Chapter 2: Dvergr, Danger, and Boom Sticks

The girl disappeared through the door portal. Huygens wrenched the glass doorknob off while the scarlet flash flickered and died, showing only the shadowy wooden steps curving down from the attic. He could hear in the distance the girl’s parents rousing and calling out,starting to race up the stairs.

To his left, a sickly green glow seeped through the seams of the closet door.

The frame began to rattle.

Once.

Twice.

Then the door burst inward, slamming hard against the wall.

They came through it.

Four of them.

Short, broad, and armored- dwarf-like, but nothing out of storybooks. Each wore a wide-brimmed miner’s cap of dull metal, the rims catching and bending the bedroom light. Their chests were plated in bronze, rounded like shields, etched with tight spirals of runic script that seemed to turn if you looked too long.

Their boots were tall and dark with grease, their limbs braced in metal that gleamed in hard edges as they moved. On each of their backs hung a blunderbuss-long, heavy, and far too intricate to be mistaken for anything ordinary.

They stepped into the room as one. A practiced battle squad who didn’t rush or hesitate, but instead claimed the ground before them.

Huygens sagged, his strength finally giving way as he dropped to one knee.

He did not try to rise again.

Time- for him- had run out.

The only clean-shaven dwarf marched past the others, who had formed a rough half-circle around the tweed man. From beneath his chest plate he drew an object the size and shape of a metronome and slammed it into Tink’s nightstand, knocking her Mickey Mouse clock onto its side with a startled clatter.

A dial at the base clicked as he twisted it- once, twice, three times and no further. 

A Jacob’s ladder of blue-green lightning sprang to life between its prongs, fluttering like a trapped spark. Then a pulse- an emerald ripple- rolled outward from the nightstand, washing across the walls, the bed, the door.

And through them.

The room did not change.

Everything beyond it did.

On the stairs, Violet and Edmund Masterson froze mid-stride, mouths open in the shape of Tink’s name. Outside the attic window, an owl hung suspended against the moon, its wings fixed in a single, silent beat. The wind itself had been caught and stilled, leaves held motionless as though painted into place.

Inside the room, the clock ticked.

Outside it, time did not.

“Where is it?” the one he knew as Volkrim growled. His full reddish-mud black beard rattled with the copper rings deep in the hair as if they sprouted from his chin.

Huygens stared daggers into the hate-filled eyes of the Dvergr,

“Two minutes!” chimed out the bare-faced Dvergr. 

Volkrim turned his head. “Ivik? Only two?”

Ivik looked at the artefact ticking away. “We didn’t have time to charge it properly.”

A handlebar moustached dwarf sidled next to Volkrim and whispered. “This room won’t stay in stasis long.”

Volkrim’s pudgy hand grabbed Huygens’ white collar and drew that wheezing man forward. “Where. Is. It?!” He growled menacingly.

The tweed man shook free from the grasp and looked down to the floor. His arm quivered, bracing as he laughed hoarsely.

“Where you’ll never find it.”

“Come now, Huygens,” hissed Handlebar. “You don’t have to do this. It doesn’t belong to you.”

With a herculean effort, the tweed man snatched his fallen bowler from the ground, carefully dusted it, and set it smartly on his head on a jaunty angle. He struggled against the doorframe trying- and failing- to push himself upright.

“It belongs not to you, either,” he said and looked over all four of them. “You… you Dvergr better get used to being the last.” Swallowing, Huygens fastened one of the buttons on his vest with trembling hands. “I took an oath.”

The Dvergr with mutton chops roared and shoved Volkrim aside.

In one motion, he tore the blunderbuss from his back and snapped the curved hammer forward.

The weapon came alive with a rising whirr.

Then it fired.

A jagged surge of crackling light leapt from the barrel and struck Huygens square in the chest, fast as lightning, loud as tearing metal.

For a single, impossible instant, he remained where he stood.

Then his form broke.

Not collapsed. Not thrown-

broken.

His body thinned into a wavering outline of smoke, as though something had erased the substance beneath it. The shape of him held for a heartbeat… and then unraveled, the last wisps curling away into nothing.

“Vornk! You slag head! What are we going to do now?” Volkrim grabbed his brother’s blunderbuss and tried to twist it from his grasp

Mutton-chops frowned miserably and jerked the rifle out of his brother’s hand. He re-slung it behind him growling. “He wouldna told ya anything.”

Handlebar shook his head, smiling maliciously. “You didn’t give us much of a chance of finding that out, now did you?”

“Less than a minute!” called out Ivik with rising alarm.

Handlebar shook his head, his smile never wavered. “We’re not getting caught here because of Vornk.”

Mutton-chops glowered. “Push me again, Varric!”

Volkrim twisted a copper loop at the bottom of his beard. “Enough both of you. We need a way to locate whoever was here. They have the-”

The object on the dresser sputtered out, sparking twice as it died. Ivik, the smooth-faced, scooped up the time collector and placed it in his satchel under his breast plate.

In an instant, the world outside Tink’s bedroom returned to life. The owl flew across the moon’s face. The wind returned in a roar against the window, and Tink’s parents scrambled up the attic staircase shouting in alarm, seeing intruders in their daughter’s bedroom. 

Volkrim slammed the heavy oak door shut and hissed to his brothers. Varrick and Vornk shoved the desk against the door knocking the radio set flying. Ivik dragged Tink’s bed, barricading against the pounding from the other side.

“Tink!” Violet wailed.

“Let! Us! In!” Edmund hammered his shoulder with all his might against the stuck fast entryway barrier.

The Dvergr glanced for exits. The Mastersons’ frantic hammering shook the door, threatening to splinter it from its hinges. Each took position against it, holding it fast, waiting for Volkrim’s order.

But the full bearded dwarf was looking at the radio set on the floor. It flashed and crackled in the battle for the door. He leaned down and lifted the headset to his ear.

“Tink?!” The voice whispered from beyond. “What’s that weird glow from your bedroom?”

The door snapped in the centre as Edmund’s shoulder found a weak point in the panels. 

“Get away from her!” he shouted in full paternal fury.

Volkrim’s lips pursed into a sharpen-toothed grin. His hand reached for his pocket in  his trousers. He looked at the closet door and cautiously closed it. From his hand he drew an extended doorknob that looked like a clockwork toy. It spun and whirred as he pressed it in place on the closet.

“We go!” he shouted to his brothers as Edmund and Violet snatched at them through the battered attic door. The four Dvergr readied and Volkrim twisted the knob, as eldritch emerald light burst from behind the door. He wrenched the closet door open and the four brothers ran into the pulsing light. Volkrim snapped the doorknob off the door and disappeared just as Violet squeezed through the barricade.

“Tink!” she cried in confusion and helplessness. Edmund lifted the bed looking for his daughter cowering underneath- finding nothing.

The room was a wreck.

And Tink was nowhere to be seen.