I pelted up the streets, not bothering to see if anyone followed. The signal fire itself was obscured now I was amongst the buildings, but its smoke made a pillar visible from anywhere. My breath began to falter, and I slowed to a fast walk. My knife was snug in my palm, refusing to slip even a centimetre despite the wet. I put it back in its sheath.

“Stony, you idiot!” came a shout from behind, and I cringed. “Don’t run off like that!”

I didn't need to turn around to know it was Tradfast.

“Why not?” I said. “We all know where to go, and the monsters were in the river.”

He clapped one hand on my shoulder, and glared at me, then let go and looked away. I scowled.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, giving me another sideways glance.

“Is this about Urist? I already told you I didn't do anything to him.”

“No,” he said, “Perhaps. But something of yours did, didn't it?”

I glared at him, and put a finger to my lips.

“I though you promised to help me, not shout my secrets to everybody.”

He ignored that.

“You should have thrown it in the river.”

“Thrown it in the river? I’ve been promised riches for it. If you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life mining under you, you can think again. No matter what happens down here, that hasn’t changed.”

He grabbed me by the shoulder, and spun me around to face him, nearly wrenching my shoulder from it socket. I cried out as blood oozed from the cuts in it.

“Promised? Who promised you riches? What riches?”

I tried to shake him away, wincing, but his grip was too strong. Shit. I’d said too much.

“None of your business. Maybe I’ll share some with you if you don’t get in my way.”

“If you get us killed...”

His grip loosened and I pulled free, five new little bruises to accompany the talon-scratches there.

“I’m not going to get anyone killed. Now leave me alone.”

He retreated. I dodged around a three-metre mushroom, and came to a crossroads. The signal fire was directly up the slope now, and to the left just a smidgeon, the tops of its flames licking over a two story building. It seemed to have diminished slightly, and I shivered, noting how strong the rain had gotten. Each drop took away a corresponding fraction of my strength. I needed to dry myself off soon.

Up the street I went, accompanied by the sound of footsteps from behind and the thick smell of wet mushroom in my nostrils. In front of one house was a little courtyard with a statue that caught my attention. A pillar five metres tall, a miniature version of the massive pillars from before, and a trench around it flowing with water like the river. I shivered and looked away.

Another few streets passed, and I could smell the fire, with the same bitter scent our own had. My pace quickened, my anxiousness to see if Airon was there too strong to hold back any longer. I sprinted up in great strides, wind and rain rushing past my face, legs beginning to burn.

With a final gasp, the fire came into full view, and with it, a crowd of soldiers. They huddled around it with hands outstretched.

“Hello?” I said. “We saw your fire!”

One of the dwarves turned from the warmth to look at me. His eyes were sunken and dark, and his beard jutted from his chin like a black stalactite. Lieutenant Horir, the one who’d called Lorsson an idiot in front of his own men, and who looked at everyone else like they were dirt.

Why was it the unpleasant ones who always got to survive?

“I know,” he said. “We saw you fighting down on the bridge.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why--”

I nearly asked ‘why didn't you help us?’, then remembered that Horir was neither as soft as Lorsson, nor in debt to me like Tradfast. Getting on his bad side was a poor idea, especially with no one else being back yet.

“Why what?” he snapped, shivering slightly.

“I mean, is my friend here? He’s a miner, and I wondered if maybe you’d met up with him.”

Horir gazed into my eyes with his, which were purest black in the centre, like all light had been sucked out of them. I noticed a scar on his cheek, dark red and gaping. He gave no reply.

“His name’s Airon,” I said, and held my breath with hope.

“The miners are over there.” He pointed to a two-story house with a smaller pillar of smoke coming through the roof, and the base stems of mushrooms clustered around the entrance like white tree stumps.

“Thank you!” I said, and dashed towards it, darting around a group of soldiers. They were badly scarred as well, their armour bashed in. Whatever Horir’s group had been through, it hadn’t been pleasant. Hang on. I glanced back. There were a lot of soldiers here, over a hundred. I thought they nearly all must have perished in the ghost attack. How had so many escaped?

Well, maybe the ghosts weren’t as deadly as they’d seemed. That meant Airon must have survived, surely.

I half walked, half jumped into the house. Inside was a single room, the interior walls nothing but long fallen lines of rubble, swept to one end. In the centre was a fire, most of its smoke exiting through a hole in the roof but enough staying in to water my eyes slightly. A dozen or so miners squatted around it, staring either into the fire or through the hole above it.

“Airon!” I shouted, not bothering even to give a greeting. “Are you here?”

There was no movement for a few gut-wrenching seconds. Then a dirty blonde head turned, and a pair of blue eyes and a soft face revealed themselves. Airon smiled.

He was alive!

“Airon!” I leapt at him, squeezed him in a tight hug, and pulled him to his feet. “My friend! What happened to you?”

“Stony! I’ve never see you so glad to see me.”

I let go and we both looked at each other. He was even more of a mess than I was, his shirt torn, and a deep scar in his chest stitched crudely.

“Your clothes are a mess,” I said. “And what happened to your chest?”

He shook his head.

“I’ll explain later. Are the other miners with you? We heard the soldiers shouting about it outside, but Lieutenant Horir ordered us to stay in here. Said the weather would do us no good with us wearing these rags.”

I frowned.

“That must have been frustrating.”

“Yes, but it’s for the best.”

He looked at my shirt, plastered against my chilled skin and heavy with wet.

“You’re soaked. Come and sit down in front of the fire. You can hang your shirt up there if you want,” he said, pointing to a crude clotheshorse set up next to the fire.

“Oh, I won’t hang my shirt up,” I said, and lowered my voice. “It wouldn’t be safe, you know?”

He looked confused for a second, and tilted his head a little at me.

“What do you mean?”

“You know!” I hissed. “The thing.”

“Oh, yeah.” His eyelids shuddered and his mouth twitched. “The thing.”

The tremor came across the whole left side of his face, each muscle contracting and relaxing on its own and at random. My eyes widened.

‘Are you alright? Your face is--”

He pinched his own cheek, hard enough that a little blood welled up from beneath his fingernails. The facial spasms slowed, then stopped after a final convulsion of the left eyelid. I stared at him, aghast.

“I’m alright,” he said. “It’s just stress, you know? It isn’t good for the body.”

“No, no,” I said. “It certainly isn’t. Look at these.” I pointed to the cuts on my shoulder. They were shallower than they ought to be, but still burned.

‘What are those from?” he asked.

I gave a shiver, and pulled my sopping shirt tight around me. So numb was everything, I barely felt the scrape of fabric against skin.

“Let me get to the fire first, then we’ll talk.” I flicked my eyes left to right. Strangely, none of the miners seemed interested in our conversation. They just stared into the fire blankly. Still, no harm in being to cautious. I lowered my voice and added, “I can’t say everything here though. We should get somewhere private afterwards, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

He nodded, but his eyes stayed blank, and dark. Darker than I remembered, oddly enough, but then again, who could remember how dark someone’s pupils were? No, there was nothing strange here. He gestured to the fire.

“Sit down then,” he said, smiling. “It’s good to finally have some normality. Just like back at the barracks, eh?”

“Sure,” I said, squeezing in between two miners, who parted to let Airon in as well.

The fire was miniscule compared to the giant signal fire outside, but big enough that any rain drops turned to puffs of steam the moment they touched it. Warmth crept into my body and I felt my shirt getting dryer by the minute, even at the back. Airon turned to me.

“So,” he said. “How did you end up down here with the rest of everyone? You must have quite a story.”

I remembered something, and a tear came to my eye. It wasn’t like me to get so emotional, but in the circumstances, buried shame welled up of its own accord.

“I’ll tell you. But first I need to apologise.”

“What for?”

“For abandoning you! I never should have run away so soon. I’ve been hoping to see you for so long, and after I brushed you off like that.”

He looked vaguely confused, and then smiled.

“No, no, you don’t have to apologise. You can just tell me the story.”

“Oh.” I wiped away my tear. “I thought you’d be a little more...” I struggled to find the word.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, alright.”

It wasn’t really like Airon to brush me off like that. I’d expected him to accept my apology, and say something heartfelt in return. That’s what he’d done the one other time I’d said sorry to him. But whatever, we were back together. And that was the only thing that mattered.

So I told him the story, but left out any mention of the sapphire and the Ghost King, lest one of the other miners hear me. He listened intently, staring at me and making no sound at all, as if fearful to interrupt. As I went on, a tension I hadn’t realised I’d been holding started to dissipate, and I smiled. This really was like old times, no, better. I hadn’t been this enthusiastic about anything since my old life before the mines. Who’d have thought a situation as dire as this could lead to a happy moment? Not me, that was for sure.

Finally, I got to the attack on the bridge.

“They were pale green, and had four arms each, and talons so long you wouldn’t believe! Like swords.”

Airon straightened his back as suddenly as if he’d been pricked. As one, the other miners swiveled their eyes to look at me.

“They did?” he asked.

“Oh, um, yes. But what was most horrible was how similar they were to the pillars

above. You know, those things had plenty of legs too, and the same kind of claws.”

His eyes shone with... happiness?

“Airon?”

I frowned.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, and shook his head.

“Are you sure?” I leaned towards him, my stomach feeling a little light all of a sudden. “You’re acting a little odd today.”

He gave a nervous laugh.

“Oh, no, it’s just stress. Just stress. It’s been a hard way down here, you know?”

“You better tell me about it,” I said.

He nodded, and began to speak.