Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

The architecture is grand. The arch of the roof continues to heighten until our lanterns' rays can no longer reach it through the haze of soot. The pillars are slimmer than I feel they should be, and worked with incredible detail: they are carved with images of weapons and armor of every description, and gems also, which are displayed as if unfolded along the facets so their poems can be read in full.

Yet the carvings are marred with an uneven coating of soot, and this is not soot from coal or wood. It has a different smell to it, one unassociated with the forge. It smells like death. The blackness in the air which our lanterns has such trouble penetrating is, I'm sure, the remains of dwarves. The floor feels a little slippery, as if waxed—I think we tread across a thin patina of melted fat. Now and again I'll feel a twisted piece of metal beneath my boot, or crush to dust a loose shard of bone, but not very often. The annihilation of this place has been thorough.

If the black dragon's fire reached even down here, how is my armor meant to stand against it? Even if Uthrarzak's forces managed to injure it, even if it expended a great deal of power in the first attack, as Xomhyrk conjectures, the heat of its flames must still be immense.

A chill flows across my skin. My ruby blazes. My grip on Gutspiercer tightens.

My crafts will not let me doubt myself.

The pillared hall stretches far. After what feels like many hours, Xomhyrk calls a halt and we sit down for a meal and a short rest. This time I'm given no guard duty. Braztak refuses his when Erak tells him he ought to take first watch.

“I might go wandering off on my own,” he says. “I won't make a very good guard. But I'll stay awake as long as I can.”

I go to talk to Pellas, but she's already asleep. She has a pained expression on her face. I don't know if that's a sign that her ribs are healing and that she's fighting her wounds, or if it's a sign things are getting worse.

The next day, though whether it's day above or not we of course have no way to tell, Xomhyrk increases the pace of our march. Before long the hall comes to an end and stand before what was once a tall gate. The bars lie in a tangle on the stone like a nest of iron snakes. We march over them without slowing.

“Look!” someone shouts a few minutes after we pass into the corridor beyond. “Bodies!”

“Halt!” Xomhyrk shouts. “Gollor, investigate.”

We halt. Gollor readies his shield and spear and marches to where the dwarf who shouted is pointing. Sure enough, there's bodies there or, at least, suits of armor. The metal has sagged somewhat. Gollor picks up a helmet, and ash mixed with sections of bone falls out. A gray cloud rises from the floor to mingle with the black soot.

“These were Runeking Halajatbast's runeknights,” Gollor says, gently laying the helmet back down. “Characteristically thin armor with poems of Volot script grafted in gold, though impure gold in this case. These two weren't very high ranking.”

“They didn't leave many guards down here,” says Xomhyrk. “They sent everyone strong up to fight the dragon.”

“And still they lost,” Gollor finishes grimly.

“Which just goes to show numbers aren't everything.”

“Indeed.”

“Don't let a few bodies strike fear in you, runeknights. We'll see more soon enough, many more. Restart the march!”

The rumble of our march restarts. Might we wake something up? This part of the city is no spacious hall or plaza but a tight corridor with many doorways, blackened around the edges where their doors have been burned. Could there be salamanders hiding within?

Unlikely, I decide. There's nothing to eat here but ash. Even salamanders don't eat ash. There isn't much air either; it's getting steadily harder to breath. Ventilation is something no one thinks about very often, but it's vital. All inhabited caves have tunnels leading to wide, airy caverns, or sometimes even directly to the surface, for the purpose of making sure we don't suffocate.

The dragon's attack must have melted many of these shut. Others have probably been clogged with soot. I hope it doesn't get too hard to breath. If I'm going to die, it must be in combat, not gasping and retching on the floor.

The corridors end more quickly than I expected and we enter another hall of pillars. I look around, wondering what it was used for.

“Braztak, do you know much about this place?” I ask.

“A little.”

“Why such long halls, with nothing much in them?”

“Nothing in them now. I don't think they were just for going from place to place. This hall and the last were markets, I'm fairly sure.”

“Markets? Really?”

“Yes. The dwarves here valued commerce. A lot like the hill dwarves we met.”

“I see. They sold their crafts?”

He shrugs. “I don't know. But they were famous for their wealth. The mountain itself was long ago mined dry, of course, but the stone below is rich. And they were famous for good meat as well, I think I read somewhere. They had goats, not boar, whose meat keeps better.”

“Interesting.” I shake my head. “But it's all gone now.”

“Yes. Fucking dragon,” he spits. “It deserves everything we're going to do to it and more.”

“I wonder if there aren't any survivors who might help us. Surely someone managed to escape.”

“I'm sure many did, but they won't be back here any time soon. The dragon shattered them.”

We continue to walk. I spot a glint in the distance. The echoes of our march are oddly broken up there. I focus, try to see through the soot, and spot the glint again. It's yellow—gold. I tell Braztak.

“Keep your voice down,” he warns. “Someone might get greedy.”

“If this was a market, I'm surprised there isn't more of it.”

“Probably most hid it or fled with it as soon as they heard the dragon was on its way.” He shakes his head. “You know, there should be more dwarves up here. Halajatbast's realm wasn't just the mountain. It extended right down.”

“Down to the magma seas?”

“Yes. They should be gathering forces—but something tells me they aren't, that they'd rather cut their losses. Cowards! Just like a certain guildmaster, no?”

“They might just be biding their time.”

“Yes, until the dragon leaves. Come to think of it, that might be how Runeking Halajatbast claimed this mountain in the first place.”

“I don't follow.”

“The biggest dragon Runethane Thanerzak killed was said to have taken its treasure, and its power, from some mountain kingdom. Maybe it was this one.”

“There's no way to know now.”

“And it doesn't matter. All we care about is the black dragon. I can feel its heat. Can't you?”

“Honestly, no.”

“Hah! Good, good. Means your armor's doing its job.”

“For now. I'm starting to think I ought to have made a shield like Wharoth's too, one that could eat the flames.”

“No. Better you're forced to attack than rot behind a shield your whole life. Don't worry, Zathar. Your ice is plenty protection. As long as you don't get struck directly you'll be fine.”

“And you?”

“You know how my armor is. The more damaged it gets, the more power goes into my strikes.”

“Up to a limit, surely.”

“Of course. I'll have to be careful—but I've been thinking about how I'd get my revenge every night for a decade and a half. Every night since it took her from me.”

“Strike harder!” Hardrick bellows. “Harder! Put your fucking backs into it, you're breaking rock, not chalk! Harder!”

To be in the midst of a mining operation again, after so many years spent at the forge or on the gloriously blood-drenched battlefield, is deeply unpleasant. The crack of iron on stone, the smell and taste of dust, the grunts of dumb, manual labor—these all bring back memories of a time when Hardrick was one of the lowest of the low.

Runethane Broderick has ordered that every connecting wall and supporting pillar in an area of more than five hundred by five hundred yards be demolished, bar one central spire of stone, which is instead to be drilled and run through with cable. It will become the key. When pulled, the ceiling, and maybe the entire top section of the mountain, will collapse onto the sleeping dragon.

This should injure it enough that the Runethane and his elites can finish the job they started, hopefully. Hardrick is not too sure. It seems more likely that the ceiling will collapse early, bringing down the runeknights-turned-miners with it.

But orders are orders.

“Harder!” he yells as he stalks through the debris and clouds of dust. “Strike harder!”

However hard they strike this job won't go quickly. Their picks are makeshift, of melted iron bars taken from the ruins of a mountainside prison where criminals were once exposed to the sky for their punishment. They are cruder even than regular picks, and as a once-miner, Hardrick knows that the quality of one's pick matters a great deal.

“Damn fool of a runethane!” he hisses under his breath. “Doesn't know a thing.”

He waits a moment for the shadow's usual biting reply. Nothing comes. Come to think of it, it's been silent for a long while. This is very odd. Recently it hasn't been silent for more than a few minutes at a time.

Has it abandoned him? Hardrick stops still, stops his shouting. Fear has grabbed hold of him.

The shadow is the root of his abilities. More than that, it is his abilities. With words and more it guides him in the forge and in the fight. If it was to leave...

“Where are you?” he whispers.

There is no answer. The only sound is the crack of stone and the grunts of sweating dwarves. They take on a new significance for him—perhaps mining has not been totally confined to his past, for if he cannot be a runeknight, what else remains for him but the mines?

“Where are you?” he says.

Still no answer.

“Where are you?” he screams at the top of his lungs, uncaring of the shocked looks from the runeknights around him.

There is no answer. He bends double, coughing on dust.

“Where are you?” he chokes. “Come back! Where are you? Where are you?”