It was early morning before Ska returned from his hunt. Not that I minded a good night's sleep. We were already underway, the invisibility field concealing us from the ground. We were floating along at a leisurely twenty miles an hour. There was no immediate rush to get there and I was curious about the area.I rolled out the rough map we had been given. It had been a state map but someone had scribbled on most of it with a sharpie.The line of mountains that the dwarves lived in was marked as the Spine and little triangles marking them at the edge. I noticed they ran mostly north with no real break. 'I wonder how far they go.'The words hill country with a rough distance of two hundred miles was marked. I assumed this information came from one of the Marshall's men. A large area was marked off in the north, probably a hundred miles from the base of the mountains as 'Forest'.It looked like the town we were headed to was ten miles from the edge of the forest. Around where Tyler Texas

The others left early the next day to finish the minutiae of diplomacy. Blah, I was thankful I didn't have to be involved. I did my time sitting through mind-numbing meetings when I worked in IT.After they left, I decided to make nice with the guards. I packed a table, some chairs, and a whole case of my beer into my ring, then I headed outside.I found the four from yesterday standing off to the side, quietly watching me. I walked down the ramp and approached them. When I was ten feet away, I pulled the folding table out from my ring. It was a circular fake wood table, the kind you would find in a school cafeteria. Because that was exactly where Martin had sourced these items from. They even had the faded school markings on the bottom. Next came the folding chairs. Not the cheap ones either. These had decent padding on the top.I casually sat down at the chair facing them, dealing out cards in five places along with a set of plastic poker chips. I still didn't get any bites. I arche

We landed six hours later, back in our parking lot. My headache had finally decided to fuck off after a healthy dose of aspirin. It was the first time a wound had plagued me for so long and I wondered if it was some magical effect Jacob's arrows had. My hud certainly didn't clue me in if it was but that wouldn't be the first time the hud let me down. Hell, for all I know it could have just been a concussion. But I didn't have accompanying nausea to go with it.I would take more care in the future, already planning on creating a self-defense amulet that could be worn 'incognito'.The truck was unmolested, which was good, otherwise, the entire parking lot would have been a crater. Yeah, I kind of went overboard with the explosives.As soon as morning came, Martin left to talk with the Marshall and Ska went to go train his protégé. I think she may have had a bit of a crush on Ska but Ska seemed oblivious to it and I wasn't about to point it out or stick my nose in.Fiona stuck around if

We were getting ready to head out, the fortress was restocked and Martin had moved most of his items out. He was always welcome so the room would remain his anytime he wished to visit or join us on a trip.I was finishing up my preparations when I heard a knock at the door. After checking the camera I noticed it was that hunter girl, the one Ska was training.I unlocked the door to see what she wanted.She let out a squeak of surprise, "um... is Ska here?""Yeah, but we were planning on leaving soon, can this wait until we return?""It shouldn't take long," she said, fidgeting and not making eye contact with me.I sighed, "fine, I'll go get him, wait here," I added, closing the door.I went to Ska's room, he had been acting weird since we returned. I chalked it up to Martin leaving but maybe he had a falling out with his woman friend. I sighed again, it wasn't any of my business."Ska, your hunter friend is here.""Oh..." he said, sounding lethargic. "I will go meet with her."He got

We set out the next day, rested as well as could be expected. Our next stop was in three days. Two of those were just getting through this valley to the next tunnel entrance.The trail wound down the steep cliffs, crossing a small stream, only to wind back up and through a high pass on the other side. I noticed the peaks inside the Spine of the World were not quite as tall as the surrounding peaks. It made me think of two tectonic plates slamming together but instead of one going up and the other going down, they both just said fuck it, let's head for the clouds.I knew plates slamming together could cause mountains, but usually one of them won out, or at least it wasn’t this extreme. Most of the peaks on the spine were tens of thousands of feet high. Some were probably taller than Mount Everest. I was pretty sure this was abnormal, but then again what was considered normal anymore.Late on the second day, we entered the next tunnel. It was located halfway up a small peak. It wasn’t a