Chapter 8 | Part 5

They ran until running became falling forward and catching themselves.

Dulint’s lungs were full of glass shards. That was the specific sensation—not burning, but cutting. Every breath rasped against his throat. Sixty-three years of mine dust and pipe smoke were collecting their debt all at once.

He stumbled, his boot catching on a root, and hit the dirt hard. The impact jarred his teeth, but the pain in his knees was already so loud it drowned out the new bruise.

“Uncle!” Balin was there, hauling him up by the armpit. The boy’s strength was frantic, trembling. “Get up. We’re close to the tree line.”

“I… need…” Dulint couldn’t finish the sentence. He waved a hand, a weak gesture meant to indicate air, or time, or mercy.

” They aren’t stopping, Uncle.” Balin hauled him forward.

They weren’t. Dulint could hear them. The rhythmic crunch-step, crunch-step of the pursuers hadn’t changed cadence, but it had grown louder. They didn’t need to sprint. They just needed to not stop. It was the hunting strategy of wolves and winter: just keep coming until the prey collapses.

They crashed into the underbrush of the forest edge. The branches whipped at Dulint’s face, stinging like insults, but the darkness under the canopy was welcome. It felt like a tunnel. It felt like home.

“Here,” Balin hissed, dragging them behind the bulk of a fallen oak. “Breather. Two minutes.”

Dulint slumped against the rotting wood. He could smell wet moss and decay. He fumbled for his waterskin, his hands shaking so badly he nearly dropped the stopper.

“We can’t keep this pace,” Balin whispered. He was peering over the log, his knuckles white on the hilt of his knife. “You know we can’t.”

“We don’t… have a choice.”

“We do.” Balin turned, his eyes wide and terrifyingly rational in the gloom. “Drop the rock. Leave it here. Run south.”

“Balin—”

“They’re tracking the signal, Uncle! You said it yourself.” Balin pointed a trembling finger at Dulint’s pack. “Leave it. Let them find their prize. We live.”

Dulint looked down at his pack. The heat was scorching now, radiating through the leather and thick wool of his tunic. It felt heavy. Heavier than stone should be. It felt like it had mass that warped the air around it.

He thought of throwing it. The image was clear in his mind: the arc of the leather bag into the ferns, the sudden lightness of his burden. The freedom.

But then came the pull.

North-East.

It wasn’t a thought. It was a hook in his gut. A certainty that if he let go of the cube, he would be letting go of the only thing that mattered.

“My great-grandfather,” Dulint wheezed. “Thrain.”

“What?”

“Thrain Ironbeard didn’t drop the map,” Dulint said, forcing the words out past the glass in his chest. “When the ceiling cracked. When the water came in. He held onto the map.”

“This isn’t a map! It’s a beacon for monsters!”

“It’s a key,” Dulint said. He didn’t know why he said it. He hadn’t known it a second ago. But as the words left his mouth, they solidified into truth. “It opens something. And if They get it… if those pistons-walking things get it…”

He trailed off. The hum of the artifact was vibrating his ribcage now. Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

“If they get it,” Balin finished softly, “it’s not just us who die.”

“I think,” Dulint said, pushing himself up. His knees screamed, a high-pitched agony that made his vision blur white for a second. “I think Thrain held on because he knew the cost of letting go was higher.”

Balin stared at him. Then, slowly, the boy sheathed his knife. He reached out and steadied Dulint.

“You’re a stubborn old badger,” Balin said. There was no humor in it, just a grim, terrified affection.

“Family trait.”

The crunch of footsteps reached the tree line. The pursuit hadn’t stopped. It had just entered the shade.

“Riverhold,” Dulint said, adjusting the burning weight on his back. “Riverhold.”

They turned away from the noise and pushed deeper into the dark.

End of Chapter 8.5 —> 9.1: The Nightmare Sea: The Black Water