“Are they alive? Dwarves have big lungs, you know, not just big livers. And stomachs.”

“Helmsman, eyes forward!” a deeper voice snapped. “There may be some stragglers about who don’t know their leaders have left the field.”

“By Mekkatorque’s mustache,” a third voice piped, “That was ugly.”

Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer rolled over and expelled what felt like several pints of salt water from his lungs. He opened what felt like frozen eyelids to see his wife climbing to her feet, ignoring her violent shivering despite the thick blankets wrapped around each of them.

“Where are we?” Ringo coughed, trying for all the dignity he could, with snot dripping into his beard and mustache. “Ah donnae remember aught but yer hands pullin’ us free o’ th’ battle.”

“Not the real battle,” the human commander said. He wore the insignia of an Alliance High Commander and of the legendary 7th Legion. “The X-2 Pincer was headed north on another mission when we heard the distress call when another Alliance submarine was under attack. We arrived at the tail end of a battle between our forces and the naga, and have been rescuing any survivors that we can.”

“Reckon we stumbled into that same battle as well,” Beli said, leaning forward over the shoulders of a gnomish helmsman. “We were comin’ ta see the new islands when we were attacked by … whatever that thing was.”

“The Earthen Ring survivors call him Ozumat, Fiend of the Dark Below,” the commander nodded. “A bit prone to melodrama, the shaman are.”

“Did ye rescue any o’ them Earthen Ring, then?” Ringo glanced at the wet streaks from the hatch in the floor where the crew had apparently dragged the pair and Frostmaw from the black waters. “It’s them we were really comin’ ta see.”

“It’s the king,” Beli said, her teeth chattering. “He’s been turned to stone, you see.”

“Aye,” one of the gnomish sailors said, hopping down from his station. “Follow me.”

“Ye know,” Ringo said, as he squelched after the gnome, deeper into the bowels of the ship, “Ah never did understand it: Why does Gnomeregan have a navy at all? Ye’re a landlocked nation.”