Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

A regular giant salamander is on average three times the size of a dwarf. An abyssal giant salamander is on average twenty times the size of a dwarf. I have read about them in the guild library. Their skin is more expensive by weight than flawless diamond and there are, broadly speaking, three techniques runeknights employ to hunt them.

Number one:

After the salamander’s lair has been identified, a pit is dug at the entrance and titanium spikes set at the bottom. Once the salamander falls in and impales itself, the runeknights descend to finish the job. If it is not quite dead, some of the runeknights are incinerated.

Number two:

A pool of magma that the salamander hunts in is identified. When the salamander dives in, a tungsten wire net is laid over the top to entangle it when it emerges. However sometimes the salamander finds an alternative exit, ambushes the hunters from behind, and devours them.

Number three:

A troglodyte is captured and left bound in a dead-end tunnel as bait. The runeknights listen for screams and the sound of crunching bone, block the tunnel up with an enormous boulder, and wait for the salamander to starve. This technique has the advantage that the skin becomes nice and loose, easy to harvest. However if the wrong type of stone is chosen, the salamander will smash it into a hail of splinters, eviscerating the runeknights standing guard.

All of these methods require coordination, expensive equipment, extensive preparation, and still go horribly wrong half the time.

None of them involve fighting the salamander head on.

It charges for the center of the line, six-legged lope awkward yet blindingly fast, and the dwarves there shout out in terror. One forgets she’s standing in front of a five-hundred foot drop, and flees over it. Others scatter sideways. Only one brave dwarf stands his ground. He raises his shield and axe. The salamander accelerates.

With perfect instincts, the dwarf sidesteps out the way not a foot before its jaws snap around him. But the salamander does not fall headfirst over the edge. It halts its momentum with precision borne of a hundred million years of evolution, whips its head around and bites into the young dwarf’s midriff. Its teeth shear through his steel armor like it’s paper. It throws the dwarf’s torso up into the stands in a shower of blood and trailing intestines, and swallows the lower half whole.

The crowd erupts into screams of horror. Some braver dwarves charge at the head examiner, and are held back by guards.

The head examiner watches on impassively, expression behind his mirrored tungsten mask unknown to anyone but himself.

I sprint away from the rampaging salamander, or at least I stumble away as fast as I can—my muscles are shreds, and I only make it halfway to the main gate where the other candidates are fleeing through before falling over again.

I look behind me, terrified. Luckily the monster is at the opposite side of the arena, tearing to shreds another candidate delusional enough to think he had a chance. I lay my spear down temporarily, and strip off the remains of my armor. There’s not much point in wearing it if the monster can bite right through.

I pick my spear back up, and shuffle as fast as I can to the wall. I point it up, and wait for the monster to make its way to me.

His name is Vanerak. He is a runeknight of the first degree, personal friend and bodyguard to Runethane Thanerzak, and five hundred years of war has erased every trace of compassion he ever had.

Though it has to be admitted he never had much to begin with.

The panicked cries of the guildmasters, the wailing of suddenly and shockingly bereaved families, and the wails of utmost terror from the candidates below make their way through his tungsten helm and into his ears, but don’t quite make it into his brain.

“This is madness!” cries a guildmaster. “All my best initiates are in there! Let them out!”

“My son!” screams a woman. “My son!”

“Let them out, you monster!” shouts a miner who came here to see fair fights, not a massacre. “Unlock the inner gates! What’s wrong with you?”

Vanerak ignores them all, and continues to watch the chaos unfold down below. Behind his mask he has a slight smile on his face. Carnage is always amusing to watch, especially when sanctioned by the Runethane. Well, not entirely sanctioned. But Vanerak is Runethane Thanerzak's most trusted dwarf, and there are always more initiates.

He won't get in too much trouble.

It wasn’t meant to be like this, thinks Bazhie as she runs from the heat at her back. She was meant to have an easy time of this exam. Her brothers prepared her for it, helped her get together the funds for the steel and dictionaries, her kind guildmaster taught her how to forge and rune. This was to be the day of her triumph, the day she’d make her miner father up in the stands proud.

She can feel the heat of the beast’s breath on her back. Her armor feels heavy, her axe-hand heavier. She knows she should turn around and face the beast head on. But the last two who tried that are in pieces now.

With a terrible cold feeling in the pit of her stomach, she understands she is about to die. The only question is whether to meet it with courage, or with cowardice.

She chooses courage, but her body chooses cowardice. She cannot turn.

The salamander rips into her from behind.

A woman’s severed head, still in its helmet, flies over Nothak and thuds into the gravel. He leaps over it, tears streaming from his eyes, anguish wailing from his lips. He dropped his axe as soon as the salamander emerged but hasn’t even noticed its absence yet. There is nothing else in his mind apart from fear.

He never wanted to be a runeknight. His parents wanted him to become one, because they’re runeknights, along with their parents, and grandparents, and so on through the ages. But he didn't inherit courage, skill, brains—nothing.

He rather liked painting pictures.

Some people get to see every happy memory of their life roll past their eyes before they peacefully and quietly sink into oblivion.

Nothak does not die peacefully and quietly.

Medez and his friend Fretik stand upon the fallen gates, shields and swords up, visors down, watching as the salamander tears off its latest victim’s limbs one by one. Behind them the rest of the surviving candidates are pressed against the inner gates, pounding against them with armored fists, trying to pry the bars apart with their weapons, or stripping down and desperately attempting to squeeze through.

Not Medez, though. He’s not a coward. Not a failure like the rest of them. Told the examiner that himself, didn't he?

“We’re going to kill this thing, aren’t we?” Fretik says. “Aren’t we?”

“We sure fucking are. Going to slide under and stab it right in the neck.”

“It’s gonna be easy, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Stupid easy. We’re faster than the rest are.”

“Yeah. That’s right. They were just slow. Slow and stupid.”

“Too right.”

The salamander tears the limbless, still screaming dwarf’s guts out, then silences him with a jet of blue flames that melts his armor to slag and turns his flesh into ash. It looks up at Medez and Fretik, hisses, and accelerates toward them.

“Ready?” Fretik says. “Medez?”

Medez is already forcing himself into the press behind, elbowing and shoving his way through the armored, screaming mass. He finds a handhold on one dwarf’s shoulders and pulls himself up, tramples over heads until he comes to the inner gates. With his sword he hacks at the bars, but his steel can do nothing but bring forth sparks.

The press shifts beneath him and he falls down into it.

The world smells of sweat and urine. The screams in his ears are so loud that they are no longer like sound, but the opposite, an all-engulfing blackness of noise. Metal boots crush down on him. Then the world becomes very hot, very blue, very painful.

Then it ceases to exist at all.

“Stop this!”

“Have mercy!”

“Do something! Do something!”

“Monster!”

The words penetrate through Vanerak’s helmet, and do not make it into his mind. He feels his platform shiver beneath his feet as the salamander incinerates and tears to pieces the remaining candidates.

Cowards, all of them. Not a single attempt at coordination, formation. No, Runethane Thanerzak is better off without these sorts. Hell, dwarfkind itself is better off without them.

“Examiner,” hisses one of his guards. “I don’t think we can hold them off much longer.”

“I’ll hold them off myself then.”

“I don’t think the Runethane is going to be happy about every single one of the candidates dying either.”

“What makes the Runethane happy is often not in his best interests.”

“Even so...”

Vanerak looks behind him for the first time. It really is chaotic, isn’t it? A total breakdown of discipline. Dwarves of all sorts screaming at his thin line of guards, battering them with whatever they can find—throwing food even, amusingly.

But maybe the guard has a point. Runethane Thanerzak did say to bring the pass rate down, but he did not mean bring it down to zero.

Vanerak turns back to the arena. There is one dwarf left, right near the abyss, backed up against the left wall, spear jutting out. He doesn’t seem to have a single scrap of armor on. Well, that’s smart enough. Initiate-level steel is no defense against an abyssal salamander.

Maybe Runethane Thanerzak won’t be so angry if there’s a pass rate of at least one.

Better move fast. The salamander’s heading toward him.

From the bloodstained arena gatehouse, the salamander is emerging. I stay still as a stone, hoping it won’t notice me, but no living creature, no matter how disguised, even in the darkest of dark caverns, has ever escaped the notice of its four bestial eyes. It is heading right toward me.

I shuffle back. I’m nearly at the edge of the abyss. Which is the less painful way to die, five hundred foot fall or being torn apart? Probably the former.

But I can’t throw myself off. If there’s even the smallest chance I can survive this nightmare of smoke and blood, I have to go for it with all my might, for my friends, for my brother. I stand. I take a fighting stance and aim my spear.

“Come on, monster!” I scream. “Come and get me! I’ve killed before, and I’ll kill again!”

Its tongue, gray like ash, flicks out. The red glow of its scales dyes the gravel around it a dark crimson. Its belly is a touch fatter than when it first emerged, its six legs move perhaps a touch more sluggishly, and the fire in its jaws is yellow rather than blue, but I’m under no delusions—this thing could kill me as easily as I could crush an insect.

One good stab. I have that in me at least. One good stab.

The thing begins to speed up. I ready myself.

From his platform above the main gate, the head examiner leaps down and draws his sword. He begins to sprint after the salamander, runes of speed flashing on his boots. The salamander doesn’t seem to notice him, and continues its charge toward me.

One good stab! It’s right before me now, jaws opening, two rows of teeth clearly visible, sharpened tombstones—my entire field of vision is a graveyard of razors.

I throw myself to the side, and those jaws follow me just like they did their first victim. But I’m ready. I take my good stab, power my spear right into one of its black eyes. It roars. Flames flicker on me, but they’re yellow and weak, their power used up.

One taloned paw lashes out and I’m thrown backwards. I can feel the upper part of my back resting on nothing. I try to sit up, but all my strength is gone. I made my stab, and now I have no more.

No claws pierce my belly, though. My legs are not bitten off. I hear the beast roar in anger, then in pain. Finally, silence. A tungsten clad hand takes me by the forearm and pulls me up.

I stare into the darkly reflective mask of the head examiner. Behind him the salamander lies in a pool of its own blood. And I notice that a lot of blood is coming from its eye, if not quite most of it.

“Congratulations,” the head examiner says. “You pass.”