Chapter 301: The Dwarven Cave of Mantamia (3)

The dwarves could only stare.

The gate had opened of its own accord. There were no levers, no hands, and no password muttered under breath. It had swung wide as if the mountain itself had chosen to breathe in. That could mean only one thing: their god had personally welcomed the barbarian.

For several stunned heartbeats, they simply froze, trying and failing to make sense of it.

“Make way.”

The voice came from behind them: heavy, iron in the throat. Dwarves shuffled aside at once, a lane opening through beards and breastplates. A single dwarf walked out between them.

Ketal’s brows lifted. “Oh?”

This one was strong. Not merely stout the way dwarves were famous for being, but honed—weighty as a thunderhead. If someone called him a Hero, Ketal would not have argued. The dwarf’s eyes, narrow beneath thick brows, measured him for a long second.

“So you are the one our god spoke of,” he said at last. “Let him pass.”

“B-but, Your Majesty...”

“He is a guest of the god. We will treat him as such.”

Mouths closed, and axes lowered. The crowd parted, and Ketal stepped through the ramshackle outpost at an unhurried pace, dwarven gazes prickling across his skin like sleet. He ignored the whispers and followed his escort into a hut large enough to pass for a hall among dwarves.

“Welcome,” the dwarf said. “I am Grombir Ironhand, King of the Dwarves. I am also a man who failed in his duty, whose holy halls were wrested from him by the spawn of Hell.”

“I’m Ketal,” Ketal said, taking the seat indicated to him. “I set aside my own duties to come here.”

They traded those plain introductions without bowing or embroidery. Then Grombir’s tone gentled.

“I know of you, Ketal. You’re the barbarian wanderer, friend to the Pointy Ears, a man who has meddled in more than one corner of the world on the side of the living.”

“Huh. Word gets around even out here?” Ketal smiled. “I figured this place would be too far to keep up with the news.”

“A king must track the currents of the world,” Grombir said simply. “I did not expect those currents to bring you here. And I certainly did not expect our god to open the way.”

He studied Ketal more frankly then, allowing himself a craftsman’s indulgence.

He’s flawless,

Grombir thought.

The man’s body was all clean line and pared strength, every muscle set exactly where it ought to be. A sculptor with a lifetime to waste on a single block would struggle to match it. If he ignored the absence of a beard, a serious aesthetic shortcoming in Grombir’s private taxonomy, it was the ideal of a warrior’s frame.

More than that, even tamped down, the man’s presence hummed under the skin like a forge at full draw. The Myst he carried was not vast, but the

weight

of him made the quantity irrelevant. Grombir nodded, satisfied with his first reading.

“Our god has welcomed you. Your closeness with the Pointy Ears displeases me,” he said, without heat, “but you may rest under my camp’s protection.”

“My thanks,” Ketal said, the corner of his mouth tipping up.

The courtesies paid, Grombir leaned in. “So, why have you come to our ground? I can guess. The Holy Sword, perhaps?”

His gaze flicked to the hilt riding Ketal’s hip.

Reports had come from messengers snatched off battle roads and from traders who swore they’d seen the impossible and lived to sell the story. Grombir had dismissed them as campfire nonsense.

“The Holy Sword does not break,” he had told himself. Yet, here it was, broken.

“The sword is one reason,” Ketal said. “There are others.”

There was the Dragon Bone he meant to have refined, the hide of the Whitie, and the severed forepaw of the Ugly Rat. He also had questions he wanted answered about the ink-black axe that had become his companion. It was a short list to say aloud, but a long one to carry.

Grombir’s mouth twisted. “And none of those will be easy while we sleep like refugees on our own threshold.”

He did not need to explain the shame of it. Every dwarf in the camp wore it like a second cloak. They had been driven from Mantamia, their holy tunnels, their under-mountain city, and now they huddled in tents within bowshot of their own gate.

“Tell me what came,” Ketal said. “Did several demons descend, as they did at the elves’ sacred ground?”

When the demons had moved on the elves, they had done it with a full hand: three named demons, an aerial fortress, even a walking vessel of hellfire itself. Ketal expected something similar here.

Grombir shook his head. “No. Only one.”

Ketal’s eyes widened. By Ketal’s reckoning, Grombir himself was a Hero dwarf. He was perhaps a rung below Karin, the High Elf Queen, but very much of that tier. Mantamia was a sacred ground for the dwarves. Sacred ground had their gods’ blessings built into their bones. Dwarves of the upper ranks would have manned the walls in numbers.

However, Grombir had told him that merely one demon had thrown them all out. It seemed impossible.

“What descended?” Ketal asked him.

“A demon who holds the title of count, the Demon of Jewels, Raphael,” Grombir answered.

***

“A count...,” Ketal murmured, interest sharpening his tone.

Floris, the Demon of the Flower, also had a rank, but her title had never been made explicit. That meant Raphael outstripped her by title and likely by strength.

“Jewels?” Ketal asked him. “That’s his authority?”

“He commands gemstones and the power sealed within them,” Grombir said. “He has seized the mines.”

In this world, a jewel was not just an ornament; it was a catalyst. Schools of magic existed that used nothing else, treating polished stones as batteries and lenses. Raphael was the Demon of Jewels. He exercised complete dominance over anything that could be called a gem.

“If this were another battlefield, we might have found a way to counter him,” Grombir said. “Gems are rare and difficult to gather in large numbers, but that demon controls the entire wealth of Mantamia’s lodes.”

There were many powerful gems inside Mantamia.

Mithril was a soft-white metal that gleamed like moonlight and carried Myst the way veins carry blood. A single fist-sized lump could sustain the Mage Tower’s mana for a week. Adamantadium was a black, unyielding ore so hard that only Mantamia’s great furnaces could bully it into bars. Orikalos was a legendary myth-ore that absorbed any power fed into it and returned that power doubled.

And those were only the names scholars knew. The deeper galleries of Mantamia hid whole families of minerals with names that had never been written in human ink. Such ores were unruly by nature. Grombir himself, for all his rank, had to court them carefully and work them with patience. Even beings that could reach out and tug at the world’s definitions found them difficult to master.

Raphael required no courtship, no tempering, and no rites. It simply

took

, and the mountain obeyed every single time.

“It is very like what I am made of,” the Holy Sword said inside Ketal’s mind, cool and small. “Mithril, at least, is close to one of the bones beneath my skin.”

Mantamia’s mines held such bones in abundance. The Demon of Jewels had made his den in the middle of the hoard and was already sending the choicest pieces downward, into Hell.

“What they mean to do with those ores, I cannot say,” Grombir admitted. “But nothing good. It has been over a week since Raphael took the shafts. A great deal has already been lost.”

“I see,” he said, stroking his chin. “ Is that why Ignisia came to help you?”

“The Elder Dragon came herself,” Grombir said. “Even so, we have not reclaimed a single gallery.”

“That means Ignisia and the demon are fighting inside,” he said, glancing toward the black gap of the cave. “I can feel it.”

“You can...

feel

it?” Grombir asked him, disbelieving despite himself.

Mantamia ran deep. The mines ran deeper still. And since the takeover, the interior had been saturated with an oily, possessive miasma, demonic taint that swallowed sound and dulled sense. Even dwarves born to these halls could no longer read what happened below.

Ketal shrugged. “Power at that scale resonates. It’s hard to miss.”

“Ignisia came two days ago,” he said. “She has been fighting since.”

“And getting nowhere, I assume,” Ketal said.

“Regrettably.” Grombir’s beard shifted in something like a grimace.

Ketal looked at him sidelong. “Then why are you here, and not down there beside her?”

“Because we do not know when Hell will come for the camp. I have to be here to hold the line,” Grombir said, blunt pride and blunter realism mixing in his voice. “And because, more to the point, I would only drag her down.”

“Drag... her down?”

“If I go in against Raphael, I become a liability,” Grombir said. “I would be no more than a weight around her throat.”

Ketal whistled softly. Even Heroes became burdens at that threshold. That, more than the titles or the stories, told him what he needed to know.

His smile brightened. “All right. I’ll go see it myself.”

Grombir did not waste breath telling him not to.

“Your strength may be enough,” he said instead. “But it will be dangerous.”

“Dangerous? For me?”

The Dwarf King flinched before he could stop himself. Ketal’s grin turned frankly delighted. There was something very barbaric in that look.

“Good,” Ketal said. “I was hoping for that.”

***

Mantamia’s depths shook with force strong enough to erase mountains, if not for the mines themselves. The very walls caught the worst of the storm. Pillars and ore veins absorbed the backlash, leaving only tremors and dust to reach the surface.

Ignisia darted back with a snarl, the hem of her beloved dress ragged and scorched. She crossed both hands, and Dragon Tongue pealed out of her like hammered silver.

“

Space, become chains,

” she chanted.

The air clanked as concepts hardened, and the very idea of between condensed into iron links that snapped tight around her foe. She had once used the same spell to pin Ketal’s movements back before he stopped holding himself back. She did not wait to see if it held.

𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

“

Tear. Crush. Break. Twist.”

Four Dragon Tongue layered one atop another. The world itself put its hands on the target and tried to make it not be. Even Bayern, armoured in Myst, would have gone to his knees if that storm struck him square.

However, the spell shattered like glass under a thrown stone. Sound slammed up out of the floor, and the mine lurched around her. Ignisia gritted her teeth and rode the slide, but a rain of knife-sharp fragments sliced across her skin all the same. She tried to use Dragon Tongue to heal herself, but it was ineffective.

The opposition carried enough force to outmuscle even her direct Dragon Tongue.

“What a shame,” someone said. The voice was smooth, almost tender. It was the tone of a collector studying a scratched painting.

“That beautiful body is picking up scratches. If you would yield before there are too many, I would appreciate it. I prefer to preserve works as near to whole as possible.”

“Shut up,” Ignisia said, nose wrinkling. “You’re disgustingly strong.”

“As you are, Elder Dragon Ignisia,” the voice went on, as if she had not spoken. The world settled. The figure at the center of the crater resolved.

His eyes were as bright as rubies, and his horns gleamed like polished obsidian. He wore a violet suit cut with fussy, devilish elegance, every line tailored to perfection. Above all, there was his beauty—not the warm, human kind that lives in people, but the cold, untouchable perfection of a jewel displayed in a velvet case.

Demon of Jewels indeed,

Ignisia thought, disgust and reluctant acceptance mixing like oil.

“You possess power and bearing worthy of the famed Elder Dragon. Truly impressive. If this battle weren't taking place here, even I might have been in danger. What’s more, your beauty is nearly the pinnacle, befitting an Elder Dragon. But...!” Raphael gave his head a dramatic shake, his glossy hair rippling like liquid shadow. “You still cannot compare to me! I wondered if there was anything in this world that could rival my perfection. And yet, even one who bears the title of Elder Dragon cannot reach it. Such is the greatness of my perfection!”

“Do you ever stop talking?” Ignisia asked him, perfectly sincere.

Raphael did not. “You cannot match me, no. Still, you are not

bad

. Would you like to enjoy some time with me? I have, I assure you, satisfied many demons.”

He said it without irony, with the pride of a master craftsman discussing his finest piece. His certainty was absolute. He believed this about himself as naturally and unshakably as a mountain knows the pull of the earth beneath it.

“I am perfection,” he continued. “The apex of beauty. Think of your life. How many chances will you have to be loved by someone like

me

?”

“I am not shy, but even I think your confidence is pathological,” Ignisia said. “If you will walk out of this shaft and leave it to me, I will consider your proposition.”

“I cannot,” Raphael replied amiably. “Certain very great people would be angry.”

“Then it’s a no,” she said, voice going flat.

She clicked her tongue. The demon lived up to his station, and the setting could not have suited him better. He had been able to be languid because the mine itself fed him and cushioned him. Every second he talked, his field strengthened.

In another place, it would not have been like this. However, this was Mantamia, the greatest mine in the world. Every priceless ore Ignisia had ever heard of sang from these walls, and every one of those songs now harmonized under Raphael’s hand. She could not win, not alone.

She needed help, but there was no help to be had. Even coming here had stripped strength from other fronts; staying long would cost lives elsewhere.

Then I have to spend everything I have and take the risk,

she decided.

Her eyes settled, and her breath shortened as she gathered herself, focusing everything into a single word.

“ᚹ.”

It was barely a syllable. A breath shaped around a single rune. However, the force packed into it made her earlier spells feel like sketches. This was compression: the secret art that only a handful of true Elder Dragons could perform, squeezing Dragon Tongue until their density approached the breaking point.

“How beautiful,” he said, his smile cooling. “Also, how dangerous. Such arts have a price when they fail.”

Even as she spoke the word, pain tightened Ignisia’s face. She could wield it, but not easily. It demanded everything. If he blocked it, she would be spent, and it would be over.

Raphael chose to trust his field and began chanting. “Come.”

The mines answered him as Adamantadium, Mithril, and Orikalos, ores so rare that a single fist-sized chunk could buy a city, flowed toward him in streams of liquid light, compacting, folding, and fusing into a shield that glowed with the pooled pride of mountains.

“A shield of countless gems,” he said softly. “Protect me.”

The compressed Dragon Tongue shot forward like a bullet, and the impact shook the gallery as rock that had withstood both heat and pressure for ages trembled and swayed. Ignisia snarled and fed the word harder, bearing it into the shield. Cracks spidered across the construct, glittering and ugly.

However, the shield fell slower than her word faded.

“My victory,” Raphael said, almost apologetic. “I dislike seeing beauty break. I will close my eyes for this part.”

“You—!”

Power blew her back before she could complete the curse. She caught herself hard and braced for the stone. Then, a pair of arms caught her instead. Boots hit and skidded, ploughing long dark grooves through the dust. The slide bled out and stopped. Ignisia blinked up, and her eyes went very wide.

“Who,” Raphael asked, momentarily at a loss, “are you?”

“Your enemy, probably,” Ketal said cheerfully. He set Ignisia on her feet without looking away from the demon. “Are you all right, Ignisia?”

“Y-yes,” she said, dazed, and stepped back out of the immediate line of death.

***

“You don’t look great,” Ketal said. “Fall back. I’ll take it from here.”

“O-okay,” she said, and retreated, questions crowding her mouth and then falling off the edge. This was not the moment to ask how or why he had appeared in Mantamia.

Ketal rolled his shoulders and studied the one who had driven an Elder Dragon to that point, and despite himself, admiration rose within him like heat.

He’s powerful,

Ketal thought.

Even beside Ignisia or Karin, Raphael’s aesthetic was overwhelming. He looked like a man carved from gemstones to demonstrate the concept of symmetry to would-be gods.

“I am Ketal,” Ketal said. “And you are Raphael, Demon of Jewels. Yes?”

“I am,” the demon said. “And I know you.”

This was Ketal, the enemy of Hell. He had disrupted the demons’ plan not just once, but many times over. He was also the one the Four Pillars of Hell themselves had named for death. Under other circumstances, those orders might have meant something. Here, they were sound without meaning. Raphael had no attention to spare for duty.

His eyes trembled, his breath caught. He stared at Ketal’s body the way an artist stares at the piece that has been living in his head since he was old enough to draw breath.

“Perfection...,” Raphael whispered.