Dwarfheim Chronicles
Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Bellows of Kloor Stonebind Pact The Singing Anvil Shadows Hammer of Accord
The Stonebind Pact
Dwarfheim - Late Summer, 1907
Bromli Ironpost stood at the lip of the Embervault overlook, the forgefires flickering far below like angry coals in a giant’s hearth. The breath of the mountain rose in waves—hot, metallic, laced with urgency. Beneath the rising heat, he heard the rhythmic hiss of cooling steel, and farther still, the distant grind of stone gears turning in half-forgotten machines.
Behind him, the Elder Council waited in stiff silence, the weight of decisions not made hanging between them.
“We have a choice,” Bromli said without turning. “We can starve our forges and bury our pride… or we can go to the Dead Hills.”
A low murmur rose. Several of the elders exchanged grim glances.
“Go to the Trolls, you mean,” muttered Harnik Flintbelt, voice thick with scorn. “Beg scraps from the very beasts who once cracked our anvils and stole the Iron Banner of Hearthdeep?”
“We’d bring terms, not supplication,” Bromli replied, finally facing them. “They’ve been harvesting minerals from the surface—ilmenite, moonstone, perhaps even sky-iron. And we have what they don’t: mastery of the stone.”
Grelta Hearthwhistle shifted her weight, youthful compared to the others but already respected for her innovations in forgecraft. “Even if Hrond accepts parley,” she said, “do we trust him not to twist it into leverage?”
Bromli nodded. “No. But I trust the mountain less. It’s hollowing beneath us. The Embervaults are thinning. We either adapt… or fade.”
Three days later, two emissaries—Fenik Stoneshine and Lodra Cleftpick—rode atop sure-footed rams into the barren reaches of the Dead Hills. Wind swept the ridge with a dry rasp, and the air grew bitter despite the season.
They carried no weapons, only the scroll bearing Bromli’s seal, a carved token of stonebound peace, and two packs of precious mineral samples—tokens of goodwill.
Trollheim’s border was marked not by walls, but by obelisks etched with spiraling root-sign and inlaid bone. The air shifted subtly here, as if the hills themselves watched.
A scout met them first—hulking, slate-skinned, silent. He examined their packs with a single glowing eye and disappeared without a word.
They were made to wait beneath the wind for hours.
Then, as twilight bled into violet, Hrond the Mottled emerged from behind a veil of smoke. He was enormous, even by Troll standards, his mottled skin patterned like lichen-covered stone. Thick cords of muscle stretched beneath ceremonial wraps, and talismans clinked from his braids and tusk rings.
“I am Hrond,” he said, his voice like a landslide. “And you are far from your holes.”
Fenik stepped forward. “We come not for war or warning, but for trade. Dwarfheim offers knowledge. Secrets of stone-binding, from vault to peak.”
Hrond tilted his head. “And in return?”
“Minerals you have gathered. What you do not use.”
Hrond’s laugh boomed like a drum. “We use everything, little mountain-born. Even bones have use in our walls.”
Lodra stepped in. “Use does not mean purpose. What we offer has purpose.”
Hrond studied them for a long moment, then turned. “Come then. Let us speak beneath the moon. It sees clearer than either of our peoples.”
The council ring was unlike anything the Dwarves had seen—an open bowl of earth ringed by root-pillars and carved stones, lit by flickering green sap-fires. Instead of a table, a great flat stone lay in the center, etched with old pact lines, some broken, some untouched. Around it sat Hrond and his advisers: a blind seeress with bark-like skin, and a silent shaman with chalked hands and piercing eyes.
Fenik and Lodra placed their offerings—two unworked blocks of dwarven-hardened basalt and a sealed scroll of techniques—upon the stone.
“We bring this in trust,” Lodra said. “To build something neither of us could alone.”
Hrond placed a leather bundle on the stone. When he unwrapped it, a collection of rare minerals gleamed in the torchlight—sky-iron, dark glassy crystal, and a veined chunk of crimson ore unknown to the Dwarves.
“You offer the root of your skill,” Hrond said. “We offer the fruit of the surface. But what grows from this?”
“A bridge,” Fenik replied. “Not without cracks, but strong enough for both to walk.”
The shaman finally spoke, voice dry as dust. “Trolls do not walk bridges built by others.”
“Then build it with us,” Lodra offered. “Shape it with your hands. Bind it with our stones.”
There was a long pause.
Then Hrond placed one wide, clawed hand upon the etched stone between them.
“I will shape the pact,” he said. “But know this—if it breaks, we will not rebuild.”
“Nor will we,” Fenik said.
Back in Dwarfheim, the decision fractured the forges.
The Ironfire Guild called it heresy. Miners muttered about ancestral betrayal. Even in the taprooms, apprentices debated whether Bromli had crossed a line that no forgehammer could re-forge.
“I didn’t light this fire for them,” Bromli told Grelta one evening in his office. “I lit it because I saw the cold coming.”
She studied the map of the lower caverns on the wall. “You know the old ones won’t all follow you.”
“They don’t have to,” Bromli said quietly. “But the mountain will. It always does.”
When Hrond arrived at Dwarfheim, every corridor held its breath.
He walked in silence, his feet echoing on worked stone, flanked by unarmed trolls and trailed by curious, fearful eyes. Some dwarves turned away. Others stared in open awe. Children peeked from behind market stalls. The air buzzed—not with fear, but something deeper: history colliding with change.
They led him to the Atrium of Accord, a vaulted chamber beneath the Great Hammer Dome, where pacts had been forged and broken for generations. There, Bromli stood waiting, Deepbell hammer resting beside him, the stone ring of union already laid.
Hrond looked at it with an unreadable gaze. “This stone bears both our marks?”
“It does now,” Grelta said, stepping forward with the greensteel chisel.
She cut a single groove down the middle of the ring—half runed in Dwarvish, half in Troll root-sign.
“Do you bind your will to this?” she asked.
“I bind my need,” Hrond said. “And my caution.”
Bromli stepped forward. “Stone to stone,” he said solemnly. “Not to break, but to bind.”
He raised Deepbell, and with a single resonant strike, sealed the pact.
The sound rolled through the chambers like thunder, reaching every corner of the city.
That evening, a muted feast was held in the Hall of Hammers. It was not joyous—but it was peaceful. Trolls and Dwarves sat at shared tables, eyeing each other between sips of stonebrew and plates of hotroot stew.
Hrond sat beside Bromli, who nursed a mug of amber ale.
“Your halls are narrower than I expected,” Hrond said.
“Your frame is broader than I feared,” Bromli replied.
Hrond gave a rare grin.
Across the table, Grelta leaned toward Lodra and whispered, “Do you think it will hold?”
Lodra watched as a young dwarf cautiously handed a troll child a carved toy made of slagwood.
“It’s holding now,” she said. “That’s more than it ever did before.”