Day 1:
It was well passed midnight and Hallmar was exhausted. Dropping down on his rump he let his shovel fall to the pile of dirt he'd managed to create. His cloak was discarded in a corner, along with his shirt and gloves. Boots and trousers he still wore but they were dusted and crusted with so much dirt it was impossible to tell what color they were. Dirt was also raining out of his salt-and-pepper curls and smeared across his face in a paste mixed with his sweat. The same smears were on his chest arms and hands so he took a moment to flake away some of the crust while he caught his breath. Around him were various kegs and barrels, shelves with bottles and sacks of grain and potatoes. He hadn't bothered moving anything, instead chosing to simply start in the middle of the floor, heaping the displaced earth against one wall.
The young man tried to calculate how long he'd been digging... he started after the cooks left the kitchen for the night, so he was probably at it for about four hours and the hole he had was pitiful. Maybe knee deep on the lanky youth but a good size across. Really, he was having a hard time of moving the dirt so it wouldn't keep fallin in, so maybe this was a good time to stop tonight. He had perhaps a few hours till dawn so maybe he could even rinse off in the lake and get some sleep while it was still night.
Despite these thoughts, though, he simply takes a stolen drink for one of the bottles then stands back up, raining bits of soil as he moves. He returns the bottle to a shelf and retrieves his shovel and sets back to his work. The hole wouldn't dig itself, after all.
Finally, an hour or so before dawn, before the cook returns to begin cooking for the day, Hallmar leaves, having added perhaps another foot in depth and with themound of earth climbing up the empty wall. No luck yet, but then he didn't expect his work to be easy. Nothing worthwhile was ever easy. Up the cellar steps and across the kitchen floor he left a trail of damp soil and a scattering of dry soil, the only trace outside the cellar of the all-night work he'd put in beneath the Broken Dagger.