NOVEL FROG Cavern Exile: The Box and the Hammer
“You’re deranged!” Hayhek shouts. He grabs me by the shirt and thrusts me against the wall of our chamber. “Mad! Suicidal!”
“I need that key!”
“We won’t get it!”
“You don’t have to come. I never said you had to come!”
“And with you dead, I’m meant to just make it back to the surface on my own? With whatever crap we manage to make down here?”
“We won’t make crap. We’ll make gear better than we’ve ever made before. It’ll be enough.”
“Enough? Do you even know what a lava troll is?”
“I killed a troll once before. With armor worse than I’m going to forge.”
“That was an ordinary troll. A lava troll is... It’s what an abyssal salamander is to an ordinary giant salamander. You’re insane to think you could take on even one. Let alone a horde of them, and their chief to boot!”
“This is my chance!” I shout, and shove him stumbling away. “I’ll take it. With the right equipment, a dwarf can do anything. Conquer anywhere.”
“Why do you think they were arguing so much with the chief? They’re terrified of angering them!”
“But the chief believes we have a chance.”
“What does he know? You’d need third degree armor. Maybe even second!”
“Then I’ll make it.”
“We don’t have time! We need to get to the dragon hunt.” He throws his hands up in despair. “And we don’t even have a proper forge!”
“We’ll manage,” I say stubbornly. “Or at least I will.”
The river trolls have a legend, Dwatrall explained to me. It revolves around the big stone cube the chief leans against, and although he used the word legend, it is to most of the trolls’ minds indisputable history.
Back when Hazhakmar cavern was ruled by dragons, their hoards lay among the stalagmite spires, sometimes even towering higher than them. Each was a great pile of gold, silver and platinum coins, cups, necklaces, chains and furniture. Most treasured of each dragon, however, were its artifacts of magic. The dragons could not use them, of course, just as they could not use the rest of their hoards—whoever heard of a dragon drinking from a cup or eating off a table?—but they liked having them.
Having is the most important thing to a dragon, those embodiments of greed. Like fire which burns inside them, they cannot help but continue to seek out more and more fuel for their hungry egos.
The dragons ranged far and wide out of the cavern, flying up out the tunnel where the mirrors are now to soar over the surface and to far distant cities, mountains and caves. They terrorized anyone they came across, humans and elves, goblins and giants, but most especially the dwarves. For, to our great pride, no one makes treasures as magical, beautiful and powerful as we do.
The dwarven artifacts they stole they placed at the very top of their golden mountains so that their fellows might look upon them and become enraged with jealousy. Their jealousies led to raging battles that smashed both stalagmite and stalactite as they rolled on the ground and in the air, tearing each other to shreds and burning the shreds to ash.
It was during one of these battles that two enterprising trolls crept up from the deep tunnels and stole from one of the dragon’s hoards. The first took a great hammer, created by one of those money-grubbing mercenary dwarves from the east to sell for human use. For a tall human it would have served well as a two-handed weapon, so for a troll it made a small but extremely serviceable one-handed one.
The second, a river troll with skin dry and itching, desperate for something he could take back to prove his worth, picked up a stone cube, runed with titanium on its top side, and carried it down on his shoulders.
At the grotto, he was derided as a fool. He shook the cube over his head and it rattled. He told the others that whatever was inside had to be of incredible power if it was secured so well. Better than a weapon, he speculated that maybe it contained some magic that could lift the trolls out of their sorry, stupid lives of squalor and bring them into the light of full sapience.
Some of the smarter trolls saw the logic and helped him try to smash the cube apart. But no matter how hard they beat it with their fists, kicked it with their clawed feet, and bit at it with steel-sharp teeth, they could not break it. Then they sought out a natural shaft of immense height and dropped it. From the bottom there came a crash and a crack.
When they got down, the stone ground was shattered and the cube was intact. They cursed the troll adventurer again as a fool, and told him that if he wanted the respect he so craved, he should go back up to the dragons and steal something more useful.
Then he remembered that the runes on the hammer had been the same as those on the top of the cube. They were a set. Maybe the hammer was not for mercenary use at all, but a kind of key.
He persuaded half the of river trolls to travel with him to the lava trolls, to either persuade them to share the power of the box, or else crush them and steal the hammer. They failed at both of these. The lava trolls slaughtered them and marched down to steal the cube for themselves.
They could not get it, for the river trolls hid in the abysses of the river. After a long siege the lava trolls grew sick from the damp and retreated back to their burning abode.
Five or six hundred years have passed since then.
After Dwatrall finished this tale, the chief picked up the stone cube and with great effort and strain, the veins on his arms and face and neck and chest bulging like cords, shook it over his head.
It indeed rattled.
“It’s probably just gold in there,” said Hayhek. “And the hammer... Just because it was written in the same form of runes doesn’t mean they’re connected.”
“Not finish story,” said Dwatrall. “I born on this stone. Chief made me eat off it, sleep on it. He smarter than before chiefs, thought up this test. And I change. Ancestor clever, sensed the truth. Inside this box is magic that can make trolls better than strong. Can make us clever. Clever as dwarves.” He grinned. “Who know... Cleverer, even.”
“And the lava trolls still have the hammer?” I asked.
“Yes. Hear stories sometime, of them fighting over who holds it on hunts. Strong weapon.”
“But the heat where they live weakens you, so you can’t fight them for it. But if we forge the right armor...”
“Maybe you can get it. You get our key for us, and we get yours for you.”
And of course, ignoring Hayhek’s protests, I agreed to help.
Another sleep and a couple meals of something that the trolls promise isn’t dwarf later, and Dwatroll announces he will lead us to our new forge. We follow him to one of the grotto exits, a slimy tunnel that drops suddenly downward at a right angle into a deep pool. I drag myself out spluttering—I won’t ever get used to swimming.
He leads the two of us down yet another tunnel. The green algae that for a long while has been the only source of light dims as it flakes away to leave bare black stone and total darkness. Before long however, a new glow reaches us, the familiar bright orange of magma. I quicken my pace to get closer to the glorious dryness and wonderful smell of hot rock and metal.
I’m the first into the cave. It’s small, the magma a pool only a dozen feet or so across, and the space around it a circle only about ten feet wide, but it'll serve just fine. They’ve dragged in three flat boulders for us to use as anvils, and more importantly they’ve stocked the place to the brim. There’s barely room to move for all the twisted iron and the towers of armor of all kinds of exotic and strong metals. Weapons are stacked in piles like firewood.
Most of everything is fused with black basalt from the lava Runethane Thanerzak poured over our foes, but that can be removed easily enough.
“Lot of dwarves fall recent,” says Dwatrall. “Can you tell why?”
“There was a battle,” I say. “A big fight... very big fight. Our Runethane poured lava on the enemies, and they fell off.”
“How did you fall off also?”
“There was... It’s a long story. We’ll tell it to you while we forge.”
“Good. Improve all my knowledge. Let’s begin.”