After only half an hour of swim-climbing through the molten stone, I am starting to get tired. Even with my runes enhancing my strength with their tale of cleaving through the magma, and my ruby warm against my chest reducing my fatigue, excited by the prospect of oncoming battle, this is still hard work. No one else is showing any signs of slowing, however. They are well used to this method of traveling.
One of the guards on the right points downward and leftward. I look—there are spots of coolness down there. Halax holds up his hand to halt. He briefly considers, then points down with two fingers. Those spots are the shards we're looking for. Apparently they are near impervious to heat as well as impact.
We orient ourselves vertically down and dive. Our cables are nowhere near tight yet—they are longer than I thought. They are thin, too, and this makes me feel vulnerable. An enemy does not need to penetrate my armor to kill me, only sever the cable, which means that my life is not in my own hands, but the hands of whoever crafted the cable.
The spots of coolness floating in the magma are almost unmoving. Magma's tides are slow. As we approach, I focus on them and can make out their shapes more clearly. They're larger than I thought, nearly the size of breastplates. Upon them are runes, but my heat-sense isn't precise enough to make the shapes out clearly.
A little closer, and I notice that one doesn't have runes, but a picture. It seems to show a dwarf in a robe, surrounded by walls, but apart from that I can make out no more details.
Once we're beside them, Nazak motions to some of the guards. They grab hold of the larger shards. There's smaller ones around it, and these are wrapped in a wire net, which is then tightened. Then all movement stops. Neither Halax nor Nazak make any motion to lead us away. They're waiting—for the demons, of course. That's what we're here for. That's the real prize: to show me the demons so I may make the runes Vanerak desires.
How are we to fight them, though? Demons were described to me as formless heat. Only once they possess a dwarf do they have a physical body that can be pierced and slashed by metal. Is one of the guards going to have to sacrifice himself? Vanerak is not so wasteful with his runeknights though. If a dwarf was required as bait, we would have taken a miner with us.
There's nothing particularly special about the weapons everyone is carrying either, or at least not in shape. I should have read the runes on them, but can't now, for the rune are the same temperature as the base metal.
I focus on Hayhek. He seems calm—he was never calm on our journey with the trolls, I remember. Always seemed on the edge of panic, though he honored himself by overcoming his fear. I wonder how many demons he has faced so far—how many all these runeknights have faced.
The wait continues. My nerves feel on the edge of shattering—could a demon not just possess one of the great salamanders here, swim up to the surface, and submerge the ends of our cables? If I was a demon, that's what I would do. There are no guards set to protect the ends of our cables—are Nazak and Halax that confident the demons won't destroy them there?
Finally, at the edge of my heat-sense, I see them. Two roiling balls of heat, like fires with flames that lick in every direction, cross-ways and inwards included. They are approaching from the opposite direction from which we came, and are doing so very quickly. The guards swim to reposition themselves before me in a shield formation with Nazak and Halax at the center. They aim their weapons—spears, swords, halberds.
The demons continue to rush at us. Their movements are totally straight, as if they are falling at us, and they seem to have no notion of strategy. They do not curve to take us from either side. I glance back—there is nothing coming from behind, and Nazak and Halax don't seem to expect anything to either, or there would be guards behind me also.
One of the demons gets in range of a spear-wielding guard, who stabs. The demon's heat shivers, disrupted, and it adjusts its rush toward the speardwarf. The guard beside him slashes, quickly for having to cut through molten stone. His slash only barely disrupts the demon's heat though, and it hits the speardwarf hard.
Halax slashes with his own sword, and the demon's heat diminishes somewhat. The second demon has now reached the formation, and two spear-wielding guards strike it. Yet it seems not to even notice.
It's broken through—it's right in front of me. Roaring flames, hotter heat than that of my armor, beat against me. I yell into my helmet and tear at the demon with my gauntlets. The flames shiver and die where I touch, but the demon doesn't pull back, just continues to beat at me. I sense Nazak, Hayhek, and several others turn to attack it. Tungsten blades sweep through it, killing its heat. Nazak's axe—a different one to what usually hangs from his hip—goes through its core.
For a moment the flames die away, but quickly they flare back up and lick at my face. I tear at the demon with my hands, pulling at it, trying to grasp the tongues of heat and crush them. Each time I make contact my skin feels like it burns. I'm drenched in sweat also. If this continues for much longer, I might drown in it.
Nazak's axe goes through the demon's core a second time, and it vanishes. I shout in relief. The second one is gone too—Halax must have dealt with it.
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I focus on him. He's embracing another dwarf. I am confused for a single moment, for Halax does not seem the type to embrace others after a victory, before I sense that the dwarf he holds is rapidly rising in temperature.
It is possessed! It grabs Halax's wrists and forces them apart. Nazak slashes its shoulder, but his axe, momentum robbed by the molten rock it must go through, only barely penetrates the possessed dwarf's armor.
It hammers Halax hard with a knee-strike. Halax bends sideways and over, the breath knocked from him. There is a dent in his armor, first degree armor. That was a terrible blow. The possessed dwarf kicks hard and swims up, grasping for his air-cable. A speardwarf stabs at it, giving Halax a brief moment to dart up and out the way, jerking his cable out of reach behind him as he does so.
The possessed dwarf swims at the speardwarf. Nazak strikes into its legs, and Hayhek and two others hit hard also, but it's only barely slowed. It grasps the speardwarf's air-cable and clutches tight. The speardwarf lays a stab into its wrist, a stab with the strength of mortal fear behind it, and the blade penetrates the gap between gauntlet and wrist-plate.
The possessed dwarf lets go of the air-cable, but the damage is done: the cable is twisted and melted. The speardwarf panics and swims upward, as Halax and Nazak manage to slice the possessed dwarf apart—yet the surface is too far. I watch in horror as the speardwarf's movements slow just at the edge of my heat-sense. He clutches at his throat, then becomes still.
“No!” I shout.
That was a terrible way for anyone to die, suffocating in hot blackness, your own armor your tomb.
Nazak and Halax put their heads together for a moment to discuss, then both point back the way we came.
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An hour later and we are back upon the shore. I pull off my helmet and drink in the colors and shades of the underworld. To have normal vision returned is a blessing—the magma sea is not where dwarves are meant to be. Quickly Nazak orders us back to the door. He knocks a complex beat, and a few seconds later the door opens a crack. The guard behind confirms who we are, then opens the door just wide enough for us to come back through in single file.
We go to the rear of the hall and only then does Nazak tell us that we can rest. Everyone but for him and Halax sinks down to their haunches, or sits fully on the floor. For a while, no one speaks.
Eventually Nazak says, “That could have gone worse. A lot worse. Be grateful only one had to die for you, traitor.”
I nearly scowl, but stop myself. “Yes, honored runeknight.”
“Two at once is rather rare,” says Halax. “Fortunately they were not the strongest we've faced, and the runeknight possessed was only a fourth degree.”
“A fourth degree,” Nazak spits. “A hundred years of forging, gone in an instant.”
“He will be remembered as brave. I will donate to his family myself; I may have died if not for him, and then we would have lost three hundred years of forging.”
“I hope it was worth it. Well, traitor? Was it? And stand up to talk to us.”
I stand. I'm not sure what he's saying—I'm too hot and exhausted to think straight. “If the shards prove useful—”
“This wasn't about the shards,” he snaps. “It was for your runes. Can you write some better ones, or not? Do we have to go back in?”
“I apologize for misunderstanding. Yes, I think I can create some runes for them.”
Some hope seems to catch light in the eyes of the guards.
“But I need to know a few things first, about these demons.”
“What? If we know, we'll answer. If we don't know, then there's no one who can.”
“Firstly, why did they not go straight for our breathing cables? If they concentrated their heat, surely they could have damaged them. And they could have done it up at the surface, because there were no guards there.”
Halax answers: “A dwarf would think to do that, of course. But until a demon enters the body and mind of a dwarf, it cannot think like that. In what way they think while in their natural forms, we cannot know. They are likely intelligent. But that intelligence does not work along the lines we understand.”
I nod. “Thank you, honored runeknight Halax.”
“Anything else?” Nazak demands.
“Yes. Is anything known about their origin? How they are born, or made?”
“Nothing.”
"Do they ever possess the creatures of the magma sea?"
"We are not sure."
"How do they sustain themselves?"
"We do not know."
"As you can see," says Halax, "we know very little of their true nature. It could be a boon to capture one, or a dwarf while he is possessed, yet so far this has proven impossible."
“I see. I have a more personal question next: how have you designed your weapons to injure them while they have no form?”
“As beings of heat, terrible heat, they cannot abide cold,” Halax answers. “Our weapons cool when they contact particularly fierce heat. You could not tell this because their original temperature is too cool to sense with the heat-masks. If you examine one, you should understand.”
“If I may,” Hayhek says.
He stands up and hands me his axe in both hands. I bow low, then take it to read the runes.
They are written in the script I forged, and tell of a blade beneath the magma. It is calm, undisturbed, a natural part of the sea. Yet when something too hot approaches, it acts as the wrong pole of a magnet and flares cold to balance the intrusion. It slashes with great speed to punish the breaking of the equilibrium.
“Most of our weapons are written in a similar way,” he says. “Yet they are not so effective as they should be against something with no armor.”
I hand it back to him. “It is still a fine weapon.”
“But not fine enough. I have lost friends because it did not cut as well as it should. The magma congeals around it when it cools—the runic flow destabilizes a little and the cooling spreads out of it, slowing my strikes. It may be a decent enough weapon, but it is flawed.”
“We need something that cuts right to the demons' hearts,” says another guard. “We will be in your debt if you can devise a way.”
“We won't be ashamed to imitate it,” Hayhek adds. “We are not like Uthrarzak's scum, don't think we have become like them—but this is the greatest challenge dwarfkind has ever undertaken. We have no choice but to collaborate.”
“No,” says Nazak. “You don't, traitor.”
“I am glad to help in whatever way I can,” I say, ignoring the anger Nazak's barb brings up. “I'll make a weapon. And I'll help you slay these demons. We'll win this.”
“Yes,” says Halax, nodding. “We will, runeforger. For the Runethane, we will be victorious.”
“For the Runethane!” chorus the guards. “For the Runethane!”
I have no choice but to join their chant.