Before them stood the sheer fifty-foot rock face leading up to the narrow archway high on the cliff wall. With the Otyugh slain in the dark lake below, Garnel Stoneblender shook his head, looking up at the soaring drop and the grim dwarven tunnels beyond.

“I’ve seen enough monster jaws for one lifetime,” Garnel confessed, clutching his leather notebook tight. “The ancient Ethium conduits back at the pool need studying — I’ll head back there to work in safety.”

The companions agreed. With Garnel heading back to the pool chamber, Nibbles stepped forward, slinging his climbing gear over his shoulder. “Fifty feet? Easy,” he grunted, wedging his toes into a slick granite crease.

He made it twenty feet up before disaster struck. A wet shelf of stone crumbled beneath his boots. Nibbles yelled as he plummeted backward, crashing hard onto the rocky cavern floor with a breath-knocking thud.

“Hold still, Nibbles!” Derek barked, rushing to his side. The dwarf cleric laid a heavy hand on the rogue’s shoulder, chanting a low prayer to the Sun Father. A warm, golden radiance enveloped Nibbles — Derek’s Guidance spell — clearing the fog from his mind and imbuing his limbs with steady strength.

“Try again,” Derek urged. “The Sun Father guides your footing.”

With the divine blessing humming through his veins, Nibbles wiped his bruised hands and sprang back onto the cliff. His fingers found unseen handholds in the rock face with uncanny precision. In minutes, he pulled himself over the lip of the high archway fifty feet above.

Hammering an iron piton deep into a fissure in the rock, Nibbles secured a thick hempen rope and tossed it down the cliff. One by one, Thorn, Derek, Dave, and Loki hauled themselves up the sheer drop into the high passage.

At the top, the air changed sharply. The damp stench of the subterranean lake fell away, replaced by the dry scent of ancient stone, faint coal smoke, and old iron. The corridor ahead displayed grand ancient dwarven architecture — massive granite arches and finely dressed masonry from Ethium’s golden age, though centuries of neglect had smudged the fine relief carvings with soot.

“Grand dwarven stonework,” Derek murmured, running his hand reverently along the chiselled granite of a pillar. He paused, his beard twitching as he sniffed the still air. “Built over a thousand years ago… but my kin are long gone from these halls. Dwarves would never leave a bridge fallen in ruins below, nor let this stone lie unkept. Be on your guard — whatever dwells here now, it isn’t dwarf.”

They reached a wide four-way intersection between an old well room and a ruined shrine. The flags underfoot were littered with crude iron spikes and animal bones. Suddenly, Loki let out a sharp bark as the air itself seemed to shimmer.

Out of thin air, four squat, grey-skinned dwarves wearing spiked iron mail materialized, their eyes glowing like dull embers. Before Thorn could raise his shield, the Duergar let out harsh, guttural shouts and began to swell in size — their bodies expanding until they towered eight feet tall, their heavy iron hammers doubling in weight.

“Form up! Group together!” Thorn shouted, raising his battleaxe and shield.

Behind the giant Duergar, two wild, shaggy beasts with long claws — Quaggoth slaves — lunged from the shadows with deafening howls.

“Why is it always the big ones?” Nibbles groaned, diving forward as an oversized iron hammer shattered the stone flag where he had stood a second before. He tumbled behind a pillar, drew a deep breath, and let fly a blast of roaring flame from his dragonborn throat, catching the nearest Quaggoth square in the chest.

“Dave, clear the corridor!” Thorn grunted, holding off two giant Duergar with his shield while his battleaxe rang off their heavy mail.

Dave wove his hands through the air, chanting words of power. A globe of roaring, orange fire — a Flaming Sphere — burst into existence behind the Duergar line, rolling forward and scorching their legs. Derek slammed his mace into the stone, calling forth a glowing spectral hammer — a Spiritual Weapon — that hovered over the fight, striking the Duergar captain with divine force.

With Thorn holding the front, Dave’s rolling sphere controlling the corridor, and Derek healing Nibbles’s claw wounds, the companions slowly turned the tide. The last giant Duergar collapsed back into his normal size with a heavy groan, and the crossroad fell silent.

---

Past the shrine, the hallway opened into a square chamber built from polished pale stone that stood out sharply against the rough dwarven tunnels around it.

In the centre of the room, set atop a couple of raised stone steps, stood the Ethium Viewing Table — a massive, rectangular table cut from a single block of Ethium stone. At table height, the smooth stone surface featured a large circular opening at its center surrounded by interlocking grooves, with an obvious stone receptacle slot at its rim and a shallow, stone-carved tray beside it.

The companions climbed the steps and gathered around the table, examining the strange runes and layout.

“What do you make of it?” Thorn asked, leaning over the smooth stone surface. “Some kind of altar?”

“Look at the stone cutting,” Dave said, tracing the grooves with a finger. “It’s an ancient Ethium mechanism, but it’s dormant.”

Dave reached into his pouch, pulled out a smooth blue stone, and pressed it firmly into the circular slot on the table surface.

The table hummed with deep resonance. From the circle in the centre of the table surface, a crystal viewing sphere — perfectly clear and two feet in diameter — slowly rose upward into the air as glowing runes flared along its rim. A calm, resonant voice echoed inside Dave’s mind:

system active… awaiting item…

“It’s active!” Dave gasped, clutching his forehead. “It wants an item.”

Nibbles stepped forward first, pulling a copper tavern token from his pocket and placing it on the shallow stone tray. Nothing happened. The sphere remained blank and dormant.

“Try a dagger,” Thorn suggested. Nibbles placed his iron dagger on the tray. Again, the sphere showed nothing.

“It must need something connected to Ethium,” Dave realized.

Thorn unslung the ancient battleaxe they had recovered earlier from the zombie mess beneath the ruined tower — its heavy metal head engraved with glowing Ethium runes — and carefully laid it across the tray.

The moment the metal axe head touched the tray, glowing runes along the grooves flared bright azure. The voice echoed telepathically once more:

accessing [ Memory ]… memory updating…

The crystal sphere flickered to life, filling the room with a brilliant three-dimensional vision.

First, they saw ancient Ethium as it had been over a thousand years ago — a bustling dwarven forge, bright with roaring fires and loud with the cheerful clink of hammers, where dwarves and ancient Ethium artisans crafted magic side by side. Then, with a static glitch, the image shifted to a gloomy, shadow-draped vision of the same forge, now dim and ruined, filled with iron cages, crates, and dark Duergar riding giant spiders through the gloom.

Curious, Dave lifted the battleaxe from the tray and sprinkled a drop of the activated pool water from his canteen onto the tray. The sphere flickered once more, displaying a brief historical memory of an ancient Ethium citizen being lowered gently into the healing pool before settling into a crystal-clear, moving image:

In the glowing pool chamber barely half a mile behind them, Garnel Stoneblender was kneeling near the stone conduits, carefully tracing ancient rune carvings with a charcoal pencil, while Poopy Joe lay unmoving and resting comfortably beside the water.

“Wait,” Derek murmured, stepping closer to the sphere. “Look at Garnel… he’s moving. That isn’t an ancient memory. That’s Garnel right now!”

A sudden, heavy silence fell over the steps as Dave’s eyes widened in realization. “If the pool water shows what is happening live… then the forge vision wasn’t an ancient recording either.”

Thorn gritted his teeth, his grip tightening on his shield. “The Duergar. They are in the forge right now.”

“It’s an ancient Ethium network,” Derek said, placing a palm against the stone table. “The table accesses any site where active Ethium stones or nodes remain… but I can feel it. Most of the network is broken and dark.”

Curious to test the network further, Dave pulled out another stone — one of the carved stones recovered from the Old Manor back near Fallcrest — and pressed it into the table slot.

The sphere recalibrated with a deep hum. First, it projected a splendid vision of the past: ancient Ethium nobility in grand, shimmering robes holding court within a soaring, immaculate manor house. But with a static pulse, the image updated to the present: the same manor halls, now ruined and crudely cobbled back together with timber barricades, crawling with goblins, massive ogres, and a ruthless hobgoblin king barking orders from a stolen throne.

Before leaving the Viewing Table, Dave pulled out his leather journal and charcoal stick, meticulously sketching the mechanism’s layout — the stone slot, the item tray, the rising sphere, and its live network feedback — recording every detail to share with Garnel when they returned to the pool.

---

The companions stood near the chamber exit, debating their next move.

“We know Duergar are in the forge ahead, riding giant spiders,” Derek warned softly, adjusting his shield strap. “Should we turn back and regroup with Garnel, or push on?”

“We’ve come this far,” Thorn grunted, resting his battleaxe on his shoulder. “If we fall back now, they might reinforce the tunnels. We need to see what’s further down the corridor and gauge how many Duergar are nearby.”

Agreeing to press forward with extreme caution, they moved quietly down the long hallway until the passage reached a sharp corner that turned up a flight of wide stone stairs leading toward a larger, open chamber above.

Staying low in the shadow of the corner, Dave sent Peggy — his pseudodragon familiar, who was perched lightly on his shoulder — gliding silently up the stairwell into the upper shadows to scout ahead. Through Peggy’s eyes, Dave saw a massive, high-ceilinged hall supported by giant stone pillars. At the far end stood four heavy Duergar guards and two chained Quaggoths, positioned behind barricades and waiting in silence.

“They know we’re coming,” Dave whispered, opening his eyes. “They’re dug in at the top of the stairs.”

“We can’t go back,” Thorn said quietly. “We push through.”

The companions charged up the stairs into the grand hall. The Duergar captain roared an order, and the guards enlarged themselves once more while releasing the chained Quaggoths. Along the side wall, a Duergar crossbowman stepped out from behind a pillar, trying to flank the party as they came in, raising his heavy crossbow to loose an iron bolt that grazed Thorn’s helm.

“Flanker on the left! Rush him!” Thorn shouted, leading the charge to overwhelm the crossbowman before he could reload.

“Nibbles, move!” Derek yelled.

Nibbles sprinted into position and slammed his hands together, releasing a deafening Thunderwave that shattered the wooden barricades and sent two Quaggoths stumbling back. But as he tried to leap clear, a Quaggoth’s heavy claws raked across his back, bringing him down to one knee.

“Nibbles!” Dave yelled, directing his rolling Flaming Sphere to cut off the flanking Duergar while Derek rushed to support the rogue.

Suddenly, the stone floor buckled.

A sound like grinding mountains echoed beneath their feet. Dust rained down from the high ceiling, and heavy granite flags exploded upward in a shower of rock. Out of the broken floor erupted the Grey Burrower — a colossal, blind worm forty feet long, its round mouth lined with hundreds of razor-sharp, concentric teeth.

“Worm!” Derek screamed, pulling Nibbles back just as the monster’s jaws slammed shut on the flagstone where the rogue had lain.

The Burrower attacked blindly, striking anything that moved. With a single terrifying snap, it swallowed one of the enlarged Quaggoths whole, then thrashing its tail across the hall, smashing two Duergar into the pillars.

The Grey Burrower tears through the Assembly Hall — swallowing anything that moves.

Chaos engulfed the Assembly Hall. Derek’s Spiritual Weapon struck the monster’s side while Thorn and Dave’s Flaming Sphere brought down the Duergar captain. Dave fell as a stray tail-swipe clipped his chest, but Derek rushed to his side, uttering a prayer of healing just in time.

The last surviving Duergar guard broke rank, throwing down his shield and sprinting madly down the long corridor toward the distant city gates. The giant Grey Burrower let out a terrifying roar, turned, and surged down the tunnel after him, its massive body scraping the stone walls.

Thorn, Derek, Dave, and Nibbles scrambled to the archway, peeking cautiously around the corner.

Far down the long stone avenue, the escaping Duergar was met by a patrol of Duergar cavalry mounted on giant, wall-crawling spiders. The dark dwarves raised long iron lances, swarming the Grey Burrower and driving the colossal worm back into the earth with disciplined, lethal precision.

Before the companions could make another move, a heavy metallic grinding echoed down the hall. Great dwarven cogs turned, ancient chains rattled, and with a deafening BOOM that shook the foundation of the mountain, the massive dwarven gates of Ethium slammed shut, sealing the lower city.

Nibbles slumped against the wall, catching his breath. “Well,” he muttered, wiping soot from his forehead. “At least the worm is gone.”

Before retreating, the companions searched the fallen Duergar captain and the supply crates near the shattered barricades.

Tucked into an inner pocket of the captain’s tunic, Dave discovered a small brass casing. He popped the latch, revealing a campaign-defining relic — the Explorer’s Compass. Instead of pointing north, its delicate, glowing blue crystal needle spun smoothly before locking firmly onto the resonance of the nearest Ethium Stone.

From the captain’s belt, Nibbles unhooked a heavy pouch containing gold coins, a polished platinum ring, an iron Duergar emblem token, an old dwarven key fragment, written orders in Dwarvish, and a heavy ring holding four iron keys — stamped with dwarven runes for side doors, supply stores, and slave pens.

Near the barricade crates, Thorn recovered a perfectly preserved Ethium Smith’s Hammer, its masterwork head bearing ancient guild marks that could aid in repairing, reforging, or understanding Ethium metalwork in the future. Tucked beneath the hammer, Derek found a fragile piece of parchment — a child’s drawing depicting a happy dwarf family, a hunting dog, a small stone house, and a glowing blue crystal. Though it held no gold value, a quiet, emotional hush fell over the dwarf cleric as he gently smoothed the fragile paper and tucked it safely inside his tunic.

Finally, they gathered the coiled rope ladders and extra climbing gear stacked beside the crates — a welcome find that would make traversing the cavern lake and scaling the fifty-foot cliff face considerably safer for future journeys.

“Four keys, proper rope ladders, and an Ethium compass,” Nibbles whispered, slinging the gear over his shoulder. “We’re leaving with far more than we came with.”

---

With the lower city sealed tight and the Duergar patrols on high alert, the companions fell back through the statues and the excavated tunnel to regroup at the healing pool.

As they stepped back into the warm, blue-lit pool chamber, Garnel looked up from his papers with a broad, triumphant grin. Standing beside him was the peat-stained zombie they had left propped against the pillar — now thoroughly cleansed by the pool’s waters, grey leather gleaming, standing upright and bowing politely while holding Garnel’s inkpot with delicate precision.

“You’re back!” Garnel beamed, gesturing with his quill. “And look! The Ethium resonance from the pool cleansed the old decay. I managed to align the ancient conduits and get him moving!”

Nibbles stared, his jaw dropping before a wide grin spread across his face. “Poopy Joe! You’re walking!”

Poopy Joe blinked his empty eye sockets, took a slow, creaking step forward, and held out Garnel’s leather folder to Dave with surprising grace.

“See?” Nibbles beamed, nudging Derek with an elbow. “Our very own butler.”