It had been a quiet afternoon at the Bathhouse, until the dwarven boot knocked the door in. Kalus Rumguzzler was among the dwarfiest dwarves Orias had ever seen, as the squat man stomped into the bathhouse - sideways, on account of being too stout across the chest to fit through the doors.

Like all dwarven men, he was blunt and coarse in temper, cursing vulgarly about the price of the bathhouse’s treatments. In appearance, he showed the typical signs of self-neglect. Other than his combed and overly-oiled beard, his outer skin was deeply fissured from the heat of the forge, like parched earth.

The only reason he was bothering to poke his nose in today, the man said, was because the foundry at which he worked was closed for its bicentennial chimney-sweeping, while his favourite drinking hole and his 1st, 2nd, and 3rd favourite whorehouses were closed on account of the large amount of soot the cleaning was throwing up across the city.

For the price the dwarf was offering, Orias had every right to refuse. But he couldn’t, in good conscience, turn away a man in so pitiful a state. He set aside his combs and picked up a chisel. After a moment to assess, he started to hack away under the man’s left armpit, cracking through the hardened rock.

“Has it been some time since your last self-care?” Orias asked diplomatically.

Dwarves were much like onions, or ogres - smelly and layered. Underground, in their original environment, the rough cave walls would naturally erode their ever-growing stone-skin. But living above ground, in a city, that skin had a tendency to accumulate and harden over time, becoming a burden, in the same way sheep left unsheared would eventually be smothered by their own wool.

“We usually advise dwarves to book a debridement at least every decade.”

“Don’t talk to me about debridement. I’ve five bloody ex-wives,” grumbled Rumguzzler. “Been busy. Working. How long's this gonna take?”

Orias grunted, reaching for a crowbar and wedging it into the ossified geodermis. “Hours,” he groaned, levering his weight, throwing up clouds of dust with the excavation.

This dwarf was in such a dire state that he would need to take him down to the bedrock, he realised, to ensure there was no risk of deep infection. It was probably just through sheer stubbornness that the dwarf had survived this long. As he pried off each chunk, Orias expected to be able to start the process of finer sandpaper abrasion, only to unveil more substrata. Things had even become fossilised down there. He unearthed a crudely minted silver coin wedged inside the dwarf’s ass crack and squinted at the date etched onit.

“You haven’t had a treatment since the First Age of Man?!” Orias gasped.

“Aye, well, that’s when they put their prices up,” Rumguzzler muttered.

Then, after much grinding and grunting and tugging, something cracked. Like a geode splitting open, a large chunk of the upper body sloughed away in a single piece, releasing the fossilised funk of fifteen thousand years. A pair of sparkling ruby nipples greeted the daylight for the first time in an aeon. The dwarf looked equally as blindsided, shielding his eyes from the dazzling emerald gleam of his own breasts.

“How fucking long have they been there?!” Rumguzzler bellowed.

No wonder they were going extinct, Orias thought.