Free The Hammer of Fire by Tom Liberman

are quite nice
for keeping the heat. Gold is ridiculous as a coffee mug, just
ridiculous; you’d think someone would think of that.”
    Milli closed one eye and shook her head,
“What?”
    “The coffee, best to make it too hot.”
    “Yes, I’m sorry First Edos, would you like me
to put the kettle back on?” said Milli.
    “What do you make of that?” said
Fierfelm.
    Milli blinked three times with her long
lashes and stared at the elderly dwarf for a long moment, “The
halls?”
    “Of course, what else were we talking
about?”
    “I suppose …,” she started and put her hand
to her chin, “I suppose it means that they weren’t built for
dwarves in the first place.”
    “Or even by dwarves,” said Fierfelm and took
another sip of his coffee, made a sour face, looked at the cup, and
frowned.
    Milli stood up, went to the kitchen, put the
kettle back on the fire, and then returned to sit down next to the
First Edos, “If not dwarves, then who built all this?”
    “Elementals, from the dawn of time, the
greatest elemental of them all, Gazadum, this was his seat of
power,” said Fierfelm, put the coffee cup to his lips for a moment,
wrinkled his nose, and set it back down again without drinking
further.
    “But, but, but where are they now? These
elementals?” said Milli as she sat down with a thump.
    “You know the story of Dar Drawhammer,” said
Fierfelm with another distasteful look at his coffee. “Did you say
you had cake?”
    Milli jumped to her feet again and went back
to the kitchen as she looked over her shoulder, “I’ve heard the
story a thousand times, how Dar defeated the Elementals with the
shield … wait, you mean that story is about here, about Craggen
Steep? They never say that, they always say it was some far off
place.”
    Fierfelm nodded his head and the platinum
circled around his beard bumped into the table and sent some of the
coffee in his cup slopping out. “It’s all a secret you know.”
    “Let me get that,” said Milli as she rushed
back over to the table with a rag just as the kettle began to
whistle.
    “You said there was cake?” repeated
Fierfelm.
    “Oh, yes, I’ll get some, in just a moment, I
think I might have it around here, somewhere,” said Milli with a
desperate look at the kettle, the spill, and her cupboard.
    “I thought all you halflings loved to
bake?”
    “I was raised by dwarves,” said Milli as she
suddenly stopped and looked at the old dwarf with a wide smile, “I
love gold.”
    Fierfelm nodded his head, “Not a bad thing
necessarily, although to extreme, it is a dangerous pursuit.
Perhaps, because I have so much, it is not as valuable to me. One
doesn’t value what one has in abundance I suppose, it’s the nature
of a dwarf.”
    “What about those elementals, how does that
fit into convincing Dol to take the hammer?” asked Milli as she
finished cleaning up the mess, although her subsequent neglect of
the kettle saw boiling water slop onto the stove and hiss
violently.
    “Gazadum was possibly the first of the
elementals and certainly one of the most powerful,” said Fierfelm.
“When Dar drove him from Balag Tol he fled to the southlands along
with many of the other powerful fire elementals including Hezfer
the Blue Flame who consumed Onod, his twin sister Eleniak the
Dancing Flame, and the terrible Shadak the Black Fire.”
    “Balag Tol?” asked Milli as she returned with
a fresh cup of coffee and a rather malformed pastry, icing smeared
unevenly across its surface, “I’m sorry about the tart, it’s a few
days old, I haven’t been shopping, I thought we were going to take
the hammer and leave, so I’ve let things slip a little.”
    “Quite all right, my dear,” said Fierfelm and
he looked at the misshapen little tart with a glance and then
raised the coffee cup to his lips.
    “What is Balag Tol?” repeated Milli.
    “What’s that?” said the First Edos.
    “Balag Tol, I’ve never heard of it,” said
Milli.
    “Oh, that’s