Sophia White
Stories
6
Chapters
1,465
Words
493.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
1 d, 17 h
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I shook my head, which was still ringing after the giant stoneant had bounced me off the floor. I didn’t think I was dead? My body was no longer made of stone and I could still feel Lillyweather wrapped in my arms. The afterlife had better not just be a string of Pete ending up in the body of different Petes throughout the multiverse… The soldier stoneant had thrown us aside after someone, Balin I think, yelled at it. Balin! I sat bolt upright. Lillyweather slumped over, but I caught her before she…-
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A stoneant looked very similar to a regular ant, if a regular ant was the size of a Gods-bedamned Rottweiler. It had a hard grey exoskeleton with significantly more spikes than your average ant deserved. A serrated set of pincers, and a pair of fuchsia compound eyes completed the set. It otherwise looked and behaved like a regular ant, complete with an obsessive desire to defend its nest. A nest we had just blown a hole into. “Hold tha line!” A dwarf in plate mail shouted. He swung an axe and sheared…
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The end of the tunnel was over a kilometer away, and we were taking it slow. “Rafter crew! Check on the supports!” Copperpot shouted. The overall clad dwarves I’d seen during Balin’s rescue got to work climbing the walls as we made our way down the tunnel. “Excellent, I don’t see any real damage to the tunnel structure…” Copperpot leaned in, and I could see his glasses telescoping outwards. “What do you think? Was the experiment a success?” I was nervous, and Balin wasn’t helping,…
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I walked in silence while Copperpot ordered his grad students around. I found out from Lillyweather that most of them were staying on as research assistants because Copperpot was the biggest genius this side of Nikola Tesla. There were a lot of boxes and barrels to be moved, along with what looked like a giant drill. They were setting the drill up on the minecart tracks, and there was nothing for me to really do at the moment. I had grabbed Balin and pulled him along but he wasn’t much good for…
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“Excuse me?” I couldn’t believe my ears. This pint sized, over-moustached, propeller capped egghead said gunpowder was worthless? “Do you have the correct recipe?" I wanted to follow that up with ‘and did you do it right’, but figured now wasn’t the time. It was also possible that this was a high-pressure sales technique. I could feel my old business brain clicking into gear; I was a bit rusty, but skills honed for that long didn't disappear overnight. It did feel nice to be back in my…
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I shuffled impatiently as we stood at the entrance to the camp. Soon, Balin and I would either be spending the next few years mining, or we’d be free. We were joined by Speaker John, Doc Opal, and Grim. Almost all the Titled dwarves in the camp were here except for Whisperer Gemma. The rest of the prisoners were watching from behind us back in the camp. They had the day off from mining, and they weren’t going to miss the show. I grumbled as I saw Sam taking the last bets on ‘does Pete die today’.…
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I sat on my bed, lost in thought. Tomorrow was the big day. I’d put in a hard day in the mine, and Grim had dropped by partway through the day to announce that the were coming tomorrow. He had a big stash of the red vine, which was apparently called sparkvine, and the were providing the gunpowder plans. Depending on the results of tomorrow’s test, Balin and I would be free. It was hard to imagine. Well, I mean it was easy to imagine. Me in a brewery making sweet, sweet liquor. I purred a bit as I…
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Tim frowned into his tankard as he took another drink of the True Brew of the dwarves. Nothing was going to plan anymore. “How’s it goin’, Tim?” The Great Deceiver asked. Tim put on his brightest and most winning smile. “Great, Pete! Congratulations on getting your Title!” He couldn’t believe it. How could the Gods possibly favour this dwarf? The rest of the room raised their tankards in a toast, and Tim shivered as smelled the telltale rank odour of lemons from many of them. The rot was…
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“Well gentle-dwarves, do you have any ideas?” I was currently down a dive tunnel with Wreck and Sam. Balin had the day off today, so he was explaining our gunpowder to the engineers. I used on a particularly difficult section of the wall, and then turned to face Sam. He was lying on his back facing the roof of the cave. He’d just come from lugging some sacks up the dive tunnel and was wheezing a bit. “What about a candlewick?” Wreck asked, as she filled a sack with the ore I’d…
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Grim adjusted the portrait on his desk as he thought. The explosion on the outskirts of the camp had caused him no small amount of worry, and he’d sent some guards to go investigate. They’d reported finding a small workstation along with several containers of minerals and Pete and Balin limping back to camp with slight injuries. The guards had stayed hidden and watched as the two made their way into the kitchen. Pete and Balin had special permission to be in there, so they had allowed it, and the two…
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