Chapter 215: Into the Mine
The first trap waited where the public mine map showed a collapsed branch.
Dirk found fresh scratches across the rubble and stopped the group before anyone touched it. A wire ran beneath the dust to a support brace holding loose stone above the main passage. Helmar’s people had reopened the branch, rigged the original collapse, and concealed the work behind debris.
The ward specialists disabled the trigger while Rod watched the darkness ahead.
"He knows we recovered the maps." Dirk said.
"Then he knows which routes we are likely to trust." Rod replied.
They abandoned the marked passage and used the reopened branch instead. It descended steeply through unfinished stone before reconnecting with the main mine beyond the trap. The detour cost time, but setting off Helmar’s collapse would have cost people and sealed the route behind them.
The known mine ended at Lower Work Area Three.
Lucian’s copied plans extended farther, showing newer passages labeled only by number. Helmar’s retreat followed the broadest route. Drag marks from supply crates crossed the floor, and spilled grain marked places where captive workers struggled with the load.
They found the first bodies beside an abandoned cart.
Two slaves lay where Helmar’s guards left them. One had died from a crossbow wound. The other still breathed beneath a fallen sack.
Nessa knelt beside him. "He cannot continue with us."
Rod assigned two supporting adventurers to carry the survivor upward. The decision reduced the pursuit group before it encountered another defender.
"There will be more." Renn said.
No one mistook the statement for pessimism.
The next guard station had been abandoned in haste. Empty weapon racks lined one wall, while bowls of half-eaten food remained on a table. Dirk found a roster listing six guards. Only four sets of tracks continued downward.
"Two went somewhere else." He said.
The answer came from behind them.
A concealed door opened in the wall. Two dwarves attacked the rear of the group, aiming for Renn. Korran’s chosen guard intercepted the first. Valewick raised a barrier across the passage, trapping the second attacker on the wrong side of his companion.
Rod’s fighters subdued both.
One guard refused to speak. The other surrendered when Renn showed the council seal.
"Helmar ordered us to delay you." He said. "Brogan took the strongest people below."
"How many slaves?" Renn asked.
"I don’t know."
"You worked here."
"Not in the lower sections. Groups went down. Different crews delivered their food to transfer gates. No one assigned above Area Six entered the deeper work zones."
The separation explained why no ordinary worker returned with stories. Helmar compartmentalized the mine as carefully as he concealed his companies.
"What happens to people sent below?" Nessa asked.
The guard looked away. "They do not come back."
Rod sent both prisoners to the surface under escort. The group continued.
Lower Work Area Four contained rows of locked sleeping chambers. Iron doors opened into cramped rooms filled with bunks, chains, and buckets. More than sixty slaves waited inside.
They recoiled when armed strangers entered.
Renn lowered his weapon. "Helmar no longer controls Blackwater’s surface. We are taking you out."
Several stared without moving. One human man asked whether this was another transfer.
Nessa opened the first restraint herself. "No."
The locks used different keys from the surface stores. Ward specialists broke the controlling mechanism while fighters searched adjoining rooms. They found an overseer’s office, punishment equipment, and ledgers recording people as labor units rather than names.
The enslaved workers confirmed that Helmar divided them by work area. Guards moved meals through barred gates. Anyone too injured to work disappeared. Rumors spoke of a buried city below the mine, but no one in Area Four had seen it.
Rod could not take sixty exhausted people deeper.
He assigned six more adventurers to escort them toward the surface, using the cleared branch rather than the trapped main route. Two healers went with them.
The pursuit force continued shrinking because freeing people mattered more than catching Helmar quickly.
Area Five held equipment repair shops and another guard station. Its defenders surrendered after learning the surface had fallen. They supplied keys and warned that Helmar placed charges beneath the next transfer gate.
The explosives were not meant merely to delay pursuit. Detonating them would collapse the ceiling onto the slave chambers behind it.
"He was willing to bury everyone once he passed." Renn said.
The ward specialists isolated the firing line. Valewick maintained a barrier beneath the weakest ceiling section while they removed the charges. His spell wavered as stone shifted above it.
"I need to reset the left anchor." He said.
"The ceiling does not care." Lana replied. "Hold it."
He held.
When the final charge came free, sweat ran down his face and one side of the barrier had sunk nearly a foot. No stone fell upon the chambers.
The next passage descended through heat and dust. Rails carried empty ore carts upward. The vibration Lucian reported became strong enough to feel through their boots.
Area Six was in revolt.
Helmar’s retreating guards had ordered the slaves to carry supplies deeper. Several refused after hearing fighting above. A guard killed one man, and the others attacked with mining tools. By the time Rod arrived, three guards and five slaves were dead. The survivors held the loading room behind overturned carts.
Rod’s party struck the guards from behind.
The fight ended quickly. Nessa moved among the injured while Renn explained the surface victory again. This group believed him sooner because some had seen Helmar retreat with his household guards.
An elderly dwarf among the slaves had worked in Area Eight.
"There are old walls below." He said. "Not mine supports. Proper stonework. Helmar made us clear a gate and then moved everyone who saw it farther down."
"What lies beyond it?" Renn asked.
"I never passed the gate."
The dwarf described underground water loud enough to shake the walls and ancient rails running toward it. Helmar’s engineers had spent months restoring lifts and doors.
He still knew almost nothing about what lay below.
Rod sent the freed workers upward with another escort. Fewer than fifteen supporting adventurers remained with the party.
"At this rate, Helmar will reach the bottom with more fighters than we have." Dain said.
"If we leave the slaves locked up, we are no better than he is." Rod replied.
"I was counting, not disagreeing."
Dirk examined the tracks. Helmar had also lost people. Blood crossed the passage where someone had been carried, and boot patterns showed several guards remaining behind at each defensive point.
Area Seven contained the first organized resistance since the upper mine. Metal shutters divided a processing chamber into lanes. Archers fired through narrow openings while two mages controlled the central floor.
Rod refused a direct advance.
The rails entering the room passed beneath the first shutter. Dirk and a ward specialist crawled through the maintenance trench beside them. Lana used repeated ice attacks against the opposite wall, convincing the defenders that the group intended to break through there.
When the mages concentrated on the false breach, Dirk disabled the shutter control.
Rod and Dain lifted the metal panel far enough for fighters to enter beneath it. Valewick released a force spell through the opening before the defenders reorganized. It lacked the symmetry he preferred and knocked one ally down with the enemies.
The ally got back to his feet with a chuckle. He wasn’t upset because getting knocked down also pushed him out of the way of 3 bolts fired from the dwarves crossbows. "Warn me next time."
"There was no time." Valewick said sheepishly. Saving the man and knocking him down was completely accidental.
The chamber was over run. Four defenders surrendered. The rest died or fled through the lower door.
Behind the processing equipment, the group found another slave compound. These workers were in worse condition. Several had fungal infections from damp tunnels, while others carried burns from unfamiliar machinery.
Nessa could stabilize them but not restore months of abuse in minutes.
The party’s remaining supporting healer stayed with the enslaved workers. Three fighters escorted those capable of walking. The rest waited behind the secured shutters for help from the surface.
Rod’s party continued with Renn, Valewick, two ward specialists, Korran’s chosen guard, and six other adventurers.
Area Eight had been stripped.
Tools, maps, and records were gone. Ancient stone formed the far wall, cut through by a passage wide enough for two wagons. Modern supports held sections damaged during excavation.
One bore fresh cuts.
"Another collapse." Dirk said.
The supports had been weakened rather than rigged to a single trigger. Fighting nearby could bring the passage down.
Rod ordered everyone through without touching the walls. Dain crossed last, shield raised as though it could stop the mountain from fall on their heads.
No collapse came.
Beyond Area Eight, the passage descended through the breached wall into older construction. Square columns supported the ceiling. Worn reliefs showed dwarves moving carts toward a lake beneath mountains. Mineral deposits covered most inscriptions.
Renn stopped when heat spread across his chest beneath the armor. He reached under the metal plates and pulled the ring far enough from his clothing to examine it.
The metal had grown noticeably warm. A faint light moved through the lines carved around its surface, disappearing and returning in a slow rhythm.
"The ring is reacting to something ahead." Renn said. "It has never done this before."
Rod looked past him toward the end of the passage. "Then we may be closer to whatever Helmar intends to unlock."
Dirk motioned for everyone to remain behind him while he examined the final stretch of tunnel. He found no traps, but tool marks covered the surrounding stone. Helmar’s workers had widened the passage recently enough that pale scars remained along the walls.
Beyond them, the tunnel opened into an excavation far larger than anything shown on the mine maps.
A weathered sign had been driven into the stone beside the entrance.
AREA NINE
Helmar’s engineers had turned the ancient entrance hall into the deepest slave camp. More than a hundred people remained behind barred partitions. Some had worked until moments earlier. Dust still filled the air, and chains ran from their ankles to fixed rails.
The guards were gone.
Helmar had taken every capable fighter toward the ancient stronghold and left the slaves locked behind him.
Renn approached the nearest partition. "We control the surface. Help is coming."
A woman gripped the bars. "He took the keys."
The ward specialists examined the locks. Opening all of them would take time.
Rod looked toward the broad passage continuing beyond the camp. Distant orange light moved across its walls. Helmar was still close.
"We split again." He said.
One specialist and four adventurers remained to open the partitions. They would send freed workers upward in manageable groups and mark every trap already cleared.
The remaining pursuers followed the orange light.
The sound of water grew from a warning carved into a map into a constant presence. The passage curved around a final column and emerged high above a vast underground lake.
An ancient dwarven stronghold stood along its shore.
Helmar’s lamps burned inside it.
Before crossing toward the stronghold, Rod sent a final messenger upward. The runner carried the location of every freed group, the number of injured unable to walk, and a warning that the mine extended far beyond the recovered plans. If Rod’s group failed to return, Korran would still know where to send rescuers.
Renn also sent orders placing the liberated workers under his protection. Their status would not depend upon locating purchase records or proving which company delivered them. Anyone found chained inside Blackwater would be treated as enslaved unless that person freely stated otherwise before an Ironcloud official.
Only after establishing what happened behind them did the group face the bridge ahead.
The messenger had not traveled far before encountering reinforcements descending from the surface. The escorts returning with freed workers had warned Korran how quickly Rod’s pursuit force was shrinking, so he had sent ten fresh adventurers down the cleared route.
The reinforcements included another ward specialist and fighters experienced in confined spaces. They had followed the marks left by the earlier escorts and reached Area Nine without encountering resistance.
Rod gave them time to inspect their equipment and explained what waited ahead. With their arrival, twenty people remained available to approach the ancient stronghold.