We now stand before the doors. They have been greatly strengthened since I was last down here: they are of tungsten, with many thick support struts running through them, forming a grid of triangles, and they are enruned with blue-tinted platinum that suggests quizik reagent. They are made for solidity—and the runes tell of enemies of formless heat beating against metal in vain.

Nazak told me they needed my script to mention demons directly—perhaps that means these poems haven't been so effective. Well, this doesn't matter to me right now: the demons won't have to go to the trouble of penetrating this door to get me, for we're about to step right into their domain.

One of the guards goes to a wheel jutting from the wall. He grasps it hard and turns. At first it turns slowly, then some gear grinds inside, blue sparks jump, and the turning speeds up; the wheel squeals.

The tungsten doors retract to either side. A line of orange light appears in the gap and illuminates the guards in front of me brightly. The scars in my vision are outlined vividly. Fumes billow over us, bringing yellow dust. I cough as it burns my throat. What I do not feel is any extra heat—my armor is working well so far.

“Forward,” orders Nazak.

We march out. I step over the boundary between rock and obsidian shards and my foot sinks a little. I hear scratching as the shards try to scar my boots. I glance down and see they are not succeeding. The power of my runes combined with my near perfect metalcrafting puts my armor above being harmed by mere glass.

I am in the exact middle of the formation. Ahead of me are six guards, with Halax in the front. Behind are six also, and Nazak behind them. There are three each to my left and right also. Hayhek is one guard away from me to the left. His rubies are glinting brightly.

There is no clear division between beach and magma, I notice. The place is not like one of the beaches of the surface I have read about, with sand bordering water—those are two different elements, while here the land and the sea are just different degrees of the same. The obsidian shards become gradually redder and less solid and my boots sink a little with each step. Drops of orange fall from them as I walk.

When we reach a point where each step is only barely taking our feet out of the half-magma, Halax holds up a palm, the signal to halt. We do so. I feel myself slowly sinking down, though after a few inches my feet thankfully find solid rock.

“Equip your air-cables,” Halax orders. “Erot, Ragnay, make sure the runeforger's is tightened securely—you will be held responsible if it is not.”

I fumble with the thin metallic wrappings, trying somehow to equip myself with one hand, before I remember that these cables are capable of withstanding far higher temperatures than those of the glistening, semi-molten black glass I'm standing in. I lay down the concave float-section and use both hands to tighten the breathing end around my helmet.

One of the runeknights beside me curses, undoes it, and re-tightens it hard. I make no protest, even though she touches my helmet rather roughly. I really don't want to breath in magma. The guard on my other side tightens it further for good measure.

“Is it on correctly?” Nazak barks from behind.

“Yes!” the guard on the right says.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” says the guard on the left.

“Are you breathing properly, traitor?”

I nod. The cables seem to be working—I am taking deep slow breaths, and the air tastes sweeter than that I was breathing unfiltered.

“Good.”

Nazak equips his own breathing cable. His helmet is constructed so that it locks in smoothly—it only takes him a moment. Should I remake my helmet in such a way? Probably it would be a good idea. I'll see how it performs down here first.

Halax turns around and pulls down his visor. The guards either side of me pull mine down also—everything becomes black. There is no sight, and no sound but for the rumbling of the sea's heavy waves, molten rock crashing up and down with the force of a cave-in every few seconds. Panic starts to rise within me—there could be a salamander bearing at us and I would have no idea. Vanerak could be stalking behind me, and I would have no idea.

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Someone shoves my back. We're marching. I stumble forward and fall onto my knees. Magma closes around my gauntlets, thick and heavy. The guard behind me grabs me by the armpit and pulls me up. I'm shoved forward.

I stride—I can't panic, must regain control. This is the magma, where I need to be, for Hayhek's sake if no one else's.

The obsidian is just a crust now, breaking against my armor. My shins are deep in molten stone, and now it is around my knees, and now my hips. I feel a sense of pressure—my joints don't bend quite so easily now that stone is around them.

But I still don't feel heat. The magma's most potent force is being repelled.

I stride with more confidence, taking greater steps. Soon I'm not stepping at all, but swimming, and sinking rapidly. I sense that the magma is at my neck.

Sight that is not sight comes into being. I gasp in shock. I can see—yet I am not seeing. My heat-mask has begun to function, and what a function it is. It is like no experience I have ever had, like no dwarf has ever had. My runic ears extended my hearing, yet this is, just as Halax said—something new.

It has some connection to my eyes. That is proved by how this new not-vision has scars of emptiness cut into it. They are not scars of blackness, though. This world has no black, nor white. It only has heat and lesser heat. That is what I see, or rather sense.

There are no runes to describe this sensation, yet.

Someone grabs my shoulder and pulls me roughly around. It's Nazak—I can sense the shape of his armor clearly, a cold gap in the magma. He taps my heat visor, then he pushes his helmet up against mine.

“Is it working?” he says. His voice is distorted and metallic, and sounds like it comes from far off, so I can only barely make out the words.

“Yes,” I say back.

He pulls away and points forward. Halax, another shape cut out of the heat, nods.

We swim forwards. The guards spread away from me a little as we do so—I imagine this is so that the air-cables, lines of cool unwrapping and straightening as we travel forwards and down, don't get tangled together.

I copy the technique of those around me. It is not quite swimming we are doing, for the molten stone subsuming us is far thicker and heavier than water. It is half climbing, almost, pulling through the stone as well as kicking. Like I'm laying down with my hands out and grasping the floor, and pulling myself along, except the floor is all around me, not just below.

Could a rune describe this action? If I were to make it, certainly. Though to make a rune, a word is also needed. Could a word be made? Dwarven words, unlike human ones, are immutable—yet does that need to mean new ones cannot be coined? I will try.

Likely Vanerak will make me try.

We continue down. Although there is a sense of what is above, a great coolness, there is no sense of anything below. The stone that makes up the floor is at the same temperature, of course, it just is solid because its melting point is higher. And it's not as if it has a different color.

How, then, will we know where a shard of the impervious black stone is? I would ask Hayhek, whose rubies are spots hotter than the surrounding magma, if I could speak.

A few minutes of diving, and the surface vanishes. The furthest ends of the breathing-cables are gone too—the cool metal lines fade into nothingness. Clearly the heat-masks have a range. They are not vision which continues until light is blocked by something. This is a disadvantage, yet there is an advantage to their nature as well: I can sense anything cool within their range. I can sense every guard in the formation. My not-view of Halax at the front, for example, isn't blocked by the two guards between me and him.

It is very odd to have both the front and back of objects defined to me at the same time.

A greater heat flashes into view below us and to the left. My heart jumps. The guards tilt around to face it, extending their weapons out. It is massive, and has six legs, though this is hard to tell because they are roughly the same temperature as the magma.

It looks up at us. I flinch—it seems to be fixated on me. I hold my hands out in front of me, the only weapons I have. It stretches its head a little. Yes, it's looking at me. I'm sure of this.

Why? Then I notice—I do not look quite like the other dwarves down here.

My armor is shining slightly, and with the equivalent of a color. Over my tungsten is a very thin layer of heat, and it is the heat that is not that of the magma sea, but the heat of life increased a hundred times. I focus on the other runeknights, but they have no similar glow. Their armor is designed only to stop the heat penetrating through, so they are cut-out coldnesses. I am also a cut-out coldness, yet one also surrounded by a very thin layer of bright heat. It's hard to detect, unless I concentrate—but that is only because I am unused to this heat-sense.

The salamander below us noticed immediately. It is a creature of the magma.

Is it enraged at the intrusion of this strange heat, of the arrogance of my runes? It turns and swims quickly away. I breath out in relief—apparently not. I was just a curiosity to it, no more interesting than an oddly colored boar. Salamanders are animals. They do not feel offense, only hunger, and on occasion fear.

But demons are no animals.

Halax motions for us to swim on. My wonder at this new heat-sense has died in me, though, and I am afraid again.