“I decided that I had to take down the Emperor because his lackeys came after me, yours is as good a reason as mine. But uh… How does your membership in my sect influence your clan?”

“The rules surrounding that are unspoken and blurry at best,” he shrugged. “It’s mainly for the purpose of travel to foreign lands. You can’t be part of two clans back in Borea, but you can be part of one clan or equivalent in Borea and another in some remote country. Birth clan tends to take precedence unless you yourself decide otherwise.”

A silence settled in as the conversation petered off, both sides satisfied and ready to turn in for the night… Until a few minutes later, Zel looked up from the stew which they had bubbling over the burner and said: “Honestly, besides fixing the Butcher, the springs, and the megafauna, what I look forward to the most is seeing if I can lift as much as one of the great clans’ elders.”

“With all due respect, Sect Elder, not a chance,” the norseman grinned.

She shrugged.

“Hey, you never know. I haven’t bothered to measure how much all those plates total up to ever since I passed the one ton mark, but I did lift one of the target blocks that one time.”

“Aren’t those solid two by two meter blocks of cold-iron? That has to be…” Victor piped up, but he was interrupted.

“Seventeen tons,” Zel boasted.

“You flipped it over on its edge, your scars exploded when you did it, and you collapsed immediately afterwards,” Zefaris listed out in an attempt to admonish her lover, but she couldn’t muster an edge to her tone at the mention of the feat.

“Hey, it was barely five months after the Blue Moon War. I wasn’t at my best. And besides… I still lifted it.”

“We will be in moledwarf dweller territory soon,” Jorfr warned. They were still deep in the caves, and only driving deeper.

“Uh-huh…” Zel muttered, then did a double take. “Wait, moledwarf? Is that a separate tribe or some weird name for-”

“-Deep dwellers, sorry. I have some starmetal hrivns, we can use those and throw in some of the busted power wires from the gandrs.”

“So are they… Civilized? Or do we just toss them the metal and run?” Vic asked.

An amused chuckle came from the northman: “Agarthan Molemen are not only civilized, they are smug about it. They hold themselves to be overmen of their race compared to their comparatively primitive siblings across Ikesia. It is… Not entirely unfounded. They are one of the only dweller tribes capable of high-level material refinement, easily on par with human craft in quality. Now, they don’t actually mine and smelt, they grow their metal using these gigantic beetles, Metallophages they are called. Their carapaces become infused with the metals they consume. Working the carapace is a finicky process compared to smithing from what little I have learned, which is the reason we can pay them in refined metals. They are not able to produce them themselves. We may be able to use their local ritual site to do the Itrian sealing rite as well.”

“How would they react if we tried to pay with some valuable from one of their rival tribes?” Zel asked.

“Can’t say,” Jorfr shrugged. “Won’t hurt to try, though. At worst they will escort us to ensure we leave their territory.”

A moment of quiet, and then another question from Zelsys, though she was more thinking aloud than actually asking: “...Wait, if they don’t mine their own metal, how do they get the iron to coat their teeth and claws? That dietary need was supposed to be the main reason why their kind attacks human ore shipments.”

Jorfr once again shrugged: “Hell if I know. It’s probably readily available in Metallophage meat or something.”

Evidence of habitation soon became evident, and a few hours of travel later, they came upon a Deep Dweller lookout in a particularly spacious passage; the creature was just sitting up in an alcove carved straight into the wall, its fur poking out from under a chestplate of dark iridescent chitin.

Out of nowhere, it opened its mouth, dagger-like iron-coated teeth chattering… And then it spoke in the thickest, surliest accent Zelsys had ever heard, hollering down at them while waving its hand as if it weren’t tipped with daggers. It was like… Some weird mutant branch of Ikesian that had diverged from the main branch two hundred years ago.

“Ey, if it ain’t our favorite surface-dweller! Gotyer friends from down south as y’said y’would?”

Paying the creature’s behavior no mind, Jorfr answered: “So I did! Any path changes since the last time I passed through?”

“Nah, yer good to go on through,” the moleman shooed them onward.

“...They speak? And Ikesian at that?” she questioned, though only once the lookout was out of eyeshot.

“It’s perfect Begebuch Ikesian,” Zef cut in. “They’re a tiny mountain kingdom right to the east of Titan’s Bane. Big on mining and metallurgy, so… They could’ve come into contact with these molemen at some point, I suppose?”

“If you ask them, they’ll insist that they taught the Begebuchs’ caveman ancestors how to speak,” Jorfr laughed.

It didn’t truly sink in that these molemen were legitimately civilized until they entered into a particularly large cave chamber and were greeted by a sizable settlement, buildings carved into solid rock and built from stone blocks fitted together so tightly that it had to be some sort of geopolymer. The smell down here was certainly strong, but it was one that resembled a farm more than anything else, which lined up with the widely varied giant beetles that seemed to serve as livestock for these folk.

Molemen milled about back and forth just going about their lives, only a few bothering to stop and gawk at the foreigners; of those who did, most pointed towards a particularly large doorway in the side of the cave wall with two spear-wielding molemen standing guard in front. Instead of a door, a curtain of glittering chitin chunks on strings separated what lay beyond from the exterior. High-piched bickering could be heard from within, and they entered with Jorfr in the lead.