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Tumunzahar makes Menegroth look like a contract project. Which, the Dwarves assure her, it was. The stonework is astonishingly careful and beautiful, silky to the touch up close while from a distance it gives the impression of stretching on forever above, a sky of stone with crystals for stars. Vast natural cave systems are connected by dozens of perfectly smooth, gently sloped broad stone pathways from which the fall, if she fell, would be several miles down. There are handrails. "We use those to move materials carts," someone explains to her, "we're not going to be reckless."
There's an amphitheater, a place where a hundred of the stone walkways twine around to create space for a hundred thousand people to sit in close proximity, and someone is giving a lecture or a demonstration at the base of it, the seats closest to him filled with eager, tiny, bearded Dwarf-children.
And they spiral down, and down, and down, past waterfalls and egg-sized gemstones left half in the rock and halls of crystal. Everything grows gradually more ornate and more perfectly maintained and the clang of hammers fades behind them. "People say," her guide says, "that we only have a council instead of a single King because there were nine winners of the competition to design the throne so we couldn't just select one person to sit it." And they push open the doors to reveal, indeed, nine thrones so elaborate it would be hard to choose between them, and nine squat bearded people sitting them.
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purposeful_glory
"Good afternoon. I'm Loki." She's just. Not even gonna with the matronymic now. "What's your name?"
"...hello. Checheg."
purposeful_glory
"Pleased to meet you. Do you want some help with the grain or have you got that covered?"
"Help - picking it up? If you're going to want to eat you should pick some things up."
purposeful_glory
"I'm not hungry," she doesn't mention this is because she's gotten quite used to curbing the insect population, "I just wanted to know if you wanted me to help pick some things up for you. I don't know how much you're meaning to get."
"Oh. Enough to eat. It doesn't usually take all day."
"Rest. Explore. Look out for trouble."
"Sometimes we run into other people and then we go away, or they go away, because there's not enough food. Or there are wild animals."
purposeful_glory
Nod, nod. "I heard someone say you appeared a little while ago; do you remember that?"
"Appeared?"
purposeful_glory
"You were here one day and weren't here the day before? The person I heard this from could be wrong; that's why I'm asking you."
She looks confused."We came here from over there."
"Couple nights ago, because there wasn't anything left to pick over there."
"...farther?"
"We've always done that."
She looks bewildered again. "'how many' doesn't go that high."
She gestures around at the people around her. "That high but we don't have that many words."
purposeful_glory
"Okay... how many times would you run out of numbers if you tried to count the days that way and started the numbers over again whenever you ran out?"