NOVEL FROG Cavern Exile: The Final Tunnel
Hardrick forges furiously. He batters the silver and platinum of his new breastplate with unerring accuracy and the sound of the blows are a rhythmic vibration that shivers in his ears. His crafts are not yet strong enough. He will forge armor that cannot be punctured.
He steps back to examine the work and curses loudly—it's not good enough. Six times he has forged, deconstructed, then remade this piece, yet it is still not good enough. There is some quality about it, one he cannot quite put his finger on, that tells him a tungsten blade could pierce it no matter what runes he grafts to it.
Patience, that is what he hears the older dwarves urge the younger—though he has never been urged, they take a look into his eyes and scuttle off. They recognize genius when they see it.
Until now patience has done him no good. Its opposite has. Greed. The need for more, faster, sooner. Why save up for materials when you can steal them? Yes, he soon understood that money was the way forward for a runeknight. Money to buy metal. To buy reagent. To buy dictionaries and your way into lectures. He stole his money. Even from the start, when he emptied his bank account to buy steel for the first Silverslash—it wasn’t just his account he emptied. Oh no, he had the key to his wife’s savings, his parents’ funds, the money set aside for his useless sons...
That was how a dwarf got ahead. Genius won’t make it alone. Genius and money is what’s needed. And if the money cannot be gotten honestly, then dishonesty must be used.
Every night he stole. He dressed in rough black and with a new knife of pain and paralysis he has robbed many a runeknight—amazing how much you can improve when you put effort into something: the merest touch of it against bare skin will send even the strongest dwarf into convulsions. He has stolen into many a house and tortured the valuables from the family within. Even prized weapons he has taken and melted down.
Genius won’t make it alone. Genius and money. With his earnings he has forged his way to the top, and as for those that ask irritating, nosey questions? He duels them and he wins.
Yet now he curses, for money won’t fix his current problems.
There is the trouble of the key. Braedle said it would mean his head if one of his dwarves had nicked it and smashed it to bits to sell, so Hardrick has had to promise whoever recovers it more gold than any number of diamonds could be worth.
Fortunately for his bank accounts no one has yet found it. Unfortunately for him the Runethane is not very happy about this. He will not give Hardrick another opportunity to command, nor an opportunity to take the first degree exam, until it is delivered.
Another obstacle on his rise to the top. However the key is only a sub-part of the real problem, which is the duties of commanding.
His every waking hour is reading reports, shouting at people to search harder, filling out reports, shouting at accountants to weasel more money out seized piles of equipment, shouting at soldiers to treat the civilians half decently because the Runethane does not want a rebellion...
No wonder he has hit a wall with his forging: he barely has the time for it. A few nights a week, that’s all. And a genius must keep his mind and hands sharp and strong with constant practice.
He throws his hammer down with a clang and kicks at the anvil angrily—though not too hard, he doesn’t need a broken toe to add to his irritations.
He thought the climb to the top would be all forging and fighting.
Turns out it isn’t so easy as all that.
His shoulder twinges suddenly. He grasps the old knife-wound and winces. There’s another problem:
Danath told him of an encounter with a young black-bearded dwarf that ought to be dead. And if someone can survive being thrown into the cavern once...
Why not twice?
Our journey continues, eerily quiet. We move up through further tunnels of sulfurous stone. The stink sinks deep into my nose and now I’m starting to believe I’ll never be able to smell anything else again.
A couple sleeps later we enter the caves our captive told us about.
First is the cave of shards—a very aptly named place. Here the stalactites are a kind of very jagged glass. The stalagmites used to be the same, I think, but have long since been smashed to pieces by the constant passage of trolls. A dribble of lava flowing down one wall casts a very faint light, and through it I see that each glass spike hanging above is a different color, and they form patterns of red, blue, and green waves. Underfoot though, all the colors are mixed together in a random assortment of chaos.
After adding to this chaos by stomping a path through it, leaving smaller shards and sand in our wake, we exit into yet another winding tunnel. It shrinks; the trolls have to edge sideways through it for a good mile.
We enter the next and final cave our captive told us of—the ring-river. As I expected it's nothing drinkable: the water is the same white-algae-choked acidic gunk we encountered at the entrance to the lava trolls’ realm. Strangely the river does not seem to come from or go to anywhere—it is exactly what its name suggests, a ring flowing in an endless loop.
Unfortunately the exit from this weird cavern is in the central island, which means we have to cross.
“We’ll be up to our waists!” Hayhek whispers to me. “We should ask them to carry us across.”
I shrug in reply.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A runeknight should have more confidence in his armor.”
“Fire resistance is not acid resistance. There are beasts of slime that eat metal, you know. They’re made of the same stuff as this river.”
“Relax. It’s just a quick splash.”
“You before me, then.”
We line up before the shallowest point of the river, me at the front—I don't want to get drenched by any waves roiled up by the trolls' bulk.
I step into the whitely glowing water without hesitation. The sour-stinking substance reaches nearly up to my waist and there must be something of flame in it for I feel my runes buzz and resist its power.
"Go slowly and smoothly," warns Dwatrall. "Chief says we don't want to bring up gas."
Nodding my head, I proceed forward as gently as I can. The algae sticks to me, forms slimy ropes around my ankles that drag at me. I grimace and force myself through until I emerge onto the opposite bank.
I stare down the tunnel in the island's center. There is a sulfurous glow from the far end and a trollish stench.
Hayhek comes next. He lowers himself into the river in a fashion that suggests he is grimacing behind his helmet, and walks forward smoothly but rather more hurriedly than I did. He pauses for a second.
“Damn slime round my legs!” he curses, then he redoubles his effort and forces himself through and out of the water.
Dwatrall goes next. It is a lot easier for him than it was for us, at least to halfway, when he starts cursing.
“Getting through the joints,” he hisses to us.
When he’s nearly at the bank we take his hands and help haul him up. He sits down, cursing, and takes off his leg armor to shake out. Water drips from it and sizzles on the rock like it’s on a heated pan.
I hear something from the tunnel. A kind of low murmuring, or loud shouting coming from very far away.
“We should hurry,” I tell Dwatrall.
He says something to chief as he puts his armor back on. The chief replies in what I guess is the affirmative, and strides through next. His armor is better made and none of the water gets through. He turns and beckons the two warriors.
The first gets through without difficulty. The second stops half way.
He grunts out in alarm. The chief says something to him, and a panicked exchange of troll-language follows.
“What’s happened?” I ask Dwatrall.
He looks at me with worry in his eyes. “The algae’s caught around his leg.”
“He can’t pull free? It’s just algae!”
“Is it?”
“We got through with no trouble? Why this now?”
“It’s not just algae, I think. Maybe some kind of slow-awoken predator.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
Dwatrall scans the cave. “No, it does. The lava trolls have been instructed not to go through the same part of the river twice in quick succession. If the algae gets stirred up too much, it sticks whatever wades through.”
“And then what?”
The chief says something to the other warrior, who goes forward to help his struggling comrade.
“Wait!” I shout as he steps in.
He bellows in shock the moment his foot touches the bottom, and jumps back. He kicks his foot up, and a great slimy strand of white is caught around it. The water where we’ve been crossing begins to hiss and bubble.
The chief shouts something at Hayhek.
“Cut the algae!” Dwatrall translates.
Hayhek slashes down with his axe. Sparks fly up from the rock beneath. The loop unwraps itself and falls away. The chief shouts something else to us. He does not make eye contact with the bellowing troll in the river.
“We have to get down!” Dwatrall shouts. “Hurry, into the tunnel!”
“Are we just going to leave him?” Hayhek says, shocked. The troll in the river is choking and clutching his throat.
“He’s gone!”
There’s a massive splash; the troll has vanished in a cloud of poison. The curling gas claws its way through the air toward us. My eyes begin to water and my throat begins to itch.
“Zathar!” Dwatrall shouts. “Into the tunnel!”
The chief and the other warrior are already running down it, Dwatrall following close behind. I grab Hayhek and pull him down with me toward the sulfurous glow and the murmurs.
The murmurs sound like distant laughter now.