Whelt died in the night: the very last of the burned dwarves to perish. Most fell mere hours after their hope for revenge was drained, but Whelt managed to hang on for a whole long and painful week. Yet perish he did. Vanerak’s order to cease the hunt and march double for the city scarred his soul too much.

Wharoth lays him to rest in a small hollow in the rock and crosses his arms over his weapon. The rest of the Association of Steel bow solemnly.

“We’ll get the dragon one day,” Wharoth promises both the dead and living. “We will.”

His guild look away. They do not believe him.

“It was injured. Slowed for sure,” Wharoth says desperately. “I took its hand off!”

“We know,” someone says quietly. “It might even be dead already.”

“Or maybe it’s out of our reach forever,” says another.

Wharoth shakes his head. “Don’t speak like that. We will get it one day, I promise you.”

“Can you?” Gerthel says quietly. She has been very quiet recently. “Can you promise us, really?

Guildmaster Wharoth’s head droops. “No,” he says. “I cannot. But I can promise that if I have the opportunity, I will take it. For you. For all we have lost.”

“We should chase it anyway,” another dwarf says in a low voice. “Forget what Vanerak said. What does he know?”

“Stop,” Wharoth commands. “He has lost friends to dragons also. And the task ahead of us is just as important. Broderick is our enemy now. Focus on him. The dragon comes later.”

They fall back in line and continue the march through the towering stalagmites. In the far distance the glow of sunlight from the mirrors lights the city from above. Nearly all the smoke is gone now.

Wharoth knows more is to come, be it smoke from war or smoke from dragonfire.

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

The final warrior died in his sleep. He refused every drop of water we squeezed out of the near-dry skins and tried to give. Each time we offered, he just grunted and nodded to Dwatrall and the chief. They are more important than me, he was saying. I didn't need to understand troll-tongue to get that.

Now the chief is stumbling also. The skins are almost truly empty now—it takes a good minute of squeezing and coaxing to get out just a few droplets.

Hayhek and I are not suffering so badly. Us dwarves are hardy, designed to live in dark caves where food and water is scarce. But the river trolls have lived off the river’s bounty since the beginning of their race and require water nearly as badly as fish do. Without it, their skins turn dry and papery, begin to flake apart. Their eyes go red and yellow crystals build up, preventing the eyelids closing properly. Their tongues have swollen up—the chief is no longer able to talk to Dwatrall gently to try and bring him out his concussed stupor.

We are nearing the end of the journey, I think. Hayhek and I carry Dwatrall as well as the hammer now, for the chief has become too weak—his steps are a constant horizontal collapse, a far cry from the rage-filled strides of before.

“I recognize this place,” Hayhek whispers hoarsely. “This tunnel. Look.”

I must admit that I cannot, until the first traces of blackened blood crunch beneath my sabatons. It’s the cave where we first met the lava trolls. Splintered bone covers the stones.

The chief collapses face first and the tunnel shakes—yet not much as it ought to for, his muscles have shriveled and become light.

“Get some water in him!” I shout to Hayhek. “Hurry!”

He lets down Dwatrall’s legs and the end of the hammer and hurries to unstrap a skin from the chief’s back. The chief lets out a faint sigh. Hayhek kneels beside his head and opens his spike-toothed mouth. He inserts the leather opening, pulls the skin up vertical and squeezes tight, runs his hand down to get the very last moisture out.

“Come on!” he hisses. “Come on!”

I watch with fists clenched, hoping desperately. My focused vision allows me to make out the fine details even in the darkness, but the only fine details I see are cracks of drought. A tiny droplet glints and falls onto the inside of the chief’s cheek. The chief sighs faintly again, then becomes silent.

“No!” Hayhek hisses. “No, no!”

He continues to squeeze. Another droplet rolls onto the chief’s parched tongue. The great river troll gives no reaction.

Water is not the elixir of life. Not after so much has been already drained away. I let down Dwatrall’s head gently and walk over to Hayhek.

“He’s gone,” the old dwarf says glumly.

“Dwatrall needs it,” I croak. “Let’s give some to him and hurry on our way.”

We do so. His eyelids flutter when the moisture rolls down his tongue, yet I feel little hope. After we removed his helmet a few sleeps ago the damage became clear. The dent in his wide forehead is deep. There is no doubt that the blow sunk into his brain.

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We resume our journey after taking no water for ourselves. I remember the tunnels well enough, I hope, and my hope turns out to be well-founded. After only one more sleep we come to the trap room, pass through, and soon are walking out the crystalline arch that marked the beginning of our quest.

A couple caverns later we meet a party of river trolls. We shout in thanks, or at least try to with our throats like sand. They give us and Dwatrall all the clear pure water we can drink. It takes every ounce of mental effort to take sips rather than gulps.

The ask us questions, which of course we cannot answer. All we can tell them is that we must hurry to the grotto. Perhaps whatever is inside the box can be Dwatrall’s savior; the movements of his eyelids are becoming less and less frequent.

As soon as we are brought into the grotto, it begins. The river trolls form a wide circle around the stone cube and kneel down as one. Dwatrall is laid a few paces from it, and Hayhek and I stand beside him holding the hammer between us.

The chief has been retrieved and his body sits in a cross-legged position against the wall, head propped up and eyes staring sightlessly. He waited all his life to see what mystery his heirloom contains, I realize suddenly with tremendous sadness. Now he will never know.

“Ready?” I whisper to Hayhek.

“Ready.”

We lift the hammer high. The grotto’s green light plays across us in a slow shimmer. I shiver, feeling magic. This is the culmination of a legend. The curious gems embedded in the twisted hammerhead glimmer and flash. The runes appear to move, marching in geometric paradoxes around the weird angles of the metal. A hum sounds. I look to the box to aim, and the runic pattern on it feels magnetic.

I am fated now to bring the hammer down.

“Go,” I say.

We bring it down. The moment contact is made both hammer and box crack into fragments, which crack into smaller fragments, which disintegrate further and so on into infinity in but a fraction of a second. A sound like shattering glass rings out. Metallic dust blows from our hands.

The trolls stand up and shout. I look to the shifting pile of dust where the box once lay—for a second my heart fails to beat, for it appears there is nothing.

Then I spot a thin ribbon of metal.

I step forward and pick it up, then turn to show the trolls. Immediately their shouting stops: they are struck dumb in awe.

“What is it?” Hayhek says. He leans in close. “Is it... That can’t be...”

“I’m not sure,” I say, as the grotto spins around me. I have gone dizzy. “No...”

“It is!” Hayhek gasps. “What else could it be?”

“It can’t be a crown. Surely.”

“What else?”

The band—silver-looking yet it cannot be something so common—is thick with runes so small my eyes cannot make them out. I can tell they are runes, however: I am a dwarf and they speak to me in a language the depths of my soul understands.

They speak of power. Regal power.

Dwatrall twitches and trembles on the green-lit stone. A low half-word escapes his lips. The trolls gabble and point at him, mime putting the crown around his head.

If crown it truly is.

I do not keep them waiting. I kneel beside my trollish friend and place the band around his cranium. I align the center with the wound in his forehead.

Light bursts from the metal. I stagger back, crying out and shielding my eyes. The trolls wail and stumble away, for the band is emitting a powerful heat too.

“We need to get it off him!” Hayhek shouts. “It’s burning him!”

I peek out from between my fingers and see that the band is wreathed in green flame and that smoke is streaming from Dwatrall’s head. It is thick and crackles with strands of jagged energy. I force myself to step toward him, and a bolt of white strikes my chest and I fall down, my heart’s rhythm suddenly disturbed.

Just as abruptly as it burst forth the light blinks out. The smoke dissipates and the energy ceases its existence. And Dwatrall sits up.

He is transformed. Gone are the last vestiges of trollishness. His face is handsome, though not quite like a dwarf’s: the features are finer and more elegant. His eyes are as bright green as emeralds and as clear as still water. When he opens his mouth, his voice is almost like music.

“Zathar, Hayhek. My friends.”

“Dwatrall...” I say.

“I feel... I remember...” He puts his hands to his head. His skull is taller and narrower now, and the band is embedded in it. He runs a finger around its circumference, then stands.

“What is it?” Hayhek asks. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel... Whole. And reborn. Or perhaps born for the first time.”

“And your head?”

He taps where the dent used to be. “My head feels faster than it used to be. As if a thin fog has been lifted.” He turns to the river trolls, who are kneeling once more in silence.

“Ah, my people,” he says. “Look up!”

They make no movement. He smiles.

“I think there is no more reason to use our old tongue. We will make a new one, but for now the language of the dwarves will suit us. Now, I say again: look up!”

Brightness bursts forth from the band. Dwatrall winces slightly—whatever he did required effort. Magical effort. This brightness does not move like ordinary light: instead it moves out in a slow ring which passes through the trolls’ heads.

One looks up, then another. Their mouths drop open in amazement.

“All of you!” Dwatrall commands, pain suppressed. “Look at me!”

They look up, eyes wide. My own eyes widen too. They understand, they obeyed his command—and not just his command to do as he wished them to do, but also his command to be as he wished them to be.

“A crown,” Hayhek whispers. “The crown of a Runeking.”

“Maybe,” Dwatrall says.

I laugh, despite everything. It seems this quest is at its end. “It is one. And a Runeking’s crown is meant to be destroyed when he dies. And certainly no troll is ever meant to wear it. You are lucky, friend. Blessed by fortune. I am nearly jealous.”

Dwatrall smiles. “Luck and fate are two words for the same thing.”

“You even speak like a king. At least, how I think a king should sound.”

“That is because I am one.” He turns to look into the sightless eyes of his chief and bows deeply. “I thank you for everything, my chief. You were the greatest and also the last. From now on, the river trolls will be ruled by kings like the sapient beings we are.”

“We’re honored to be part of this...” Hayhek says. “Very honored. I’m sorry I wanted to refuse this quest.”

“You were fated to join it. Your arrival here was fated, and so was everything that followed. It could have turned out no other way. I see that now.”

“I’m glad we could help,” I say.

“I am glad too. Not just for my people, but also that we could become friends. And friends keep their promises.”

My eyes light up. Fear mixed with anticipation makes me shake a little. Dizziness takes me again.

“The key,” I say.

“It shall be dredged up immediately.”