Dagna rolled her eyes. “38. But don’t give me that trollshit about lacking experience now. I’m not a child!”
Kraghtol looked at Valir helplessly, who just shrugged.
“I don’t know. Is that very young? I’m 19. No, wait actually. It’s 20 now.” His birthday must have been at some point during the ship passage. The thought filled him with a twinge of sadness; he was no child anymore, and he didn’t need to celebrate his birthday. But it was the first he had spent without Merrick, who had gone out of his way to bake him a cake every year. It had been a small cake, just for the two of them, and Merrick wasn’t even that good of a baker, always using too much butter, but he missed it nevertheless.
“Twenty years?! You longlegs are really weird. A dwarf under 25 is considered a child. By our standards, you’re little more than a baby. And if you’re under fifty years old, nobody really considers your opinions valid.”
She huffed again.
“As if you needed fifty years to see what’s going wrong in the world.”
Valir made a noncommittal noise and gestured towards her pocket containing the crossbow.
“And that’s why you threaten to burst people open. Like a tomato.”
She pulled out the device again, pointed it at a nearby rock and pulled the trigger. The bolt zipped out with little strength and produced a modest pling as it collided with the stone, leaving only the slightest of marks. Dagna smiled apologetically.
“I may have exaggerated that a bit. The only thing it’s capable of bursting open right now is a tomato. A very ripe one at that. I’m still working on improving the tension, which, in my defense, is really hardif I don’t want to increase the size. The goal was to chase you away, not to kill you.”
“Why though? What’s here that you didn’t want us to see?”
When Dagna hesitated, Valir sighed theatrically, back in his element. “Oh, come on. You already told us enough to get you in serious trouble, so why stop now? It’s the first time we’ve actually gottensomeoneto talk to us.”
The dwarf looked somewhat convinced, and the useless crossbow disappeared into one of her many pockets. “I’ll show you.”
Dagna led the two of them nearer to the back side of the foundry complex, where a tangle of pipes and ducts ran over the ceiling. Embedded in the wall was a door; it seemed to be an ordinary door made of metal, like every other door here in Bronzebreak. However, at the center, there was an additional blotch of slightly lighter copper-like metal. Strange geometric shapes and runes in an unknown language were etched onto its surface.
“This is Voldrik’s workshop. Everything he left behind after he departed is behind this door.”
“So, that’s where you learned your stuff?” Valir asked. “And you’re afraid the Guild of Crafts gets wind of it and takes it away?”
Kraghtol shook his head. “No… I don’t think that’s it. You can’t get in, right?”
Valir looked surprised, but Kraghtol hardly noticed that as he approached the door. The metal blotch felt cool to his touch, emanating a sense of stability.
“What is it?”
Dagna shrugged. “I was hoping you could tell me. It’s some kind of seal the alchemists put on the door. Now, nothing gets through it. Believe me, I’ve tried. The thing itself is pretty indestructible, too.”
Looking at it from this angle, the metal object really looked similar to the wax seal Valir produced with his signet ring. He had seen nothing like it before, but it was clear that this, too, was a form of alchemy. One the school probably wouldn’t have taught him about until much later, if ever. He didn’t understand why he could tell so clearly, but it was a similar feeling that he had experienced in his dream.
“If you can’t get in, and the guilds sealed this off — why did you feel the need to keep us from it?” Valir asked, apparently much less captivated by the metal.
“I feel like the council — they are the ones ruling the city in the name of tradition — has been getting more adamant during the last years. I’m sure if they were to decide about the workshop now, they wouldn’t just seal it off, but purge everything left in it from existence and from history. Rumor has it they even chisel away parts they don’t like from the old stone tablets. Isn’t that crazy? They try to change history in the name of a tradition they believeshouldbe the truth. It’s only a matter of time until they come for places like this.”
“And you think you can keep them from it?” Valir didn’t sound particularly convinced, but a tone of appreciation mixed into his voice as well. “With a crossbow that doesn’t pierce skin?”
“Someone has to try,” she answered with defiance. “Also, I’ve set up my own workshop nearby, and I wouldn’t want them to find out about that, either.”
Valir shrugged. “I probably would have tried to keep attention away from the places important to you, unless you have the means to defend them. But I admit I’m no expert on Dwarven politics. Let’s see this workshop of yours, then. Are you coming, Kragh?”
Kraghtol, who had studied the metal seal in awe, almost jumped at the question and hurried back to the two of them. It intrigued him immensely, and he couldn’t say why.
Dagna led them to a crammed room nearby, reachable through a mineshaft. This one seemed to be a repurposed break room from the mining days and was only separated from the public area by an old door with a new padlock. The ceiling of the workshop was low enough for Kraghtol to watch his head, but higher than in the connecting tunnels, where he had to crawl. Inside, there was pure chaos. Dozens of tools Kraghtol didn’t even know the names of lay scattered across multiple workbenches. Springs and cogs and pieces of metal in all kinds of unusual shapes filled boxes with no apparent system, and unfinished workpieces begged their owner to continue. In one corner, there was even a small crucible furnace and a set of casts, under a blackened hole in the ceiling for ventilation. It was a lot to take in.
“How do you findanythingin here?” Valir muttered, but Kraghtol ignored him. To him, it felt oddly comfortable.
“This is amazing!” he exclaimed and looked through a stash of paper with plans he didn’t understand in the least. “Did you build everything yourself? Your crossbow, the lock on the door, all of this?”
