The Dwarven Kings had heard scattered reports regarding the sightings of what was believed to be an ascended Dwarf. One of their race had become a Hero God, something unprecedented and worthy of celebration. They knew no who it was, only that whoever it was had a raging hate-boner for the Rattan Menace and had intervened in their assaults on several Fortress-Cities, turning the tide singlehandedly and either pushing the damnable rats away or wiping them all out.

In the past few days the sightings had ceased, but so had the bulk of the assaults from the rat-men. It was widely assumed by the surviving Dwarven Kings and nobility that the new Hero God had successfully beaten back the rat-men and possibly even exterminated their leaders. Maybe he was bringing the fight to the rat-people even now, tearing up their evil lairs with righteous zeal.

The calm that proceeded the unknown Hero God’s disappearance seemed too good to be true, and all thoughts of fleeing to the surface were quickly forgotten in the days afterwards. Even as a week passed with no other sightings of the anonymous Hero God, the Children of the Stone felt that things were turning around.

Then came the sighting of a mass movement of rat-people, whose numbers seemed to turn entire sections of the underway into massive undulating carpets made of sadistic and homicidal rat-folk. They once again were back and were ready for round two. It boggled the minds of the gyrocopter crews to see so many bodies all moving (mostly) as one. The sight of all of the monsters moving together and completely in sync with each other was enough to cause even hardened veterans to question if what they saw was reality or not, but the sounds and smells that emanated from the writhing mass of fur and hate could not be made up.

When the Dwarven Kings who had begun to go back to ‘business as usual’ mode after a week of relative quiet saw the recorded images, they nearly passed out from shock and fear. They called an emergency session and finally decided to begin the evacuation of the Dwarven Under-Kingdoms on their side of the massive crevasse that separated the underground. Unfortunately, this evacuation was not going to be easy. The massive horde of rat-men descended on every Dwarven Fortress-City at once, their numbers being so massive that they could afford to split into so many tendrils of destruction.

There were only a handful of Fortress-Cities that had access to the surface and thus the rest of the Fortress-Cities had to make a choice. Should they hold out for as long as possible and allow the few places with access to the surface to empty, should they try and break out and rush to the few escape routes or should they use the expensive and few gyrocopters that existed to airlift the VIPs to safety and leave the rest to their fate? Each Fortress-City came to its own conclusion, with many choosing to either try and break out or to simply abandon the masses and evacuate the VIPs.

Needless to say, both of those choices were not very good ones. There were too many Rattan surrounding the Fortress-Cities to break through without taking crippling losses and the Rattan had their own ways of dealing with airborne enemies. The breakouts were hastily planned and only a handful of Dwarfs managed to escape the sieges, if any at all, and the gyrocopters were shot down one by one as they attempted to flee. Normally capable of flying too high for the Rattan to shoot, they were now burdened by large numbers of people and possessions, forcing them to fly low and well within the firing arcs of the Rattan weapons.

The Dwarven Kings and their families (those that survived, anyways) did manage to make it to the surface, and after a day and a half had passed and the vast majority of the people who could escape did the exits/ entrances to the surface were sealed with explosives. Needless to say, there were still some who did not manage to get out in time, but that was due to several factors, one of which included the unwillingness of the Dwarf Kings to wait and potentially let the Rattan follow them.

Only one in eighty dwarves native to the Under-Kingdoms managed to escape the hell that was to come, all of them being the wealthiest, most influential and blue-blooded of the dwarven people. While they lamented the loss of their homes and much of their belongings, they were glad that they managed to escape. They could start over, rebuild what they could and eventually they or their descendants could retake their ancestral homes from the vermin. They would have their revenge, for a dwarf never forgets a single slight against them.

…

Vaile sat in a cart as the scenery rolled on past him. He had been safely on the surface for some time now, finding that even he Level 10-40 junk items that he had hoarded were considered extremely expensive in this New World. This meant that he had been able to build a sizable bank account in a relatively short period of time. The problem with gaining so much money so fast was that it raised eyebrows in the local and national levels of government. There were more than a few people who had tried to get Vaile to confess to fraud or other crimes, but Vaile had managed to sweet talk his way out of said situations.

He was glad that his current equipment effectively reversed his curse/ blessing, without it he would have found himself up shit-creek without a paddle. Sure, he had trained his Fishing, Gathering, Processing and Cooking abilities to peak perfection when the Game was just a Game, but there was something to be said about just buying the food already made. While staying in one of the Human Kingdoms had been enjoyable, he was sick of people coming after him and wanting some of his finances for themselves.

Too many people knew he was now loaded, and he was looking forward to traveling across the border and using his massive bank account to live a comfortable, peaceful lifestyle. Yes, he would have to be careful not to let anyone see him without his current outfit, but he had that down to pat by now. After all, he did not need to relieve himself due to ‘Game Logic’ still applying to him in some odd way and he technically did not sweat at all even in the hottest conditions and wearing his current getup. He could fall asleep in his outfit and no one would be any the wiser about his status as the most repulsive tamer in existence.

“Hey, what is that?”

The question posed by another person on the cart led Vaile to pop his head out from one of the openings in the covered wagon. What he saw was a parade of rich and well-to-do Dwarves pouring out of a massive gate that was embedded in the side of a mountain. With the sight that was before them rendering many in the caravan quite confused, the passengers and guards alike began to talk amongst themselves.

“Was that gate always there?”

“No, it wasn’t. Couldn’t have been made recently either, too much detail work.”

“Then Rune Magic hid it?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“What do you think they are coming out for?”

“Dunno. Heard a rumor that some kind of Beastman horde is running roughshod over their lands. Seems that the Dwarves finally met their match.”

Wait, Beastmen? When were there Beastmen in the Underground? They should have steered clear of that place for several reasons.

“Nah, man. Old drinking buddy of mine said that it ain’t Beastmen but some kind of Rat-people.”

Vaile now had a sinking feeling that he had, in his haste to be free from his ‘house arrest’ had caused something very, very bad to happen.

A Dwarf in very regal clothing approached stopped caravan and told the leader something that Vaile could not hear. The caravan leader nodded, and as the convoy continued on its way. The massive gates the Dwarves had emerged from swung shut, followed shortly thereafter by the sound a massive explosion being muffled by said massive metal doors.

“So, what happened?” Vaile asked the caravan leader with growing dread.

“Apparently a race of vicious, dwarf-sized rat-people overran the underground. Those are some of the few that escaped. I find the existence of dwarf-sized rat-people hard to believe, but if a king tells me they are real then who am I to question it?”

“And… were the rats looking for anything in particular or did they just want to cause chaos?” Vaile asked with ever increasing trepidation.

“No clue. Didn’t ask. Why do you want to know?”

“No reason.” Vaile said as he felt butterflies churn in his stomach. “Just wondered if there was a reason for it all.”

“You are a weird guy, you know that? Monsters don’t do things for ‘reasons.’ They act purely based on their destructive urges with no rhyme or reason for anything. If there are monsters that look like dwarf-sized rat-men down there, then they would be acting that way because they are built that way. The Evil God of Chaos and Destruction made them that way, or so says the Church, and I am not paid nearly enough to question the doctrines of the Church. Now, go back and sit down, we are almost to the Trelawny Kingdom.”

Vaile went back to his seat and stewed in his thoughts. Surely the Five-Clawed Paw wouldn’t just try and wipe out the Dwarves because he ran away, right? How would they even know where he escaped to, let alone if….

“Oh, fudgemuppets…”

He forgot just how twisted they could be and how much more powerful they were compared to himself. IF they did manage to trace where he landed, then it stood to reason they could make the leap to the assumption that the Dwarves had kidnapped him.

Vaile looked back at the shrinking group of Dwarves in the distance as he cursed himself for not writing a note to explain his escape. Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. Besides, it was not like the Rattan would just wipe out every Dwarf in existence that had been left behind. Surely some would live and…

“Fuck… I forgot that they do that to people and even each other...”

Yeah, he had made a world-changing mistake.