Dwarf hire who dug bare-handed for a keyhole they had no key for until hope finally drained out of him.
The last of Everly's Mercenaries alongside the ogre, this dwarf spent the final minutes on his hands and knees in the crushing room beneath The Tower Maze, sifting meter-deep sand for the tiny keyhole — even though they had never found the key on the floor above before being forced to jump down. His thick, callused fingers bled and tears ran down his dirty face while he kept digging.
Everly watched him with strange fascination, seeing hope leak out of him "like water seeping from a punctured skin," and pitied him — the first time she had ever pitied a hire. He was the person she had once believed she would be at The Inevitable Ruin: raging, refusing to accept it. He finally stopped, rolled onto his back, closed his eyes and reached up until he could nearly touch the descending ceiling.
A stout dwarf, dirt-streaked and weeping, with thick callused fingers torn and bleeding from digging through sand.
The image of refusal-to-quit that Everly measures her own surrender against.