“Natural disasters affect the lives of many, often even when it takes place far away.” - Old folk saying.

“So the pass is unusable?” Aideen heard trademaster Goras’anoviel ask one of his dwarven counterparts who had been inside the pass during the incident. There were half a dozen merchant caravans gathered around the mouth of the pass by then, another being a caravan that departed from Alfheim half a day after Goras’anoviel’s one, and the rest being from the pass.

“Afraid so, trademaster. Unless your birds and wagons can traverse sideways slopes, I don’t think we’ll be able to pass through the regions of that pass that have been… annihilated just earlier,” replied the dwarven merchant. The merchant in question looked rather haggard and troubled, because the rear part of his caravan – including his father who was the original trademaster of the caravan – was caught up in the incident.

As a result, he suddenly found himself in charge of the whole caravan, including having to deal with the losses. He was fortunate that the wagon his father had been on was mostly filled with personal belongings rather than trade goods, but the loss still stung. The dwarf likely threw himself into his work to take his mind off his losses.

It was the sort of coping mechanism Aideen was all too familiar with. She had seen others do the same in the past, even people close to her amongst that number. She herself had done the same when she lost those close to her, so Aideen knew the sentiment all too well. She shared her condolences with those who lost their family earlier, but at the moment she was more interested in the logistics of their trip.

There were multiple passes through the mountain range, but the largest two which most merchants used were the ones right next to the site of the incident. Both were naturally affected by the disaster, though it was hard to tell the extent from afar. The merchants they met with already shared with them that one of the two passes were completely cut off by the incident, which rendered it unusable for all intents and purposes.

As for the second pass further west of their location, they had no idea yet. Trademaster Goras’anoviel already sent one of his hired guards atop a great bird to check the situation there, but the man wouldn’t return until the next day at the earliest. In the meantime, there was nothing for the rest of them to do but to wait.

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Thanks to Aideen’s interference, none of the injured lost their life. In fact, the victims with the lighter injuries were already up and about, most of whom conveyed their gratitude to Aideen and Celia for their help. The more heavily injured were still unconscious, which was due to their body’s natural reaction in its attempt to recuperate after the treatment. They were all back in good shape thanks to her help, though.

At the moment, the occupant of the many caravans had gathered together by the entrance of the pass, their wagons circled around them to establish a perimeter. While the head merchants and trademasters of the various caravans talked about the possibilities they could take going forward, the rest of the occupants, the cooks and the passengers, busied themselves with dinner.

It was common in dwarven culture – Aideen had observed it in Ur-Teros, in Knallzog, and now again with the dwarves from the Kingdom Down Under – to cook up hearty, heavy meals after a disaster, both to fill the stomachs of the survivors and to remind them of the joys of living. That exact thing took place as the cooks from the various caravans pooled the ingredients they had in hand to cook a hefty dinner for the group.

Aideen saw the cooks busy themselves over what looked like a huge, flat pan that was set over multiple fires and kept revolving to distribute the heat evenly. The dwarves from the Kingdom Down Under looked quite different from their cousins in Knallzog and Ur-Teros.

Where those in Ur-Teros usually had a tan of some sort on their skin, and those from Knallzog had dark skins, the dwarves here were pale, to the point of almost being sickly pale at times. They did share some similarities with their Knallzog cousins in that they kept their beards long and styled, however, which differentiated them from the dwarves of Ur-Teros.

The differences were not only there, as Aideen noticed many of the dwarves from the Kingdom Down Under often used their hands to walk instead of just their legs, though only when they weren’t using their hands to carry things. It was a peculiar habit Aideen had not seen in any of the other dwarven sub-groups, and she thought it was probably because these dwarves lived primarily underground in tight confines.

Their posture – which often defaulted to a slight hunch – lent further credence to that theory, though she wouldn’t know for certain until she could visit their Kingdom and take a look for herself. What she learned from the old dwarf in her caravan suggested that it likely wouldn’t be possible on this trip, at the very least. The Kingdom Down Under allowed trade but foreigners were still limited to trading posts set up in the periphery of the Kingdom, and not allowed to go further in.

That was something Aideen knew she likely wouldn’t be able to change, so if that avenue of approach proved fruitless, she would just bide her time and wait. Things were bound to change with the passing of time, and out of all things in the world, time was the one thing she had plenty of. She could afford to wait until the Kingdom changed their policy.

After all, it was not like she was in any sort of hurry anyway. If and when she managed to gather enough people and resources to actualize her dream of founding a city for unliving people to live and thrive in, chances are a good few centuries would have passed by then. Even for long-lived people like the dwarves, changes were bound to happen in that period of time.