Riloth 19th the 71st

“Wake up! You’re burning daylight!” Dagmar’s voice woke me from my sleep. “Stupid saying. Daylight is the thing that burns us.”

He emphasised his disdain for the sun by spitting. I should mention, by the end of the two-hour cart ride in the setting sun, Dagmar had become badly sunburned. Unsurprisingly, a subterranean race of men is not well adapted to the sun’s rays.

Groggily, I rose from my bed and went through the motions of getting ready. After dressing myself, I found my potions on the desk and downed them in two quick gulps. The taste had yet to grow easier to stomach.

Now fully alert, I looked at Dagmar. He was pacing across the modestly sized room, anxious to get at the day.

“So, how are you with a crossbow?” I asked him.

An hour, many grumpy shopkeepers, and one Simon later, we were on our cart heading south towards the harpy. It was still only seven in the morning; Dagmar woke between five and six each reset, giving us plenty of extra time to start our day.

The cart’s mule was able to match Ian’s leisurely pace from my earlier trips south and we made it to the lightning struck tree in under an hour. I realized during this journey that I’d never named the cart horse. I dubbed her Gretchen. At the tree, I led Gretchen to the side of the road and staked her to the ground with a long lead. We would hopefully survive to need her later.

We elected to use simple wax earplugs, forgoing Levar’s more creative silencing methods. If everything went to plan, we wouldn't be in close quarters combat. As part of our supplies for the day, we had purchased the giant crossbow from Hilroy. A quick examination by Dagmar revealed that the runes were meant to allow for fast reloading by pulling the string back when the wielder powered them. Repairing them was not something he could do in a few hours on a cart, so we made do with the added winch.

I wore the crossbow on my back as we trekked through the forest. Arcane Armor and ear plugs made the trip free of snagging branches and Dagmar’s complaints. We stopped at the edge of the clearing for the outpost. The fort’s four towers gave the outpost visibility of all approaches, but luckily for us, only one was manned—or vulture-womaned. We circled our destination towards the east through the woods. Once the northeast tower blocked the harpy’s view, we broke from cover and charged the wall.

When we reached the wall, I handed Dagmar the crossbow, which he loaded gingerly. It is very hard to be silent when you cannot hear your own movements. Each contact of your boot to the ground leaves you second guessing. We snuck along the wall, hugging it closely, the crenelations of the wall partially obscuring our view of the roost, and hopefully its view of us. At the rubble of the gate, Dagmar positioned himself with a clear view of the ogre. This morning, he’d taken a few practice shots at a watermelon at a similar distance and hit the target on his third try, and repeated the task half a dozen times.

The ogre was still at vigil, along with the knight and Gerald. Without a signal, Dagmar fired the crossbow, and the ogre collapsed, the bolt passing clean through its head and hitting the wall of the central fort building behind him. The crossbow sounded like a faint thud through the earplugs, but it was plenty loud to the remaining men and the harpy. When I heard the shot, I turned to the tower and watched as the harpy took flight into the sky. Per the plan, Dagmar and I ran away from the charging men, leaving the crossbow behind.

The harpy began to circle above us as we stood in the open field. With no ranged weapons at hand, she perceived us as no threat. When she got within range, my inverted personal Updraft made quick work of her, pulling her from the ground in an unnaturally fast descent. At the sight of their mistress’ death, the two men collapsed to their knees and wept, but only for a moment. Soon after, they seemed to come to themselves and rose to their feet with confusion clear on their faces.

I approached the men, and spoke in what I hoped was a reassuring manner, “Gerald, your wife sent me to save you, rest for a time and head back to your camp to recover.”

I left him with a pack of food and water, and Dagmar and I continued into the fort, ignoring their confused questions.

Dagmar pulled the large door to the center building open with ease, the grass blocking the path was only a small hindrance to him. His short four-foot body had to weigh more than me, and hid surprising strength. Once inside, he touched a gemstone set in the wall near the entrance. After a moment, the runes throughout the subterranean base illuminated in a clean, stable, white light.

Ha! I was right. I thought, taking some pride in my prior guess.

Together, we explored the rooms. In a decidedly un-Dagmar fashion, my companion described the functions of all the devices I'd seen before. A flammable gas ran through the walls to each lantern, a remnant from before the people of Torc had learned runes. The kitchen and baths were also equipped with these gas pipes.

"From the combination of gas pipes and runes, I estimate this place was built around the fall of the Midlothian Empire and before the flood, anywhere from eight-hundred to one-thousand years ago," he mused during the tour.

A thousand years! They have had runes, rustproof metal, and gas piping for a thousand years, and we've never learned the art of it? These people seem to be able to keep a secret.

In the armory, Dagmar walked by the rows of equipment, marveling at it all. The gear was laid out in neat rows. Each rack was filled with armor and weapons. The armor racks each held a barbute helm—a stout cylinder that covered the head fully, with a T-shaped opening. Each also had a simple breastplate sized for a dwarf, a tower shield, pauldrons and gauntlets. At first glance, they were free of all adornment and flourish. It was only after Dagmar began to wipe a breastplate clean did I see the fine, intricate runes etched all over the armor.

I grabbed a gauntlet and turned it over in my hand. It had runes covering it as well, and inside the gauntlet, above the wrist, was set a small ruby, surrounded by fine and complex runes, orders of magnitude more intricate than any rune I’d seen thus far. Each piece of armor had a gem similarly set in it.

Noticing my attention, Dagmar explained, “Those gemstones act as a reservoir. You imbue it with your Will, and to activate the effect you power a secondary rune which draws it and converts it to the proper intent and shape to power the runes. Much easier to manage in the heat of battle.”

He demonstrated by putting on a gauntlet and picking up a sword from the rack. Holding his hand out before him, palm down, he released his grip on the sword, but the sword did not fall.

He continued, “There is a rune in the gauntlet to keep you from losing your weapon. It also acts to channel some magical attacks away from the wielder and shunt the magic back into the arcane realm.”

He ran down a quick summary of the rest of the equipment. Each piece of armor had reinforcement runes in them, granting increased strength, along with friction-reducing runes that made attacks more likely to deflect off of them. In addition, they all had magical and physical shunting runes to further protect the wearer from attacks. The helmets also had runes near the ears that allowed sound to pass through the metal easier, or block it out entirely. That would have been useful against the harpy.

An army of Dagmars, all equipped in this gear, would be unstoppable.

The weapon racks were not as uniform as the armor. Most held at least a short sword, a dagger, and a collection of throwing knives, but each had a mix of other weapons as well: battle-axes, war picks, smaller throwing axes, longer swords, and war hammers. These weapons all had a mixture of runes that made them better able to cut, pierce, or break their targets.

Taking a war pick from a rack, I practiced filling the gem with Will. Using an amount I judged equal to a Ghost Light, I went to the wall and took a swing. The war pick hit the wall with a deafening ping and sent a shock through my hands.

“Activate the secondary rune,” came Dagmar’s voice from down the hall. He followed up his advice with a low “moron” that I chose to ignore.

This time, the pick dug deep into the stone of the wall, and I succeeded in removing a large chunk of stone. There was very little shock to my hands from the impact, and the pick freed itself of the stone easily. Activating the secondary rune took little more than thinking about it, allowing your attention to grant a slight amount of Will to trigger the runes’ effects. I was able to repeat the attack ten times before the Will was exhausted and the shocking stings of impact returned.

“Great job!” Dagmar encouraged me when he saw the damage I’d done to the wall. “If the golems stand still and let you attack them, we should have the Dahn in short order.”

Maybe not encouragement then.

Dagmar was now dressed fully in the armor from a rack. He approached me and, after staring at my head for a moment, walked up and down the racks of equipment until he settled on one that fit his needs. Grabbing the helmet off the top, be brought it to me,

“Here,” he said, handing it over. “You can’t wear the gauntlets, the runes will interfere with your magic, but this helm should keep you safe from a glancing blow.”

“Thanks,” I replied, taking it and checking the fit. It was a little loose around the brim, but the built-in padding and strap secured it nicely.

“Follow me, if we are lucky, we won't have to travel overland to get to the Dahn.”

I followed him back to the hallway, and he walked to the end where the floor met a bare wall. Now that the illumination runes were lit, I saw that not all the runes on the wall were part of it. In a circular patch the size of my head, there was a spiral of runes that looked vaguely familiar. In the center of this tangle lay a small socket, the size of a grape. Dagmar reached out, and stuck his finger in the hole.

The sound of stone grating on stone rumbled out through the fortress as the wall rose, disappearing into the ceiling. Behind the wall lay a continuation of the hall. The runed track on the left side of the hall continued on into the darkness. Dagmar strode forward confidently into the dark. As we walked, the runes on the way on either side of him lit in response to his presence. I followed, and once past the threshold I saw that crates lined the wall of the newly revealed room. After a hundred-foot walk, we reached another blank wall. This one had no socket, but instead had a small room set to the side of it. Inside there was a control room similar to the one I’d used with my friends to open the main gate at the Hardune outpost near Edgewater. Dagmar inspected the equipment and gave a satisfactory grunt before leaving the room. He felt along the wall until he found what he was seeking. With a quick gesture, he pulled down a four by six foot metal sheet and dragged it toward the runed section of the floor.

Standing on the sheet of metal, he spread his arms wide and said, “Welcome to the Kitah.” At his words, the metal plate rose three inches off the ground. “Please keep your arms, legs, and gabbing jaws within the boundary of the vehicle at all times.”

Despite myself, I laughed.

“Did you just make a joke?” I asked.

“The only joke here is whatever you were doing with the war pick earlier. Come on. Get on, we need to get going.”

“Two jokes?” I asked incredulously as I complied with his demands. “I must be rubbing off on you.”

“If you touch me, let alone rub me, I will cut off whatever you used to do it and feed it to you.”

Three jokes?! I thought silently. Maybe the weapons put him in a good mood.

Once I was settled on the Kitah, he walked over to the control room, pulled the lever, and ran back to the Kitah. While he was gone, I examined the plate. The side we sat on was nearly unadorned, but had an emerald set in it near the front. From that were connected a series of runes that looked like the controls runes I’d seen on the gauntlet, only there were many more of them.

Once Dagmar was seated, the wall before us rose into the ceiling. “Hold on!” he shouted, and we took off into the darkness.

Never had I moved so quickly or suddenly in my life. There was a gut-wrenching sensation, like falling, that persisted for the first ten seconds. The wind was buffeting all around us, and I had to activate the sound dampening feature of my helm to dull the pain it was causing. When Dagmar had shouted “hold on,” I’d reflexively grabbed onto the plate in front of me, and now I was finding that I could not remove my hands from where they touched the plate. A good thing, for without this feature I would have been thrown off at the start.

We traveled through the darkness, the lights turning on before us and shutting off as we passed. It was hard to gauge time; in the tunnel reality seemed to only exist in a small bubble around us. At times, forks appeared, but each time Dagmar confidently chose a direction. Before leaving town, we’d consulted a map, and I’d provided my best guesses for the locations of the Dahn and the fortress.

I hope he's better at navigating underground than he is above.

I was completely unaware of the pace we were traveling until we passed a group of forsaken traveling down the road. In the brief moment they were lit by our passing, I saw a group of dark elves with weapons drawn. We passed them so quickly, they didn't have a chance to swing.

Shortly after passing the dark elves, we passed a section of the tunnel where the lights didn't work. Dagmar slowed to inspect it and there was a large hole broken open in the wall leading into the Torack. After passing the first, they became more regular, and we continued to pass enemies, but none could react fast enough to do us harm. To be safe, I activated my Arcane Armor, and to my surprise discovered that it reduced the force of the wind and took very little Will to do so.

After an indeterminate amount of time, and passing a half dozen groups of Forsaken, Dagmar stopped. He hopped off the metal plate, and it fell the three inches to the ground. Now free of the binding magic, I was able to stand.

"How was I supposed to disengage the safety binding runes?" I asked.

Dagmar laughed for a moment before answering, "Those weren't safety runes. They were for securing cargo!"

"Well, thanks, I guess. I would've fallen off for certain without them."

Silently, Dagmar started inspecting the wall where we'd stopped. After only a moment, he found what he was looking for—another small socket where he could imbue his Will. At a touch, the wall parted at an unseen seam, revealing a narrow stairway. I illuminated the passage with a Light from my palm, and we climbed.

The light revealed the ceiling just above my stooped head. Unlike the Kitah tunnel, the roof here was uneven and covered in dangling roots that had worked their way through cracks in the otherwise seamless stone. We ascended a dozen feet before we reached a ladder cut into the wall. Dagmar climbed the ladder wordlessly. At the top he encountered a trap door set with runes. He activated them with a quick tap of his fingers, and pushed it open. Dust and debris filled the small tunnel.

I climbed up after him, coughing through the dust, and found myself in a small cave barely tall enough for Dagmar to stand in. Dagmar was already crawling through a narrow tunnel when I got up and followed.

The tunnel was secured by a grate of the rustproof steel and just large enough for a grown dwarf to crawl through on all fours. Dwarves being stockier than humans, the tunnel was plenty wide for me to crawl through.

It let out into the forest after a short downward crawl, on the side of a small hill from which a large gnarled tree grew atop of. I was shocked to discover that I recognized the tree from my walk to the Dahn with Perfon. Which meant that from here I knew the way to the Dahn.

"Riloth's balls," I muttered to myself. "I know where we are, and the Dahn is close."

"Of course it's close," came Dagmar's reply, almost sounding offended. "Do you think I just blindly chose paths? If it wasn't near the Dahn, it'd be because of your pisspoor map, not my navigation."

I led him due east for ten minutes, and there was the door, illuminated in the clearing by the noon-time sun. I reviewed the day and marveled at the speed the Kitah must have traveled to get us here so quickly.

It must have taken less than an hour to travel what would have been three or four by horse. What other wonders could Dagmar be hiding?

Outside the Dahn, I performed some practice swings with my war pick against a boulder. With my Will, the pick pierced deeply into the stone, as if I was striking wet clay. The boulder split cleanly after only two hits. The vibrations of the impact reverberated through the shaft, but it was bearable.

“I’m ready,” I told Dagmar, as I downed a clarity potion. Unlike coffee, the taste of deep whale excrement did not grow on you.

We stepped through the door, and I smelled the putrid stink of death, which had started to return to the tower as our bodies decayed. We positioned ourselves as close to our targets as we could manage during the counting. When Dagmar made his failed passphrase attempt, the golems broke into motion.

Dagmar reached Timothy before I got into range of Jimothy and I got to witness him make a clean strike against the golem’s “calf” before jumping out of its return attack. The pick pierced deeper into the stone than before, but not nearly as deep as my boulder test led me to expect. Instead, when the pick hit, a web of runes lit up over the body of the golem, sapping some magic from the attack.

“Fauell’s whores!” came Dagmar’s curse.

In the end, his attack did as much damage as the makeshift runes weapon he'd made before.

In the instant I took all this in, Jimothy had closed the distance between us. He swung at me with an overhead crushing attack and I attempted a new trick I’d been considering. I was not fast enough to dodge their attacks, but I had other strengths. I reached into the Arcane Realm, and summoned a tight Updraft centered on myself, but instead of lifting me, it pushed me away from Jimothy. Right when I felt the spell’s pressure against me, I released the power. To my shock and delight, I witnessed Jimothy clip the brim of my helm, narrowly missing and crashing into the floor.

While the stone fist was still moving, I swung. The pick, filled with my Will and with all my strength behind it, made contact with the arm when it hit the floor. The attack was far more effective than my swing with the mundane pick and I left a divot the size of a coin in the stone—a vast improvement over my first attempt.

Immediately after making contact, I turned to Timothy and cast Blink with no target in mind. The magical anchor brought me before the golem as it was reorienting to attack Dagmar, who has moved to its side. As soon as I appeared, I attacked the golem, getting a solid hit to its chest. I then Updrafted—Drafted?—myself away. During my brief appearance, the golem reoriented to attack me, and Dagmar was able to make two more strikes.

Sailing backwards out of the way, my feet stumbled over the ground as I tried to regain my footing as I flew. I fell and my spell continued to push me across the ground. I released the spell and tried to get to my feet, but the golem towered over me, and time seemed to slow. I had a moment to notice that the damage from the Dagmar’s attacks the day before had begun to smooth out.

And then, my part for the day was over.