Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

The stone pillars lining the road blur with my speed. My rapid footsteps echo. I jostle through crowds of miners to much cursing, but thankfully none of the runeknight guards around take much of an interest beyond a few odd looks—it’s raucous and chaotic enough here that one dwarf, even fleeing for his life, doesn’t draw so much attention.

Runethane Broderick's new forge-hall is a grid of corridors punctuated by thousand meter shafts, halls of empty bookshelves awaiting runic treatises, scaffolds straining to support great tungsten buckets filled to the brim with molten metal, and of course statues of the Runethane himself, solid gold and hung with diamond encrusted chains. Apparently he's wanted it built for two hundred years or so, and ten years ago he finally amassed enough funds to begin. It’s going to be a great deal bigger than the forge-halls of Runethane Thanerzak. It’ll have to be, if he and his runeknights are going to be able to craft enough powerful runic weapons and armor to win them the victory they’re after.

Being a grid, one might think the half-made forge-hall would be easy to navigate, but grids are surprisingly easy to get lost in—one turn wrong and you end up going in a circle, or rather a square. Nonetheless I have been working here like a dog for the past eight years and know how to find my way around. Past the empty dragon house with its barred windows, a right turn at the great statue of the Hammer of Jazkh Haldaak, a left turn at the quarter-filled mercury lake, and I’m hurrying down the main road. Past the pubs and guardhouse, and very a far way away from anywhere wealthy, I come to the miner barracks that is my home.

It’s a block of stone, and its windows are barred like the dragon house’s, though with iron rather than tungsten. Its door is shut.

For most miners, a rune-sealed door may as well be a wall of solid stone. I am not like most miners. I am not illiterate.

Zhekh Harkza Hazhulam

Steel Path-To Victorious

I speak the runes painted upon the door and it swings open. I hurry to my room. It’s the worst one, right next to the toilets, and stinks of stale sweat and urine.

Fearing that I will hear runeknights pounding down the corridor any second, I heave my mattress off of the hole it covers and reach down. I scrabble around with both hands in a familiar motion. They make contact with my brother’s treasures:

A small pouch of silver, a book, and a short bar of refined steel.

This is all I need to begin my legend. I swallow and bring them up. I’ve never dared to bring them into the light until today, but they look just as I remember them from four years past. I count the silver pieces. Enough for a good hammer and tongs, and some left over for a rune. Just enough.

I push the mattress back over the hole and stand up. I put the silver in my pocket next to the incandesite, and the steel in my other pocket along with the book: a dictionary of runes, a battered thing, with a thin leather cover scratched all over. Some of its pages are scorched at the edges. Other pages are missing entirely, or blotted. Even so, enough is readable. At any rate there’s enough information in here for me to tell the difference between a pain rune and a death rune. If Hardrick owned a book like this, I might actually be dead.

I wonder how much he’s stolen using that crude knife of his? Too much. I scowl in disgust. To take your first steps at forging just to get your grubby hands on some money. Pathetic. And it was money he had in mind, for I know he sure spends enough of it drinking and whoring.

But I won’t have to deal with him ever again, nor any other miner.

I rush from the barracks and down the street to the merchant’s district. I just have to make two purchases and then I’ll be gone, free, ready to do what my brother always whispered to me in his half-dreams.

Become a legend.

Hardrick lies gasping in agony, clutching at the wound in his shoulder, which the two plate-armoured runeknights standing over him have extracted the knife from. He is looking up at one, blonde, who turns the weapon over in his gauntleted hands.

“Yuck,” the blonde runeknight says to the other. “Have you ever seen something so badly made?”

“Looks like a child crafted it.”

“Or a miner. I’m shocked this rune even works at all.”

“Me too.”

“Does it?” Blonde directs this question to Hardrick.

“Does it work?” Hardrick groans. “It nearly stopped my heart. I’d say it works.”

“Stopped your heart?” says the other runeknight. He has a black beard and a scar cutting through both lips. “What are you talking about?”

“Hah! Don’t worry,” Blonde laughs. “This is just a rune of pain. You didn't have anything to worry about.”

“Oh,” Hardrick says through gritted yellow teeth. “Bastard.”

The other miners are crowded around them. Partly they are shocked, but mostly they’re excited. Nothing this interesting has ever intruded on their empty, dull lives before.

“He just set upon you?” one of the miners asks. “Just tried to stab you like that?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Why though?”

“No idea... He didn't like the beer I gave him much. And he was always a weird one. We all could tell that. Doesn’t take much to make his type fly off the handle.”

“I wonder where he forged it,” ponders Blonde.

“Not at a guildhall, I can tell you that,” says Blackbeard. “Any guildmaster worth the title would throw the dwarf who made this into a cauldron of molten iron as soon as he saw it.”

“And good on him for doing it.” Blonde’s mouth twists into a grimace. “This thing is an insult.”

“What are you waiting for, then?” Hardrick asks. “Aren’t you going to go and grab him? He stabbed me!”

“Shut up, miner. We’re faster than we look. We’ll catch up.”

“But not for your benefit,” Blackbeard makes clear. “We’re going for him because this,”—he takes the knife and waves it in Hardrick’s face—“Is an insult to the hammer that bent it into shape.”

“Right you are,” Hardrick says. “Right you are.”

“What was his name again?” asks Blonde. “Zuthur? Zother?”

“Zathar.”

“Zuthur?

“Zathar.”

“Zuthur. Got it. Any idea where he might have run off to?”

“No idea... Wait...” Hardrick decides to go for a gamble. “I saw something in his pocket. An orange glow. He might have found something.”

“He’ll be off to pawn it then,” says Blackbeard. "Probably in the dark district."

“No, not him. He’s crazy. Wants to be a runeknight. He mutters about it under his breath sometimes.”

“The forging district then,” says Blonde. “If he’s foolish enough to head there directly." He gives Hardrick the slightest of smirks. "Though, it was stupid of him to attempt a murder just after succeeding at a thievery, wasn’t it?”

The blonde runeknight’s eyes are piercing. Can he see through the lies?

“Like I said,” Hardrick says nervously. “He’s crazy.”

Blonde shrugs. “Well, whatever. A bit of incandesite never goes amiss in any case.”

“Must have been a big chunk to glow so strong,” says Blackbeard. “Plenty even after the Runethane has his tithe.”

“And if you find him, there’ll be some payment for me too?” Hardrick asks hopefully.

“Maybe something small. We’ll see.” He starts to turn to leave, then stops to look back at Hardrick. “What was his name again..? Ah, never mind. Doesn’t matter. You don’t need a name after you’ve been submerged in molten iron.”