I am watching the door through the slits of my visor. I glance down briefly at myself. The glow from the daycrystals glints unnaturally upon my armor. Sunlight shouldn't shine on my tungsten; it's an unnatural power to it. The glow of the magma is what my metal must bathe in. Under sunlight, it looks strangely weak and mundane.
Nazak said I wouldn't have to wait long, and maybe he wasn't lying, but I feel like I've been standing here an eternity. The thrill of forging has died away totally, and in its place fear has returned. I examine my gauntlets. The some of the fingertips are a slightly different shade—they don't have the slight reddish tint to their gray that the rest of my suit does. If I can notice this, so will Vanerak.
My waiting ends; a loud click sounds from the lock and in he walks, his mirror-mask reflecting me and my new armor at the center of a distorted forge. The bright gold of my runes appears diminished, made dull by the slight darkness of the mirror-mask's color.
“Greetings, Zathar Runeforger.”
I bow low. “Greetings, my Runethane. I have completed my armor. I am sorry for the delay.”
“There was no delay worth speaking of. Approach.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
I approach him. My movement seems to happen quickly, very quickly. In this armor I move very smoothly. The armor plates make no noise as they glide against each other.
I stop before him. Vanerak stares at my helmet. With no way of seeing his eyes, I can't see if he's looking at the rune dway, or at some section of inferior metalwork, or at some rune that has less power than it should.
He tilts his head down. Now he is examining my breastplate. He walks around me to look upon my back. I flinch when he grabs my left forearm and lifts it up. He does the same to my right, then walks around, examining both my arms closely. He takes a step back and looks over my legs, then kneels to look at my sabatons.
A crazy urge to laugh comes over me. Vanerak is kneeling at my feet! But he stands up again and my mirth vanishes in a wash of icy fear.
“You may relax your arms,” he says.
I do so.
“Some of your runes are powerful,” he says. “Especially the one on your helm that is the anchor of its poem, and another one that repeats throughout all of your poems. These are what give your compositions most of their strength.”
“Thank you, my Runethane.”
“I would guess that the second means heat. It is the rune for lahj.”
“That is correct, my Runethane.”
“The one on your helm has a complex runic flow. It contains many connotations. I guess that it is the rune for dway, or for the rune tway.”
“It is the rune for dway, my Runethane. This script does not have a rune for self yet.”
“Yes, that makes sense. Runes meaning self usually have a less clearly defined runic flow. They are more open.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“The rest of runes for this script are more varied in their power. Some produce a great amount but direct the flow awkwardly. As if they are not quite sure what they are meant to be. Others have a simplistic flow and little power. As if they know what they are but also know they are inferior.”
“I am still not used to controlling my powers, my Runethane.”
My stomach feels like a knot.
“Yes, I am aware of this. And I am aware that pushing them too hard is dangerous for you. You must come to master them slowly. I can forgive certain inferiorities with them.”
“Thank you, my Runethane. You are indeed most forgiving.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“Yet I cannot forgive the inferiority of your metalwork. You have rushed it. And then you have degraded it by introducing an element foreign to it.”
The knot grows tighter. “I don't quite follow, my Runethane.”
“You do not? You are a fourth degree, yet you do not understand what you have done to the metal?”
“No, my Runethane.” My voice is quavering.
“I see. I suppose that is to be expected. It is your power that has brought you this far, after all, not your skill with metal, of which you have only a small amount. Your lack of patience also does your crafts an injustice.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“Many of your plates show evidence of being badly shaped and then beaten back for their transgressions—although it was their forger who transgressed. Your fingers especially, and also parts of your helmet, and in many other plates also.”
“I see, my Runethane.”
“I can tell by the tone of your voice that you do not.”
“I understand that I forged badly, my Runethane.”
“Yet you do not understand the reason. You think, as most lesser runeknights do, that metal bent out of and into shape over the course of many mistakes can be fixed by a few rounds of heating and quenching. Some scholars, who see things from only a physical perspective, also believe this. They then write their lies down in books for the upper levels of the libraries and are believed by fools. You have clearly read such books.”
“I have, my Runethane.”
“Their writers do not understand metal. They believe that with a powerful enough lens, the truth of metal might be revealed to them. This is false. The truth of metal is only revealed to those runeknights who have worked a hundred and a hundred more years with it.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“Metal remembers. Metal feels. Through every blow of the hammer, metal understands the mettle of its striker.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“You hear yet you do not understand. You have not the experience. You have not taken the time to understand metal. Not with this craft, nor with any other.”
“I only wanted to get you your runes, my Runethane.”
“Runes are only as powerful as the metal they are grafted to. Applied to inferior metal, their power is diminished and their flows unclear. A distortion of a tenth of a millimeter can render one completely ineffective.”
“I know this, my Runethane. But my runes are not distorted.”
“They are—by the inferior metal they are grafted to. I will copy these to paper, of course, yet I will not be able to tell their true form, the form you made them into under the magma, because they are slightly distorted. Whenever a dictionary is written, the runes are copied from the highest grade of equipment they appear on. And that grade is far higher than that of the metal you are wearing.”
I bow my head low. “I apologize, my Runethane.”
“I will accept your apology when this metal is remade. That is what you will spend your time on from this point forth—you will remake this armor. Each section of tungsten you will hammer perfectly. If you bend a piece out of shape, you will heat and reshape it half a hundred times over until you are sure that the insult is forgiven. Better that you make no mistakes, of course. You will become patient enough to see when you are about to make one, and stop.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“It is clear that your eyes are not yet attuned enough to metal for you to understand it. So you will use your runic ears. You have not yet used them for the purpose you created them for. I presume that you are afraid of them.”
“...I am, my Runethane. I am concerned that they might destroy my vision. If that happens, I do not see how I might make further runes.”
“You make them by feel, not by sight. Under the magma sea you have no body, and thus no eyes—or do I misremember?”
“You do not misremember, my Runethane.”
“I did not think I did. You will go over your less-accomplished runes also. I do not know how many iterations the First Runeforger created for each of his runes, but it may have been many. And you are not so skilled yet as he was.”
“Very well, my Runethane. I shall do as you ask.”
“And one last point: this time you will not introduce foreign substances to the metal. The threads of the black glowworm do have their applications in forging. But to bond them to the metal so unevenly, with no thought or skill applied at all, was to insult your armor most grievously.”
I hang my head in shame. “Yes, my Runethane.”
“Once you have worked the metal, I will be called. I will judge if it is yet worthy of applying runes to. If the perfect forms will show on them.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“Goodbye for now, Zathar Runeforger. Try not to disappoint me again.”
“I will not, my Runethane. You have my promise on that.”
“I hope that is a promise you can keep.”
After that final remark, he turns and leaves. I lean back against the anvil, shaking, ashamed of my failure and deathly afraid of failing for a second time.
----------------------------------------
“Did you feel that?” says the miner.
“No,” says his friend, who then coughs loudly on black rock-dust. “Feel what?”
“A kind of shiver in the rock.”
“Didn't feel nothing. My arms are shaking already.” He coughs again. “Need something to wet my throat. And deaden my arms.”
He strikes again at the wall. A long sliver of black falls away and shatters to pieces at his feet. There is no true black behind it though, the imperviousness that cannot be scratched. Hell! If only he could find some, and finally be allowed a rest.
“I'm sure I felt a tremor,” the first miner says nervously.
“Just withdrawal. Fucking beer shortage!”
“It's not a shortage,” says a third miner. “It was orders of the Runethane that we be given less.”
“That's just an excuse. We've run out.”
One of the beardless boys shoveling chips into the wheelbarrow says, “I felt a tremor too.”
“It's nothing,” snaps the second miner. “You're all just trying to come up with excuses to skive off. Put your backs into it! I don't want to get another whipping.”