Peter eventually stopped screaming and simply concentrated on keeping his balance. The damned thing seemed to have a mind of its own and tried at every opportunity to throw him off. The slightest bump in the road caused it to buck not unlike a bronco.

When we get there, wherever there is, I’m going to pound Pham with this scooter until it breaks or he does. He? She? Does it matter? It still felt weird to think of Pham as a girl in real life and a guy here when their mannerisms were exactly the same, even with such diametrically opposed bodies. I should just ask what s/he prefers. After the respawn, of course.

His musings were punctuated frequently by fresh attempts by his ‘steed’ to throw him, forcing Peter to dedicate more and more attention to steering and balance and relegating his desire for revenge to a dull burning at the back of his mind. Most difficult were corners, whilst few, meant that he had to lean into the curve, avoid the bumps and dodge any rocks thrown up by Dani’s mount as well. Every one that he didn’t manage to avoid did little for his attitude towards his fellow man or horse.

Such was his intent on maintaining an upright and stone-free journey that its’ sudden terminus caught him by surprise. They had just entered a lightly forested area surrounding the foothills, which added sticks to the hazards he needed to avoid, and rounded a corner sharper than any previous when the rope went slack. The scooter and occupant shot past the now stationary Pham and Dani into a wide clear space around a cliff face with a yawning void that was now rapidly approaching. Resuming his earlier screaming, Peter leaned left and right to wend between mining carts, buildings and people who were diving for cover themselves. The rope reached its limit and snapped taught, bringing the scooter to a sudden and decisive halt. Peter continued onwards, now unfettered and seemingly held aloft only because gravity had better things to do elsewhere.

His graceful arc ended in a water trough, arresting his momentum moderately safely. The still glowing metal bar that had been dropped into said trough to quench offered ample motivation to exit the water quick-smart and in a hurry. Only then did Peter finish screaming and inhale. He was sure a second round would begin as soon as he had enough air, when a resounding meaty slapping noise interrupted his scattered thoughts.

“BWA-HA-HA-HA! By Jord’s ample bosom! Never have I seen such a sight!” A dwarf, though perhaps in name only, stood by the handle of a set of bellows as tall as it was laughing the bouncing belly laugh of the truly jolly. An impressive beard obscured their otherwise bare upper body, the muscles sliding around under their skin like SUVs trying to overtake on an English sidestreet as they clapped one hand against a domed metal helmet recently removed from their head - if their helmet hair was any indication.

The now-familiar cold sensation gripped Peter, flushing through his body in an instant as though he had been plunged into the arctic ocean. He stalked over to where the scooter lay on its side, one wheel still spinning and calmly, methodically, precisely untied the rope. He carried it to a nearby anvil and laid it atop the metal surface. Taking his time, he weighed several hammers from a nearby rack before selecting one to his liking. Returning to the anvil he gave the hammer two practice taps on the metal, then one savage blow to the scooter.

Tap-tap. Smash.

Tap-tap. Smash.

Tap-tap. Smash.

Without batting an eyelid he crushed the cursed conveyance and tossed the remains into the flames. As the wood crackled and was consumed he neatly returned the hammer to the appropriate peg and took a deep breath. Looking from Pham to Dani and back again, he exhaled. “Never. Again. Are we clear?”

Stunned, mute, his companions could only nod.

Then, unexpectedly, Peter smiled. He turned and strode over to where the oversize dwarf was still chortling.

Pham dismounted and tiptoed over to Dani’s side. “Oi, do his eyes do that thing often?”

“What thing?” Dani breathed.

“That thing where they ain’t there, and there’s nothing but the endless void except for two tiny blue pinpricks. You know, that thing.”

Dani tore her eyes away from where Peter was introducing himself to the Smiths Guild representative. “What? Oh. A couple of times now. Does it give you the willies too?”

“Lady, you got no idea.”

Over by the metalworking equipment, Peter was making a new friend. “So, you’re a half-dwarf?” he asked in confusion. “But not half human? How does that even work?”

“Aye, well, me Ma was a hill giant and me Da was recklessly suicidal, er, brave. You can imagine how the Solstice celebrations went,” she clapped Peter on the shoulder, nearly sending him sprawling in the dirt. “I were too tall for the mines back home, so Da’n’I came down ‘ere to the human lands where I wasn’t gonna bash me ‘ead on the roof every five feet. Someday I’ll go back.”

Noticing the wistful tone he inquired, “You miss your family?”

“Nah, there’s some heads that need smacking and I weren’t big enough to when we left.”

“Ah.”

They began wandering towards one of the buildings as they chatted. “Asides, I’m not the only one far from home. What brings a Celesti all the way down here?”

The question rooted Peter to the spot for a moment. Why AM I here? “Running away from home I suppose. My parents are always fighting and there’s his big jerk who likes to hit people smaller than him.”

Opening the door and waving Peter in, the half-dwarf paused for a moment. “There’s always a big jerk who likes to hit people smaller than them. The secret is to hit back. Doesn’t matter if you win, what matters is that you don’t let them get away with it.”

The room was mostly bare, just a pine desk and some shelves filled with scrolls. A single window in each wall let in the mid-morning light and a couple of unlit mining lanterns hung from the walls. Peter was waved into a wooden chair opposite the desk. “So, apart from running away, what brings you here, specifically, Traveller?”

Peter stopped halfway sat down and rose again, offering a hand. “My apologies, I haven’t even introduced myself properly. Peter is the name I go by.”

His hand was engulfed in a vice-like grip. “Peter, I’m Maya. You know, you ain’t like most Travellers. They’re all ‘what’cha got to sell’ and ‘show me how to smith’ and all. So rude.”

“Well, Maya, I’m sorry about how my fellows treat Citizens. I assure you I’m not like them.” He turned to the side and opened his inventory so it wasn’t between the two of them. He pulled out the letter he had received and placed it on the desk. “I was given this letter of introduction for helping John the farmhand down in Averton. Dani convinced me that learning some smithing skills would help, as would mining.” He stopped and looked around. “Are you the person to talk to about mining too? Or is there someone else?”

Maya picked up the letter and scanned it. “I don’t teach smithing, Peter. That’s kinda my point,” she glared momentarily over the top of the sheet of paper. “They see a lady working the forge and assume. You want to learn how to make swords for the Travellers or ploughshares for Citizens, Ol’ Pappa Smith has the knowings.” The top of the letter flipped down to reveal two piercing blue eyes, “you wanna know how to bore into the heart of the mountain where the richest viens run, lovingly ease the purest gemstones from their rocky prisons, how to listen to the very earth itself whisper its’ darkest secrets to you? That’s what I teach.” The paper flipped up again. “But that day is a long way off. Today you learn how not to hit yourself in the foot with a pickaxe. Here,” she took a stamp from a drawer in the desk and marked the letter. “You have my endorsement. Work hard, work long and one day you might meet the heart of the mountain. Not today though. Off you pop, I’ve got work to do.”

Taking the letter Peter returned to the yard to find Dani and Pham poking at the tools half-heartedly and making small talk. “Duck egg? Eau de nil maybe?” he heard Pham say.

“What’re you guys talking about?” he inquired.

His companions jumped and looked at him guiltily.

“Nothing,” Dani blurted out.

“What colour to dye my armour next,” explained Pham, unconvincingly.

Peter shrugged. “Whatever. You guys are weird.” He looked about, searching for something. “So, Maya said I need to learn to use the pickaxe. Where do I get one?”

“Ooh. It’s ‘Maya’ already is it?” teased Pham. “Most of us have to call her Ms Stonebrow until at least Apprentice Miner. You didn’t ask her to teach you Smithing did you?”

Dani strode over to the mine entrance and beckoned the other two over. “Come on you two, get a wriggle on. Beginner tools are on the board here, along with a helmet and a lantern.” She pointed just inside the entrance.

Pham and Peter shared a look. “Yes ma’am,” they intoned in unison.

After equipping themselves with picks, lanterns and the all important helmet with a torch on the front the trio progressed carefully down the tunnel. The oppressive weight of the mountain seemed to weigh heavily on the team, rendering them mute for a time. In the far darkness things moved, breathed and occasionally screeched. Peter gripped the haft of his tool hard enough that he imagined he was leaving fingerprints in the wood.

A particularly loud screech from nearby made Pham drop his pick and grab a pair of glittering orbs from inside his waistcoat. “What the hell was that?”

Dani trained her helmet lamp on a crossbeam a few meters down the way. A pair of yellow eyes reflected the light back in a most disturbing way and the screech echoed down the tunnel again. “Pfft. It’s a mimic bat, ya pansy. Look.”

Sure enough, hanging from the wood was a tiny flying mammal no bigger than a fist. A full third of its body was its head, with huge creepy eyes. As they watched, it opened its mouth wider than should be possible and loosed a blood-curdling cry. Even knowing what it was, Peter found himself rooted to the spot with fear. He tried to find the cold detachment from earlier, but the sensation eluded him. Pham cocked an arm back ready to throw one of the orbs but Dani stepped in front of him.

“Oi. We’re underground. Grenades? Really?” She reached out and plucked the sphere from his nerveless fingers. “Look, they usually hang about near ore nodes anyway. Get over yourself and have a look around.”

Peter shook himself out of his stupor and examined the tunnel walls closely. Running his fingers over the rocky surface, he traced a sparkly line from near knee level to where the thickest point about chest height where it collected in a goldish vein as wide as his hand. Suddenly realising that his arm had been itching for the last half hour he opened his Traveller’s Mark.

He’d earned the skill Ride and several skill ups for it, his Perception skill had taken a bump and, most surprising of all, his Avatar Attention (Bani) had ticked up 0.5%. How does a dead Avatar pay attention to anything? he wondered as another scream assaulted his ears. “Dani, you seem to know all about those things. How do you shut them up?”

“Like this,” she answered, slipping a small dart from a pouch. With a deft flick she sent it soaring through the gloom to embed itself in the bat’s chest. The scream became a gurgle, became a wheeze and it dropped to the ground with a quiet whumph. “Don’t touch that unless you want to see Jacob sooner than you’d like.” In the glow of their helmet lamps the body swelled, blackened and burst releasing a small cloud that dispersed as they watched. The remains faded rapidly, leaving no trace the creature had ever existed. “Happy now?”

Pham shrugged. “Better, I s’pose. Now what?”

“Now, you get your hands dirty. Peter’s found the node, so get swingin’.”

Sure enough, there was now a small highlight where the vein was widest with a notification above it announcing to all that they had found a Copper Vein. Peter hefted the pick experimentally, finding the weight and balance completely different to his scythe. Heaving it back over his shoulder, he swung with his whole body, driving the pick point deep into the vein.

Where it stuck.

The vibrations travelling back up the shaft stung so bad he immediately let go, wringing his hands and squeezing them between his legs. “DA… ang it. That hurt.” When the sting had abated he tried levering the pick back and forth to no avail and much laughter. Glaring at his chortling companions, he gave them a helpless ‘do you want to try’ gesture. Their only response was to laugh harder, Dani holding her sides and Pham leaning on the wall slapping a knee.

Another scream echoed up the tunnel. “I thought you shut that thing up,” wheezed Pham, trying to get himself under control.

“I did,” Dani replied, suddenly all business. She drew a dagger from the small of her back and one from a sheath on her left calf. “That wasn’t a mimic bat. That’s what the bats mimic.”

“Oh.” Pham pulled himself together and opened his inventory. He pulled several complicated looking devices out and attached one of them to the wall a few meters down the tunnel from which the scream had come. “No bangs, I promise. Just a little something to slow whatever it is down a bit.” Pulling another two devices out he firmly pressed one to the floor, causing it to shoot a tiny bolt trailing a hair thin wire into the roof. Stepping back two paces he jumped, tying to affix the last one to the roof. After a couple of jumps he managed to apply the needed pressure and eight brass legs flipped out and bit into the stone to hold it in place.

“What’s that one?” Peter asked, still trying to extract the pick from the wall. It finally let go with a crack, landing him on his back with a small shower of stones and a piece of rock marbled with green veins. Copper Ore his Appraise skill announced. He popped them all, tool, stones and ore, into his inventory and pulled out his scythe.

Pham looked up at where the last device hung like the sword of Damocles and smiled. It was not a very nice smile. “Yeah, don’t stand under that one. The rest are relatively non-lethal and pretty cheap. That one took me a couple of days to make. Anything coming up the way is going to regret it.”

The scream came again, the source much closer and this time they could hear the difference. The Mimic Bat screamed as a defence, trying to scare off a predator. This sound clearly came from a predator, sort of an “FYI, you’re about to get eaten” sound.

As they waited, lanterns flickering, feeling the weight of the mountain above them, Peter wondered if they should run away instead. Whatever was coming, and he could hear the scraping footsteps now, was enough to make an experienced Traveller like Dani take it seriously. He was just opening his mouth to suggest it when…

“Hey, so, uh, what is this thing?” Pham whispered.

“You’ll see,” Dani responded, reading her blades. “You got any weapons that aren’t going to kill us all in these confined spaces?”

“Umm, not really. I didn’t really pack for a mining trip.”

Dani looked left at him, blinding him with her helmet lamp. “Well, what did you pack for?”

“Not that, that’s for damn sure. What the hell is that thing?”

Slowly fading in out of the darkness came a shambling, twisted creature. It resembled a small green skinned humanoid, but one that had been dipped randomly in tar and thrown in front of a bus. Peter tried using Appraise, hoping against hope. Shade-corrupted Goblin, the notification informed him, Level?, HP?. I guess my skill needs to be higher to get anything more, he realised, but happy he’d gotten anything. He relayed the information to Pham.

“Just one?” Pham replied loudly. “You got me all freaked out over a single gobbo?”

Dani rapped on his helmet with the hilt of her dagger and raised her finger to her lips. “Shhh! There’s never just one with these wankers.” Sure enough, three more had just emerged from the gloom.

Simultaneously, all four opened their mouths and uttered the loudest scream yet. They shuddered and lurched forward in lockstep like something from a bad zombie movie. They were all misshapen, gross caricatures of an already ugly monster, but each was twisted in its own unique way. Three gripped crude stone picks in oversize paws, the last one had its tool melded with its limb. One had its free hand on the shoulder of the creature beside it, shuffling along blindly with its eyes scrunched closed.

The twisted quartet shuddered closer, passing the first trap on the wall. Peter cringed in expectation of some horrible explosion of blades or acid shower or even razor wire. When nothing happened he glared at Pham.

“It’s a magnetic trigger,” he shrugged. “I guess they’re using stone weapons. My bad. The next one will work, so cover your eyes.”

Backing up a few paces as the goblins came on, passing nervous glances amongst the themselves, the party waited for the monsters to trip the second trap. Surely enough, the hair thin wire tangled around the first one’s chest and pulled the dart free of the roof. The dart fell, coiling the wire around the goblin’s neck and arms before pulling taught and eliciting a click from the device at its feet.

“Say ‘cheese’!” Pham yelled as the tunnel was flooded with the light of a thousand suns.

Even with his face buried in the crook of his arm, Peter’s eyes hurt from the glare. Three of the goblins shriek died in their throats, though the fourth one still wailed, immune to the actinic assault.

Dani punched Pham in the shoulder. “More warning next time, ya mongrel. Now, we get them.”

Pham held out a hand. “One to go. I say we let them trip it first,” he warned, indicating the device on the roof with his chin.

“We’re safe here, aren’t we?” Peter asked warily.

Pham nodded, then paused. “Probably,” he conceded.

While the three monsters that had been blinded were still pawing at their misshapen faces and walking into the walls, the last had obviously been spawned with some sort of blindsight or echolocation attribute because it pressed forward undeterred. Its jerking locomotion carried it forward right underneath the final trap where it paused and looked up.

“Oh, crap. It can see the metal!” Pham lamented.

Unfortunately for the goblin, this proved to be its undoing. As it stood underneath the device it detached from the roof and dropped straight onto its face. The legs that once burrowed into the rock above now reversed and drove themselves into the twisted cranium of its victim.

Then, they began to squeeze.

Instead of the terrifying yodelling, the tunnel filled with the pained squealing of greenskin in agony. To Peter’s immense relief it was short lived, to Dani’s disgust it was ended with a shower of goblin head. Glowing voxels scattered across the floor before dimming and fading, leaving a faint mark on everything they touched.

“My boots, ya bastard. You said we were safe here.” She punched Pham again.

Pham rubbed his shoulder, “I said probably. Maybe we should clean up the stragglers before the debuff wears off?” He pulled out an exceptionally large ring spanner with a conspicuously worn end that was quite out of round. “You know, while we still have the advantage?”

Dani lurched forward and caught herself before grabbing Pham as he rushed past. “Magnetic trigger you say?”

Pham’s eyes widened, realising he’d nearly just rushed into a trap he himself had set. “Uh, yeah. Crap. Thanks.”

Dani stuck one of her blades between her teeth, drew a throwing knife from the bandolier across her chest and sent it hurtling down the tunnel to bury itself in the torso of one of the goblins, who were still rubbing their eyes and walking into each other. A moment later the device on the wall beside them came to life, sending a rapidly expanding weighted net of thin metal ropes hurtling across the tunnel to entangle all three monsters and pin them to the rock. Still holding Pham by the sleeve, Dani waved her spare hand in front of Peter’s horrified eyes. “After you, mate. Time to earn your keep. We’ve already done the hard part.”

Peter grumbled the whole way down the hall, slipped around the corpse left by the roof trap, and carefully delivered the coup de grace to the bound beasts. Each time the scythe slipped through the mob’s neck without resistance, causing them to flash red and eliciting the Critical Hit notification and a cut off squeal that turned his stomach.

Silence returned to the tunnel as the bodies and the mess despawned.

“Well, that was dramatic,” Pham quipped.