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He's not concerned. The tiny sapient being shines his gold coins, and replaces them in his chest. He is rich, but this means little to him. He simply collects, and enjoys, and sells, and collects more.
But it nears the time when humans go to sleep, and he goes to gather things they call, collectively, “private property.” Normally by that time the farmer has returned.
Time doesn't mean much more to him than the passing of sun into moon phase. And it is dark outside, and he feels it.
They are not back yet. He has not heard the panting at the ladder that signals their physical distress and also triumph that they're able to climb at all, nor has he heard the distinctive 'ding' that they always make when they ascend via the elevator humans put in so long ago.
He polishes another gold coin.
What if the shadows have her?
The gold coin flips to the ground.
Dwarf gathers all his bombs, and he moves towards the elevator with his heavy load in tow. She'd mentioned 60. He had 60 floors to guess on, and he really didn't like that. Perhaps she hadn't eaten. Perhaps she had simply gotten hungry and passed out. Maybe early on. He could hope.
But a sensation of dread and anger filled him at the thought that, more likely, she was on a floor with those dreaded brutes. And those spirits. Ghosts, he could handle. They cried, and he took care of them and stole their essence.
But the void spirits. Their screams tore into his mind, reminded him of times he'd rather forget. Or wars that no one truly won. Wars that still tore a hole in his heart, and left that Krobus in the sewer also affected.
Not that he cared.
He delved. He dispatched with ghosts with a hammer and bombs, and he mostly ignored the slimes. Fighting was not his game. Blowing things up until they rained valuable ore? That was what he lived here for.
It lacked some appeal that night.
Floor 70.
Skeletons provided a nice crunch when they blew up. Even if he didn't kill them with a regular bomb, they stilled just long enough for him to get away. Usually, he was even able to avoid their nasty leg tossing.
But it annoyed him enough, and he was frustrated enough, that when one hit him with a tibia, he grabbed it, and beat it into the dust with its own leg, then blew up said dust. And the leg.
Floor 80.
He didn't like this. He didn't like them. He didn't want this.
Why did he care?
This human wasn't his human. He didn't even know their name, nor did he care.
For all he knew, they were secretly with the shadow brutes, and this was all a ruse to force him into the mines where he never tread.
He slammed his heavy hammer into a Squid Kid before it could even shoot out its rays of death.
The dwarf hated the mines, he hated the farmer, he hated humans, and he definitely hated--
He could hear them. Gurgles of language, like slime oozing and screeching. He hated them. All of them.
“What do we do with it?”
“It's a human.”
“But what do we do?”
They had her. On the 89th floor, he listened to them discuss. Plans, as if they understood anything.
“We keep her. We found her.”
“Take the jewels.”
“She has good ones, I never get these.”
It was against the rules to fight them. It was against the rules to attack. He wouldn't break the rules, on pain of the Wizard coming and doing whatever it was a Wizard could do. But neither would they. He could hope.
He stepped into the shimmer of the torch. “She's mine.” There were four of them. He had misjudged how many. This was definitely too many. He could bomb them, but she would not last. And that was still fighting. If any got away...
They had such strange eyes. He couldn't always tell when they looked at him.
But he was almost certain they did. All of them. Behind masks, and from within shadow bodies that shouldn't exist, they stared, he just knew.
“She's ours.”
“She's mine.” Another step forward. He looked braver than he understood himself to be, he knew this. Bravery was stupidity, shined to a nice glow. He was not stupid. Why was he here? Here got dwarves like him killed.
“Prove it. Prove your claim.”
What had she said. What had she shown him? Human ritual. Sea shell necklace. 'Marriage.' Bonding. “Check in her bag. She has a blue shell on string. It's for human mating rituals.”
“So what?”
“I gave it to her.” He can lie to them and they won't know the distinctive fluctuation of his voice, the way it holds steadier than it would. The way his mouth curls. The way his eyes take in more light to satiate his need to take in the situation and plot ways out while he lies.
Shock, anger, and every other expression he would know on his own people didn't register on their faces. To him, at least.
One stepped forward, wearing a mask, clearly a leader. “Then we can't hurt her?”
“If you do, you break the agreement. The treaty.”
“Then she broke it.”
Oh, that was an unfortunate complication.
They advanced.
“She isn't 'married' to me yet.”
“Then she's ours. And she'll pay for her slaughter.”
Hmm.
They advanced.
He grabbed a cherry bomb, lit it, and tossed it into the air. It exploded before it reached the ground, but it provided a distract. He grabbed her, hauled her over his shoulders, and ran off towards a ladder the bomb uncovered.
They chased, but he moved immediately to the elevator, and mashed the buttons to go up.
Howls, howls, like those that had brought him to the sewers on that night he'd met 'Krobus'.
He hated those howls. He stayed up in the mines where he didn't have to hear them, most of the time.
She grumbled something.
“You'll repay me for all 27 bombs I used. And that cherry bomb.” He pulled out a life elixir. “And this.”
She drank it, sip by sip, until her lids peeled back enough, and she seemed aware enough, that she tipped the bottle and guzzled it. “What did you say?” She asked, her throat hoarse.
“I said, you owe me. I almost reignited a war.”
“I thought the Wizard stopped that.”
“Well. He wasn't here.”
She did what humans would call a smile.
He smiled as well. “You owe me 18,500G”
The smile was no longer a smile, but the very opposite. Her body was stiff as a boulder. “What?”
“Which is just materials. I also expended a great deal of time and effort finding you.”
“Oh, my hero, gouging me.”
“Who else would have found you?” He focused his gaze on her, and stepped closer. “I could always give you back.”
“I'll have to start counting all the gifts I've given you. Let's see, 7 emeralds, 16 rubies, multi-geodes...” She counted, and proceeded to do the math.
He smiled, though she never seemed to know when he did that.
“I suppose your debt can be forgiven.”
“Oh, now that I'm ahead, you want to forgive?” She smiled in a looser way, and her arm flapped into his back. “I knew you'd come around.”
“I do. I have. You're an excellent negotiator.” He felt relief. Strange, satisfying. He wanted to shout, but he was not angry. That was where shouts went. This was just a loud feeling.
He wondered, idly, if having said they were married, or were to be married, meant they were. He would have to learn about that. If so, he had some good news, and some bad news, about where in the mines she was allowed to go.
He would certainly feel better if she didn't go there.
Decided, he would tell the Wizard first, and see what the options were.
He didn't want to start another war up, after all. Not even for someone who dealt as shrewdly, and with as much good humor and taste, as this strange human.