Krulm’venor could no longer remember how many fortresses, minilements, and cities he’d sacked. However, the fact that he now traveled as a small band of himself most of the time instead of as a singur entity was enough to make him at least as much goblin as dwarf. That made thinking harder, but even if it hadn’t, he’d been down here so long that all of those quests made everything blur together after a while.
Not thinking referable to the alternative, though. Krulm’venor had not been able to drink a good dark ale or a bright golde beer ihe closest he’d e was the smell of them burning as he and his many copies had burned down tless taverns and breweries. Still, the faint fuzziness as his mind started to slip away from being divided so many times was the most parable sensation he’d yet discovered.
The fire godling had figured out many months ago that if he simply existed as five or six of himself all the time, his cares and suffering would be just far enough away that they wouldn’t bother him too much. The Lich had not yet figured that out, but it no doubt would one day. Until then, even if he had to deal with the random mutterings and outbursts of his copies, it was worth it. After all, drinking was nothing if not the excuse to feel like this while you were surrounded by idiots anyway.
So, he and the shards of himself walked ever on, almost at random, in the depths, looking for hings to destroy. The Lich had released any number of wraiths dowo map the tunnels and find everything worth snuffing out or burning alive, so Krulm would receive frequent messages in the form of whispered words from the dark, but he had no talent for the are or the neantic, so it wasn’t alossible to determine what it was the things were trying to tell him.
Still, as long as he kept moving, the cursed bohat bound him slumbered, and the Lich rgely left him, and all his other copies, aloo suffer in the dark. It had bigger issues to worry about, not that it had quered half the world.
If Krulm’venor was braver, then he would have asked the Lich why it even o keep fighting this war so far from anywhere. Dwarves were never a numerous people, even before the fighting had started. These days, he purged moblin caves and kobold irs than dwarven outposts.
The fire godling said nothing, though. He khe answer already. Inside every dwarvelemehings the Lich craved, even beyond the blood of the living and bodies capable of being reanimated. The mohat ow body and soul was forever in need of mold, silver, and steel to create new abominations. Even more, it forced Krulm’venor to sack every tomb and shrine in searore mithril and adamantine.
Even the bones of the honored dead were not safe. He did not know what the Lio do with them, but he was sure it was nothing good. Krulm’venretted giving those up to his master wherever they were found, even more than murdering a city full of dwarves trying to live their lives. New families could be created, but a hero of old was a work of singur life well lived, and ohe Lich stole it away through its dark portals, it was gone forever.
Today, it wasn’t a shrihey were moving toward, at least. Today, they were too shallow for that. By his reing, they were only a couple hundred feet below the surface. He and his noisy copies had spent the st few days burning out goblin warren after goblin warren.
Yesterday, they'd found a lumi mushroom forest that might have been a dwarvish pntation before it had gone wild. They’d left all of those caves as nothing but ashes, of course, but the trend was toward civilization. When they found the vent shafts for the ine, he was only surprised that dwarves were still w on them.
“Feed us!” the spirits cmored in his soul, but Krulm’venor suppressed them.
In fact, he pulled all of his duplicates back together. That wasn’t for the crity, though. It was because if he was careful, he could destroy the pce without killing many besides perhaps himself.
Krulm’venor was always on the lookout for two things: ways to keep his master happy and ways to end his miserable existen a way that didn’t trigger the agohat the Lich had yered throughout his body to ensure his obedienbsp;
Last year, most of his copies had gotten caught in an underground ndslide, but enough had survived for him to be restituted, and more vessels for his guttering soul had been built. Several months ter, he’d been swallowed whole by a giant purple b worm. Krulm had hoped that the thing’s acids would have been enough to melt down its body for scrap and release his suffering soul. Instead, its fmes had eventually killed the creature, and he’d ripped his way out of its belly to find his metal skeleton polished to a fine silvered sheen.
Nothing, it would seem, was enough to defeat the Lich’s craftsmanship, which had only grower now that it harvest the souls of dwarves to work its fes instead of randes. If anything was going to do it, though, a mine shaft that led to a warren of mines following a coal seam might be enough to do the trick. He hoped it would, at least, because short of finding the All-Father or one of his sacred champions and being smote from existence by a blessed fe hammer, he was uo ever find ao this awful existenbsp;
That didn’t stop Krulm’venor from leaping into the hole and bursting into fmes as he fell toward the unsuspeg mihirty feet below him. They barely had time to look up before he and the wall of fire trailing behind him reached them. They’d done everything right. They’d watered the walls to avoid explosions, and they were using bronze picks and shovels to prevent sparks. No amount of safety precautions could do much to stop a burning skeleton, though.
Despite his sudden appearahe fire godling was surprised that some of the dwarves mao escape the death trap it created. It wouldn’t chase them, though.l Even if they were shouting in arm, trying to warn their fellows now, their lungs would be cooking from the hor air soon enough.
Instead, Krulm’venor watched the e fmes that had started this show gutter and fade as the blue fmes repced them. These weren’t the blue fmes of its unfire, but they did look very simir. They were the oxygen-starved methane fmes leaking off the coal as all the air was sucked out of the room.
That wouldn’t st long, of course. Even how it could feel the increasing wind as the ey effect took hold. Soon this whole mine would be a bst furnace, desperately sug in air, only to vert that air into more fire, repeating the vicious cycle.
He walked slowly, ign both the growi as well as the gibbering voices in his mind begging to release. Instead, he focused on the destru all around him as he walked as sloossible toward the entranbsp;
Along the way, the fire godling found a few charred bodies and other dwarves who had given in to smoke inhation but had not yet burst into fmes. He ignored all of those and tinued on. The fmes had long sirun him, and though more than anything, he wao stay standing where he was, the sm timbers were just enough for the angry spirits that were always watg him to demand he keep moving.
He did, but as he did so, he felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time, at least as a siity. During the razing of every city, he felt the terrible, primitive joy of a goblin tribe running roughshod over their enemies, but it wasn’t the same as this.
It took him some time to figure out just what it was, but it wasn’t enough until he could see the exit and the small stoown that y in the cavern beyond that he finally uood. It was the fire.
It had been a long time since Krulm’venor had experienced enough heat to make him feel true exaltation, and even at the height of his powers, he’d never experienced a fire like this. The mine had bee exactly the bst furhat he hoped it would be. The air roared into the mouth of the cave, sending waves e fires along the walls and ceiling. They almost reached him, too, before turning the blue color that saturated the rest of the mine.
It was so much heat that it was reag through the cold steel barrier that the Lich had bound him in. For the first time in years and years, that heat actually reached him and warmed his soul. It wasn’t hard to see why. His entire skeletal body had taken on a dull red glow. He was so warm that his body’s temper was damaged; if any dwarf could withstand such terrible ditions, they might even be able to strike him down in this weakeate.
The tribe of nearly a hundred copies of himself squired and writhed inside of him, demanding to be free, but he ighem. Instead, he basked in the warm glow of a sensation that had been gone so long he’d fotten what it felt like.
As he stood there like this, it was almost enough that he could believe he was still back there in Fallravea, feasting on the goblin sughter, or even before that, feeling the power of the fes as the dwarves hammer steel beh his…
The sound of the colpse somewhere behind him wasn’t enough to shake the godling free of his reverie. her was the tumbling stone. However, the stone blocked the smooth flow of the air, instantly killing the bst furnace he was enjoying so mud redug the ehing to an ordinary inferno.
It was disappointing, but no good thing could st forever, certainly not in his torturous existence. Even though the fire godling was still hundreds of degrees, it could already feel itself glowing colder as the ephemeral heat left it as what had been for so long: a dead soul trapped in a ntern of unfme shaped like a skull.
This sad thought was enough to finally make him feel real self-pity, and as he walked out of the ine and passed the rge stacks of coal that had no doubt bee for export to some nearby city, he began to unleash the horde inside him.
As Krulm’venor reflected on how none of this would ever reach its destinatioarted to fission, being two, then four, the twisted metal skeletons instead of the ohat was there only a moment before. He wasn’t looking to let all the demons out. He didn’t want to cease to exist, as his doppelg?ngers began to rush toward the frighteownspeople who were clustered under glow stones uhe far end of the street, trying to uand what had happened. He just wao take the edge off, and for that, a little sughter was exactly what the doctor ordered.
