Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

I remain standing over Faltast's body for some time. Blood wells up around Gutspiercer. Moonlight reflects off the stain onto the weapon's platinum runes, making them gleam redly. I stare at this scene and find myself sinking into it, yet it doesn't quite seem real, but like I'm looking at some mosaic, an image, or some scene from a poem, rather than at my dead friend.

Dead? Can he really be dead? Slowly I pull Gutspiercer out. Faltast twitches. My heart jumps. I watch closely for further movement, but there's nothing. He's as still as the frozen plain upon which he lies.

I killed him. Reality sets in. I killed him, my friend! I stagger back, slipping on the snow. Why?

Because he was a traitor. Because he betrayed our quest, abandoned his comrades to a fell beast bent on destroying us.

Just as I did. Yet I was given a second chance. More than one chance.

I gave the tenth degree, Ulat, a chance. Why didn't I give one to Faltast?

I shake my head. I went through these thoughts while I was fighting him. I found myself to be correct then, so why not now?

Slowly, carefully, pressing into the snow with the fronts of my boots so I don't slip again, I step back away from the body. I don't want to see it anymore, don't want to have anything to do with it. There's can be no reason for this feeling—I did justice, I did the right thing, he was a deserter—yet all the same I can't bear to be here; I want to be away, want to leave him in the darkness where I can no longer see him.

I turn and flee, almost flying over the ice, skidding through the darkness. I'm breathing hard—now that the burning in my ruby has dimmed, fatigue has caught up with me. Something dark is in my way and I'm traveling too fast to turn and avoid. My boots smash into it and I go flying through the air. I tumble over and over, then skid to a stop. I scramble to my feet look back. The dark shape is a body, and there are others around it. Pale red circles are in bloom upon on many-times punctured armor.

I continue to flee. How many did I kill tonight? A dozen? When have I ever killed a dozen of my fellow dwarves before? Back in the war against Broderick, perhaps, but those were my enemies. It was fair and proper to kill them.

It was fair and proper to kill the deserters! They betrayed us.

Yet I am also a traitor.

I'm going in circles again; I've been through all this!

“I did the right thing!' I scream.

Then I slow myself down and take some deep breaths. I need to calm myself. I'm going to be back at camp soon, and I need to be in a sound state of mind if I'm going to be able to convince everyone of the truth.

The truth being that what I did was right.

I start back off at a slower pace. There's a slight glow to the east. The sun is coming up. I've been out away from camp for a while now. My killing passed in a blur, but between the different fleeing groups there must have been more distance than I thought. I seem to have traveled quite a long way.

Am I even going in the right direction? I look around me. There's a faint line in the snow some way to my left. I travel toward it, and it looks like it might be my tracks. I step into it, and my boots fit.

These are my tracks. I breath a sigh of relief. I take off alongside them. At least I know I'm going in the right direction now.

This brings a new worry to my mind—Ulat. I spared him, sent him away, but can he find his way back? Did my act of forgiveness just condemn him to a slower death?

I won't know until I myself make it to camp. I continue. My wrist begins to sting with pain, and the cut beside my neck too. It's growing warm, which means it must be bleeding again. Faltast's strike was harder than I realized at the time. Another inch to the right and I would've been seriously wounded, perhaps fatally wounded.

As the glow to the east brightens, the clouds above fade and with them the snowfall. For a while I consider this good luck, for there's no way it'll become hot enough for my tracks to melt, but then the snow starts to glisten. It is melting.

Briefly I take my helmet off. It's not so cold as it's been on the many miles we traveled to get here. Has our killing of the frozen mammoth disrupted something? Or is this just another effect of the dragon's continued presence? Could it perhaps be waking up, recovering from its injuries?

Likely it's growing in strength, absorbing power from the new hoard of runic weapons and armor it's taken from Uthrarzak's forces.

There's no point in speculation. I try to clear my mind for what feels like the hundredth time—and Faltast's last moments appear before my eyes. I hear him plead for his life again.

“Shut up!” I hiss to myself. “Shut up!”

How long until camp? How long? Out here alone on the ice, I have nothing but my own thoughts, and they are torment.

Finally, about mid-morning, I catch sight of the great red and white mound that was the icy mammoth, then the wrecked tents and the dark figures of my fellow dwarves. They are bent over, breaking apart the ground with the handles of their weapons. Everyone is doing this labor, the low labor of miners, even Xomhyrk.

He's the first to spot me. He suddenly straightens up and points. I brace myself—somehow I think he'll be angry with me, and I remember his power to suddenly appear long distances away. Is he about to take my head for my crime? Maybe Braztak has told him what I left camp to do.

He's walking out of camp, though, not flying at impossible speed.

“Zathar!” he shouts. “Where in hell have you been? What the hell were you thinking?”

There's a note of worry in his voice. I slide to a stop just before him. Some of my guildmates, Braztak and Guthah among them, rush out to join us.

For several seconds I am struck dumb, unable to think of anything to say.

“Zathar?” Xomhyrk says again. “Where were you?”

“Did you find Faltast?” Braztak asks.

“And Ulat?” asks Guthah.

What is there to say? What can I tell them?

“Zathar?” says Braztak. “What happened?”

All I can tell them, I know, is the honest truth, and my honest reasons.

“Did you see Ulat?” Guthah asks again. “No sign at all?”

“I found him,” I say. “Is he not back yet? I let him go.”

Guthah frowns. “Let him go? What do you mean?”

A strange look comes across Braztak's face. He must now realize what I've done; my careless remark has confirmed his suspicions. But it is, surprisingly, not an angry look. Stern and cold, but not angry.

“What did you do out there?” says Xomhyrk. There's a little more steel in his voice now. “Answer me.”

I straighten my stance and look him in the eyes. “I did what I had to do.”

“And what was that?”

“Hand down justice.”

“Justice? Enforcing justice is not your role, Zathar.”

A sudden anger comes upon me. My ruby is hot all of a sudden. What I have to say becomes as clear as ice:

"I did what I had to do!" I cry. “They were traitors! They left us to fight that beast alone. They cared only for their own skins. And they aren't the only ones—so many have run from this expedition, Xomhyrk. You know, everyone knows, but we say nothing. I took it upon myself to do something. No one can get away with betraying us—no one!”

Most of the expedition has gathered around now. Many are glaring in rage: I have killed their guildmates for betrayal, a crime I myself am famous for committing.

“I was ready to accept my punishment!” I snap at them. “I was willing to die if found guilty. When I lost the final contest—it was overturned later, but at that point I had lost—I was willing to die. I was ready to meet the executioner's axe.”

“And this gives you the right to play executioner, does it?” says Xomhyrk.

“Play? I did not play at anything. I did a duty no one else was willing to do.”

“I have said many times that those who do not wish to face the dragon are free to do so.”

“And as a result of that, our numbers are less than half what they were!”

There is silence. Xomhyrk is staring into my eyes through my helm's skull-sockets. I glare back. I don't know what gives me the courage to do this—to disobey a first degree directly—but I'm doing it all the same.

The silence continues. No one is sure what to say. The Dragonslayers seem aghast—I don't think anyone has spoken to Xomhyrk like this before.

Gollor breaks it. He steps between me and Xomhyrk and grabs hold of me by the shoulders. His hands are strong, and he seems unaffected by my armor's cold.

“The commander's judgement is not yours to question!”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I made a mistake. But his orders were not on my mind. All that was in my mind, in my heart, was rage that our comrades could abandon us. Our own guildmates!”

“Zathar,” Braztak says with a slight tremble in his voice. “Did you find Faltast?”

“Yes.”

“And then what did you do?”

“I told him to come back.”

“And what did he reply?”

“He refused.”

“Refused?”

“Yes. He said he was finished. That he thought we were doomed, and that he no longer wanted a part in our quest.”

“I see.”

“I told him that by coming he agreed to see this to the end. He admitted this, and then said he was going to turn back anyway.” I take a deep, shaky breath. “He was an oathbreaker, Braztak. Dwarves of the Association of Steel, he was an oathbreaker.”

“And then what happened?” Braztak asks quietly.

“We fought.”

“And then?”

“I won.”

“And where is he now?”

“Lying in the snow.”

“Dead?”

“Dead.”