Tradfast screamed and brought his sword down as I brought mine up. I felt my blade slice through flesh, then bounce off hard sapphire. Tradfast’s only went halfway through the King’s arm where it stopped, encased in blood-red ice. The King grinned and swung a palm up at my chest. The impact knocked the breath from my lungs and chilled my whole body.

Barely conscious, I flew out the tomb exit, deep blue sky rushing past above and white sunlight warming my face. Stones cut into my back as I smacked into the mountain path, and my broken arm hit the rocks with an impact even more painful than when I’d first snapped it. For a moment I lay there, choking a faint scream out my frozen voice-box, then tried to struggle up. My muscles were cool and stiff; just the merest touch of the King had frozen me. I couldn’t even see what had happened to Tradfast, only listen.

“Die!” screamed Tradfast. “Di--” His body obscured the blue above for a second as he too came sailing through the air, landing with a crunch somewhere behind me.

Stand up! I tensed my abdomen and curled forwards. A dull ached formed as I rose to sitting, my cold muscles barely able to take the strain. Feeling returned to my right palm with a tingle and I felt the sword hilt there. Somehow I hadn’t dropped it.

The King stood in the entranceway, palms blue with chill energy. "Come with me. You know you have no choice."

I stood, every inch of me painful right down to the cores of my bones. "I told you already. We're going to kill you."

"We?"

Behind me Tradfast lay on the path, one arm a shattered red mess. Even if he survived, he'd be doing no more fighting. I took a deep breath to calm myself. The King now had two deep cuts.

"I will. You're injured. You're not even complete. And you have to come to me."

I turned and ran down the bare red stone, glancing over my shoulder to see if the King would follow. He did, a scowl upon his lips, blue steam flowing from his legs and wounds. He’d frozen them to stop the bleeding, but it looked like the sunlight was warming his body up. Good. The weaker he was when he got to me, the better.

As I ran, I looked down at the dwarfholds. Just as Tradfast had said, they were crawling with harbingers, but that wasn't all. The red landscape had taken on an odd tinge. What could it be? I looked down at the path beneath my feet and saw a spot of green. Then another lay ahead of me, and down the mountain as the land was studded with emeralds thousands more buds poked up from the red rock. The King hadn't lied. The ritual he’d planned so long ago was renewing the world. From the bloody rain of a hundred million souls sprouted new life.

Maybe he did deserve his reward. But there was no way I’d let him have it.

I turned around, legs shaking. Even the adrenaline pumping through me couldn’t dull the pain of my ravaged muscles. Behind me the path turned, so my back was towards a steep drop. If the King froze me, I’d fall down the mountainside and shatter into a million pieces before he could have my body. I aimed the point of my sword at the King’s chest and widened my stance to become stable. Despite my best efforts, my swordpoint wobbled. Tired and one armed as I was it proved impossible to hold the metre’s worth of steel steady.

On he came. His wounds had unfrozen completely now and blood spurted from them with every step. The raw muscle on his legs and face looked dry, red paper over cords and bones. But his speed was undiminished.

With a shout, he leapt forwards, palms outstretched. I lunged with my sword, and it sunk deep into his belly, scraping against the sapphire there. He gave a howl of pain, but carried on, driving my sword all the way through him, to barrel into me. I put one foot back to steady myself, and stepped into thin air over the edge of the path.

We rolled down together, mouths open in mortal screams. My vision was filled with the King’s face: his throat, raw and bloody with only half the teeth it should have; his blue brown green grey eyes; the red meat where skin and hair should have covered his upper lip.

“You could never rule me!” I yelled, words half broken by the constant impacts of the ground against my back that knocked the breath from me.

“I will rule all of you! I saved all of you!”

A crag of rock spiked from the cliff, far larger than either of us. We were heading straight for it, and whoever slammed against it would die. I racked my brain for a way to ensure that dwarf wasn’t me, but could think of nothing. Would our final battle turn to a game of chance?

No! I tugged at the sword, slicing back an inch through the meat. I had to free myself, use the sword to stop myself and let the King fall down on his own. The King wrapped a huge hand around my wrist and squeezed.

“You will not get free of me. I will not let this opportunity go.”

Something, perhaps a small rock or uneven piece of ground, hit his elbow with a crunch. He screamed and let go, and I extended my arm to the sky, ripping the full length of my blade out him in a shower of blood. I stabbed at the ground, the point dug in and then the momentum ripped it out again, the jolt nearly shaking the sword from my grasp. We were going to fast, and the crag was approaching. There was no way to arrest my momentum.

We rolled over again, and for an instant I was over the King with my sword pointed down. Well, even if I was the one to be dashed against the rock I’d make sure he perished too. I stabbed down, he brought his hand up in a futile effort to block but the blade went right through his palm, driven down half through my strength and half through gravity. The blade entered his chest and the broken ground below.

The impact wrenched the blade from my hand and threw me sideways. I bounced away and down, sliding to a stop a dozen metres below where the slope leveled out. Above me, the King smashed into the rocky crag, his newly-wrought bones splintering like the mining rig had done, with just as sick a sound. Blood sprayed out to water the new growths on the red rock below.

“I got you! I killed you!” I screamed. “Revenge!”

Perhaps I sounded happy, but I didn't feel it. I looked up at his limp limbs, hanging over the side of the crag. It should have been the Gods I killed. But they were nowhere to be found. Across the desert landscape, turning greener with every minute that passed, not one of those snake-like monsters could be seen. The dwarfholds, on closer inspection, were far from demolished like the etchings in the city and the tomb had me believe. The Gods had attacked the works of dwarf, and found them not worth destroying.

The apocalypse I’d set out to stop had come, and it hadn’t destroyed the world. Doubtless many dwarves had died, but not all. Not nearly all.

“What was the fucking point!” I screamed at the sky. “Why’d I have to go through all this? Why’d Airon have to die?”

All those fights, all the endless walking, all the fear and worry, and at the end of it nothing I’d done had mattered. If I’d fallen to the priests in the hall of pillars nothing would have changed. The Gods would still have remade the world.

I slammed my fist into the ground. No! This journey must have had some meaning. I’d learned something, hadn’t I? I’d grown up a little, learned to respect dwarves like Tradfast and Lorsson who I’d once hated. But was that really worth all the pain and trial? Then I remembered the reason I’d first run away from the mine.

I crawled to where my sword lay, a bar of reflected light among the green and picked it up. Using my it as a walking stick, I worked my way up the mountainside. The buds of green were now opening into long leaves and fronds, and the sun was no longer so hot on my face. The sky’s blue deepened, and the thin air thickened. It’d never been so easy to breathe before. The crunch of stone beneath my boots, so pervasive on our journey to the tomb, was replaced by the gentle squish of those long green plants.

“Perhaps you and the priests weren’t monsters after all,” I said to the King’s broken body, spreadeagled against the boulder. “The souls you sacrificed should have died a long time ago anyway.”

The corpse’s face remained twisted in a scowl. Holding back a wave of nausea, I jabbed my blade into its belly and cut the sapphire out with short sawing motions, the slick sound of blood and flesh loud in my ears. The gem fell out, and, not wishing to get any closer to the corpse, I pushed it a few metres to the side with my sword. Using a loose rock nearby, I polished the last shreds of flesh from my prize. It was whole again, the fragment that had sustained Buro’s existence in this world once again part of the octagon, but somehow it was less than it had been.

I held it up to the sun, frowning. Instead of reflecting the sunlight on it in green, like it’d done the torchlight below, the rays projected glassy blue squares on the plants beneath. The magic was out; now it was naught but a rock. Albeit a very precious one.

I walked back to the tomb entrance where Tradfast lay on the ground, groaning. His shirt, now soaked with crimson, was wrapped around a stump just below his elbow..

“I did it,” I said. “The King’s dead.” I held up the sapphire and let the blue shine on his face.

“Get that out my eyes,” he said, shielding them with his good arm. “We’re still doomed, aren’t we? There’s no more dwarfholds.”

“Yes there is. What were you talking about back there? The mountains haven’t fallen down, have they?”

“Hundreds of thousands will be dead, Stony. The dwarfholds will be in total chaos. Not all the harbingers were killed, were they? We’ll never make it back alive, and even if we do manage, there’ll be no society to return to.”

I rolled my eyes. “So we should just wait here to die? Stand up, you stupid oaf. Look around you. We can make it back. There isn’t a harbinger in sight, and this place isn’t a desert anymore.”

“No. It’s a big plain with nothing to eat. Like I said, we’re doomed.”

“Fine. Stay here then. You’ll be nothing but a hindrance anyway.”

I surveyed the landscape. The dwarfholds were not so far away after all. With a bit of luck, I might be able to make it. I’d sleep under the plants during the day, and walk at night. If any harbingers still hung around, well, that would be the end, but that couldn’t be helped.

“You’ll be eaten alive, Stony,” said Tradfast. “Even if you had two good arms you still wouldn’t be able to make it.”

I didn't bother turning my head to look at him as I turned and walked down the path, plants soft and green beneath my feet. “Yeah, maybe. But I won’t save my life by staying here either. Neither will you.”

Tradfast grunted, and jogged up to walk beside me. “Fine. You’re right. Thanks for saving my life, again.”

“You’re welcome.”

It took us two days of walking, interrupted by throwing ourselves to the ground whenever a harbinger stalked within seeing distance, to reach where we’d first emerged into the mountains. The doorway was barely recognisable, hung over with strange green fronds. I reached out to grab one, my belly rumbling and empty. It had rained - normal rain - the day before and I’d walked with my head tilted to the heavens and mouth open. That had quenched my thirst, but our food had run out on the first day.

Tradfast grabbed my hand. “Have some patience, Stony.” His voice was no longer the roar it had been, but was weak with pain and hunger. That stump of his must be in agony, but he’d barely complained about it. “It could be poisonous. Let’s just wait for the mushrooms down below.”

I nodded and sighed before stepping into the doorway, the fronds brushing through my matted hair. The horrible dryness that had parched me on the way up the stairs was gone completely now, instead each step was slippery with damp. After a couple minutes walking, one hand against the wall, my foot came down on something soft. An earthy smell wafted up.

“There’s already mushrooms all the way up here,” I said. I felt around the walls and floor, and dozens of slimy bulges grazed my palm. Wrapping my fingers tight around one, I wrenched it off the wall and put it in my pocket.

“Grab as many as you can,” said Tradfast.

“I know.” I grabbed slimy handful after slimy handful, resisting the urge to pop a few in my mouth. Some of them might be poisonous, after all. We’d check at the surface.

A howl sounded from somewhere far below.

“We should get out of here,” I said. I knew what that howl was from.

Pockets heavy, we trudged back up the stairs. A square of soft light shone as we rounded the final turn, fronds hanging lower over the doorway than they’d been at the time of our entry. I stepped forward to brush through, and a dark shadow filled my vision.

I sucked in a breath to scream, then held it. A harbinger stood there, a new variety. It stood on all six limbs and was as long as three dwarves, thickly muscled and covered in ridges. It took a mouthful of fronds in its teeth, then pulled back and scraped the green matter into its mouth. I bit my lip in confusion. Its teeth were not sharpened for tearing flesh, but blunt like pebbles. As it ate, they seemed to grow blunter.

I drew my sword. Plant eater or not, it was still dangerous.

“Wait,” said Tradfast. “There’s no point. It’s not going to harm us.”

“How do you know?”

“It would’ve killed you already if it could. Now we know why the Gods brought the monsters down with them.”

“We already knew that.” I didn't sheathe my weapon. “They brought them here to kill dwarves.”

“No, Stony, I don’t think they did. Not just that. The Gods prepared the world for the harbingers through their magic and brought them here to wipe out the dwarves. Then the harbingers would repopulate the world as normal creatures.” He pushed past me and reached out one hand to the lizard. It gave no reaction as he brushed its scaly skin. “Harmless.”

I looked into the creature’s eyes. Gone was the predatory glare of the monsters that had tried to eat me so many times. Instead its pupil was big and doleful. The creature was none too different to the great wagon lizards I’d seen every day down in the mines.

“Whatever, let’s just get a move on. I want to be back in the dwarfholds within the next few days, not wasting time here.”

Tradfast ignored me to stare at the outside world. “I wonder if the world used to be like this. Perhaps dwarves didn't always live underground.”

I rolled my eyes. Judging by the old tomb where I’d got my sword from, they hadn’t. Like Tradfast guessed, the world had been lush and green far in the past. But who cared? Certainly not me. All that mattered was here and now.

We strode out to begin the trek home.

A few months later...

“Mr Grungnir,” said the butler, “Welcome to your new house.”

I grinned and walked through the carved door into a richly carpeted hallway. Oil lamps cut into the shape of gems sent glittering patterns of light through across the walls, which were plain, just as I’d requested. Painted walls brought back bad memories.

“Where’s the kitchen?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

“It’s just below the dining room, sir. But I thought you were eager to see the window first? It has a very beautiful view.”

I rolled my eyes and stared down my nose at the dwarf. He was smaller than me, with thick black hair and a painstakingly combed beard. A week ago, before Tradfast and I found a black market dealer willing to take the sapphire and our weapons, he’d have been considered my superior in every respect. He probably made ten times my miner’s salary. But now I was rich enough to employ him. It was disconcerting and wonderful.

“When I want to see the window, I’ll ask you to take me there. Right now, I want a snack.”

“Of course.” The butler did an about turn and led me down the corridor. My palate was dying for something better than the gruel Tradfast’s wife had served me while I’d stayed with them. Living with the Overseer had been an unfortunate necessity, as we needed to bank our money safely before settling down in our respective new homes. An earthy smell hit my nose as the butler opened a door on the right.

“Your dining room, sir.”

It was small, with a table in the centre of the room on top of which lay a basket of

mushrooms. I picked one up and sniffed it. Yes, a very familiar smell. Undoubtedly the exact same species Lorsson had pointed out to us in the tunnels. A little sadness crept up on me as I remembered the dwarf Captain. His whole family had perished in the disaster, and there was no one to mourn him.

“Butler, tell the cook I can’t eat these.”

“Sir, they are a delicacy. Everyone eats them.”

“Well, I don’t. I’m not quite like the rest of the dwarves here, as you’ll soon learn. Tell the cook to prepare some cakes or something.”

“It may take a while.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Fine. Show me my window first.”

“Of course.” I detected a hint of exasperation in the butler’s tone. Probably he thought me just another arrogant rich bastard. Hah! If only he’d known what I’d been through. Of course, he couldn’t know. No one could. Everyone was looking for an explanation to the arrival of the Gods and the disaster that followed, and if they knew I’d been involved, well... They likely wouldn’t believe it, but I wasn’t going to risk my fantastic new life in any case.

“The window, sir.” The butler drew back deep blue curtains, meant to resemble the sky, from a circular sheet of glass. Moonlight flooded the room and I pressed my face to the cool surface to peer out. An endless plain of grass and bushes stretched out below a starry sky. Dotted all over were wooden scaffolds and the beginnings of stone houses.

How many were Tradfast’s?

“Stony,” he’d said, “After you’ve squandered your money feel welcome to apply for a job at my new company. I’ll give you one that pays well.”

“You wish,” I’d replied, but in a couple years I probably wouldn’t have any choice. Those blackmarket dealers had really ripped us off. And I’d sent considerable funds to Airon’s parents.

“Do you like the view, sir?” asked the Butler. “I could arrange a tour of the outside for you one day, if you desire.”

“Yes, I like the view. I don’t plan on going outside though. Not anytime soon.”

“All right sir. I’ll convey your wish for a cake to the cook. Please ring the bell,” he gestured to a rope hanging in the corner of the room, “If you need anything.”

“Thanks,” I said. “By the way I want these curtains changed. I can’t stand blue.”

THE END.