Once the rest of the lava trolls have been dismantled and their limbs separated into individual piles, the chief strides to the survivor and glares down into his eyes. Two warriors are pinning him to the ground. The chief speaks, but the lava troll only averts his eyes and growls. The chief growls in reply.

“Dwatrall?” I say. “Is he asking after the hammer?”

“Not yet. Right now he is preparing him emotionally. Threatening him, but it goes deeper than that. He seeks to convince the lava troll that the only fate awaiting him is pain.”

“Pain? Do they even feel it?” Hayhek says. “These monsters...” He shakes his head.

“You never told me they could regenerate so fast,” I say.

“They couldn’t, not the one I faced way back. Five of us hacked it to pieces after it killed four. It was a mess once we were done, and... Well, we ran away when we heard more coming. If it managed to pull itself back together, we were long gone by then.”

The chief continues to speak to the lava troll. His words heighten in intensity and the lava troll groans and writhes. I still cannot imagine how they will make this monster feel pain, but whatever the method, the lava troll is in fear of it. His gray skin turns an ashen white, his eyes roll, and more low groans escape his lips. Of course, I realize, to a creature that likely has not felt pain its entire life, the threat of it must be worse than any fear of torture a dwarf can have.

“Now he’s asking after the hammer,” Dwatrall says, as the chief leans in close.

The lava troll writhes and shouts. He beats his leg stumps against the stone floor, flexes the muscles of its arms so that the river troll warriors bellow and strain to keep him down.

“Can you understand him? Is he giving it up?” I ask.

“Yes, our languages are similar enough," Dwatrall answers. "And no. He refuses to tell us where his chief is.”

“What kind of pain exactly is he so afraid of?”

“Think on it, Zathar. If we can feel pain only from fire, what can these feel it from?”

“Water? We can’t afford to waste the skins we have, though. You said there would be no rivers up here.”

“We don’t need to do anything so wasteful. Watch.”

The chief shakes his head at the lava troll, then stands up and walks to our sacks of supplies. He reaches in a finger claw and skewers a chunk of amphidon. It is glistening with meat-juices. He walks slowly to the struggling, writhing, bellowing lava troll. I wince and cover my ears. The chief kneels and holds the chunk of meat over the lava troll’s face.

"Just moisture from meat is enough? How do they eat?" I ask.

“They cook their meat thoroughly,” Dwatrall replies. “Even more thoroughly than you dwarves do. They dry it out, nearly burn it over magma.”

A drop of liquid falls onto the lava troll’s cheek. Steam hisses up and the lava troll’s face contorts in agony. He kicks his stumps so hard against the stone the black crust over them cracks and bright orange splatters out. The chief brings the meat down and presses it against the lava troll’s cheek.

I wince as our captive screams. The cave shivers with his cries of unadulterated pain. They increase in volume and I put my hands over my ears; this does not help much.

The chief withdraws the meat. Morbidly curious, I draw closer to the now shivering troll. On his cheek there is a mark of pale pink where it once was gray. It almost looks like dwarf skin, or maybe even paler.

Once more the chief looks the lava troll in the eyes and speaks.

“Is he asking about the hammer?” I ask Dwatrall.

“Yes.”

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The lava troll mumbles something. Saliva bubbles up from its lips.

“What did it say?”

“It says it cannot give up the location. It does not want to give up the future of its people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The chief is asking that now.”

The lava troll shakes his head. The chief grunts in frustration and slices the meat in half. Dark blood drips down on the lava troll’s face; once again the cave becomes filled with screaming. The chief places the halves over the lava troll’s closed eyes. The lava troll beats his stumps so hard against the stone that the bones splinter—I hear it clearly and flinch backward from the violence. The troll warriors tighten their grip on the monster’s arms.

The chief removes the slices and I see that the lava troll’s eyelids are gone and the eyes beneath are ruined, split and burned.

“I can’t watch,” Hayhek whispers, and turns away.

I force myself to look on grimly as the chief resumes his questioning. That beast tried to break my craft. This is what it deserves. Not to mention that this is revenge for all the dwarves it’s probably torn limb from limb and cooked over a slow-burning fire.

“Anything new?” I ask Dwatrall, whose face looks slightly pale—though its hard to tell in the dim orange glow.

“He nearly said something, then stopped himself.”

“Doesn’t he want the pain to end? Surely he knows he’s going to die anyway. What’s the damn point in suffering?”

“If I was in his position, I would try to bear it too. The future of his tribe rests on the hammer, he says again.”

“What does that even mean?”

“He hasn’t made clear... But if I were to guess, he means the same as when the chief says the box is the future of our tribe.”

“They want to break it too, then? They know it has power?”

“I surmise so... A worrying prospect.”

The chief places the chunks of meat over the lava troll’s eyes again and presses down hard, grinds them into the sockets. Fast jets of steam spout into the air. The lava troll’s scream increases in pitch until it no longer sounds like a scream but instead like a crystal being pressured unto the verge of breaking—an inorganic sound, nothing that should ever come from a living creature’s throat.

The chief rips the chunks of meat out the eye sockets. The eyes within are gone. He shouts in the lava troll’s face and receives no reply. Ranting what I assume are terrible curses, he stands and kicks the wall hard. Gravel crumbles down leaving a two-foot diameter crater. Still ranting, he stomps over to our supplies and draws out a skin of water. My eyes widen in alarm—if he drains it all, that’s a good one tenth of our drink gone.

He dangles it over the lava troll and shouts down into the quivering monster’s face.

“Pure water, he’s saying,” Dwatrall translates. “A death of pain unimaginable, a hundred times worse than what he just felt, if he does not tell us where to find the hammer.”

The lava troll wails out.

“He’s said it! He’s saying it!”

“Where?” I demand. “Where is it?”

“Their chief is up, left, right, left... Right from cave of shards, down through cave of ring-river... A long list of directions, Zathar.”

The lava troll finishes and looks up pleadingly with his blinded eyes. The chief roars something else.

“If he lies, the chief is saying, he will throw every infant of the tribe into the river.”

The lava troll wails out again.

“He promises he does not lie.”

The chief pauses. Now it is time to see what kind of a troll he is: will he reward the lava troll with a painless demise, or the worst fate imaginable?

Dwatrall holds his breath. I do the same. The lava troll quivers silently in terror.

The chief empties the waterskin over the monster’s chest. The terrible inorganic whine comes once more, at a pitch on the very edge of my hearing, and increases in volume so that it pierces into my brain even through my hands pressed firmly to the sides of my head. The sound stings worse than the burn of my ruined ear. The lava troll convulses. Clouds of steam fill the cave, and then the whine ceases.

One of the warriors barks something to the chief, who snaps back angrily.

“The chief says he suffered no less than our tribesman who fell to the salamanders,” Dwatrall says sadly.

“Still...” I say faintly. My ears are ringing.

“I know. He went back on his promise. I would criticize him for it, but he is not in the mood for criticism.”

The chief walks up to us. The blood-orange steam whirls and roils around him. He stares down at me. I shift back slightly, irrationally afraid—or maybe not so irrationally, for this is an angry troll, after all. He grunts something.

“Are you ready to go, he asks,” says Dwatrall.

I look back at Hayhek. “Well?” I say.

He turns back around slowly. “Yeah. Let’s get this over with.”

I look up into the chief's eyes. “We’re ready,” I say.

Dwatrall translates. The chief nods approvingly. Then we leave the cave to journey to our confrontation with the chief of the lava trolls and his dwarven hammer of who-knows-what ancient and terrible runes.