Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

Nthazes tells me of eight dwarves Mathek was close to. We split the job—he will talk to four, and I to another four. After we’re done we’ll meet to discuss any possible motives and perpetrators.

My first targets are two fifth degrees called Belthur and Danak. They’re close friends, and I’ve seen them enter the forges many times together. Nthazes told me they often used to drink with Mathek after going on jobs, but at some point—of course he can’t say exactly how long before the murder—they stopped being so friendly with him.

I head into a pit near the forging hall’s entrance. I know the pair recently came back from a hunt that was attacked by a swarm of some horrid creatures called braskaks, and will be looking to repair their armor.

As expected, they arrive together wearing their battered and dented plate. To go up and greet them would obviously look suspicious, so I work on my titanium boots, biding my time until they’re about to leave—this’ll give me an excuse to get close to them.

I cut and shape some more of the strips of titanium that’ll go over the top of my feet. Now that I’m used to hammering it correctly, I don’t have to be focused totally on the task, and can devote a small part of my mind to listening for the pair's voices. After a little less time than expected, I hear them finishing up.

“Ready to leave?” says Belthur.

“Yeah,” answers Danak. “Get much done?”

“A bit. That stab to my forearm is proving a right bastard to repair, though.”

“That forearm you made in one piece, as a cylinder?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“I told you doing it like that would make it a bitch to repair.”

“Looks like you were right.”

I quickly gather up my titanium, dash to my chest to store it, and catch up to them just as Belthur is reaching to open the door out.

“Excuse me!” I call. “I’ve just finished too. Mind if I join you?”

“Oh,” says Danak. “It’s you. Well, all right. No reason you can’t.”

“Thanks.”

“Who’d you come down with in the first place, though?”

“Nthazes,” I say, not untruthfully. “But he already left. Forgot the drafts of some runic poems he’d been working on.”

“He should be back soon, then,” says Belthur, slightly suspiciously.

“Maybe, but I’m starving. Dwarf’s got to eat.”

He shrugs. “Fair enough.”

We make our way along the corridor. I’m very used to how it sounds now: I can make out small details on the wall, tell the shape of runes scratched and gouged then smoothed over from a millennia of weathering. The crackling sound of the torches and the loud, slightly out of time footsteps of other dwarves barely bothers me anymore. So good is my hearing, in fact, that I have my eyes shut to prevent the flickering of the burning tar and its shifting smoke from distracting me.

“I heard your hunt didn't go so well,” I say.

“Went terribly,” Belthur grunts. “Nothing edible in sight—apart from us dwarves.”

“What are braskaks anyway?” I ask.

Obviously I can’t jump to the topic of Mathek and the darkness right away.

“Surprised you haven’t run into any before,” says Danak. “Though I suppose you haven’t gone on so many hunts yet. Not to the upper levels, at least.”

“Is that where you find them?”

“Usually. We were just in the middle levels though... Fourth level.”

“Little bastards,” Belthur says. “About the size of a small child, with ten legs and fangs. Very sharp fangs.”

“Sharp enough to get through armor, I guess,” I say.

“Yes. Pierced into my skin too. Still hurts bad.”

“They don’t drink blood, do they?” I ask, making sure to put a heavy dose of anxiety into my tone. This is my chance to get onto the topic of Mathek.

“Not that I know of,” says Danak. “Just try to tear you up. Horrible little things.”

“And there’s no way one could have gotten into the fort?”

“No way. You’ve seen how tightly the entrance is guarded.”

“One couldn’t just have slipped through?”

“Not possible.”

“It was definitely the darkness that killed Mathek, then?”

“For sure,” says Belthur. “Poor bastard. Was working so hard, too.”

“I heard you were good friends with him. Must have been terrible for you.”

“Yes. He was a damn good dwarf. A bit blunt, but that’s what you need in a friend sometimes.”

“Always honest, was Mathek,” says Danak. “His crafts were coming along very nicely as well. Nearly had a good new suit of armor done.”

“Cut off far too soon,” says Belthur, shaking his head sadly.

“Before it happened,” I say, “Did he say anything? That he was being watched, or followed? Or that he felt some premonition?”

“Why?” asks Danak. “Do you think you’re being watched?”

“All the time,” I say, lowering my voice to a whisper and adding a fearful tremor to it. “Can’t stop worrying that the deep darkness is creeping up behind me, ready to strike. Do you feel anything like that? Or is it just me?”

Belthur shakes his head. “You’re not the only one, but it’s just nerves. You just need to take some deep breaths now and again. And no, Mathek never said anything like that.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No. He was a bit quieter than usual, I suppose, but he was just tired from working so hard. When the deep darkness came, it must have been just as much a shock to him as it was to all of us.”

"He must have noticed something. If it was targeting him... He never said anything at all?"

"Nothing," says Danak.

“Horrible,” I say. “It’s all horrible. To be taken, without any warning...”

"You'll just scare yourself worse if you go on like that," Belthur says sternly. "Scare everyone else too."

“We’re all feeling stressed about it,” Danak says kindly. “But there’s nothing to do for it but go about as normal.”

"Mathek wouldn't have wanted us panicking either. He wouldn't have panicked."

"Yes," I say. "I'm sorry. I just lost control for a second."

We part at the meal hall. I might have been hamming it up with the fear a little bit, but I wasn’t lying about being hungry: I tuck into a large plate of deep-fried gelthob while I think—it's a bit rubbery, but has a hearty flavor. I wash it down with a mug of water. Usually water is only used for cleaning, of course, but I don’t want my thoughts disrupted.

Not that our conversation has given me much to think about. There's nothing at all suspicious about what they said. Neither Belthur nor Danak seemed jealous, resentful, or ill-disposed to Mathek in any way. Just saddened. And as for what Nthazes mentioned about them not talking so much before the murder, that can easily be explained away by Mathek’s busyness at the forge.

No, these two were a dead end. Hopefully my next target, a sixth degree called Naethuz, will prove to have some more useful information. And as luck would have it, he’s right here at the other end of the table, drinking heavily. Not that this is much of a surprise—he’s been drinking a great deal lately. The meal hall is relatively empty right now, so I seize my chance and walk over to him.

“You all right?” I say, feigning concern—well, I am a bit concerned, actually. He’s in a terrible state, beard knotted and unkempt, eyes bloodshot, hands trembling as he brings the flagon up to his mouth.

“No,” he says shakily, before downing the entire flagon in one gulp. “Pour me another, would you mind?”

I sit down opposite to him and do so, and he downs that as well.

“Are you sure you haven’t had enough?” I ask. “You really look like you ought to be in bed.”

“In bed? In bed?” He laughs, slightly maniacally. His breath reeks. “Alone? No, no. I sleep here. Where there’s light.”

“You could always keep your candle lit. That’s what I do.”

“A little candle? Do you really think that’s going to keep the darkness at bay?”

“Keep your torch lit as well, then. If you can sleep with the fumes.”

“Torch won’t be enough either. Oh, no, no, no. Nothing can stop it, nothing!”

“If that was the case, we’d all be dead by now. Not just Mathek.”

“Oh, we’ll all be dead soon, my friend. You up-abovers just don’t understand what the deep darkness is like. It’s ancient, evil! It’ll stop at nothing to kill every last one of us and drink our souls.”

“We’ve defended against it until now.”

“Until Mathek. Until it got Mathek... Pour me another.”

I do so. Again, he downs it in one gulp.

“You were close friends with him, weren’t you? I often saw you talking together.”

“Yes, very close. He was the best dwarf I ever knew!”

“He was that good a friend?”

“He was a wonderful friend. Wonderful.” He attempts to wipe his eyes with his armored forearm, gives up and uses his beard instead. It would be funny if it wasn’t for his expression of absolute, crushing despair.

“You must miss him then.”

“I miss him terribly, up-abover. Some dwarves, you know, when they go up a degree, they start looking down on everyone below them.”

“He wasn’t like that, I gather.”

“No. I was! I moved up past him, after the Runethane took a liking to my helmet. Oh, I was awful, I was. Stopped talking with him, ignorar.. ignored him, and my other friends too. Tried to wiz... weasel my way into the good graces of the fourth and fifth degrees. Oh, I was a terrible friend to him.”

“I’m sure you weren’t that bad.”

“I was, I was! Brushed him off. Condis... Condo... Condescended to him too.”

“But he never held it against you?”

“Not one bit. When I got injured on a hunt, my other old friends told me it was my own fault, that I shouldn’t have got cocky... But he never said that. Never had an ill-word to say about me. Nor about anyone else.”

"What did others say about him?"

A slightly unnatural line of questioning, perhaps, but somehow I don't think Naethuz will remember this conversation for very long, and the other dwarves here are involved in their own quiet discussions, so hopefully aren't listening to us.

"I don't know," he says. "Not much. Not enough! They didn't appreciate him. None of us did. It's always like that... You don't appreciate what you have until it's torn away from you."

“That's very true," I say.

“He was a kind, kind dwarf,” he continues, and wipes his eyes with his beard again. “Kind and honest to a fault. Didn't deserve what happened to him.”

“No one deserves that.”

“But it will happen,” he says, staring crazily into my eyes, his face a mask of pale terror. “Mark my words, it’ll happen to all of us. Pour me another ale, would you?”

“I think you’ve had enough,” I say.

Us dwarves have a high tolerance for alcohol, but not an infinite one. I don't want to be responsible for him drinking himself to brain damage.

He thumps his fist on the table with a loud bang. “Damn up-abovers! You don’t know, you don’t know what it’s like...” Sobbing loudly, he bows his face to the table and puts his hands over his head. “It’s coming for us. It’s going to get us...”

“We’ll drive it off,” I say, feeling genuinely worried for him. “I’m sure of it.”

He’s sobbing too loudly, I think, to be able to hear me.

“Leave him be,” one of the few others here tells me. “He’ll sober up eventually.”

“Will he? I haven’t seen him sober since... You know. Shouldn’t we do something?”

“No, best wait it out. That’s always the best thing to do for cases like these.”