“I need to go down there, at least to the shoreline.”

“No.”

“It's for my runes. I'm not going to try and escape. Where would I even escape to?”

“You might try and kill yourself,” suggests one of the other guards.

“If I was suicidal, I'd have done it a long time ago.”

“It's for your safety,” snaps Nazak. “We are tasked with making sure no harm comes to you, however much you deserve it.”

“And I have been tasked with creating new runes. You know how much our Runethane values this.”

“I fail to see what going down to the magma sea has to do with runes. You are plotting something.”

“My power derives from the depths of the magma. Did he not tell you this? Why do you think he put me here in the first place, rather than some secure corner of his palace?”

“Because this is a hellish place, fit for a traitor like yourself.”

“Ask him yourself then, if you don't believe me. I am here because he thinks my runes will gain more strength by my being here.”

“The Runethane has important matters to attend to.”

“I believe he will make time.”

Nazak scowls hard at me, scrutinizing me. Eventually he relents:

“Fine. I will ask him.”

A week later, which I spend on sketching designs for armor, none of which come together very well, he gives me Vanerak's answer:

“The Runethane says you are to go as far as the lower observation hall, and no further. You are not to be allowed onto the shore itself.”

“I thank you greatly.”

“You should. We will leave now—we are in a lull in eruptions now, and neither have the salamanders been particularly active.”

“I would prefer to go in my armor, however broken it may be. Does our Runethane still hold it?”

“He does. You do not need armor—eight guards of second and first degree are plenty for you.”

“All the same—”

“Our Runethane is still examining your armor thoroughly. It is said that he pours over it every night. He will give it back when he sees fit. Now come! You were not simply granted permission to go down—since you think it will help your rune-making, our Runethane orders that you go down.”

I bow. “Very well, honored runeknight.”

He and eight others escort me from my room and down the switchback corridors and steep flights of stairs. My skin prickles with heat under my thin fabric clothes.

Dwarves press themselves against the sides of the corridors or retreat back into their rooms at our passage. There is more fear on their faces than hate, oddly enough. On this most dangerous job, maybe they don't have time to worry about old history, and the goings-on of others. How many die each long-hour down at the shore, I wonder? A few at least, and sometimes many more. I imagine some just sink to their knees from heat and exhaustion to never stand again.

We pass the tunnel I first arrived through, then descend into the very lowest corridors. I see rows of beds stacked three high through some of the open doors. This is a place for the poorest, for miners. Exhausted dwarves lie on many of them as if dead, their foilsuits still on, their dust-contaminated beards tangled and stiff with dried sweat.

Then there's a few bare corridors leading back into the cliffs. In their ceilings are wide ventilation shafts which powerful gusts blow from, slowing and speeding our passage in turn, then there is a wide spiral down to a guarded gate.

As soon as the guards, fourth or fifth degrees in armor of tungsten, see Nazak, they open the gate. Past it is a long, pillared chamber crowded with both commoners and runeknights together, all in foilsuits. It seems to be some sort of common hall, furnished with tables, chairs, armor racks and weapon stands. At the far side of the chamber is a long strip of a window. Bright yellow light from it makes the silver-wrapped dwarves as phantoms of flashing fire.

When we enter, about half stop to look at us. The other half are too preoccupied with various activities—drinking, inspecting their suits for damage, sleeping with their faces down on tables. There is food here too, of a mean sort, which some with their baggy silver helmets removed are devouring rapidly.

“Ill disciplined,” Nazak remarks with disgust. “But the heat and fumes clouds their minds down here. It can't be helped.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

They do not seem so ill-disciplined to me: there is little idle chatter, and everything is done quickly. The dwarves who were eating when we came in are already putting their helmets back on; now they are making their way to a large gate. They pick up long-handled shovels from a rack beside it.

Four of my guards form a wall in front of me. One of the suited-up dwarves takes hold of a wheel and starts to turn it. The gate, a wide sheet of aluminum dirtied by yellow and green dust, slides partway up into the dark stone, to just below head height. The dwarves duck through, and a few moments later the wheel starts to turn back automatically, and the gate slides down shut.

The whole process was very quick, but still long enough to fill the hall with that terrible heat and a strong scent of sulfur.

“Didn't you want to get a closer look?” says Nazak. “Come along to the window.”

We walk through the thick black pillars to the thin strip of quartz that serves as the observation window. From this low angle the entire sea looks as if it's ablaze from the heat-shimmer. At the horizon the low roof is warped into black flames that point downward to intersect with the yellow ones of the magma itself. Heat radiating through the window is bringing sweat to my face.

Despite the warmth and spectacle I feel no particular supernatural power, but I pretend I do, and breath in and out deeply. I let my eyes glaze a little as if I'm in some kind of trance. Nazak gives me a very strange look, but says nothing.

I am really considering deeply about what is being dug up from the beach. The dwarves seem to be searching for fragments of some kind of stone, all of a particular type that is unmelted by the magma's heat, though in color the same as the obsidian constantly reforming and remelting on the sea's surface. I see runes on one, runes I don't recognize, yet on another longer piece being hauled out the sea by two runeknights—perhaps a section of a pillar—there are no runes, just a picture that I can't make out properly.

Remnants of some lost society. The runes being pulled out makes sense, but as for the images, I never thought Vanerak one to be interested in ancient history. Like most runeknights he is absolutely focused on his own work and power, not the works of those long dead.

I puzzle over what I'm seeing, letting my mouth hang open slackly a little for show, for a while, but come to no conclusion. Eventually I refocus my eyes and start breathing normally again.

“Finished?” Nazak says suspiciously. “You don't have some kind of illness, do you?”

“Not that I know of, honored runeknight.”

“Come along then. We'll go back. No knowing when another eruption might happen.”

I step away from the window, and at that moment, the gate starts to pull up again. Three dwarves, two carrying the fragment with the picture, and one with a shard with runes inscribed, enter. Some of the commoners hurry to take their burden from them.

“Come on,” says Nazak. “I told you before that their work doesn't concern you.”

Not wanting to irritate him any further, I start to turn away, but at that moment I see the runeknight who held the shard with runes pulling off his helmet, and our eyes meet.

He goes pale, as if looking on someone that should be long dead, whose return when announced by Vanerak he could not believe.

My jaw opens slightly, and this time it is not for show.

The runeknight looks a little healthier than last I saw him, perhaps even a little younger, with some color returned to his gray beard, and there are a few new scars and burn-marks, but I cannot forget his face. How could I, after all the horrors I put him through, after the deadly adventure we embarked on together below the chasm?

The runeknight is Hayhek, whose son died for my foolishness in those far away days before the black dragon's rise. He turns away quickly, saying nothing. I also say nothing.

What could I possibly say to the dwarf here with the most cause to hate me?

----------------------------------------

Over the next couple of long-hours I continue to sketch designs for my new armor. My inkstick wanders across the paper, drawing lines and shapes that lead nowhere and become nothing useful. I cannot focus on the task. My mind wanders into dark corners, and every so often I will feel a groan building him my chest, then I will hear it come out through the back of my throat, low and mournful. At that point I will put down my inkstick and slump back in my chair, and be able to do no more work until after a long sleep filled with visions of the past.

I don't think it is just my encounter with Hayhek that has brought on this malaise. Rather, all the guilt over all the terrible things I've done separate to my deal with the black dragon has come to weigh on me. This feeling that slaying the black dragon has not redeemed all of my sins has been building for a while, like a great boil of black magma in my heart, and now it has finally erupted.

Three sins weigh on me:

Firstly, my getting Yezakh killed. Secondly, ignoring my promise to the tenth degrees. And thirdly, my slaying of Faltast and my good-as-killing of the tenth degree Ulat too.

That third crime is justified as far as military discipline is concerned, but as for where friendship is concerned? Once more I see that I should have let Faltast go, yet my ruby and Gutspiercer—but I made those crafts and chose to wield them—they do not absolve me of responsibility for my actions.

The second crime is not justified by anything. I should have told them to stay back, and that to come with me was almost certain death, and that in the midst of the battle with the black dragon I would have no time or stamina to spare to protect them.

And the first one? I drag up fifteen year old memories. I believe my justification to Hayhek was that I had saved both their lives in the first battle against Broderick. But how can that possibly excuse getting him killed after? There is really no logic to what I said. Protecting something does not give you the right to destroy it later.

It is no wonder that Hayhek had no forgiveness for me.

I can see no way to make up for these crimes. What's worse, I cannot shake the feeling that I will do worse in the future. For one, giving Vanerak knowledge of new runes, or worse, to somehow let slip some vital insight that allows him to do it himself—with that power, he could do far worse damage than the black dragon ever unleashed.

There is a sharp knock on my door. I jerk up from my slumped position. Vanerak has come, likely for another interrogation.

But when my door is opened it is not Vanerak who stands in it.

It is Hayhek.

“You have a visitor,” says Nazak. “Ordinarily you would not be allowed one. However Vanerak has accounted him special dispensation, for it is he that first informed him that you were the one who stole Runethane Thanerzak's key.”

“It's been a long time, Zathar,” says Hayhek.

I cannot tell his feelings from his tone—it is relieved, exhausted, as well as holding a touch of anger and fear all at once.

“A very long time,” I say quietly.

“I have some things to say to you.”

“I thought you might.”