Colot, ninth degree runeknight of the Brazen Shields, screams in terror as the spear-leg jabs down at him. He raises his shield, a great slab which he can only just lift—the runes of weightlessness he made for it didn't quite come out right. Sparks explode from its centre and he is dashed to the stones. His helmet hits something metallic. Sparks swim in his vision.

He chokes, feels something copper-tasting come up. Blood? He has just enough presence of mind to roll out the way as another dark spear comes stabbing down through the fog.

"Up!" someone screams. "Get up!"

The speaker grabs Colot by the wrist and drags him up. It's Tothok, leader of this expedition.

"Get yourself together!" he screams. "All of you, get it together! Attack! Attack!"

A leg rushes down at them. It's almost impossible to see through the stinging fog, and indeed Tothok does not seem to be aware of it.

"Back!" Colot yells.

He rushes forward with his shield to push Tothok out the way, but the jitilik is a fraction too fast. The leg impacts the side of Tothok's helmet, slides down the metal into the space between neck and breastplate. It pierces flesh within the curve of the collarbone, goes down right through the fourth-degree's body, through left lung, stomach, guts, then slides past the hip bone and exits his body through his thigh, and through his armor from just above the kneecap.

All this happens in a single instant. In the next, Tothok is gone, wrenched upward to the jitilik's high-waiting maw. Colot yells out in horror and backs away. More dwarves fall, blinded and slowed by the fog. The last few torches, dropped on the ground at the start of ambush, sputter out, their light consumed by the toxic dark spilling from the beast above.

An eye glints. Colot screams. Any moment now and he will be dead.

Blinding white light explodes around them. The mist becomes but a slight silvery haze, and the jitilik, spasming as it's exposed to the rays, seems a diminished thing, a contraption of sticks that might fall apart at the slightest blows.

What is this light? Colot has never seen anything like it. It is pure, almost holy. Is it a creation of a Runegod? Is their guild a favored one? Could this be some kind of divine intervention?

The light grows to blinding intensity and Colot wails in despair, knowing that he must shut his eyes to the darkness again, once more be in the blackness from which a spear may fall at any moment to bring painful death.

He forces his eyes to stay open. He turns, desperate to see the source of the brilliance, desperate to see their saviours.

A grotesque spiral of five hundred interlocking titanium teeth confronts him, white in the light blasting from the hammer the runeknight holds above his head. The weapon seems to be carved from brilliance itself, a gemstone of light.

The runeknight swings it at Colot's shin. Bone and armor shatter simultaneously. Colot screams as he falls. He hits the ground with his eyes screwed tightly shut. He is desperate to hide from the blinding light, for he now understands that this is no intervention of the divine kind—just another kind of ambush.

"For the Runic League!" the runeknight in the maw-helm yells, and the others repeat the cry after him.

"Runseh-Krus-Ek!"

"For the Runeforger!"

"Runseh-Jalfroh-Ek!"

"Runseh-Jalfroh-Ek!"

"Runseh-Jalfroh-Ek!"

The battle proves a short one. Jitiliks, unlike most predators of the deep underground, primarily use sight to find their prey. From atop many stilts, a jitilik will gaze down and picks out which tasty morsel to spear next. To thus peek through the darkness requires immense sensitivity to light.

The bright maces of the Runic League completely blinded it, and just a few strikes to its feet sent it skittering massively to the far end of the cavern and beyond. But what a grim toll it's wrought, thinks Hayhek, as he listens over the battlefield. Eight runeknights lie unmoving, speared through like chunks of pork dropped from the skewer. Five more are unaccounted for, vanished into the jitilik's maw. They leave behind no armor or bodies to be interred, only their fallen weapons.

"Don't move," Ithis warns the remaining seven. "Stay right where you are. Remember that we can hear your movements. We don't need to see."

"Who are you?" one groans. "Are you Uthrarzak's?"

"Don't insult us," Ithis spits. "Did you not hear our battlecry?"

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"They're the runic league," whispers the most junior-looking one. "They're that Zathar's runeknights."

"You're on our side, then," says the first speaker. "Why have you ordered us to sit like this? Please, lead us back."

"We will—in time."

"In time?"

Ithis laughs harshly. "Time has so little meaning down here, doesn't it? But money retains its value wherever one goes."

"Enough with the riddling," rasps another of the captives. He's bleeding through his armor. "Just lead us back."

"Once we know what we've come to find out, we will."

"From where did you receive the quest?" Hayhek says, wishing to get this unpleasant business over and done with as soon as possible.

"The quest halls," the most senior-looking captive blurts out. His steel is magnificent, yet badly damaged at the shoulder. "Same place everyone gets their quests."

"Liar," Ithis spits.

Silence falls. The captives become more nervous—Hayhek and Ithis hear how the speed of their breathing increases, hear some of them swallowing dryly.

"It's no lie," the senior runeknight says after a while, lamely. "That's where everyone gets their quests."

"Just tell the truth," Hayhek says. "We just saved your lives. Tell us the truth."

"It is the truth," says the runeknight.

Ithis, shaking his head in frustration, walks up to the runeknight. He kneels and pushes his warhammer against his forehead. The runeknight flinches away from the cold titanium and screws his eyes up tighter. Even so, the light still shines through the skin into his eyes. There is no escape from it.

"What's your name?" Ithis says softly. "Tell us."

The runeknight stays silent.

"Tell us!"

"Watalf," whispers the runeknight.

"Rank?"

"I'm a fifth-degree."

"Where did you get the quest, Watalf? Tell us."

"From the quest halls. It was posted there about a long-hour ago."

"Then why were we not aware of it?"

"You must have come in at the wrong time."

Ithis laughs. "Don't take us for fools, fool. Every guild has a few junior members in the halls at all times, ready to snatch up any kind of job they've been ordered to. That's how things work down here and we picked up on it pretty quickly. We have members in all the quest halls at all times—nothing worth mentioning has come into them for many long-hours."

"You must just have been unlucky."

"You're a damn fool, Watalf. One of your dwarves is bleeding out even as we speak, and yet you continue to prolong everyone's suffering."

"I'm telling you—"

"Oh, give it up, please," begs the bleeding dwarf. "What if the thing comes back? Or something worse?"

"You needn't wait for something worse," Ithis says darkly. "We're already here."

"We're all subjects of Runethane Halmak," says Watalf. "Your treatment of us is criminal."

"Criminal? You're involved in a conspiracy against Zathar Runeforger, the only hope for all dwarfkind. That makes you the criminals, and as such we have no qualms about smashing your bones to dust, if that's what it takes to get the truth out of you.

"Murderer!"

"Insults are a waste of our time. And I'll tell you what: if you're not fast enough—maybe we'll just tie you up and leave you to die here."

"Just tell him," begs the most junior dwarf, a shield-bearer clutching at a broken shin. "Just tell them the truth."

"We got the job from the quest hall," Watalf says stubbornly. "That is the truth."

"Fool!" Hayhek shouts. "We know that is a lie. Tell us the truth!"

Ithis stands, pulls his warhammer back, then kicks Watalf in the chest violently. The runeknight rocks back but does not fall. He makes to stand. Ithis wields his hammer like a battering ram and bludgeons his face. Both helm and nose crack, and Watalf cries out. He swings wildly with his axe, misses by a meter. Ithis slams his hammer down onto his opponent's shoulder, crushing it.

Watalf screams in pain and falls to his knees. Ithis kicks him in the chest once again, and this time succeeds in knocking him onto his back—and he does cease the violence there. He lands another blow into the center of Watalf's chest. The plate bends. Ithis yells in fury and swings down again, and again, like he's beating a piece of metal upon the anvil. Watalf tries to struggle up from under the constant strikes, but cannot. He coughs wetly. Hopefully he's coughing blood, thinks Ithis.

"Enough!" Hayhek shouts, and he grabs Ithis' arm mid-swing. "No torture."

Ithis pulls away. "They are trying to destroy us!"

"Zathar would not allow this!"

Ithis lets out a low hiss, steps back. He still holds his hammer high. "Until he tells us the truth, we should hurt him as we like."

"There is no need for this. They'll tell the truth on their honor. At least one of them will."

"Oh, I'll tell the truth," says the junior runeknight. "For love of the Runethane, I'll tell it."

"What?" says Hayhek. "What is the truth? Hurry up about it."

"The quest—it was given to Guildmaster Rothok personally."

"Give to him by whom?" snaps Ithis.

"One of the elders."

"Elder Brezakh?"

"It might have been. I'm not sure."

"And then the guildmaster gave it to Watalf?" Hayhek asks.

"To Tothok. Our leader here. He's the guildmaster's brother, so he got the best one. This one—three thousand in gold to be split between the party."

Ithis hear-looks around. "Which one is Tothok? Or is he one of the dead? One of the vanished?"

"The jitilik took him," says the junior runeknight. "He was right in front of me. Just before you came."

"Damn," Ithis spits. "And I assume he was the one with the papers."

"Yes."

Ithis curses again, spits on the ground. Then he sighs.

"Well, we'll just have to hope the Runethane will accept a personal confession from each of you. Dwarves, take their weapons then use the vines to tie their hands. We're going back to the guildhall, where Guildmaster Zathar is going to hear exactly what you bastards have to say for yourselves. Then, we will all be making our way to Runethane Halmak—the whole guild, that is."

The collection of weapons and tying of hands proceeds swiftly, and soon the eight of the Runic League and their seven captives are on their way back through the many winding tunnels toward Brightdeep city. They proceed slowly, for Hayhek refuses to leave any of them behind. Just because they are enemies, does not mean they deserve to die alone in the dark, just as they do not deserve to be tortured.

Will Zathar really see things the same way, though? Hayhek hopes that he will, but cannot be sure. And even if he does not abide by torture, when it comes down to blood and anger and honest fighting, Zathar is far more likely to take the side of Ithis—that damn fanatic!

Yet to confront a Runethane in his own castle—surely even Zathar is not so foolish as to do this? Surely, he has grown in sense since his days in the realm of Runethane Thanerzak? Perhaps he has—yet perhaps his slight madness, always present even back then—perhaps it has grown too.

The question is not of whether blood is going to be spilled, but rather of whose blood, and how much. Around Zathar Runeforger, those are the only two questions that matter. Not for the first time, Hayhek wonders if Zathar is the hope for all dwarfkind or its doom.

In moments like these, both possibilities seem equally likely.

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