This is actually an interview with a different persona from chapter one so you don't have to read it first, but please don't let that stop you. The more reviews the merrier.

1.2

Interview taken on12/03/1968

Ddraig on the Dwarven Halls

Good evening… Lieutenant Lecter, isn’t it? Psychiatrist as well? Holy Hel, you must get a lot of money… No, don’t worry, I wasn’t particularly busy. What’s this about, though? My past? Well, I guess you have a right to know.

First things first. I’m a dwarf. And yes, I know I’m six foot nine, but it’s true. Please don’t think of me as naïve or crazy, because it’s definitely true; I mature at a third of the pace of humans, I see in the dark, I can taste the difference between any two metals you care to mention, I’m short-sighted, and I had a fully grown beard by the age of ten. I’m currently fifty-six and I still keep getting stronger. Confused? So was I, for most of my life. I don’t suppose it helps that my father is never around because of work and I never met my mother. I asked my godfather, Hnoror Axethrower, whether I was adopted, when I was about thirty. I can still remember what he told me in answer;

‘Ddraig, I never met your mother. Your father met her on one of his business trips thirty-five years ago. All I know about her is that-’ he paused here – ‘Her whole family were Jotun, mountain giants. You were dropped into our lives as a newly-born dwarf thirty years ago. And no matter what size you are, you’re a dwarf, and your father loves you very much.’

He’s never lied to me before – I know he was telling the truth. And to be fair, none of the dwarf kids treated me any differently for being twice their size. If anything, most of them idolised me.

My dwarf clan was banished underground eight hundred years ago. Why? Because we were supporters of Loki. Now excuse me, but I think that borders on racism. I mean, sure, for them, Loki is the God of Evil, but there’s a reason – i.e., nobody supports him! Read between the lines; he brings about the end of the world because he’s jealous of Baldr getting worshippers and him getting none. Our little clan of dwarves could be the last line between now and Ragnarok!

…That was an exact quote from a speech made by the original head of the clan, Gorlaf Beelightning, to John Sverker, the king of Scandinavia at the time. Sverker’s reaction was slightly less positive than we expected. He threw his shoe at Gorlaf and chased him underground. Typical humans, eh? No offence, of course. The bottom line is, more or less every Scandinavian leader since has hated the dwarves, and they say the current prince – Tandit Smith, grandson of Thor – is the worst yet.

…Then again, it must be said that banishment wasn’t the most gruelling punishment for the dwarves. See, when they did banish us underground, they didn’t actually remember that that’s where we’d be anyway; unless we’re covered by at least five layers of clothing, we turn to stone in the sunlight. Well, I say “we”, but… yeah, ok, I think we’ve established that I’m Special.

And now I should probably tell you a few things about dwarfish tradition. After all, we’ve got a few minutes to burn off talking about us dwarves, surely? Here goes.

The first bit is still about the dwarves-turning-to-stone-in-the-light extravaganza. Like I said, we’re fairly safe above ground so long as we wear six layers of clothing. There’s a fair amount of visible light around underground, too, which means two or three layers down there as well to be safe.

The problem is, or at least was, if a single ray of visible light touches us, we will turn to stone – therefore, something had to be worn on the face, beard and eyes at all times as well. After several years of severe visibility problems, someone discovered Sun Cream. As we soon discovered, most of our bodies are allergic to the stuff – this was thought generally proven after the fourth death. However, probably due to genetics, we eventually found out that the face is completely fine with sun cream. These days, dwarves are generally safe wearing three layers of clothing under the neck, four coatings of sun cream (topped up every twelve hours) on the face, and an iron coating on every hair.

On the subject of hair, it should be noted that dwarf females grow beards as well. This could be thought of as an act of misplaced evolution, because although dwarf beards cane come in very useful (Lecter's note: it was explained to me later that dwarf hair can suck the moisture out of rocks, making it vital when living underground with no other sources of water), it also makes it damn hard to tell females apart from males combined with the three layers of clothing and the fact that it can be very dangerous to cut off any beard hair. Mating rituals generally include meeting a partner, falling in love, and go in to the Lead Room where there was no visible light so that it was safe to undress and find out whether their partner is of the opposite gender or not. About ninety percent of homosexual dwarf partners are the result of severe stubbornness to stay with the partner they choose. The Lead Room is also used for births; baby dwarves are given a male name, but the father will also traditionally give the child a female name, known as the "backup", to be remembered just in case the child grows up to have a vagina.

And finally, dwarven marriage. Basically, it’s a normal Norse ceremony; however, the female doesn’t always take the male’s name. The tradition is that both bride and groom share the name of the most successful and famous family between them, as counted from lore; alternatively, if either member of the couple has performed a heroic task in their life, they may chose to begin a new surname legacy based around that name. There are eight dwarven family names amongst our clan; from the greatest to lowest lore, they are the Axethrowers (my godfather Hnoror’s family), the Lokissens (my family), the Beelightnings, the Elfstranglers, the Irontounges, the Dragonfires, the Thurspunchers, and the Thomases. Hnoror was originally asked to become the clan’s leader, but he refused; my father and Uncle Sven do it. There are about a hundred and twenty dwarves between the eight families.

Anyway, thanks to the help of several dwarves and secret Loki supporters bringing or selling us food, we managed to survive eight hundred years down there. Pretty impressive, really. And I had to go and spoil it.

Yeah, sorry, I should have mentioned that that doesn’t last. Then again, you should probably have guessed that from the fact that I’m here. Want to know how that came about? Alright then. You’ll have to excuse me if I miss anything out.

Ok, I’d woken up. I’d eaten. I’d done my daily sparring with Hnoror, who won, by the way.

Actually, if you can give me another few minutes away from the whole how-I-came-here, I’d really like to talk about Hnoror.

He’s a legend. That’s probably the best word for him. He is, and I mean this sincerely, the only person, mortal or immortal, I would want on my side in any two-on-two fight. Actually, in any fight. If it weren’t for the Axethrowers, us dwarves would have been killed off hundreds of years ago. I’ve seen Hnoror get surrounded by twenty men and beat them all with no scars. There is a legend that, in Hnoror’s prime, Thor – we’re talking the actual god of war – came down from the heavens and challenged Hnoror and his brother Cole to a duel. The legend says that Hnoror thought about it for several seconds and then said the god wouldn’t be good enough competition. And he got away with it.

Another reason he’s famous is that, thanks mostly to him and his wife Billie, nearly a quarter of the clan are Axethrowers. He has thirteen living sons. Dwarf pregnancy cycles are eleven months long and our mating season comes along once a leap year; a total of thirteen kids is impressive.

Enough about him. On with the memories. I’d just lost at sparring with Hnoror, and it was that time of the month; I had to go up to Midgard, upper Earth if you like, and get us some groceries. This is basically my job, or at least way of getting pocket money. I’m the only person who can do it, because I don’t get turned to stone in the light and no mortal can tell me apart from dwarves, as you can imagine. Also, as a half-giant, I’m strong enough to wheel all the food we need home in one afternoon in our push-cart.

After wheeling the cart through the five lead doors and long tunnel that separate us from Midgard, I found myself in the familiar Elfwood Forest. Since I have to come up here about twice a month, I know my way around quite well. The forest is very close to the city port of Helsingborg, where I usually get the food. However, as always, I avoid anyone noticing me by coming out on the road from Halmstad. Sure enough, no-one looked at me as I walked into the town. I turned into Stefan’s butchers, where I got a warm welcome. I usually do; every two weeks I turn up and buy half his huge stock in exchange for enough freshly-mined gold to buy the shop itself, no questions asked. Apparently us dwarves are sending Stefan’s kids to college. Were, rather.

But that’s when the fortnightly routine was broken. Because as I started to wheel the cart back to the road to Halmstad and home, a voice from a side street said, ‘Oy! You!’

I stopped wheeling and turned to the voice’s owner. He winked at me.

‘You look like you get noticed quite a bit,’ he said, talking to a man pushing ten tonnes of meat around a city. ‘How would you like to be able to hide some of that?’

‘You a conman?’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, ok, not the most plausible argument. What if I told you I had a bag you could hide anything in?’

‘Not really convincing me you’re not a conman, here.’

He shrugged and showed me a small black bag with two straps. He reached into it and pulled out two solid doors. ‘Con them, mate.’

I was quite impressed. ‘How does it work?’

‘It meddles with time and space, not sure why. I’ve got two, found them a few years ago. Bottom line is, I only need one, whereas you seem to have a truckload of meat which can be hidden with one of them and what I do need right now personally is cash.’

I considered and threw him a handful of gold. He caught most of it and threw the bag back. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘from the look of it, you’ll be needing a little bit of hiding magic.’

‘Why?’ I asked, despite myself.

He didn’t have to answer, because at that moment, a hissing noise from down the road hissed, ‘Dwarf blood,’ so quietly I thought I’d imagined it. I turned around. There was a slim, tall woman with long blonde hair, in a tight-fitting sort of black exoskeleton thing. She was probably quite attractive most of the time, but I don't really know - the only times ever seen her she's been pulling a face at me as if I'm doing something really disgusting, and the expression really isn't very flattering.

Just in case I had imagined it, I put on a humouring look and yelled, ‘What?’ back.

‘DWARF BLOOD!’ the skinny blonde woman shouted back, and before I could even think, she was running straight at me, growing taller and pulling out a whip with sparks dancing across it as she ran. Her hair seemed to stand on end and hiss.

Demi-god, I thought, gulping. Oh, Hel…

I dropped the cart, grasped the little bag close and ran for my life. I knew for certain that I still wasn’t nearly good enough a fighter to match a daughter of the Æsir. I lost all sense of safety, hearing vicious snarling that seemed to be catching up with me for every step of the journey. I didn’t look back, although as I legged it into Elfwood forest I was sure an electric whipcrack just missed the back of my leg. And I was running down our brilliantly disguised tunnel before I realised that I had just led a dwarf-hating magical being straight into our carefully hidden lair.