We are ready for our quest. We stand prepared at the exit of the grotto behind the chief, who makes a fearful sight in his steel-scale armor which glows red and violet with runic power no troll has ever yet held.

He is making a speech, grunting and barking and slashing his claws through the damp air to emphasize key points.

“What’s he saying?” I whisper to Dwatrall.

“He is not speaking like you and I do. More emotions than structured logic.”

“He must be communicating something.”

“Ancestral rage, and promises for future generations.”

Whatever he’s saying, it’s working. The trolls clap and jump and cheer. Troll children splash in the water and wrestle each other in excitement. The chief comes to the climax of his speech: he charges out into the crowd, leaps onto the stone box, stretches his arms out wide and lets out a roar that shakes the grotto, shivers the water, and makes me clasp my hands over my helmet earholes.

Amidst cheers he walks back to us, then says something.

“He says: we’re off now,” Dwatrall translates.

Indeed we are. We exit the grotto and jump down a hole into a watery landing pool beneath. We climb out, and the journey to the lava trolls begins.

The morning is spent walking through tunnels upwards and leftwards. Hayhek and I haven’t been here yet, and I have to say it’s a damn sight better than the slippery tunnels under the river. The ground is dry and gritty, so our sabatons get a good grip and we ascend quickly.

I observe the party. Our equipment is fearsome. Hayhek and I, armed and armored like fifth or sixth degree runeknights, are more intimidating than most dwarves can ever hope to be. But I have to admit that the trolls are the real combat power.

Dwatrall, though armored in his uneven plates and wielding a long steel hammer, is still the weakest of the five. Three of them are the biggest trolls in the tribe: dressed like their chief in steel-scale armor of fire resistance, they wield hammers twice the length and weight of Dwatrall’s. As for the chief himself—I do not doubt for a second his titanium enhanced claws can tear open a lava troll with utter ease. The scales of his armor are finer than those of the other trolls, and the glow of their runes more vivid too.

We march for many hours until the tunnel widens enough for us to sit down in a circle. We devour our meal troll-style, taking turns cramming chunks of raw flesh into our mouths. On the menu is abyssal salamander meat mixed with slices of troll. Both meats are bloodier and heartier than the fish and amphidon we’ve been chowing these past months, and I relish them.

The three troll warriors sling the sacks of supplies back over their shoulders and we restart the march. Still upward we go, and the ground becomes jagged and crunchy. Bits of obsidian are mixed into the gravel. Fortunately my armor is well-runed enough that they can’t scratch the metal.

It grows hotter and hotter. I feel sweat run down my face and into my beard. I pull up my visor in a vain attempt to cool myself off.

“I thought heat and magma got worse as you moved down,” I complain to Hayhek. “Not up.”

Hayhek shrugs. “On average that’s meant to be the case. But lava can well up anywhere. Especially to the down-east of the city, there’s a volcanic network. I went down there once before.”

“Hard job?”

“About as hard as the one we’re on now,” he says grimly. “That’s where we faced a lava troll. It’s where we’re headed now.”

“Are they really that bad? Bigger?”

“A little shorter, but stockier, wider. Longer arms.”

“Do they breath fire? Like salamanders?”

“No. But they spit at you, and their spit may as well be lava.”

I shrug. “My armor will resist it. I've calculated—I could survive for up to a minute swimming through lava, just as long as I keep my head in the air.”

“I hope we won’t have to put that to the test.”

We sleep, march, eat, sleep, march, repeat. The upward direction of the tunnel evens off until we’re marching straight. There’s no handy mushrooms or slime here to provide light, so nearly all of our time is spent in blackness. The runes glow of course, but not enough to see by. Because I cannot see the walls it almost feels as if I’m walking not in a tunnel but over a vast black open plain following tall spectres glittering red and blue.

After a few more sleeps, the tunnel widens into a cave. It is like no cave I have ever seen before: the walls are crystalline yellow and white, and the stalagmites and stalactites are pale green and translucent. Light is provided by a thin river of lava running down the cavern center. Unlike most lava it glows whitish-gold.

Visually, this cavern is strikingly beautiful. The smell, however, is something terrible: rotten eggs, meat, and feces all mixed together. Usually one gets used to bad smells after a few hours of being amidst them, but this I do not get used to even after a day and a night.

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A rather sleepless, nauseous night.

“No signs of life at least,” Hayhek comments.

“Is this the same place you came on that job?”

“A similar place. The place I ended up at smelled even worse.”

I grimace. I don’t know how much more my nose can take, my lungs too. Just breathing here makes my throat burn a little. Fortunately for me, the cavern twists then joins another, larger one to make a great circular room. My eyes widen at its scale—it must be nearly a mile from end to end.

Dominating its center is a massive pool of pale greenish liquid, blooming with whitely glowing algae and shimmering slightly.

“Time to fill up our waterskins?” I joke.

Dwatrall does not quite get my humor. “No. Deadly poison, water mixed with the sulfur of the caverns. Only these white plants can grow in it without dying.”

The chief grunts something.

“Stick close to the cavern walls,” Dwatrall translates. “Gas comes out sometimes.”

“How do you know all this?” I ask as we skirt around the pool, clinging firmly to the rocky sides of the cavern. “How do we even know the way?”

“The chief has been here before.”

“Weren’t the lava trolls considered too dangerous to approach?”

“It was just for exploring, mapping. Maybe a probing attack, see if they really were so dangerous.”

“And were they?”

“Yes. His expedition ended over there.” He points to the other side of the lake, where a triangular arch of yellow-white crystals stands twelve foot tall. “That is the entrance to the lava trolls’ domain.”

“Hell,” Hayhek whispers. “We’re nearly there. Will it be guarded?”

Dwatrall asks the chief.

“He says yes. Ready your weapons.”

I hold Heartseeker ready in two hands. When I grip it with my right glove, I feel power shiver down both my arms. I look over to the sulfurous entrance, point Heartseeker at it. The sensation I feel is hard to describe—like my eyes and the tip of Heartseeker are directly linked. When a fight comes, I will have no trouble hitting weak points.

Provided lava trolls even have weak points. I remember my fight with the ordinary troll, and just how much punishment it needed before it fell. No matter—I have trolls of my own helping me now.

Yet...

The river trolls seem scared. Something in their body language, which until now has been a continuous swagger, has altered. They’re slightly more hunched, a bit more flighty: their eyes dart from lake to entrance back and forth.

After half an hour of shuffling along, we come to the crystal arch. The chief peers through, then turns back to us and gives a cautious nod. We follow him into a tunnel of flakey sulfur, vivid yellow even in the dim light. The trolls’ heavy tread brings up clouds of noxious dust, and I feel my eyes itch and brim with tears.

If only I knew how to make metal one-way transparent like Vanerak’s mirrored mask.

The tunnel opens out into a wide, square room. I gulp—this place looks artificial. The chief holds up his hand to halt us. He looks from one edge of the room to the other, and I follow his gaze. A grim sense of foreboding comes over me. This place is definitely artificial, and has all the hallmarks of a trap-room.

It’s perfectly square, lit by even strips of lichen on the ceiling, and tall gray boulders are laid out on the floor in a grid-pattern. Each is painted on top with a different color: blood, greenish algae, crushed azure, tar, sulfur. I see what the scheme is immediately. Trolls authorized to come down here are given a code of colors to instruct them on which path to follow. If anyone or anything deviates from that path, they will set off an alarm or trap.

The chief consults Dwatrall. Their discussion is long.

“I thought trolls were too stupid to come up with anything like this,” I tell Hayhek. “No offense to our hosts, of course. But I thought hitting their enemies was more their style.”

“It is,” Hayhek says. “I’ve never heard of anything like this.”

“That hammer must have the same magic as the box. It’s made them smarter, or at least more cunning.”

“Maybe.” He scans the colored boulders once more. There’s five rows of five. “I don’t see a solution.”

“Neither.”

Dwatrall and the chief’s discussion becomes heated. The chief shouts something and Dwatrall backs off, holding his palms out. He turns to us and sighs.

“I have a solution, but the chief doesn’t like it.”

“What was your idea?” I ask.

“Go back to the entrance and pull down those big crystals. Not all of them were sulfur, at least one was quartz. We could have laid it down gently as a bridge beside the boulders."

"Wouldn't that still have set any trap off?"

"Possibly. But our weight would have been more evenly distributed. No hard points of pressure like a troll walking would create."

“Seems like a decent idea to me,” Hayhek says.

“But the chief thinks it’s a waste of time to go back.” Dwatrall sighs. “He’s convinced the lava trolls will catch us in the tunnel. Completely illogical, I know. But he was attacked there once, and was expecting to get attacked there again. Once trolls have their expectations set, it’s hard to change their minds.”

“Doesn’t he usually listen to you?”

Dwatrall laughs. “Usually. But he’s fought lava trolls and I haven’t, so he judges his opinion better.”

“What’s his plan then?” I ask.

“Watch.”

The chief gestures to one of the warrior trolls, who marches to the left side of the square cavern, raises his hammer, and smashes the ground next to the first boulder. No alarm shouts, no trap is sprung. The chief grunts in satisfaction and orders the warrior to take a step forward.

We all tense.

The troll steps up to the boulder. The ground seems to be solid, and we breath out in relief.

He takes another step forward and smashes down beside the next boulder. A wide circle of ground around it crumbles, right up to the troll warrior’s toes. He shouts and backs off. The chief laughs loudly. The troll warrior edges around the pit to the next boulder.

He raises his hammer.

From the pit comes angry hissing and bright flashes of fire. Salamanders both small and massive skitter out from it like water overflowing from a cup. The troll warrior shouts in panic as they leap onto him and weigh him down to his knees, scratching, biting, and flaming at his armor.

The chief and the other two warriors yell a battlecry and rush forward. More hissing salamanders pour from the pit and meet their charge.

I snap down my visor and prepare for combat.