The light of the early morning sun caught and reflected off of the goggles perched atop the blonde head of the scientist who had emerged from the workshop at the foot of the mountain. He quickly raised a hand to shade his eyes from the rays of light stabbing into them and squinted accusingly at the sun. Lalna turned away from the sun and prepared to begin what would be a long trek away from his workshop towards the almost invisible plume of smoke rising in the distance.
It lay in the direction of a long range of tall snow-capped mountains that rose out of a thick forest of pines that were covered in a similar amount of snow. The forest, which quickly became swamp land, extended away from the mountain almost to the foot of the hill with his foundations. Lalna knew that on the other side of these mountains lay the ocean that separated Tekkitopia from the mainland. He hoped that the not-meteor hadn't landed on the other side of that ocean. It would be so embarrassing if the smoke he was gazing at now was simply smoke ventilation from the dwarves.
Oh right. The dwarves.
He knew that in the tallest mountain there was a large clan of them living and even thriving behind the thick iron doors that blocked the entrance. However he had heard that recently something unheard of had happened. The clan had banished one of their own to live outside of the walls of their mountain home. The reason that could've laid behind this banishment was quite beyond him, but then he didn't know much about them. Who knew with them.
Sudden movement at the edge of the forest caught his eye. Something small and bright orange was moving in his direction at high speed. Just to be on the cautious side Lalna drew the emerald bladed sword from the sheath at his waist. This early in the morning a few of the nightly monsters could not have burnt up in the morning's rays. Especially under the thick foliage of the forest.
However, the longer he watched the approaching orange thing the more unlikely it seemed to be that this was a monster. For one thing it was walking a little too steadily to be one of the undead. Creepers didn't burn in the daylight, but they always seemed to disappear once the sun came up. It was much too tall to be a spider, and they didn't burn in the daylight anyways. They actually became strangely docile, a phenomenon that Lalna had often wanted to investigate.
It did appear to humanoid, at least. Could this be the banished dwarf?
It was certainly short enough.
"Oy! There's no need for that sort of talk!" the dwarf shouted indignantly. Without realizing it, Lalna had saying all of his observations out loud while watching what was now clearly a dwarf. Said dwarf was glaring angrily up at him from underneath an iron helmet with two pointed horns embedded into the sides of it.
When did he get so close? The scientist wondered, sheathing his sword now that it was clear that there would be no need to use it on the dwarf. I'm usually more observant than that.
"Well, it might have something to do with the fact that you aren't as observant as you think you are." the dwarf replied cheekily. He looked like he was going to continue, but instead he stopped and furrowed his bushy eyebrows together. "You do know that you're saying all of that out loud, right?"
"God damn it." the scientist thought, while making a conscious effort to keep the thought inside his head. Lalna spluttered indignantly and reached up to his forehead to adjust his goggles importantly. "Of course I do! What do you think that I'm some kind of an idiot?" The dwarf raised an eyebrow and opened mouth to respond, but before he could Lalna cut him off hastily. "What do you want anyways? I'm a bit busy at the moment."
"Well, so am I," the dwarf responded while taking the leather pack off of his shoulders. He set it on the ground and began rummaging in it, seemingly looking for something. Lalna shifted uneasily from foot to foot, glancing up from the dwarf at the smoke in the distance. "Ah! Here's the little bugger." With that he yanked out a small triangle of metal set on top of and oval and handed it triumphantly to the befuddled scientist. Lalna reluctantly took the offered piece of metal and turned it over a few times examining it before glancing up at the dwarf.
"And what exactly do you want me to do with this?" he questioned, waving it flippantly in the air. "I'm a scientist not a telepa-" Lalna stopped short as his waving of it made something catch his eye. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes as he squinted more closely at the object. He had never seen anything like this before, the circuitry was more complex than any he had ever seen, and yet it was so small...How had they done that? "Where did you get this?" shot Lalna sharply at the ginger, and without realizing it he turned and walked back through the open door of his workshop, dropping his bag next to the door without a second thought. Behind him the dwarf clambered up the steps and followed Lalna over to a worktable.
"Well," said the dwarf peeking over the edge of the table at the device which Lalna was now examining under some device that looked like a cross between a magnifying glass and a table. "I was hoping you could tell me what exactly it is." Lalna merely nodded and failed to notice that the dwarf had avoided his second question, and he continued his examination of the device. It was simply incredible! The complexity of the circuits, under closer examination showed that they were light-years ahead of any of the circuits that he had designed, which were in turn, many years ahead of the devices that they had on the mainland.
"As far as I can figure," the scientist replied after many minutes, finally leaning away from the worktable and running his fingers through his already mussed up hair, "it appears to be a translator of some kind, though how that's possible, I can't imagine." Honeydew, he had introduced himself proudly with a fist to his chest when Lalna hadn't asked for his name, reached for the for the translator and Lalna reluctantly returned it to him. He had used the condenser to make a copy under the pretense of getting a wrench from a chest, though how accurately it had copied the wiring was yet to be seen. He clutched the copy in his pocket. No way was he letting the possibility of such an advancement slip through his fingers.
Meanwhile Honeydew appeared to be busy packing his things back into his bag. "Got to be leaving soon, want to get home before dark." Home before dark? A glance out his window revealed that the sun was already setting and would soon vanish behind the mountains. He'd been sitting for what felt like only a few minutes to him, but what was actually hours. What the dwarf been doing all this time? Upon glancing around, the answer appeared to be raiding his chests and laying out the contents on the floor. He just started to replace some of the removed objects with a grumble when the sound of a door opening made him whirl around.
"Best be off then!" Honeydew called, "Long walk ahead of me. See you when I see you!" Pulling his pack back over his shoulders he started out the door with a wave back to Lalna.
"Wait! You still haven't answer my question!" Lalna shouted after the dwarf who was already further away than he would've thought possible. Upon hearing his shout Honeydew merely turned and waved farewell to the exasperated scientist. Bloody dwarfs. How am I supposed to get answers now? He thought, leaning dejectedly on the doorframe. Doing so he noticed the discarded pack he had left forgotten by the door in his hurry to examine the translator.
He stared at it for a moment before dashing back in to grab a torch and a sword, fully intending to follow Honeydew back and get his questions answered. Unfortunately, by the time he got back to the door, the dwarf was quite out of sight among the trees and the growing dark. In fact he could already see a few mobs sloshing through the water searching for unsuspecting prey.
An arrow shot at him from between the trees and he jumped out of the way. It stuck, quivering, in the wall behind him and he yanked it out of the wood and retreated inside his workshop without a glance at who had fired it. The door slammed shut behind him and he heard the twang of another arrow leaving the bow of a skeletal archer. He peeked out the window to see the offending skeleton lowering its bow at the sight of the firmly shut door. Lalna breathed a sigh of relief when it hobbled away through the murky water.
Seems that he wasn't going to be able to follow Honeydew to get more answers, though now that he thought about the dwarf he hoped that he got back to his home safely. He'll be fine, it was probably still daytime on the other side of the mountain, but Lalna had more critical business to attend to than the welfare of a dwarf. There was Science to be done!
With that he set his bag and the torches aside and pulled a chair up to his worktable. Thankfully the translator he had alchemized seemed nothing if not identical to the real thing, but whether that was true would have to be answered under closer examination of the device. And so he sat, nearly perfectly still, or so it would have looked to an outside viewer. His mind was flying a million miles a minute, new ideas and plans sparking off like firecrackers, and not even one of his thoughts turned to sleep.
For he knew what awaited him there.