Well, Vanerak thinks, it was to be expected. A runeknight of the tenth degree going straight to the fifth? A miracle story, had it been true. But of course it is not a miracle, just a deception. He doesn’t feel any anger, to be clear. It was a bold move.

His weakness revealed, the candidate must now be punished. That’s how it always goes. Let’s see how he fares against the next three trolls.

Vanerak stands up. The crowd is a sea of fury either side of him, jabbing down their thumbs like daggers, not that most of them have ever killed anyone. Some are even dirtying his arena with their half chewed snacks. How revolting. Sometimes he wonders how they’d react, the common ones, if they were down in the arena, gates before them and their only escape the five hundred foot plummet at their backs.

Now on his platform, he sighs and crosses his arms. Just behind him he has a woman ready to pull the lever at his command, and unleash the upstart’s doom.

“Stop!” comes a shout. At first Vanerak ignores it, then there’s the unmistakable sound of metal smashing down shield. He turns.

“Stop!” shouts a blonde dwarf in dull, heavily scripted bronze. He’s at the head of a wedge of a dozen more bronze-clad runeknights; together they drive against the ring of guards, shoving with elbows and shoulders. The guards lock shields and force most away, but the blonde dwarf breaks through punching and kicking like a mad animal.

“Stop!” he begs again. “Don’t kill him yet.”

“And who might you be?” Vanerak asks.

“I have a quarrel with him.”

“Do you now?”

“Yes! He murdered my friend.”

“Did he now?”

“Yes. Stabbed him. I want my revenge.”

Vanerak tilts his head quizzically. “He’s about to die anyway. That not enough for you?”

“I thought it might be, for a while. But if I have a chance, any chance, I want to do it myself.” He holds up his warhammer. It’s a hand-and-a-half one, with a small but quadruple-spiked head. “I want to break him myself.”

“Well, I can understand your desire. Must have been hard to lose your friend. However, this is my examination, and I will decide how it proceeds.”

“No!”

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t have the right to decide how it proceeds,” says the dwarf. “Not if I make a formal challenge of him. Challenges take precedent over examinations. It is written into our laws.”

“Is it?”

“It is.”

Vanerak frowns behind his tungsten mask. Rather ironically for an examiner, he’s never much been bothered with rules—he’s been above them for so long. Well, who cares if the candidate dies by troll or by dwarf? Dead is dead. Maybe the fight will be interesting. He can always send the trolls in later.

“Okay,” Vanerak says. “You can duel him.”

The dwarf blinks. “Really?”

“Yes. Do you want to go down through the main gate? We’ll have to move the trolls out the way first, which will be rather a pain, however.”

“No need.” He pulls his visor down over his handsome features and bright blue eyes. “I’ll jump straight down.”

How impatient, thinks Vanerak. That’s the trouble with young dwarves these days.

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From the stands comes plummeting a bronze-clad figure. He hits the gravel; it explodes away from him to leave a crater ten feet wide. He tears his helmet off and tosses it away—he wants me to know who he is.

I recognize the cruel features, blonde hair.

“You’re my test, are you?” I ask.

“No. Your test is finished. I just persuaded the examiner to let me end you personally.”

I ready Heartseeker. “I’m not going to be ended.”

“Look at you!” he laughs as he advances. “Thought you could become a runeknight on the cheap, did you?”

“I didn't have a choice,” I scowl.

“You’ve always had choices. You chose to kill my friend, and now you’ve chosen to kill yourself.”

He lunges with his warhammer. I catch his strike on Heartseeker and turn it, but he follows up with a precisely aimed kick to my knee and I stumble nearly to the ground. His next blow I sense going for my head, so I duck, but he turns the strike in the last fraction of a second and smashes my arm.

A spike on his hammer catches the armplate and he rips it right away. It clatters to the gravel like a dropped tin plate; its gold flickers to gray.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Call yourself a runeknight!” he spits.

The crowd roars its approval.

I whip Heartseeker upward. Its power directs it to Kazhek’s eye, but he steps back and lands a blow directly on my upper right arm. The plate crumples and my flesh is crushed beneath it, my bone bends—I think I feel it crack.

He steps back out the way of my clumsy counter-slash, readies himself back to fighting stance. I ready myself too, but my right arm is agony, the crumpled plate still crushing the muscle and pushing on the bruised bone.

He smiles. He can see my pain. I grimace and aim Heartseeker at his face once more.

Thrust! And Heartseeker, with half the strength from my right arm gone, moves of its own accord. Kazhek is taken aback—his smile vanishes abruptly—Heartseeker gashes his cheek. Crimson sprays onto the gravel.

“Fucking murderer!” he screams, and swings at my leg. His warhammer connects, puncturing the steel over my ankle. A brutal stab of pain goes through the muscle. Blood runs from the hole. I back away. I’m exhausted now, the troll was too much for me, lungs are burning, heart is thudding, muscles are stinging with fatigue.

Kazhek’s not tired at all, and comes at me, just as relentlessly as the troll lying dead on the gravel behind us did. He swings, nearly catches my nose as I don’t bring Heartseeker up in time—spear against hand-and-a-half hammer, how’s he even in range! He’s more skilled than me for sure—but Heartseeker has its own skill. Like a hunting hound it finds the gap above his kneecap plate and slices in.

Kazhek gasps in pain and scrambles backward. He nearly falls to his hurt knee, but manages to steady himself. I’m too tired to chase—yet Heartseeker has other ideas, stabs right at Kazhek's mouth. He throws himself backwards to avoid the dark-haloed steel; it still gashes his forehead in a deep vertical line.

I restrain Heartseeker. Kazhek’s still dangerous; I can’t overextend myself.

“What are you waiting on?” he hisses.

“I never chose to kill your miserable friend. It was a fucking accident!”

“You could have dropped your spear.”

“While he was trying to bash my head in?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Fuck you,” I spit. “You going to come at me? Or are you too scared? Prefer beating up the weak, do you?”

He grimaces and walks forward. His eyes are deadly focused, I can almost see the combat mind behind them whirring as he calculates the best angle of attack. I try to predict it—a swing from the left—thrust to his right. He parries with ease and using the momentum of his parry brings his warhammer up. He hooks two spikes under the lower edge of my breastplate, rips back and the dull gold tears.

Its final runes of mimicry broken, the entire breastplate fades to plain, scratched steel. The vanishing of runic power shocks into the almandines; some merely crack while most burst into matte red shards which scatter and rattle at my feet.

“You’re a disgrace!” Kazhek spits. “You’re no runeknight.”

I scream in rage and unleash a rapid flurry of stabs, the same kind of flurry I bled the troll out with, but Kazhek is too skilled. He is not overwhelmed, not physically, not psychologically. He is fearless in the face of razor-sharp death. His warhammer flows from position to position, smooth as water, and meets every one of my strikes. I press forward and he walks back calmly, not letting my advance break his composure, even when Heartseeker touches his armor, even when it slices off a lock of hair which scatters into fine threads that vanish into the breeze.

Gasping, I fall back. My arms are like two lengths of lead. Kazhek smiles and hefts his warhammer up above his head, angles it back, widens his stance back, readying a killing blow that will smash my skull to pieces.

He is tougher than me. More skilled. Yet I know skill at combat is not the most important skill for a runeknight to have.

The most important skill for us to have is that displayed at the anvil.

I stab down—and Heartseeker follows its runic instinct, drives up at a gap under the left of Kazhek’s breastplate.

Through the gap.

A terrible ringing sound and blackness obliterates the world.

I open my eyes and I’m lying on my back. One side of my face is cold. I gasp and choke on dust. The cavern far above is spinning, the stalactites twisting like mad ropes. Blazing dots of color dance among them.

I gasp and choke again, clutch the side of my face—wet with blood—helmet gone. I sit up, vomit onto my lap.

“Nearly got you,” Kazhek groans.

He’s lurching towards me. With his right hand he’s holding his warhammer aloft for a second strike, but his left is around Heartseeker, whose snout is still buried deep into his side. It’s shivering and twisting, trying to get deeper.

“Nearly got you!” he gasps.

I try to stand, vomit again. The world is still spinning—I’m badly concussed.

“Nearly got you,” he whispers. Blood pours from his mouth. Heartseeker looks to be partway into his left lung.

“Got you!” he screams. His warhammer comes down at my bare head.

It falls from his hand halfway down and clatters harmlessly on my shoulder, then it clatters on the ground. More blood runs out his mouth and he falls to his knees.

He gives a final blood-bubbling gasp, sprawls backwards and lies still. Heartseeker continues to slide into him slowly and gruesomely.

I groan, stand, vomit up nothing, stagger over to him and tear Heartseeker out. It drips with blood.

“Fuck you,” I say hoarsely to Kazhek’s corpse. “Fuck you, you fucking bastard. You brought this on yourself.”

The crowd is on their feet, shouting and booing at me. I take a moment to catch my breath, ready myself. I swallow to wet my throat.

“Fuck you too!” I scream at them. “All of you! Bastards!”

I bring my armored foot down on Kazhek’s nose. The dead bone crunches—his handsome features are forever ruined now. He can burn in hell disfigured.

“You hear me!” I scream to the stands. “You get in the way of me, in the way of what I want to do, my dreams, everything and anything, you’re going to end up like him!” I stamp down on his face again. “Just like him! Look down on me, will you, you bastards? Because I was a miner? I’ll fucking cut your hearts out!”

They continue booing of course. I spit onto the gravel, and aim Heartseeker toward the gates, fully prepared to die.

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He’s got guts, Vanerak thinks to himself. You have to admit that about him. Did he really just threaten to kill every single one of us? Did he mean that to include me? Real guts, just like when the Runethane took on all those dragons three hundred years back.

“Kill him!” screams the crowd. “Crush him!”

Just a nod and it’ll all be over. This candidate, no matter how much guts he’s got in him, is not going to kill three trolls. Not to mention the abyssal salamander after them—one of the biggest on record too, if you believe the runeknights who caught it.

“Kill him!” scream the dead dwarf’s guildmates, shoving violently against the shieldwall of Vanerak’s guards. “Kill the fucking bastard now!”

Why should he die, though? Such guts! Exactly like how the Runethane used to be, back in the good old days when this cavern was wild and Broderick just an unknown soldier. No, this candidate won’t die today.

He won’t pass either, though. His weapon is impressive, but his armor?

Nowhere near good enough.

He can try again in a couple years. Vanerak looks forward to it.