Reincarnated as a Dwarf

Rune Class

One Grueling hour of training later, an hour that seemed to last for a week, I stumbled out of Advanced Combat class with multiple knicks, bruises, and at least one new scar that would hopefully make for a fun story in a few decades, and began making my way to my next class. Bekhi had gotten better with her weapons after visiting her family and the result had been an unrelenting assault on my shield that made me wonder if I should just forget about trying to use my weapon altogether in a fight against her, and just make myself a shield with a star and stripes.

My next class for the day was Rune Theory with Elder Thrikrondromm. I wondered as I entered the classroom, if he still remembered me. After all, we hadn’t seen each other in at least five years.

“Kvalinn Ekgorsson!” Boomed the angry voice of Elder Thrikrondromm. “Get here and shut the door behind you. We need to have a long talk about your ‘experimental runes’ and the damage they have caused!”

“Um…” I was more than a little confused. Part of me was urging my body to follow the Elder’s instructions, while the other half was trying to follow custom and do the ceremonial greeting. Leaving me frozen in the doorway to try and figure out the right course of action.

“Well! What are you waiting for?! You are my only student currently and there are many things I need to lecture- I mean discuss with you. Elder Threrburk has sent me several letters about your creations in the youth center. Now take a seat!” 

Elder Thrikrondromm’s voice was so loud that I was sure that it was audible from the adjacent classrooms. I hastily closed the door and sat down for the impending lecture. 

The booming lecture lasted for around half an hour, mostly it was about my stupidity in testing new and unknown runes near where people could get hurt or killed. After that, he lectured me on the danger of creating new runes, and finally he issued an ultimatum to never test or create a rune unless he was supervising. Somehow never lowering the volume throughout the duration of the lecture. 

Ow! Is this going to stop soon? He could probably give an army drill instructor a run for his money.

Heaving a sigh of exhaustion. Elder Thirkrondromm sat down at his desk and went over his notes. “So to make myself clear, Kvalinn. Never, under any circumstances, are you to make another rune unless I am directly supervising you, and you will follow my precise instructions when making runes. Is that clear?”

I emphatically nodded. The anger in his voice was palpable, and his furrowed brows and flashing eyes made it clear that if I disobeyed or messed up, I would not be getting a second chance. Both in life, and this class.

“Good. Now show me what you crafted for me. Don’t bother with the formal greeting. In my thousand years of life I’ve never seen the point of it.” Elder Thrikrondromm gestured for me to put the weapon, a small throwing hammer, on his desk and then waved me back to my seat. He then took out a pair of runed glasses and began examining the weapon. 

“The rune of snow?” The Elder looked sharply at me. “I wasn’t aware that rune was taught in Elder Rongrim’s class. Also, how do you know about snow if you’ve never left this town?”

Oh, so that’s what this rune is. It carved itself in the sword after I sang a Christmas song about snow while pouring in magic. If only there weren’t so many runes I could have known what it was and had a white new year celebration.

“I didn’t know that was the rune of snow, but I go to class with a girl from the surface and she told me about snow.”

“Hmph, the surface dwarf? Interesting. What does it do?” Elder Thrikrondromm clearly didn’t want to touch the weapon until he knew it was safe.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, honorable Elder. Not knowing what the rune was, I was hesitant to test it.” 

“Hmm.” Elder Thrikrondromm stroked his braided beard in thought before coming to a decision. “Pick up that hammer and follow me.” He then walked out of the room, at a speed that seemed impossible for his self proclaimed thousand year age, and started down the halls.

I picked up the hammer and rushed after him. Elder Thrikrondromm was walking so fast that I needed to go at a half jog to keep up with him. So we soon reached our destination. 

“This is the testing room.” Elder Thrikromm said as he stopped in front of a small but solidly built door. “Do not test any of your runes except in this room. It is sealed with several steel doors and at least five feet of solid stone to prevent any magic from leaking out.” The elder took a large key and unlocked the doors one by one. Each set of doors got progressively smaller until we had to get on our hands and knees to get through the last one.

The testing room was relatively small, just large enough to swing a greataxe or greatsword without hitting the walls. What made this room ominous though were the deep gouges and impact craters in the solid rock and scrubbed down bloodstains on the walls. 

“Welcome to the testing room, where you will live and die by the quality of your runes. Follow my instructions, and you might live through your training. Ignore my words, and you will end up as nothing more than a stain on the wall.” Elder Thrikrondromm chuckled harshly to himself. “My mentor gave me that speech some eight hundred years ago when I first started training under him, and I’ve given it to each of my students since then. Hopefully you will survive to give the same speech to your own students in the coming centuries. Now, wait until the count of one thousand and then test your rune. I will return later to let you out, or retrieve your corpse. And if the rune goes out of control, place it in that box over there and seal the lid. It might increase your chances of survival.”

With those bright words, Elder Thrikrondromm exited the testing room and closed the heavy steel door behind him. Since there were no clocks or sun to tell time, I had to count to a thousand before testing the rune. I made a mental note to myself to make an egg timer of some sort later. 

After waiting the allotted time, I gripped the handle of the hammer tightly and threw it at a practice dummy like I was a certain Norse god. Even though the target was less than four feet away I still managed to miss. Fortunately there was no one to witness my embarrassment. 

The  hammer and the rune didn’t seem to do anything so far as I could see. It just lay unmoving on the floor without any reaction to being thrown. Before I could let out a sigh of relief though, the oddest thing began happening, snowflakes started swirling around the fallen hammer.

For the first couple minutes, there were just a couple white specks floating around the room. It was rather comforting to see, I had grown up with snow and the sight brought back fond memories from my other childhood. It also made me want a cup of hot cocoa. I wasn’t able to enjoy the sight for long though, with each passing minute more and more snowflakes filled the air until it was like a raging blizzard. The temperature was also dropping rapidly, causing the snow to accumulate in clumps and ice to form in the corners of the room.

Yikes! This isn’t good. It’s going down to sub zero in here, and the temperature is still dropping. Where’s that box? I’m going to freeze to death!

Sensing impending death from the freezing cold, I sifted through the powered snow in a panic until I found the now buried hammer. I threw it in the solid stone box that was helpfully marked with a skull and crossbones, as well as the runes for danger, death, and certain death, and sat on the lid. (Yes, there are two separate runes for death and certain death, I’m not sure why or how that makes sense.)

Once the hammer was in the box, the snow stopped swirling around the room, but the piles of it didn’t vanish, and the temperature remained below freezing. This was the first time I’d experienced cold weather in this world, and apparently my dwarven body, which could withstand extreme heat with ease, wasn’t made for cold weather.

“Well this sucks!” I indulged myself, and spoke in English for the first time in a while. “At least I didn’t put that much magic into the rune while making it. If I had, then this room could have turned into a block of ice with me in it, and being thawed out by future scientists isn’t on my bucket list. Well, now to wait for the Elder to come back. But damn! It’s really cold here!”

I made a makeshift igloo out of the piled snow, and did my best to recall any cold survival tips from my previous life. Counting down the seconds until Elder Thrikrondromm said he would return. 

Based on how high I counted, it was over an hour before the Elder returned. From the pounding noises, it sounded like they were using a battering ram to force the door open. The snow eventually was forced back, and Elder Thrikrondromm and a couple other Elders entered the testing room. 

“Ancestors beard.” Elder Thrikrondromm muttered to himself. “It seems I will have to decipher this rune for myself. Kvalinn, are you still alive? Move around if you are still alive.”

The Elders shuffled through the snow until one of them encountered my half frozen body and helped me out of the testing room. I was then given hot drinks and blankets to help get my body temperature back up. 

“Congratulations, Kvalinn.” Elder Thrikrondromm looked down at my shivering form with an approving nod. “You survived your first time in the testing room without losing a limb. Get some rest, because starting tomorrow, I will teach you how to make your runes just a bit less life threatening to yourself.”

Hurray for avoiding life threatening danger. But why the heck am I so cold? I’m a yankee! I should be a lot better at getting through the cold. 

Elder Thrikrondromm left me in the care of the medical staff and went off to arrange the cleaning of the test room. From what I overheard, there was an entire team that was paid by Thane Throdhengrun and the school to clean out the testing room each time it was used. 

The medical staff working on me decided to take me to the medical class as a case study for how to treat dwarves affected by cold since there was no other opportunity for them to do so since the temperature in the entire underground city was always a balmy sixty degrees. The students in the class were all from the scholar clan, hoping to be admitted to the physicians guild. Turns out, dwarves were biologically susceptible to the cold. We had been created by the gods to be able to survive insanely hot temperatures, in exchange for being weak to cold. 

“Kvalinn!” For some reason, my father was waiting for me near the entrance of the school. “I heard what happened from Elder Thrikrondromm. Are you alright? Did you lose any fingers or toes to frostbite? Did you lose your sight from the blinding snow?”

I mentally chuckled and rolled my eyes. Father sounded like he was getting his information on what snow can cause from a sketchy medical website.

“I’m fine, father. Just a little tired from a long day at school.” 

“I see.” I could feel father’s scrutinizing eyes examine me like I was one of his weapons, checking for dents, dings, or incompleteness. When he couldn’t find anything wrong, he let out a sigh of relief. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had to stay late at school. Were you successful in impressing Elder Thrikrondromm?”

“Yes, father. Elder Thrikrondromm said that he’d start training me tomorrow, but he also told me I wasn’t allowed to make any more runes without his supervision and I can only test them in the testing room.”

“I know.” I looked at my father in surprise. “Elder Thrikrondromm took me to the testing room while you were being examined and warned me that unless I wanted our house to end up like that, then I was to ensure you did not make or test any more runes at home.” Father shivered overdramatically. “I saw snow once, back when I was traveling the mountain as a lad of twenty four. Never thought I’d have to see the dreadful stuff again, and I never want to see my home covered in it. So no testing runes at home!”

Father’s pretend forcefulness soon melted and both of us started chuckling. He never could never get too serious over anything not weapons related. When we stopped laughing though, father momentarily glared at me.

“Don’t test them at the youth center either. Elder Threrburk was at the meeting between me and Elder Thrikrondromm and he expressed his anger at having to replace the equipment broken by you.”

“Yes, Father.” I had been contemplating using the youth center as a neutral place to test the more harmless runes, but apparently Elder Threrburk was ahead of the game in denying me.

“Now, let’s go home and celebrate your first day as a fifth year student. I had some spiced beer delivered, and while I was waiting for you, a nice young lady gave me some sausages for you. She said you’ll need the extra meat to keep up with her training, and that she wants a greataxe in exchange for the sausages.”

Father had a grin on his face as he gently elbowed me in the ribs. “It must be nice having the attention of such a pretty girl. Make sure you craft her a good weapon, Kvalinn.” 

I wryly grinned, even though that weapon was going to be used against me for the next Advanced Combat class, I’d still do my best to make an excellent weapon for Bekhi though. Because if I didn’t, then both Bekhi and my father would chew me out. Bekhi for giving her a weapon that was ‘no fun’, and father would chew me out for bringing shame to the clan. So I began bringing up mental notes from my past life on how to dodge a greataxe, while contemplating the pleasant meal of sausage awaiting me at home.