Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

I hurry through the empty streets after Hayhek. Even though we see no soldiers, we stick to the shadows and hunch low, not saying a word to each other. The city still bears the scars of battle—loose gravel, burned buildings, and bloodstains on the pavements.

I break our silence with a whisper: "Where are we heading?"

"My home. They won't be there, I don't think, but there's a chance. And maybe some neighbors are left around."

We turn a corner and I recognize the street we’re on. It’s the not-poor yet far from rich neighborhood Hayhek’s apartment block is in. We hurry along. There are no bloodstains here, which I hope is a good omen, but neither are there many signs of life. Everyone too scared to creep outside with the battle raging up top, no doubt.

The apartment comes into sight and familiar guilt starts to gnaw at me once more. The last time I was here, Yezakh was still alive. When I left the gates, he was preparing to follow me to his doom. Hayhek is feeling something too—his breathing is oddly muted, though I can’t see his face.

Perhaps tears are rolling down it already, or perhaps he is saving them for the reunion, or if our hope proves futile, for a greater tragedy.

“We’ll find them,” I tell him firmly as we approach. “If not here then somewhere else.”

“I know.”

The gates are broken off their hinges, which is not a good sign. We walk on through and up the stairs to his door. It is also broken. Hayhek braces himself for the worst and walks through.

The interior is smashed, torn up, ravaged. No piece of furniture remains whole or upright, the carpets have been slashed into strips and pulled off the floorboards, and every single door has been thrown down, their hinges snapped.

No hiding place has remained hidden.

“No!” he says as he rushes from room to room. “No, no!”

I grab him by the shoulders. “Stop!” I say.

“What do you mean stop?” The high pitch of hysteria has crept into his voice. “They’ve—”

“If they tore it up this badly, that means they probably couldn’t find them! And there’s no blood, is there? Apart from just past the door, and that was our doing, remember?”

“But...”

“Think logically! We have to think, if we’re going to find them.”

“Yes,” he says, breathing hard and swallowing. “You’re right. I panicked, that’s all.”

“Where are we going next?”

“Down to the first floor. There’s a neighbor we were on good terms with. Maybe she knows.”

We leave the ruined apartment and go down the stairs. A few doors along and we’re at the friend’s place. It has one small window looking out onto the corridor, but through the frosted glass I can only see darkness.

He knocks.

He knocks again.

He knocks again, rapidly and very loudly.

“Who is it?” comes a frightened voice from through the keyhole.

“Hayhek!”

“Hayhek? You?”

“Yes, me. Baeltha, listen, do you know where Halda ran to?”

“Your wife?”

“Yes! Where is she? Have you heard anything from her?”

I can hear the fear in his voice.

“No,” Baeltha apologizes. “I haven’t. Sorry.”

“Are you sure? Nothing?”

“...Are you really Hayhek? I don’t recognize that armor.”

“It is me! Look!” He removes his helmet and backs away from the keyhole so she can get a clear view. “Look, can’t you tell?”

“...I’m not sure. At any rate, I don’t know anything!” she says quickly. “Nothing at all, you hear me?”

“Please!” Hayhek begs. “I have to know.”

“Nothing!”

“It’s me! Believe me, please!”

“No!” Baeltha snaps suddenly. “You’re one of them hunting for that key, aren’t you? They don’t have it, and I don’t know why you think they would. You’ve already been through my home anyway! Get out of here!”

“I’m not hunting her! I’m Hayhek, truly!”

“Get out!” she screeches, and I flinch back when something heavy is banged against the inside of the door, barricading it.

“Please!” begs Hayhek.

“It’s no use,” I tell him. “She’s made up her mind.”

“She was close with my wife. If anyone knows, it’s her.”

I shake my head. “Maybe, but she’s loyal. I guess we should be glad of that. And if someone was asking about you all before, that means they don’t have her.”

“Or at least didn't,” he says in despair.

“Who else might know?”

“Another friend a few blocks from here. Trelda. I never got on with her, but still...”

I feel guilt bite at me again as we walk back through the shattered gates onto the same street Danath chased me down before that fateful duel on the bridge. He must be up in the battle somewhere—I hope he gets his head sliced off, but somehow I get a sense he’s unharmed.

Murderous, lying bastard. I remember his words, being back in the apartment jogged my memory: he said that Broderick’s silver legend was none other than Hardrick.

A stupid lie. Utterly impossible.

Yet, how else would he have remembered his name? No runeknight of the fifth degree would recall the name of a mere miner, and certainly not in the midst of combat, unless that miner had risen to become something more...

Two lefts and a right later and Hayhek stops behind the door of a small shop. Two carts filled with withered looking vegetables stand sentinel outside—among all its other horrors, war is bad for business.

Hayhek knocks on the door. No answer. He knocks again. I hear a noise from inside and raise my hand to silence him. I remove my helmet and put my non-burned ear against the wood.

I hear a slight scuffing sound, then it stops. I keep still for a minute longer, but the sound doesn’t come again. I back away and nod to Hayhek.

“There’s someone in there.”

He knocks again. “Open up! Trelda, it’s me! Hayhek!”

No answer.

“Should we go in?” I ask.

“No choice, I think.” He readies his shield and barges into the door, which collapses into splinters with a loud bang. He strides through and immediately gets clonked over the head with an iron bar. The blow sends him reeling backward. I level my spear at his attacker, then lower it.

“Wait!” I shout. “Hayhek, that’s her! It’s her!”

She strikes at him again; he dodges back and tosses his axe backward. She yells out in desperation and strikes again. He reaches up and grabs the bar, then looks into her eyes.

“Get out of here!” she shouts backwards. “Get—”

“It’s me!” Hayhek shouts. “Me!” He lets go of the bar and tears off his helmet. “Look!”

“Hayhek?” she breathes.

“Yes!” he cries out. “Yes, it’s me, Halda! It’s me!”

From a doorway at the back of the room a few faces peer out, then Hayhek’s daughters rush to throw their arms around him.

While Trelda and her husband fix up the door, Halda tells us what happened after the battle over a simple meal of bread, cheese and water in one of the back rooms.

After the battle ended, the runeknights led by Danath returned to their apartment, dragging Yezakh’s body with them. Halda had had the good sense to hide by then, however, on the first floor with Baeltha.

After they ransacked their apartment, Danath and his runeknights went through every other. Fortunately it was dark, and a few rogue pockets of resistance kept the fight going until the morning, so under the cover of night and chaos the family managed to steal away to an abandoned tunnel.

They fled from hiding place to hiding place after that: a basement one night, a damp cave the next, for they knew Broderick’s runeknights wanted the key and the massive bounty on it. This cycle of hide, move, hide, repeat continued for several weeks, then eventually the runeknights began to call off the search.

Worried for the health of her daughters in the damp and danger of the caves, she made the decision to move up here only a few days ago. There's a tunnel leading from the basement, a tight fit but it leads to a network with plenty of hiding places. She was going to run there as soon as the heavy knocking came, but the sound of Hayhek's voice, though she didn't fully trust it, gave her pause.

"I was half sure it was you when you blundered through," she said. "But I saw that armor and thought it was impossible."

"I've gotten an upgrade," he says.

"At any rate, I thought you were dead."

"I'm not. And I won't leave you again. Not for anything."

There is silence for what feels like a long while. There are more words that have to be spoken today, about Yezakh, about what I did, about the key, and why their son had to die because of it. Where it is now. And of course, Hayhek will not lie to his wife; although he will make my case, I cannot be sure of her reaction when he tells her the key was for the black dragon.

On the whole I judge it best to let him to talk to her alone. I stand up.

“My guild is in the battle,” I say. “I have to go to them.”

“So soon?” Halda says with suspicion. "We need to hear your side of the tale. And I don't see the key. What happened to it?"

“Don’t... Don't think too harsh of him,” Hayhek says. “He's our friend. He’s saved me twice. And about the key... It’s not something to talk about with our daughters around.”

“No?”

“No,” he says firmly. “Later. Go on now, Zathar. Get back to your guild. Try not to die.”

“I won’t die,” I say. “I’m stronger now. We both are.”

“There’s others still far above you. Don’t forget that.”

I nod. “See you again, I hope.”

“Yeah.”

“Keep them all safe.”

“I will.”

I take one last look at the family: Hayhek smiling grimly, his wife looking at me with eyes slightly narrowed—how conflicted she must be—and the three daughters not seeming to understand much of anything, just holding their father close, glad that he’s finally returned to them.

I bow to them and make my exit. Onward I walk, the peak of the mountain in my sights.