halfling girl. “I’m with him until the end.”
Dol looked at her for a moment and his eyes seemed to lose their reddish glow for a moment, “Maybe…,”
“Don’t you start,” said Milli with a steady look in return. “You’ve been nothing but glory, death, and fire for the last few weeks and you’re not going to go soft on me now. I’m coming with you to face Gazadum and afterwards, whatever happens is what happens.”
Dol’s eyes seemed to ignite with fire again and he smiled broadly, “It is good that you want to be along for the glory. Nothing will happen to her,” he said turning to Petra. “I promise you I’ll keep her safe.”
Petra pursed her lips and said nothing.
“Come along then,” said Dol and walked over to the horse that stood at the ready. Milli followed him and within a few seconds the sounds of hoof beats was all that remained of the two as Petra stood and watched them go.
The woman looked around the little camp and began to gather her things, although a little tear appeared in the corner of her eye.
Chapter 29
Milli hacked up a lungful of yellowish phlegm again as they made their way through yet another of the strange little circular tunnels that made it feel like they were walking through the inside of a tree. The temperature continued to rise and Milli was stripped down to a light jerkin and her braided hair lay plastered to her sweaty back as they continued onwards in the dim environment. The odors were intense like rotten eggs and the air was so heavy that it hurt just to take it into her lungs. Dol seemed oblivious not only to the oppressive heat but also to the noxious fumes, and there wasn’t even a bead of sweat on his brow.
Milli paused for a second to try and catch her breath and watched the strangely bald head of her companion ahead of her. It had happened not far from the volcano’s entrance itself. Dol’s eyes grew in intensity with every step their horses took towards the biggest of the five volcanos. The guards slept around their burnt out fire on the road that led directly to this place.
As Dol’s eyes grew red so also did the apples in his hair and the hammer at his side. Milli seemed to remember that the runes buried deep in the hammer’s head were faint and dull when they started out those months ago but now they burned bright red, and the hammer itself seemed to pulse like a heart beating slowly and steadily. First a few of the apples began to explode as they passed through the fertile farmland that led up to the volcano, and when they neared the entrance they seemed to reach some critical point and dozens of them went off at once with a thunder of little pops that spread seeds all over the ground. Now Dol’s head and face had only little patches of his thick hair here and there and bald spots shone starkly in the strange red light that seemed to suffuse the passages they traversed.
Try as she might, Milli couldn’t catch her breath in the heavy air; put her hand on her knee and bent over to cough a few more times in a futile attempt to clear her lungs. “Wait, Dol,” she gasped but the words seemed to die in the heavy air and Dol continued on without her. “Wait, Dol,” she tried again but with even fainter results than before. She pulled out a flask of water, now more than half empty, and took a swallow, allowing the water to roll around in her mouth before she downed it past her burning throat. It brought some relief and she breathed in through her nose, the horrible stench seeming to pierce every part of her body, and then began to walk after Dol. Her pace continued to slow as her lungs burned and the overwhelming heat sapped her strength. When she next looked up she could no longer make out her companion but she continued to trudge forward nevertheless.
Dol’s eyes shone like the red hot embers of a fire stoked too often and he moved with steady strides down the passageways as if he knew them from a thousand journeys. His thoughts were on the great heartbeat ahead that seemed to move through the tunnels, coalesce in his hammer, and infuse his body with terrible, invincible strength. He turned down another corridor and came into a smallish chamber with rock formations running from the ceiling to the floor, fiery veins of red minerals infused the walls giving this place a deep glow.
“Gazadum!” he called out and swung the hammer from his side. “I, Dol Delius, am here to slay you.”
There was no answer, and Dol advanced further into the room as he spun the hammer around his head. “You cannot hide, great Gazadum. I am Dol Delius from Craggen Steep and I carry Kanoner, the Hammer of Fire. I am here to seal your fate. Come out and meet me!”
“This is a good thing,” said a deep voice that sounded like logs crackling on a fire. “Although you are not the first who has made such claims over the many, many years.”
“Where are you?” said Dol, looking around at the chamber and seeing rocky outcroppings and a thin stream of lava roiling past along a trench in the floor but no sign of a living beast or god.
Slowly, deliberately, like a drizzle of honey from a massive hive, a molten creature seemed to form from the churning lava that poured through the chamber. It took the shape of a dwarf-like beast although rocky in shape and black and purple in color. It stood before Dol who, despite the protection of the hammer, still felt the terrible heat that came off the creature. “I am Gazadum and I have waited five thousand years for such as you to come and slay me.”
“Your wait is over,” said Dol and hefted the great hammer. “This hammer was forged from the essence you left behind at Craggen Steep, and now I will use it to destroy you once and for all so that you might never enslave the dwarves again.”
There was a pause and Dol studied his foe, trying to determine any weakness in the terrible thing. Its exterior was like a roiling river of rock constantly changing but remaining ever the same.
Then Gazadum spoke again, the sound like crackling rocks, “I never meant for the dwarves to think of themselves as slaves,” it said. “I am saddened you think such was your fate. When we came from the stars and shaped the world we dreamed that we could create free-willed creatures and your presence here is proof of our success. We had many dreams, many hopes when we abandoned the freedom of the stars.”
“We?” asked Dol as he paused in his slow advance towards Gazadum, the most ancient of elementals.
“My companions and I, Fafaradum, Glangaldum, and Korakdum. We came to earth together with our dreams. We shaped this place for eons beyond comprehension. We tore off pieces of ourselves to create those you call the elementals and with their help we slowly formed this land from its molten shell. Over the long years it cooled and we crafted the quantum pieces into pleasing forms, dug deep into the earth, and positioned the great plates. Then we waited for many long eons as the earth drifted into form. When all was ready great, sweet Glangaldum with her delicate hands twisted the double-helix of life and with that set in motion events leading to this very moment.”
“Did you create all the stars as well?” said Dol, now fully paused and staring wide-eyed at the creature.
“Yes, although not in a way you would imagine. We did not create this planet, we simply shaped it. The planets shaped themselves from the quantum dust born of starry fire.”
“Did you create the universe then?” asked Dol.
“That I do not know, although when I was young it was a topic of much discussion,” said the molten form slowly shifting into a new shape that began to look like a terrible dragon. “My kind were not first born,” said Gazadum and the flowing energy that made up his form seemed to shrug, although how Dol sensed this he could not exactly tell.
“Who was first born then?” asked Dol.
“Fafaradum and his kind awakened in the universe and they were so numerous as to be beyond counting. He and his kind merged and mingled and Glangaldum and her kind came of this mixing. When countless many of Fafaradum and his kind gathered in too small a space my kind was born of the fiery inferno that resulted. But even this was well before my time.”
“How old are you?” asked Dol. “Why did you create the dwarves if not to enslave them?”
“I shaped this earth for almost three billion years from the early times when much of our work was constantly undone by the bombardments, and then the later years when things became more… settled. But I lived long before that. I was born in a burning star and lived there for many billions of years with those of my kind. We enjoyed power beyond comprehension and saw things of such great beauty that it all seems a dream to me today. The lashings of plasma arms a million miles long, the lakes of a fire bigger than a thousand of your worlds, the
