Ultimately, there is one other issue I have with dwarfkind and the environment they inhabit. This issue has been raised by others, but many seem to accept it as simply something that exists and cannot be changed. I particularly despise the views of those that see the issue and decide to not question it. Those types should realise they have nothing to add to the conversation and simply remove themselves from it. And remove themselves from Arda, for our world shall be made richer by their lacking.

  Worldbreaking shifted continents. That is known. Worldbreaking raised lands out of the ground and submerged others. That is known too. Mountain ranges likewise were pulled up and others were pushed down. At this point, it is easier to list out places that were not affected by Worldbreaking than those which were created or destroyed by it. The Dwarves likewise retreated to their Holds. Some were buried underground, some were cast out of the ground, some survived. They typically killed any outsiders on sight. Magicians and Divines with world-altering powers were simply put down by their great machineries if they came close.

  This is all known history.

  And it is known history that the Highways have always existed. They are not knew discoveries, the dwarves have long lived underground.

  Thus, the problem should be obvious.

  How is a network of tunnels large enough to stack entire fortresses in still standing after an epoch such as Worldbreaking? It would be difficult enough to accept if there were just these scattered pieces of the ancient Highways that had been scattered across Arda by Worldbreaking. It is impossible, downright impossible down to even being provable with mathematical formulae, that the Highway survived Worldbreaking. When a web is fractured, it does not get rebuilt in the exact same fashion. Not ever.

  Thus, I have to stand here as the bearer of bad news once again. At this point, I have come to the conclusion that the Highways are not transport links in foundation but have merely been adapted for it. The secretive nature of the dwarves raises questions too, for I refuse to believe that they do not know. It would be one thing if the tunnels simply existed for thousands of years, being older than humanity. Worldbreaking occurred only two centuries ago. We have examples of civilizations forgetting how to build great works of engineering but there is no such thing as civilizations simply not being to recall how their land came to be. It is not as if the Dwarves are some backwater who rely on oral tradition, they can read and they write in stone of all things.

  There is only one conclusion that any sane, logical mind can make regarding Worldbreaking. Any other answer is simply the equivalent of sticking one’s head into the sand and pretending that the sky does not exist: The Highway network is ancient. Worldbreaking destroyed the Highway network. Something recreated the Highway network.

  At this point, I will be certain in my claim that it was not the half-men themselves.

  - Excerpt from “The Need to batter Information out of Stone.” Written by Goddess Kassandora, of War. It published in the early Reconstruction, after the dissolution of the Reconstruction Authority, when Divinity and mankind’s leaders debated what to do with the Dwarves after their failed invasion of Arda’s surface.

  “Obsidian.” Olephia said and watched another star open up below her as she dug. The syllables found the particles about to crack and pushed them over the edge with energies from the Goddess of Chaos. Suddenly, the darkness ripped away by a blinding light that lit up the entire bottom of the Hold, all the way up to where Iniri was stood with her roots that acted as the buffer and protected the city above from Olephia’s magic. Fires roared upwards as the air itself combusted, the world shook for a brief moment and then stopped rumbling.

  Olephia searched for another word. She could repeat of course, but it was a waste. Rarely did she get times where she was allowed to get away with speaking so much. She wanted to see what the entire dictionary tasted like. “Amphibian.” Another set of three syllables streaming out of her mouth streamed into another momentary star at the bottom of the world. Only the start had been difficult, when there was this much distance between Iniri’s barricade and Olephia, there was no need to be cautious. Speed was the name of the game, so they needed to go as fast as possible.

  “Trebuchet.” Speed was the name of the game, but that did not mean they threw caution to the wind. Four syllable words were still off the table. Olephia hummed to keep herself in the air and watched the fires subside. Even now, after what felt like forever, there was still more waters down there. The dwarves had actually gone ahead and poured a small sea’s worth of liquid down into the bottom of their Hold. It was black, almost to the consistency of custard with all the contaminants it had inundated itself with from their storerooms and machinery. “Antelope.” That was a good one, Olephia liked any word that ended in a long and flowing syllable. Those were always fun to say. A dozen more vocalizations, a dozen more suns were fired off, with a half-minute time in between. “Reaction. Destruction. Nuclear.” This one was almost too soft for what it was. Defined syllables were better. “Energy. Animal. Sciences.” Terrible word, downright terrible. Whoever thought to make it a plural should have been removed from history. “Pollinate. Terrible. Offering. Dentistry.” Eww. She hated how that one sounded. “Multiple. Flowering.” Whatever, she knew what flower sounded like already and this was just the addition of a suffix. Just generic vocabulary, that one.

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  Each time another star. Each time another surge of light. Each time another crash of heat. Each time another rumbling shockwave and each time another dose of radiation. Surely at this point, she would kill men just by standing besides them. Olephia could feel her own skin actually going warm from the sheer onslaught brought on by herself. That was a new sensation indeed. She stared down at the waters, not even bothering to scan the sides of the Hold anymore. Deeper it went, so deeper she would. Full speed ahead.

  Olephia tried to think of yet another new word. She didn’t like repeating herself but at this point, she felt as if she had gone through an entire dictionary. Oh? That was a word. She silently counted out the syllables on her fingers. Dic-Tion-Ahh… Too many, she wasn’t willing to see what would happen local geology if she said four syllables. She let out a deep breath through her nose in disappointment. What was she right now?

  “Janitor.” Olephia said it out loud and another annihilating star opened up below her. There had been times when she thought she would never get enough of her power. Now though? It really felt like cleaning up. Atoms collided, crashed, split open, reacted, more gave way under the power of the Goddess of Chaos. More and more the energy from below poured up, above Olephia until the star began to retreat.

  The heat came first, Olephia let out a deep breath as she felt herself be warmed up. Stone began to disfigure, sharp points weakened and curled and then shattered as the shockwave of a star exploding followed. More buildings cracked and shattered above her although it didn’t really matter at this point, Klavdiv had once reached forever into the depths, it was said to have great statues and castles on every floor. Maybe there were other tunnels and maybe the small offshoots could be reclaimed but Olephia had dug a mining shaft in the only way that she could.

  A clean pillar of emptiness with its walls slightly bulbous, Olephia’s suns had not been uniform after all. In sections, it got thinner, in a few spots, there were even remaining buildings or platforms to which bridges had connected to. Not anymore.

  Olephia waited for the poisoned waters to drain down as she started to hum and bring herself even lower. Immediately, the stone around her began to dark from the sheer heat emanating out of the Goddess of Chaos. It cracked, it boiled and curled under the radiation emitting from her. Every few moments, a flash of red lightning would crash out of her body and leave a black mark on the closest piece of stone.

  But her mind was focused on Klavdiv now. It would make a painting. The Goddess of Chaos slowly floated lower through the air as if she was sinking at a snail’s pace through viscous liquid. There were three Klavdivs now, the smallest, right at the top, that still had light and life. The second, below that, that was an empty city. Now a ruin for its structure could stand ten thousand years before the demon of disrepair came to inhabit it, but just empty. A monument of scale to the grandeur of a civilization that no longer existed. And below that, there was Olephia’s Klavdiv. An empty shaft that had been carved out by the Goddess of Uncreation as she went about destroying the waters that had rendered the Hold uninhabitable.

  Some would call it waste, Olephia only a saw a painting it.

  She slowly shifted even lower, her hum grew louder and faster, the sparks of crimson energy became a hue around her. If there were winds, they would start curling around into a storm around the Goddess right now, but there were no winds. The temperature rose as did the amount of light emitted by Olephia. The Goddess of Chaos finally smiled as her eyes saw not more darkness, but shadow.

  It had been reached.

  The bottom of Klavdiv, maybe even the deepest point in the world. The only thing that would compare would be maybe the most isolated and unexplored ocean trenches. She looked up and got another realisation for a painting to make. The Goddess of Chaos, the annihilator of creator, standing in a point where all life was above her. The scene practically made itself. Olephia’s hum took on a joyous tone as she thought of how to make the painting so that it would capture the scene.

  Her eyes jumped to more rock. There was something almost disappointing about it. The rock certainly had a different texture and shade to the material that mountains were made out of, but… Well, it was still rock. Just rock that happened to sit below Klavdiv. There were no grand veins of diamonds, nor any glowing ancient metals. It was just… rock. Stone.

  Olephia smiled to herself. How comically normal. She turned back around to look around and her eyes caught the way immediately. A huge controlled that had been blocked off. Her hum got even louder, air started to combust in random locations, stone shifted and broke down under her energies. The light got powerful enough to illuminate the very bottom of Klavdiv although maybe it was better to describe it as the very bottom of a slate that had been wiped clean. The only markings in the stone were small, dwarf-sized tunnels that would have led to private homes and a few mineshafts.

  And a massive entrance. Olephia stared down at the huge entrance of the barricaded tunnel and then back up. Miles above her, Iniri’s barrier of wood that was protecting Klavdiv from the annihilation Olephia brought on was beating out flames. Flaming roots retreated or slithered or formed carapaces of sap and fresh bark over itself to stop the flames from devouring further. Olephia looked back to the hole. Back to Iniri’s root. Back to the hole.

  Surely it was impossible. Surely…

  She took a tentative step forwards, her eyes analysing and tracing the lines that filled the hole. Rugged and sharp, with jagged edges, as if they were tiny canyons of stone. Yet it was not stone. The Goddess of Chaos looked down at the poisoned waters of the dwarves. She had reached the bottom of Klavdiv. Down there, the structures and decorations had ended. It was just a quarry with a few ponds of the terrible, poisoned waters that the dwarves used to flood the World Core that had been leftover. Olephia would clean them up if needed, maybe the scientists would want some.

  So then...

  Her eyes went back to the massive entrance. Was that the path? Her gut instinct said it was. It was grand enough, there were remains of a grand decorated archway where her annihilating star had not quite expanded to. The dwarves did say it was at the bottom too. She looked down at the stone. And that obviously was just raw rock and not more of Klavdiv’s structure. Although any number of the multitudes of entrances to caves could have been the route to the World Core. She thought of breaching it. If it had been just stone, she would breach it. Just save everyone the trouble of needing to remove rubble. But this?

  No.

  This would have to be reported first.

  That entrance, to wherever it was, had been overgrown with wood.