Another series of flashes and rumbles shook the cavern, throwing every line on Urist’s face in black and white relief. His expression was no longer cold and emotionless, but fearful, bursting with the desire to run.

“I’m leaving Airon!” I said.

“He’s not Airon any more, Stony,” said Urist. “He’s as dead as Urist!”

“What? You’re... Urist’s not...”

Urist stood still, his eyes and lips grim and unmoving.

“You’re right here. You just... Oh, no.” The revelation finally came through, and my shoulders slumped.

“I’m not Urist. Urist is dead,” said whatever ancient slave of the King it was who’d possessed him. “We need to go now.”

He turned down the alley, away from the dying column of smoke, and the shouting in the camp.

“Wrong way,” I said, and pulled out my dagger.

“Stony,” said not-Urist. “We need to get away from them. They’re on the other side. They’re our enemies.”

“No! My enemies are anyone trying to ruin my life. Like you, trying to take my only friend away. Airon’s still in there, we both saw the ghost leave him for a second.”

My hand shook as I cut into my shirt, into the hidden pocket. I pulled out the sapphire.

“We’re going to save Airon, or I’m giving this to Horir. To these priest-ghosts.”

“No!” shouted the Ghost King. “You will doom us all!”

“And I want enough treasure to make me the richest dwarf in the holds.”

Irritation shadowed not-Urist’s fearful face.

“Fine,” said not-Urist. “If that’s what it takes to get you to help us.”

“Let’s go then,” I said, and I put the sapphire back in my pocket. Would I actually have given it to Horir? I didn't know.

So I led the way out of the alley, wondering what not-Urist’s real name was as I turned the corner to the camp with a determined stride. I wasn’t thinking up a plan to rescue Airon, or about how I was walking into the midst of a hundred ghosts wearing dwarven skin. The only thing I knew was that I was going to save my friend.

I stopped and gasped.

The campfire now smoked and spluttered with the eye-sized raindrops hitting it in a torrent, surrounded by dwarves in a religious frenzy. Apart from Lorsson and a few other dwarves staring wide-eyed with horror, the rest pumped their fists in the air and jumped up and down. A few more had their hands over their hearts, and looked up calm and still, as if their prayers had been answered.

Which they had. I looked to the river, and my breath stopped. Through the hole where the river entered came a great black mass, scaled and lined with hundreds of house sized legs. Blue energy crackled off it in forks, blasting anything it touched to ruin. Water poured from holes along its sides in torrents, and storm clouds rose from its spiny back.

This was a god, no, a God. I could say nothing; any word, any exclamation caught in my throat and died in the thing’s awesome majesty.

Not-Urist clapped me on the shoulder. No longer fearfulness, but terror was on his face, no different to how it’d looked on the real Urist when he’d seen his end.

Terror was terror, no matter who felt it.

“Airon!” I cried suddenly, wresting my eyes from the God. I pushed into the crowd of dwarves, elbowing and shouldering past anyone who got in my way. They barely reacted, so madly focused on their God were they.

“Airon!” I shouted again. “Are you in there?”

No reply came. How could I bring him out again? My only friend, taken from me again, and I had no idea how I could bring him back.

“Dwarves!” came the unmistakable voice of Captain Lorsson, carrying through the racket. “We need to escape this city! I have--”

Abruptly he was cut off. I snapped my head around, stomach jolting and turning, terrified one of the possessed had killed him. No, he was still alive, Lieutenant Horir was saying something to him. Captain Lorsson leaned in and replied, then a look of determination crossed his face. He looked back up at the dwarves, few of whom looked back. They were too busy staring at the the God, which was a good quarter way down the river now, and its body showed no sign of ending. The river itself had swollen to twice its size.

Alien screeches came from down there too, and I noticed little six-limbed shapes crawling out from under the God’s black belly.

“Dwarves!” shouted Captain Lorsson. “We’re going to the nearest tunnel exit. Form up!”

They made no move until Lieutenant Horir gave the smallest nod of his head, then they jumped into action. But far from the tight discipline they’d shown as soldiers, now they rushed and pushed past each other in a frenzy. An armoured shoulder smacked into my back, sending me on my hands and knees in the steel swirl of possessed soldiers. I stood back up, and realised no one I knew was in sight.

“Airon!” I shouted again, but it was no use. The only one who could help me now, as loathe as I was to admit it, was not-Urist. Airon would be back once I’d dragged the ghost from him.

I opened my mouth to shout for not-Urist, but he appeared in front of me before a sound left my lips.

“Stony, we have to get Airon before they get to the exit.”

His voice barely carried over the tremendous racket filling the cavern, and I had to shout to make my next words heard.

“How far away is the exit anyway?”

“Close, look up.”

I hadn’t realised it before, but near to the camp part of the stone wall that formed the sidewall of the city stuck out in a truncated wedge. An exit must be there.

‘Shit,” I said.

“I’m going to search for him. You should too.”

“How will I know if you find him?”

He creased his brow for a second.

“I’ll give a shout.”

“OK, but what about the--”

A steel-clad possessed dwarf bumped me nearly to the ground, and when I looked up, not-Urist had disappeared. The shifting stopped, and I was in the middle of a column, crooked like a mad snake, flanked by more.

“Dwarves advance!” came Lorsson’s order and the army began to move forward, ranks jumbling and shifting. I ran forward, ducking and weaving between the possessed. The water now ran at my feet like a river, and the wind blasted me, a constant force trying to push me to the floor. Every dwarf I passed gave me an evil look, black eyes and fanatic smile. Were they looking forward to killing me? Or worse, to give my body to one of their own and leave my soul a helpless prisoner in my own flesh?

I caught a glimpse of a head rising a metre above anyone else’s. Tradfast!

“Tradfast!” I called, and ran to him. He was at the back of a small group of miners, who cringed at every boom and shake. Not possessed ones then. He looked down at me.

“Stony? What do you want?” he asked, sourly.

“It’s Airon, he’s--”

“If you two had a falling out, I won’t help you.”

I lowered my voice to a hiss.

“All the dwarves here, they’re not dwarves. They’re the ghosts! They’re possessed!”

Tradfast went very pale.

“Don’t be a fool.”

“You said you owed me a favour, so I’ll pay it back now. Escape with Urist and I, and bring Airon too. Or you’ll die for sure.”

“If they were all ghosts,” he lowered his voice to barely audible when he said ghosts, “They’d have killed us already.”

“No! They’re scared of Lorsson’s sword. It’s the only thing that can kill them. They’re going to lead you somewhere dark, and then murder you.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you, Stony. Not after what happened to Urist. He was a perfectly fine dwarf, you know. Until you came along.”

I hissed in a breath through clenched teeth. The idiot! Was I so hard to trust?

“Tradfast, you’re going to die if you don’t listen to me!”

He spun around and shoved me into a soldier marching behind, and I smacked off steel plate and onto the stone path in front. I scrambled up, spitting out odd-tasting water.

“Fuck you! Don’t blame me when you die! Now where’s Airon!” I screamed the last.

A few of the miners turned to look at me.

“Well? Where is he?”

Two looked at each other nervously, and a third towards me.

“What?” said Vorgur, face pale and shaking with fear, cold or anger. Maybe all three. “Are you going to do to him what you did to Urist? With that knife of yours?”

“What? Don’t be ridiculous. Urist gave me the damn knife in the first place. Have you seen Airon?”

Another miner spoke up.

“He pushed past us, saying he needed to speak to Lieutenant Horir. Go after him if you want, just get away from us.”

“What knife?” said another miner, a smile fading from his face.

“He found a runed knife in the caverns,” said Vorgur. “And he did something with it to Urist.”

The miner who asked stared at me with pupils that reflected no light.

Shit!

“Look at his eyes Tradfast, then decide if you want to die or not!”

I don’t know why I shouted that. It felt like the right thing to do.

I charged through the grinning soldiers, and made it to the side of the road. In front of me stretched a metal snake of dwarves, just like the one that had brought me down here, and I ran along the narrow space beside it.

The road was half a river itself from the rain, and flash after flash lit up the sky, growing more rapid every minute. The monstrous roaring of the God filled the city double what it had before, trembling the very raindrops. I slipped and fell, got up again, slipped again.

“Double the march dwarves!” came Lorsson’s shout from the head of the snake. “We’re almost at the exit!”

“No!” I cried, as the snake quickened. Now the rumble of hundreds of steel boots added their chorus to the rest of the terrifying sounds. I doubled my own speed, knees beginning to ache, muscles now beyond aching after too much exercise and not enough sleep or nutrition. I fell again, and got up, vaguely aware of a warmth in my shoulder. My scratched must be bleeding again.

A shout from behind.

“They know! This one knows!”

Then, “The king’s man is here as well!”

“Get the running one too!”

Black-pit eyes glared at me from the wall of metal I ran alongside, and a spear jabbed at me quicker than a frog’s tongue at an insect. I fell sideways onto the wet road.

Two dwarves, spears in hand, jumped at me and I rolled to avoid them, sprang to my feet and ran down an alleyway.

A blue flash and a chill hit me, then another. Two ghostly blue dwarves with their own spears apparated in my path, and I ran through them. Twin screams came, and were swept away in another gust of wind. My pursuers were on the ground, no wound on them but dead nonetheless. Another flash, and the ghostly guards were gone.

I pelted down the street, my feet chilled to numbness, pounding bits of floating mushroom to paste beneath them. A sharp smell filled the air; perhaps it was from the energy the God shot out in great flashes.

“Stony! You were right!”

It was Tradfast, not-Urist rushing after him and struggling to keep up with the Overseer’s monstrously long and powerful legs. I slid to a stop.

“We need to get Airon! And Lorsson, he’s the only one who can stop the ghosts.”

“No,” said not-Urist, “Stony it’s too late. They’re going into the tunnels now.”

“What! It can’t be!”

But the cavern wall rose up above me, only a few houses from where we stood. An impenetrable grey mass extending in every direction, up down left and right. The end.

“No...” I sunk to my knees, not even feeling the coldness of the water rushing past me.

“He’s gone,” said Tradfast. “They all are.”

He fell down too, boulder-like fists clenched. He raised one up, and smashed down with it, and made a small splash, whose wave and sound was washed away in the fury of the storm.

“We need to keep calm,” said not-Urist. “We can still save them. Don’t worry.”

“Who are you anyway?” I spat out.

“Yes,” said Tradfast, tears or rain running down his face in more rivers to join the one at his feet and legs. “Who are you? You aren’t Urist.”

“I am Buro,” said not-Urist. “Of the royal guards of the Eternal King of All That Has Worth.”

I couldn’t care less about his titles right then. More alien screaming and roaring came from the river, and it was nearly pitch dark. We’d lost our lamps at some point, I couldn’t recall when.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Under the city.”

“It’ll be flooded,” said Tradfast. “We need to go up.”

“We go down and then up,” said Buro. “Trust me.”

“Fine,” I said, and pointed to the end of the alleyway. There was an opening there, just like the one I’d gone down for the trial of valour. “Let’s go. But I want to make one thing clear. We’re going to save Airon. Before the treasure, before anything. I’m going to save my friend.”

“No,” said Tradfast. He stood and stared towards the dark tunnel the possessed had gone down. “We’re going to save all the miners. From all the ghosts.”

He narrowed his eyes at what had once been Urist.

“Let’s go!” he shouted.