The darkness does not go to destroy us immediately. Instead, the clouds expand to the sides and upward, then curl around to envelop. My hearing-view of the sphere of nothing vanishes as a black shell forms around us. The chill immediately grows more intense, like we’ve been plunged into icy water, and my hearing dims further so the shapes of the dwarves around me become indistinct, hard to make out.

Then the darkness begins to tighten its grip; it coils around us like a nest of snakes. I blink open my eyes: our weapons seem dimmer, like they’re obscured by black fog, and some streams of the fog are darker than others, and getting darker.

“It’s getting ready to strike!” Hraroth shouts. “Prepare to fight! Trust in the strength of your weapons—you have faced this before on your duties, many times!”

This must be the speech he gives whenever there’s an incursion: in the moment of crisis he’s forgotten that most of us have never faced this. The chill deepens; the maces of several senior runeknights flare brighter, and then the Runethane’s own mace eclipses them. I shut my eyes; one instant later and it’s coming for us.

“Brace!” someone yells.

A terrible emptiness rushes from above. I cry out—my words fade even as they leave my helm—and thrust up with my mace. The runes are nearly at the zenith of its brightness and I feel a kind of pressure which suddenly vanishes. I hit the foe! Did I? It’s coming again, stronger: an absence of sound forms above and to my left and falls. The dwarf next to me seems to disappear, his shape extinguished. I batter at the darkness, feel my mace pass through like it’s nothing but air. The runes’ glow is fading—quickly I pull it back.

I need to time my strikes, but in this case there was nothing I could’ve done. The tendril of darkness vanishes upward before the dwarves next to me can beat it away. It leaves behind a corpse splayed on the stone, all heat and movement gone from him.

Someone in my squad screams in horror and drops his weapon: one of the lower degrees. A tendril of darkness rushes for him and subsumes him in its grasp. I sense him thrashing even as he fades from my hearing, and swing for the emptiness above him—my mace should be brightening right now—and the darkness weakens enough that I can detect the dwarf trapped in it, still weakly attempting to defend himself.

We cannot batter it away quick enough. The mace falls from the ninth degree’s hand just as the soundlessness fades. He is unmoving. Not a minute into the fight, and already two of our squad are dead.

I can’t tell how the other squads are faring. My hearing is so dulled so that I can only vaguely make out the battle around us.

“To me!” comes a faint whisper. “My runeknights, to me!”

It’s the Runethane, his bellow reduced to a whisper by the twisting silent voids separating him from us. I have no idea how far away from me he is: has he stayed in place, has he come toward us to become the centerpoint of our defense, or is he still advancing? I guess the latter.

He wants to strike a killing blow; he thinks defense is useless now. He may be right. We may have delved too far for retreat to be possible.

The dwarves around me obey. The Runethane is strong; just the ambient brightness of his mace will weaken the darkness at least a fraction. I follow, march down the steps, my gripping boots serving me well, while cold voids elongate and lash at me. I strike back each time; sometimes the void vanishes immediately, other times after a few strikes, and sometimes my mace passes through with no effect at all.

I’ve forgotten all timing, completely lost track of the pulsing of my mace. My swings are wild and unbalanced—not since my encounter with the many-legged bzathletic just before my entry to the fortress have I felt so outmatched.

The darkness is a far more powerful foe than any I’ve faced, or heard of dwarves facing—even a dragon would be an easier opponent. Yes that is fair to say: Runethane Thanerzak defeated many a dragon, the black dragon was nearly defeated also, by only a first and third degree no less, but the darkness has never been defeated.

Not by the dwarves who dug this Shaft, lost to history, nor the first defenders of the fort, whose records are also lost to history, nor the current lineage of defenders. All us dwarves have been able to do is hold it back at terrible cost. Never has it been defeated—and not in the ages before dwarfkind first tunneled through the underworld either. That is why it was sealed and not destroyed: there is no other explanation for this lost prison.

It may be immortal. It may be invincible.

Strike by strike we advance. More dwarves fall: three at once, four at once. Soundlessness envelops them, they vanish, and when the darkness pulls away cold corpses lie on the stone. Our battlecries are annihilated. Fear grips me and my legs become weak. My strikes feel slow, as if I swing my mace through water.

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This is no battle, but a black nightmare.

“To me!” says the Runethane. His voice sounds slightly louder now. “To me, to me, my dwarves! We end this now! My precious dwarves, this is what we have lived until this moment for! Now is the time for our vigilance to end, one way or another! To me! To me!”

The deep darkness’ assault is relentless. No longer are we in squads; we have huddled into a terror-stricken mass.

“Forward!” says the Runethane. “My dwarves, move forward! Everything depends on you moving forward—your lives, the lives of your comrades, the lives of all dwarfkind! Destroy the darkness! Smash it at the source! We are almost there—I can feel it!”

A wave crashes down upon me. Coldness floods through my armor and my skin turns numb. My breath freezes even as I cry out. All sensation vanishes. It's like my body has been ripped away from me, like my mind and soul have been snatched into some lightless, soundless, touchless hell.

I open my eyes wide. All I can see is a distant glow of runes. They seem faded, almost gone. Slowly they brighten. Other vague blurs of light sweep back and forth over me.

“Zathar,” comes a whisper. “Zathar, are you alive? Fight back! Swing!”

With the last of my strength I swing up at the darkness. The coldness wavers and vanishes. Light floods my eyes along with sharp pain. I scream out. Someone pulls me up by my arm—somehow I’m expecting it to be Nthazes, but he’s holding a trident.

It’s Galar.

“You all right?” he says.

“Yes. Thank you.”

“We have to keep moving!” someone else shouts from right beside us. “The Runethane will leave us behind!”

We nod and hurry along. More voids descend upon us. Galar blasts them with his trident—he has no need to stab, he just turns the wheel in its handle and light crashes into the darkness, burning it away. I cannot see the light of course, but I can feel the heat from it. His entire weapon glows with warmth.

This strategy is not flawless. Like Hraroth warned, the effect is narrow and thin streams of darkness can twist around and bypass it. Our maces deal with them, though.

For the first time my boots fail me and I trip and crash down onto the next step. They’ve suddenly steepened.

“Descend!” comes the Runethane’s cry. “Down we go, to the darkness’s heart!”

I scramble up; we obey. A thick pillar divides our crowd momentarily, and the darkness takes advantage of the gap. It floods in. Galar shouts and spins the wheel on his trident again. A wave of heat washes over me. The darkness recoils up.

He shouts in triumph, and we cheer him—even me, all thoughts of the killer pushed from my mind.

“Downward!” orders the Runethane. “Downward!”

“Follow!” Cathez shouts. “Charge down the steps!”

“Destroy the foe!” yells Hraroth.

The darkness momentarily beaten back, we rush. Our battlecries become deafening, and the waves of sound pierce the shell of void at the center of the great chamber. Within it I make out the shape of one of the creatures whose likenesses are engraved throughout the city. It holds its hands above its head, open, palms facing each other as if holding an invisible sphere. Its four legs are bound to the floor with crystalline shackles.

“Death to the darkness!” screams the Runethane. “Smash it!”

The sorcerer opens its eyes and turns its head toward us. Our battlecries stop dead in our throats as our foe’s body shivers with power. I sense the darkness surrounding us grow in strength. It is no longer a mere absence of sound and light: it is consuming those. Our shouts of panic are torn up and away. My mace seems to shudder—I blink open my eyes and the light of its runes is stretching toward the utterly black roof over our heads.

“Continue!” the Runethane screams. “Do not dare falter!”

His mace, held high above his head, explodes into brilliance. My vision turns absolutely white then absolutely black. I sense him swing at a wave of nothingness that rushes up from our foe, who is once again obscured. He staggers back; the darkness recoils also.

“Charge!” screams Hraroth. “We nearly have it! Charge!”

But only the darkness directly in front of the Runethane was affected by his swing. The rest is still more powerful even than before. Torrents of it flood down. One envelops a dwarf behind me. I yell out in fear and anger and swing.

My mace must be at the zenith of its power; the void disintegrates. The dwarf is still alive, already trying to stand. I pull him up.

“Zathar! Thank you!”

With a shock I realize it’s Nthazes.

“You were at the back!”

“What are you talking about? This is the rearguard...”

But it is not, and with a second shock I realize that the Runethane is only a few ranks away. Behind Nthazes is a trail of cold bodies. Dimmed maces lie on the steps beside their wielders at odd angles.

“Come on!” Hraroth bellows at us. “Charge! Charge! There’s no retreat now! Attack!”

We hurry onward, leaping down the massive steps—then comes a shout from behind:

“Retreat! Run, all of you! This is hopeless! Abandon the attack!”

I turn. It’s Belthur. He must have abandoned the rearguard and followed us down here.

“Traitor!” Hraroth screams at him. “Obey your Runethane!”

“Obeying is suicide! Retreat or die! Retreat or the fort is finished!”

The attack falters. My steps slow even as the darkness swirls above, readying its next strikes.

“Zathar?” Nthazes says nervously.