Published at 1st of December 2023 10:40 am

Chapter 40 Walking Back Through Time

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Krulm’venor’s walk was endless, but boredom was more of a concern than fatigue would ever be for him. No matter how far he walked into the bowels of the earth, he did not tire. He couldn’t. He was a deathless creature of fire and bone. He was shackled to his tormentor by the thin thread of magical energy as much as he was by the runes that bound his new body to the Lich’s irresistible commandments.

While he was on the surface, the godling had stumbled across a few prospectors to vent his volcanic wrath on. Even when he had gone deeper, he had found a goblin nest that had blocked his way. He had seared the flesh from their bones without a second thought in both cases. While this body limited him in many ways, the destructive power he could marshal had only been enhanced. It wasn’t his power he was wielding, though. It was the Lich’s, and it melted stone and steel as easily as it burned bone to ash in vicious bursts of blue flame that blackened any who would oppose him. That part at least should have been a thrill, but it wasn’t, not even when he got to wring the life from a particularly fierce goblin warrior with his own hands.

It had been an awfully long time since he’d gotten to do that. He’d been without physical form for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like. Before now, he assumed he’d been missing something as a creature of flickering fire that could only touch the world to destroy it, but that turned out not to be the case. At least, that wasn’t the case as far as this body was concerned. There was no sense of taste or touch, and even the joy of burning a creature that threatened him to ash felt thin and far away compared to his time as ruler of a goblin tribe. There the sacrifices of their fallen foes had been stringy and greasy, but at least they tasted like something while he devoured their essence. Now he didn’t even get to enjoy that.

He was alone and disconnected, walking ever deeper into a place he was sure he’d been before, even if he had no memory of it.

Before he’d been a spirit of fire, he’d been the stone burner. He’d been the god of forges in over a dozen cities of the deeps, but he could remember only the faintest details about any of that. The shape of an arch here and the breaching of a fortress there. The memories were less than smoke, dissipating as soon as he focused on them.

Even though Krulm’venor loathed being ordered to do it, he didn’t hate being forced to return to the roots of the mountains. None of his kin were left for the Lich to hurt. He didn’t know why he knew that, but he was sure that they’d died long ago, which was part of why he’d fled to the surface. It was maddening that he couldn’t remember any details, but he’d been reduced to bare embers too many times. If he ever hoped to rekindle those parts of himself, he would have to go back to the scene of the crime, and even as deep as he’d gone, that was still somewhere far below where he was now.

Less than two weeks into his trip below ground, he was still in the dead zone that marked the area that was out of reach by the surface creatures but was still much too shallow for the beasts of the deeps. But they would come. The rock eaters, fungus dwellers, and the shadow crawlers - all types of horror would come for him as he descended deeper and deeper. They’d never be able to resist the flickering blue light that illuminated each tunnel he walked down.

On the rare occasion that dwarves needed to travel to the surface, they would extinguish all their lights and travel silently in only the safest tunnels to avoid fighting such monsters. It was said that— Krulm’venor’s thoughts trailed off suddenly as he realized that his thoughts were not things he’d been able to remember before now.

Rock eaters? Shadow crawlers? As quickly as the ideas had appeared in his mind, they were gone again. He could remember thinking about them, but the words had no meaning to him. At least he was remembering things, though. It was a reassuring realization.

That thought alone was enough to stop him in his tracks until the spirits that infested his bones threatened to unleash their mayhem on him once more. Those threats started his feet moving again, but slower this time, as the fire spirit reflected on the moment and tried to gauge whether or not anything else had been jarred loose from the dim recesses of his mind.

The cities were still ghosts, but he better understood how deep they were now. Though there were some more shallow fortresses and trade hubs in critical areas, any self-respecting dwarf lived deep enough that his only enemy was time. That time was measured by the ceaseless forges where his worship had been centered.

As he considered it, a cascade of details came flooding into his mind. The tolling he always heard at the back of his mind hadn’t been battle as he’d thought it had been, but the blow of hammers on anvils as steel and mithril were worked into something timeless and deadly.

Beyond that, though, there was nothing. No matter how hard he tried to force his memory, there was only void, and Krulm’venor was frustrated all the more for being able to remember such trivial and insubstantial things.

Days later, he found his first kobolds. He remembered the lizard creatures as soon as he saw them. In his memories, there was a hint of fear and revulsion associated with them, but he wasn’t sure why. Today though, he wasn’t impressed.

There were three of them gnawing on a vein of rose quartz. They were intelligent humanoids with rust-colored scales and a tapered snout that held three rows of metal teeth for grinding their favored ores and crystals into dust. In his foggy recollection, they were big for their species, but none were over five feet tall. When they saw him, they hissed and began to slowly back away from him. At least, that was until they noticed how the light glinted off his metal skeleton.

That gave them pause. After that, they conferred with each other with a series of whistles and clicks of their teeth, changing their minds and readying themselves for battle. They had no idea what they were facing, but they knew how good the gold and steel that made up his cage would taste. So, two of them extended their crystalline claws. The third drew a knapped obsidian blade that would be less useful against it than their crude leather armor that looked like goblin skins.

For a moment, Krulm’venor was tempted to let them try to kill him. He knew they wouldn’t be successful, but if they were to do enough damage to some of the runes that bound it, perhaps it would finally break free.

Ultimately, he wouldn’t be able to follow through with that thought. Not because of how the spirits in his body howled in outrage that he would dare rebel, but because of the revulsion, he felt as they got closer. Corpse eaters. Grave robbers. Vermin.

Seeing the beady red eyes of the lizard man up close as they thought they were about to score an easy meal sickened him. He no longer had a sense of smell, but even without it, he could smell the coppery scent of death around these bottom feeders.

Krulm’venor stepped back, pulling his arm out of the way as he suddenly remembered that their claws could damage even the sturdiest metal armor his forges had once produced. Creatures like this were best dealt with at a distance via crossbow. He didn’t have one of those exactly, but he didn’t need such a toy to deliver death at a distance.

He flared the fires that flickered around him in a constant aura in a burst wide enough to scare the one that had lashed out at him further back. These things lived their whole lives in darkness, and though they could see in the light, they did not enjoy it.

The fire spirit extended his hand and unleashed a torrent of fire just as he felt a new presence enter his mind. He’d known that the Lich’s connection would allow it to check on him at any time, but this was the first time that had merited its deathless gaze in weeks. It weighed almost as heavily on him as his disgust as he turned the first creature into a bonfire.

“What are these things. These kobolds?” the Lich asked silently in his mind. It was an invasion, but he could do nothing to stop it, especially while he was focused on the fight.

“They are lower than rats or even goblins,” Krulm’venor growled back as he poured out white-blue flames that made the kobold’s flesh boil beneath its scales so that as it fell to the tunnel floor, the only thing that escaped its dying body was steam and smoke. “They devour civilization itself, and even stone walls will not keep them out forever.”

The other two bolted at the sight of their smoldering comrade, but before Krulm’venor could burn them to ashes as well, the Lich stopped him short.

“You want them to live?” the fire spirit asked, feeling the rage boiling up inside him.

“No. I want you to follow them back to their lair and murder them by the score. I want you to kill every last one you can find so that I can study their souls further. As creatures who have never seen the sun, they seem eminently suitable to one of several tasks, and their draconic bloodline…” The Lich’s voice trailed off after that. “Well - you have your orders, hound. Go - fetch.”

And just like that, Krulm’venor was striding forward again, regardless of the anger and resentment building inside him even as the Lich disappeared. No matter how much he wanted to slaughter those creatures, the embarrassment of being forced to do so had utterly ruined the moment for him.

They didn’t lead him very far, and he probably would have been able to find their warren even without the dumb things leading him right back. This deep underground, there were only so many tunnels they could have gone down, and at a glance, he could see which were natural and which bore the telltale teeth marks of these rock eaters.

Then suddenly, he turned a corner, and he was there, in a kobold warren. It was the last place any sane dwarf would have wanted to be. They would have considered such a plan suicide, of course, and rightfully so. It was a nightmare to have dozens of the things close enough to reach out with their claws and gut you in a room that was riddled with holes like a slice of soft cheese. What good were the hundreds of hours spent drawing mithril into wire and forging that wire into link after link of sturdy chain mail if a monster like these could cut their way through it without much of a struggle?

Even as Krulm’venor looked around and found dozens of pairs of glittering eyes hidden in those holes, the fires in his ribcage and around his fist began to build. He wasn’t going to let the Lich ruin this for him. If there was one thing in the world he wanted to destroy more than that cursed golden skeleton, it was the bone eaters of the deep.

“All right, you bastards,” he growled as he looked for the inevitable ambush. “Who wants to be the first to die?” Their numbers were effectively endless, but then, so was his anger.

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