Orfal opens his eyes and takes a deep breath to clear his cloudy mind. This is the second time today his spirit has returned to his physical body and he hopes it remains the last.
The book's spirit left Orfal's body crouched and it was not a pleasant feeling to have on his return. As Orfal stands up his joints crack, creating noise akin to tree branches snapping. Orfal starts to become light headed as his blood flows through his relaxed limbs unimpeded. His foot stomps forward to catch himself from collapsing and he shakes his body to loosen up.
Orfal then begins to examine his refined body. His skin looks clean and unblemished, like that of a royal clansmen. His body fat is gone and muscles now protrude outward like a veteran warrior. Orfal does a few flexes in admiration of his new self then pauses at the realization that he feels too comfortable here.
Of all the visual changes in Orfal's refined body it's the unseen ones that surprise him the most. The heat and pressure inside the refractory chamber is no longer tearing apart his body. It now feels more like he is standing in a sauna while also receiving a relaxing massage.
'Is it possible to become this strong from punching yourself?' Orfal thinks to himself. 'Never mind that, I need to get out of this room first.'
Orfal looks over at the blue diamond waste chamber attached to the refractory. The substance inside has risen from halfway to about six tenths full. In the spirit void Orfal put it together that his drunken self stumbled inside the refractory chamber below the boiler room. In his heart he again swears off drinking liquor.
Orfal remembers to pick up the crafting journal and empty potion bottle. Both these things were found inside the chest that is now burnt to a crisp. This draws in more unanswered questions as to how the chest appeared here in the first place, but at this point he has been through so much today he doesn't care.
Orfal starts to walk towards the step ladder then pauses and looks up at the ceiling. The axe that failed to cut through the potion's magic seal was still embedded in there.
"If Sindri wills it maybe the thing will fall down before my voyage on this vessel ends." Up the ladder Orfal climbs, returning to his duties as a coal worker.
-----
Above the refractory room was the boiler room. A dwarf stood in front of the furnace alone shoveling coal to keep the engine alive. Usually the machinery made the room quite loud to the point that nothing else could be heard but today all the surrounding engineers could hear the spiteful swearing of this coal worker who's missing his shift partner.
"And if I ever catch that lazy sack of troll snot I will bash him in the face with this shovel till his own mother wouldn't recognize him," rants the angry coal worker.
At this time Orfal is walking into the furnace room after pondering over an excuse for his absence. He thought up a pretty good excuse and started his brilliant delivery, "Hey sorry I am late I had a bad case of--" Orfal's words are cut short when a shovel hits him in the face. He falls down holding his nose.
"If my arms weren't so numb I would keep bashing your nose in! You can finish the rest of the shift today on your own, I need a drink." says the worker as he storms off.
Orfal picks himself off the ground while the worker is storming off to the mess hall. Orfal cracks his neck to the side, fixing the damage the shovel caused. He is shocked that the worker hit him with a shovel, but more so at the fact that it didn't really hurt.
"Feels a bit numb but other than that I really do think that book made me tough as gold," Orfal mutters to himself.
He then picks up the shovel and gets to work, finding it quite enjoyable this time, almost like he is in an unstoppable trance. Even the soft crunching sound of the shovel grinding into the coal gives his mind a sense of peace. This state of tranquility is greatly preferred over the chaos he has experienced the past few days. Fleeing the colony after polluting it with the smell of sewage. Tricked into doing free labor for dundrid. Then whatever strange near death experience he went through in the refractory chamber.
Orfal finds himself at a point of reflection that he needs to make some changes in his life.
Every time Orfal tosses coal into the fire and receives a burst of heat in response, his skin seems to glisen in envy as if it is jealous of the coal. At first he was too focused on his life's reflection to notice but soon all his thoughts were consumed with the desire to reach out and touch the flames. Before Orfal realizes it his hand stretches out and almost inside the flames.
"Watcha doing with yer hand lad?" asks a dwarf standing behind Orfal.
Orfal snaps out of his trance and retracts his hand that was entering near the furnace.
"Ah nothing, just burning off a wart,' replies a flustered Orfal.
"You'd burn off a lot more than a wart if you moved that hand any further. Anyways, your shift ended half an hour ago. I've just been enjoying the extra rest since you didn't want to stop shoveling. By the looks of it though you should stay away from fire for the rest of the day."
Orfal hands over his shovel to the dwarf then heads off to the mess hall. He walks past the door of the refractory and pauses as he feels the same allure from moments ago urging him to enter it again.
'Nah if I want to get hammered I'll be doing it the dwarven way.'
Orfal picks up his steps and hurries off towards the mess hall to drink.
----
-Midgard: North Pole, Dwarven Protector's Hidden Lair
Austri and Sudri are busy checking out the mana readouts on the control panels. Earlier they awoke to the room's alarm. After shaking off the side effects of being in stasis they both walked over to the alarm and deactivated it. Investigating the reason that activated it they both got excited and proceeded to validate the instruments readings.
On the other side of the room Vestri is tied to a chair while Nordri is interrogating him.
"Where did you send our stuff to Vestri? I know you took my book. What, did you spot some young dwarfy you want to impress? If you aren't going to tell me then I will have to start feeding you these polar bear droppings." Nordri says while waving some frozen feces in front of Vestri's face.
"Ahh knock it off already you clowns and get over here to help us," snaps an annoyed Sudri.
Nordri turns towards Sudri and replies. "Oh, today you decide to stop caring about your precious 'Ale of the Gods' Sudri? Before when i took a taste of some you nearly cut off my--"
"All of you come look at this!" Shouted Austri over Nordri's rant.
Sudri turned around to look at Austri's screen while Nordri appeared on the other side of Austri within the blink of an eye.
Both dwarfs stare where Austri's finger is pointing until the screeching of a wooden chair against the metal floor breaks their attention. The three dwarfs turn around to see Vestri trying his best to slide the chair he's tied to towards the trio. Sudri lets out a sigh and throws a hatchet at the ropes cutting them all before it's blade embedded itself right between his legs.
A cold sweat appears on the other three dwarfs' backs as they dare not imagine the pain that hatchet could have caused if it landed just an inch higher.
"Now get over here Vestri and stop making such a racket, and don't think for a second I have let you off from what you did," says Sudri in a stern cold voice.
Once Vestri's hesitant legs walk over to join the others, Austri clears his throat and begins explaining, "Midgard is clearly generating mana again, but at the same time it's connection to Yggdrasil is still broken. We have to assume Midgard is no longer a dead realm but has mysteriously come back to life."
"It is more accurate to say Midgard is evolving from a realm into a cosmo," speaks a dark voice behind the four dwarves.
Nordri bursts out into laughter at the preposterous statement and replies, "Hah like that could ever happen."
Suddenly without flinching all four dwarves react to the unknown voice by drawing weapons and attacking the visitor behind them.
Nordri cleaves his double bladed war-axe down at the dark figure's chest.
Vestri shoots off a scatter-shot round from his blunder buster at the figure's head.
Austri swings two dwarven war axes at the figure's legs.
Sudri throws hatchets at the figure's arms.
Not a breath of time passed between Nordri's last spoken word to the end of each dwarf's attack. All the while a smirk is shown on the figures face as he raises his hands in the air, drawing a rune: ᛉ
Mana starts to gather quickly at the four points of the rune then it instantly transforms into a magic shield that blocks all the attacks. The glow from the magic shield lights up the face of the mysterious figure and the four dwarves immediately drop to their knees shouting, "King Askr!"
Askr releases the magic shield and replies, "Arise my old friends, it is good to see you again".
There is a moment of silence as the dwarfs glance at one another, reassuring they aren't the only ones witnessing a ghost returning from the past.
Nordri is the first to stand and voice the question on each of their minds, "Are you a specter? Why have you come to haunt us after you died forty thousand years ago?"
The other three dwarfs stand and start examining Askr's body as if they expect him to spirit away in the blink of an eye.
Askr just smiles and proclaims his response to the curious four, "I never died, just stopped living in the body you four crafted me into, but that is a story for another time. My spirit has been trapped in a slumber but it's awoken now with her arrival. Midgard is about to be born again and I need your dwarves help to protect it."
Each of the dwarfs recites their protector's pledge to Askr to show their loyalty has not been lost to time. Once they finished Vestri interrupted the joyous reunion with a thought that started to bug him, "Askr you said you woke up from 'her arrival' but who is this person you are referring too?"
When Askr hears the question he does not hesitate to summon a high quality raven stone, crushes it into powder then blows the residue into the air above the group.
"See for yourself," replies Asker as he gestures up towards the air. Everyone gazes up at the swirling stone dust as an image appears within it.
The image shows a vast ocean somewhere on Midgard with a storm beginning to form. The storm proceeds to call down thunder the size of whales then follows up with summoning twisters as large as mountains. The once peaceful ocean has become a nightmare for the greatest of sailors. At the eye of the storm a void crack forms inside the firmament and a large severed draconic arm attached to a shield the size of a continent falls through the crack.
The dwarfs are stunned by the scene before them, but they become even more shocked by what Askr says next.
"The beholder of my heart and mother to my race, my queen Embla has returned."
It's one thing to see the ghost of a person thought to be dead return, but another thing for a person who was brutally murdered in front of you to also return. The dwarfs still suffer the guilt of failing to protect Embla from the gods' betrayal, an event that eventually led to Midgard's separation from Yggdrasil. The dwarfs are trying to wrap their heads around all this new information when again it's Nordri who speaks up, "Where was she? I didn't notice anything other than the severed arm."
"The shield." Askr points out.
"Yes I saw the shield too but where was Embla?" Nordri asks again.
"I was inside the shield," says a female voice that appeared behind the group.
All the dwarfs draw their weapons again but halt upon seeing the smile on the second visitor's face.
"Blast it, you pair need to stop sneaking up on us like that," grumbles a frustrated Nordri.
Nordri's words fall on empty ears as Embla and Askr are too busy embracing each other in a reunion that was thought to never happen again.