When they left the workshop of the Gelvar, with Sonkarien as their lead, they were not challenged by any dwarven patrols. Even though some armed dwarves came close to them and looked sceptical, the fact that Sonkarien was with them seemed good enough. So the group went further into the depths of Harged unhindered.

On their way Rhojeka learned a lot about the dwarves and their way of life. They passed some more mushroom fields that grew enough of those brown things to feed the entire community. Nearby were some corrals housing strange animals - they looked like a mix between giant rat and cow, but with a lizard-like scaly skin that reflected part of the dim light in this area. Those were the Gwarnots, as Sonkarien told her. Cattle that were raised for a lot of purposes and could grow in the confines of dwarven underground settlements like no other animal was able to. Though Rhojeka had faintly heard of those and was fascinated of the idea, she didn't really want to get any closer for a further look. Those animals stank.

She didn't even notice that they had left the actual settlement when they were marching down a long tunnel that led even further underground. Some lights still shone in old rusty lanterns mounted to the tunnel walls, and every once in a while there was a cart or a bunch of tools like it had been abandoned for the moment. Widraw looked at those with odd curiosity, like he was hoping to find any sort of valuables among them. But then he turned away with a disappointed face.

As they went further on, they found less and less leftover materials. "We are approaching the abandoned part of our mines," Sonkarien explained. "We had to close this part down due to health and safety regulations. Some of our workers in here... well... they had very tragic accidents."

Rhojeka did not ask the question aloud that was lingering over the entire group after the dwarf had made that statement. Whatever "tragic accidents" he was referring to, she hoped that Sonkarien's experience and wisdom would prevent them meeting a similar fate. Kane seemed to have similar thoughts, as she noticed the sword master silently look around, having his sheathed sword in a tight grip, his entire body in a constant state of battle readiness. Mervella was probably the same, but her heavy armor concealed a lot of her body language.

Even Sonkarien had stopped talking and explaining things at this point. The group traveled through the narrow tunnels in uncomfortable, yet strained and anxious silence. The tunnels itself were awfully quiet - and yet there was the feeling that something in them was watching their every move. Like the silence itself was whispering - a sound that could rather be felt than heard. It was an unsettling feeling. Rhojeka was glad that the magicbreaker was gone, so she wasn't entirely defenseless. But would her powers do her any good down here if they were attacked by something... less corporeal?

Another crossing, another corner... but suddenly they came out of the narrow cave they were almost crawling through. The tunnel they had reached was tall and wide - there were rails and a cart right in front of them leading in both directions to their left and right. Another one of those dwarven lamps was attached to the wall opposite of them and was still shining a warm light. There was one leftover pickaxe on the ground, with the hilt broken in two beyond repair, so nobody had bothered to take it with them. Apart from that broken tool, nothing of value could be found. Rhojeka almost felt Widraw's disappointment in her back.

Sonkarien had one finger on his lips, signalling them to be quiet. Then he pointed forwards. The light of the single lamp barely touched it, but Rhojeka could see it - almost like it had an aura to it, like everyone else around her. She looked at each of her companions, saw the different colors of their personality like they were shining like a magic beacon around them. Mervella's aura, the one she knew best, had a dark blueish tone to it. Kane's looked very similar, but had a more grey tone. Sonkarien's looked like a golden gleam, like most dwarfs she had met so far. And Widraw... he seemed to be somewhere between green and purple; colors that reminded her of the boys back in her village and stood for all sorts of mischief.

Now she looked back at the ore deposit blinking from the tunnel wall. It showed a bright white, almost brighter than the lamp, but she knew that she was the only one able to see it.

"What do we do now?" she whispered. Immediately her own voice startled her. It was the first time in ages that someone had spoken up. But it wasn't only that... her voice seemed to be louder, echoing in the tunnel, like it was amplified by something. It was much louder than she had intended.

And she feared that she had made a terrible mistake. Whatever was down here, lurking in the darkness... it now was fully aware of their presence.

A tiny sound of metal screeching, almost too silent to be heard, told Rhojeka that Mervella behind her tightened the grip on her own sword.

Sonkarien made an inviting gesture towards the hunk of ore in the wall, and Rhojeka carefully stepped closer. As she approached it, not only did she feel it resonating with a strange power that nobody else could notice, but there was also a whisper in the air. She stretched out her hand towards it, and her fingertips began to tingle. "You feel that?" she asked Sonkarien under her breath, keeping her voice down as much as possible. The dwarf looked at her, watched her every move and seemed fascinated. He shook his head, but it didn't seem to bother him in the slightest. It was like he saw something he had never seen before in his life.

Rhojeka retracted her hand again, so the tingling stopped. Slowly she began to understand what Sonkarien had told them about the silverite before: that the stone had to willingly part from it. If that substance were a living creature, then the stone would be its home - or vice versa. And the energy she felt within it, the aura she saw - it all suggested that this was more than just a special kind of ore the dwarves would mine or sell. It was like... the ore was alive. A living and feeling creature, with fears and desires.

She closed her eyes and approached it once more. Her hand reached out to the ore. The tingling in her fingertips became stronger and crawled up into her entire hand. The whispers grew louder, like a hundred voices trying to speak at the same time, but without any words. She felt the echo inside her body. For a moment she hesitated, tried in her head to calm the voices down... or maybe just herself. And for a moment it worked. The anxiety in the voices turned into mild curiosity, and the tingling decreased. Finally she touched the ore.

And then...

The feeling was strange, yet so familiar. She felt like standing on the stage, her flute in her hand, a library full of songs and tales in her head, and the eyes of the audience resting on her. An audience that had never seen or even heard of her before, that didn't know what to expect. An audience that she would have little time and opportunity to convince of her good intentions. But even that was not a first for her. At the early stages of her journey as a bard, nobody had heard of her. When traveling with Sharon, she had been "the other one", or "the companion" - something that had repeated itself with Mervella on her side when they got to certain places or groups. During this time she had learned an important lesson: that her talent alone would not be enough to get her through this world.

The second lesson however had been even more important: It was not fame she needed to be successful. It was faith. Faith in herself.

So she began to perform. She played the flute. The wooden instrument on her lips, her eyes closed and her mind focused on the melody. It was the most honest, self-revealing kind of performance she was capable of, and she used none of her usual bard tricks to enhance it. This was her introduction. She showed her audience who she truly was, and left the judgment up to them. But as she played her tune, the music began to affect her. It took her back to the beginning of her long journey, to her home village and her family, to her childhood - and to the place where it all began. To the darkness that had held her prisoner. To the night that had changed her forever.

As hard as it was for her, as much as her emotions and memories tried to overwhelm her, she never missed a tone on her flute and played the tune to its end. But as it ended, she felt like she had held her breath for an eternity instead of letting it out into her instrument. And when she finally opened her eyes, the audience was still looking at her. No applause sounded, no cheers came from the crowd. But something much more powerful: a sense of awe. The silence itself answered to her performance, an atmosphere of fascination and appreciation that could not be put into words or mere sounds. The audience was captured by her.

She heard a crack, loud and sudden, and she was startled. She opened her eyes - not aware that they had been closed this entire time. The ore was right in front of her, the light of its aura glowing beneath her fingers, and the rock surrounding it crumbled to dust with a grinding sound. Grumbling and grinding echoed in the depths of the tunnel as the ground under their feet shook. She looked around to her companions, and their alarmed and surprised looks told her that this was no imagination - this was happening right now!

The wall in front of her turned into rubble and dust under her fingers, and suddenly the gleaming silverite was released and fell right into her open arms. Her reflexes caught it, though her mind warned her that this would be way too heavy for her to do this. Sonkarien jumped forward to help her with it. But as it turned out, the weight of the silverite was surprisingly much less than she anticipated. A piece of the ore bigger than her head lay in her arms, but it weighed not much more than a newborn baby. Rhojeka was puzzled that this comparison made its way into her mind, but as she looked down on it, she felt it: the energy of rudimentary life, too new to understand things, but radiating raw emotions. And in a way it held onto her, trusted her.

A hand in an armored glove touched her gently from behind. "We need to leave," Mervella urged her, her voice struggling to get through the noise in the tunnel. The ground wouldn't stop shaking, and not only the wall in front of Rhojeka would now fall apart. Holding the ore in both her arms, protecting it, Rhojeka nodded and followed her friend. The others were already on their way down the tunnel, with Sonkarien leading them. She noticed that Kane had drawn his sword from the sheath.  There was no imminent threat that she could see, besides the falling rocks from walls and ceiling, but she felt that he was right with this. Something was down here with them, and it wasn't friendly...

Sonkarien moved astonishingly fast for a dwarf that spent his working hours reading books and scrolls, and the rest of the group hurried to keep up with him. The tunnel was not the way they came in - Rhojeka worried if this was really the right way. But they had no choice. The small cave would collapse any moment if those quakes continued. Even the tunnel itself became unstable as they ran through it. The ore in her arms continued to glow, and she felt the power resonating from the stone walls.

"Look out!" Mervella yelled and pushed Rhojeka backwards. A large part of the stone ceiling came crushing down between them, missing them both by an inch. The others stopped and turned around instantly. Rhojeka looked up and saw the cracks in the ceiling - one heartbeat before another one got loose and fell. It came right at her. Her hand shot upwards as she reacted instinctively, and right at the moment when the rock touched her, it exploded into a million pieces. Instantaneously she felt the pain in her arm and couldn't tell if this was Elstar being petty about the use of her powers, or if the rock had actually hurt her before she had destroyed it.

Mervella urged her to hurry again. The tunnel was now completely falling apart. Cracks opened in the walls and the ceiling, with rubble and big pieces of stone crashing to the ground. Rhojeka couldn't help but wondering if this strange power she felt resonating from the orb actually intensified the effect on the tunnel, so that the quakes and the destruction would follow them wherever they went. She held on tighter to it with her other arm, shielding it with her cape, and went on.

But for a moment she looked over her shoulder to see how close the collapse was to them. And then she saw it... Only that she wasn't sure of what it was she saw. "Something is behind us!" she called out to the rest of the group. Where the ceiling started to come down and the walls fell apart, there was a shadow creeping through the chaos, and it approached them.

"Hurry!" Sonkarien yelled back. Even he saw it as he looked back - and he didn't seem surprised. "We are close, now move!"

There was no time to think about what he meant by that, since the tunnel didn't seem to end anytime soon. But the dwarf had loosened the ribbon of his warhammer and had now taken the weapon into both hands. As Kane and Widraw passed him, he stopped for a moment, waiting for Mervella and Rhojeka to get through as well. Kane stopped, too. "Sonkarien!"

"Don't worry, my friend!" As Mervella rushed past him, Sonkarien examined the walls around him with a quick glance. Rhojeka stayed on the heels of her friend, and soon they were all past the dwarf.  Yet he wouldn't leave his place. The darkness came closer, filling out the tunnel with a shadow that Rhojeka could feel more than she saw it. Sonkarien had his back on her, but his aura told her that he readied himself for what was coming. This is madness!, she thought. He cannot fight whatever this is all by himself!

Kane must have had the same thought, as he had his sword with the black blade in his hands, turning around to come to his aid. But Mervella stopped him shaking her head - there was nothing he could do here.

The Gelvar raised his hammer... and smashed it into the wall.

"What in the name..." Rhojeka's words were swallowed by the loud crashing of stone and rubble. The ceiling came down, and with it apparently the entire mountain. A thick cloud of dust covered them all entirely. She coughed, tried to breathe, covering her face with her cape while still holding on to the ore. She felt that Mervella had covered her head as well, pressed it against the metal of her armor to protect her. The rock behind her growled like an angry animal, the ground shook beneath her feet.

And suddenly... there was silence. The thunderous roar of the collapsed ceiling echoed in the tunnel ahead of them. Rhojeka dared to open her eyes and raise her head again.. and saw Sonkarien stand before a huge pile of rock that blocked their way back. The cloud of dust slowly came to a rest, and as everyone else was coughing and trying to get some air, the dwarf didn't seem to be affected in any way. He stood there calmly, and when he turned around, a triumphant smile was on his lips.

"That should do it," he announced.

Rhojeka looked around distrustful, but it was true. The tunnel was quiet now. The ceiling seemed to be stable again, no cracking or rumbling could be heard. The lantern closest to them gave a warm shine of light that almost seemed cozy. And she could see no trace of that shadow that seemed to have chased them.

"What was that?" she asked. "I mean... there was something after us, wasn't there?"

"Indeed there was," Sonkarien confirmed. "But I thought that only dwarves are able to see it. We call it Gromskor... a spirit being that calls the mines its lair. Several of our miners fell victim to this creature" The smile on his face had vanished. "Unfortunately we had to shut this tunnel now... there might have been some more precious ore that we could mine. What a waste!"

Rhojeka looked down on the hunk of ore in her arms. The glow had faded a little, but it still radiated a little, giving her a feeling of raw emotions without context. Mervella stood up, looked at the collapsed tunnel and shook her head.

"One blow," she uttered breathlessly. "The entire tunnel... and he broke it down with a single blow."

Rhojeka shrugged. "I guess we know now what a Gelvar is."