The crushing heat refuses to relinquish its hold on me. Enraged at my transgressions, it is clinging to my tungsten as I attempt to claw my way up onto the unseen ledge. My body is almost burning, my runes having reached their point of failure; the heat of the magma is inundating my skin.

  I scream, grasp up into the blackness. The magma pulls me down and burning heat envelops me entirely. I scream again, kick up, grab, and exert the very last of my energy and might to pull.

  The clinging magma comes away with an angry hissing and I manage to force my body fully onto the ledge. I crawl on forearms and knees away from the heat, then tear the heat-mask from my face. The coils of tungsten wire come away also, and stinging fumes bathe my cheek-wound. I whimper in pain. My head spins, yet I do not allow myself to lie there.

  I sit up, and for a few minutes look out across the magma sea from my sanctuary. I spotted this place an hour ago—when the heat was starting to become too much to bear, I surfaced and peeked through the heat-mask, and found this long, thin line of offset stone. Over the churning molten sea, the half-sunken city and the great tower in which my enemies remain are only just visible through the shifting smoke.

  I groan in pain. I judged our duel to be a draw, yet it might still prove to be a victory for Vanerak if I cannot seal my face-wound. Blood is dripping from the gash continuously, my life draining out drop by drop.

  I have no healing chains. Therefore, only one option remains to me. In lieu of bandages, there is another way to close wounds. I strip off my upper armor plates. Dried blood on my ribs comes away, and fresh blood pours. It is sharply painful, yet nothing compared to the pain that is about to follow.

  There are broken stones, long-dried gobbets of magma, scattered around. I pick a longish one up, crawl to the edge, and lower its end into the heat. It begins to glow red. I draw it out, and the air around it is shimmering.

  Waiting will only prolong my anguish. I touch it to my cut cheek, drag it along. Pain flashes through my face. All goes black. I wake up moments later, and scream. My flesh is seared, feels as if it is on fire. Then I begin to laugh: have I not felt this pain before? In my runeforging trances, I burned. This pain is no worse than that.

  I use the heated stone to weld the cut in my side shut too, and then the hole where Vanerak pierced through my ribs. I laugh harder at the pain, roar at it. The scars that will be left will be terrible ones, and the pain in them will never truly vanish, just as the dark lines cut into my vision will never vanish. The duel against Vanerak will remain a part of me.

  And likewise my wounds to his hand and foot will remain part of him. The power of new runes and true metal pierced him. His flesh will never truly heal. He will remember my strike every time he clutches the forging-hammer.

  For a few minutes I permit myself to rest. Only a few minutes—the sand-timer of mortality is running out quickly. I have no food and no water, and my every moment from now on must be spent searching for them. I force myself to stand up and re-equip the rest of my armor plates. I pick up Life-Ripper and begin to make my way along the ledge.

  It is a crinkle in the rock, very long, running almost entirely along this cliff to the east side of the city, starting low above the magma and fading back into the stone halfway to the great cavern ceiling. Dark holes and arches, carved or formed in ages past by who knows what process or hand, mar the sides. I enter into one tall enough that I don't have to stoop and retreat from the heat.

  Now to hunt. A beast, perhaps a salamander, will provide blood and meat, if I can find one. There is no guarantee of this. There is little life in these dry caves, so it is unlikely that any usual-sized salamanders will have wandered down in search of prey. And as for the great salamanders that live in the magma sea, what they eat is unknown, and at any rate I do not think I could defeat one in my current state.

  Moving up to some wetter cavern will give me a good chance of meeting something I can hunt. Through the blackness I trudge. The stone is smooth, almost slippery. My armor feels heavy around me, impedes me—its power has been degraded substantially. Should I meet even a regular salamander, there is no guarantee I will survive the fight. I may have to gamble all on a single stab with Life-Ripper.

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  I walk with one hand brushing the wall. After a while, I feel the floor beginning to slope down, and sense heat ahead. I turn back and place my hand against the opposite wall. It curves around at a fork in the path. I head up that way. It becomes thin, scrapes against and squeezes my armor until I have no choice but to turn back.

  If sight will not help me, I will rely on sound. I remove my helmet to listen closely to the shiftings of the wind, and also feel them on my sweaty skin. Instinct tells me to move back a little, and on the right I find an opening. Along it I go until my boot clangs into a high step. I listen upwards and fancy that I hear the trickle of water.

  The climb proves a long one, made difficult by the erosion that has been wrought on these stairs. That is a good sign, though—erosion is usually wrought by water. There may be some underground stream nearby.

  These hopes are dashed soon after I mount the top of the stairs. After one left turn I see the source of the splashing: a font of lava, bubbling up in a small pool and streaming away down a steep cave. I would curse, if my throat was not so dry. Instead I just walk around it, spying for any promising tunnels, or anything to eat or get moisture from.

  There is only stone. This cave does not even contain mold, let alone bracket fungi. No boar certainly, and no salamanders nor bats to hunt them. So far, the only footsteps I've heard have been my own—the bloody scent of my wounds is attracting nothing.

  I walk up a tunnel whose air seems a little less dry than the others. I continue to walk up it for a long time. How long have I been wandering these caves? A few short-hours, at least. And before that was the journey to the city, the fighting, and the journey away from it. I need to rest.

  But every moment with no supplies is a moment I must be searching for them. I continue to trudge upward. Sometimes I think I hear the patter of feet, or a distant hissing, yet further listening reveals only silence. My armor begins to grow very heavy. My eyelids do as well. I must sleep. I can no longer avoid this reality, and slump against the wall with Life-Ripper held out in both hands.

  Perhaps, like that moment so many years ago, I will wake with something edible clawing at me.

  Yet this does not happen. I wake to no bats or salamanders, just silent blackness. I groan and stand up. My muscles protest and my wounds throb. The inside of my head feels fuzzy, and my first few unbalanced steps make me nauseous, make me halt for a moment. I recover, keep on going. Up and up I spiral, throat drying further with each step, and my belly is beginning to rumble and ache.

  I wandered through the underworld once before, for many years too. For ten years! I survived then, did I not, in this timeless place? But I was uninjured and there was food. When I scrape my cupped palms along the walls now, they bring no insects or fungi for me to devour. There is nothing but dust, and not much of that either.

  My craving for a salamander's hot flesh starts to become unbearable. Will one not come for me?

  Perhaps my scent is not strong enough. Do I do it? To cut myself, drain my strength further, seems foolish. Yet if nothing comes for me I will die within the long-hour.

  I remove the armor from my right arm and draw Life-Ripper's thorns across my forearm. The touch is light, yet the pain is like the barbs are being driven half an inch deep and twisted right around. The meat of my arm seems to curl around them, squeeze itself dry. Blood runs out, more than I'd anticipated, and splashes on the ground.

  I hold my arm against my chest and let it run down my armor, coat it. After a while, the blood congeals and my cuts begin to scab over, this process accelerated by the dryness of the air. I breath deep through my nose yet can smell nothing coppery. Salamanders, and other predators, have a better sense for blood than dwarves, though.

  I have to hope. I move on, slowly, hoping desperately that something will pick up on my trail. Yet I hear nothing. Nothing is coming. My legs begin to lose strength, until I sink down not out of mere exhaustion but out of debilitating weakness. My vitality is spent.

  Can Vanerak really have won? After that terrible battle, and before then, my struggles in the forge—are they going to be rendered pointless from simple hunger and thirst? I suppose that is the reality of life. No matter the strength of your armor, beneath it is mortal flesh. My amulet burns, despite its great power cannot provide me with sustenance. Runes can be no substitute for water and bread.

  And then, on the edge of blackness, I hear it. Snuffling breaths and clicking talons are coming up through the tunnel toward me. I stand, though must lean against the wall, and hold Life-Ripper up, though it is almost too heavy, and shaking.

  Bright eyes see me. Yet they are not the narrowed, reptilian eyes of a salamander. The beast that approaches stands on two legs, and its gray skin gleams with a fiery sheen. It is a troll—a lava troll.

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