“The paths one took in life often decided the destination one reached at the end.” - Old dwarven saying.

The following day, the two caravans went on their respective ways after a hearty breakfast and a thankful farewell. The trademasters embraced each other and traded well wishes before they hopped onto their respective wagons and led their caravans on their way. The road for both of them was likely clear, as it was unlikely for beasts to repopulate an area within a day, and their passage had naturally driven away the beasts that used to inhabit the area near the road.

After half a day’s worth of fortunately uneventful travel, the joint caravan Aideen was in reached the other exit on the other side of the valley. From there, they were officially in the territory of the Kingdom Down Under, who still claimed the moniker of being the greatest and oldest of the dwarven kingdoms despite their decline in the past millennium.

The Kingdom Down Under was an oddity in that they had no real cities other than their grand underground kingdom, which spanned the entire territory of the region they inhabited like a spider’s web and was considered a singular city, just divided into multiple districts. On the other hand, many agricultural villages and trading towns were set up aboveground, manned by people from other races who had pledged their loyalty to the dwarves and were subservient to them.

As for the dwarves from Down Under, they generally avoided leaving their underground domicile if they could avoid it. Aideen wondered if that was maybe why the few she had met had such dreadfully pale skin tone, almost as pale as her own.

By the evening, the caravan had reached their final destination for the trip, a trading town only designated as C11. The dwarves had simply labeled the towns and villages on the surface using a coordinate system, rather than with more common names. For what it was worth, it did not look like such a name bothered the people living there, and in fact many praised the easy-to-understand coordinate systems since it helped make travel between the villages, hamlets, and townships easier.

For Aideen’s primary purpose of coming to Alcidea, namely to find information regarding the various nations on top of scouting the continent for a suitable location, her stay in the Kingdom Down Under proved to be a disappointment, however. The Kingdom Down Under had very strict rules about forbidding any foreigners from entering the depths of their territory. The underground was especially forbidden to all but dwarves.

Aideen did not wish to cause any trouble during her stay there – dwarves live long lives, so chances were if she was to cause any trouble some might still remember it even if she returned centuries later – so she had not tried to sneak into those forbidden territories and instead took a trip around the periphery regions of the Kingdom Down Under to visit the various hamlets and port towns.

That leisurely trip was partly to show Celia more of the world around her, and to gather up whatever intelligence she could, though most of it were in the form of gossip and rumors of unverifiable credence. Probably the most plausible and important rumor she learned was the supposed discord amongst the kingdom’s royal family.

Said discord stemmed from the fact that the Crown Prince – who was born weak and sickly – had died young, and the remaining princes were locked in conflict to cement their position as the successor to the throne. From the rumors Aideen heard, the strongest contenders were the third prince, who was a liberal that proposed for more open relationships with their neighbors, and the sixth prince, who was a conservative who wished to lead the kingdom back to its glory days via military conquest.

When Aideen considered how long dwarves live – the current king was still in his fourth century – and the fact that the race loathed those who used dirty tricks to remove their rivals, chances were that the Kingdom Down Under was headed for a century or more of political turmoil in its near future. It was something that wouldn’t solve itself quickly barring unexpected circumstances.

Ten years after their arrival in the Kingdom Down Under, Aideen and Celia joined another mercantile caravan, this time one headed westward to Knallzog by boat. They had already visited what parts of the Kingdom Down Under they were allowed to, so there was little reason for them to prolong their stay for much longer. Instead, Aideen chose to head to Knallzog, say a last goodbye to Ginnie and her family, before she would head back to Ur-Teros with Celia in tow.

The journey by riverboat was an uneventful one, though it did not bring them all the way to the depths of Knallzog territory. The boat stopped at Ostmauer, a fortress city that was built at the end of a long, narrow valley on the eastern side of Knallzog, separated from the Kingdom Down Under by a long, barren strip of no-man’s land neither side wanted to claim.

Once the boat reached the fort, the merchant caravans – there were several of them since it was cheaper for several caravans to pool together and hire a boat for all of them – unloaded their wagons, the beasts of burden pulling them towards the fortress city’s eastern gate. There Aideen and Celia parted ways with the caravan they accompanied for the trip, as they headed to the fort and requested entry on their own.

Given how Ostmauer was where Ginnie used to be stationed, Aideen thought that there was a good likelihood that she had stationed someone there in case Aideen passed by. After she and Celia handed their identity tokens to the soldier on duty at the gate, they were asked to wait for a moment, as the dwarven soldier ran inside to contact his superior.

Sure enough, Aideen and Celia were invited into the fortress not ten minutes later, where an older dwarf led them directly to the office used by the fort city’s commander and ruling Markgraf. As the door was opened, Aideen was greeted by a familiar face, and returned a smile in turn.