Chunks of black stone crash down the steps. One hits me right where Nazak tore my armor. The impact is like the blow of a battering ram and sends me flying. I slam into the stairs and sparks fly as I slide down, breathless and stunned, far too fast for my hands to be able to find a grip, no matter how desperately I try to halt myself.
The grind of friction eventually slows me. Another piece of stone smashes the step my head rests on, mere inches away from breaking my skull, then the thudding and crumbling moves past me, down the stairs, quieting as it goes. It leaves no dust or splinters in its wake.
I groan in pain and struggle to my feet, using Life-Ripper like an invalid might a cane. I quickly mutter an apology for insulting it, blink hard to clear the confusion from my mind, and aim it at the dark gap through which Vanerak and the guardian have vanished.
Through the gate! I must get through the gate. Vanerak's armor is damaged, and his flesh may even be injured, but I do not think he will be defeated so easily. A clash of metal on metal echoes out the darkness and I know he has not.
Forward I hurry, taking the steps two at a time, widening my strides as far as my armor will allow. I pass a splash of Halax's blood, then take a few more steps over rubble and I am through into the space beyond.
I emerge from the gatehouse into a vast dome. A circular wall is on my left, but the curvature is so shallow as to be almost imperceptible. Shafts of light pour in from high windows arranged in a starburst of dashes leading from a smooth circle—itself fifty feet at least in diameter—at the dome's center. Each window is many feet long.
However, they illuminate no secret knowledge. Most of their light fades into the heavy fumes filling the chamber. Vanerak and the guardian's clashes are outlined sharply in flashes of sparks alone, and the movements between each strike are hard to make out.
It appears that Vanerak has the upper hand. For every one step the guardian forces him back, he manages to advance two forward, and despite the guardian's furious movements, many of Vanerak's pollaxe-blows are finding contact with the silver-flame armor. Not just sparks, but the broken tips of silver-flames are arcing into the fume-thick air, and the movement of the flames slows, and their shine dulls.
I skirt around the duel, trying to position myself behind Vanerak. My first strike into his back did nothing, but now his armor there has been cleaved. I have a chance to get through and, if my aim is true, end this battle in an instant.
He sees me though, and sidesteps, turns himself so I remain reflected in his mirror-mask. I try to get around again, and again he positions himself so I cannot get to his blind-spot. All the while, he does not relent his pressure on the guardian, whose movements have slowed to an obvious degree.
He is too experience a fighter for this strategy to work. So I simply rush him, stabbing with Life-Ripper's twin points at his face, attempting to scratch his mirror-mask further. Again and again I stab, and each strike he blocks. He does not move his pollaxe particularly fast, yet it somehow always finds its way between his armor and my points. He continues to force the guardian backward at the same time.
It is terrifying to have to fight a dwarf so skilled, but my rage drives me to ignore the odds; I cannot run. I must avenge Pellas, avenge Wharoth, avenge my guild and every other innocent he has destroyed. I scream as I attack, scream continuously. Twice a second my tines rake at his mask, his body, his limbs, and yet still I cannot get through.
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I hold a weapon-catcher. So, catch! I leave my guard open for a second to tempt him. He ignores me and hammer-strikes the guardian in the wrist, sending the silent dwarf's weapon spinning away for a second time. The guardian, defenseless, backs off quickly. Vanerak sees his opportunity, stabs at the left side of his hip. The true metal point enters and the guardian stumbles.
The moment it enters, I side-step. Vanerak makes to pull out but is too slow. I stab him in the back. Both points stick at either side of the scar down his plate, and runic power twists and breaks like metal bent too far. Vanerak stumbles forward, his pollaxe digging further into the guardian's hip. I pull back, spin Life-Ripper around, make to strike again yet suddenly Vanerak is sweeping back around with an axe-blow. I succeed in catching the haft of his pollaxe, but with not enough force, and the axe-head strikes me in the arm. My armor crumples and parts. A line of pain is carved into skin and muscle. I scream out and pull back, Life-Ripper scratching bright metal curls from the haft of Vanerak's pollaxe.
The guardian reaches up to grab Vanerak. Vanerak stabs down through his shoulder. No blood sprays, but the guardian's arm falls limp—and I see that his left leg has gone completely still too. I grit my teeth and stab at Vanerak's head. He ducks and my blow only glances. He slashes at me again, with only one-hand, near the base of his weapon for maximum range. I step away. His strike loops up, around. His free hand joins the other, still near the base, and he slams the axe-head into the face of the guardian with maximum force.
The guardian's visor splits. The axe-head goes right through. Multi-hued light erupts, a kaleidoscope spectrum, blazing beams in all the colors of every gemstone there is. They cut through the fumes, illuminating the dome-hall beyond, and they illuminate also what the guardian was guarding, the knowledge he was tasked with keeping hidden.
In his death, the secret he kept is revealed:
At the center of the dome is a statue a hundred feet high, standing on a base another third that height. All is rendered in black stone. The base is carved to look like stacked bones and skulls—thin human skulls, squatter dwarf ones, great troll ones, and there are skulls whose type I do not know also.
Upon these bones stands a dwarf. He is clad in plate armor carved with tens of thousands of runes, runes with power. Up his body my gaze travels, until it stops at his grim face, and for a moment my heart stops as well, because I recognize this dwarf.
His face is one I have seen many times over. It is the face of my brother—but it is also my face—and it is also the face of Hardrick—and it is also none of our faces. It is as if this face has been casting a shadow onto ours, a shadow that has lurked in the recesses and transformed our features to be reminiscent of his.
To transform some part of each of us into the First Runeforger.
Crystalline colors, darkened by its black material, dance across it. A glint of translucent gold travels up his shoulder, drawing my gaze up his raised arm to his hand. It is clasping a perfectly smooth sphere.
Vanerak twists his weapon. The light fades and swirling fumes obscure the statue once more, leaving only the vaguest outline. I look down from it to the lifeless body of the guardian. Vanerak plants one boot on his chest and pulls to extract his pollaxe from the helmet, which tilts up slightly, then clanks down hollowly as the pollaxe comes free. No blood drips from it.
He turns to me.
“You have decided to betray me, Zathar Runeforger,” he says. “In the end, you are still a traitor.”
His attention terrifies me. My body wants to run. My muscles tense to turn me around and propel me away. But I resist the urge and instead level Life-Ripper at his mirror-mask. I quell the shaking in my arms. I am ready to fight. I am ready to kill.
“I may give you another opportunity to serve, if you kneel and beg for it.”
I laugh, mirthlessly, in his face. “Never! You do not need me. The moment I kneel, you will behead me—you tried to pierce my heart but a few minutes ago.”
He does not reply, just takes a sudden step forward, another, two more. I strike—he blocks. He strikes, I ward the blow away, dodge back to get out of his range. He moves in time with my step, copying the movement, and stabs at my heart. I twist out the way, shorten my grip on Life-Ripper. He stabs again and I catch his weapon between the two tines. I twist, and a screech sounds.
He wrenches his pollaxe back, pulling me off balance. My instinct tells me he will stab, and I throw myself out the way, twisting Life-Ripper away also. He turns his stab into a cut and I spin Life-Ripper to block. Tungsten clashes on tungsten loudly.
Our duel has begun.