Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

A great corkscrew has been cut into the sides of the shaft. One long chain is strung through it. Its steel links are a blur. I look up and see dwarves hanging from it, Xomhyrk in the lead. They're spiraling up at an incredible pace.

“We have to grab on?” one of the tenth degrees shouts in alarm.

“Yes,” says Braztak.

“That's crazy!”

“But safer than stairs would be, don't you think?”

“It's not like it's any less dangerous than the rest of our quest is going to be,” I say. “It's not more dangerous than the dragon.”

“Exactly, Zathar,” says Braztak. “That's the correct attitude here, and it's the correct attitude to have up on the surface also.”

With that, he grabs the chain firmly and is yanked up and away. Erak, our second degree, is next. A few dwarves later it's my turn. I grab without hesitation.

The pull on my arm is as forceful as a troll's. It hurts. A gasp escapes my lips, but it's whipped away, left at the entrance, while I fly upward, suspended several feet above the stone.

What a marvel this is! I'm scared and amazed in equal measure.

The mechanism is silent. All I can hear is the whine of air ripping past the jags of my armor. From the metal there's no rattling at all, for the chain is suspended magnetically. It does not hang from anything, else it wouldn't be able to move nearly so fast, not without taking a heavy toll in fingers and hands.

I examine the runes on the links. They are tiny, exact, and perfect in form.

Truly this is a wonder of dwarven engineering on par with—no, exceeding—the magnetic rails of the New Dynamium Guild. And it's the last such I'll see for a long while, I think. Allabrast is the center of dwarvish civilisation, but now we will be traveling far from it. Even the Mountain of Halajatbast, judging from what little I've read about it, has nothing so advanced.

I'm certain the humans have nothing like this either. From now on I will be in the wilderness. Maybe I will never see or touch anything as incredible as this chain again.

I've only been hanging on for a minute, yet when I look down, the dwarves still waiting their turn already look as small as fungus-mites. How far to the top then? I look up past the winding corkscrew. We still have a long way to go: the sky is a tiny dot of light so small that I can't even make out its color, if it's blue, or gray, or black with the silver moon shining in its center.

I'm completely relaxed. I ask myself why. Shouldn't I be scared? If my fingers lose their grip, I'm dead. It's more than likely that one or two dwarves are going to perish right here, before the journey even begins, but I find that I don't care. Aren't we all marching to our deaths already? So why worry about someone's fate coming early?

My fate won't. Strange—the thought that I might be the one to lose my grip barely entered my head just then.

I'm confident in my runes. Very confident, maybe too confident. The ruby upon my chest is at fault, or maybe it's the pick strapped across my back. Or perhaps it's my helmet. These three forces won't settle for me falling. They want me to kill.

The dragon, I say to the first two under my breath. We're going up to kill the dragon. That's our goal. Once that ends, no more killing for a while. The poem in the red facets is not about me.

I count the seconds until I lose count, then I try to clear my mind. Some distraction might be nice, but I think that any words, even shouted with all my might, will be snatched away the instant I say them. I settle on trying to make out the color of the dot of light above.

After a few hours I decide that it's bright blue. It's day up there and the burning sun is out. I'm glad of my helmet. I've never been sun-scorched, but I've seen illustrations of it. Every guide to the surface has a few gruesome pictures to scare the reader into preparing properly. It can be tempting to take your armor off up there, they say, for the sun's heat bakes you within your steel, but you must not, because it's only heat that goes through steel, not the sun's true power.

Sun-scorch can lead to sun-blight. No amulet of unaging and vitality can halt the black-spotted march of that disease.

The dot of blue becomes a small circle, which then becomes about the size of a coin. Then all of a sudden it's growing fast. A dark shape jumps off the chain into the light. Xomhyrk has reached the top. That means in about half an hour it'll be my turn.

The stone cog turning the chain, affixed to the head of an obelisk that towers over the exit hole, becomes visible. It's massive. If one of us gets too scared to swing himself off, he'll be crushed.

I wonder what's awaiting us out in the light. Humans? A thrill runs through my weapon. Am I to face battle right away?

Braztak swings off the chain. The wheel is approaching fast. The grinding noise is tremendous. I brace for whatever's awaiting me on the surface.

Suddenly I'm out into the blinding light. I twist and swing myself sideways, let go of the chain. I'm falling. I hit something soft, unlike stone but not quite like undergrowth either; it's not that soft.

I roll to my feet and fumble to unbuckle the straps holding Gutspiercer to my back. It swings loose, and hits only air.

“Careful there, Zathar,” says Braztak. “And get out the way!”

Mulkath lands right next to me. I hurry to clear myself from the landing area. Before me is a crowd of dwarves, all hurrying away, and beyond them—

Is nothing at all.

It's emptiness as far as my eyes can see. I close them, and my other senses begin to overwhelm me. The strange texture of the ground feels stranger, the whistle of the air sounds louder, and the smells are sickening.

I open my eyes again and try to focus on the other dwarves instead of the emptiness. This doesn't work. The world is divided into two halves, an infinite plain of green fungus below and vivid, unnatural blue above. Worst is the terrible brightness to one side that I dare not look at. It's like the brightness of almergris except impossibly larger and more fearsome and more constant. I turn away from it, and stumble, and fall over into the green fungus. I shut my eyes again and groan.

“You alright?” asks Faltast. He grips my hand and pulls me up.

“Thanks.”

“Overwhelming, isn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“You should open your eyes, or you'll never get used to it.”

I do so. The blue vastness makes me lean back. It's like staring down an bottomless pit, except the wrong way. The weight of my pack drags on me and I nearly fall again, but Faltast steadies me.

“Watch it there.”

“I'm fine, I'm fine.”

“Different to the books, isn't it?”

“Very.”

Blue and green ink is one thing. Seeing the entire world, all around you, is something else.

Though, it's not quite as simple as blue and green, I realize as my shock starts to wear off. There's puffs of white in the blue—clouds, real clouds! They're not like the mists you sometimes get in caverns. They're a little blue, taking on the color of the sky behind them, though a couple are more solid. The ground isn't totally green either. It's actually quite yellowish, with brown areas too. Disappointingly there are none of the multi-capped, multicolored fungi called flowers. Since winter is closing in, they'll all be closed up now. Or perished? I'm not quite sure.

“Come on, you two!” says Braztak. “We're clearing out. Come on.”

We follow him. I look back to see if we're all here yet, and spot Guthah jumping off the chain. He stumbles and hurries after me and, to his credit, doesn't fall. Pellas and the other tenth degrees have more difficulty. They stagger and fall just like I did. I rush to help them, but some of Xomhyrk's guildsdwarves are already pulling them up and shoving them in our direction.

We gather a few dozen yards away from the shaft. I make a quick count of the guild. I don't think we've lost anyone.

“Where exactly are we?” Guthah asks me while we wait for the rest of the army.

“Tallreach,” I say. “In its untamed central plains.”

“Plains?”

“This kind of place, mostly flat, with all this tall thin fungus.”

“Where's all the humans, I wonder?”

“Mostly they live in villages,” I say, happy to share my knowledge. “Which is a very small settlement of a few houses. Of course, some live in towns and cities as well.”

Once the army is all out, Xomhyrk leads us on a short march to a nearby rise. Xomhyrk stops at the top of it and motions for us to halt as well. His guildsdwarves line up beside him. Their tungsten is very dark against the bright blue of the sky, apart from at the edges, which reflect brightly. Xomhyrk's armor takes on light in a stranger fashion: the sun's rays curve along it in a way not quite metallic.

“My dwarves!” he shouts down to us. “I don't have much to say to you now, apart from that we're on our way!” He points behind him. “That way lies the dragon! We march!”

He lifts Icemite high, and it flashes cyan in the sunlight. He turns. We all let out a cheer and follow him over the rise.