The runeknight, Balhu, ignores Hayhek and continues to advance. Nazak steps forward.

“Halt!”

Balhu halts his advance, yet does not seem cowed in the slightest, and speaks harshly:

“You are Nazak?”

“I am. What of it?”

“You are a first degree runeknight, is that correct?”

“You ought to know that by now.”

Hayhek hurries over to us. “Balhu!” he shouts. “What in hell are you doing?”

“So you are one of the leaders of this excavation?” Balhu continues. He looks to be about fourth or fifth degree, in tungsten armor with lines of runes that wind around coldly-cyan sapphires.

“You know I am. What is it you want? If you have a complaint about pay, you can take it to one of the second or third degrees.”

Hayhek grabs Balhu by the shoulder and tries to pull him away. Balhu resists.

“I apologize for his behavior, honored runeknight!” says Hayhek. “The heat has gotten to him. He must have caught a fever.”

“I have no fever, graybeard!” Balhu snaps.

Two guards of about fourth degree step forward to flank Nazak. “Step away,” they order.

“Are you responsible for the disruption of the magma sea?” says Balhu.

“What?” says Nazak.

A look of horror comes across Hayhek's face. He's suddenly realized something. “Zathar, get back!” he shouts. “He's possessed!”

Possessed?

In an instant, Nazak has slammed down his mirrored visor and drawn his axe. In the same instant, flames burst from Balhu's helmet, from around the neck and his visor. Nazak swings his axe at his face with incredible speed and power. Balhu catches the haft in one hand.

“You will pay for intruding upon our domain!” Balhu roars, except it isn't Balhu roaring. It's something within him, something of heat and flame. His tungsten armor is beginning to glow.

“Zathar, get back!” Hayhek screams.

I'm already stepping back—with no armor or weapon I can do nothing. Guards close in front of me and now I can't see what's happening. There's a scream, and the smell of burning flesh grows stronger.

“Slash him!” Nazak yells. He sounds panicked. “And get the runeforger out of here!”

“Runeforger?” shouts the demon burning Balhu's body.

That's what it has to be, a demon. What else could take over the body of a dwarf to burn them from the inside with terrible power? I've heard tales of demons, tales I was told were exaggerated, or plain false, stories to frighten children. But it seems the tales were true.

Guards pull me back. Others close in front of me. “To the exit!” one yells. “Get him out of here!”

I turn to look where they're taking me, and with horror see that the exits are blocked. Screaming miners still in their foilsuits are crushing into every available doorway. Some hold long shovels and are brandishing them in our direction. They scream unintelligibly.

“Cut through them!” yells one of the guards. “Get them out the way!”

“Stop!” I yell.

Two run out in front of me with axes raised high. Some of the miners in their way throw themselves to the floor. Others who cannot see continue to try and push their way into the press for the exit.

“Out the fucking way!” one of the guards yells at their backs. “I'll cut you down!”

He sounds just as terrified as the miners do.

“Stop!” I shout, and I grab his axe-hand. I try to pull it down but his rune-enhanced strength is far too much for me. A guard behind me wraps his arms around my chest and pulls me back. I yell out in horror for the miners.

“Behind you!” someone yells—maybe Hayhek.

I turn my head and look into the face of the demon.

Its heat has melted Balhu's tungsten helm to blinding white, dripping slag. Through sagging, distended eye-slits I can see his flesh burning with yellow flames on black char and bubbling fat around his eyes, and his eyes are balls of brighter flame, shimmering, and twisted weirdly by the shimmering. He has become an animated torch—animated with ferocity beyond anything his physical body, even enhanced with runic armor, was ever capable of. The demon has thrown Nazak into a pillar—the first degree is pulling himself from the rubble—and torn its way through the guards meant to be protecting me. They lie scattered with burning, molten hand prints in the metal of their armor.

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“Runeforger!” it yells at me, and its burning hands, dripping metal, reach for me.

“Get away from him!” Hayhek shouts, and he charges from behind, bringing down his axe into the demon's head. The flames flicker. The demon turns with such force that the axe is twisted from Hayhek's grasp.

One of the guards to my front pulls me away while another chops at the demon's arm. The axe bites deep. The demon yells out—it seems to feel pain, thankfully, or maybe it just yells in rage. It kicks with a flaming leg, sweeping the guard from his feet. The guard screams. Part of his shinguard has been melted. Steam scented by fat whistles from a small hole there.

“Nazak!” the guard dragging me back screams. “Help!”

Nazak rushes from the rubble of the broken pillar with his axe held high. Gravel flies from his armor tracing a path in the air, and before the first stones reach the ground he is again at the demon, again slicing at its head. His axe cleaves into its shoulder, deep.

The arm and part of the shoulder falls away, hits the ground and turns to fine ash. The demon has no defense against runic blades, it seems, not with Balhu's armor burned away by inner fire. Yet I don't think it needs them. Like the dragon, it is a creature of elemental force, and its power is in that force turned to offense.

It kicks up at Nazak's chest. Like a proper dwarven warrior, Nazak does not dodge but trusts fully in the strength of his armor to take the blow. He leans into it. Even so, the force knocks him back a step, and a red glow forms where the demon struck. He yells in fury and sweeps his axe at the offending leg.

The demon is fast, and the blade only brushes through the flames. Yet the other runeknights here are no cowards either and one of Hayhek's group slashes a leg from behind. The short-sword cleaves deep into the burning flesh. The runeknight rips it out in a flare of flame, then cries out in horror to see that the metal is now twisted and melted, as if he had thrust it into the magma itself.

Hayhek picks his axe back up. The demon as it is turning to the dwarf with the sword, meets him halfway through its movement. Hayhek slashes its face.

“Damn graybeard!” screams the demon. There is no trace of Balhu left in its voice, though I guess it still has some of his memories. “Burn in our fire!”

It throws its flaming hand out, hooking as if to draw him into a one-handed hug, an embrace which will scorch his armor to slag and turn his flesh to charcoal.

Nazak severs both its feet in one sweeping slash. It topples to the ground, which bubbles around it in shades of yellow-orange. Nazak slashes its legs at the knees, then slashes off the hand that flails at him as the demon tries to sit up. He slashes off the forearm at the elbow next. He is methodical, like a butcher with a boar, and there is no sense of anger to his movements. He gives me an impression of grim satisfaction.

The demon's limbs rent away, it lies on the ground helplessly as the rest of its stolen body turns to ash and embers. I watch in horror: its flames burn as ferociously as dragonbreath. By the time the burning is done, there are not even any bone chips. All is fine gray powder.

“Fucking hell,” I whisper. “Hell!”

“You all right?” Hayhek asks.

I nod. “Are you? You fought the damn thing.”

“I'm fine.” He holds his axe up to inspect. “Damn near ruined my axe though...” He looks back down at the pile of ash. “Shit! I warned the fool to be more careful.”

“How... How did it get in him?”

“Through his mouth,” says Nazak grimly. “That's how they possess you. They're shimmering heat in the air, and when you breath in that air, it's in you.”

“Just by breathing?”

“Yes,” says Hayhek. “It gets through your visor and onto your face first. When you feel that, you have to shut your mouth tight in an instant.”

“What about your nose?”

“You exhale hard then pinch it shut.”

“And then?”

“Run out of the magma sea.”

“Cowardly,” Nazak spits. “But it's the only way. Once you're on the shore they won't do anything. Or so we thought.”

“You thought?”

He ignores me to address Hayhek's group. “You five! You will come with me and you will report in full the events of your excursion just now!”

“Yes, honored runeknight!”

He addresses the rest of the hall also: “Until Runethane Vanerak declares otherwise, the excavations of the magma sea are to be halted. No one is to exit the cliffs. The guards are to be posted inside—now quickly, bring all those outside into here!”

There is a clamor as the gates slide up and high-ranking runeknights rush out to relay Nazak's orders. He himself runs out also to make sure they're followed correctly.

“What's going on?” I ask Hayhek. “Haven't there been demon attacks before?”

“There have. But not inside here. Usually when a dwarf is possessed, the demon will show itself almost immediately.” He swallows. “But I think that one was inside Balhu for many long-hours. A while back, I thought I saw a shimmer take him just after he cast his net. He was out far then.”

“Many long-hours? How many?”

“I'm not sure.” He shudders. “That thing ate with us! Talked with us!”

“You couldn't tell?”

“No. This is bad news, Zathar. Very bad news.”

“They seem intelligent.”

“They are. Who knows what kind of thoughts they have when they're swirling above their ocean, but when they enter a dwarf, they think like he or she did.”

“Once in, is there no way to—”

“No. Not that anyone knows of. Instant death. And no armor can protect against it.”

“I suppose every helmet needs some way to breath.”

“Exactly.”

He looks down at the fine ash that used to be his comrade, and shakes his head once more.

“I'm truly sorry for your loss,” I say.

“Just another one of many,” he says bitterly. “And there'll be many more to come as well. Runethane Vanerak will have the excavations continued soon enough.”

“I'll have the script ready soon,” I promise. “You'll have new defenses from it. Its runes will be masterpieces. I can already see it.”

He nods as if he doesn't quite believe me.

Two guards suddenly flank me. “Come on up, runeforger. Nazak has ordered us to take you back to your quarters.”

“Of course,” I say. “Goodbye for now, Hayhek.”

“Goodbye, Zathar. I hope you don't mind if I don't call you runeforger. I'll call you that once I've used your runes for myself.”

But as I'm escorted back up the black tunnels towards my quarters, I'm far too rattled to think any more of runes.