After dinner Kildur took the boy for a walk, along the hallways and machine rooms. They talked about their sick mother a bit, and as a distraction Kildur explained to him how several of the more exciting machinery worked. The dwarven leader had a rather fearsome appearance with his fiery red beard and his short broad stature. He reminded Kyell of a rock of lava for some reason. Kildur was on about explosives and even more about his own pride and joy: crafting blunderbusses or guns.
'I would show you my masterpiece lad, the best blunderbuss I ever crafted, but it's n longer on my wall. I gave it away to the best hunter I ever trained in these here mountains.'

‘Now that the lady Malika is ill lad, do you think your father will come to help you two out?’ Kildur asked the question in a very casual fashion.
Kyell kept silent a moment, as if he was considering his options.
‘My father died before my birth even. He was one of the Kaliari, ‘the rope people’ as you call them.’ He tried to lie as convincing as possible, clinging on to what was actually Leki’s true story.
‘That girl Leki is a Kaliari if ever there was one, you can tell from the first look. But it will take more than tying a few nods to make you one of the rope people my friend.’
Kyell kept silent, sorry about having to lie to this dwarf he started to like this much.
‘You however, little lad, are probably more like your father than you realise.’ Kildur smiled, not angry about the obvious lying.
‘My father died.’ Kyell insisted, without much conviction.
‘He did. In more ways than you hold possible lad…’

Kildur took Kyell to his private quarters. Instead of something luxurious they entered another working place with the smell of sulphur and several forges smouldering with a warm scent.
’I see you can keep a secret lad, so I’ll tell you one of my own.’
Kildur went over to a lockbox and opened it with a key from inside his boot. From a table to the side he got a piece of rock, a few dinner plates made of porcelain and a hammer.
‘Schooltime, lad. Pay attention, you’re going to enjoy this.’
Kildur took the first dinner plate and dropped the rock on it from a high. The breaking of the porcelain cleared Kyell’s mind: the noise made him focus, this was something real going on and not just a little conversation.
‘Why did the plate break lad?’
‘Because the rock is harder?’
Kildur took the rock and put it softly down on one of the remaining pieces. Nothing broke.
‘Well, because it took speed and hit it hard?’
Kildur nodded. xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

‘But there is more to it lad. Things break because they can’t move anymore.’
Next he dropped the rock on a piece of cloth, obviously it simply fell on it to no effect.
‘The cloth can move and the plate can’t?’
‘Indeed, but move inside, not from one place to another.’
‘Like trembling?’
‘Exactly like trembling!’
Kyell tried to understand the answer he had just given.
‘When something wants to tremble so hard it can’t anymore, it breaks lad.’
Kildur took his hammer and actually smashed the piece of rock.
‘The rock couldn’t tremble out of it?’ Kyell smiled.
Kildur grinned.

‘Now lad, what would happen if something never trembled?’
‘Euh, no idea… it would never break?’
‘Or always break…’
‘Guess so.’
‘Let’s say it never breaks, than what would happen if you hit something with it?’
‘Hit it hard?’
‘Hard as you can.’
‘Than I guess the other thing would break.’
‘Aye, as if that other thing had to do all the trembling. It would likely break pretty fast. A lot faster than by this hammer or that rock that still tremble quite a bit more than you would think.’
Kildur gave Kyell the hammer and let him hit the anvil with it. Hard.
Kyell did and he dropped the hammer from his hand on the impact.
‘Trembling enough for you?’
Kyell smiled a bit uneasily.
‘This is all mere guessing lad. I can’t prove a word of what I just said. But let’s say I held something that wouldn’t break, and all that I hit it with would break in the end, than I could conclude that that thing could not tremble.’
‘Sure, I suppose.’
‘Let’s keep it at this: for now I can’t come up with anything better why this thing behaves like this.’
‘Do you mean you have something like that? Something that doesn’t break?’
‘These here mountains lad, under the ground, are filled with the stuff.’

Kildur took something from the secured lockbox. It was a small piece of black something, a bit like metal, a bit like rock. It was but a small piece, hardly bigger than a finger nail.
He took it to another porcelain plate and beckoned Kyell closer.
‘This is too small to break this from this close, right?’
‘Depends on heavy it is.’
‘Smart lad.’
Kildur handed over the piece to Kyell, gentle as if it was a diamond.
‘Drop it.’
It was light indeed. Kyell dropped it. It hit the plate, did not bounce or move. It simply dropped down and the plate broke.
Kildur took another piece out of the lockbox. This one was bigger and had a curved shape that stood up a bit when he put it on the table.
‘Break it with the hammer.’
‘No I won’t, I’m sure this is expensive.’
‘Just hit it lad.’
So Kyell hit it. Hard. Expecting anything to happen.
Nothing happened other than him hitting the anvil but with less impact than expected.
The reason was simple: the hammer had been broken by the hitting!
‘Is this a trick?’
The small piece of curved material was untouched at the anvil.
‘No trick. If you hit it hard enough, it would break the anvil in the end.’
‘This is weird.’
‘My thoughts exactly.’

Kildur showed Kyell more pieces of this material, some bigger and longer.
‘They are found deep in these mountains, in different shapes and sizes. We haven’t found any way yet to alter them. There is simply nothing you can do with it in terms of shaping or modifying.’
‘So what is it good for?’
‘Breaking things I guess lad.’
Kyell liked the simplicity of this answer, what else would you do with something that didn’t break.
‘You know lad, one day we found a really big piece, the longest so far. It came almost to my shoulders and had a funny nod at the top. It was slender and straight, a lot like a walking stick.
Kyell immediately thought of the mysterious weapon his father wielded: the black walking stick he could break anything with, even swords and shields.
‘That stick was too long for me, so I gave it to a fellow named Scaramance. Slippery bloke that one, always popping up in the weirdest places, and always involved in some other fishy business.’
Kyell gasped.
‘Last thing I heard is that he had a son now, not that he would acknowledge that. Far too many people would just love to hurt the boy to get to the father.
Kyell realised Kildur knew all along of course.
‘Sorry I had to lie to you Kildur.’
‘Not at all lad, not at all. You wouldn’t be his son if you didn’t try to trick me.’