Jocasta stared at the glowing walls in wonderment. The grubs were small, no larger than her pinky finger, but there were thousands off them. They wriggled and crawled over each other, feeding on something, perhaps minerals in the rock. The smelled faintly of something like old parchment which Jocasta found unexpectedly pleasant. She reached out a finger and laughed delightedly as one of the the grubs curled around it and began to crawl up her arm, vanishing beneath her sleeve. A moment later she was giggling for a different reason as the animal slithered up underneath her blouse, its progress faintly visible through the bluish glow beneath her garments. A second grub joined the first, then a third.

"They like ya, a good omen," Buri put in, to the accompanying nod of the rest of the dwarves. Jocasta thought they probably needed good omens and were finding them where they could but she didn't dislodge the glowing grubs as they curled up on her shoulder and wrist.

"Well, we came to find a dwarf stronghold, lets go see it," Jocasta said with a smile.

That feat was harder than she thought, they passed through several tunnels, many of which were festooned with blind bunkers and blockhouses cut into the stone. Signs of ancient combat were everywhere, and clearly the dwarves of this hold had sold their lives dearly. Ancient skeletons of dwarves and gundarogs lay scattered in profusion. In places they waded through the bones of the abhuman monsters, ancient cairns marking particularly cunning or tenacious dwarven defenses. Both Beren and the dwarves greeted this with sullen stoicism. This front melted away when they stepped through another of the interminable series of low arches and a cavern opened out before them. It fell away in breathtaking defile, a vast space well over a mile long. Great stalactites fell from the ceiling far above, but they had been improved wth intricate brickwork so that spiraling stair cases wide enough for ten horsemen climbed them and bridges ran between the pillars like spreading spiders webs. Palaces and homes dotted the cavern, though they largely seemed built into the walls with vast open areas given over to fungal forests which might once have been something like cropland. Canals crisscrossed the space, many dry but some glutted with dark water and clogged with detritus. There was not a living soul to be seen.

"Wow..." Jocasta breathed in honest awe.