Uncle Eldvar chuckled in his usual, inimitable way. A hearty, deep, but short laugh, inevitably followed by a brief coughing session as his broad but old lungs caught up with the stress of the activity.

“You boys are right, of course.” He composed himself, smiled and ran his stubby, hairy hand along the thick braids in his proud ginger beard. The hair on his head had long since fallen out or fallen grey, but somehow, his beard was as flame-red as the day he was born with it. Some of the other Dwarves were convinced he dyed it, but if he did, he’d sooner die than admit it.

“What were once our ways,” He continued. “definitely are no longer your generation’s, my lads.”

His ‘r’s rolled as he talked, and any ‘s’ gained a bonus ‘h’ sound. It was a common Dwarvish accent, or at least it used to be. My brother and I lacked those particular affectations and were even prone to actually pronouncing the ‘t’s in our words.

Until Uncle Eldvar’s era, Dwarves were an insular race who barely interacted with Man or Elf except to occasionally hurl an axe at their head, often for trying to thieve from the Dwarf’s hoard.

“Times have changed. You lads probably spend more time with outlanders than with your own folk in the mountains now.”

He got up from his creaking wooden stool, unsteadily at first, but then, as he reached for his pickaxe leaning on the wall nearby, he had the vim and vigour of a Dwarf centuries younger than he truly was.

“But!” He roared. It echoed through the stone walls of his home’s front room and, I’m not ashamed to admit, even startled us two strong, warrior-age Dwarves sitting on the floor before him.

He lifted his pickaxe and slung it over his shoulder.

“That doesn’t mean there isn’t any value in our ways. It just means you can choose how you include them in your lives.”

He wordlessly beckoned us to follow him and walked out the door. My brother and I looked at each other for a moment. Almost looking for approval from one another to let the crazy old man just wander off into the mountain alone.

But that was never really an option. He was, for all intents and purposes, a father to us. Our parents, both mercenaries — as was increasingly common in Dwarvish society for the last couple of generations — had been killed in the Mad King’s war on the Elves. Though it was hard to feel much sorrow for their passing once we learned which side they had fought on. Uncle Eldvar had disowned both of them — some of his best friends were Elves, after all — and had been basically raising us as his own for long before they were killed anyway.

He could move surprisingly quickly for a man with four digits to his age. Still, it only took us a few seconds to catch up with him. He began leading us through the cave where he and dozens of other Dwarves made their home. Once upon a time, it would have been hundreds, but now only a small handful of those like Uncle Eldvar remain here in the mountain. Most of them were pretty close to his age, though we were fairly certain he was by now the eldest.

“In my time, this was the whole world.” He said, not looking back at us, simply marching onwards deeper and deeper into the mountain as we silently followed.

“We were born underground.” He pointed at the old fountains built up around stalactites, cleverly designed to catch the moisture for reliable water sources even in the absence of large bodies or streams. “From birth, we suckled from a teat of stone.”

As we got deeper, the light from the dwellings faded. Man and even Elf would struggle to see down here, but for us Dwarves, it was almost as clear as walking in daylight.

“We were raised in the dark and trusted in the safety of this mountain home.”

As the light behind us finally failed to reach us and our eyes fully adjusted, a beautiful sight started to surround us in its place. The gems in the walls sparkled in our Dwarven vision. Diamonds, rubies, gold and more lit up the walls around us like stars in the night sky.

Of course, this was the very earliest part of the mine. Deep, deep within, they’d still all be hidden away in the rock. If this were a mine of Man, the walls would have been stripped bare generations ago, but Dwarves do not know greed. Instead, the gift of this view was left for all those who came after, and the mine continued deeper in search of bounties yet to be tapped.

Eventually, we reached a point in the mine where other Dwarves were still at work. Uncle Eldvar grabbed two spare pickaxes from one of the rest stations and thrust them into my and my brother’s hands.

“The first time my father brought me into the mines, barely six months out of the womb, he put an axe in my hand and said these words to me:”

Uncle Eldvar stared deep into our eyes with a seriousness we’d rarely seen from him. It wasn’t even the same kind of stern look we got when we’d ‘accidentally’ beheaded all the gnome statues in Durnir’s front yard. I could tell that this was something that truly mattered to him. Perhaps something he’d wished he’d done with us centuries ago.

“Skin made of iron, steel in our bones,

To dig and dig makes us free.”

As his words, an almost song-like Dwarven creed, echoed through the cavern, the sounds of the axe on stone seemed to change from cacophony to rhythm in an instant.

He turned, pointed at an unassuming outcropping on the cavern’s rockface, raised his axe and smashed it against the wall. As the grey rock shattered at his feet, a treasure of what must have been at least a dozen gemstones revealed itself in the lighter, more brittle stone beneath.

It was an instinct that, for most Dwarves, had seemingly given way to being better at swinging an axe at a Man’s chest most quickly and efficiently to dismember or kill him. But for Uncle Eldvar and the Dwarves that remained here digging in the mines, their ability to pinpoint rich founts of resources in unassuming rock was still as sharp as their axe points.

He smiled, turned to look at us and then gestured at the wall. Your turn.

My brother and I worked in Myrthorn’s Vale as shopkeepers of arcane oddities and rarities. We’d never swung any kind of axe in anger in our lives. It was even Uncle Eldvar that put us on that path. Perhaps out of sympathy or guilt for his blood’s part in the war, he raised us in an Elven village for decades of our young lives. Even when he left us to return home to the mountain, it was he who insisted we live and work with the Elves and with Man and ideally do so without killing either of them.

We both moved past him, trying to figure out where to start — we clearly lacked Eldvar’s skill — and made unsteady attempts at hacking at the wall before us. I watched my brother — the bigger and more brutish of the two of us stagger backwards and almost off his feet onto his arse as his axe bounced off the hard rock as if it were made of rubber.

I wasn’t doing much better, but my weaker arms allowed me a more steady approach. Amidst the din we were making, I could still hear Uncle Eldvar chuckling to himself as he watched us. Then, the cough. He continued this cycle for most of the time we were trying. A deep, chesty laugh echoed in the darkness, followed by the whoop of his lungs rebelling at the exercise.

Nevertheless, we persevered. We tried a few different spots in the wall until, eventually, we both stopped at one each and looked at each other. We felt it almost simultaneously — a nearly magnetic pull to specific points in the rockface. I watched as my brother lifted his axe way farther above his head than he really needed to and smashed it violently downwards into the wall. Just like when Uncle Eldvar did it earlier, huge chunks of stone shattered to the ground, leaving the unmistakable sparkle of a diamond in the wall where it once implacably stood.

“Great Grumholdt!” We both exclaimed. I rushed to lift my axe and strike my own spot. Was it just dumb luck?

As I violently reshaped the wall before me, my eyes lit up green from the shimmer of no less than five large emeralds.

“We actually did it!” I exclaimed. My brother reached over for a high-five — a tradition we’d embarrassingly picked up from the pubs full of Man in Myrthorn’s Vale.

I turned to where Uncle Eldvar had been standing, expecting to see an approving smile on his face. But then I realised that in getting so caught up in the activity, I hadn’t noticed that the chuckling and coughing had stopped at some point.

My brother and I both started looking around with concern in our eyes. He spotted Eldvar first and pointed to the stools and tables at the rest stop where we’d picked up our axes.

As we approached, we already knew. Blood spat and sprayed on the ground lit up in our accursed vision as brightly as the gemstones. Uncle Eldvar had reached a stool to rest at least, but he would never get back up.

The commotion we made as we got to his side, embraced each other as a family one last time and made a guttural roar our ancestors would have been proud of us about for once, drew the attention of the dozen or so other Dwarves working around us.

Every Dwarf in the mountain knew Eldvar. Every Dwarf in the mountain respected him. A ripple of primal mourning roars spread throughout the caves until it returned to us as a tidal wave.

Eventually, silence fell. A few of the women who had been working near us helped us lift Eldvar’s body off the table he’d been slumped over and onto a stone bed that sat in the open space nearby. We were in the first ‘true’ mine cave in the mountain, and as such, it was also a space used for events and funerals. Perhaps Uncle Eldvar knew exactly what he was doing when he led us here specifically…

We all stood in silence for what felt like decades. Eldvar’s lifeless body now lying before us as if he were just in a gentle slumber.

Eventually, the silence was broken by a rhythmic clanging of axes against the ground.

“Skin made of iron.” Sang one Dwarf.

“Steel in our bones.” Responded another, again, in song.

My brother and I embraced each other and watched over Eldvar together.

“To dig and dig makes us free”.

We weren’t the only ones that responded with the next line. The entire room joined in. In the distance, the clanging of axe against rock had not only returned but was seemingly getting closer.

“Down and down into the deep”.

We didn’t realise there was more to the creed Eldvar had told us earlier. But clearly, a lot of other Dwarves did as far more voices than those we could see had started singing. Their song echoed throughout the whole mountain.

“Who knows what we’ll find beneath?”

The singing had become a roar. The cave walls themselves were joining in. We turned to look at the lights coming in behind us. The entire mountain had come to pay its respects.

“Born underground, grown inside a rocky womb,

The earth is our cradle; the mountain shall become our tomb.”

I tried to dab a tear from my eye, but the wiry hairs on my fingers just irritated it and made it worse. Oh well. I thought. If even the toughest warrior cannot show emotion in the face of loss, why be close to anyone in the first place?

The song picked up in ferocity and volume.

“Face us on the battlefield, you will meet your doom.

We do not fear what lies beneath.

We can never dig too deep.”

My brother and most of the Dwarves surrounding us by now were bawling their eyes out. But the song continued undeterred as it reached its climax.

“Skin made of iron and steel in our bones.

To dig and dig makes us free.

Come on brothers, sing with me!

I am a Dwarf and I’m digging a hole,

Diggy, diggy hole. Diggy, diggy hole.

I am a Dwarf and I’m digging a hole,

Diggy, diggy hole. Diggy diggy hole.

I am a Dwarf and I’m digging a hole,

Diggy, diggy hole.

Digging a hole.”

As the song faded and the axes fell silent again, I thought back to what we’d been talking about with Uncle Eldvar before he brought us down here. My brother and I hadn’t even been back to the mountain for decades, and we’d almost been arguing with him about whether there was even anything for us here. Our world, like most of the rest of the Dwarves of our generation, was the world of Man and Elf now.

Before today, I’d never believed that the old ways of the Dwarves had anything to offer any more. But as we mourned our true father in the company of an entire community that survived and thrived on those old ways, it was clear that Uncle Eldvar’s words earlier were exactly right.

Dwarves these days were about more than just digging holes, but my brother and I were never more of a Dwarf than today. Uncle Eldvar’s final gift was giving us the choice of how to make those ways parts of our lives outside of the mountain.

As the lights faded from mourners leaving the funeral, I gazed upon Uncle Eldvar one last time and swore I’d make him proud by doing exactly that.

“To dig and dig makes us free”.

I picked up my pickaxe, put my arm around my brother and led us back to the daylight of the world of Man and Elf.

(Credits to Simon Lane/Yogscast for the lyrics to Diggy Hole. Yes you just read an entire short story about a stupid song from a Youtube Let’s Play. You’re welcome.)