Asala flitted out her forked tongue, a little peeved that she could not get Li to sit down and regale her for hours and hours about knowledge he had. Not that he was too opposed to it. It was more like he did not want to be the center of conversation for hours, vomiting out factoids he knew. Despite the fact that he figured himself a good enough public speaker, he did not like being the center of a regular conversation for too long.

"That place bad," said Sheela. She pointed a clawed, gold furred hand to the entrances of the Triforge Mountains where purple haze still curled out. "Source of death."

Vilga crossed her burly arms together and narrowed her eyes as she peered at the entrances, not being as knowledgeable about mystical fields such as undeath as Sheela but still trusting the Feli's words regardless.

"Aye, but if needs be, I will be apt vanguard for these dastardly tunnels," said Old Thane as he took a confident step forward. "For the dark of caverns and tunnels will do little against me."

"Sorry to say, old man, but you can take a seat too," said Li.

He snapped his fingers, causing the wreath around his neck – the same one that Sindra had given to him – to grow bioluminescent blue flowers that were more than bright enough to light the way through the tunnel. He then pointed his hand towards the unconscious forms of Mason and Mercer, shrouding them in green that would fend them against the effects of the haze within the mountain.

"We're going to be taking a break from fighting for the most part, and I'll be leading. Until we reach whatever it is that's causing this haze in the mountain."

Li led the entire party throughout the winding tunnels of the Triforge mountains, his divine presence warding off the purple haze while the light on his wreath shining bright, making sure that nothing came as a surprise.

The insides of the Triforge Mountain were a haunting tapestry of the past. There were iron bar supports at the top of the tunnels as well as wooden pillars placed every so often with rusted bell and lantern light hanging off of them, though it had been centuries since the lanterns had ever been lit. The metal heads of picks and shovels as well as the warped and deteriorating figures of weapons, mostly axes and bludgeoning weapons, lay scattered about, their skeletal owners lying beside them.

And many were these owners. Countless corpses of dwarves, their skeletal frame shorter and stockier than those of men, littered these stony innards. Pieces of metal they wore, mostly armor, remained on their bones, all other clothing having long since rotted away. Around all their necks were necklaces with rough, uncut gemstones or ores etched with what Li could read as their names and what tribe they were from.

A sizable portion of these dwarven skeletons did reanimate, fueled by the haze, but all Li had to do was flux his divine aura, and they faded away.

At a certain point an hour in, they reached a spot to rest in. It was at the end of the tunnel they had entered, atop a platform of stone, wood, and metal attached to a chain that could loosen or coil on command of a lever. An elevator system, in essence, and atop this sizable platform, the party sat.

"Careful, Tia," said Li as he saw Tia lean against a guardrail, peering over it down to plummeting, haze shrouded depths. There seemed to be absolutely no life in these mountains aside from the occasional undead, and it was questionable to even call that life to begin with.

Beyond the elevator platform they sat on, Li could see with his enhanced sight that far in the distance, there was another platform that marked the other side of the mountain. It would seem that at the base of the mountain where they were currently at, the dwarves were not too active. There were not too many structures around, no places that looked anything like housing. Just some mining equipment, mostly.

This place was more like a transit point. The dwarves probably took the elevator up or down to more populated areas. Or they did two hundred years ago.

"It down there!" said Tia as she pointed a claw over the guardrail, towards the depths below. "Dragon's friend."

"The primal spirit," said Old Thane.

"No such thing," said Asala with a didactic shake of her head. Throughout the whole way across the tunnel, she had been scribbling furiously on tablet after tablet, evidently completely enraptured by the ruin around her.

"Really now?" said Li. He saw her put a tablet in her satchel, finished sketching and writing on it with her stylus, and manifested another with her magic. "And I am a little curious. It seems that you would have had more than enough tablets to fill up that small bag. Is the inside larger than the outside? Dimensional storage of sorts?"

He wondered if she had anything similar to the inventory that players had.

"Dimensional storage?" Asala pondered the word before she shook her head. "Nay, no such thing. Magic that warps the rigid structure of space lies not within domain of mortal hands. But a shard of it, I can access with divine aid.

Thus, whence I am done with my recording, I place mine tablet in this vessel, and it crumbles, its contents transferred and inscribed upon the Stela, the neverending tablet in mine homeland upon which all history lies written and observed."

"A glorious sight," said Old Thane. "It points high to the sun, and below the sands, I am sure it touches near to the heart of the world itself. Witnessing it with mine eyes, when I still had them, made me truly feel small. Small in such a way that no Jotunn could make me feel.

Like I was witnessing the vast breadth of eternity, knowing well how mine mortality was but a speck as tiny as one of countless grains of sand within the Sandrivers."

Asala smiled. "I am glad that thou hath understood the wonder of the Stela." Her smile faded into a thin-lipped expression of disgust. "Yet others do not think the same."

"Aye, I'd heard tell that the Elves sought to take the Stela from ye," said Old Thane.

"Philistines, all of them, refusing even our scribes to record their new ways," said Asala. She sighed. "Though I suppose that must be said of all lands now. Ever since the Third Darkening, the kingdoms of man became ever more chaotic, ever more distrustful of that which was not human, and the north became the plaything of Elven schemes.

My sisters once roamed the far-flung edges of this vast and beautiful world to record its wonder, and now, we are rejected everywhere."

"Strange to see you so far from home in that context," said Li.

"Snakes never seen in many years," agreed Sheela as she sat on her haunches. The golden, tough fur that usually grew out when she fought had receded now, leaving her fair, conventionally pleasing features uncovered. "Once, snakes came to us. Wrote about us. But with elves, no more."

"I have never before seen your kind," said Vilga as she gnawed on a bone she had found from the skeleton of a large beast of burden. Tia wanted to do the same, but Li had told her not to because who knew how long those bones were collecting dust and nastiness.

"But you are strong. Very strong. If all your sisters are just as strong, then you do not worry, no? Fight elves and win. Take what you want afterwards."

Asala shook her head. "Nay. The way of the sword is not ours to follow. If it comes to be that our presence is rejected, then we cannot force our will upon the unwilling."

"But strong means nobody mess with you," said Tia as she waltzed back to the group, sitting beside Li.

Vilga grunted in agreement.

"Hm." Asala paused for a while. An uncharacteristically long time, for usually, she had answers right at the top of her head, or if needed, took only a second to elocute herself. "I suppose. But a way forced upon others through the back of a blade's edge means that it holds not the legs to stand upon itself.

Regardless, if thou art curious about why I am here, far, far flung from mine home, then it is because I am one of few, perhaps the only among mine sisters whom hath mustered the will and courage to traverse the outside world once more."

"Snake people magic is strong," said Sheela. "How did you get captured? Like us?"

"Ah, that." Asala shrugged lightly. "My sisterhood enforces an oath upon us. To not raise our magics wantonly against others. We are allowed to wield them to fend for ourselves, but my caution in withholding it led to my magic's neutralization in surprise attack."

"Cowardly," muttered Vilga. She snorted. "Such is the way of the elves. They glorify single combat and the honor of the fight in arenas, but when they want for something, they take without any shred of honor."

"That is not the true way of the elves," said Old Thane. He had his arms crossed, his stare glazed and looking back to the past. "Even when my hair still stood tall and black, there were yet many elves that followed the ways of nature where the life of the earth and those that tread upon it are sacred above all.

After all, it is among the elves that herbalism in its truest, purest state began. Among elves, my dear wife Aine perfected her craft."

"No more," said Sheela. "Elves different now. Use big, loud metal. Fire. Destroy forest. Homes. My home. Take us. Make us work." She put a hand to her neck, where once there had been a slaver's collar. "Sell us."

"Aye," said Old Thane quietly. "Years and years, I spent on my farm, never once looking outside to the world around me, never paying attention to how it changed for better or for worse. I suppose when Aine left, the world simply became that much duller.

And now, I cannot help but think that I had yet held more years to make a difference. In the north. In the south. Anywhere."

"You have made a difference, old man," said Li. "You've raised Triple Threat, and I guarantee they're going to make their mark in this world, and it'll be a good one. And without you, I have no idea where I would be. All I know is that because of you, I can at the least confidently say I have made this world just a bit better.

And I guarantee you, it will only keep getting better."