"Did your little bugs see any signs of the others?" Buri demanded. Jocasta was studying funerary inscriptions, making notes in her notebook. Beren, who had been travelling with her for some time now, noticed that the book never seemed to fill up, no matter how many scrawled notes and hasty diagrams were drawn on its pages. He shook his head, dismissing it as yet another of Jocasta's seemingly endless quirks.

"They didn't see them no," Jocasta explained as she copied down what appeared to be a warding spell of some kind. There was enough similiarity in dwarven surnames that she thought maybe she could begin to create a key to deiciphering the writting language, if she lived long enough and had the lesuire. 

"But from what I did see it didn't look like the collapse was that far across the city. Assuming there is anything of the city left at all, I'd say they have a pretty good chance." She paused to trace a rune stone with a fingertip.

"Of course, they are as stuck down here as we are and we might all starve to death before we find the surface," she added cheerfully.

"The dwarf roads might be a way out. Assuming they aren't collapsed and the Gundarogs haven't completely overrun them," Buri replied, sounding stoic if not exactly confident.

"Little chance of the latter, but if we can get through, we might make it to some dwarfhold or a minehead," Beren replied seizing on the idea at once. Buri looked skeptical.

"It's near a thousand miles to the nearest hold I know of, not much shy of that to any shafts," he cautioned.

"Its not as though we have any better ideas," Beren countered. Jocasta lifted her head to interject when Buri cocked his head curiously to the side. A moment later Beren's eyes narrowed.

"What?!" Jocasta demanded.

"Gundarogs," the pair answered at once in identically grim tones.

"The earthquake must have stired up the hornets nest," Beren concluded grimly.