Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

Where to run to? Where to run to? Already more runeknights are throwing down their sacks of loot and joining the chase. They know whatever the reward for catching me is, it’s greater by far than anything they’re holding, anything they’ve ever dreamt of.

What the hell does this key unlock?

The road becomes littered with fragments of stone block, puddles of smooth basalt still glowing from within, and bodies from a few skirmishes that must have broken out in the side streets. The wall looms above me, its shadow short, for the cavern mirrors are nearly directly above it, but so dark.

Danath is still close behind—I can hear his footsteps, irregular but as fast paced as my own. He’s given up shouting—he’s shouted enough. The news is spreading across the city as we run. The news that the thief has been found and will soon be ready for slaughter.

I turn and run along the wall. It’s a horrifying thought, but the black dragon is my only hope. I have to believe that in its gratitude, it will carry me away somewhere safe. That is, if it hasn’t already been cornered and cut to pieces by Vanerak.

I am hoping for a miracle that will almost certainly not become reality. Yet I must hope. A break in the shadows appears; I’m nearly at the breach in the wall. I turn and run onto the bridge. Some panicked shouts break out behind me:

“He’s going to jump off!”

“He’s crazy!”

“Stop him!”

Fortunately for them, I have no intention of jumping off. I'm here because it's the center of the city, and if the dragon can spot me anywhere it'll be here. I clamber over the still-smoking wood and twisted iron that was the ram and make my way to the center of the bridge. Nearly out of breath, I turn around, and pull away as much of the rag covering the key as possible.

“It’s here!” I scream to the stalactites above. “Come on! Come on!”

“We’re coming!” my pursuers scream back. Some laugh maniacally.

“Halt, you lot!” Danath shouts, mustering up the last of his breath. “Bastard’s mine. I’m a lieutenant! Stop right there!”

They stop and form a line across the rift in the wall. The dying lava illuminates their armor and weapons so they become like a spiked fence of flame. Danath limps forward, spinning his axe in his hand. It’s small, I think, so much smaller than Heartseeker, but just as deadly or deadlier. He has no shield, for he’s judged that one would only slow him down.

This here is a master of the fight. He knows his style, and has forged equipment to suit it perfectly. The blood coating him is a testament to just how skilled he is. My blow before was luck, and he won’t underestimate me again.

Kazhek was nothing compared to him.

“Give me the key and I’ll make this quick,” he says.

“You’ve already said that,” I say between gasping breaths. “I’m not giving it up.”

“Give it to me!”

“Never. I can beat you. I already got one good stab in. One more, and your blood is mine.”

He laughs. “Going to be hard to stab when you’re missing both arms.”

For a few moments we make no movement, just circle around each other. He stops. I ready Heartseeker to meet his attack. It comes before I can blink—in a sudden surge of strength and speed he leaps over a pile of wrecked iron and cleaves down at my wrists. I draw them back and his blade contacts Heartseeker’s haft instead. Sparks fly, and the spear’s dark glow flickers for an instant. The natural response would be to fall back, but I resist the fear-urge and push forward instead, thrusting Heartseeker’s haft up to his chin while I kick at his injured leg.

He sidesteps and swings at my head. It’s only because his injury unbalances him that the blow doesn’t remove my head from my shoulders. Instead it only rips my helmet from my head. I swing around, manage to block his next cut to my side. Shit! He’s right in close-range—I’m in the worst position possible for a spearfighter.

He strikes again and again, his axehead like a darting predatory bat, always where I least expect it. It’s only because of the precision granted by my gauntlets that I manage to block each strike, but still his axe brushes my armor again and again, slicing it like the iron is no more than paper. Finally I get a blow of my own in—a sudden knee kick—and can back away eight feet or so to a better range.

“Harder than you used to be,” he pants. “Never knew miners could be so tough. Shit, that pisses me off.”

I stab at him, left right and center, repeat and repeat. As always, my only concern is to get Heartseeker into position and let it loose. Unleashed it’s nearly as fast as Danath’s axe, and at the correct range more mobile. He can’t block every strike. One nicks his side, turning one of his silvery runes dark. Another nearly gets into his eye, and the follow-up chips into his groin-plate.

Confident, my mouth curves into a grim smile and I let loose a rapid flurry. He spins his axe clockwise, counter-clockwise, counter-clockwise again. His injured knee is slowing him, keeping him off balance. He stumbles on a splintered piece of wood and nearly falls over. My strike of opportunity half prizes off his left shoulder plate.

He charges and slashes at Heartseeker’s haft. Sparks fly and one of the runes goes dark—the spearhead’s shadow-glow dims. I curse and stab out, but he takes advantage of my hurried frustration to dodge down and get back into close-range.

A strike at my thigh misses, but a reverse-cut upward slices deep into my right gauntlet. I feel some of its power drain away—Heartseeker suddenly feels unwieldy. He follows up with another dozes slashes, each leaving a deep mark through my iron armor.

I whip Heartseeker around and catch his helmet with a blow from its blunt end. It stuns him momentarily and I hurry back out of his range. We stand still for a few seconds, sucking in deep gulps of air. Then he laughs.

He’s winning this and we both know it.

Yezakh watches from the balcony as Zathar duels the runeknight in bloody gold in the entrance hall. The apartment—just his ordinary apartment—rings with the sound of their battle. Zathar is brave, even baring his face at the enemy to bait him into striking. Their conversation Yezakh does not quite understand, but then the duel restarts.

Zathar gets him in the leg! Yezakh shouts encouragement, but they’re both too focused on the fight to notice.

He readies to leap into the fray. Damn! He should be down there already, but... His steel boots can take the impact, can’t they? Can they? He’s never leapt from so high before, but he has to overcome these cowardly instincts of his.

Hayhek grabs him firmly by the arm.

“Don’t!” he warns.

Three runeknights have appeared in the doors to the entrance hall.

“He needs our help!”

“Just stay here! Listen to me for once in your life!”

“He saved our lives!”

“No! He’s a damn curse on our lives! He put us all in danger, willingly, for riches.”

“It’s not just riches! He’s better than that. He went out his way to help me.”

“When?” Hayhek demands. “When did he help you when it wasn’t also for his own gain?”

“He...”

Yezakh wrestles with his thoughts. His father is right, Zathar’s help has always been for himself before anyone else, yet he has helped! That night when they stole into the shop, stole the reagent and gold... It was immoral, sure. But so was all his father suffered at the hands of his guild. Yezakh has heard the stories of the bullying, seen the red rings around his father's eyes.

All he wants is to break the cycle. To make sure he never suffers the same. Maybe if he does that his father won’t have to keep suffering either.

“Let go of me!” he snaps, and jerks his arm free. Zathar has just run out into the night. The golden runeknight gives chase.

“You really think you can save him?” Hayhek pleads. “You stand by him, son, and you will be torn apart. We all will! You don’t know how cruel some people are.”

“I just stood in the front lines of a battle with you. I know the risks! I have to face them!”

“You don’t!” his mother says, and grabs him by the shoulders. “You can stay here with us. Be with us.”

He pushes her away.

“No. I’ve put my fights off for too long.” He slams his visor down. “I’m going to help him. Don’t try to stop me.”

He leaps down. His boots shatter the tiles. For a brief second hope flares in Hayhek’s heart that maybe he’s injured his ankles, cannot run, but then his son is up and dashing off into the night.

“I have to stop him,” he says to his wife. “Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back.”

“Please,” she pleads. “You have to.”

“I will. I swear it.”

He gives her a kiss then jumps down and sprints away.

A sudden commotion at the wall catches my eye. A dwarf smashes through from behind, breaching the line of dwarves with his shield charge. Another follows close behind. Yezakh and Hayhek. The son is in the lead, running toward me, shouting something I can’t make out.

“...I’ll save you!”

He charges Danath from behind in the same moment I strike. Danath blocks his stab easily, but doesn’t turn back quite fast enough to totally avoid mine. Heartseeker digs into his back, then scrapes across into behind his damaged left shoulder plate. Its shadow-glow darkens hungrily as it digs in to the flesh beneath. He screams out, then Yezakh slashes him hard in the head, sending his gold-and-crimson visor flying off.

Hayhek shield-slams him, sending him flying backward to crash into a lump of twisted iron and wood. He gasps and spits blood.

I rush forward to stab his open mouth. Heartseeker darts forward hungrily—but I have forgotten how to fight like a dwarf. Danath’s armor is mostly intact, and he is not yet at the limit of his endurance.

He tilts his body to avoid my stab and sweeps out with his uninjured leg. It slams into my ankles like a titanium bar swung with impossible force. I crash to the rubble sideways, shouting in shock. I roll over and see that Danath has stood up, see his axe already cutting down to my belly.

“No!” screams Yezakh.

He slices at Danath’s neck, but the tall runeknight is far too fast for him. Danath spins and cuts through the axe. The axehead begins to fall down, and already Danath is swinging back, his platinum runes of speed on his golden armor and axe glowing brightly and coldly with power.

He severs Yezakh’s head.

It hits the stone at the same time his axehead does, and rolls to face me. The lights in the young dwarf’s eyes, once so full of desperate hope and promise, dull and die. His body, fountaining blood from the neck, collapses backwards.

“No!” Hayhek screams, and he charges Danath with shield forward, but already the dwarves behind him are rushing, nearly at him, and leading them is another familiar face, a dwarf in a suit of lead scales with a hideous scar through his lips. He drives an open palm into the back of Hayhek’s head and the old dwarf flies past me, bounces off another lump of ruined iron with a clang, and sprawls concussed or dead at the edge of the bridge.

I stagger to my feet and fall forward over the wreckage that only seconds ago Danath was lying against. At the other end of the bridge more dwarves are gathering—I’m trapped, utterly and totally. Out of pure instinct I leap forward and roll, and an instant later hear Danath’s bloody axe whir through the air just behind my head.

“Stop!” someone shouts. “He’s nearly at the edge!”

I get to my feet, see the chasm before me, spin back around dizzily.

“Give me the key!” Danath rasps. His face is haggard but his eyes are bright. “You jump down and we’ll hunt down your family and tear them apart.”

“I don’t have a family,” I say quietly.

“Family...” Hayhek groans. He tries to stand up, but can only make it to his knees.

The leering faces of dwarves surround me in a tight semi-circle. They are ghoulish. They are monsters equal in greed and cruelty to the black dragon or perhaps even more so.

“You have a choice,” Danath says. “Hand over the key and maybe you can live.”

I laugh bitterly. “If I hand over the key I die.”

“If you don’t you die either way,” says the lead-clad dwarf. “I’ll make it quick. I’ll crush your head in an instant. You won’t feel a thing. Faster and easier than decapitation, even.”

I look up to the mirrors. They’re directly above me, and I can see a silver orb on them, repeated many times over. The moon, that must be.

“Hand it over,” Danath says again. “Don’t you dare jump.”

The stalactites are still. Nothing flits between them, not a bat, not a bird, not a dragon either. It isn’t coming for me. Wherever the black dragon is, dead or alive, it isn’t here. I lower my gaze and look Danath in the eyes.

“You’re wrong,” I say. “I don’t have a choice. Hayhek, stand up.”

I reach out a hand, and when he doesn’t grab it I clutch his upper arm and drag him to his feet.

“My son...” he says. “You killed him. My only son, you killed him.”

I don’t know who he’s speaking to: Danath or me.

“Hand over the damn key,” says Danath.

“Never.”

I lean backwards, pulling down Hayhek as I do so. Danath’s hand snatches toward the key, the tips of his fingers brush it, and then I’m out of reach. For the second time in my life I plummet into the chasm with the faces of my enemies looking down on me. Except this time no tears flow from my eyes to leave a trail like diamond dew.

Wracked with guilt I fall, waiting for my existence to end.