I woke up feeling oddly damp. The ambient glow of the sun had died, and now only flaring, twisting orange lit the camp from the raging signal fire, which sent great white clouds to the top of the cavern. I coughed; the smoke was bitter now.

Sitting up, I realised the happy chatter from earlier was gone. The only sounds were that of the roaring fire and those of the grunt of dwarves lugging great woody logs through the camp, hard mushroom-wood grinding against the stones.

A soldier, in his helmet but without his other armor, stepped around me and let another log fall against the fire. It hit the flames with a crackle and a shower of sparks.

“Hey, what time is it?” I asked. “How long since I got back?”

“Oh,” he said, and paused for a second. “It must be about two in the afternoon.”

“Thanks.”

I rose, my battered body aching at the movement, and took a look around, sniffing the air. Why was it so dark? And humid too. I squinted at where the hole to the outside had lit the cavern earlier. There was no bright white there anymore, just dim grey, barely visible.

I remembered my childhood lessons. I knew water was meant to fall outside, and refill the rivers, and that with the rain came clouds of water vapour. Under these, rich dwarves sometimes took vacations to the outside, before the burning sun returned. Every dwarf child lucky enough to get an education learned this.

But rain only came in one short season, a couple weeks a year. The rest of the time the sun dried up the land like a commercial oven might dry the moisture out of lizard meat. Well, lessons could be wrong, I supposed. What did us dwarves know about the weather anyway? It was something that affected very few of us. If my teachers had been wrong about it, it would be no surprise. I’d never found their lessons much use anyway, not once I’d fallen down to the mines.

But this was a place the weather was going to affect us. Before, the river had slid along the central canal far from smoothly, but hardly violently either. Now it was jumping to the banks and splashing up in huge white jets. As I looked, a mushroom that’d been leaning too far over the bank was smacked down by a wave, as if by a raging giant.

I swallowed. The etchings on the tunnel to the city forced themselves into my mind.. Those images of ancient gods shattering the works of dwarf with their snakeish bodies, and remaking nature in its place. Palaces to rubble, cities to lakes, mines to collapsed caverns. Might this storm be their doing? The Ghost King had certainly mentioned the ancient dwarf gods before, and as if they were physical entities too.

I shook my head. There was no use worrying about things I couldn’t control. Onto more concrete issues. Should I be working right now? I spotted Tradfast directing some of the log carriers, and he caught my eye. I glanced away, and rubbed my legs. No. I didn't want to do any more work.

Content to watch, I sat back down and noticed Urist inside the house we’d cleared. He had a knife, and was cutting into a piece of wood. Strange.

“What’s that?” came a shout from the other end of camp, carrying over the rushing sound of the river. I jerked my head up, and grabbed at my dagger. Where had the shout come from?

“It’s another fire!” came another voice. It was from a guard, stationed on the edge of a downhill street that gave a view across the river.

I edged around the fire and took a tentative look to where they were pointing. I could see nothing but grey buildings, so I walked up behind them. Half a dozen other dwarves began to crowd around me.

“It’s a signal fire!” cried a dwarf from behind.

“Where? I don’t see it,” cried another.

“Look!” One of the guard dwarves pointed to the other side of the city with his spear, a grin showing every tooth on his face. I moved my eyes along the weapon’s shimmering point, orange in the flames, and saw an spark on the other side of the city.

The guard was right! It was nothing less than a signal fire. I heard more dwarves running up behind, more of them shouting with joy.

“They’re alive!

“They made it out of the hall!”

One of the guards sniffed, and wiped a tear from his eye. “I thought they’d all be dead. How under the mountains did they ever escape?”

“Who cares?” I said, heart beating fast out of joy for once rather than fear. “The ghosts didn't get them, and that’s all that matters.”

Silence was their only reply. I glanced back. Although the other dwarves jostled against each other, elbowing and putting hands on shoulders in a firm but friendly manner, no one stood closer than a metre to me. I felt cold, even amongst the warm bodies.

Damn, I really hoped Airon was over there.

I could see small shapes beside the fire. They were too far for me to make out their features, but there were a lot of them, and they were definitely dwarves. Most in armour, gleaming dimly, but some in plain drab -- miners.

“Captain,” shouted the dwarf who’d spotted the fire. “You have to come and see this.”

Captain Lorsson was already dashing over, followed by the rest of the dwarves. The crowd parted to let him through, and he stood beside the guard. He squinted hard at the orange light on the other side for a second, then turned to beam at us, smile splitting his beard with perfect white teeth.

“Your faith in our friends has been proved!”

He pursed his lips and rubbed his brow. Everyone watched him, smiles frozen onto their faces in anticipation. We would go to them, surely. There were clearly more of them than there were of us, after all. Give the order! I wanted to be there already, to know if my only friend was still among the living. I tapped one of my feet so rapidly it might have been shaking.

“We will go over there as soon as we can!” cried Lorsson, unfurrowing his brow and pumping his fist in the air. Yes! “Prepare some food, on the double!” He drew his sword and pointed to a bridge across the river, a big one with stone walls at either side. “We need our strength up for the crossing; it’ll do us no good to go there tired and hungry. Prepare lunch, take a ten minute rest and then form up!”

A great cheer erupted, drowning out all other sound. Every dwarf, including me, let everything they could out their lungs, and pumped their fists in a wild beat.

“Cap-tain! Cap-tain! Cap-tain!” came the chant, and I joined in, all worries forgotten.

The Captain put his sword away and waved us down with his hands.

“We can celebrate plenty later. Let’s get to work!”

Around me the dwarves dashed off, bumping against each other in their excitement, but no curses were thrown. I spun around, grinning wide in a strange delirium, ready for once in my life to help my fellow miners.

“Turn around and look at the river for me.”

“Pardon?” I looked around, but I couldn’t see the speaker. Oh. The Ghost King. “What do you mean?” I asked, thoughts cloudy with happiness.

“Look at the water!” His voice was harsher now, more commanding. I bit my tongue and turned to look.

The river rushed and spouted in great white jets, like it had been for a while now.

“It’s a little more violent than usual, sure.”

“Look again!”

I did so. Was it just my imagination or was there something else in there? Something solid, and pale green, leaping out of the water and back in.

Yes, there was! Multiple things!

“What are they?” I whispered, unable to pull my eyes away. I caught a good look at one as it jumped six metres out of the top of a wave; it was frilled and six-limbed.

“They are harbingers. Of the gods. Do not fall in the water, and stick close to Urist.”

I took in a deep breath. Behind me, the other dwarves chattered and cheered in equal measure. But my elation was no more.

The next half an hour was spent making lunch in preparation for the hike across the city. The mushrooms took an irritatingly long time to cook, and the whole process was made worse by the pale-faced glances in my direction from the other miners. Urist’s change had really terrified them. I wondered what they thought I was? Some sort of hidden warrior perhaps, or a runesmith. Eventually it was time to eat.

I wolfed my skewers down despite barely being hungry. The thought of the ‘harbingers’ I’d seen sucked all the taste from the food, as well as the saliva from my mouth. Worse, was the fact none of the dwarves around me had any idea of the danger, and were chewing their mushroom chunks with unabating enthusiasm. Idiots. I wished I could tell them of the danger, not out of any concern for their safety, but simply because if they were prepared, I’d feel safer.

Aside from me, only Urist looked something other than enthusiastic. His lips were straight and grim, and the bit of wood he’d been cutting into had become a rudimentary spear. Of course, the ‘guard’ the Ghost King had set in him would also know of the harbingers.

The Ghost King had told me to stick close to Urist, but the wonky pointed stick, which Urist was now tempering in the signal fire, did nothing to boost my confidence. No, for once I better stay near Captain Lorsson and Tradfast. One’s sword and the other’s size would surely make them formidable adversaries to the ‘harbingers’. Even so, my stomach turned at the thought of another fight.

“Dwarves form up!” shouted Captain Lorsson, slamming his fist against his steel breastplate, making a hollow clang that echoed through the camp. I stood up, and stretched my arms and legs. If I got attacked, all I had was my knife; if I couldn’t run away properly, things would not go well.

No one else bothered to stretch though. They practically ran into formation, miners in the middle with soldiers surrounding them. Funny to think that two days ago the miners had to be shoved and hit so the soldiers could march them off. I supposed both groups had suffered together so much in the past few days most animosity was behind them. That or both lots were too distracted by the promise of seeing their friends again. With bright, eager eyes, they gazed at their commander, waiting for the order to move, while I came up in the back of the line.

Shit! I’d meant to be at the front. Now nearly a dozen rows of dwarves separated me from the two best fighters. A hand clasped my shoulder, and I jumped.

“Don’t worry, Stony,” said Urist. He must have stayed back to be with me.

“Do you have to be here?”

He jiggled his spear slightly.

“I’m meant to protect you. Of course I have to be here.”

I took another hard look at his weapon. It was barely even straight, and although I couldn’t tell its sharpness from looking, it was obviously a far cry from tempered steel, even the non-runed stuff.

“You aren’t going to be able to protect much with that thing.”

He gave a faint smile, and I rolled my eyes. Whatever the Ghost King’s powers were, I doubted they extended to making good weapons out of bits of mushroom, no matter how wood-like those bits were.

“Ready!” shouted Lorsson, snapping my attention back to the head of the column. In unison, every dwarf with a spear banged it on the ground, and every dwarf without stomped their foot. “In single time, move out!”

He sounded like a real commander saying that, and we began to march. One two, just like we had in the hall of pillars, except instead of along a flat surface, we moved down a slope. On either side buildings filled with more mushrooms crowded us, and along the ground we trampled small fungi to mush, which mixed with the rain and made it a battle to stay on my feet. On the left we passed another glowing mushroom, and little flecks of rain sparked blue in its ambience.

If droplets were making it all the way down here, the storm must be worsening. I looked up at the hole to the outside. It churned with grey and black clouds, raging with the same natural ferocity as the earthquake had done.

The rain grew stronger, and so did the wind buffeting us in irregular gusts. Every time we passed an alley a rush of air, littered with scattered drops of water, would drive at the side of my face, forcing me to blink and turn my head.

A metal clatter sounded from the front of the column.

“Halt!” cried Captain Lorsson. “Are you alright?”

He pulled up a soldier who’d fallen on his face.

“I’m fine,” said the dwarf. I saw he was coated in mushroom gunk and water. “It’s just

a little slippery going downhill.”

“Right you are,” said Lorsson. “Dwarves, turn right! We’ll take a more diagonal path down.”

The diagonal path wasn’t much better than the straight one. Gravity wasn’t pulling us downhill, but instead the wind at our back, three times stronger than anything I’d felt from ventilation, pushed us forwards. My feet slid on the slimy floor in front, and my back was rapidly getting soaked through, my flesh chilled and numb. If only I’d got to the front of the column, then I’d have someone behind to take the force. Urist seemed little bothered however. He walked like he’d been doing this his whole life.

On either side the buildings began to take on new forms, and new sizes. Great domes became common, as well as doors twice as tall as any dwarf. Statues appeared too, of dwarves and twisted lizard things wrapping around them, stone claws digging into stone faces calm in rapture, slimy green-brown coating everything. Were these temples? Or perhaps they were the houses of the greatest priests. I eyed the face of one of the lizard-statues. It was triangular, with small eyes and teeth of dark glass that looked sharp even after ten millennia.

Who would worship such a thing? I turned my gaze to the floor, and tried to think about meeting Airon again. But all that did was remind me of the raging river we were about to cross, thick with more monsters.