Mesaraih stepped back as Ester got to work on questioning the dwarves. He was a bit surprised to see her refer to him as a friend, though he assumed it just fit in better with the threatening act she was putting on. Which, when he thought about it, wasn't really an act at all. Ester talked this way a lot of the time.<br/><br/>The dwarf was breathing heavily, a small look of defiance at his face. He grew a little paler at Ester's words, but he still looked like he wasn't completely ready to cooperate. He pointed down the hallway. "They lyrium is over there. The big door is unlocked with keys. There, told you what you needed to know. Now let us go," he said.<br/><br/>Mesaraih rolled his eyes. The dwarf was playing with fire by being uncooperative, literally too. "That's not very helpful," Mesaraih said. He walked over and ran a dagger along the man's chin, cutting off part of his beard in the process.<br/><br/>"We're going to need you to be a little more specific," he said, pricking the dwarf's neck slightly and drawing some blood.<br/><br/>"Sod off," the dwarf responded. "You'll just kill us if we tell you anyway."<br/><br/>Mesaraih raised his hands in the air. "I won't, I promise," he said. "But death might be preferable to the things she can do to you."<br/><br/>The dwarf looked nervously towards Ester, then gulped a little too loudly. "...fine, alright, I'll talk. The tunnel by the bookcase. If you follow it, it'll split off two ways. Path to the right will take you to the lyrium, but it's guarded by some filthy rock creatures. If you're careful, though, you might be able to get them to fight with the darkspawn. They kill anything that moves, those rock monsters. We haven't been able to get to the lyrium, however. The path to the left leads you to the actual thaig this old prison belongs to. The darkspawn are settled deep into it, so if you go around its walls, keep to the outside, you'll come onto a cave entrance that leads you to the surface. The big door to this prison, all we know is you need some keys. They've been sending us to try and open it to connect our smuggling routes, but all these years and we still can't find them. They say the keys are hidden in the statues, but every time we try to dig into 'em, the broken statues come to life by forming themselves into those rock things."<br/><br/>He reached into his pack and took out a strange, vice-like contraption with a rotating handle. "We use this to bring the statues down. Clamp it around the base, and it'll crack the whole thing into pieces. It'll break those pieces into even smaller ones if you clamp it around those too. Take it and leave us be," the dwarf said.<br/><br/>Mesaraih picked up the contraption the dwarf threw onto the ground and turned it over in his hands. It also seemed to be inscribed with runes.