The scrawny duergar that wounded Beldrak was already waiting for me, and somehow escaped my attention, so he tried to stab me through the heart with a long, slender dagger. He was a little too eager, missed the weak point of my armour at the armpit and the blade slid off my back. I instinctively turned and stabbed at him with Shatterspike, and before I could check my momentum, I already opened his belly, his guts were spilling out. Oh well, I don’t think we would have been very good friends anyway.

There were two duergar warriors fast converging on me, and another two on the other side of the stream, with a withered old dwarf, who had a staff in his hand. Let’s hope Beldrak and Jim are following me.

I clashed with one of the dwarves, while the other tried to flank me. Both were already giant-sized, and it took all my swordplay to keep them at bay. If a third one was to join them before my comrades arrived, I was done for.

Then the withered old duergar hurled a mote of fire at me. I ducked, covered behind my shield. After the damage that has been done to it by the roper and other enemies, it was in dire condition. Now that I left the two warriors free for a moment, they both attacked, and my faithful shield was split in two by a merciless strike. I pulled my arm out of the straps and grabbed on Shatterspike’s blade with both hands. If I remained on the defensive, I was going to lose anyway, so I attacked, swinging my sword as it was a club, going for the face of one of my adversaries.

My desperate swing connected, the enemy went down, but at the same time, I felt his comrade’s axe biting into my back. I fell screaming, spluttering blood. I tried to turn on my back to protect my wound, just in time to see Jim arrive, and push his rapier into the still-standing duergar’s side. The dwarf roared, but his defiant war-cry quickly became a whine, and he slumped against the wall, hand desperately clutching at his wound, bloody foam leaking from the corner of his mouth.

Two warriors remained against Jim and Beldrak now, and also the enemy mage. It really hurt when I moved, but I squirmed my way to the wall, so I could prop up myself and see the fight that was to decide my fate as well.

The duergar wizard stayed on their side of the stream, muttering and gesturing. Seemingly he cast a spell, but without an effect I could see. The other two dwarven warriors enlarged themselves and crossed the stream, but only to stand threateningly, and stare at us. Maybe they were ready to talk?

Beldrak understood first.

“That’s an illusion!” he shouted. “They have become invisible!” He ducked at the same time, barely avoiding the axe that was supposed to split his head in half. Then he straightened to unleash a storm of fire on his assailant. The duergar screamed, threw his axe and shield away, ran to the stream and dove into the water.

Jim meanwhile did not avoid the attack against him unscathed. The swing against him connected, but thanks to Beldraks’s warning the tiefling did move a little, and the axe only hit him with its flat. The tremendous force behind the duergar’s axe still broke his shoulder, and now his shield-hand was hanging limp beside his side. His rapier was unhindered though.

Jim turned on the now visible duergar with vengeance, his rapier became a blur as he stabbed again and again. He drove the enemy back against the wall, not letting the dwarf breathe or counterattack with his much unwieldier weapon. The duergar was bleeding from multiple wounds now. He also saw what had happened with his comrades. There was no fight left in him. He threw his weapon on the ground, raising his hands as a sign of surrender.

Only the enemy mage remained, but he was already on the run, while Beldrak was raining spells down on him. He still might have got away, but I finally summoned enough strength to stand and took aim with my right hand. It was a long shot, but my javelin flew true and pierced the duergar’s thigh. We were left as the masters of the battlefield.

Jim healed himself at first, then me, then we bound and gagged our enemies one by one. No one died in the end, but the scrawny one whose guts I spilt out, the others were still not beyond the tiefling’s power to save, though it used up the last ounce of magic left in him. Then we started to ask questions.

“Are there any more of you?” I asked the enemy wizard. He didn’t answer, so I kicked him in the loins, then broke his elbow with a warhammer. I was getting worryingly good at torturing people.

“You have one more elbow and two ankles. After that my friend here can heal you, so I can break them again. Are there more of you?”

“Damn you!” he spat. “Damn you, and your whole kind!”

The hammer slammed into his foot this time, crushing the small bones of his toes, and the duergar’s curses turned into screams.

“Yes, there are four more warriors, and our leader, Herja!”

“Good. I wish we could take away the pain now, but as it turns out, I was lying just before, and you will have to wait till tomorrow to be healed from these wounds. But don’t worry, you will live. Incidentally, I also have some more questions, and you still happen to have toes and fingers, so try to keep up this honest and forthcoming attitude.”

The old wizard shot me a hateful glare, but the tears of pain running down his cheeks told me that he will give us the answers we desired.

As it turned out, the duergars were after Durgeddin’s legacy, just like we were. They moved into the place a year ago, or so. They circumvented the orks by descending through a vent that led straight into the lower levels, sneaked through the territory that was only loosely defended by the troglodytes, and opened the gate leading to this part of the maze with the expertise of the scrawny fellow I killed. He was supposed to be a genius of replicating keys by merely examining the lock.

Once they were inside, there was an ugly surprise waiting for them, though. The halls of Durgeddin were connected to a great cavern, where the dragon Nightscale resided. The wyrm had her own exit from the mountain. Whether she burrowed it herself, or it already existed before, the duergars didn’t know, but she was able to come and go as she pleased. The dwarves could not just wall her in and starve her to death, and they did not fancy their chances in direct combat. Grudgingly, they agreed to pay tribute to the wyrm, and she, in turn, decided to leave them in peace.

Months went by, and while the dueargars did make progress, they were still far from completing their work. Durgeddin was a master amongst smiths and magicians alike, and he was working on a great weapon when the orks finally stormed his fortress and killed him. The duergars almost reconstructed his whole work by now, but they still lacked some crucial pieces of the puzzle.

“It is a weapon that specifically kills orks,” the duergar mage explained. “You know that there are swords that are specifically enchanted to kill dragons? This is something like that, only that it is attuned to kill orks instead of wyrms. And it wouldn’t be just one weapon. Durgeddin was working on a cheap and easy blueprint so that smiths who were far less skilled than him could also create blades of this kind. Sadly, he was not able to finish this work. We not only have to recreate his research; we also have to complete it.”

“Sounds like an extremely useless weapon,” I shrugged. “The orks have lost the war and have been confined to a frozen wasteland in the last two hundred years. Are there even enough of them left to warrant the effort you have been putting into finishing this blueprint?”

“Arnold, my dear fellow, researching the ways of efficiently killing orks is never a futile endeavour,” said Trueanvil chidingly. “If you would be a dwarf, you would understand.” He turned towards our prisoner. “Well, I am terribly sorry for all the things we have done to you and your warriors, but what’s done it’s done. We seem to hold all the cards now, and we want in. You will show me your research, and I will help you in turn. When we completed the blueprint, we will both have it. I am Beldrak Truenvil from Sky Hall, by the way. Terribly rude of us to skip introductions like this, but then again, you haven’t been paragons of hospitality either.”

The dueargar let out a dry chuckle. “I am Frór from Spirit-shaft, and if I already have to endure you, I would rather have you as a partner than as an enemy. If you are half as ruthless in recovering Durgeddin’s secrets as you were in questioning me, we will have the blueprint ready in no time. Now unbind these ropes and get me a crutch. I cannot walk normally after what this water-guzzler,” he gave me a dirty look here, “did to my foot.”

“First things first,” I said. “We would like to finalise an agreement with your leader before we let any prisoners go. So, where can we find her?”

Beldrak and I went to meet this Herja, while Jim guarded our prisoners. He later told us, that the crafty old bastard summoned his familiar, a rat – a suitable choice for his personality – to chew through his ropes. Of course, Jim, thanks to our experiences with the late ork shaman, François, was doubly watchful and caught the little rodent before it could cause any mischief.

Our talks with the duergar leader were surprisingly smooth. I had the feeling that instead of resenting the fact that we beat up her soldiers, and even killed one, she was impressed by our efficiency and ruthlessness. In short, she thought we were her kindred spirits. As much as it pains me to say, she might not have been wrong about that.

In the end, we didn’t have to pay any reparations, we just let our prisoners go, and immediately became full partners in the duergars’ enterprise. The wizard took Beldrak to the smithy to show him all the research they have done so far, while Jim and I were told everything they have found out about the dragon Nightscale so far. The idea of us fighting and killing the monster seemingly appealed to Herja. I was much less enthusiastic.

So went by the rest of the 13th of November. We only had seventeen days to map out the maze and return to Avennar. But for the first time in our adventure, we have glimpsed the end of difficulties. Our map was almost complete, and we had hoped to acquire something significant from Durgeddin’s legacy. A blueprint was not as good as a real weapon would have been, but I was confident that Baron Alton would pay a handsome price for a copy. Even if we wouldn’t strike rich, all that time and effort we put into our tasks in these last tens will not be wasted.