The dwarves hurry to grab at Fjalar’s armor. I'm too fatigued even to stay sitting up; my eyes close and I collapse back. I hear the screech of titanium being pried away, then a snapping sound. I blink my eyes open and see Melkor standing and holding the chain of Fjalar’s amulet. He’s dangling the ruby-like gem in front of his mace so that the light shines through it. I hear him begin to whisper the poem written on it, though cannot make out the words.

“Shit, look at this!” Hirthik says. “The chain here goes right into his neck. See? Just above the collarbone.”

“Take his gauntlets off,” someone says. “We need to see the weapon.”

I hear more armor being torn away. I want to look for myself, but even the thought of standing sends pain shooting through my legs and my rib.

“Horrible,” Nthazes rasps. “Brilliantly made, but horrible. Evil.”

“Are you all right?” another dwarf asks him.

“I feel half dead. A lot of my blood’s in that thing.”

“Melkor, what poem is written on it?” I say quietly. “Was I right?”

“You were,” he replies in a grim tone. “It’s too long and the runes are too small for me to understand it all yet, but it seems to be what you predicted. There are many runes of strength, though in strange grammar, to keep the glass together. That’s the outer poem—I can make out three layers, each laid on top of the other. I cannot fathom how he constructed them. In honesty, I never even knew you could enrune glass.”

“They were experimenting with it. What runes are on the other layers?”

“The middle layer is a twisted narrative about a dwarf inside a collapsing cave. Let me read a little further.”

We all wait, with baited breath.

“The cave gets smaller by half every ten heartbeats. Soon the dwarf is crushed, yet he does not die despite the pain and injury. He is squeezed into a point, yet still can feel everything.”

“Is the amulet heavy?” someone asks.

“A bit heavier than it looks. I’d say it’s about the same density of lead. There are load-lightening runes worked into the outer poem.”

“I see,” I say. “What is written into the final layer?”

“Another narrative,” Melkor answers. “The runes are far too small for me to make out easily. It is very long, too... It repeats at certain points. There’s a pattern to the repetition, or at least that’s the feeling I get. Whatever it is, it’s complex.”

“What kind of narrative?” someone asks.

“It is about beasts that devour the flesh of dwarves. To call it a narrative is perhaps inaccurate. It's mostly just twisted violence.”

“I imagine that the gaining of strength through death is an important motif,” I say.

“You guess right. That is written into each repetition, at the corners where the facets meet. But what about the needle? How is it constructed?”

“There’s a section of metal on his palm that’s linked to a lever within the arm-guard,” one of the dwarves bending over Fjalar's corpse says. “Push on it, and the lever pushes against the forearm, sliding up quite hard to push the needle out the flesh.”

“Wait,” I say. “I checked his armor after the dithyok got him. There was nothing like that in it.”

“What?” Hirthik says, alarmed. “Then did Galar kill the injured dwarf up there? But then—”

“Let me think.” After a few long moments’ thought, I have an idea. “He mustn’t always have had the needle embedded in his flesh. Probably he was concealing it below his armor. Maybe at his thigh, so it’d be easy to draw out.”

“Then when you started to pull off his armor, he stabbed it into himself?” Nthazes suggests.

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“I think so. He struggled a lot, kept thrashing and hitting himself. Probably he inserted it into one of the wounds we were bandaging, making sure the tip stuck out a tiny amount.”

“That seems risky,” says Hirthik.

“Yes, but he had no other option," I say. "It was that or be found out. I guess that he decided to keep it in his flesh permanently from then on. On the off chance his armor was ever examined, the mechanism you described would have been suspicious but not strong evidence.”

“It would have convinced me and Jaemes,” says Nthazes. “Likely not anyone else in the fort though.”

There is an awkward pause.

“The needle would still have been linked to his amulet though,” I say. “Is there some kind of chain?”

“One with tubular links, yes,” says Hirthik.

“I’m not sure how I missed it when we stripped him off.”

“It’s extremely thin. If he was covered in blood, you would have had a hard time seeing it.”

“How thin?”

“Like a hair. I’ve never see runes so miniscule. I wonder if he was making lenses out of the glass as well.”

“We’ll search his quarters once we reach the top, after we release Jaemes.”

“What runes are they?” Melkor asks. “And how about those on the needle too?”

“On the needle are the same kind we saw etched on the glass in Galar’s quarters,” Nthazes answers. “Ones about drawing in and pushing out. Worked into a poem about breathing in a substance that isn’t air—I’ve never seen runes used this way.”

“A creative genius,” I murmur. “As terrible as they were, I cannot deny their creativity.”

“Galar saved us,” Melkor reminds me.

“I suppose so. Still, I don’t think he cared about us. When he pointed out that Fjalar was first to run out while he held back to stop the darkness, he sounded proud of his kindness.”

“He lacked a true understanding of duty then,” says Nthazes. “It was his duty to hold back the darkness as best he could. His brother should never have come into it.”

“Still, he did save us,” says Melkor. “We must honor that about him at least.”

“What if he was killing too?” says Hirthik. “Isn’t that possible?”

“I don’t think he was,” says Nthazes. “But I think he knew what his brother was doing, or at least suspected it.”

“Yes,” I say. “That’s why he warned me when I first started my investigations—he knew that if Fjalar found out I was snooping around, I’d be next on his list of victims. I suppose that’s proof he wasn’t another killer: if he was, he’d have killed me, even if he was grateful for me saving his life.”

“Even if he did know, we should still honor him,” says Melkor. “It must have been a hard thing, torn between his conscience and his brother. And all here would be dead if not for him, no matter his other shortcomings.”

I say nothing, even though I’m not sure about that assessment. At any rate, I am far too exhausted to argue, or even think any more. Sleep takes me as the lift grinds upward back to the fort.

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

My first order of business when our ascent ends is to release Jaemes. Nthazes and I leave the other dwarves in the chamber of the Shaft as the platform is sent back down on the off chance Belthur and those with him have somehow survived. I think it’s a slim hope.

It is a slow and hard walk upstairs, what with both our bodies at their breaking points. At last we reach his doors and, with all the strength we can muster, batter them open. Leaned against the wall, he opens his eyes, shading them from the light of our torches with his hand. He blinks heavily.

“You came back,” he croaks. “You came back!”

I run forward, embrace him. He’s terribly thin, and his lips look cracked and parched. I see that the Runethane did not give him so much food and drink. He must have been rationing it. How long were we down there for? It feels like hours, yet it also feels like years.

“You look terrible,” says Nthazes.

“You look worse,” Jaemes croaks back. “But you lived! I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it!” Joy lights up his eyes. “You survived!”

“Yes,” I say. My shock of happiness at seeing him alive has already faded. “Us two, and only nine more.”

He blinks heavily. “Nine?”

“Yes. Eleven are left. The darkness crushed us. But we got the killer. You were half-right: it was Fjalar. It wasn’t for revenge though. We examined the runes on his amulet, which his weapon was linked to. He was stealing the strength of others. Stealing their life to take their skill and heal himself.”

“Take their skill?”

“A dwarf’s life is forging,” says Nthazes. “Steal it and you steal that as well. He finished his mace remarkably quickly.”

“But he was strong already,” Jaemes says, shaking his head. “Why? To compete with his brother? Their feud wasn't just a cover, then?”

“Yes,” I say. "It was real."

“What a reason. Terrible. Selfish beyond words.”

“He’s dead now. We smashed his body to pieces, and we tore off his amulet as well.”

“What of the Runethane?”

“Dead. Cathez and Hraroth too, and the chamberlain, and everyone third degree and over, unless Belthur is somehow alive. Galar also.”

“I guess that a lot happened down there.”

“Yes,” I say bitterly. “A lot happened.”