⛏️ Chapter 51: The Hidden Folk
🌍 July 27, 91 BCE — High Summer ☀️
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🌿 Elves in the Valley
The elves had settled into the valley with quiet grace. Carpenters planed beams smoother than any villager had ever managed. Hunters returned with game strung across poles, meat salted and smoking in the communal sheds. Herbalists brewed tonics that eased fevers and soothed coughs no human recipe could touch.
One evening, around the forge fires, a young elf idly remarked while polishing a hunting knife,
"It is a pity the dwarves are not among you. With all this stone you raise, they would have shaped marvels beyond compare."
Junjie froze. "Dwarves?"
The elf blinked, ears tilting back in mild surprise. "Yes. Folk of the mountains, stout of form, enduring, their hands made for hammer and chisel. You have not heard of them?"
Claudia glanced up from her notes. "Do you know any other secret people?"
The elf's gaze drifted toward the dark ridge beyond the firelight. "Giants," he said softly. "They were the first to lift the hills and hollow the valleys, but the Troll Hunters hunted them to the last. Big bones, slow hearts, the world has always been cruel to what stands out. Only their bones remain beneath the northern snows."
"No," Junjie said slowly. "Tell me everything."
🪨 The Hidden Passage
The Sky Leviathan drifted over jagged ridges until the elves pointed to a hollow clinging to the mountainside. Stone halls sprawled there, broken and silent. Roofs had collapsed; doorways yawned black and empty. Forges stood cold, their chimneys cracked.
"They lived here, once," Claudia murmured, laying a hand against the shattered lintel of a gate.
But there were no voices, no fires, only wind in the stones.
Nano's whisper brushed Junjie's ear. "Thermal variance below. Hollow spaces... passageways. Still active."
Junjie straightened, speaking for all to hear. "You said they were miners, didn't you? Then maybe they went deeper. Look for seams, hidden cuts, anything that leads down."
They searched: palms against stone, lanterns probing cracks, ears pressed for the faintest breath of air. At last, a seam revealed itself, a line too straight for nature, running down a cliffside like a scar. With crowbars and patient leverage, they pried it open.
Cold air sighed from the dark throat of a stairwell.
They descended single file, Junjie and Claudia close behind the elven guides, guards watching the rear. Lantern light swayed against the walls, throwing long shadows down the narrow stairs. The passage opened into a cavern vast enough to swallow the Leviathan whole, its ceiling lost in darkness.
Smoke drifted. The ring of hammers fell silent.
And eyes watched.
Dwarves.
Stocky figures stood in a ragged crescent, beards braided, shoulders like anvils, hands wrapped around hafts and hammer-necks. Their speech came in gravel and iron, hard syllables sparking off the walls.
🎙️ First Words and First Impressions
The elven envoy stepped forward, posture precise, voice a low river. "We come as friends," she said in their own tongue, measured and melodic, then again in the common traders' cant. "No chains. No nets. Only an offer."
A rumble answered her. It wasn't one voice; it was many, colliding.
"Bah, pretty words."
"Long ears always did love speeches."
"That tall one's no elf. Who's he, then?"
Junjie listened, head slightly tilted, eyes on mouths and hands, reading more than sound. Nano thrummed in his bracer. "Overtalk is excellent for sampling. Thirty-four percent, forty-nine, consonant clusters are brutal. Don't try the rolled R yet; you'll insult their ancestors."
The dwarf at the center, older, thick-armed, beard banded in copper, lifted a hand, and the noise flattened to a simmer. He barked a verdict at the elves, then pointed his chin at Junjie, weighing him like ore on a scale.
The elven envoy began to translate. Junjie lifted a hand. "Let me."
Nano: "Sixty-eight percent. Feed ready. Keep it simple."
Junjie spoke in dwarvish, slow and careful. "Stone strong," he said, palm to the wall. He touched his chest. "You strong. We, builders. Not hunters."
Silence puckered. Then a few chuckles. A palm spat into the dust in rough approval. The elder's beard twitched with what might have been amusement.
"Rough as broken granite," he rumbled back, this time without glancing at the elves, "but it's ours. Speak, then, tall builder. Speak plain."
Junjie did. He told them of the valley, not its secrets, only its safety. Work waited: walls, roads, forges. Food is plentiful. Sky. No chains.
They did not leap. They scoffed, questioned, and argued over one another's sentences. The elves tried to smooth it; Nano soaked up the chaos like rain. By the time the talk ran down, the elder jabbed a thumb at a young dwarf with bright eyes and callused hands.
"Brokk," he said. "Ye'll gae. See if the tall lad's truths weigh as he claims. Come back. Tell us if his stone holds."
Nano, dry in Junjie's ear: "Congratulations. We've earned a field test."
🚢 First Sight of the Sky Leviathan
They brought Brokk up the throat of the mountain and into the day. He stopped on the last step, blinded by blue. His breath hitched.
"It goes on forever," he whispered, as if confessing a sin.
Past the lip of the ravine, shadow moved and the world reared up: an ocean-broad hull hovered with no earth beneath it, sails furled, masts black and high. The Sky Leviathan's gravity plates hummed like a held breath.
Brokk's jaw dropped. "Stone-Father's bones... the mountain's afloat."
He staggered forward and rapped his knuckles against the hull. A hollow thunk answered. He sniffed, frowned, then grinned through his beard. "Looks like timber," he said reverently, "but it's metal. No hammer struck this. Devilry?"
Claudia smiled. "Ingenuity."
Nano murmured, amused, "Compliment detected."
"Aye," Brokk breathed. "She's a beaut."
They offered him a gangplank. He went up with the awkward care of a man stepping into a dream. When the Leviathan rose, no oars, no wheels, no cliff beneath, Brokk's hands tightened on the rail until his knuckles blanched, then loosened as laughter shook him.
"Flyin' stone and timber," he muttered. "We've been crawlin' in caves while skyfolk ride the wind. What fools we've been."
Junjie tried a line of dwarvish. It came out clumsy, vowels boxed in the wrong corners, but true. Brokk barked a laugh and clapped him on the shoulder. "Ye learn fast, tall builder. I like ye."
🏭 The Valley Tour: Forges, Furnace, and Fire
They did not take him to the grandest marvel first. They led him where a dwarf's heart would quicken.
The blast furnace came first: three stories of fire in a fixed tower, iron bands bracing brick that glowed like a volcano's throat. Ore fed at the crown, slag bled at the base, and between those two mouths, metal poured like dawn. Brokk leaned too close, beard tips singed, eyes wet.
"She's a mountain turned upside down," he whispered. "I could stand here 'til me bones cool."
The forges came next. Hammers fell. Sparks leapt. Anvils sang. Blacksmiths drifted aside just enough for him to watch the grain change as iron bent to will. He mouthed their cadence under his breath, matching stroke to heartbeat.
⚙️ The Ore Eater
Only then did they bring him to the creature crouched on broad legs in the forge yard: beetle-black plates, a drill like a fang, two wide viewports like watchful eyes.
Brokk stopped. His hammer slid loose in his grip and hung forgotten. "What manner o' beast?"
"It eats mountains," Junjie said simply. "We call it the Ore Eater."
"Ye feed it rock," Brokk said, circling, palm skimming plating as if blessing it, "and it gives ye?"
"Ore," Junjie said. "Only ore."
"Two seats," Laon called from the hatch, grinning. "Care for a flight?"
Brokk didn't answer. He ran.
The fans wound up in a rising whirr, gravity plates thrummed, and the Ore Eater lifted. Brokk strapped in beside Laon, eyes shining like lamps. They banked toward a copper vein scar slanting across a cliff. The drill came down with a hungry snarl. Stone screamed. Dust bloomed. Conveyors swallowed rubble, magnets sang, sensors blinked, and the machine spat clean waste back to the face while ore rumbled into its belly.
Brokk laughed until his voice broke. He laughed again through tears. "Aye!" he roared over the noise. "She eats stone an' leaves naught but treasure! She's a forge's dream, she's a beaut!"
When they set down, he slid from the hatch and pressed his forehead to the hull. "I'll tell 'em," he said hoarsely. "By stone and steel, I'll tell 'em all."
🍺 The Brewery and the Barrel
They continued the tour around the valley, past forge yards, furnaces, and workshops, Brokk's eyes darting, his hands itching to touch everything at once. Then his nose twitched. He sniffed once, then again, and halted in his tracks.
"Lass," he rumbled, pointing toward a heavy oak door, "what in the nine hells is that smell?"
Claudia led him to one last hall before he left. Warm yeast and sweet mash curled through the air. Barrels lined the walls, copper stills gleamed in firelight.
Brokk froze. For dwarves, ale was legend, something whispered about and savored in dwindling sips from the last hoarded casks hidden deep underground. He himself had tasted it only on rare feast days, when the elders unsealed a barrel as though opening a tomb. And here it was again, not one cask but dozens, whole stills working as though the gods themselves had blessed this valley.
"Ye've... ye've a brewery?" His voice cracked between disbelief and awe.
"And a distillery," Claudia said, lifting a small oak cask bound in iron. She pressed it into his arms. "A gift for your people. Brewed by our own hands. There's more where it came from."
Brokk cradled it like a child. "Show a dwarf steel, he'll listen," he said, eyes bright. "Give him ale, he'll follow."
Nano, dry: "Recruitment protocol: complete."
🏔️ The Return and the Decision
Back beneath the mountain, Brokk did not speak at first. He rolled the keg into torchlight, popped the bung with his knife, and filled a horn. Foam ran down his beard. He passed the drink to the nearest hands. A murmur swelled into a cheer. Horns clinked. Laughter cracked the smoke.
Only then did he speak of blast furnaces that roared like gods, of forges that did not sleep, of a machine that ate rock and spat riches, of a ship that floated like a mountain set free. He did not mention magic. He said craft. He said work. He said home.
The elder listened without smiling. He twisted his beard and watched his people's faces change.
"Maybe," he said finally. "Maybe the tall lad's truths weigh. We'll gae. Pack yer lives. Keep yer wits. We'll leave no anvil behind."
🚛 The Migration
Three hundred and fifty dwarves, smiths and miners, carvers and coopers, children with braids and elders with walking hammers, packed not just clothes but heritage: anvils worn smooth by grandfathers' hands, bellows patched and re-patched, hearthstones black with memory, racks of chisels, casks of ale, barrels of grain, crates of ore samples wrapped like infants. They marched to the ravine with their world on their backs.
But not all could come. The great stone forges, carved hearths, and chimney throats cut into the cavern walls belonged to the mountain, too vast and heavy to uproot. Dwarves lingered, hands pressed to soot-dark arches, whispering farewells.
"These stones burned with us for centuries," one greybeard muttered, voice breaking.
A younger smith gripped his arm. "We'll build new ones, master, and make them hotter."
The Sky Leviathan could carry four hundred souls and still keep her temper, but she could not bear a people's whole history in one breath. It took two voyages to move the Stonefolk: the first groaning with two hundred dwarves and enough gear to raise a town in a week, the second with the stubborn and the sacred, the last coals from the main hearth sealed in clay, the final anvil dragged aboard amid cheers that shook the canyon.
They marched on, leaving the heart of their craft entombed in silence.
⛰️ Leaving the Stoneworks Behind
The dwarves packed their lives with grim efficiency, anvils strapped to sledges, bellows folded tight, tool racks bundled in hides. But the forges, the carved hearths, the chimney throats cut into the cavern walls, they could only touch in farewell. The stone was the mountain, and the mountain could not walk with them.
One greybeard laid a hand against the soot-dark arch of a forge and muttered, "These stones burned with us for centuries."
A younger smith gripped his arm. "We'll build new ones, master, and make them hotter."
They marched on, leaving the heart of their craft entombed in silence.
When the Sky Leviathan set down in the Hidden Valley, the dwarves tumbled out into open sky for the first time in generations. Sunlight stabbed their eyes, grass brushed their boots, and the air smelled of pine and living earth. They were shown the Ore Eater, the blast furnace, and the brewery, and their gruff skepticism cracked into open wonder. Brokk himself clutched a small cask of ale gifted from the valley folk, vowing to share it with his kin.
Here was safety, here was promise. Yet in their eyes lingered the shadow of the forges left behind.
✨ Junji's Secret Errand
After the second voyage, when the last dwarves had stepped into the Hidden Valley, Junjie stood apart, watching their eyes drink in the open sky they hadn't seen in generations. They laughed and argued and pointed like children, but in the shadows of their joy, he still caught the weight, the memory of forges left behind.
That night, he slipped away. The Gull of the Mountain waited, its hull humming low like a resting bird. She needed no crew; Nano could trim ballast, balance power feeds, and even fly her blind if need be. With Junjie at the helm and Nano murmuring course corrections, the little craft soared back into the night.
He descended alone into the dwarves' cavern halls. No human hand but his touched the blackened hearths, the carved stone arches, the bellows worn smooth as leather. He laid his palms together and let Nano fold them away into the vault only he could access. The gulf of silence pressed heavily; no hammer rang, no flame burned, only the ghosts of dwarves who had lived and worked there for centuries.
Nano whispered in his ear, "The south branch of the valley is optimal. Basalt bedrock, steady draft for chimney flues. I've drawn a plan, streets, smelters, hearths, all radiating from a central forge. Suggest placing the largest works already recovered at anchor points."
By dawn, the Gull of the Mountain returned to the Hidden Valley, silent as a thought, carrying the soul of a people in her hold.
📜 The Big Reveal
Later that day, Junjie gathered Brokk and the elders and led them to a side valley where basalt cliffs cradled a wide, flat floor. There, set neatly upon the earth, stood their hearthstones, forge mouths, chimney arches, anvils, and racks, every piece they had mourned as lost. Around them, pegged and chalked, was a town plan: orderly lanes, placements for kilns, smelters, and living halls.
Junjie held out the parchment. "Don't find me presumptuous. I drew up a little plan of your new quarter. I thought this might help you to build."
The dwarves stared. One dropped to his knees, pressing his forehead against a soot-stained hearthstone. Another gripped his hammer and muttered, "By the Stone, he brought it all back."
Brokk took the plan with both hands, voice unsteady. "Ye've given us more than land, lad. Ye've given us our blood again." He straightened, raised his voice so all could hear, and declared,
"From this day, ye are stone brother to the dwarves."
A roar rose from the gathered clan, hammers striking anvils, voices echoing off the valley walls.
Nano, dry in Junjie's ear: "Recruitment protocol: complete."