The Wrong Side of the Stone

The echoes of the colossal booms from above still reverberated through the crystalline cavern, mingling with Grond’s ragged breathing and the faint, dying clicks of the last spider. The adrenaline from the fight, the shock of my unexpected transformation, the dawning awe in Grond’s eyes – all of it was instantly eclipsed by a far more primal, immediate dread. Those were not the sounds of accidental cave-ins. Those were the sounds of deliberate, massive, final actions.
“No…” Grond whispered again, his gaze, wide with dawning horror, fixed on the tunnel ceiling as if he could see through solid rock to the source of the cataclysm. He knew, with the certainty of a veteran dwarf who understood the ways of his people and the terrible resolve they could muster, what those sounds meant. “They’re sealing the Deeps.”
He didn’t waste another moment. Ignoring his wounds, the stinging cuts from crystal shards, the deep ache in his muscles from the fight and the spider’s crushing weight, Grond Hammerfall moved. He snatched up his discarded lantern, its flame miraculously still sputtering, and plunged back into the labyrinthine tunnels, not with the cautious tread of a patroller, but with the desperate, driven urgency of a man fleeing a collapsing mine. I was clutched tightly in his fist, my own internal weariness momentarily forgotten in the face of this new, overarching crisis.
Sealing the Deeps? As in, all of it? With us still in it? My internal monologue was a frantic whirl. Are they insane? Or just incredibly thorough in their pest control measures? And did no one do a headcount before they started dropping mountains on the exits? Typical!
We raced through passages that had seemed merely ominous on the way in, but now felt like the tightening jaws of a colossal trap. Grond knew these lower routes, but even his knowledge was tested as he pushed himself, and by extension me, at a near run. The distant rumbles continued, sometimes a grinding, protracted groan of immense weight settling, sometimes a sharp, percussive CRUMP that shook the very foundations of the mountain. Dust began to sift down from the ceilings, a fine grey powder that coated everything and made the air thick and hard to breathe.
Stitch, though still depleted from my earlier exertion, tried to project a sense of direction, of urgency, trying to augment Grond’s already desperate pace, focusing on any feeling of "upwards" or "towards safety." Grond, his face a mask of grim determination, seemed to respond, his grip on me almost painfully tight, as if I were not just a weapon but a talisman against the encroaching doom.
After what felt like an eternity of desperate scrambling, dodging fresh rockfalls, and navigating by the increasingly dim light of the struggling lantern, we burst into a much larger, more familiar thoroughfare – the main access tunnel known as Davin’s Haul, a primary route that led, or should have led, back to the mid-levels of Mount Hearthstone.
But it didn’t.
Where the grand, arched opening to the next section should have been, there was only… stone. A colossal, newly emplaced barrier of roughly hewn rock and fused slag, still radiating a faint heat, stretched from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, a monstrous, unyielding plug. The air was thick with the acrid smell of dwarven blasting powder and the fine grit of pulverized rock. On our side, a few discarded tools lay scattered, as if dropped in haste.
Grond skidded to a halt, his chest heaving, his eyes staring in disbelief at the impassable wall. “No! By the First Father’s beard, NO!” he roared, his voice cracking with despair and fury. He hammered on the stone with his free fist, the blows echoing dully, absorbed by the sheer mass. “Open up! Borog! Elder Thrain! There’s a dwarf still down here! GROND HAMMERFALL IS STILL BELOW!”
There was no reply but the mocking echo of his own voice and the faint, final thunk of what sounded like immense locking bolts ramming home on the far side. He pressed his ear to the stone, listening, then slumped against it, his shoulders sagging.
“They… they’ve done it,” he whispered, his voice hollow. “Sealed. All of it.”
The crushing, absolute finality of it settled upon us like a physical weight, heavier than any mountain. Trapped. Cut off from Mount Hearthstone, from light, from hope, with all the nameless terrors of the Deep Deeps now their sole, unwelcome companions.
Grond slowly slid down the barrier until he was sitting on the dusty floor, his head in his hands. He looked down at me, still clutched in his fist, his eyes filled with a bleakness that mirrored the oppressive darkness around us.
Oh, brilliant. Just brilliant, I thought, a wave of cold dismay washing through me, which I couldn't help but project towards him. I even threw in a flicker of what I hoped felt like a grim, sarcastic "I told you this was a bad idea." Sealed in. With the creepy crawlies, the unspeakable 'Big Cold' thing we haven't even properly met yet, and a dwarf who, I'm beginning to suspect, has the worst luck in this entire mountain range and probably forgot to pack snacks. This is just like that time Gnikpaugh walled us into a dead-end tunnel with a very angry badger, only on a significantly grander and more existentially terrifying scale. Super.
He looked at me, then, a strange expression on his face. Not just despair, but a flicker of that awe from the spider fight, mixed with a new, hard resolve. He’d seen me change, seen me perform an impossibility. Perhaps, just perhaps, being trapped with a peculiar, ancient dwarven blade wasn't the worst fate imaginable.
Or perhaps it was. Only time, and the countless horrors of the sealed Deep Deeps, would tell.