The metal giant was painted in yellow. It had four arms ending in pincers and walked on two legs. Its torso was big and broad, and its head was covered by a reddish-black tinted dome.

John aimed his glaive’s tip at the new threat.

“Relax friend,” said the giant, “We’re all flesh and blood here. There’s no need to fight. Have you destroyed all the skeletons here?”

“Who are you?” John asked. John’s team had not let down their guard. They were ready to attack in an instant. “You don’t look like flesh and blood to me.”

The red dome opened and the torso split apart. Within the metal giant sat five tiny men, two at the head three in the torso. They waved at John. If John was standing beside them their heads would reach his chest. It felt good to be taller than someone for once.

“I’m Taromi, prince of the Akiaska dwarfs,” said one of the dwarfs sitting in the head, “and these are my men.” He looked around at the scattered piles of bones and dust on the floor and laughed. He jumped off his war machine to pick up the golden crown and then jumped back on it again.

“I’m John.”

“Yohn,” said Taromi. “That is a good and strong name. We’ve been coming here every night for the past week trying to kill that skeleton king and his cohort. Till now, we’ve had to flee since they’ve always overwhelmed us. It looks like you succeeded though. Thank you for ridding us of this threat.” First it was Jehun and now Yohn. Why couldn’t the other races pronounce his name right?

“It was no problem,” John put down his glaive. Orcs, warlocks, and now dwarfs. Would he encounter all the different races of the galaxy in the next few weeks? Dwarfs were friendly to humans, and Taromi seemed a pleasant enough person.

“Why don’t you come with us to our city? We will have a feast tonight to celebrate the death of the skeleton king.”

“All right,” John and his men followed the metal giant through the dark land. “You said ‘tonight’. Isn’t the night almost over? It’s been pitch dark for more than six hours.”

“The nights last long here. Daytime is but a third of night time.”

“Does this world have a moon.”

“No. We’ve only heard of the light of the moon, but never once seen it here.”

“Where is here exactly?”

“The planet Rifa. It was part of the Sena star system once. The aether swallowed it whole and the planet moved to some unknown region of the galaxy. There aren’t even stars in the sky to give us a hint of where we are.”

“Haven’t you tried building a spaceship to escape?”

“There is a barrier in the upper atmosphere that does not let us pass. You don’t seem to be nomads as we first thought. How did you get here?”

“Through a waygate. Your people can come with us to my planet if you like.” Fi was a paradise compared to this place.

“Waygate! I’ll announce it to the clan. Maybe some of us will take you up on that offer.”

“Taromi,” the other dwarf in the head called out. “High demon approaching.” The dome closed and the metal giant ran ahead. John and the rest ran after it. A demon that looked like a stag with the body of a man charged at the metal man. The iron giant caught it and threw it to the ground. One of its pincers revolved rapidly and pierced through the high demon’s aether core. Taromi’s contraption was stronger than John had realized, or high demons were much weaker on this planet.

They reached the base of a mountain where a gigantic hollow was carved into the rock. Within the hollow lay a small city. It had about a thousand houses, John estimated with a glance, along with ten larger structures. The city was surrounded by low walls and watch towers. Lights bloomed like flowers in each of the towers, and John could see the silhouettes of guards watching them from above.

“It’s Taromi and some friends,” shouted the gatekeeper when he saw them approach. “Open up.”

“Brothers,” the iron giant shouted. It was so loud that John had to cover his ears. “Let us feast and rejoice tonight. The skeleton king is slain.”

“You finally did it,” the gatekeeper was overjoyed as the gate opened.

“It was not us, but our new human friends who did it.”

Taromi led them to a big shed where he parked his iron giant. There were other machines there of all shapes and sizes. Some of them were humanoid like the iron giant, but many were in strange forms. A few were shaped like spheres, a few like giant cubes with long and limbs, a few were shaped like ants and dragonflies. There was even one that looked like a peacock. There were about five hundred machines in all.

News of their arrival seemed to have spread for there were nearly a hundred dwarfs gathered.

“Is the skeleton king really dead?” one of them shouted.

“I saw his bone dust with my own two eyes,” said Taromi. The other dwarfs in the iron giant made their affirmations as well.

“The skeleton king is dead,” shouted one of them. “Long live the prince.”

“That sounds wrong for some reason,” John said to Spiz.

“These dwarfs are kind of odd,” Spiz replied, “but I’ve never seen one before, so I don’t really know.”

Prince Taromi silenced the crowd with a hand gesture. “It was our human friends down below who did the deed. They are our guests of honor tonight. Let us give them the greatest feast they have had in their lives.”

John and his companions were taken to the central hall and made to sit at a table. The dwarfs entertained them as best as they could, telling stories and singing songs. From what John gathered, this had once been one of the key mining planets of the dwarfs. One day, for unknown reasons, the aether had transported the planet away to another star system and sealed the planet’s skies. They talked of the aether as though it was a living being, a malevolent being. The aether then opened doorways on the planet allowing the entry of demons and other entities.

Warlocks had arrived from the aether a thousand years ago, and the dwarfs had faced a bitter war with them. City after city fell to the warlocks but the dwarfs prevailed in the end with their mighty war machines. The warlocks died but their skeleton army remained. The dwarfs had managed to kill the bulk of them, but the remaining few were too powerful and cunning for the dwarfs to deal with. John was surprised when he heard this. His team hadn’t had much of a problem defeating the skeletons. Was his team very strong? Maybe they had taken the skeletons by surprise.

John scanned the food and drink he was given, a little paranoid about eating unknown things on unknown worlds. He had learned to observe the molecular structures of food when he was taking the first trial of the second trial tower, where he had lived a lifetime on his lonely planet and died of old age. He wouldn’t be caught off guard when someone tried to poison him with demon seeds. The banquet passed all his tests. He ate without worry. There was a lot of meat.

The king soon came with his entourage and toasted John. “It is rare to have guests and rarer for them to be like the heroes of legend,” he said, raising his glass.

John was embarrassed. He hadn’t done anything that great. What did they make the wine out of? It wasn’t grapes but it tasted great.

“Your armor is falling apart,” said Taromi. “Leave it with us for a day and we will have it better than new.”

“I’ll take you up on that offer,” John said happily. The dwarfs were master craftsmen after all, and dwarf made armor was heavily priced.

The festivities lasted for hours and were then taken to rooms to sleep. Taromi took John to his own house and poured out some more wine for them to drink.

The next day, Taromi approached him. “Yohn,” Taromi said after some hesitation. “I have a favor to ask.”

“What is it?”

“There is a bone dragon that threatens my city. He is stronger than the skeleton king. Would you be willing to join my men when we go to slay it? We will reward you handsomely. There are many precious ores here.”

“You plan on staying in this hell?” John asked. “Why don’t all of you just come and settle on Fi. If that isn’t to your liking I can get a space ship to take you to your capital planet.”

“We can’t go back,” Taromi sighed. “We committed a crime against our own people a long time ago. All my ancestors’ descendants are marked with the crime in our blood. Dwarfs will kill us on sight if they learn of it. Some of us might settle on your planet Fi, but most will stay here, unwilling to risk their lives. If the rulers of Andanar were to discover us, all the dwarfs in the galaxy would try to destroy us.”

“What crime?”

“My ancestors stole a certain thing that changed their bloodline. It is a taboo bloodline but it increases our metal working and runic writing abilities. The ancestors thought it was worth the risk, that nobody would find out it was them. They were clearly wrong. Even the aether went against them in the end.”

“It might not be the aether itself. It could have been a secret weapon of Andanar.”

“Maybe,” Taromi sighed. “The forge world has many secrets. So, will you come with us on this perilous quest to kill the bone dragon?”

“Why not?” John was feeling confident, and winning the trust of these dwarfs would end up making him a huge profit. John also felt that nothing on this planet was a threat to him. He’d had easy victories so far. Still, it would be good to remain cautious.

“Good,” said Taromi. “Rest while we repair your armor. We will leave in three days.”