"Students!" Elder Wevrik's voice boomed in the Training Hall at dawn as if trying to banish sleep from every dwarven child's mind. "Are you prepared for your first journey to the surface?"
"Yes, Elder!" There were about thirty other dwarven children here aside from me. They trained alongside me for the past several months but I didn't know a single one of their names. Exercising from waking to passing out wasn't ideal for socializing. If you had breath to spare for speaking, then you had energy to handle more weight.
Satisfied by our answer, Elder Wevrik stared us down. "We will go out to the surface, set up camp five miles from the gate, train for a week, and then come back. Even the weakest of you can manage this. Now move out!"
Without any further delay, he began setting the pace towards the gates that led to the surface. A pace we all were forced to match while loaded down with a hundred pounds of armor, weapons, and supplies.
I was carrying a bit more weight than my fellows. Even though ninety nine percent of my attempts at magical sci-fi gear were abject failures, a few items were relatively successful. With my luck, some of them might prove useful.
"Keep up, younglings!" Elder Wevrik shouted. "We will not stop until we set up camp!"
While running at a brisk jog, Elder Wevrik provided us with additional details on our trip to the surface. "You will be seeing the sun for the first time, young dwarves. Imagine it like an extremely bright rune-lamp. Be sure not to stare directly at it or you will permanently damage your eyes. Although you will have the benefit of your first experience being in the Demon Wastes, where a constant haze seems to cloud the sun from the hordes of unslain demons occupying the land."
"Why would demons cloud the sun?" I asked between breaths. There hadn't been anything about that written in the dwarven tomes.
"Don't know." He replied bluntly. "Demons infect everything around them with miasma. Tainting the water, the soil, and the sky. Hopefully we won't see a demon this close to the gate, but if you do then report it to one of the warriors. Under no circumstances are you to engage in combat with them on your own. Where there is one demon, a hundred more lurk in the shadows."
The warriors referenced were a hundred or so adult dwarves who were serving as our guards and supervisors on this mission. Dwarven reproduction rates were very low so every child was like a national treasure and not to be risked lightly.
Elder Wevrik continued from where he left off. "We will only be spending a week on the surface this time, but starting next month, we will alternate spending a month on the surface and a month in the Training Hall. At the end of your assigned five years, you will be warriors worthy to serve alongside the High King with honor."
"But I don't want to be a warrior." I grumbled under my breath.
"Too bad!" Elder Wevrik's ears missed nothing. "In an Age of Judgment, everyone must be a warrior. If you don't like it, take it up with the gods!"
Several hours of rapid tunnel march later, we exited the great stone gates that led to the surface. I was strangely nonchalant about it, after five years underground I would have thought I'd be overjoyed to see sunlight. In books and movies, prisoners held in dungeons always cried tears of happiness upon seeing natural light.
The other dwarven children were nervous.
"Ready yourselves, young dwarves." The dwarf commanding the gate bellowed out. "Demons and those tainted by demonic miasma lurk behind every weed. They will not hesitate to kill you, be sure to kill them first and return to your families instead of joining the ancestors."
We were given one last chance to check our weapons and armor before the order to open the gates was issued. With a loud creaking and groaning, the stone gates gradually moved apart to reveal the outside world.
To ensure none of the children did something idiotic like peer directly at the son or have a nervous breakdown at the lack of a ceiling, we were marched out one by one under careful supervision. I thought they were overthinking it until I saw one of the kids from the Weapon's Guild freak out.
"It goes on forever!" He screamed out. "It's scary!"
A few of the other kids whimpered in fear. I didn't understand what they were going on about until I had to experience it myself. But once I was outside, it became painfully clear. To put it in human terms, it was like having the ceiling of a familiar room, like a bedroom or office, suddenly disappear. You would keep looking upwards, feeling exposed and wondering if and when the ceiling was going to come back, or if it would crash down on you suddenly and kill you in your sleep. A very unsettling feeling.
Eventually all thirty of us were outside and were relatively acclimated to the surface. I still felt a little jumpy despite having lived all my previous life aboveground, but it may have just been my dwarven biology. Or perhaps it was due to the warnings of demons.
"Remember this feeling, young dwarves!" Elder Wevrik ordered in a grave tone. "This is the taint of demonic miasma. It infects and ruins everything it touches. Whenever your beard prickles and shivers run up your spine, grip your weapon tightly and tighten your helm strap. For death is around every corner. Now move it!"
Once again, we were forced to march quickly. Although this time we were constantly tripping over unfamiliar roots and branches. A bright side to living deep underground was that you never tripped over tree roots.
Several hours later, in the late afternoon, Elder Wevrik called for a halt in the middle of some ruins. "We'll set up camp here. Unpack your bags and prepare to be assigned your night watch shift."
"Elder Wevrik, what was this place?" I asked as I kicked a stray rock. "An abandoned dwarf city?"
"Ancestor's Beard! Don't be crass!" He snarled. "Dwarves would never be so foolish as to build a city where the sun shines. This was once a beastkin city. Their collective nations fell in the last Age of Judgment over five hundred years ago and they have never been rebuilt."
Elder Wevrik seemed to lose interest in the topic and began instructing the students on how to pitch their tents. However, I was more curious than ever. It was like I had stumbled on an ancient temple before a certain fedora-wearing treasure hunter could steal all the artifacts and put them in a museum. I snuck away to explore.
Unfortunately, the reality turned out to be much more boring. Whatever treasure may or may not have existed in the timeworn buildings, they had long ago been taken or destroyed. I only found some weird looking plants and what may have once been a fork.
"Sigh. Well this was a waste of time." My grumbling was interrupted by my rumbling stomach. "Well, no better place to eat lunch. Let's see what I packed… Oh what a surprise. Stone bread and mystery meat sandwich."
If only some of the plants looked or smelled like an herb from my previous life. Then maybe I could flavor my lunch to be slightly better, but none of the greenery around me looked tasty or even safe to eat. So my meal was doomed to be the same grub as always.
While I was munching on my gravelly meal, I tried contemplating again a way to get some form of grain to this part of the world. But the only port to grain growing regions was hundreds of miles to the north and it was under exclusive authority of the High King and his clan. Who utilized it to ship dwarven goods in exchange for barley that was immediately turned into dwarven beer that got shipped to all the mountains in exchange for continued allegiance. There was absolutely no chance I could get even a few grains of yeast to make some sourdough.
In the midst of my melancholy brooding, I felt something staring at me. Is it a monster? A demon?
I slowly reached for my weapon, prepared to fight whatever it was to the death.
Instead of finding a scary death dealing monster or demon though, I saw a fellow child, perhaps around ten or eleven years old like me. A girl to be precise. But not a dwarven child, but a beastkin! If you're wondering how I knew she was a beastkin, well, the twitching cat-ears on her head and cat tail near her rump were kind of a giveaway. She was currently attempting to steal my lunch.
"Hello there." I said while grabbing my remaining food. "I'm afraid that's mine."
"Mrow." She emitted a heartbroken meow sound as the food moved out of reach. The cat-girl then gave me the saddest, pity inducing look I had ever seen. I could almost hear depressing violin music playing in the background as she silently begged.
Unable to resist, my hands instinctively handed half my remaining meat to the raggedy girl. Stonebread is deadly to non-dwarves, records showed that it could cause life threatening constipation. She silently grabbed the mystery meat and vanished into the underbrush like a ghost. Barely disturbing a leaf as she left.
"Huh, I didn't expect to see that today. She was kinda cute though." In my past life I had owned a few cats and was admittedly weak to their fluffy ears. I probably would never see her again so I quickly forgot about the cat-girl and resumed what was left of my meal.
I finished the last of my lunch without incident and moved to rejoin the group. There was nothing to be gained by hunting for nonexistent relics. Just as no one noticed me leaving, no one noticed me returning. The guards were busy scouting the area and Elder Wevrik was occupied with the other dwarven children.
"Hmm. My tent is a bit crooked, but at least it's far from the toilet pit." The tent was hardly worthy of the name since the cloth was only thick enough to keep the morning dew off and barely big enough to just fit a dwarf kid.
Satisfied with my rather sloppy work, I joined the other kids at the fire for dinner. Maybe tonight I'd finally get to meet my fellow students who I had been training alongside. It'd be nice to have personalities to go with their names and faces.