My house was silent.

  Cleaning myself up took longer than usual. Starting the fire, pulling the water from the well, filling a pot to heat up, filling the main basin, the list goes on. Two basins and a larger stock tank couldn’t truly replace a shower, a clothes washer and a dryer. The back of my mind began whirling on how to make a proper outdoor shower or a heated bath but the needs of my filthy self called out louder than my future plans. I worked in the quiet, diligently cleaning myself off, scrubbing harder than I needed to.

  I felt like the blood of the innocent that I had no chance of saving just wouldn’t wash off. The nagging voice of my irrational conscience needled at me while I tried to focus on the here and now. Nothing else truly mattered in this moment.

  Get clean. Eat food.

  Get clean. Eat food.

  It became a mantra to block out the worries, the lack of the support system that had grounded me for years. The gaping hole in my brain wasn’t the lack in my life. My other half was gone and there was no way I could get to her. Nothing made me feel that pain more than walking through her kitchen, her garden, her home. It was all hers, every piece of it. It bore her touch, her careful attention to detail.

  It didn’t feel right.

  The small paintings or choice of dishware. The vase of flowers she’d grown and the pottery that held her cooking spoons. It’s not that I wouldn’t have arranged my home that way, it’s that I knew myself. If I were alone and left to my own devices, my house would be far emptier. I would only have a house.

  My wife made this house a home. And without her in it, it wasn’t home.

  Late lunch took longer than I hoped as I had to use Alchemy to make a new hand-powered meat grinder. The KitchenAid tool was useless now. It was only decoration at this point. After grinding up the last of the fresh meat with rosemary, thyme, and cayenne, my meal was a simple affair of fried meat atop roasted potatoes and onions that were fried in the meat fat. I sprinkled a generous portion of salt and pepper on top of it before eating faster than I ever had in my life.

  Looking across the table only made it worse. The steady light of the sunstone lamp cast deep shadows reminding me that I needed to fix windows into the house. Having a house within a hill is awesome for insulation but awful for light. My heart pounded as my throat and chest constricted. I set my fork down on my empty plate and just stared at where Sandra usually ate.

  Her chair stood there at a slight angle, a painful reminder that I’d said for too long that I’d get around to fixing the fact that one leg was a hair shorter than the others. That made it worse, the list of things coming to mind that always got pushed to the back burner. My hands curled into fists before slowly unclenching. Nothing here deserved my anger. Nothing, except for me.

  With slow purpose, I stood and cleaned up my place, Alchemy doing the work. If I didn’t have this boulder sitting on my chest, I would’ve crowed with absolute joy at the fact that I could use Alchemy to clean dishes.

  “There’s no time like the present.” I thought to myself, not allowing my voice to break audibly. With measured steps, I gathered things that needed fixing and righted the wrongs of the past one by one. I started with Sandra’s chair, bringing it back to new before moving on to the torn bathroom rug. Her grandmother’s porcelain bowl that I’d accidentally cracked but never actually gotten around to gluing back together. That took its rightful place at the center of the table after becoming like new again.

  One by one, each task pushed to the wayside soon got crossed off my list. Knives that needed sharpening and wooden handles that needed oiling or restoration. I worked until my house was perfectly clean without a single bit of it untouched by Alchemy. The mana-rain melting everything not natural galvanized me to put everything through my Alchemy ritual at least once to make sure that if a roof ever broke then it wouldn’t melt away. I used up my supply of bug chitin on either replacing or covering up anything that I feared could easily be ruined. Old photos in their plastic frames, shitty pressed wood bookshelves held together with even shittier plastic screws or pegs, anything I could see got the Alchemy treatment. I wasn’t exactly sure that it would work but my gut feeling told me that it would be and that was good enough for me.

  By the time I had finished putting the final touches on everything, I noticed that I was still alone in the house. At the very least, I’d expected to hear Elvis knocking on the front door to try and get back in but then I realized. I had just walked out on them.

  Without a word. Without so much as a ‘goodbye’, I’d stroll into the hill and right on out on them without even a damn note.

  “That makes me a serious asshole.” I grumbled, shaking my head as I looked at the ceiling. “Fuckin’ hell.”

  Getting ready took a couple minutes. With my armor cleaned up and put on, I hefted my shield in my left hand. It was a bit longer than it used to be. Also, I’d gone ahead and altered the shape to be a larger version of a kite shield. I made sure to thicken the spike on the bottom with an extra layer of cast iron. It was just too useful, being able to spike the shield down and crush smaller foes, or grounding the shield to take a charge.

  My weapons got a makeover as well, mainly in the fact that I was holding one less. My Earth Magic was just too good, too versatile. Why carry a large warhammer with an ax head AND a tomahawk AND a long knife? I could easily make all of that from stone whenever I needed it.

  That thought caught me as I walked out the door.

  “Don’t be an idiot. More weapons are better than fewer, especially if you ran outta mana.”

  Because I had noticed that my control over my strength had increased, I reveled in the feeling of carrying heavier weapons and more of them. Not only had I repaired my stuff with Alchemy, but I had reinforced them even more, pushing the limits of increasing the density and sharpness of my various axes and knives. My shield especially, was a veritable beast. It sat comfortably on my left arm as I held a brutal war spear in my right hand, the haft and bladed head double the weight and mass allowing me to wield a brutal example of superhuman physics.

  Both the tomahawk and warhammer sat on my person, the warhammer on my back and the other on my hip. I looked like a medieval knight on the warpath as I jogged south towards the dwarven encampment.

  Luckily, nothing decided to attack me during the three minute job it took to reach them. I marveled at how easy running with all this weight had become. It should’ve crushed me but it felt manageable.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Heavy, but very workable.

  What I didn’t expect was arriving at a massive barbecue in full swing. Elvis and Thomas were both turning massive chunks of meat on spits over open fires while the dwarves were painting the crisping meat with buckets of sauce. It had a reddish hue in the firelight. I half expected music and ale but instead most of the dwarves were hard at work butchering some of the ugliest creatures I’d ever seen.

  Combine a naked mole rat with a broken suit of armor crafted out of dirt and gravel, then upsize the beasties to the size of a large goat. I saw a few bigger specimens splayed out, the dwarves happily chopping away at the joints to remove the bones. They argued and fought over the femurs, teeth, and skulls but left the smaller bones to the children.

  “And where the hell have you been?”

  I nearly tripped as Eli popped out of nowhere.

  “Leaving me to watch Paul while Elvis and YOUR brother cause nothing but trouble!”

  His indignant annoyance bounced off my helmet as I just stared at him. Gulping quickly, Eli’s gaze bounced between my spear and shield before noticing the large warhammer on my back.

  I let the silence hang as he babbled.

  “What I mean to say is-”

  The butt of my spear landed in the dirt with a dull thud. Pulling my helmet off, I shot him a tired look.

  “Growing a backbone, are we?”

  He started to object but I cut him off.

  “Good. You’re gonna need it.” Flipping my spear around, I pushed the blade into the dirt so the butt of the spear pointed upwards. My helmet and shield looked nice as they sat up there. Waving towards the busy merriment, I chewed on my cheek for a second. “Wanna tell me what the hell happened here?”

  Eli didn’t notice my deflection, the bit of praise derailing him enough to launch into a tale of a surprise attack by rock moles defending their home. Of course, the dwarves loved Elvis and his penchant for mass slaughter but I was even more pleased to hear about Thomas seamlessly fitting into his role as the team’s shield. His barrier magic saved more than a few lives at key moments. I saw Yeldin and Maelyin with their guards down, drinking and slapping him on the shoulder. Grimger kept pulling him away from trying to look at the Minexo suits.

  I stood in stark contrast to the party. I wanted to drink, eat, and forget the events of the last days. Instead, I brooded in the shadows letting Eli yammer on about this and that. I didn’t even pay attention until he mentioned Paul.

  “But don’t worry boss.” His voice getting higher as he spoke without breathing. “The healers here are awesome! Paul got that bone splinter out of his spine and in another day or two of sunshine, he should be back to new! I can’t wait to him up on his feet-”

  “Hold on!” My voice sounding more like a growl than normal. “Splinter in his spine!? Back up there a bit.”

  Eli finally took a breath as he wound back the conversation in his head. “The giants, they chewed on him like a toothpick. They didn’t kill him but they almost did. A piece of bone broke off from a disc in his spine and poked into his spine. The dwarves did some miracle healing thing, dissolving that sliver of bone and then BOOM.”

  “So he’s really the only one that can hurt himself.” I wondered aloud. “Huh. So he’ll be fine soon, that’s good to hear. I was getting worried.” Looking around, I scratched my head. “Where is he anyways?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  I followed Eli past Elvis and Thomas who I waved at but wasn’t sure if they actually saw me. Two female dwarves, both heavily armored, guarded a small keg of something alcoholic from an oddly skinny dwarf man. All of them stopped to give a friendly wave to Eli before shooting odd looks in my direction. I ignored them, following Eli into the tunnel behind them. It went straight back for twenty yards before branching out.

  “The sunstones are awesome flashlights.” Eli said with a smile. “I overheard a bunch of dwarves talking about how to get one of their own. The big one, Yeldin, or was it Grimger? Anyways, he said to not piss off the Stone Warden. I think he was talking about you.”

  I absorbed the information, digesting it until we arrived in Paul’s room. Three dwarves sat around him, two of them sleeping while the third was almost there. Two sunstones sat around Paul illuminating the room.

  “The white robes are for their healers.” Eli explained, nodding in their direction. “They worked for hours on Paul. I’m just happy that our kind of healing doesn’t require all that singing and chanting.”

  I saw Paul stir in his receding coma.

  “It does seem to have worked.” I leaned forward with my own sunstone. “His color is better and his breathing is deeper.”

  “Magic.” Eli breathed. “It’s so awesome to be able to do stuff like this.” He picked up his First-Aid kit, sending motes of yellow-white energy into the dwarves. “It’s the least I can do. They’re exhausted. Some good sleep and food is what they need.”

  “That boy is a treasure, Stone Warden. You would do well to keep him safe. Even the most minor of fire-born are a threat to the Skarn’Vaul.”

  The light of the sunstones did not seem to touch the figure in front of me. He glowed with his own white light emanating from the robes that defied all color. I squinted, trying to see through the halo he emitted. After a moment, the glare died down and in front of me stood the shortest dwarf I’d seen so far. It looked like Grimger’s twin but if someone had shoved him into a compactor. It was so hard to tell if it was fat or muscle under there, the body shape just too alien for my human sensitivities to comprehend.

  “Stone Warden. Fire-born. At some point, y’all are going to have to start defining these terms.” I tapped my translation medallion. “Ain’t no dictionary heya’ sir.” I said with an exaggerated southern accent. Fixing my voice, I held back an annoyed laugh. “I’m assuming that we have you to thank for healing my friend?”

  “By shale and stone, lad! No.” He chuckled, his girth contorting his face into a facsimile of a smile. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine or not. “All thanks are to be given to the Forge Father. Those tempered by the great sunfire above and the HeartFire below are His greatest works, even if they be not dwarves.”

  Eli leaned forward. “He means the ‘sun’ and the Earth’s ‘core’. So, angelic beings or fire elementals.”

  My confusion came out as a frown and Eli shrugged. “What? I’ve been talking to a lot of dwarves today. Their religion, religions? Eh, it’s hard to follow.”

  “We can feel the blessing of the Mother upon you, Stone Warden. Her gifts are rare, valuable. Be careful with your pride and growing anger. Your gift is too strong to tread a darker path.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Let’s update that translation software. You’re talking about my Terrastria, my Earth Magic? Aren’t you?” I turned to Eli. “Is it me? Or is the translation stuff coming out weird? Why can’t he just come out and say what he means?”

  Eli shrugged. “It’s a dialect. The other dwarves said that all the clerics and healers and magic users, or most of them talk in some kind of archaic dialect. I didn’t really get the reasons why but it’s just how it works.”

  Oddly enough, while I got clarification from Eli who’d been doing an excellent job absorbing info from the dwarves while I was gone, the short dwarf had already vanished but his whitish glow lingered.

  Eli didn’t notice at all. He kept right on talking, expounding on the difference between the religious significance between the clerics and healers and then how that mattered when it came to drinking and courtship. Tuning it out, I nodded along as I examined Paul. His midnight skin looked healthy even though his cheekbones were becoming more pronounced. We needed to get some nutrients into him before too long.

  I caught myself. “Midnight . . . night . . . SHIT!”