The runes on the wynding's walls seemed to burn as she ran past. Every twenty yards a lamp shimmered and pulsed in a tin cage shaped like an iron maiden. The copper wire ran from lamp to lamp as if it was a vein carrying blood and their light was somehow made by the animus of life. Her eyes streamed for Khaz but she couldn't spare a step for him or for what had happened. The lamplights passed her face through every phase of the moons over and over as she sprinted toward a concrete door as wide as the span and as tall as the [sentinel]. It stood ajar and the wire snaked through its gap. She slipped through it also. Daraway came after.

They arrived in a circular chamber suspended above a river of molten rock. Overhead soared an indefinite void. They saw the stonepaved bridge arching the river and the tremendous anvil chained across its midpoint and the narrow windows like gunloops set in the walls. This was the black heart of the world, lit by the relentless heat upcast by the river that was the lifeblood of the mountain. This was the first holding of the first colony of dwarves.

"Myths alive," said Mym. "It's the forge of creation."

Daraway held up her hands as if against an invisible barrier. "There is something else here."

Mym noticed it too. She felt it more than saw it. It encompassed the chamber as if the bridge and its anvil lay inside a glass ball held in place by unseen firing tongs and the whole of the forge was its crucible. She [heard] it in the same way she [heard] stones and it [spoke] of one thing only: terrible heat.

She looked at Daraway. The woman nodded. They stepped through together and whatever it was didn't obstruct their passage. On the far side there was a tremendous noise and the sickly smoky smell of a carcass thrown on a fire.

"Halt there!" yelled a man.

Mym looked again at the bridge and now saw men near the anvil and the [armiger] kneeling over a machine there that clattered and sputtered like an angry nak. Black grease covered his hands to their wrists. He looked up at his man's call and saw her and Daraway.

The [armiger] stood up holding a cotton rag. He shouted, "Welcome dwarf! Welcome witch! A moment please!"

He put his hand inside the machine and its mechanical noise quieted. The dim lamps strewn up the bridge died all at once and at their deaths the red glow of the river seemed to press upward into the cavern for it was the only light therein.

"There," said the [armiger].

He turned to face them and wiped his hands on the cotton rag and thrust it into his belt.

"Just the two of you? One imagines others would come also, but perhaps there are no others left to come."

She would kill him just for that. She took a step onto the bridge.

He beckoned her forward. "Did you pass the doomstone? Was it yet animate? This place hosts numerous entrances and exits, some hidden even to their makers' progeny. Perhaps you didn't see it. We can show you to it once we finish here."

"Aye we saw it," said Mym.

"Marvelous. Come now and look at this. Come, come. We have no quarrel with you. In truth we could use your expertise."

Daraway looked at her.

The [armiger] waved a hand. "Come. Look upon the answer to the mystery of your folk's diminishing."

"Careful," whispered Daraway.

"Really you have nothing to fear from us, lady Daraway. We have already obtained that which we came for. The rest are merely curiosities."

Mym unslung her [longarm] and carried it in her hand. The bridge seemed to vibrate under her feet and she [heard] its making in her bones and she [heard] water running through its substructure. She stopped ten paces from him. A hundred yards below them the river of rock slowly swirled.

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

The [armiger] wore his [shortarm] in its holster on his chest. She watched him move his hand and point at something beneath the anvil. "You will not see it from there and we dare not touch it to show you for who knows what might happen. I know you understand. Come and see."

She drew closer. She saw the wheeled and belted machine beside him and she saw his knights sweating in their armor and she saw another massive door standing slightly ajar at the far end of the chamber. Closer still and she saw the anvil was cast from shard of the sky. She ducked beneath one of the chains and she touched it with her free hand and felt its tension. From there she could see clear meltwater running in a footwide flume under the anvil as if it had once served as a quenchbucket for the first [smith].

The [armiger] saw her looking. "It collects just below the summit and runs all the way through to your delving. These are the headwaters that nourish all of dwarfdom. See here?"

A metallic lump of something rested there in the stream of the flume. Beaten and shaped by a [smith], yet unfinished. She drew closer. She could hear the [armiger]'s steady breathing and the water gurgle as it slid past. She saw the lump was a sphere of soft metal folded on itself a hundred times as if it was a sheet of paper full of bad ideas crumpled into a ball and tossed aside.

"It was to be the masterwork of the first dwarves," said the [armiger]. "A second stone of their own making to match the stone of the earth had from their makers. Curious, isn't it? What happened then that prevented them from completing it? What happened that caused them to assassinate their makers in the manner you witnessed on the headman’s block?"

He looked at Mym.

"We do not have those answers. One wonders if they have something to do with this."

He unhooked the nearest lamp from the wire and held it just above the lump. The lamp lit brighter than it had when the engine powered it.

"What is it?" said Daraway.

The [armiger] shrugged. "Some new corruption. New to us anyway. Clearly not to dwarves for they have been partaking of its imbuement for generations. What say you, lastborn?"

Mym looked him in the eye. "Did ye set free the orcs?"

He sat back on his heels and set down the lamp and its light dimmed to nothing. "Come now. You drink of this water. You wash in it. You bathe in it. Here it is. The reason for your race's infertility."

"Ye didn't answer me question."

He gestured at the lump and smiled not unkindly. "You did it to yourselves."

At that moment the stones beneath her feet [wailed] with a new anguish as they welcomed home an elder of their kin. She knew in that moment that her da had died, and there before her was the man responsible.

She shouldered her [longarm] and pointed it at his forehead. "I want te hear ye say it."

She heard the clank of the knights moving and the ring of their drawing blades and Daraway whispering something but all her focus was on this man kneeling before her, his forearms resting on his knees, his head pressed against her weapon. He kept his eyes on hers.

"We have nothing to say to you,” he whispered.

"Then ye won't protest when I blast yer brains out yer head te the ground."

He watched her. In the dim red light his eyes glinted red as if the only world he saw was one of blood and hot iron.

"We are only one of many," he said.

She felt a cold muzzle push into her neck.

He kept his eyes locked on hers. "Shoot us now and another will rise in our place. But who will come to replace the white mountain's lastborn daughter of its firstborn father? The woman she loves? The child she suckles? The orc she hunts?"

Daraway whispered again and there was a plea in it but Mym wouldn't heed.

The [armiger] said, "Yes, I freed the orcs."

She rolled left as she fired and the [armiger] shifted his head and the shot passed across his scalp and the muzzle against her neck discharged as she rolled and she felt the searing fullness of it in her shoulder. She grabbed the hot barrel and flung both it and the [knight] holding it across the top of the anvil and only as he slid and bounced off the bridge and fell into the molten river did she see it was the one called Malv. Daraway shouted and another gunshot rang off the anvil and Mym ducked instinctively and drew her [alpenstock] as she heard somewhere behind her a monster bellowing twice at once and she saw the [armiger] rise on the far side of the anvil with a cascade of blood down his face and his [shortarm] drawn and firing and that ball struck the inside of her leg and just when things couldn't get any worse the tall orc stepped through the far door with a dead man lurching beside him.

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

> +4 [Vengefulness]: Next came the horrors... (10/10).

> [Vengefulness] Title Gained: [Nemesis] Denotes she whose grudges reshape space and time.

> +1 [Stonespeaking] They told her the thing she had always known was comin. He went home te them and they sung their blessings... (10/10).

> [Stonespeaking] Title Gained: [Speaker of the Secret Tongue] Denotes she who has learned a word of command.