The Claiming of MINT MOuntain, a dwarven mining tale


    The story of One, Two, and Three—three little dwarf brothers—ends in a small bar on the docks of a port town


    The pub is called The Licking Stone


    The men in the bar tell the story of One, Two, and Three


    One, Two, and Three were three dwarves left on a church''s doorstep when they were babies A note left with them explained that their caravan had been attacked and that no one had survived except these three infants They were wrapped in cloth bearing the logo of a dwarven clan


    It took many years to uncover the name of the clan When they finally did, they learned that the clan had been annihilated This revelation sent the church into hushed secrecy regarding the boys'' past


    With this knowledge, One, Two, and Three were taught to keep their origins a secret The three of them were as close as thieves


    By the time they were around seven or eight, the church assigned a monk to take them to a small mountain outside of town and show them where the coal mine was


    With the help of the townspeople and their church family, the boys made their own tools and built a small hidden refuge They weren’t afraid of their own people—they simply didn’t want to be the cause of anyone else’s death


    For the first two weeks, they would leave in the darkness and return only at night They hunted, mined, and dug The little metal they found, they learned to smelt in a clay furnace they built themselves It took them hours—sometimes days—to melt down small amounts of iron, but they persisted They fashioned chains to cut down small trees and crafted hand picks


    With time, they built saws and constructed a proper campsite


    This routine continued for a while Once they had made enough money and the right tools, they informed their church family that they were leaving Their journey led them to a port town near a vast mountain range


    When they arrived, they wandered through the town, eventually ending up on the docks, watching the sunset This was their new home


    The town itself was simply called Port Town—not the most imaginative name, but the people of this region were straightforward in their naming customs


    They kept their hoods up, concealing their faces Because they were raised by humans, they had no beards and appeared to be short humans Some townspeople suspected their true nature but chose to ignore it


    Sitting on the docks, feet dangling over the edge, the brothers finally asked each other something they had avoided for years: their memories of their parents


    As they spoke, they recalled little stone toys—child’s toys, like dreidels and other trinkets They remembered sucking on them as babies, the taste and texture distinct in their minds Each of them had possessed multiple versions of the same toy, crafted from different materials


    They realized these were licking stones—a term familiar to them from childhood At that moment, they turned around and noticed an empty stall behind them, just the right size for a small pub


    That was the moment they decided: their new tavern would be called The Licking Stone


    They gathered supplies and befriended local merchants, securing deliveries that allowed them to focus on mining rather than hunting for survival With access to better equipment, they obtained safety ropes and other necessities While digging for coal—the fuel that kept their operations running—they discovered a small vein of ore More intriguingly, they found a crack in the rock, from which a faint breeze emanated, suggesting an opening deeper within the earth


    To explore further, they each acquired a headlamp, ropes, emergency candles—and, for the first time, a bottle of booze each


    The church that had raised them had strict rules about alcohol Some dwarves claimed it was essential, while others said it was unnecessary Since they were now on their own, they decided, as a family, to give it a try


    The next morning, they awoke with the worst headaches of their lives, tied to their ropes inside a cave Their bodies were fine, but their heads throbbed One groaned, nudged Two, who then kicked Three As they stirred, realization dawned—they were alive That was enough


    One attempted to turn on his headlamp, but it was dead, the liquid fuel completely drained He lit one of his emergency candles and took in their surroundings A stalagmite, about a foot away, held their rope The cave was small, no more than fifty feet across They had widened the crack in the rock and crawled through, opening up into this chamber


    And in the chamber lay a snake


    Not just any snake—a massive, pitch-black serpent, its head cleanly severed Memories flooded back The fight The struggle Then… the drinking Oh no The drinking came first


    As Two and Three sat up, they took in the scene The snake, about six feet long and nearly a quarter-foot thick, had been slain with several well-placed pickaxe swings They carried their bags as usual, so they stuffed the snake inside—only to realize it was still bleeding That would be a problem for later


    They didn''t need to speak much; they understood each other instinctively With their single candle, they relit Two and Three’s, illuminating more of the cave Scattered bones littered the floor They cleaned up as they worked, realizing this could serve as a home—cozy in its own way


    As they explored further, they discovered another opening behind a stalagmite, barely large enough to fit an arm through The snake must have come from there They knew they would need to break through


    After ten minutes of searching and assessing, they paused and looked at each other There was no need for words


    Home


    They nodded in agreement, placed their hands together, and shared a smile Then, in a rare display of sentiment, they wrapped their arms around one another in a tight embrace


    They took out their small shovels—one of poor quality and the other two well-made They assigned the bad one for sand and soil, while Two and Three, using the better shovels, focused on moving rocks They filled in the area behind the stalagmite, preparing for when they would need to open it up For now, they used backfill, leaving a small pocket of air


    As they worked, they noticed the wind being sucked downward When they placed the last bit of soil and sand, it kept disappearing into the hole They had to use rocks to block it As they made the hole smaller, a whistling sound emerged Curious, they removed some rocks and drove a climbing spike into a natural rock face to prevent anything from coming through while leaving an opening for air to pass The gap, about a quarter-foot wide on either side of the rod, served as a security warning system If anything tried to pass through, they would hear the whistling change


    Two suggested building a fire pit with a vent leading to the hole, potentially smoking out anything inside However, he realized that whatever was lurking might charge toward them, so they opted for a different approach: trapping the entire room with spikes


    They fashioned a rope ladder using their existing ropes, securing access up and down They cut small trees, no more than a foot in diameter, and spent days sharpening them into spikes If a spike couldn''t survive being thrown down, they deemed it unfit for defense


    They arranged the spikes at 30- to 45-degree angles, depending on the floor, creating three levels of defense up to their head height of about four feet, five inches


    Satisfied with their work, they returned to town But this time, their visit to the general store took an unexpected turn


    They returned to town once more, heading straight for the general store This time, however, the shopkeeper took notice of them


    "Hey, you guys are dwarves!"


    Instantly, the three of them tensed, twisting toward him, ready to fight The shopkeeper raised his hands "Whoa, whoa! I’m sorry! I mean… I misunderstood How can I help you guys? What do you need?"


    Their postures relaxed slightly, but One—always claiming to be the oldest, even if only by a minute—stepped forward "We need to smoke out some monsters from a cave We don’t want to use wood or coal if it’ll leave a residue Do you have anything that won’t poison us if we decide to use that cave later?"


    What they didn’t reveal was that they had been trained by the church in various languages, poisons, and alchemical mixtures One wanted to see what the shopkeeper would offer—whether he was trustworthy But he also didn’t know what might be hidden behind the counter Some trust had to be given to see what would happen next It could bite them in the ***—but they''d find out soon enough


    The shopkeeper''s lips curled into a sly grin "Ohhh, I get it now My apologies, adventurers Have you been to the Adventurers'' Guild yet? If you’ve got your adventurer’s pass, I can give you a 10% discount on all sales here So… do you want me to tell you about the poisons I can offer? Or would you rather visit them first so I can show you the good stuff—only available to adventurers?"


    One, knowing that this was a trap, said, no, I''m fine Just the way it is Do you have anything? What is your cheapest thing that you could offer us? The shopkeeper had kind of tilted It looked at him not getting the answer he was expecting But what How about mint? I have a large container of mint And if you burn that the oils can be very, very bad But it smells really nice So as long as you let it air out, you might be able to use that I can offer you that for 5s?


    Before they left the church, they had done enough work that the church actually raised the money to let them go with it And they had taken that and sold coal after going and digging it out and had started small amount of money coming in So they were pretty good with that So they weren''t short on money by any means, but they didn''t have a lot 5 silver was kind of a lot of money But to do this right, they would need two of that amount So Penn Silver to get the job done


    One, two and three all looked at each other, and they all nodded almost at the same time to each other And the shopkeeper noticed that And just smirk to himself, knowing these guys are totally dwarfs, but they''re not They''ve shaved their beard They must have really **** **** or something to have everybody hunting for them Someone would definitely pay for that information But for now, he didn''t need to get dead from them So he just kept his mouth shut, and he waited for what they were going to say


    One turned, pulled out his coin pouch Put 10 silver down and ask for two of those Some more liquid for their lamps and some more emergency candles And with that, he put down another silver The merchant picked it up, grabbed the candles off the shelf, grabbed the two boxes of the mint, put it down Gentlemen, have a great day


    As the door closed the owner called to the back and he called his helper and told him to get down here He was going to take off for a bit and he was in charge of the store till he came back


    He waited about three minutes after the gentleman left, and he went out and went the exact opposite direction, down to the local bar because he had to go talk to 1 of his friends that worked for the underbelly If there''s any dwarf contracts out there it''s easy enough to make some money off of information in this town Looking for three dwarves on the run to his side, and disappointed self after talking to his contacts, there was absolutely nothing out there


    But being the Loudmouth **** he was his contact, now was told to do three dwarves hiding, and he didn''t know why Hiding dwarves always ended in something big and exploding, which could be fun, but he would have tell one of his friends that was going to be coming to town in about a week and a half, who happened to be a dwarf about it, thinking maybe, just maybe he''d no more


    They had gone to a different store owner who has made them a deal on the booze they had bought And they had figured out that he had also realized their dwarfs and the bottles of booze They had never drank something that strong So yes, they they loved it, but they couldn''t remember **** all And for them, that was not a positive sign So they were to know what he had given them And their conversation basically went, I gave you dwarven alcohol And the moment he said the word dwarf, they all looked at him and he went, I whatever Do you want something lighter or heavier?


    This is one of the only times where all three of them started just yelling at the guy, telling them how they loved it so much, but how they woke up after a fight They don''t even remember having


    One calmed two and three down and then the look on the alcohol salesman''s face was prices as he tried to hold in the lab and he had apologized right there on the spot, not knowing that they didn''t drink alcohol And that was her first He had given them actually strong dwarven alcohol What he now pulled out, he says on the house I have a couple extra bottles here Take 6 bottles This is some wine that a friend of mine made It''s **** but it''s cheap It''s yours as an apology This is low quality You can probably kill a bottle and it won''t hurt you I''m so sorry When you want something stronger, you come back to me And that''s what happens People get I didn''t say the other people I said people get used to it used to it over time The same that happens at the beginning They try to chase that over and over again Don''t do that, guys Keep it Keep it light and keep it Simple


    They wouldn''t know how accurate those words were Keep it light and keep it simple, because they went home that night, and they all just had half a bottle in one of their wooden mug deck carved out over the last little while, living in the forest And as they were eating their stag potato, carrots and a mug of wine, they realized that they were happy and how to hold And they were ready for a good fight And after that one mug and that one meal, they were knocking away till the next day to do this They were going to do in the dead of night in the cave They were to start smoking them out So they got a good fire in their belly They started getting all the wood shoved down in there They started making a little bit more of an area to load the fire The whole 9 yards And then they just said, hey, **** it Let''s just put a fire up against this It''ll cook it solid so they can''t get through We''re like, yeah, that''ll work great So they started piling up the rocks right against the opening And then wood on top of that So, and then just so much wood, they were at least 20 feet away from anyone of the tips of the wood And they lit it up And they sat there for about two minutes and realized they should just get out 0 UT They climbed the ladder, and they were getting smoked on by that point And the horror was starting to fill up with smoke


    They had grabbed a couple of the nicer ones of the wooden logs that they had sharpened the tips too, to make the sticks that were in the walls And they grab some big ones, some nice, long, thick ones that are like something''s coming through that hole coming up the I''m going to poke it, and they, they actually had another little pile of them right at the entrance to the cave So if anything came up and out, it was going after them They also had set up a small area with rocks where they could really quickly seal the whole thing But that was a last resort, cuz that would cause a landslide, and it screw up everything


    They killed some more alcohol and then the scent of mint hit their nostrils and their brains just opened up Their thoughts, everything They were drunk, happy, but in control And they just started banging their drums on wooden logs and then just started dancing and having a party And this was they felt right They felt this was right on the smoke was coming and then they heard it They heard it and they went, yeah And they screamed with the scream from underneath They realized it was coming out of the cave But then he realized it was coming out of caves all throughout the mountains And it wasn''t a bone curdling scream It was that that you just got pepper spray anger and defeat and all the motions that come with just being screwed up


    The absolute mayhem that then erupted out of small caves all throughout the mountain was backs and I''m not talking 1 or 2 million I''m talking one or 2 billion facts They just said screw this We''re out


    Now those people that played Dungeons and Dragons probably know there''s a role you don''t like fires in places you don''t know, because it''s either gases or whatever, whatever is what happened next Because all those bats evacuating their body mass out as fast as they could from those caves out of every entrance made the absorption of fire from their smoking attempt to actually start pulling in fire through the hole because they had enough of a bonfire going in that cave and was pulling in so much air that the fire actually started pulling all the smoke and everything over there actually could be in the cave down below and they actually went and looked and they were standing over the edge looking down and they could see all the smoke being sucked in all the air was getting sucked in And I mean, a lot of air was going in and as they saw the fire going in and they heard the sound, they kind of **** their heads back out of the cave and they walked about 60 feet 2060 feet somewhere in between there away from The Cave Luckily enough because they did that what they got to see next is this even in the dark with the stars in the background the giant swarm of bats blocking out the sky


    The sound is what first got their attention, because all of a sudden the sucking sound went away and it was like they heard a pop and the wind came pushing out very quickly Enough that they felt the wind hit them in the chest but then they heard Papa Papa Papa Papa Papa and it was just a popping was almost one big, long paw over and over again And what you saw next was different spots on the mountain Literally start shooting out funnels of fire, blue, greens, Reds, but not just those The pressure coming off of them was so much a shoot that into the air Their cave started shooting out and it was shooting out so much as they hit the dirt But the whole place was on fire They could see almost 100 different spots where a fire was out pouring out of the mountain


    As the brothers holding each other and laying on the ground face down with the fire against their backs waited and as it settled down they were able to look up and to their backs to see all the fiery plumes coming off and starting to slowly die down And when there''s started to die down and they looked at the very top of the mountain at the tips of all three of the points that they could see in the distance, there was 3 large, almost volcanoes of fire, just pouring and slowly going down


    Number one had two and three under each arm as they were looking standing up And he said, gentlemen, welcome to Mint Mountain


    I don''t know if anybody''s ever stopped burning mint, but it is one hell of an nostril opener because what they were also smelling didn''t smell very good and they realized all those bats were pooping in those caves That''s guano That''s basically rocket fuel And they just said um teen thousands of tons of this stuff off Oops


    So 12 and three Looking at their mess, said Hey, you know, we just screwed up and there''s gonna be somewhere investigating this, right?


    All three of them looked into each other''s eyes They grabbed each other''s hands and they said brothers were like they just smiled and looked up with the destruction day It just caused let them come They can take us dead


    In the town about 5 miles away  The Shockwave was felt and it actually moved the bell and the bell tower just a slight bit I know that when the bell tower guard actually pulled on it It was already kind of going so it made it really easy He even noted that and he didn''t mean to pull it so hard thinking it would be hard to start but the bell It rang hard and it rang hard again and again and I guess if you had pulled it a couple times thinking you''d have to get it going and the bell just started to do hard rings scare you screw you rings the town was awake instantly and they all looked out to see the mountain on fire


    It took about 10 minutes for the fires to die down And by that point, all the people in town were already working their way to the City Hall to figure out what to do and what was going on


    The shopkeeper and the friend at the pub almost at the same time when they heard the bell, wondered what the dwarf said done But both of them knew because of them There was going to be more business in town, which means more money So this is a good thing for them Plus doors nowadays are good luck charms to find them He had already started asking around and had no clue why three of them were hiding and he was getting more excited by the day and grabbing a bottle of wine and sitting on his balcony watching the fire come out of the mountain He knew they both did that this is going to be a good financial month


    As soon as the fire in their cave started to go down, they wanted to go check and they knew it was gonna be warm, but they didn''t expect how hot it was actually They all could get about 4 feet towards the end urance from the mouth before the the heat coming off made them stop


    When that had all happened, there was small rock slides, and there rock side that they had set up actually didn''t slide And they were really impressed But they were like, OK, we have to go check it It''s like a bomb that hasn''t gone off That should have gone off And they just looked at all the weight was on their little support So what they did is they put a little bit more support under the lever and a breakaway 1 a little bit farther down And then they just kind of, yeah, they just prayed all the hell that it didn''t pop this still wanted to have it in case they needed it for the exact reason it was there So if they had it still


    By sunset the bat the bats couldn''t come back The whole caves are so big, so they just, they bailed And that was the night that the bats infested all the woods around and some of the larger prey animals didn''t have a chance against those bats


    They were in all the trees around the dwarf''s little cabin, but they didn''t get in The door said their cabin slightly buried into the side of the hill So it looked like a hobbit hole, but it was more of a cabin on the inside This is a nice way to hide it Looked green on the outside You couldn''t really tell from green and rocky if you didn''t know it was there


    They couldn''t do anything until it cooled down South They went and they slept And when they woke up, they had no hangover and they had killed a whole bottle of wine before bed So they knew they didn''t hurt them not much when they went to go and check on the cave instead of blowing out air It was now sucking in air They slept It was still light out The sudden wasn''t too far pastena of the arch A K a noon


    One of their favorite games is rock, paper, scissors or something or some people call it Rochambeau The three of them played and it was three who won He was the first one to go into the hole, and he wanted to go So they got their lamps filled up with fuel extra candles And as a entered, they realized there was glass everywhere So they knew it was sharp And they''re hearing the crunching of the glass under their feet It''s a little bit the sand have been turned into hard glass They had removed their ladder when they started So they threw it back down the opening to the smaller cave where they go down the ladder had been opened up because all the rock had gotten heated and cracked and fallen in So the entrance was quite big They had to figure out new places to tie down the ropes that weren''t cooked This took a couple minutes


    One thing they noticed was that it was pretty much so ot on everything So they put pieces of cloth over their mouth when they went in and they got down the rope ladder and what they found was the slag tight or slag mite that had been there Now we''re totally destroyed through the heat and had fallen and broken on each other Actually slight widery powdery to them now that there''s cook so hot they realize they might need this or they put a small pile that off to the side and they said they tried to figure out what type of material that was later The whole place didn''t have very much ash or anything around that had all been blown out or sucked out with the immense amount of wind So once they broke the white the white stalagmites and they look past where the fire had been pulled down into it was another little caveroom like walking from one bubble to another bubble but they weren''t even they were higher and lower So as they started to move the bubble started to go lower Jade can be on a bubble and you''d go in the next bubble and you''d have to go down a little bit So what they started doing was taking their picks and breaking a little staircase and making a staircase down from one bubble to the next bubble and the next bubble and honestly they kept on going and it took about 6 bubbles for them to go okay We can keep on going We go back for dinner


    All three of them didn''t even have to say anything They just about turned it and they started marching back out when they got out They had a barrel for water and then they had a wash barrel That was if you''re really dirty, used wash barrel By the time they''re done, the wash barrel had to go and get dumped But they made sure to dump it near their house so that all the nutrients would go into the soil that they were taught about for farming and all their their extras were in that same pile and all that So they got that barrel and they held and they helped all three of them because it was a big barrel But they walked it down to the river, which is about 2 miles away Then made some ropes hooked up so they could easily carry it between the three of them 1 in front to on either side of the back so they marched on down and they finished cleaning up on the river and I filled up this with clean water and then they brought it back home that night they ate and slept and dreamed of what they might find


    This went on for two more days They hadn''t gone in a full 25 little orbs And these rims are like 10 foot by 10 foot by 10 foot, or 20 foot by 20 foot by 20 foot This used to be some sort of tunnel, but it got so hot that things melted together and the gases held them from well, yeah, they just held them And I guess there was always enough that they never ever fully sealed but they kind of did It was almost like a film lair


    It was until they got to the 21st one that they realized how stupid they were being and didn''t even realize it The 25th one, the floor was see through They only had probably two inches Another one to go into the room, because what they could see below was nothing but darkness When they lamps went across, it was like looking through a pane of glass and looking through a floor over like a skyscraper It freaked up great the hell out So the first thing they did is they looked under the 24th and they had stone underneath it So they were right on the edge of a room So well, if they''re going to break it, they should break it already And they knew that So number two being the **** he was took a rock about the size of your head and just hooked it in the room And it bounced and then nothing happened They both looked at you and he just shrugged So one in three and two all grabbed a rock each And they all began to shot foot And number one did the hand signal for 123 and on three of the all shot their shot foot They all then shot from the middle of the room Thud thud crash the one that had been thrown first made a crack The next one made that crack bigger the 3rd one made the crack biggest and the 4th one the final one had just gone right there What came out of there was a pungent rot of sulfur and then the air went the other direction and they got shocked in and they just they weren''t sucked into but the air was passing from their back where they were had their back to the exit down at the hole and it was just flowing and flowing and flowing it it had been under vacuum on the other side of the 25th or broom was enough was another entrance to another set of orbs or rooms or something and as it starts sucking air it starts sucking in from that side but you could hear pieces of glass shattering and then more and more and more and then all of a sudden the far side broke and pieces of glass were getting sucked down into the hole in the 21st rooms floor and it was really weird to see bats going hi there by there as it just went past the down the hole with the air and they were getting sucked down and there''s got to be a couple 1000 50,000 bats getting sucked into this hole at high speed and the boys are like they were holding on to their lines and there was a little typhoon like they could stand I guess like it wasn''t that strong but I guess it was strong like they had low centre of gravity I guess


    Number one had been counting with his hands, and they were kind of watching him what he was doing And they questioned, and he just said, 6768 sixty 9 And he just kept on counting with his fingers After a while, he stopped counting when the wind stopped sucking so hard And yeah, so what was it?


    212  Seconds For air to flow in and fill that cavity that''s in there That is huge We found a giant cave system We can find probably lots stuff in here They''re all three of them were just smiling and they felt they were doing the right thing But that was enough for today They had the last bottles of wine to drink and they hadn''t had anybody coming in from town so they were going to make a quick run to town and get some more rope


    They knew something was gonna go wrong when they went to town They could feel it in their bones, and they were not wrong, because the moment they walked into the general store, he smiled and told his apprentice tell Patty his parcel just showed up and then walked in to see his three customers where they hadn''t heard him say that to his assistant


    He sold them all the stuff they were looking for and they left and then they went next to the alcohol salesman Then they told them that it was good and they wanted more of that And this time they wanted 3 kegs or barrels or whatever they could get And they were talking with the alcohol salesman getting them to give him a good deal And in the end, he got rid of some old apple wine Three casks of it They put one on each of their backs along with giant chunks of rope and some tools and some food And they went back into the hills


    The three rogues that had been sent to follow them, literally told one of them Hey, I don''t need your help Go **** **** Go have a drink And he told the other two to go away And this old timer just do the follow the dwarves because he was in charge The other two are like we''re getting paid still right


    The old guy who said yeah, and he threw them a couple of coins, two silvers each and they just **** off Tell the Guild master what I just did, and that shocked them not thinking he actually wanted them to rat on him Tell him I''ll be back in a day or three


    With that he grabbed a backpack that he had hidden around the corner where he was talking with the other two Put it on his back and start walking into the forest behind them


    About two miles out of town, he actually started to pick up his pace till he could see them in the distance The three boys saw the man as they were almost to their own house He waved to them once he saw that they saw them so they stopped in their tracks and they wait for him to catch up and ask what he wanted Why was he following them?


    The old man smiled and said, I''m from the rogue skilled Let''s put this way People want to know why you''re doing mining And did you have anything to do with the fire on the mountain, or was it something else? People are really freaked out about that And there''s been actually a couple people hurt from the bats They''re getting more aggressive


    As the three of them didn''t want to say, I think to the guy, but them just shutting up real quick and then trying to give their brothers each signals The old man just started laughing He goes, don''t worry No one''s in trouble You guys didn''t do anything wrong They just want to make sure a dragons not in town or something like that Plus, everybody''s kinda worried why there''s three dwarfs that have shaved their beard, hiding in our town, like to shave your beard is a great well it We''ve never seen it We don''t know why you guys are doing it, and we''re worried that you guys are gonna have something bad, or you guys are evil people But you don''t seem bad You seem like kids So, hey, my name is Larry Just tell me what''s going on


    One, two and three, knowing that the jig was half up And if they had looked really closely, they couldn''t even see there where they lived So they just said, sorry, sir And they all bowed their heads to him


    Larry said, hey, kids, don''t do that Now you''re making me feel bad Just tell me what''s going on and I maybe I can help


    One, two and three didn''t know where to start, so two and three push one So one step forward and just said we were abandoned as babies and we know our parents are dead and our plan is dead So we don''t have anybody to go back to and we don''t want to die So we''re hiding here trying to find a place for ourselves


    O the old thief was **** at himself Now it felt like a **** **** ****


    Kids here''s what Larry''s gonna do for you And he just looked at him and said, take your heads up You haven''t done anything wrong What happened? I will take the blame if there''s anything going wrong, I will protect you Tell me what''s going on And he explained to them what everybody was expecting And I was Larry to come back with some knowledge of what happened So one explained that they were trying to clean out the cave And he pointed over to the cave, and they explained to them what he did And as he got to the part where the wind shains, larry just face pawned, and he''s like, and I''m guessing after that, the fire started in the mountains, and that''s what, yeah, we were knocked on our **** and we covered our head We put our **** in the air And once the fire died down, we looked around and, yeah, we went and didn''t check it, and there''s lots of glass rooms in there, molten glass and rock It''s been burnt, and it''s really beautiful Hey, Larry''s like, you''ve been in there already It''s like, yeah, we''re going to go back in You want to come with us, because these are kids like they want to have fun They''re excited


    Larry just looked at him and said, kids, you may not know your heritage, but you are absolute dwarfs no matter what anybody says, just the way you act and the way that you''re happy and the way you you are awesome and perfect just the way you are So I will keep an eye on you and if it''s okay, I will sleep outside for tonight and tomorrow we can go in I brought my own tangent everything The three of them said, nah, don''t worry about it And he let them sleep in the cabin with them, not realizing that it was actually pretty big in there They can actually fit about 7 to 10 people in there if they wanted to They actually had extra bed made up in case And I had all the little sewing things that they had made from different animals and different hides and all that And that''s what they did for fun They made things with their hands


    On one of the shelves was a set of children''s toys made of stone Each of them had made them in memory of the memories of their parents But it wasn''t till the next morning when Larry was looking around and they were offering him food, and he was offering them some food he brought for being warmed up on their fire pits slash stove area inside their house, which is amazingly beautiful They''ve been there for a couple years You can tell he was looking at the baby toys and he had picked one up and on It was one of the dwarven crests that he knew He knew of the House of  Coal and fire,  He turned around and asked the rhythm, do you guys know the symbol?


    They all shut up real quick and just said no And Larry knew that they were lying, but he just dropped, and he put it down He says, OK, no worries So what''s for breakfast? And with that, they were happy to change the subject


    That day, they went with Larry, and they went in to the cave system And Larry watched him as the guy started to go down into the the whole of the 25th Larry is like, I''m not going down there That''s too big for me I''d have to open this up a way a bit more So the Ashton just keep an eye on them up there and the 1 in 3 stayed up Well, there''s two turn to go down So to shimmy down the rope, I was in another room except this room was a lot bigger than they expected And as the light moved around the room, 13 and Larry looking through the floor of the room 24 could actually see the light coming through and realize that they weren''t actually on rock It was just thicker And they looked back into room 23 and they could see the lights So they actually moved back in extra room And Larry looked up, and they could see Larry pointing the light right off them It was hard to see because it was so thick But, yeah, and Larry was literally walking underneath them until he''s his rope stopped And he, he just turned around and pulled on, tugged on the rope, and they had checked for sharp edges So they helped to pull him back up What they weren''t expecting is to him to be a little bit heavier


    He had this stupid smile on his face, and he said, hey, Larry, I have a gift for you, if you don''t mind keeping our secret


    Being a rogue stealing in the secrets was Larry''s jam He loved that stuff So he''s like, sure, I can be bought off what you got


    Number two said, let''s go outside, and I''ll show you when we get outside So they all had it outside, and when they got to the mouth of the cave, number two pulled his backpack off That was just a little bit heavier than it was when he went down there And he handed out, he pulled out all four of them, and he only had 4 of them, but they were eggs about the sizes of two fists put together, a solid metal And it was silvery metal too It was 4 teardrops They had warped and warmed up the metal so much of it melted some metal So he said, with these, we seal the pact of the secret Now, Larry, I''m willing to give you mine I''m best of my brothers Will probably give you theirs too If you can do us a favor, how do we get stuff from town without being assaulted or without someone figuring out what we have up here? And how do we And how do we get ahold of you so that we can sell stuff through you?


    One in three both looked at two and then looked at Larry and smiled the most evil smile


    The next half an hour was negotiated was negotiating with a Larry and then Larry took up with all four giant chunks of metal He was so heavy he took him a long time to get back to town, but he had but he had now a business partnership to take care of


    Larry didn''t even go to the general store or anything He went right to town hall and asteroid meeting with the mayor


    No one in town knew that the mayor was actually in charge of all the different guilds, including the thief skilled He wasn''t the thief guild chief but they all reported to the mayor So the mayor needed to know and think something was going to affect him Plus, Larry and the mayor were family So Larry knew that the mayor could be trusted, as far as he could be thrown But with money, definitely trust


    Within five minutes, he was in with the mayor, closed the door and said, I need you to pull out a deed for some land right now No questions asked And the mayor, knowing that Larry would never ever say those words without a good meeting, he said, why? I said, I need to buy the sign right now No questions asked OK, and he pointed over on the map, on the wall, and he said, and M703M and 74 and NM 72 7079 actually


    Mn70-mn79


    The mayor had gone through this before and OK, not a problem Did it cost you this much? And the moment he said that Larry just pulled out one of the teardrops, that was huge And they said here''s my payment and that''ll cover everything else to loan it, uncle


    The mayor took the  Teardrop held it in his hand and asked what the **** did he find? The next couple of minutes were describing how 3 human miners came selling stuff and that he was sending keep an eye on them And this is what he found So they''re buying the mine and they''re going to work it I don''t sell to our town, and I''m selling through me and the smile on Larry''s face and the smile on the mayor''s face They shook hands and he said pleasure doing the business The nephew


    And with that, he went down to the appraiser''s office in the same building and rang the bell


    An older man was sitting at a desk, and a younger man said, how can I help? And he said, I have an appraisal of some medal, unknown type I need you to please get your boss to appraise it, please, for me


    This got the older man''s attention This man was kind of short and looked like he didn''t look human It looked more like a gnome It was really weird, but uglier The little man waddled up to the counter, which he didn''t even is he didn''t even see over it But he had a little ladder, and he came up and he said, let me see it You got


    As he put the teardrop down the old man whistled and said, I haven''t seen one of these in probably 50 years I guess this is from what happened the other day with the mountain getting too hot for you How many do you got?


    Larry replied, I''ve got three I might be able to get more, but I need to know what they are first And this looks pretty darn pure So can you tell


    The old man walked over to one of the shells, and it had a glass set of mechanisms and contraptions on, and there was a spot where he put it in He said, give me a second and he put it on this holder on this holder lit up and he pushed a button and it scanned it and he pushed button It all went down and he waited a minute and there''s a printer just slowly printing off a whole slower printer grab the piece of paper, grab the item, brought it back and he started reading off a piece of paper This is silver 999% silver We will offer to you at for this weight 17 gold pieces each


    Larry agreed that would be perfect and asked if he could have the half of that kept in the bank, which is also was the bank for the town and the other half If you could have it as a promissory note for the general store And the reason Larry did that is that if you did that, you actually got a discount at the general store because you''re holding the money in the banks for them So it was a 10% discount


    Larry, after that took a couple pieces of his own silver as a thank you to the boys for making him the money and went over to alcohol place and talked to the alcohol vendor Grab a couple of bottles of wine after the stories they have talked about the horrible stronger stuff and headed back to the boys


    When he got back, the boys were down in the cave, so he opened the door to the Little  Home And on the table, they put a note


    “with this is for you Now you can buy stuff without having to worry about money from the next little while from the general store And he''ll tell you when you have to have more and hear some why Congratulations on opening your mind And here''s the D to the mind It''s all yours and legal proper with the city I will come and check back in a week or a month Have whatever you got ready for me Stop in at the general store and tell him that you''re looking for me If I don''t come see you first


    At the very bottom PS I''m leaving a stick with a little piece of red cloth on it at your front door Hide it if I''m coming to see you guys or I need to come see you guys You put that out and if I come up and I see that the red flags there, I''ll stick around Even if you''re down in the caves So stay safe Find me in town if you need to”


    ************


    Larry left the boys alone, I went and went back to town, went to his contact and let him know that the boys and that''s what they were They were children were under Larry''s protection And Larry was 1 of those people He didn''t grow up in this town and he was hiding Everybody knew it in the bad guys guilt I mean, they were all pretty sure they knew what was going on, but he had a couple tattoos that 1 of 2 of them got to see Think of I think it''s Russian Mafia They have rules about how tattoos are The tattoos of this gentleman has make everybody very, very nervous around him At the same time, Larry''s the nicest guy you''ve ever met


    So when he headed back to the bar and talked with the owner and Justice said, Hey, Those boys are under my protection There wasn''t too many questions other than **** And then the next question is, hey, when McDurbish gets into town  Let me know I have to ask him some laws from his race Do you understand?


    Larry and the bartender tavern owner were business friends They had their own little way of communicating with each other Larry got his message across, but this also let the bartender know that there''s something with the boys up that it''s in trouble with the law Probably So one of those rules is when you find that you just stop asking questions, get your nose cut off or stuff like that So the boys now have a somewhat good alibi with the bad guys in town and they can do their stuff through Larry and Larry Well, he waited for two more days and then McDurbish showed up


    Just happened to Larry B at the pub when Mcdermott showed and out of respect for the old dwarf, a tankered of the nice, good dwarf whiskey was given to him The moment McDurbish  Saw free alcohol and a big mug of it He knew they needed something, so this is going to be an interesting question the night, if you will


    As they sat down only one question had to be asked And Larry just looked at McDurbish


    And asked as he drew in the dust on the table, the symbol that he had seen on the dreidel in the dwarfs home


    As he is about to finish drawing it, Mcdermott saw his eyes opened up real big and he went down He just wiped the little way and he goes who wants to know about that?


    Larry knew instantly this was a touchy subject


    Larry looked at the man and just said, simply, there may have been an incident where some people had died and that was carved into a piece of wood where we found them What is It


    McDurbis  Took a deep breath and relaxed and looked at Larry and just said that was a really bad family that died because one of the kids fell in love with another family and it didn''t turn out well Now that family is gone forever We don''t talk about it Please


    McDurbish  Looked at Larry and asked these graves where are they? Will they ever be found?


    He knew some of the the rules that these men like Larry followed So asking this was almost asking for proof that they were killed by this person He really didn''t care He just wanted to make sure that no one would ever find them knowing that the history would bring bad business if it was ever brought up


    Larry, not knowing this, said they were in the deep woods I found them as I was travelling It was very odd and they had been partially digging up by some animals I did rebury them, but I don''t think I''ll ever find that spot again It was in the deep, deep woods


    McDurbish  Actually looked quite happy with that answer, simply because a story for a ghost in the past should sometimes be kept in the past


    And with that, they change the subject, and they start talking about anything else So that made Larry very happy to know this around the end of their conversation He did ask very quietly that symbol what the name of the family was


    McDurbish  Not thinking there''d be any problem with a little bit of information to say that the the clan was called a fire and coal


    Later on, they would go their way And with that day from on, Larry knew something about the boys that they didn''t know


    After they left McDurbish  Now I was very interested how a family that used to own an entire mountain and was murdered off over 40 years ago Let someone would find that old of a grave in the woods by accident He knew better He smelt the gods involvement in this turned his nose up at it Put one finger on one nostril and blue out of the other one And this is for you and blew it into the dirt thinking this is going to bring nothing but trouble Though he knew as being a dwarf, he would quietly go look up what actually happened He had one or two friends in the old clan houses that might be able to tell him more next time he''ll come around He maybe have more information for Larry and that would buy him another good drink It''s always worth a talk to get a free drink, especially in these backwaters


    Larry also had some friends and when he went and talked to the bartender, he asked to send a message by bird to the central city of the country It was cost, but Larry wanted some more information


    The message was very short and simple”  Dwarf clan name fire and coal send rep with information to sender”


    And with that he would get a small ball rolling, knowing that something wasn''t right here and he didn''t have a problem dealing with bad people But when good people went bad for bad reasons, that wasn''t allowed Big, big, bad people, the ones that eat other people and sell other people for slaves, stuff like that, kill for the fun of it Hunt humans for fun That''s just held no He had his morals even being an **** and a bad guy But he had his just know Larry had feelings for these boys He was going to let them be them He was going to make sure that whatever was going to come after them, he was ready


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    **************


    A week later


    In the main cathedral the priests were giving sermon for over 4000 people The 14 bird coops they had around the church''s property We''re always checked three times a day This day a message came in for information to be sent to one of its outposts The message was short, but all this was directly sent to the information brokers of the church


    Being that there was different religions, this one religion was that of the darkness, the shade


    These people believed that you could not have light and not have darkness and not have darkness without having light So they were there for not balancing They were there as part of the darkness They just made sure that they were the darkest dark that they allowed and the blackest dark was what they thought They basically killed people things They toppled governments They did whatever the hell they want But when they became about human beings being sold for body parts, meat, money, when the human was taken out of humanity, they would stop in to go Hey, no, you''re too much of a **** **** They had been around for very long time and it was actually quite easy for them now They just made sure everybody knew the rules And bad guys didn''t need a lot of rules to kill people They just needed a lot of rules not to kill people It was a lot easier that way, actually Think of inverted cops


    So one of their outposts asking about dwarf heritage they walked back directly to the library and asked, because in this church, the people that found the job got to do the job So monk number 55131 who is just among and didn''t have a name yet Not until he got his first job And by getting this piece of paper and being able to explain what''s going on to the higher ups in the church, he could earn the right to take the test by going to the outpost with the information and filling in the operative with the information so that no one could steal it because it would all be in his head and then come back safely This would prove for him to be a proper member of the church This would also earn him his name


    Show He went to speak with one of his friends who actually worked in the library, and she was just such a sweetheart of a lady But she was strict So when he came in with a smile on his face, she knew exactly what was going on He was on pigeon coop duty today And if anybody came in during that time, and they had that stupid smile on the face, they always had that piece of paper in their hand She knew exactly what was going on He got his So she needed to help him find what he needed to figure out So the first question before he could even say was, what do you need to find


    The monk looked at her and just said Dwarven Heritage family line coal and flame or flame and coal


    That one change in the message would open up a can of worms, because whence they started looking into it, they actually found two entire dwarven lines, both at 1 time were 1 and that were split One called coal and fire, and 1 called fire and coal They found a story explaining that there was one mountain and two brothers had a fight over a woman 1 one in the woman, and the other one wanted the sister of that woman But the women didn''t love the men the way the men loved the women So one man was happy while one man was sad This put a wedge between the brothers and in the end the leader of the Klan told them to make Holmes on either side of the mountain and whoever could get down to level 300 feet deep and the middle of the mind first would inherit the mine


    The sad tale was one brother was better at minding than the other 11 was a little faster The problem is the gentleman that was faster was also the one that got to marry the girl that he wanted, but she wanted to marry the other guy So when the mind collapsed on him the faster of the two brothers, she went to go to see him, but he was an interested in her so she was angry What no one knew the other brother had a secret wife He just didn''t want to bring her into this family feud and she lived far away with their daughter it didn''t come into light that she was even alive till 50 years later when she went to new to a new city from the little town she was in and she registered her name They found out one brother had taken fire and coal and her family was coal and fire So it was recorded It was recorded as a different family from the original family of fire and coal The bloodline of fire and coal was snuffed out at that point without anybody knowing about her and she registered under a different name until now


    The monk in the librarian getting so excited when they figured this out, got a little more excited than they should have And another couple of monks who were nosy kind of listened into what they were talking about enough that 2 of them ran in different directions out of the library to go at two different people 1 was one of the head of the clergy Another was a lawyer for the clergy While they were so engrossed, they did not hear everybody come in and surround them in the library as they were talking about this And after another couple minutes, the librarian looked behind the monk to see everybody just smiling at them This was a very good day because this was a very good find The reason for that, it was worth money


    But because of conflicts, the lawyer brought up, they were not going to profit off this in case it ended up in someones death But what they could do is go write a book, a story and ask for permission from the descendants if they could publish it The moment they published it, they had the right to go to the dwarven people and put in a lost clan informational referral slash refund slash Give me money and I''ll tell you who they are and what''s going on


    Dwarves were very, very big on family lineage to the point where if you could if you could prove someone''s lineage was incorrect or null and boy you could basically ask for almost anything they it was extremely important to their society and their personal belief system Mountains had been lost over this and in this case a mountain had been lost The mountain was a good mountain, but it wasn''t very popular with only having whole and magma It''s stunk, really So


    The head priests and the lawyer priest asked a monk what he thought he should be doing in this situation This was the test if he was worthy to go out and be in the world with their name


    The monk took a minute to think about it and then looked over at the librarian who he had had a crush on for so very long, and he pretty much was sure that it was reciprocal, but not allowed his brain started to come up with a plan and he looked at the head priest and just asked


    “ Can I request? to have? the test of the faithfulness And I want the librarian to be my proctor The test will be to go and find out what happened to the clan of fire and coal And I will hereby inform you now that I will put in the dwarven documentation of research before I leave This will be three things to me My naming ceremony Her naming ceremony and my request of marriage to her”


    Everybody just started smiling ear to ear These two kids had grown up together and were in love They even got caught kissing one time a long time ago And we''re well, getting hit on the knuckles with a ruler would be a light statement Let''s put this way They both felt it They were very young for that No one wanted anything else but their happiness And this sounded like a great reason for them to get out So with the head priests blessing, he agreed


    But then all eyes went to the librarian, and she dissed, looked at the monk, and he looked at her, and she just nodded her head


    With that everybody was cheering and happy in the library And then someone just had so they had a quiet cheer It was great They all decided with the hand signals to move to another room and they could start talking about what they were going to do and how they''re going to do it That went on for many hours and I believe one of the priests even went and raided the liquor cabinet and they all had a very good drunk night Next day, the monk in the librarian would have to put in paperwork with the dwarven people to let them know that they are looking into a story from their old history And they would like to have a historian of the dwarven archives look up information This alone would send up some kind of red flag, but because it''s been done enough as long as it wasn''t a really weird red flag Hopefully it wouldn''t get picked up and they could just get the information for some money


    One of the reasons for the church was to make sure information could be sent to where it needed to be and research ed research could be researched in safety They had lost too many people due to monsters and other things that just came out of the darkness Like if there was darkness, creatures from your worst nightmares would appear So this one So this wasn''t a good world People needed protection The church had their nights, their Paladins, their exorcists and every other job you could think of They had cities devoted just to protecting the citizens and letting them do adorable job of the normal day within a giant ring city Those were all over the place But where they were about to go was quiet from what they were told But was also the wild so they wouldn''t be going alone


    The paperwork got sent over to the dwarf quarter And the head pre said requested a and a couple of nights to go on a trip to make sure that the town that they were going to go to was how do I put this? Was not invested with something super evil Got to remember, these aren''t good nights and good paladins These are your bad guy Like, let''s go see what kind of trouble we can make in town, but let''s make sure there''s nothing like demonic or something from the void there Like, let''s go Let''s go cause some problems


    Now, the dwarfs getting a request like this is nothing, as long as the money is prepaid, which it was And within one day they already had a scribe show up at the church with two books and 20 minutes of his time available for questions because they had just already read the books while they were waiting


    The monk was grabbed and introduced to the information broker And they talked once the clan''s holdings were brought up the scribe told the monk that they were no money for that plan It was dissolved a long time ago So honestly, the other one, the clan of coal and fire is actually still a real clad But the clan of fire and coal was murdered off and disbanded It was actually what happened and why they were called at the end One of their enemies took a bomb into their mind right next to a colvain and lit it on fire with an explosion They think to this day that mine and that whole mountain is still burning So that clads just gone So the weird part is the symbol is on both clans and accepted on both clans So when the scribe said this that sent up a red flag for the dwarf But he just added it right there And the monk didn''t want to bring it up So he just let it die too quite quickly, actually And they finished talking and they went their own ways The monk was I have enough information Let''s grab my lady and let''s get this show on the road But that''s not what would have happened


    Because when that dwarf scribe went back, he went directly to the Klan chief and asked what it meant because he knew because he knew a lot of the rules But this was not in any of the books he had looked up and he couldn''t understand what this meant But he asked, what if one clan had the same crest exactly of another clan, and they were both accepted? Does that make them the same clanges with different names? And the look on the king''s face was, what are you talking about? There''s only one shield per clan There is no 2 names I think he had brought back the books with him So he showed the king and the king called in a lot of people in the end Because after about three hours, the whole of the King''s chambers was filled with people and tables that have brought in and other documents that were brought in when the whole clan was looking up the clan of fire and coal And what they found out was, yes, the original mountain was gone and only one generation after that survived But in that one generation, 2 of the heads of household had given their lives and had died And the last of the houses is the maids and the ladies in waiting were released They were told they had no more hold because their mountain was gone But what no one understood at the time was that they had invested in other clans and that investment over time was correlated and given to the king to keep an eye on under his supervision And it was passed on from 1 family to another family for three generations now So the king was holding on to a small nest egg basically for them And it was always in the King''s coffers for the dwarfs But because this was actually tried to been written out of the history books they found while going through documentation a long time ago, knowing that I ever found this informational bit since it was tried to been hidden They even looked back through withdrawals from that account after talking with the known bank and the dwarven and known banks both showed that one of the previous kings took out money against the account So there was actually interest owing to the bank So the moment that the current king figured this out, he told him take money out of that account right now to pay But he was stopped by a lawyer The lawyer went No, you don''t You screwed up You pay that extra money that needs to be in there You put back the money that was supposed to be there, and he had an account and go over it And the king, knowing that he couldn''t break the law here, had to go through and take it out of his own finances What they found in the end, that it wasn''t the only one that was being taken from over the years But the other ones could be dealt with right now They had to worry about this And they realized all they could offer was three platinum coins What? a fortune You would think a platinum coin wouldn''t be worth that much Maybe a couple hundred bucks Couple 1000 bucks No, we''re talking a billion We''re talking a sweet billion dollars Three coins is a billion 333  Million per platinum and these were as big as a tire from a truck and a about half a foot thicker of platinum These things were enormous and that''s what he owed this account in the end So he made the account proper and put it away But now there was a very large amount of money for a descendant if there was and if there wasn''t, it would go back into the king''s holding Now the king Everybody expected the king to say Let''s find these kids and kill them and blah No If one of the houses was still around, he''d rather have it back and funded with its own money to help the people out do it the right way It would be great for his people He needed something really good for them


    So before anybody could get some stupid idea, he told everybody that was in the room that no one and he repeated no one is allowed to harm these kids or these people or whoever were looking for But no offence if there are people that have a relations to the originals, we need to get the grandmasters of the clans down here to do the ritual of blood to verify the people once we find them So please inform them of what we found privately But give us a week or two to have a head start before all the idiots leak the information and then whoever these people are, I''m going to take 100 of the guard put them on detail with the captain of the guard for the castle and 20 of the guard from the castle are going to follow the trails back to these relatives clan heads, these family and bring them home


    ********************************


    Well, it took about a week to get most of the stuff done, Larry   Had 52 gold to spend around the boys asked for was a little more than anybody was expecting So Larry had to do it as if he was doing it for one of the guys in town and do it a couple times But he was able to make enough of an order for rope because those boys were going down some pretty sheer cliffs in those minds all so some explosives never was cheap, but always is great And Doris Love explosive stuff He knew he had to get some of that He''d get a whole whack more alcohol from him and they like the cheap stuff So light and cheap and he could get locked to that the same time he bought a wagon if they needed to, they could rent a horse for a day But they leased out the wagon They get store stuff on it Came with a tarp Got a couple of those Some more axes Basically, he made it look like he was working all week and he was actually disfilling this one order But doing it slowly through many of the companies in different places in town Like this wasn''t a total small town, but it was big enough You get lost in


    All the people that knew Larry knew Larry is up to something, but kind of being that there was a couple of families in town, they all kind of knew that Larry had taken somebody under his wing, and it was just keep an eye out for them and doing them the favor And the mayor also knew that was making some money So everybody was happy and no one needed to know what was going on So everybody just kept their own business


    Larry had already gone back to the boys with this stuff, made two trips out there They weren''t there, eat both times, so he put it all into their place in the mountain And he put the flag outside their cave So when they came back, they''d see that someone had been there the second time he was there, the flag had a little note saying thank you And said two weeks Come back Dinners on us


    When Larry made it back to town after the second trip to see the boys, he was not expecting a small group of people showing up in town, and he could tell instantly that they were altogether cause they all kinda dressed alike and they were all looking the same type of dishevel they were a group of some sort But then when he saw the weapons on them and the smile and the young people and two of them holding hands, he got a weird idea because if he was right, this is going to be more of a pan the **** and he was expecting what he wanted and what he wasn''t expecting was a lone dwarf already finding Mcdermish and talking to him in town this was a giant cluster **** Larry''s eyes right here in front of him All the things he did not want were in front of his eyes He wanted just to turn around and bail hard But the moment Mcderish caught Larry''s eye and saw how pinned Larry was Mcdermish basically froze and the dwarf that he was with realizing that the person he was talking to just stopped and froze not looking at him Look to see where he is looking And there''s this giant of a man human with this meanest look you could ever want to know And the dwarf just looked at McDerbish and looked at the man and pointed and said come here The church people did not miss this and they were also looking at this and they started walking over to the dwarfs Larry knew he had to come up with something real quick or else there was going to be some serious problems going down


    As all three groups met up before anybody could say anything, Larry just said, point blank Not very loud, but enough to get their old their attention “  I asked the bartender to find me some information on the clan of fire and coal because I found a grave in the deep woods with the symbol and he drew it in the ground and I asked Victor Bish what they were and he told me it was for a clan that was no more Well, what do you want to know? Cause you''re all here looking for whatever this is


    The dwarven man looked at the whole group and said to the man and woman holding hands Are you from the church?


    And by that they knew the  Implication was not of the religious type of church, but the church that dealt with the bad things that go bump at the night


    The monk just smiled and the lady did a little bit of a curtsey to the dwarf and said yes, Sir, we are from the church and we are here just to basically find out what we can''t We are basically on our honeymoon and this is a nice little town And to be honest, I haven''t gotten out in so long I need to get some violence out of my system being locked up in the city so much So we decided to come out here and maybe help out the town with some monsters and hang out and drink and just enjoy the time away from the city


    The old dwarf just started howling, laughing, and he said no, that sounds like a perfect idea I think we should all do that and we can just stay in this town for a couple of days and your name Sure, I never did catch it as the dwarf looked up at Larry


    Thinking quick not to give his real name, he said, I''m Charlie, the spy But my friends call me Larry


    The church knew exactly who he was It was the dwarfs he was trying to throw for a little bit of a loop And to say that the dwarfs after what he had told them, they didn''t know if Larry was a guy that killed the people that they''re looking for or did find bodies in the woods These guys need to get Larry very drunk and see if they could get information out of them So yeah And they had no problem killing a human Their strength could definitely put an ax through his back easy And the people from the church would happily help out too, because the church and the dwarfs a long time ago became very good friends when they took out a lot of bad people in the really bad town And after that, they always made a deal Don''t **** each other off and be friends And it''s worked out for almost 1000 years So the dwarves in the humans, well, the dwarves in the church at least get along


    Larry knowing that his actions would be scrutinized now would lead to them talking to the guy at the general store and Larry couldn''t just run off and tell him to shut up because any would have to pay him to do that So hopefully they wouldn''t find out about him, but they probably would So Larry knew this wasn''t about if it was how long before they figured out about the kids So he decided to try to postpone those long as possible And Yeah, the kids were fine up in the mountain as far as he knew He was just going to leave them alone As long as he didn''t take them to the only figure it out And at worst, they could start grilling Larry on where the kids were But Larry wasn''t going to let these hyenas near them


    For the next couple of days, Larry played tag basically where he disappeared from one group and then the other group would find them and he would basically just run around town, literally running around town and then going to have a beer and then go for another rent And he did this to screw with them because at this point he wanted Tucker them out and the married couple they had gotten married before they left the capital They thought this was hilarious They''re sitting on Veranda with fresh baked bread and coffee watching the other church members try to sniff out something And it was just so stupid to watch them try and not know what the hell they were doing Yes, they were trained, but there wasn''t any information they could find They thought So they were just enjoying themselves


    It wasn''t until later in that afternoon that there was a little bit of a kerfuffle and the librarian actually ran into the three boys as they were leaving town seeing that these three young boys who she thought were like 6 and 7 were these guys are actually 10 They actually don''t know And the person that had brought them in had already died So yeah, a little bit of a missing information will be in their paperwork


    Now Thinking these were very young  Dwarf children, but seeing how they had shaved their beards and they had already had stubble coming in from the morning shave, she knew something was definitely up and she didn''t actually press it too much because as she walked up and tried to talk to them, they just got really defensive and then looked at her and shook their heads and then very quietly and quickly walked away from her at, like, really fast speed of walking, almost running And she didn''t chase them She just let them go But realizing that something was definitely not right here, she went back to town to talk to her husband


    The monk wouldn''t get his name until he had fixed or gotten the information correctly, but because there was more of a story here, it was their duty to be a part of it and record it for the church So when they went back with their story, then they would get the monk a new name given to him for his deeds That was a great honor in the church and the librarian would also get a proper name And because they were together, they would get a family name And that was a great honor from the church So they were going to find out the story here But she knew that she had to be careful because to end the story without a full ending would get her into trouble And the ending was not where they were at the moment She could feel it There was more to this story than meets the eye


    She called a meeting of her people, and she explained what she had found But she also explained what was going on and how they acted And that threw up red flags that someone was probably hunting them, and they were hiding up So that right there, she asked to have a message sent to the church explaining that they would be in this town indefinitely until this problem was solved And they would wait for a word on word on if the Knights in Paladin should stick around or if they had other business in town, the church wanted to be before sending back But the monk and the librarian wanted to stay there and finish this The Knights inhaled it also wanted to stay and they made that known in their message, but they didn''t expect to be allowed


    It would take a couple days for them to get a reply, so they just bunkered in now Now I knew that they had three dwarf children that were being hunted They thought and were hiding out in the mountains Sounded about normal for dwarfs, so they were going to just wait till the church got back to them on what to do And until then, they''re just going to keep this little town safe And pluck more information


    Larry couldn''t get away from these people and it took a couple of days, but he had heard that the kids that came into town and the kids now knew that everything was going down badly and that they well, Larry didn''t know if he went back up to the cabin if they''d even be there So he decided in the middle of the night that night to make his way up to where the boys were But of course, the Knights and the Paladin were watching him and followed


    When Larry got to their cabin, it was a bad it was abandoned It looked like they had like they had taken everything and ran away But the weird thing was the red flag wasn''t anywhere he could find it So he looked over at the cave entrance and he didn''t find it It wasn''t till he turned around from the cave entrance Did he see it hanging up in a tree and next to that was a piece of bark that had been rolled up and the red flag was kind of around it And it was up in the tree So when Larry grabbed it down and he opened it up, it just had a arrow pointing down well it was more of a picture showing a cave pointing down in the cave So Larry kind of got the idea And as he went, OK, cool Grab it and he just broke it away and made it go away because they just used a little bit of coal from the fire to draw it on the piece of it So as he broke it up and just went away, he also had noticed that he had been followed So now in knowing that information, he just basically played dumb, showed the paladin and the nights when they came up and blah, blah, blah And he was all **** at them And they went through the whole charade of this And when they went into the cabin, the dreidel and all the toys were gone But as they were looking around, there was one rock and someone actually had carved that into there And it was something you couldn''t remove It was part of the house So I guess they couldn''t take it with them And when they saw the symbol they knew that they had found somebody that knew that symbol So the Knights and the Paladins basically said that they were going to stay there and wait for them to come back They started up the fireplace And the moment they did that, whatever was in that fireplace started to smoke and it choked them right out It almost exploded I could just the smoke came 0 it was disgusting And they all had to get out of that cabin And the boys had left a little bit of a present to anybody that came looking for them


    With that Larry said **** you and he just went back to town, hoping that they didn''t want to go traveling down into the cave too much and go looking, but they they had found the cave entrance along with the cabin They said weren''t too far apart So Larry had to ditch these guys and then come back with some gear to find the boys But he also had to follow the churches rules So he didn''t have to tell them anything, but he didn''t hold anything back It was a fine line of being **** **** and then letting your friends get **** ****


    What no one knew was the boys were actually in the cabin in a false wall in the back, and they had their own air supply So when that bomb went off and those guys all ran out, they actually opened up a small little flu and let the smoke go out the front of the house with those guys to air out the house And then they closed it, allowing someone to stay in the house of the guys didn''t come back when they knew they were gone They''d let the whole house air out for about 20 minutes and they were still in their little Heidi hole The brothers all asked and looked at each other except one who knew he was the one that had done it He had drawn in the rock enough times with his fingers to leave an imprint So now that is a sight if they were going to run away or not And their misdirection about down in the cave would be a good one for what they found


    2 weeks earlier


    So to explain what they had found, they had gone down through 25  Small bubble caves and came across a glass floor for the last three caves and on the 26th they had broken through into a giant cave system below Well, number two while he was moving around through them for the last couple days around number 17 found another room behind the glass and before he broke it open he showed his brothers Now they were super happy that they didn''t open it because as they put light to it, they could see that there was a liquid inside and they wondered what type of liquid would have survived that heat and they were like, no, we don''t want to play with that crap Whatever that is, it''s probably toxic is all hell to our health So they just left it there


    But it made them start looking at the walls And if they hadn''t been looking, they wouldn''t have seen it on number 4 Little Dome room 4 is actually one of the smallest of them all the off of the right hand side as you''re going downhead about head height, not to the left and up a little bit There was this shining glitter And if they hadn''t been looking, they could have just missed it But once they saw it and they brought the light to it, there was something reflecting the light in there So they gently with the axes done through the the the rock slash glass It was semi transparent, but it was also not perfect Very, very crude


    The moment they put a crack in the glass, and they let whatever was outside, inside that little crystal started glowing cool part It wasn''t the only one There was a whole little cove of them behind only about 2 feet deep and about a foot thick and wide But that brought so much light in, and they''re trying to figure out what they''re looking at These crystals, they weren''t bright until they made a crack, and they let Aaron And there''s only a little bit of air getting in there They were thinking, but these things are becoming brighter and brighter to the point where they just, it was like a light


    Now they didn''t want to screw it up too bad, so they actually put some dirt and some water and they made a little plug for the crack and they sealed it up It would take about three days for that little bit of air to function all the way through down this little weird tube But #14 of the caves, which start glowing cause there was a giant chunk of that crystal all behind it And because there was enough in 14 15 got this radiant shine This radiant shine actually made it through a small pieces down below into the main cave Now the main cave looked like it had Starlight coming from above It was really neat to look at


    The boys had been doing enough cave diving to find a couple of caves around 11 that actually went towards their home They had spent a couple of days a couple of days mapping out all the little micro caves and all the little slots until they found one that actually connected up with their home And that''s where they were hiding Their first idea was to pull on the landslide pin and collapsamine entrance They had waited for everybody to leave But they could still hear the Paladin in two nights outside the house


    After quietly discussing it between the three of them two and one agreed And Rochambeau did in three laws So three was asked to go down into the tunnel system, go into 11 go down to 13 crossover and come up one of the air shafts where they had actually pulled a pole room in case of emergency to pull it If they had to collapse it, but they never thought they''d actually need it So it was in a very awkward spot And three being honestly, the skinniest of the three Well, he was tasked to do it


    What the kids didn''t not know was that, yeah, the Paladin at night started off as minors These were old school dwarves So they were inspecting the **** out of everything that these kids are doing And don''t get me wrong there''s a lot of noise in the woods But when you hear a piece of wood being yanked on by a piece of rope, you know what that sounds like So they look up, and they''re about 100 feet down the hill and off to the right They hear it click, click as something''s trying to be folded in the rock start sliding And they just smile ear to ear and back the hell up That cabin still there But the cave entrance for the mine is totally plugged and covered We take at least the least the three kids a week to unblock it


    The two nights looked over at the Paladin and the Paladin just smiled and said they''re dwarfs I''ll give them that We''ll put it in the report and we''ll tell the king when we get back For now, let''s wait here for a while And if they don''t come back to their house by let''s say tomorrow, we will say that they are hiding and we''ll go back to town We know they''re not going anywhere They found their horde A dwarf won''t give up their mountain when they''ve got it And from what I heard in town, someone just bought this chunk of the mountain So I''m then the kids are already flamed this mountain as their own So good We know where they are Let''s find out more about this family They come from and about town to have the great church in town after these kids and then meeting Larry There''s more about this than anybody understands I feel dark presence is here Plus, what the hell? There''s a lack of beer We have to fix that They had been to the liquor Bender and found that the vendor told the story of giving the kids heavy alcohol and them getting extremely mad But then taking sweet, fruity wine and enjoying the heck out of and coming back over and over again for the light stuff


    This alone was enough was enough to put flags up that these children were not raised by dwarves plus no one could even give an accurate hair colour or beard colour The kids were always shaved and the this was almost against the law It was a personal, a belief, but to openly shave was not frowned upon like every one like everybody has to shave for hygiene, but yeah, keep yourself clean shaven for years Kind of makes all the nights and the Paladins brains just what the heck''s going on here? Crazy humans


    They stayed there overnight The kids did not come back by this point They were long into the mountain They had taken their emergency bags with them and they honestly had gone down to 22 gone off a side tunnel that they had not explored yet and use one of their candles to check for sulfur and other gases in the tubes But most of the tubes were cleared out and what they were looking for was hot places to hide that had air tunnels going outside They were finding more and more of them because of the fire melting holes out of the mountain, which was becoming very beneficial to them, except the bats were coming back


    It wasn''t until 17 left Did they find a set of small caves connecting, going downwards almost in a spiral and with a little bit of their help, they actually made a spiral staircase going down almost 100 feet when they came down into the last room They brought a torch in They were in a twenty foot diameter glass bowl and the walls had been melted


    What made this room this cave special was? as they lowered themselves down the last five feet into the room They hadn''t cut the new stairs yet, but just injured it They realized that they are in a bowl The bowl was glass, but when they stepped on it, it reverberated in the wrong way They freaked out and they were standing there holding on to their ropes with their hands and themselves tied off, please They thought they were going to fall through But once they brought the light to the glass It was a dark green black glasses They couldn''t see through it So two seeing something with his magic eyes Ask the brothers to put out their torches and when they did two things happened


    One in three were able to see into the next cave And the next cave was almost wrapped around them They were in a teardrop from a ceiling They were the chandelier And when they turned off the light, what they would see is right across from them and a little bit up It would just be little pinpricks of light blue that were feeding down and and looking down Well, what scared the living **** I mean, absolute car out of two was with his magic sense He could see these things directly below him moving And they had magic to them Every once in a while he would see a something move past one of those little bits of blue light And it had legs So to just just quietly and slowly freaking out, climb back up the rope and into the other chamber and didn''t say a word 1 in 3 of course, seeing this followed after him And when they all got up there two told them to follow him And he got back to their safe room at the top of 17 And he told him what''s down there This free one in three out just a little bit that there was something with lots of legs down there


    From this point on they were absolutely paranoid of going deeper So they actually decided to go back up to the cave entrance and start working on cleaning it up and shoring it up so that they could use it once it was time to dig it out And at the same time, they just started looking into the side rooms that, honestly, were there, but they had to break into They''d find a little bit of a piece of glass between the two circles And some were really thin, and some were like 4 feet thick, and it was more rock than glass So after a while, they relied on two with his eyes, because magic kind of wanted to leave the mountain So if they got to a room and they didn''t know which way to go, they''d ask too And two would just sit there and watch And I''m talking super small amounts, like watching lightning bugs or something super small that you just have to catch the whiff of it And then you have to see which way it goes So after a while, he would just start seeing little flickers and these little flickers would go towards this 1 area, and it would be just a chunk of rocky point The other two would have been like, okay, and they''d start going there, and they either find a vein of metal or a crack into another room And if it was metal, I guess the man who was leaving through the metal But now the boys had metal to sell And if not, it led them into another room They had enough food for about three days, and they can always go back up into their home While they did this for four They were really hungry, needed water The whole 9 yards And when they got back inside their house was food, water, a note from Larry telling them that he had taken confidence to 2 of the people from the great church And in return for that, they had admitted that they had witnessed the kids and witnessed that the church was hunting down children And because this was not a bad thing in the church''s eye, but it''s kind of goes against They were the bad guys that killed the really bad guys That''s the stuff that makes you into a really bad guy So that''s just kind of a off the table So they were waiting for permission from head office to stay in town and open up a branch of the Great Church And Larry actually loved it And the mayor had already given permission and everybody was on board the church The church army of the two nights and palden were waiting to get permission to either leave or stick around and clear the area to make sure there was nothing really bad


    The dwarfs on the other hand had kinda gotten a little belligerent


    Three days after the boys had come back to their cave and resupply and gone back down to do more cave searching at that time they actually left the red flag and a note  Telling Larry where outside the house, in the ground they had buried it and that they had found a little bit of mineral wealth if they could sell for the boys and for the group, they would be back up in a couple of days They had ways in and out and not to worry about them And thank you for the food Keep it coming They were going to be able to hunt while they people from town were around and they asked for any more information what''s going on and just keep them informed


    Larry came back into town in the middle of the night with the bag and he literally went to his uncle''s house and he knocked on the door and the mayor came down and was like, what the **** is? And he didn''t even let it finish And Larry just pushed into quiet And the moment and the moment that happened Hi Larry smile that smile that you get proved that Larry is up to absolutely no good His uncle said, I''m gonna need a drink for this, aren''t I?


    Larry asked and kind of pointed to his uncle study and said let''s let''s go in there and talk And when they went in there and Larry closed the big double door with the bag on his back, the uncles like what''s in the bag? So I own this What''s on my back I also own that mine Does that make sense? Yup So if anybody comes up, says that someone else owns it No, it does not I legally own it, and you''re backing me on that And in return for that, you can have almost what''s in this bag The **** problem Did you get me into now? Larry, the uncle was very interested, but also, this was not too good to be true This definitely smelled like trouble


    Larry just looked his uncle in the eyes and said three dwarf kids were abandoned and they made themselves a home and I''m letting them live there so that they can have their self a home and not be abandoned Does that make sense uncle?


    The mayor, Larry''s uncle was the most not despicable manual ever meet He wasn''t a snake charmer, but he had the golden tongue And he knew when he was being sold something that was too good to be true And then he had to think, and he went pour to drink for himself, and he just handed blurry the bottle Larry was one of those huge guys where he was just going to do it himself And honestly, Larry went over to the shelf and grabbed a mug because he get a least gravel onto it And he poured mug, and they had ice Like this was semi technology So there was ice and a bar fridge It was using magic non electricity, but nonetheless


    The uncle snapped his finger and said, I got it I know where the problem is Are they a proper clan? Larry, Larry told his uncle the story of how the Klan died and came back, and all the information he had gotten from the different groups in town And the moment Larry mentioned the dwarf and the Great Church, his hands hit the desk And he''s like, Larry, I told you to stay in low profile while you were here You already got yourself in enough trouble This was supposed to be a place to lay low You weren''t supposed to bring problems here


    Larry just raised his glass Looked his uncle dead in the eye and smiled, said, hey, I didn''t bring this here I just found an opportunity and I''m taking advantage of it Now I''m going to protect three kids I don''t Do you have a **** problem with that uncle? The uncle looking straight in the eye He said if they are a proper clan, this could be a clan war You go and find out if this is going to be a **** clan war in my town If the answer is no and you can give me guarantees of that or some sort of assurance, then what? I will take what''s in that bag and we will start a proper business partnership like you don''t want it to do with it from the beginning But the mayor, Larry''s uncle was looking at him as a very angry man that wanted to take him up, but the harm the town could have because of a clan war was nothing to be scoffed at and everything to be feared


    Larry didn''t move and he waited for the mayor to look at him And when he looked at him, Larry still didn''t move He just kept on smiling and this was the one thing that Larry got from his mother that the mayor could never ever get could never, ever have, could never, ever earn And that was just a hint of fear in someone And it''s not that he was worried that his nephew would hurt him, but Larry''s talent was for being an agent of chaos is the nicest way of saying it, and he did it with a smile He would shake your hand and introduce you to the devil He wasn''t evil He just had evil or more chaos than evil, not evil Just he had chaos on speed dial and truthfully, I think And the mayor even asked him one time Did he ever just have the phone connection open with chaos and just forget to hang up one time Larry that one time just looked him in the eye, smiled and nodded And from that point on, the mare was always a little hesitant of his nephew


    It wasn''t until the little game of staring slash, who''s got the bigger pee pee? that the mayor just said, fine OK, what''s in the bag? And Larry smiled Even fingered his eye I honestly don''t know I haven''t even checked Let''s let''s dump it out and see So, mayor, I''ve done this is enough times Do you have a rug we could possibly use? And the mayor, of course, had a rug in the next room and just opened the door pointed Larry brought it in, laid it out and then dumped the bag on the rug


    The thing the two men did almost not in tandem, not at the same time, but almost in unison, was they both grabbed their glass, went to their chairs, sat down, looked at what was in on the carpet and took a sigh, a deep breath, and just basically started to think, because what was laying in front of them was about 20 pieces of black rock But within those pieces of black rock was silver, gold a green glowing one, blue glowing And 1 that didn''t have any colour And it was a type of glass But when the light hit it, and I bet you the boys only got to see a little of this underground, because they were above ground, they had more light The moment it hit, it was like putting light into a prism, except this was magic Everything that that light went in and then hit if it was magical, it would almost not imbued It was like photosynthesis for everything around that little bit of magic If it was a magic item, it would absorb it If it wasn''t, it wouldn''t really absorb it Maybe over time, it would absorb into the wind The whole building would become magical But that''s the point This was a focus, a literal lens that converted light into magic This alone That one little piece that was no bigger than a piece of a dice was small er than three inch by three inch by three inch The two of them just can take their eyes off of it and every once in a while one of those lights would hit piece of metal inside the other pieces of rock and they would actually start absorbing the Magic is the metal like that it would absorb it and that metal out of just a hint of a glow You could turn off the lights in the room would start glowing after a while This was immense this was a magical mind It was something different


    The first one, the move any actual movement other than just a little bit of twitching and looking around was the mayor who got up, walked over to one of the walls, looked at the clock that was there, realized at 5 in the morning and said **** I''m already awake Let''s do this Went back into his bedroom I''d started to get dressed out of his housecoat and slippers Within 10 minutes, he was back Hem and Larry Larry had already rolled up the carpet, and they had just thrown it over his shoulder And the mayor led the way to City Hall and down into the Treasury The mayor the mayor took us out of keys out and went to one of the lock boxes in the Treasury and just said, dump it in And they dumped everything, including the carpet now in there, because the carpet was glowing


    The mare looked over at Larry and said, come back to me in a day, and I''ll have most of that figured out for price We''ll buy it all off you, and I''ll give you coins for the kids I''m gonna start up a trust for them You''re gonna put the first amount of money they get in And when the legal issues start coming, we''re gonna give this legally larry And I want to hear these words come out of your mouth and repeat after me Uncle, I promise to protect these children But when the dwarf human or elf law comes to town, I will come to you, the mayor of this town, first before I do anything great Church of myself on their ass’s


    Larry wanted to show to his uncle He was serious about this And then him and his uncle would be on the same page Larry, in front of his uncle in the Treasury Vault, went down on 1 knee and bowed his head and said, I will protect those children and let you deal with the law But uncle, it is your job to deal with the law Do you understand?


    Larry looked up and his uncle smiled, put out his hand Larry stood up and grabbed it by the the forearm and the two of them held each other And they looked at each other, and they repeated the family crest So their family motto, if you will, “until the law fails”


    Larry took off and yeah, it was a good morning because the mayor decided the Baker He could smell it from the down the street He said I deserve this and he went in knocking on the Baker''s door down the street in the Baker hooks up and goes mayor Come on in unlocks the door and let them in Mayor sits down out of stool, out of counter and talks with the Baker for the next 20 minutes After that, he leaves with two big bags full of Danishes and sweets, paeden and everything Next stop is actually to the mayor''s assistant and one of the people that runs the Treasury That''s he''s knocking on this guy''s door The guy is like, who the hell''s here at this hour of the morning? He comes to the door and opens it up to see the mayor Him not wearing a shirt in the mayor''s like, good morning, Murphy We are going to have a great day I brought you breakfast and handsome a bag of danishes When you get to work I''ve got a key on me Come find me We have a vault to inspect We had someone come in the middle of the night and drop off something pretty rare You''re going to have a good day with the appraisers fees I think you''re going to get So my gift to you and if we could have it all checked out by the end of the day, I''d love to know what we got


    Murphy being one of those really old cranky guys actually put on a smile, took the Danishes, which were way bad for his diet and close the door on the mayor The mayor just might and turned around and walled before he got less than 10 steps to door open and Murphy holding the bag with a shirt on and his shoes on started walking with the mirror back to work The two of them headed back with their bags of pastries and headed directly to the vault


    Murphy opening after opening up the safety deposit box putting it on the rug, inspecting it, freaking out, shoving it back into the safe deposit box, eating three of the Danishes, going into his personal stash of smoke weed that he wasn''t supposed to have at work anymore And the mayor was getting mad that he had a stash, started smoking it pretty heavily and handed one off to the mayor, who also got quite blitzed just to calm the hell down, realize that they didn''t not have enough money in the bank to cover what was there almost guaranteed that one little crystal alone could buy the town


    What not too many people knew was the mayor''s family, who Murphy was married into were old were old members of the Great Church, like really deep old school, great church, and they had gone off and Larry''s little bit of his family wasn''t really a part of them anymore But Murphy at one point, just like Larry had been a part of it, and he realized right there how screwed they all were But Murphy wanted to know who dropped this off


    When the mayor just looked at Murphy after being asked, who dropped this off? The mayor just looked at him and said, what have you been hearing around town lately? Took Murphy less than 30 seconds to come up with the three kicks


    That then ship Murphy up hard And then he started to pace and puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, puff, pacing, eat other Danish and he just started walking circles in that office over and over again, until he just stopped, looked the mayor and said the law


    The mare looked at him and said, Already discussed it We''re in charge We have to fix this


    All Murphy could do is kinda just slump into his chair and say the one word you could think of that kinda describes the whole situation they were in   “Fucked”


    They must have sat like that, getting high and eating sweets for at least an hour, until the mayor''s secretary came in looking for them, finding them stoned and eating munchies at like 9 in the morning She just almost started freaking out until the mayor just had come here, handed her the pipe and the bag of Danishes and for him to do that to her with no contacts She knew something had just gone down, so she calmed down and asked what''s going on


    The mayor secretary and Murphy were husband and wife When she found her husband totally calm at her getting angry and the mayor had just gotten up She looked at her husband and he just put up his finger for a second to her and just it was like just wait for it


    The mayor just went over to one of the sidewalls where there''s a whole walk of boxes They pulled a nice little ornamental box open They looked at his a velvet line empty, went over to the safety deposit box, looked inside, put something from in the box, safe deposit box in the little velvet box Close the safe deposit box back up, locked it, walked over and handed the box to her


    She opened the box, looked in, looked up at the mare than her husband, down at the box, closed it, handed it back to the the mayor, took the pipe, lit it, started puffing and then looked at the bags of sweets, grabbed you and sat down in the desk opposite her husband


    The mayor was gonna start, and all he said was Larry before he could say anything else She just said, and looked up at the mayor and said, the three kids, huh?


    The mayor and Murphy just looked at each other, and they, they knew that''s why she''s the smart one of the family She was near town She, she really was the boss of the whole crew What no one realized was she used to be the captain of the ship, literally, Then she married one of the Pirates, and they went inland and set up their own little town and settled down And, yeah,


    The mayor hadn''t told Murphy this, and he just looked over at her and said, everything that''s in that box is set up for the law We are already in charge of setting up an account for them and getting the process going, because this is their horde, and the word horde had connotations in this world to have a horde was to be a person of influence if nothing else, mostly people that had hordes were contracted by the local governments and Knights kings, emperors, whoever Because you didn''t usually earn a horde without either doing work for it or doing a lot of bad things for it


    The mayor looked over at   Murphy Murphy just was smiling ear to ear and when the mayor looked over at his secret ary she had stopped moving and was absolutely still and he had only seen that basically four or five times in his entire life working with the three of them She didn''t just have a plan She was about to have orders and the boys They fell in love with her one being a brother and one being in the lover So they were all part of the crew in the old days and They might have to grab some more of their crew members through this, I think And she just smiled, and that smile was all they needed That was the gift, to have her smile made their day She just looked over at the mayor and said “


    “ Murphy I want you to get me a general list of everything that''s in there I don''t want split into three groupings one that we''re going to store here that we can use to pay off small amount So the cheapest stuff that goes into one pile that''s going to stay here Then pretty much everything else is going to go in the second pile But the 3rd pile only want 1 or 2 of the best items Like this box share I want to have it filled with just a really, really, really good stuff and that is going to have to be a gift for the king I want that representative in town here brought to the mayor and the mayor is going to explain that there are we have to get people involved because the kids don''t have any buddy but the culture at this point they won''t allow a non cultured group to take care of the children they will fight for them but we have to show them that they''ve already failed them and we are doing better than they are”


    Being so blitz other mind, they had it noticed that Larry was literally on the other side of the door with his back against the wall And he was just resting But his ear was just in the right spot where he hit understand the conversation and he just had a giant smile on his face So He just turned and left, and no one even knew that he was there But he knew exactly where he had to go to do So Larry just took a left out of the City Hall over to the pub slash in that the dwarf investigation squad, aka the two guys that were here drinking and hanging out for a week while they tried to figure this out


    As Larry and Larry entered the main floor of the inn, off to the left was an eatery slash the bar So it''s kind of like a tavern, if you would, as he walked in They all knew him in town He just waved to the bartender, and the lady behind the desk, and he just kind of looked around the room, and he was hoping to find them in there But no, the lady at the front desk kind of looked at Larry and said, with her hands and no words, what you''re looking for


    Larry, not using anything but hand signals and a little bit of charades Just short people and she went and she went out They were out by pointing her thumb behind her to the outside of the world


    Larry was like, just bowed his head, gave her a little hat nod and took off So he was decided to go over to the bakery next And before he could even get there, he could hear them They were at the bakery and they were just filling their face with the the Danishes They really seemed to like the ones in town here Now you have to remember Larry''s not a little guy Larry''s a human teddy bear He''s super quiet, and I don''t think there''s a lot of fat on this guy, but he could just give you a hug and you would pass away He is He is nothing to be scoffed at


    The two dwarfs saw this mountain of a man Well, not a mountain, but a very impressive human start strolling up to them And Larry always wore black just what Larry did Black or gray That''s just what he was He came and asked the gentleman as he got about five feet from them He said, gentlemen, can we have a conversation about the three individuals you''re looking for privately? And he said it with a depth in his voice to kind of get the message across that he was smiling But this was not a happy smile This was, I''m here to do business Let''s go have a talk


    The two of them were not afraid of any human So of course, why not? They decided to start walking back towards their tavern where they could have a beer and have some of their dainties this early in the morning And, oh, it was going to be a good morning As they were walking one of the two, the younger of the two, looked back to Larry, who was behind them, and asked, so, what is this all about? Do you have some information, maybe, to sell us about the children and what''s going on


    Larry just had the biggest smile and his eyes open wide and just said we''ll wait till we''re inside


    Both of the dwarfs instantly changed their attitude a little bit on the way Larry said this And they were one more notch on that 0 my god, are we about to get shanked here? Scale of what the hecks going on?


    They entered the Inn, went over to one of the tables that was just basically 2 long benches with a table in between on the dwarf sat on one side of the table Larry sat on the other side


    One of the two dwarfs pulled on a notepad, and the other one started asking Larry questions And like, what can we do for you? And hi larry


    Larry said some general greeting and he basically looked him straight in their face and said I''m gonna make this very straight and clear I''m gonna ask a simple question and based on your answer, you may have a friend here in town or you might have a lot of enemies So I''m gonna make this very clear And here''s my question to you If you were to find these children would you take them from here by force if they did not want to leave?


    To the dwarfs This really wasn''t a question These were their kids, and they were coming to get them So the younger the one, no one that was taking notes, just looked up at Larry and went, of course, our family, like, well, also we gonna do And he didn''t really say that with words He kinda just looked up at Larry and with his hands, was like, what? Like, what are you talking about? Like, just the amount of difference in thought here was the divide had to get across


    It was then the older man understood that this question was more of a test And he stopped to think, what was he being tested on here? This was a question of violence that was understood But what if the children didn''t want to leave? What would keep the children here? And then he understood the children had something that they didn''t want to leave


    The old man dwarfed looked over at the younger dwarf and snatched a pad of paper away, folded over all the pages and get to the back In the back of this book was a set of documents that had been rolled with a roller So there is the same over and over again, kind of like making copies He went to the back with one of these sheets, and it was a form that they would fill out and it was a legal document So the old guy pulls one of these sheets out of the back of the book, hands the book back, keeps the pen type writing device and starts filling out this form in front of Larry


    After a moment or two, Larry is very interested in what''s going on here The young dwarf is just astonished that the old dwarf just automatically going to a writ for whatever is going on here He has no clue what he missed and he just kind of shuts up and watches what''s going on And Larry is like, well, at least the kid can learn as he notices that And he looks over at the kid and then back to the old timer


    The old timer finishes right finishes writing and looks at it, thinks if for a second and then just spins it around so Larry can see it and basically it''s not that complicated It''s like all of three paragraphs It says basically this


    ______


    Proper letterhead for the dwarven kingdom This is a royal decree from a agent of the crown With all the flowery little extras that would come on a royal document for aesthetics and how it looks Lots of sharp lines in the letters


    On this day, I officer of the crown McfinaSwitch Mctoggel  Hereby give a writ for the three children of fire and coal or at their discretion, coal and fire here by are reinstated with the family names and all the duties that come with it They will need to accept this  & this document, which will be taken back to the king and from there the king will read all the reports and then make his decision And at that time, if the decision is to return, and remove the children back to the homestead compensation for that relocation will be discussed


    This rip will only last for one year at that point It is null and void This is to give time to get all the proper paperwork done in the heritage of the lost clan


    Larry looked over the document and said I think that''s perfect, but I''m going to be letting you know that the kids aren''t going to want to leave so you better be willing to pay them a fortune to leave And then when I meet a fortune, I think it''s just smarter for you to make friends with them than to try to make them leave That''s all I''m saying And then Larry did something he promises uncle he wouldn''t do This promise was about 12 years ago when Larry started to hang out in town Larry then with his palm faced up on the table and his arm displayed He raised his sleeve on his right arm all the way past the elbow And what the two dwarves saw there was a decree from the Great Church naming Larry as a gray member, the younger dwarf looked at the tattoo that was there I knew it was from the Great Church, but didn''t know all the things that he was seeing He had never seen of this The older of the ones, the dwarf Well, he didn''t **** a brick He just looked at it and said, I understand And said I will sign this here if you are good with that


    Lowry district his head and said no I have your word on this after this conversation, I would recommend to you, gentlemen Take that piece of paper Go see the mayor right now I bet you by tonight you''ll be back on the road The older man felt and felt like he had just been slightly played But because Larry didn''t take the piece of paper, he didn''t understand what he he was basically given a piece of information by Larry and threatened to be a really bad person if they didn''t play nice with the kids Basically, the old guy was like, yeah, no, I got that So yeah, something Something wasn''t right here And these people were protecting the kids So this was, this was a step up in perception for the old man towards his town


    Larry just put his sleeve down, got up, nodded to both of them and said, gentlemen, you have yourself a great day


    Larry then took off out of the Inn and actually went directly to the other end, where the honeymooning couple from the Great Church were up on the balcony As he walked up, he just waved to them and they said, come on up and he the bakery wasn''t that far So he said one moment and he literally went and got himself a bag of danishes and went to go hang out with them for next little bit He need to let them know they had actually checked up on Larry and understood he was a member of the church But when the records are locked and you don''t get to see them, they know that Larry''s either done some really bad stuff or is hiding And that means that he''s just the local guy for in town So they understood that And after talking with the mayor the first day they got there, Larry was told to be their reps So Larry was local, if you will,


    He entered the room and headed to the balcony with them and grabbed a chair As he put down the Danishes and they looked over at him, he just had this really, really **** eyed smile He filtered his head at them and said you guys are staying, aren''t you?


    The monk was kind of grumpy, and then he just looked over at his new bride, librarian, and she was ear to ear happy And just, she nodded, and he went, yeah, we''re staying there Larry''s is like, good I need some help So we''ll get you taking care of the mayor And he pointed to the librarian and said this, the mayor''s assistant needs his assistant And trust me, that''s where you want to be She has the pulse of the town, and that''s where you''re going to be, because we''re going to need a lot of help going forward now Monk, you are going to be given a very, very special You are going to be literally named a guardian Means you can''t leave the city You not know I''m not even going to do that to you You are going to be my replacement You are going to be the gray man of this town I''ll talk to the mayor about it, and I''m going to be their guardian I have no problem with that I like the little guys Just until they''re old enough to take care of themselves properly


    The monk of the librarian were just gobsmacked, and they didn''t just get their names They also got promoted and their own towed They they were, they just got everything they could ever wanted And they had time to make a family now and a place they wanted to make a family


    Larry understanding of the emotions that he had just stirred up going from having nothing to having your dream of a place that call home A lot of people that came through the Great Church started off in a bad way and did maybe bad things But the idea was that everybody was worth something No one was worth just killing for the fun of it So why not treat the people with at least a little bit of respect? So Larry understanding what he had to do Just said I''m going to go and make one more stop and I''ll be back later on if you''re around


    With that he headed to the city call and his unkel


    As Larry entered City Hall, you could go downstairs so the balls were upstairs to his uncle''s office So he went upstairs and a secretary wasn''t at her desk, so he was guessing they''re all still downstairs So he just picked his head into his uncle''s office, and no one was there So it''s perfect He let himself in


    Larry literally went right to the mayor''s chair, sat down in it, looked around, opened up some drawers until he found the notepad that had the mayors logo and everything on it And he literally just wrote the following on the notepad


    As of today, Larry has hereby certified as a trainer for the Grey Church He will be here by legally taking responsibility for the safety of the three minors known as 1,2 and 3


    This does not give myself Larry any privileges to their finances But the town, known as Port Town,  Hereby will hold any finances and will distribute them at the children''s wishes And keep an eye on them so they can grow and become valuable members of the community This when they turn 14 will be their choice to continue this agreement or change it or end it I hereby will not harm them and will care for them with the help of pork town This means that there will be no legal issues contesting their rights and privileges in human society and dwarven society


    Larry kind of liked that and he had just the right piece in it So he then signed it and put everything back where he found it Left the off to close the door


    As Larry was crossing the assistant''s office He saw the two dwarves on a window coming towards City Hall So Larry Spec up a little bit, headed down the two flights of stairs to get to them to the vault area


    As Larry came on the door, he just used one of his tricks and the lock just kind of wasn''t in the right spotting Put a little bit of weight into it and pop the door open and it came through the door Everybody in the room is fun to see who it was as he just came through the big grin on his face with all like Larry, because they didn''t try to stop him from years He can always get in when he wants his a real pain that way


    He looked at everybody and said, hey, guys, Showtime The moment Larry said that everybody was like, OK, what''s going on?


    Larry walked up to his uncle, lifted him out of his chair, stood him up, grabbed his lapels, the collar, and then just made sure that it was all lined up Good and said you have an as he was saying this handed his uncle the piece of paper he wrote It was rolled and he handed to his uncle He said your guests are going to show up in less than a minute You need to get upstairs and into your office and that you and he pointed to the assistant and said you might want to meet them at the door Gives him an extra moment if you get into his office and that''s all they had to say And Larry just literally left that office and walked through another quarter down below and out of back door and just down an alley in the way And with that it was all the pieces were in order It''s like Domino''s rate of fall


    As the mayor may or made his way up the stairs and almost crossing the threshold of his office He had just opened up the rolled up parchment Larry had handed him, and he stopped dead in his tracks, looked down at it, realized what it was, and just that little **** **** **** **** He planned all this


    And as he said that his assistant who had come up the stairs and the worst weren''t very close indoors, she actually ran up and got towards her desk, finding the mayor frozen step She looked over his shoulder, and within three seconds of reading it, she just spun around, pushed him and closed the door and tried not to hyperventilate


    She sat down and less than a second after she sat down, the downstairs door opened, and she could hear two people coming up the stairs


    As the dwarves came up and met her eyes, she waved to them and said, good morning gentlemen How can I help you?


    Within a two or three minutes of communicating, they were in front of the mayor and the mayor asked how they could be of service to these fine doors today and all that schmoozing that they do And it felt very fake But at the same time, it was the normal that they dealt with So basically politics


    The moment they? brought up the subject of why they were there The two dwarves straight up just looked at the mayor and said, what can you tell me about the three kids that are living outside your town?


    It wasn''t a secret So for them to ask, the mayor was trying to see what they wanted because Larry didn''t give him any more information than that And these dwarves hadn''t come to see the mayor yet Talked to almost everybody else, but not the mayor


    The reason we ask straightforward is we just had a conversation with Larry and yeah, we understand that we may be stepping on something a little bit more important than just three lost children Now, our culture demands that we take them home But why are they here? Why are they shaving their beards? And why do they they look at everybody that''s dwarf with fear? That''s