Seven days of blinding light and the stinging caress of salt-filled winds. The goggles I acquired from a nikaal trader west of Fort Kalvis - little more than fire-hardened pieces of wood with holes in them - left welts around my eyes from the sweat and salt, but they protected me from white glare. The night comes on suddenly in the open lands of the Ivory Triangle, and burning blinding agony gives way in an instant to a silent and shifting spectrum of color that quickly drifts toward blackness. Then the wailing starts, soft and plaintive at first, but rising quickly in volume and intensity.

Nothing lives out in the open salt flats, and almost no shelter can be found until one begins to approach the Mekillot Mountains, the peaks of which rise from the center of the Great Ivory Plain. With nothing else to look at, neither a cloud in the sky nor any sign of life, the Mekillots quickly seem to become a living, breathing thing - a herd walking slowly in the distance as the shimmering air creates the illusion of motion. And as it grows dark and the wailing begins to climb, it’s hard not to imagine that the mountains themselves are shrieking: horrid creatures lurking at the edge of night to bring torment to the living.

Having grown close to the dead as a child, I see them as people much like anyone else, but frozen, unable to see themselves and incapable of change. The banshees of the Echoing Mines told their stories and played out their tragedies in the cold of night while I traveled, listening to and experiencing them as best I could through the distance between us. They began faintly, but time and repetition made them seem like long-lost memories by the time I began to draw close. I’ve never had much need for sleep - a common trait for those my kind - so I traveled day and night with only brief rests until I had crossed the land of blinding light.

I had always had companionship from among the living in my previous travels, be they traveling companions, hapless bystanders, guides, gracious hosts, or even hostile strangers. But I could find no one with the stomach to make this journey with me, and no living soul can be found within miles of the Echoing Mines. Had I traveled from another direction, I might have approached the site of my morbid fascination via Fort Harbeth or Salt View. But stubborn and single-minded as my mother ever was and lacking the coin to convince any to accompany me, I set on a direct path with nothing to separate me from the world and its dark mirror. After that long loneliness, I was grateful for the company of the scrawny thorn bushes and lichen-splattered rocks that dot the Mekillots’ surrounding hills.

The Echoing Mines open up into a sharp valley located about halfway between Fort Harbeth and Salt View. Nestled in the heart of the Mekillot Mountains, the Mines nearly mirror the position of the ex-slave village - both look out over the relatively flat divide known as “The Gaj”; the only closer occupied point of note is Fort Fyra, which lies just south of the mountains. The surrounding mountains are full of plants and beasts - the most worthy of mention being the klar, great bear-like beasts eager to devour both mind and body should you draw near whilst they prowl; they are the true predators of the area. Why the gap in the mountains is named after the gaj I cannot say, but the klar rarely venture into the Echoing Mines, as there is little prey nearby - only the wailing dead, the former owners of the mines.

The banshees and their checkered pasts are popular in Salt View’s legends, though they mostly just serve as background characters to more personal dramas and parables meant to scare children and enlighten viewers. Elders in the dwarven community of Nibenay tell tales that are perhaps more firmly rooted in history, claiming that the Mekillots were once islands in a great inland sea, that the ancestors of the dwarves of North Ledopolus hail from those islands, and that their own kin and forebearers once sought riches in the mines there in the days when House Shom was still young and fair.

What I encountered in this desolate place were stories of greed, selfishness, and betrayal; when dwarf is set against dwarf, none can prevail. A dozen or more mine entrances lie scattered along a few miles of twisting mountain paths, with many caved in and much rubble strewn about. It is generally thought that perhaps 40 banshees haunt the area, but I would say it is far more - many are trapped inside the mines, unable to roam the mountains. Others still wander, looking for new claims and hiding from and ambushing each other in futile struggles that repeat themselves time and again. I owe it entirely to my unique psychic talent that I could witness this place and its stories and live to tell the tale.

The Echoing Mines is a more fitting name than most would imagine: not only do the wails of the dead echo through the mines, but their stories all echo each other, each a similar tragedy woven together in a tapestry of solitude, shame, and fury. I saw no way to help the souls trapped here and lay the dead to rest, for each of them reinforces the misery and pain of the others. If anything, this place must stand as a testament to a path that must never be taken. A warning to all dwarfkind to never set purpose against one another.