While the wind howls it's annoyance, and the rivers and oceans attack the ground to carve paths to their goals, the mountains patiently stand tall above the fray. Unmoving, they are content to watch while all others squabble over who shall rule the world knowing they will outlast them all.

Tuan Taun - Dwarven King of the Southern Undermountains

With each strike of the pick's blade, rocks fell away in sloughing chunks. Clacking down the wall to the floor of the freshly carved shaft, the rhythmic cadence of steel on stone repeated itself time and again without ceasing. Stacked upon the melody of the previous attacks upon the stone, each new note added to the last with a tone that sang like any number of dwarven folk tunes passed down from one generation of dwarven miners to the next.

Each of those hymns had a cadence unique to their chosen purpose. Some had fast beats, designed for speeding along the work through soft soils mere feet below the surface. Others were slow and methodical, the intent behind them to draw upon strength and precision with each blow used to cleave out the hardest of all stones ever encountered.

When the next swing came, despite seemingly not dissimilar to any of those before it, what it produced was a different and wholly unexpected result from all those previously struck. Instead of rock conceding to the demands made upon it to move out of the way, the tool's edge impacted upon something unseen until the impact. With a clank and a spray of colorful sparks as though it were striking flint, the pick slid off an invisible shell. The tunnel, once only lit by the dim radiance of the last placed glow stones some thirty paces back, exploded into brilliant resolutions before quickly fading back into near darkness.

Undaunted, and perhaps disbelieving, the dull-skinned dwarf wielding the pick, his hollow undead eyes possessing a singular and focused purpose, drew back and swung again.

The result, however, was the same. There was no progress made and the barrier remaining firm against any further incursion into the rock of the mountain. Conceding with quick consideration that any further attempts would prove equally futile, he lowered the well-worn tool of his trade. Reaching out a hand to touch the perplexing obstacle that would not allow him to pass, his fingers caressed the glassy smoothness of the unseen and out-of-place surface. It provided a stark contrast to the jagged stone all about him. With the physical connection made, fingers splaying across it, the energy exuded from the impediment caused the hairs on his arm to stand up with a static charge.

The distinct lack of any number of typical mining related sounds burrowed into the dwarf's keen ears while the eerie silence that had fallen pulled the dwarf's sight to his left. At that moment, he beheld his slightly shorter kinsman, his own worn pickaxe also down, standing there pondering the same oddity with an identical silence. Then with the pause his attention drifted to his right and the last member of their three dwarf crew. No longer placing the spoils of the labor from the other two dwarves into the four-wheeled cart resting on a pair of iron rails, the debris from their workspace had piled up while he too also reacted in the same, muted way.

"Master Dagarth will not be happy, Paron," the dwarf to his right, the one in charge of clearing their work space, muttered.

"No," Paron replied, appreciating well the price of failure. "He will certainly not be."

"What's going on?" Hunched over and limping on his legs of mismatched length up the freshly carved passage, Krane hurried to the no longer active work site with a dire sense of impatience at the sudden quiet that had befallen the once rapid progression of the tunnel's construction. His energy level was much higher than his fellow dwarves serving the Blood Lord who had long ago come to rule under this region of the undermountains. Most certainly because Krane had fed more recently than they. "Why have you stopped, Paron? We do not stop! Master's orders. Find the shrine."

Paron started to say something, but unable to find the proper words to explain the dilemma, hefted up his pick instead. He tapped its steel on the invisible impediment to show Krane the problem as even the slightest touch once more brought light to the darkness.

Upon seeing the flashes of light for himself, Krane nodded his reluctant understanding. "Magic," he grumbled, fists clenching and then releasing in frustration. "Elven magic."

"What do we do?" Paron asked while his comrades still remained entranced by the problem facing them.

"If Master Dagarth's coordinates are right, and I'm positive they are, we should be directly under the shrine." Krane rubbed his chin. "But apparently the magic protecting it is a little more complete than previously expected." Krane cursed the pointy eared beings, long since dead, who'd thwarted them. "Damn elves. May they rot in The Dark. They are annoyingly thorough. Who would have thought they'd have anticipated we dwarves digging up from below?"

Finishing his observations, now it was Krane who took his turn at touching the magical wall. Like an egg's shell, it encompassed and protected all resting upon the plateau of the Mount of Carnak above.

"How do you think Master will react to our failure?" Paron asked once Krane's silent observations had drawn out long enough.

Krane pondered that question, but not for much longer. "We haven't failed," he said with a shaky and pronounced uncertain confidence. "We found the shrine. That was our goal. All these years, and we found it. While elven magic may have been able to hide the Tear's resting place from the eyes upon the surface of Geiha, it has not been able to alter what we dwarves see from below." He then flicked the obstruction with a finger, testing its rigidity. It was harder than any stone. "Still, unless we can find a way through, we will need the keys."

"Should we go fetch them?" Paron licked cracked lips with an eager tongue, displaying a pair of elongated canines in the process. "I'm particularly hungry."

"There will be no hunting tonight." Growling like the leader of a pack of starving wolves that needed reined in, The Blood Lord known as Dagarth was in the tunnel with the now four dwarves. Because of the height of the passage, carved more for the stature of dwarves than a man, it required him to hunch over slightly in a mimic of Krane's posture. All while the red glow from his eyes was pronounced in the dreary near darkness. "What have you found?"

"The shrine, Master. We have found the shrine!" Krane beamed.

In contrast, all the dwarves present except Krane cowered before their master as the hobbled vampiric dwarf explained. Despite being nowhere to really go, the others seemed rather adept at finding even the smallest crevasses to slink in to. Not concealed, they were at least, in their own minds, apparently out of the way.

"Excellent. But then why has the digging stopped?" Dagarth asked.

"We have found the shrine, or at least the magic surrounding it," Krane continued. "There doesn't appear to be a way through. Maybe Tugol can invent something to crack it. He's good at dealing with magic and—"

"There is no need to be impatient." Dagarth smiled with a shake of his head.

The cool demeanor of his master surprised Kane. "But—But we cannot get through."

The smile turned into the slightest laugh from the Blood Lord. "Krane, have you learned nothing since I turned you? We have all the time in the world, you and I. Those who hurry—those who rush in—will always meet an unkind fate. Just like Gral and so many others have. I am older than this magic that stands before us now. I was here before it, and I will be here after it is gone and ceases to be a nuisance." As though it were inevitable, Dagarth took his turn to feel the energy the dwarves had found for him.

Touching it with tender fingertips, the Blood Lord could discern the layering of spells and how they wove in and around each other. While others would have sensed it as akin to a simple static charge, he was more attuned. Like reeds passing through stakes to make a basket, every part of the intricately crafted magic was exactly where it should be. Although never one to practice the magical arts himself, the Blood Lord had learned much through mere observation during the long years of his existence. An existence initiated long ago by other and more foul magics that he remembered the pain of well.

He knew how to decipher what was being presented to him by the energy as easily as a person who had become literate could read a book. The story laid out before him was one that could go many ways if one was not careful. The ending of it was not yet written.

Still, the magic was singing, reacting to missing parts of itself. Parts that were drawing nearer and making the magic come to life in a way it never had before. When they arrived, the keys would complete the spell in such a way that would cause it to fall away and allow access to the most precious treasure confined behind it.

"Time for a new tactic," Dagarth said, centuries of life and wisdom smoothing out any possible desire for frustration to seep into his tone. "Dig a tunnel around it."

"Around it?" Krane mimicked the statement back as a question. "Master? Around does not get us through." Krane made a tentative motion with his hand to illustrate the difference.

"Yes, around. Find us a way to the surface. That way when the key bearers arrive, we can give them a proper greeting and relieve them of that which we desire."

"Of course, Master." Krane bowed. "It will be done. Paron! Colm! Jonk! Look alive!" Each of the skulking dwarfs eased out of their hiding places at the call of their names, eyeing him and looking for further orders. "You heard the Master, find the edge and get us around it to the surface."

"We've been digging for three days straight," Paron complained, but only softly.

"And you'll work for three more! Or thirty more if need be!" Krane's rebuke of the protest was like the force of a slave-driver's whip. "Are you not dwarves? Master wants the surface! You will find him the way to the surface! Or face his wrath."

If there was any sense that they wanted to continue to protest, none of them dared act upon it and speak to such. Picks were now back in hand and stone was once more being loaded into the cart.

Sensing his instructions were clear and prepared to be adhered to, Krane turned to leave his fellow dwarves to their work. Within seconds there was the once more ringing sound of steel moving rock.

His master was already back down the passage, heading for the larger chamber carved out as a staging area for equipment about a hundred feet back down the gentle slope of the upwardly ramping passage. Krane had to struggle to keep up with his condition amplified by shorter dwarven legs.

"They will not fail you, Master." Krane said to break the silence as they emerged and Dagarth could rise to his full height in the domed space filled with tools and other implements for digging through the mountain.

"I have no fear that they will," he said. "Reward them for their loyalty. Fetch them something from the pens. It will increase their strength and speed their progress, I think. But just one. They can share the blood."

"Yes, Master. The pens are becoming depleted as of late. We may have to send some out to hunt."

"No. Soon there will be plenty of fresh meat that will come to us. You and your kinsmen who have served me can drink until your bellies are full. The world will know that rumors of my death have been premature, and all shall kneel before me."