The strangest, most wonderful part of it all was that the sculpture was made entirely of diamond.

“Welcome to Dra, humans,” Sikurgurd declared almost sadly. He gestured across the open cavern before them. “The tunnel to the mines is directly across from us, but there’s no way to get there without descending into the city first.”

Fort looked where he’d pointed, and slowly filled with despair. The cavern had to be at least a few miles across, and getting there while avoiding an entire city full of dwarves couldn’t be done, not in the time they had.

“I’m sure it’s not as fancy as human cities,” Sikurgurd was saying. “We’ve heard tales of you using something called ‘wod’ to build, making your homes out of living things.” He sighed. “I would love to see that. No Dracsi-kin has ever seen wod, alive or dead. It must be magnificent.”

“Yeah, wood’s pretty amazing,” Jia said. “What’s that statue in the middle?”

“That would be Q’baos,” Sikurgurd said, his face contorting in disgust. “The city of Dra was built on the site of the very first mine for the Dracsi, but the substance of the statue can’t be digested by them, so instead, the miners created a tribute to Q’baos as they dug, merging all the useless gems into it as they went.”

Fort had a similar reaction to Sikurgurd’s as he realized that what he thought was a forehead was actually a screaming human face, just like he’d seen on the Old One back at the previous Oppenheimer School. “How can you merge two diamonds?” he asked. That didn’t seem possible.

Sikurgurd appeared confused. “Any child can do it. Diamond is as malleable as every other substance left to us by D’vale, who created this place. All you do is—”

“Wait, you’re saying an Old One created this place?” Jia asked. “But why?”

“For the Dracsi,” Sikurgurd said, sounding even more confused now. “Haven’t I mentioned? We were brought here to care for them, once they were changed into their present form. The Dracsi have only ever been able to digest metallic minerals, so we mine the gold and silver to feed them. Whatever we have left, we use to house ourselves.” He sighed. “The Dracsi would be perfectly able to feed themselves, if we let them out of their caves. They’re better diggers than we are, and prefer the heat of the underrealms anyway. Helps them digest their food.”

“Can’t they just… escape?” Jia asked. “There didn’t seem to be much holding them back when we saw them.”