Balhu's flame-ravaged face is still vivid in my mind as I sit down on my bed, trembling. I feel that the demon's eyes are still staring at me out of their stolen sockets, shimmering.
What kind of power can take control of a dwarf, take his memories, and form its thoughts into the same patterns he had in life? Wear him like a suit of armor, a suit of skin and hair and flesh that fits so well even his closest friends and comrades notice no difference?
Their fire may burn like a dragon's, but these demons also have a power far more subtle. The dragon was pure destruction; the demons have destruction and deception both.
Yet their power is still that of heat. My new script, with runes for both that force and the denial of it, will be able to form a strong basis for poems to oppose their attacks.
I take a deep breath, go to my desk, and get back to work. I need to decide exactly what runes my script is going to have—I won't draw them, just write out the words in phonetics and the connotations I want each rune to emphasize.
What aspects of heat will work best? Slow power, but—how slow? Heat that blazes forth evenly, or that which grows within the heart of a stone, melting it from within? Heat of life, or heat that brings death?
I consider deeply. So deeply, in fact, that I soon am asleep.
But nothing comes to me in my dreams. So I will see if anything comes to me in the forge.
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Quenching tungsten properly is not so simple a task. Much like titanium, it has to be heated to the correct temperature, then plunged into a bath of the correct temperature—and of the correct volume also, to account for how much the water, or blood, will heat up. And once you have done this, you are not anywhere near finished, for each piece of tungsten should go through multiple heatings and quenchings as well. At least half a dozen.
But I believe I'm up to it. The only tricky part will be the helmet, since it's formed from such a large and oddly-shaped piece of metal. I really should have done it in multiple pieces, but I want the few parts that don't have to slide around each other to be strong and have plenty of space for long and uninterrupted sequences of stanzas.
I will start with the more average sized pieces. I turn on the forge—then take a minute to stare deeply into the magma, though I think of nothing to help my script. Then I place in a long segment of belly-plate. As I wait for it to heat up, I prepare the salamander blood. It's in a massive tank about as wide as I am and twice my length lying down. I place the empty quench-bath at its front and turn the tap.
There's a burble. Reddish-green fluid flows out fast. I shut it off when it reaches the right volume mark—a gallon and a quarter. Runes on the bath quiver and I feel a chill expand through the air.
I used a similar bath before, down in the fort when I first forged with titanium. Nazak, when I requested one, warned me that Vanerak wouldn't approve. Using enruned forging equipment is, after all, nearly breaking the taboo that a dwarf should not use another's craft. It's allowed, at least in most realms, because it results in better equipment throughout the ranks—sometimes necessity trumps tradition. But the use of such items is still frowned upon by many senior runeknights.
Nazak told me there are other ways of cooling liquid, better techniques I could use, but he refused to teach me. So I decided I didn't have much of a choice.
I dip a thermometer into the blood and watch the mercury creep down. It's nearly at the right temperature. I withdraw the heated tungsten, which I judge by its bright yet not too-bright glow to be ready, and thrust it into the bath. There's a burst of iron and acid smelling steam, and a hiss like that of a salamander itself, like some part of its essence, some conscious part, has remained in its blood, and is only now being released.
Carefully I time the seconds, then I withdraw the piece and lay it down at the back of the forge. Now I heat the next piece, adjust the volume of the blood by adding a few drops more. When the metal is the right shade of white, I thrust it in. More steam roils forth—the guards' view of me becomes half-obscured by reddish gray.
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Heat, quench, onto the next piece and the next. I am going from larger pieces to smaller. The blood-level dips accordingly as it is transformed to steam with each burning insertion. My mouth fills with the taste of salamander blood, which is like spiced iron, and my hair and beard become drenched from its condensation.
The flavor and scent remind me of my first terror from Vanerak, when he unleashed the abyssal salamander on us initiates—for his own amusement, no matter what excuse he gave that it was just punishment for our weakness. But it also reminds me of triumph. I slew an abyssal salamander not a year after that, in the tunnels below even the chasm, fighting beside Hayhek. And that is a memory that gives me strength.
Down to the finger-sections now. Each is a small loop, carefully sized and angled. They aren't closed yet, but as long as I heat and quench at the right temperatures and timings they should seal perfectly.
I flex my shoulders and arms. I don't want to slip up. I take some deep breaths of bloody mist, and it seems to lend me strength. My ruby likes the taste—it warms against my breast. Fatigue drains from my muscles and my lungs.
Heat, time, wait—perfect blinding white—now into the bath. A hiss of blood brings out more red steam. I hold for a few seconds—out it comes. I examine the join. It's perfect; not even a line can be seen. A far cry from the jagged welds I used to blemish my crafts with.
In a frenzy of bloody steam, I quench, heat, lay aside, quench—I continue with total focus. Time does not seem to pass. I am in my own world of crimson and metal. I can no longer see the guards for the red haze, and for a moment am reminded of the golden cloud that obscured Runeking Ulrike's forging.
No! I should not be so arrogant—this is salamander blood, not whatever surrounds the crafting of a Runeking.
I lay down the last segment, the toecap of my left sabaton. I look over at the winding row of metal sections. Drops of blood have condensed on them as they've cooled. They will take on more of the essence of salamander from this, I'm sure. None have become warped in the slightest—not even my helmet, which I was so afraid of destroying. Its seams are invisible now also.
Now to repeat the process five more times, with no mistake, no slip, no error to undo the hours that have gone into creating each flawless section of tungsten.
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I make five returns to my chambers for a quick meal and sleep, and five returns to the forge, to quench and heat in the mist of blood. I do not hurry. I do not let hubris get the better of me. I know that I could relax, and that my reflexes would carry out the movements for me, so used to them I have become, but I do not take this option. Each movement, even the most seemingly insignificant, I take with the greatest care.
No errors, no mistakes, no imperfections. I am a runeknight of the fourth degree. At my hand and hammer, metal moves into the shapes I envision.
And now—done! The metalwork is complete. I inspect each piece in turn with eye, ear, and palm. There are no mistakes that my senses can make out. They are smooth and redly marbled. When I chime them, the sound is deep and resonant. Truly this is metal worthy of taking on new runes. Dictionaries! The only dictionary a dwarf should need is a section of armor or a blade. That is where runes are birthed onto from the magmatic power deep below.
Still, though, I have no runes as of yet. My understanding of magma has been stunted by my imprisonment. The excavations have resumed—but with new security, and I am not going to be allowed back down for some time.
Yet I have my magma forge. I request a crucible of tungsten enruned to have its melting point doubled, and one is shortly brought to me. I dip it into the magma current and lift it up. I grip it close to the scoop and bring it to my face as if to sup from it.
The heat is intense. The meat of my face is being cooked like pork in the oven. My vision blurs as the jelly of my eyeballs softens; the black scars in my vision blur and expand slightly. Yet I resist the pain—my ruby is protecting me, blazing coldly as it seeks to undo the damage even as I inflict it upon myself.
Exposure to power, whether that be the freezing cold of snow or the heat of magma, entails pain. A good deal of pain. As I feel the pain, I come to understand further the nature of magma. It is power condensed into stone, so much power that the stone is defeated. It is a violent power. Intrinsically violent.
Nazak is striding toward me with a pail of water in hand. I let him come—let him drench me in it. I barely feel the sudden cool—I am watching and listening to the magma. It blackens and cracks, yet only the surface. Magma is power long-lived as well. To extinguish magma utterly would take more water than sits in all the oceans of the surface combined.
It is the center of power. Below sky and sea, there is magma, rock imbued with power beyond even the sun—and is the sun itself not a great globe of magma? Scholars wiser than I say so.
“Fool!” Nazak spits. “You'll bake your skull like that, idiot!”
“If I am to understand magma, I must expose myself to its power.”
“It's baked your brains.”
I blink. My blurred vision is back to normal. “I'm fine.”
“Don't pull anything stupid like that again. If you want to gaze at magma, do it from a yard's distance at least.”
“I have bathed in the magma seas,” I hear myself saying. “Its power runs through me. My blood is magma.”
Nazak curses foully. “Your mind is boiled. Time to return to your quarters, I think.”
I shrug. “Yes, honored runeknight.”
“I take it that on your next trip down here, you will enrune?”
“Yes.”
“I will inform our Runethane. I'm sure he is looking forward to it.”
Before we leave, he looks across at the sections of armor and shakes his head.
“What?” I say hotly, my heat induced fugue driven away by the offense.
“Barely acceptable, traitor,” he sneers. “Barely.”