My steps led me to a huge hall. The room was lit like Rocaceleste, but here it was a green tone—beautiful. It almost distracted me from the corpses on the floor—moldy bones already at the entrance. The place smelled of solitude and sadness. I did not need to look for enemies; they found them first.
I gave them burial. I was not going to leave those brave dwarves there a minute longer. I carved the runes Lilith taught me into them so their sleep would never be disturbed. The cemetery was behind the town hall. They said that when one of them died, such was their grief that from the poorest to the mayor, they must mourn... I mean, they said, but the reality was that we said it. Our parents repeated it as a way not to forget—to know there were dwarves concerned about something other than food. Here, everything looked as if they might return someday. There must have been over fifty thousand dwarves living in this place. The lighting was brief, but I did not need light; I managed quite well like this. At the city's center—which took me four hours to reach—there was the body of a dead beast, perhaps what killed them.
The body was six meters long, grayish—perhaps it would have been green when alive—but it had been dead for decades. Its flesh did not stink even though it was now black, and bones protruded along its skeleton. Yet that was not what interested me. The dragon's scales were almost intact—that was huge!
Many years ago, a neighbor of ours returned with a strange light in his eyes. He asked for drink—a lot of it. When he finally finished his fifth beer, he had everyone intrigued. He was a shy man who rarely interacted outside of purchases and tears when he lost some very painful battle. That occasion, after much insistence, he showed us. A small rhombus hidden in his fingers shone in the light of one of the few bonfires burning in the tavern. I only saw a reflection in the distance. When he went to sell it to the merchant societies, we heard no more of him. We thought he had prospered, earned much gold, and refused to return—that he lived in some city like Jade. No one wanted to know or ask the truth. But here, there were thousands of those scales. I imagined they were not as powerful and resistant as those of a larger dragon, but they must be incredibly tough. If I was going to face a giant relative of this beast, I needed to be prepared.
That day, I skinned as many scales as I could. When I tore them off, their gray-green turned to matte gray. I looked for a forge in the city. I found one at a place called Hard Arm & Son. Its forge and anvil were nothing like what I had and perhaps would have—wood to start the fire and prime coal awaited me in their stores. I did not know how to fully work these scales. They must not be forged; there would be no point in damaging the hardness of their structure by making them malleable. But an idea was forming in my head.
With the forge hot to the point of steel melting, I began to reheat my armor pieces. There, they had a smith's hammer—different from the crude weapon that worked perfectly for crushing skulls but had no elegant purpose for working metal. Calmly, I began to heat my armor pieces. Once softened, I began placing the dragon scales, one by one, into the burning, softened metal, integrating them as much as possible—a coat of dragon scales... The process was very slow, but I had to finish everything in two hours. I heated my hammer, and without erasing its runes, I added a Firmness rune. As a last-minute idea, I placed a coating on its head. Those scales looked impressive. My armor would look stunning.
While I waited for my things to cool, I looked at my body once more. Red was the only word that came to mind. I thought the diet of that damned mushroom affected skin tone. It did not bother me, because I knew it meant I was one of them—those who did not have money, who lived clinging to what they had, who fought only to keep their work. I saw a house with a water spring and felt like taking a shower. But it was far from the forge and my weapons. If this creature was not the only one, I would have problems.
The footsteps were unsteady—as if advancing without deciding where to go. But they were coming toward me, and there were many. I heard them in their clamor; they wanted me to leave. No living dwarf was supposed to exist here. But if they did, perhaps they had gone out to fight and were returning tired to find an intruder... that was very bad. Better apologize. When I peeked around the corner, I could see them almost two hundred meters away. Indeed, some inhabitants of Emerald had survived. But they were no longer dwarves.
The closest was a deformed thing—normal height, but no beard. Bushes grew from its face. Its eyes were uneven, its gait heavy. It wielded a broken hammer. Beside it, a dwarf woman—I thought, from an insipid braid in her dirty hair—stumbled as they approached. I shouted at them—first in greeting, then as explanation, finally as warning. But none of them stopped. They kept advancing, surrounding the smithy, cutting off my exit.
I rushed inside. My armor, though solid, was still hot. But I could not waste time—it burned! Each piece of metal I felt adhere to my skin. It was still too early to wear it! But I could not waste time—I wanted dragon scales, didn't I? Idiot! My hammer was more bearable. My magic could not be healing me all the time; I depended on my willpower and not thinking about the blisters the metal was giving me—besides the permanent burns. I went out when they were only twenty meters away. I climbed onto the roof as best I could and shouted at them again to let me go. No one should know they lived here. No one should harm them. But I received no answer. Fearfully, they approached the house but did not enter. They just stood there, threatening me with their garbage tools. Five, ten minutes passed. Suddenly, from among their clothes, they began to pull out pieces of rat, mole, and some things I did not recognize. All were green—not from the stones, but from Morgana's corruption. There, I vomited.
With the taste of bile, I watched the spectacle. They had all gone out hunting. How did they survive without trade? I imagined they were many dwarves who entered illegally, who sought food when hunger overcame common sense, who began eating contaminated things. When corruption became widespread among the animals they hunted, they kept doing it. From here, I could see their bodies—many came holding their viscera in their hands, but they did not notice. They were so corrupted inside—they were Gully dwarves, as they called those born poisoned by mercury or arsenic. They were dead, for tumors prevented them from living a life worthy of the name. Behind them, I could see the dwarves who did not make it—most crawled behind the group. It was likely that once they finished eating what they brought, they would eat those who no longer breathed. There was only one thing left to do... I did not want to do it.
While my hammer traveled from one end to the other, my reinforced shield threw bodies everywhere. Every time I activated a magic, the scales changed to the color of that magic and increased its power. My maul passed through as if bodies did not exist—families, empty minds that had inhabited their city until they ceased to be the dwarves who lived there. Since they were isolated, no one asked for help. I imagined everyone trying to make excuses and leave by the door—to flee... flee where? No one expected or wanted them. No one gave them help. What could they do if those behind the doors would kill them when they saw them? I tried to eliminate only those who got in my way. I just wanted to get out of there. But when I finally reached the other end of the city, my path was filled with death—of my people, of innocents who lived without living, who ate and died, and others little by little followed in their footsteps. How long would it take before the tumors killed them? More than that, how old were they?
I managed to get some stale bread from a house. They did not follow me, so I prepared to finish what I came to do here. Emerald connected to the deepest mines. But just as I was about to leave, I heard them cry. All sat before their dead. Even though it was something I had to do—they attacked me the whole way—it moved me to see them cry. But then they began to eat each other—without reason. They were full, I told myself. They had eaten corrupted garbage; they died from that food. Why did they not let them rest? Even though I could leave, I had something more to do. I sang the song between sobs—Emerald's composition—while I took care of them. After finishing, I bathed. In the houses, there was grain and food; they could have cultivated. Some escaped, but I hoped they would not reproduce. It was painful because their life was that—pain. The deformities hurt them; they were rotten inside. None pleaded; all advanced against me because they had to. I was not their enemy—I was food. As I began to place the bodies behind the town hall, I sang some lullabies and dirges as I buried them. It was the best I could think of, along with my promise to avenge them against whoever had harmed them like this.