Dark Path: Awakening in the Mountains.

I didn't have much time while I fell from orbit, five minutes at most, but the thin soap-bubble of Godstuff™ that had protected me on my ten second journey through hard vacuum, (Don't ask me how I could hear those two...), Kept me safe all the way down. I couldn't see a thing for most of the journey due to the blazing sheath of flame in front of me as the air robed the capsule of speed precipitously, but as I got closer to the ground and started to fall at mere terminal velocity, I could faintly make out the main continent and the archipelago off to the east. I also briefly noticed that there was a second, somewhat smaller, full continent far to the west of the main one, just barely visible at the edge of the planet's curvature. As I got closer I made out a lot of things, large woodlands, vast rivers, several mountain ranges, a lot of land that was a charred and burnt black in one corner of the continent, and another that was a sickly greenish grey, but those would be a problem for future me. all-in-all the continent was more like Pangea than anything else that I could compare it too on earth, there were several patches of "great lakes" large enough that they could have been classified as inland seas, and I wasn't even sure if some of them were fresh water. I was coming down not too-far from one of them but up in the mountains at its eastern edge, not on the shore. as I got closer I realized I was going to land very close to a dwarven city, which was both blessing and curse from my perspective. My new body was roughly the size of a three year old child, minus my incredibly extensible dicks, which could expand so much they increased the air pressure in the capsule to painful levels. I experimented with my new powers a tiny bit, but mostly that was during the fiery part, which was over by now.

As I am watching, this one dwarven city/state came into sharper-and-sharper focus. I'm going to learn it's called "Æthermarch" and specializes in the creation of Liquid Heat by distilling it from magma and the luminiferous Æther a few days from now, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, this city is like, MASSIVE they have this one main gate in the side of one of the mountains that is like, five stories high, and that was pretty impressive to me back then. This thing is easily large enough that I could have fit through it if I'd been Huge sized, but for now I am about as big as a small-to-medium sized dog. Oh, did I mention that the inside of the Godstuff™ bubble is semi-reflective and I can see what I look like in it? Yeah, I'm like some kind of weird poly-morphic cat/monkey-thing with medium blue fur and eyes and when I chose too a ton of variously sized and shaped tentacle-cocks bursting out of everywhere on my body.

Anyhow, I'm falling out of the atmosphere at this point and I think I might be about to smash right into that mountain with the giant door, then I pass over the peak, just barely, some snow gets disturbed by the wind of the capsule's passing on the top of it, and on the other side the mountain range drops down significantly. That was like the Mount Everest of this mountain range, the biggest of the big, so, the rest of these peaks are fairly small by comparison and I'm just sailing along above them, and at this point I realize that the capsule's reshaped itself to be a lot more aerodynamic, and I'm heading down toward a much smaller peak like 20 miles on from there. I miss that one too, not as close a call though, and beyond that is this beautiful pastoral mountain valley, like something you'd see on a postcard about Switzerland. This thing has to go on for about a hundred miles, almost straight as an arrow, just a few twists and turns, and as I look back I can see there's another gate into the mountain on this side, but its smaller, only two stories high. Here's where I fetch up, not just beyond the last peak at that end, but actually at the other end of the valley, in the mouth of a natural cave system.

This is where the bubble disappears with a tiny *Pop* sound and I'm left alone in this dark dank limestone cave that's three stories high, at least. I immediately realize that they intend for this to be some kind of starter base, so I get down on my paws, and start prowling around looking for resources. It doesn't take long for me to find the resource I need most: a brood mother. She's a young dwarven woman, with a baby in a sling on her hip and latched onto one breast, my massively enhanced sense of smell tells me that the baby's a girl too, but that's not going to be relevant for at least 40 years, because dwarves mature slower than humans by about 2-1, so she's a bargaining chip, sure, but not useful like her mother. I know I can't be overly bold here, so I stay in the shadows and try to keep quiet.

I watch them go about their day for a while. Mumsy seems to be a prospector, and her daughter is of-course a baby, which don't do much, but I still try to stay to the shadows and keep an eye on them. she's about 5'4", and has this amazing bright orange beard that goes down to her stomach, but I can tell she' a girl because she has this pair of knockers that must be like F cups or something. It was mid-day when I arrived, and I'm just skulking about looking for bugs or mushrooms, or something to eat while watching them, which I found a few, until around early evening, when mom and daughter both leave the cave and head down to this little hamlet nearby, where I can see mostly dwarves but also a few humans.

The place seems to have five families or so all living in and working in the same rough area, most of them all cuddled together in four large L-shaped buildings around a central square and hemmed in by a tall fence of stone uprights and stacked rock walls about 2/3rds of a human man's body high and with four crude wooden gates at the four roads into the place, but as I watch the dwarf and her daughter conduct their business with the other residents I realize that she doesn't live there, she's living outside this cozy protected arrangement in a tumbled down wreck of a stone walled house a fifteen minutes walk outside this walled enclosure. I've been staying at a distance, using the mountainside and superior eyesight to my advantage to spy on her while she bartered mineral samples from the cave, and as dusk sets in, I make it to her house, and look inside. There's just her and the baby, and she's crying over a locket in which I catch a glimpse of another dwarf's miniature picture. Recent widow, ostracized by society for some reason, so I think at the time, and I wait for her and the baby to go to bed.

Now that night has settled in, I steal into the house through a hole in one wall where a big stone has come loose, and I extend a very long and thin tentacle that I've shaped with a thin metal needle that drips with aphrodisiac venom. I'm so tempted to knock her up, but then I hold back at the last second, a plan forming in my mind. This hot honey doesn't need eighteen more kids, she can't even handle one effectively right now, but she could be a source of food and information if I play her right, so, reluctantly, I decide to scratch her with the aphrodisiac and then leave, giving her pleasant erotic dreams for the night.

That done I head over to the enclosed area. The back yards of all the buildings are full of penned cattle and kine now that night has fallen, sheep and cows mostly, but also some horses. Mushrooms and cave insects don't make much of a meal so I'm hungry, and according to my dentition, I'm an omnivore, but with carnivoristic tendencies. I decline to take out a sheep though, that would be noticed: but where there are sheep and cows, there's also grain, and where there is grain, there are rats and mice. Is it a glamorous job? No. But somebody has to do it, or my human and dwarven sluts starve, and then where would we be, ya know? So I go sniffing about for the grain bins, and not too long later, I find them. Oh, there's rats here for sure, but also some rival cats that I have to steer clear of, especially this one mean-looking tomcat that I think knows somewhere in the back of it's nasty little brain that I'm here to horn-in on the affections of the local women; but its not his queen cats I'm after: its the humanoids that I want. Anyway, I hone in on one particular area where I don't think I'll find any cats at the moment but I can smell some rats, and wander into that room looking for trouble.

Boy howdy do I find it! In the middle of this sheep sheering shed with a grain bin on one side, there's this rat the size of a damn Chihuahua. and the battle is joined!