I took a torch out of my backpack and hold it into the fire I had made before the wolves attacked us. With the help of the torch I could now see that the cave went in deeper than I thought when first walking inside with Rothgur. We headed in while being on the lookout of other unfriendly creatures. I called Rothgur by his name in hope of a shout so we could indicate where to go, but no one answered. Then my luck kicked in again, as the Norn told me she could sense a terrified dwarf by miles, and I followed her while she was leading the way. Ahead of us I could see the fresh trails of mandragor moving below the ground. If they would see us, it would be a tough battle especially since the Norn had an injury of the battle with the wolves. We tried to stay close to the walls of the cave hoping that they wouldn’t sense us.
We continued our search for Rothgur while being aware of our surroundings and watching out for those mandragors crawling around. It was really difficult navigating around as the only light we saw was from my torch and some small holes at the top of the cave. While we were walking I asked the Norn for her name, she told me she was called Bertha, she told me that it was stupid of us to make a fire while wolves were around. But it did not matter as it had happened already and nothing could be changed. When we walked around a corner I saw a movement ahead of us, it was quite small and was running away for something, could that be Rothgur? I shouted his name again, the thing stood still, looked back and ran forward again. If it was really Rothgur, why was he running away from us then, maybe he thought that we were wolves that wanted to eat a dwarf? Seriously, I would not dare to eat one, Grenth knows what he might’ve eaten for lunch the other day. We fastened our steps to catch up with him before he could get away even further.
When we got closer I heard the sound of a crying dwarf (it’s pretty distinctive, it’s like Weeeeheeeeee, you know, the sound you make when you’re just born). He then shouted: “don’t come closer, don’t look at me”! I asked him why in Dwayna’s name he was afraid of us, and started to walk closer to him. Then the light of my torch reached him, and I knew why he was crying. He turned into stone, or at least, it looked like he turned into stone, because, stone cannot move, and I clearly saw his hands trying to hide his face. I asked him why he looked like this, but he did not know, his mother did tell him a story about turning into stone, but he did never really listen to it; “must’ve been a punishment for doing something wrong”, he told us.
Bertha was standing near me, observing the dwarf, she opened her mouth and start talking:
“It is quite possible that this is one of those Dwarven legends, there is a telling about the deldrimor dwarves. In order to defeat their greatest enemy, The Great Destroyer, the dwarves would turn into stone by pleading to their leader, The Great Dwarf. It has been said that once The Great Dwarf has been spoken to, all deldrimor dwarves would turn into stone. Although it was just a mere legend, it seems like it has come true.
Great, so now I got a Stoned-dwarf companion (he must be using drugs). We found him, but we still need to get out of this place, and I for one, do not know where the exit is.