Jon’s heart was pounding in his chest as he heard the dwarf getting closer and closer to where he waited on the porch. He could see his partner’s body and the pool of blood it was laying in from the doorway, and it was clear his opponent wasn’t taking any chances. Jon wasn’t exactly going off sound though as he gaged the dwarf’s approach. Instead, he was going off of the fire he could feel radiating from the dwarf’s brand, and just like the dwarf he wasn’t going to take any chances either. 

Unlike his opponent Jon had no weapon, so he waited for Kell’s barrel to poke just outside the door and then Jon gave it a spark that caused it fire, blasting off into the night without any warning. 

“What in the Pit…” Kell asked, as he tried to figure out what was happening, but he didn’t get a chance as Jon suddenly sprang around the side of the door and kicked the dwarf as hard as he could, sending him tumbling back into the room.

Jon had spent a lot of time thinking about how he’d fight a dwarf if he ever had to do it again while he worked in the sweltering heat of the powder mill. While dwarves might have the strength of two or three men, their size and their reach wasn’t much greater than that of a child, and that was the only advantage he had as he sent his opponent sprawling. 

Then he rushed to the rack by the door where they kept a number of brands, and feeling which ones were loaded and which ones weren’t he picked one up, and in one smooth motion he cocked it and leveled it at Kell, who was just peeling himself off the floor and purpling with rage. 

“What the hell is going on?” Jon asked, looking for a reason not to shoot the other dwarf, however unlikely that was. “I didn’t even do anything to you two.”

“Being here is more than enough of a reason,” Kell growled. “The law says that any human that leaves the kingdom set aside for ye should be put down to prevent complications.”

“Complications?” Jon asked. The mention of the law made sense. That was all dwarves seemed to care about, but the rest was nonsense. Kaspov had spent plenty of time on the surface. If men weren’t allowed somewhere then the dwarf would have told him that, wouldn’t he?

“Do ye even know if that’s loaded?” Kell asked. The question was enough to make Jon’s eyes flick downward to the breach to check even though he knew for sure it was, but even as he did so, he understood what the dwarf was trying to do and he fired.

In that single instant, the dwarf had covered half the gap between them, and it was clear that he had only murder on his mind. Jon’s aim was off though, and he only managed to graze the dwarf before he was on him. Jon swung the heavy steel brand at his opponent like a club, but the dwarf easily caught the weapon and yanked it out of his hand. 

“I’ll not give ye the chance to sneak attack me as ye murdered Beark ye miserable cold blood,” the dwarf cursed. His first swing with the weapon knocked Jon off his feet and he curled up around the painful blow to his stomach as struggled to figure out how he was going to get out of this situation. 

Jon tried to flare the fireplace at the dwarf to dissuade him from his savage beating, but he just ignored the fire, and from here Jon couldn’t easily burn the dwarf without burning them both. It was only after the fifth blow when Kell growled, “Ye should have let me put a bullet in ye and saved us both the trouble,” that Jon felt the powder flask on the table behind him and detonated it. 

The heat of the resulting fireball flashed over Jon even while he was on the ground, and he used the distraction to scrambled to his feet and run for the closest exit. After half a dozen steps that run became a limp. He was bruised all over, and he wouldn’t be surprised if the dwarf had already cracked a rib or two, but that couldn’t stop him. He needed a weapon, and even limping he was still slightly faster than the very angry, slightly singed warrior that pursued him. 

“Yer usin magic against me? In my clan’s own grounds?” the dwarf yelled. “Kid - I’m gonna rip your arms off and beat ye to death with them for that.”

Jon believed him. That was why even though the hallway he was running down was filled with doors he didn’t dare stop at any of them. He just kept running trying to preserve and expand his narrow lead while he looked for anything he might be able to use as a weapon. Eventually though, he ran out of hallway and was forced to run through the double doors at the end of it. The sign said ‘main munitions storage,’ and though Jon didn’t know what a munition was, that was close enough to warehouse for him that he knew he’d be able to find somewhere to hide long enough to catch his breath. 

He’d expected the same thing he’d seen a thousand times before in Dalmarin, only perhaps larger. Instead of crates and flour sacks though, Jon found a room filled with weapons that defied his attempts to describe them. The shelves around him were filled with giant bullets bigger than his head and the weapons that they went to were bigger than he was. This would have been enough to stop him dead in his tracks if he couldn’t hear the angry dwarf still charging behind him. 

Jon thought about baring the door, but seeing no easy way to do that he kept running, eventually taking cover behind a giant metal pillar, and cowering down just before the dwarf entered the room. 

“Take a good long look, mongrel.” the dwarf yelled as he set his weapon down and picked up another from a nearby rack and cocked it. “Thousands of years of dwarven history and ye’ll be one of the few men ever to see such wonders. We don’t even let you king gaze upon the giants, not that you’ll last long enough to enjoy the view.”

The dwarf was stalking through the place now. Jon didn’t have to peek up to understand that. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous room, and the slow pace spoke of hunting. Jon tried to processes the dwarf’s words at the same time that he reached out to feel the fire of his weapon to see where he was. 

It was when he did that, that Jon thought he’d gone blind, because he couldn’t pick out a single source of fire to track his hunter with. It took a moment to understand the real reason for that: the whole room was suffused with more fire energy than he’d felt since at least the powder mill, and maybe ever. The whole room was a barely restrained firestorm, and each and every one of the little shapes and canisters that surrounded him was its own inferno, just waiting to be unleashed. 

Likewise, he only realized that the metal pillar he was hiding behind was actually a leg when he got up and took the risk of taking a quick glance in search of his opponent. Kell wasn’t far off, but he was heading towards the nearby shelves, not the giant steel boot and brass leg that hid him. That gave Jon time to study the intricate details of the creation. From where he stood he couldn’t see how tall it was, but given that he was standing comfortably beneath it, it was certainly massive. 

Jon looked around for something he could fight with, but the only thing handy was a large wrench. When he leaned over to pick it up though he sent an unseen spanner tumbling to the ground, making his hunter whirl around and take aim at Jon. From this distance Jon couldn’t read the dwarf’s expression past his bear, but the way he hesitated, made him think that he didn’t want to accidentally shoot the statue he was hiding behind. Maybe it was their god or something, he considered. Maybe they loved something else besides the damn law. 

“Ye really think that’s gonna do ye any good, lad?” the dwarf asked. “I could blow your head clean off before you ever got close to me.”

Jon was sure that was a true statement, but as he eased himself back behind cover and the dwarf still hadn’t taken a shot that made him less sure. Kell was slowly walking to his right now, forcing Jon to do the same to stay behind cover. That was when he realized it wasn’t the statue he was afraid to shoot, and he stopped. If he kept going there would be nothing behind him but a door, and he was fairly sure that the dwarf wouldn’t mind if that got a bullet hole in it. It wasn’t the statue at all. It was all the canisters of fire packed into crate after crate behind him. 

“I don’t think you will,” Jon said, stepping out from behind cover as he moved closer to the boxes the dwarf seemed loathe to shoot at. “Because we both know the bullet in that brand is going to go right through me and into this box. What do you think’s in there, I wonder?”

“Never ye mind,” the dwarf spat, moving closer as he pointed his weapon at Jon’s head. “Ye just get away from there, and I’ll make this nice and clean. Best I can do for ye. ” 

“I wish I could offer you a death so clean,” Jon said sadly. “There’s still time to run. If you flee into the snow and back to the deeps, I won’t follow. You don’t have to die.”

“Ye might have your magic, lad,” the dwarf shrugged, “but haven’t ye been paying attention. There’s no fire in here. Not unless I pull the trigger, so yer magic ain’t gonna work. There’s just ye, me, the giants, and objects far beyond yer primitive, superstitious brain could ever hope to understand.”

The whole time they’d been talking, they’d been speaking in Wenlish, but once Jon figured out what the plan here was, he decided his final words would be in stone tongue. After all, Kell had spent so long making him think the dwarf would shoot at him and give him some fire to play with when he really just planned to get close enough to beat him to death, so returning the favor was the least Jon could do. 

“Dwarven magic?” he asked. “You mean science, and I understand too well the potential it has.”

The dwarf stared at him in bafflement like the man was a mystery he would never understand, but before he had a chance to move forward or even ask a question Jon immolated him with a wave of fire that he was careful to keep away from the shelves and boxes. The dwarf screamed then, and tried to fire his brand at Jon, but he’d already devoured the fire it contained and used it against its wielder. 

The dwarf had made a fatal mistake in assuming that just because he couldn’t see fire didn’t mean it wasn’t everywhere around them. They could see further than humans in so many ways, but their blindness to justice and magic would be their undoing. Jon was certain of that much as he watched his enemy crumple on the floor. It was only when the dwarf stopped moving that Jon ceased the gout of white-hot fire and put the smoldering creature out of its misery. 

Author's Note: At long last my EPIC backlog project is complete, and this story now has 10 advance chapters on Patreon for $4. If you read several of my stories you can get 50 advance chapters across all my stories for $8. Hard to get a better deal than that! 

In October when I started my Patreon I had a backlog of 12 chapters... that has now ballooned to 50 chapters of content for my most loyal readers. Thank you all so much for your support.