“We’re trapped!” someone screams. “Oh, somebody help us, we’re trapped!”

“No one’s going to help us but ourselves,” Nthazes says grimly. “Here we stand, and fall if we must.”

“We should’ve stayed with the Runethane. At least then we could have died in glory! Fulfilled our duty!”

“Maybe. But we made our decision.”

“A cowardly decision,” weeps the dwarf. “We’re cowards, and this is what we get for it.”

“None of us are cowards for retreating. At least, I am not. I judged that the Runethane had failed in his duty to the fort, and so that means my duty lies somewhere I can continue the defense. If I’m to fall in that duty I have no regrets. You should have none either.”

“Form a line!” Fjalar yells. “Form something! It’s coming for us!”

“No need for a line,” Galar says. “I’ll hold it off myself.”

“Are you insane?”

“No!” He laughs, madly. “But my weapon is stronger than all of yours.”

He takes a long step out toward the darkness. He cuts a heroic figure, a lone hero against a tide of death, risking his life to protect us—except of course that is not his motive. I can tell by the glee in his voice that he’s doing this to spite his brother. Fjalar’s mace is excellent but could not hold back the darkness on its own. Galar knows this and it brings him joy.

The darkness seems to eat away the corridor. I feel as if the stone is crumbling, and when the collapse reaches us we will all plummet into the void.

Galar turns the wheel; it makes four clicks. Light blasts from the trident’s points: I can tell from the warmth and the way the tide of deep darkness shudders, even if I can’t see it. He moves his finger a little more and I hear the barest click. The warmth intensifies.

“Five!” he shouts triumphantly.

The darkness’s advance slows. It become slightly less opaque: I can sense the outlines of the corridor past it.

“Six!”

The warmth becomes heat and I’m forced to take several steps back. The darkness falters further, then is bolstered by a new wave of chill from behind. The outline of the corridor vanishes once more.

“Seven!”

I cry out in shock: the heat becomes as if I’m standing directly beside a lavafall. The light is now as bright as that from the Runethane’s mace was, for I can see it even through my shut eyes. It’s a cone of paleness extending to the black and burning at it.

Yet the darkness is not cowed. It draws in its edges, concentrating its power into a spear of nothingness. It pushes forward.

“Fool!” Fjalar yells desperately. “You’re going to kill yourself!”

Rivals they may be, but I don’t think either wants to see the other dead.

“Eight!” Galar screams.

I flinch back, press myself against the others who are all pressed into the end of the corridor in terror. The heat becomes unbearable, it reminds me of the terrible dragon-heat I ran from, that eventually drove me to this place. I throw myself to the ground to get away from it.

“Nine!”

“Brother, stop—”

I suddenly get the impression that a solid wall of air and heat hit me some time ago, and my ears are ringing. I’m lying face up instead of face down. There seems to be something heavy on top of me; I push it off with all my strength. It feels like the limp body of a dwarf.

My ears are still ringing. I open my eyes, unable to remember why I even had them closed. In front of me is a crater; in its center is a shallow pool of white lava. A dwarf—Galar, the name comes to me, that’s Galar—has fallen into it face first and I can smell burned flesh. His hands are missing—his arms terminate in flowers of glowing titanium and blackened flesh and splintered bone. There is no trace left of his weapon.

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“I was right,” someone gasps, his voice half a death-rattle. “The border wall is here. Look.”

I turn to look. The glow of maces is not so blinding as it once was, since most are buried in a pile of shifting armor—concussed runeknights trying to untangle themselves. Fjalar is lying against the front of the pile, his armor rent, melted, parts of it still aglow.

He slumps down from the pile and climbs to his feet. “Don’t look at me!” he snaps. “Let’s get out of here!”

I back away from him.

“At the crater, can’t you see?”

I glance back, not wanting to take my eyes from him for more than half a second, and see that the blast destroyed the walls either side of us, and one of the two gaps leads to the inside of the perimeter wall. It has a gate in it nearby, through which I can see, by the glow of the white lava, the square forms of buildings.

“Stay here then,” Fjalar curses. He limps out into the perimeter wall and toward the gate. “The darkness will be back soon.”

I can’t abandon my comrades, can’t abandon Nthazes. I begin to pull them from the pile. Some are unconscious, some are fading in and out of it. Nthazes is one of these. I stand him up; he groans and slumps back down.

“Wake up!” I plead. “Stand up, we have to get out of here!”

“What happened?” he gasps.

“Galar’s trident blasted itself to pieces. He’s dead. But it blew a hole in the labyrinth. We can get out. We have to escape.”

“Fjalar? What about Fjalar?”

“He’s already left.”

“But he was next to his brother, wasn’t he? He... He should be the worst injured.”

Does this confirm it? His armor was rent, broken, yet he’s walking just fine. His limp is already fading; he starts to hurry. He turns to us.

“Get over here! I don’t want to face the darkness on my own!”

I look down the corridor past the glowing crater and see that the darkness is shocked, maybe injured, if such a thing can be injured: it writhes and shivers, fading in and out of existence, a kind of black flashing. But we cannot assume it’s been permanently dealt with. It’ll strengthen again, and when we cannot know, so we have to get out of here as fast as we can.

Yet, I won’t abandon any dwarf who may still be alive. I nod to Nthazes: he understands. I continue to drag dwarves from the pile. He tries to wake up those showing signs of life: groans and twitches. A few in the center are uninjured and they help us also. All the while, Fjalar watches on impatiently.

“Hurry up! Do you want my brother to have died for nothing?”

I glance back at the darkness and my fears are confirmed. Already it’s becoming blacker, coiling in on itself, like black satin folding in on itself again and again.

I turn back to the dwarves; I shut my eyes since most maces are unburied now. Of the forty or so with us, about ten are standing. Five were smashed against the hard stone dead end and had the backs of their helmets caved in, and are beyond saving. Another dozen are being helped to their feet. They make incoherent groaning sounds; they are concussed.

Those who caught the full brunt of the blast are dead. The obliterating heat smashed them head-on and melted the fronts of their armor. I am only alive because I was lying down and have strong runes of fire resistance grafted to my armor. Re-using the abyssal runes from ten years ago saved me.

“Come on!” Fjalar says urgently from the gate-hole in the perimeter wall.

“We’re going as fast as we can!” Nthazes says. “But we won’t abandon anyone who still might live!”

“Fine, just hurry up about it!”

“Go, Nthazes,” I say. “All of you, go if you can walk. I’ll try to wake up these last two.”

There are two near the front whose armor, though partly melted, may still have kept enough integrity to keep them alive.

But they aren’t alive. I know this because Fjalar is alive. Just like when he was mortally wounded by the dithyok, he’s brought himself back from the brink of death by stealing the life of someone else, and it is not only life that he’s stealing.

I have just had the revelation that the killer’s supreme craft of blood has already been completed. It was completed the moment Mathek lost his life in storeroom three. It is something far more powerful than a mere weapon, and it is something I have already seen.

I turn over the first body. It’s lighter than it should be—the first hint that I’m right. I try to open the visor, but it’s stuck, the mechanism melted. Cursing, I start to bash it apart with the pommel of my mace. I need to confirm the manner of death—yet I don’t need to see his face to do that, do I?

There will be a small hole in his armor where the weapon pierced. Desperately I search for it. It has to be here, for what else could explain the lightness of the body? Yet the armor is torn and has many holes.

“Zathar!” Nthazes yells. “Zathar, the darkness! Get out of there!”

I look back; the darkness has regained its strength and is flowing toward me, a tide of annihilation about to wipe me and all the evidence I have away. I grab the armored corpse under the armpits and try to drag it with me through the hole in the wall—the darkness is slower than before, it hasn’t regained all its power—but it’s hopeless. I drop him and run toward Nthazes, already backing away to follow Fjalar and the others, who are running, walking, or limping as fast as their injured bodies permit.