Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

I can no longer tell what length of time I have been wandering these dark, dark tunnels. Sometimes it feels like weeks, other times like years, or even decades. I live by scraping fungus and the occasional insect from the walls, and lick water from the streams running between my feet. I do not know where I am.

At first, I searched for my fellow dwarves. Although I guess the black dragon used the key to greatly increase its power—what else could that terrible heat have been—and understand my punishment is certainly death, I will not run from justice.

But I have neither seen nor heard any dwarf in all my wanderings. Neither have I met anything else I recognize, not a river troll, not the chasm, not even a salamander. I have come too far down for those.

The blackness is the worst thing. Every cave I have been in up until now has been lit in some way, be it from magma, glowing fungus, or fireflies. Down at this depth there are none of those. Odd, I sometimes think, for if I keep going down I should eventually find light from the magma seas. Either I have not yet reached that depth, or else have missed them somehow, and have found my way into a tunnel of cold stone leading directly into the center of the world.

Each time I attempt to go up, each time I find a tunnel whose slope I sense ascends, I end up in another spiral downward. If I backtrack, I always end up taking a wrong turn somewhere, and find myself descending once more.

When will this blackness end?

Another indeterminate length of time passes. For my own safety I must progress slowly like a blind dwarf, tapping the floor ahead of me with Heartseeker to check for pitfalls. There are many: some I can skirt around, others I cannot that force me to turn back. Sometimes I feel a cold draft from above, telling me of a tunnel entrance upward, a potential way out I cannot take.

Then, heat and light. Not the harsh glare and burn of dragonfire, but the noble orange and kindly warmth of magma. I hurry toward it.

The equivalent of days pass before I reach the source of the glow. The spark of orange becomes a circle, and then I am standing at a tunnel exit which emerges to a cliff at whose base laps waves of magma. I look across in awe at a slowly rolling, splashing ocean of magma which extends to the far horizon. I shade my eyes, and through the brightness I see that it is slightly curved. The world truly is a sphere, it seems.

I examine the cliff to see if there are any ledges I might make my way along. There are none: the rock is smooth and black obsidian. I slump down in despair.

How long am I doomed to wander down in the very bowels of the world? Perhaps, I think to myself, I died in the battle and this wandering is my punishment for giving the dragon the diamond key.

A dark speck in the magma ocean draws my attention. At first I think it’s just a floating rock of some heat-resistant substance, then it begins to expand and become a wide circle. It glints dully in the light and I recognize it as tungsten.

The speck is far too regular in shape to be something natural, I realize as it continues to emerge. Worried it might be some creature, I back off into the shadows of the tunnel and continue to watch from there. Soon there is a circular dome protruding from the orange glow, but there is more to come. A wide plate, shaped like an arrowhead, rises out. Streams of magma roll off it and expose runework, though I am too far away to make out what they read.

Dwarves!

I hurry forward right to where tunnel becomes sheer drop, and wave violently. I imagine that the dome is some kind of lookout, mirrored like Vanerak’s helmet. I shout at it:

“Hey! Over here! Look at me! Help me!”

The ship—for that is what it must be, though the only ships I have ever seen pictures of floated in water—makes no sign that it notices me. It pauses for a short while, absolutely still among the rolling of the magma waves, before slowly beginning to sink back down.

“No!” I shout, jumping up and down and brandishing Heartseeker above my head like a maddwarf. “Come back! Look at me! Help me! Help me! Save me!”

But it vanishes. I sit down and stare into the magma sea for a long time, hoping it or another like it will reemerge, but there is nothing but endless heat and glow. My heart grows heavy. For a brief moment I consider throwing myself into the sea, then suddenly feel disgusted with myself. My sins are to be judged by the dwarves I have hurt, not erased in a moment of petty depression.

I turn and walk back the way I came. My throat is parched, but soon I’m back on familiar paths downward in damp tunnels with plenty of moisture to lick from the stone. I feel more like an animal than a dwarf, some brute cave beast. There is a theory I don’t quite believe that says all the two-legged, two-armed races—dwarves, humans, elves, et cetera—derive from a type of monkey, which is some hairy beast that lives in surface forests. There’s another that says we dwarves evolved, I believe the word is, from troglodytes.

I am beginning to feel that I am going in the opposite direction. The further I descend, the more bestial I become. My sense of taste has long since adapted: worms and beetles I once found vile now taste like the choicest cuts of meat.

Another unknowable and interminable length of time passes, and then something finds me.

The first sign that I am being tracked is the smell. Until now, the scent of the tunnels has been decayed stone and musty fungus. Then my nose detects a new scent, vaguely bloody, with a hint of decayed animal-matter. At first I ignore it as nothing, just some strange variety of mushroom, but by degrees it grows more acrid, and sometimes decreases in intensity when I turn a corner. And I can feel no new fungus, just the same squishy brackets housing the beetles that are my main source of nutrition.

I am forced to conclude that there is some animal following me. Good, I tell myself. Maybe it will have four limbs of succulent red meat. Because there are no dwarves down here, it will underestimate me too, I convince myself. Yet I begin to grow worried. It is a wily predator—I backtrack and take unexpected turns to try and lose it, but the bloody scent keeps on following me.

Then I begin to hear the sound of its passage: the soft patter of thousands of legs working in unison. This is no succulent lizard-beast then. It is something insectoid. I hurry my pace, and the patter of its legs increases in rapidity and volume accordingly. I start to run, then stop myself. It wants me to run, to tire myself out. And I can’t run very fast anyway. The joints of my armor have begun to rust together.

I have no choice but to fight, and my best option for victory is to conserve my stamina. I stop still and wait with Heartseeker pointing down the blackness. I cannot see even the merest hint of anything: it’s like my eyes have been painted over with ink.

The patter of the monster’s legs grows louder and closer, yet less rapid. It realizes that I have stopped, am waiting for it to pounce. It approaches cautiously, tapping regularly with what I imagine are antenna feeling for me.

Something with the force of a vice grabs me around my forward wrist. I cry out and try to wrench myself out of the grip, but it is too strong. It was not antenna it was tapping with, but pincers. Another one snaps at my foot like a pair of steel scissors, but I step back out the way the moment it touches, and as I do so wrench my wrist back hard. Sparks flash as I pull free, illuminating for an instant a worm-like body with tens of thousands of jointed legs sticking out of it at all angles. My attacker is a pipe-cleaner monster with two pincer arms six feet long and an eyeless head—if I had seen it in a book I would not have believed in it, but down here it is all too real.

I stab where I think its head was, but Heartseeker only brushes through the forest of its legs. Its blood-seeking runes are having no effect: either they are rusted beyond function or this creature has no blood to speak of. I slash around, trying to hit something, but the creature’s chitinous skin is resistant to slashing.

Again it tries to grasp me with its pincers. One comes around my neck, which I bat away, but the next sinks into my thigh. I feel the chitinous blade pierce right through the steel and I scream in pain. I throw myself backwards, feel the monster’s pincer tear out, feel hot blood run down my leg. I turn and run, stumbling and gasping.

The monster pursues. I can hear its many legs skittering along the floor, walls, and ceiling. It is perfectly adapted for hunting in the tunnels. This environment is not suited to creatures like us dwarves, who prefer to walk along the horizontal, but is the domain of worms, insects, and other things with no or many legs who can clamber or slither at will.

I plunge into a sudden pitfall. Screaming in shock, I extend my arms and legs to push against the walls and stall my momentum. Sparks fountain as I grind to a halt, illuminating the monster chasing me once more. Hanging above me it is even more horrible. Its mandibles click together in anticipation of a meal of my soft flesh. I pull my arms and legs in and let myself fall another few dozen feet.

My momentum becomes too fast and I fail to slow myself . I shoot down the pitfall, screaming in terror, and splash into freezing water, although it is not deep enough to cushion my impact entirely. My breath is knocked from me.

Instinctively I jab Heartseeker upward. There is a snicking sound, though no hiss of pain, and several things splash down beside me. The momentum of the monster's descent added to the force of my strike has meant at least some of its legs are severed. I quickly roll out of the way—a few lost legs are not likely to slow this thing down.

I scramble to my feet just as I feel a pincer try to close around my ankle. I blunder through the darkness and smash through something that feels like a wall of stalagmites. The creature snaps at my upper left arm and succeeds in grabbing it.

I try to wrench away, but the grip is too strong and growing in strength. I can sense the chitin cutting through the steel. Once it gives, my arm will be severed.

I cease panicking. A sense of calm comes over me, the calm of a battle trance. I see exactly what I need to do to kill this beast. I shift my free right hand up Heartseeker’s shaft right to the base of the blade. The monster’s other pincer grabs at my right arm, but I shift out the way and it targets my right leg instead. I let it grab hold, and push forward with my left leg toward the monster. It is all too happy to let me approach its maw.

The moment before I feel the armor of my left arm give, I stab directly to where I hear the clicking mandibles. It is not a particularly strong thrust, but no creature has armor inside of its throat. Heartseeker sinks deep between the mandibles, and its runes flicker to life—the black blade chases after whatever passes for blood in this creature. I feel Heartseeker’s shaft slide through my gauntlet as it drives itself up the creature’s tubular body.

The strength drains from the pincers and they fall away, splashing into the shallow water. I gasp in relief, give Heartseeker a few brutal twists, then pull it out of the creature’s corpse. There’s a larger splash as it collapses.

I quickly back away. Who is to say it doesn’t have regenerative abilities? Best thing to do is get out of here. I limp away through shallow water, then hear a crack at my feet. I freeze.

The water running around my feet is fast flowing, and a sinking feeling takes hold of me. This place smells of limestone, a notoriously erodible rock. I swallow, realizing that the floor I stand on is likely very weak, and perhaps I am the first to step on it in a millennia. I try to tiptoe back the way I came, to the ridge of stalagmites, but my leg injury forces me to limp heavily and use Heartseeker as a walking stick.

I cannot move gently enough. The floor cracks beneath me and I plummet. I land on stone, feel my legs crumple from the impact. A terrible ringing sound reverberates through my ears. Lights dance in my eyes, orangey blurs like forge-fires.

Somehow I manage to stand up, then I collapse again.

“Breach!” someone shouts from a long way away. “Cave-in!”

I try to stand up again.

“There’s something here!”

“It’s a dwarf!”

In the flickering light of the forges, I see a helmeted face appear before me. The helmet is like no helmet I have ever seen before, with strange, complex protrusions jutting from the sides. I try to say something, but pass out.