Tali hated how deaf she felt in the Deep. Her clicks still painted a picture of her world with the same accuracy, she still felt the draw of magnetic north, but she didn’t have an answer or passage that would take her to Thuumdolahr. The armband gave her no clues. Above all else, its silence was deafening. 

They were traveling more slowly now that they had a healing Lekt. Tali had built him a splint and bandaged his leg carefully. Now he could limp along with the help of crutches fashioned from the same mushroom she’d used to build Eiv’s pack. His growls as he struggled forward made Tali wish she had something to give him for the pain. Unfortunately, the grove had contained not a single varseth mushroom, which dwarves used to treat pain. The sap-like moisture of the stalk offered numbness when applied to wounds and the spores gave relief when ingested, a gift of Tek. 

Not that Lekt would trust her enough to take it. It had been hard enough to get him to eat the cavefish she’d caught. Granted, that was probably partly because of the tiny fire she’d used to cook it. He was as sensitive as her to light, perhaps moreso since she hadn’t seen a trace of fire down in the Deep. 

Having a stockpile of food was something of a relief. They had enough mushroom flesh, smoked cavefish, and dried norvar meat to last at least two weeks. She was immensely grateful that Eiv was with her to carry it. As a golem, her stony guardian wouldn’t even feel such a weight. 

Right now, Tali was trying to forge ahead despite the fact that she had no idea where to go from here except deeper. She had yet to tell Rhesis and Lekt where she aimed to go. She wasn’t certain if it would make her life easier or harder. 

Tali stopped on the edge of a slope. She smelled water ahead, but the scent was polluted with a foul stench. Her stomach twisted in sudden apprehension that defied explanation. 

“Stop,” Lekt croaked as he caught up. 

The dwarf turned to look at him. For once, he wasn’t glowering. He looked...afraid. “What’s wrong?” she asked, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt. The Deep was still terrifying and so were her companions at times.

“Elder one dwells in gears ahead,” the forsaken said, a shudder passing through his body. 

“What you would call a demon,” Rhesis clarified.

Despite the terrifying prospect of a demon in their path, mention of gears suddenly made Tali’s heart leap. “Gears?” she said hopefully. If they were gears great enough to house a demon, perhaps they were part of an artifice. If she was fortunate, perhaps it would even be Thuumdolahr. She’d been in the depths for almost three weeks now, which gave her ample reason to hope for a sign of her goal. Dhuldarim needed an answer as swiftly as possible. “Do you mean like a city?” 

“Drowned,” Lekt muttered. 

“There might be something to salvage,” Rhesis said thoughtfully. “If we are quiet, perhaps we can pass without confronting the demon. Or we could bargain with it, I suppose.”

Tali hated the thought of dealing with a demon. They were known to offer mortals bargains, often tempting them with things normally impossible, but the price was seldom immediately visible and always more than the mortal would have ever wished to pay. She had never encountered a demon or anyone who had, but the stories about them still very much existed. Even after the Revealing’s last gasps, demons were a scourge suffered by skyborn and stoneborn alike. 

“Demons are not to be trusted,” Eiv said as quietly as a golem could speak. “Nor bargained with.”

Lekt looked up at the golem. “Stonefist is right,” he said before looking to Tali. “Turn back, kinslayer.”

Tali was quiet for a moment, still thinking. Then she studied their forsaken. “This place, these gears...have you been there before?”

He frowned. “Twice,” Lekt said. “A broken city almost all below the water.”

A glimmer of a hope hit Tali. “If their Heartforge is still there, maybe…” Maybe I will have an answer about this trinket. 

“You came all this way for a talking fire?” Rhesis said, amused.

“Heartforges are more than a talking fire,” Tali said absently, trying to come up with some kind of plan. She didn’t elaborate, since she doubted the siren actually cared. Lekt had been there before, so surely he would know the best way to approach.

If he could be trusted, anyway.

“Plan, Master?” Eiv said with the patience of a stone.

Tali unslung her pack and sat down on a cleft of rock at the top of the gradual slope. She didn’t care for that smell, but she could eat despite it. “We need to get a better look,” she said as she opened her carefully sealed canteen and then fished out a few pieces of dried norvar meat. She took one and held one out to the forsaken. Rhesis didn’t seem to care for it, preferring the smoked cavefish. “Lekt, are there any overlooks above the remnants of artifice?”

The forsaken eased his twisted form down on the other side of the ledge, laying his crutches down. “A narrow path,” he said, leaning towards her and sniffing the piece she offered until he was satisfied that it was untainted. He took the piece almost delicately in one clawed hand, moving it with the same dexterity that she had once turned gemstones. He made a small rumbling sound in his chest as he ate, which she assumed was a good sign. He certainly had yet to spit out anything she’d given him despite his apprehension.

“Do you know anything about this demon?” Tali asked after a second of hesitation.

Lekt tensed with something between suspicion and fear.

“I’m not angry, and it’s alright if you don’t,” Tali clarified. “I just want to know how to maybe avoid it.”

That was enough to relax Lekt again. The forsaken looked around, clicking swiftly and waiting to hear the last of the echoes before daring to speak. “Hauras,” he whispered. “The Eater of Dreams.”

“Cheery,” Rhesis murmured. “If this is the same Hauras who once caused a great many problems in ancient days, the city’s magic fire may be gone. I hear he had a curiosity about dwarven theurgy.”

“The least we can do is scout,” Tali said as her hopes sank. She tried to keep a brave face, though she wasn’t certain how successful she was. “We need safe passage.”

“It will be dangerous,” Eiv warned.

“I know,” the dwarf acknowledged. “We’ll be careful.”

Rhesis and Lekt made no further complaints, which surprised Tali. The forsaken seemed on high alert as they moved forward, still using his crutches for support. Her golem brought up the rear with steps loud enough that she was certain the demon would hear them coming. She had to hope that Eiv would be more than a match for the evil ahead. 

“Lekt,” Tali said quietly as they approached the shores of the lake.

He turned to face her with a quizzical click. 

“You should have this,” Tali said. She held his knife out to him. “I don’t know if it will work against a demon, but I want you to be able to defend yourself.” She hoped he wouldn’t turn the blade against her, though that was a risk and she knew it. Still, if they were going to fight a creature of pure evil, he would need all the help he could get. 

“Is that wise?” Rhesis asked cautiously.

Lekt snatched the weapon from her hands, rolling it between his clawed fingers to check for tampering. Whatever he felt seemed to satisfy him. The forsaken tucked the blade through his roughly-fashioned belt. “We go,” he said with more confidence. Even if the blade wouldn’t be able to pierce demonic hide, it conferred somewhat of a sense of safety. 

Tali nodded and led the way. 

The passage broke open to a vast, yawning cavern. Tali couldn’t hear the far side with clicks. Much of it where they were was consumed by the dark waters of a lake. The waves that lapped against the rocky shore left fetid slime in their wake. A rough path followed the edge of the lake, soil instead of hard rock and wide enough that it had clearly been left by a fireswimmer. It was hard not to gag at the reeking stench of the waves, particularly for Tali. A sensitive nose and being accustomed to clean water combined for a nauseating reaction to the foul waters. She covered her nose with her hand.

“Poison waters,” Lekt warned. “Only fools drink.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Rhesis said, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Whatever happened here tainted the waters with something sickening. Hauras’s work, I’m sure.” 

Lekt hissed and glared at the siren.

“What’s wrong?” Tali asked.

“The names of elder ones are bad to say,” Lekt muttered. “Calls to them.” 

The dwarf tried not to shiver at that. “Then we’ll be careful not to say it,” she said before shooting the siren a meaningful look. “I don’t want to encounter a demon.”

“Fair enough,” Rhesis said with a shrug.

Tali set off down the path, punctuating every breath with a click. She was almost afraid to use the sounds for fear of alerting the demon, but she would be deaf without them and that meant she risked falling into the poisonous lake. Granted, Eiv made more noise than her clicking, so complete secrecy was impossible.

The path was slick in places with slime, but Tali managed to keep her feet. Lekt had more difficulty on his crutches, so she turned often and grabbed him before he could plunge into the waves. Eventually, she heard the artifice and stopped to listen. 

What had once been a vibrant city was now a tangled mess of broken gears, half-submerged in the dark waters. A small and singular path led up to the devastated construction. Hearing it near fully prompted an ugly thought, one that she tried to crush as soon as it arose.

Would this be Dhuldarim’s fate too?

“What happened here?” Tali said, trying to distract herself from that horrifying thought.

“The kinslayers crushed it,” Lekt said. “Better broken than captured.”

Destroying a gift of Tek was an anathema to stoneborn. Tali had trouble even imagining it as a possibility. “That doesn’t make sense,” she murmured.

Lekt shrugged.

“We will see,” Eiv said, placing a steadying hand on Tali’s shoulder. “Where you lead, master, I will follow.”

Tali hoped she wasn’t leading her faithful golem to its doom. She walked forward carefully and tried to keep her nerves pushed down. As they approached the wreckage, she took some comfort in the fact that she saw no sign of a demon in their area. Hopefully that meant they would be far from its influence. Perhaps it had even left the area. 

The warren-like passages that marked a dwarven artifice as much as the great machinery appeared largely flooded. The upper areas above the lake’s surface were shattered, chunks of stone and twisted metal still hanging precariously over the lake below. Most were no larger than a dwarf, but one or two were large enough to consist of several homes slagged together by whatever destruction had ruined this place. The echoing of the half-flooded areas seemed to twist the sounds of their clicking, warping it in a way that distorted dwarven senses of space. It was an entirely new and certainly unpleasant experience for Tali. Never before had she struggled with knowing where things were. 

“This place is dead,” Rhesis whispered. Now that they were actually in the ruins, the siren’s aloof nature and perpetual amusement faded. Distinct concern replaced it. “I can feel...something.” 

“The demon?” Tali asked softly. 

“No. It feels like...magic.” Rhesis sounded anything but reassured. “Something happened here. Something terrible.” 

Tali clicked, swiveling her head to catch more of a sound. Suddenly, the distortion was worse as the surface of the water was disturbed. She turned, throwing up her hands to shield her face as something hurled itself from the depths of the lake to land on the section of damaged metal that she was standing on. The force of the waves that slammed the walkway sent Rhesis, Eiv, and Lekt sprawling away from her. 

“Tali!” 

Rhesis’s cry did nothing to help the young dwarf. Freezing claws seized her torso, driving into her ribs. Tali felt something crack in her chest, accompanied by a horrible pain and an utter lack of breath. The demon bore her high into the air and then twisted, slamming her down onto the walkway. Something else cracked and Tali’s vision went black for a moment. It was crushing her to death. 

She could barely make out the creature’s shape. Six limbs, all clawed and articulated, supported a sleek body covered in slime-slicked scales. The head reminded her of an oami, but the outer mandibles were large and sharp, lethal looking. Its jaws lingered near her face, dripping foul-smelling water onto her face. 

“YOU HAVE ERRED SEVERELY, MORTAL,” the demon purred in an inhuman, metallic voice as it kneaded almost gently at Tali’s broken ribs, inflicting terrible pain without killing her entirely. “THIS IS THE DOMAIN OF HAURUS. I WILL DEVOUR YOU AS I HAVE DEVOURED ALL WHO ENTER.” 

Tali tried to gasp and found she could barely breathe, face contorting with pain. Her pack had broken open when it raised her into the air, raining her belongings into the shallows of the stinking foam borne by dark waves. She felt blindly for the one thing that might be able to help her, but she knew it was going to be too late. 

Eiv practically launched itself at the demon, slamming down on the monster’s flanks. The golem’s blow dented some of the scales and drove Haurus forward, dragging Tali with him. 

Tali’s grasping fingers caught something as she was scraped across the mingled stone and metal, but she couldn’t click to identify it. Instead, she groped along its surface to identify it, trying not to lose it in the churning of the water. Her sides burned with agony between the open wounds from Haurus’s claws and the poison of the lake. He had managed to slice even through her tefia silk shirt, a feat she had never heard of before. Then again, demons were said to be the most powerful foe a dwarf could ever have the misfortune to face. 

Eiv’s lope after the demon made the walkway shudder, something Tali could feel to give her hope. She had no idea where Rhesis and Lekt were without being able to locate them using sound. 

“YOUR ARTIFICE CANNOT SAVE YOU, DWARF,” Haurus intoned. “IF YOU WISH TO LIVE, YOU WILL SERVE ME.” 

Tali tightened her grip around the rod when she realized it was the voruhm. This would consume it, but maybe it would give those soulless obsidian eyes trouble enough for her to escape. Maybe it would create an opening for Eiv. 

She tried to channel her anger through the pain. “No!” she forced out.

The demon reared back, but before it could crush her entirely, she closed her eyes tightly and breathed out, “Khazad.”

Searing, brilliant light exploded outward from the rod she was holding. The voruhm twisted the ambient threads of power around them and then released it in a light beyond daylight. The demon let out an unearthly shriek and hurled Tali out across the surface of the lake. Hauras dove into the waters on the other side of the gear, clearly trying to evade the glare. She heard Rhesis scream her name, but that was all. 

Tali couldn’t even cry out, skipping like a stone across the surface of the water before plunging into the ice-cold depths. She was dense enough that she sank rather than floated, as most dwarves did. 

Everything went dark as the depths claimed her.