As soon as I return to my quarters, I ready a sheet of paper and begin to plan my weapon. My first problem—what kind of weapon do I even make? From what I saw under the magma sea, slashing weapons are too slow. The weight and sticky friction of the magma impedes them, even those made and enruned to first degree standard.
So, a stabbing weapon would be best. The obvious choice is a spear, like my first real weapon, Heartseeker—still languishing in our Allabrast guildhall. Yet I'm not sure about this. I have a feeling my poems are going to have to be complex, and a spearhead doesn't give me much surface area for them. Vanerak will want as many new runes made as possible also.
What runes, exactly? Upon my weapon, what kind of a poem will I write? A self-referential ode that depicts me cutting down hundreds of demons? They didn't come in hundreds, though. I need to give them the respect they must be given, and tell of them in detail also, as much truthful detail as I can manage.
And in the final stanza my poem must tell of one's destruction. How are they destroyed? Hayhek told me through cold, yet my runes of magma cannot tell of cold. This is a major problem, the flaw in the other runeknights' designs—and I'm sure they realize this too.
Maybe I could form the runic flows in such a way that they closely match those of another script, and I could write the poem in two halves, the second script being my one of cold. Yet I don't really know how to change the runic flow of the runes I create—not those I create with conscious focus anyhow.
I shut my eyes and try to remember how the demon looked—how it appeared to me in my heat sense. Flames licking out in every direction, and inside of it were flames also, going across the creature, around and inward too. It was a knot of changing, twisting loops and struts of heat.
When I reached into it with my gauntlets, I hurt it. I disrupted it, and I didn't need cold to accomplish this, just my own heat, the heat of life made greater than the immense yet unliving heat of the magma.
My poem must speak of this disruption, of pulling apart the complexity inside of the demon. The shape of my weapon will enhance the disruption also. A simple stab or slash will not do. A cruel shape comes into my mind—a shape for tearing flesh from both within and without.
I sketch in quick, jagged strokes. My lips form a grimace. The shape of my weapon is one Vanerak and his commanders will almost certainly approve of.
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“I would ask your advice on making a heat-mask of my own, honored runeknight Halax.”
“You are wise to do so, runeforger. Too many runeknights let their pride overcome their good sense, and thus they try to re-invent my great creation on their own, while they would better dwarfkind further by instead developing on my advance.”
“I will not follow their example, honored runeknight Halax. I do not wish to waste our Runethane's time and precious resources.”
“That is good to hear. Ask me whatever you wish to.”
“I would start with the basic shape. Why is it as it is? The many rods seem fragile to me.”
“Much like how your runic ears work, the gems absorb and understand the heat. They are the keys of the craft. But while the metal of your runic ears funnels sound, the gems of the heat-masks take it in directly, and so they are placed on extrusions so that the sense may be given better depth. The lines of runes on each rod also must be lengthy out of necessity, so there is that also to consider. And though the design is fragile, I admit, the better the sense of heat you have, the easier it is to prevent your foe coming into a range in which it might damage the rods.”
“I see. I will bear everything you say in mind.”
“That you must if you are to succeed.”
“Of course, honored runeknight Halax. My next question is, how does the information come through the eyes, and indeed why through the eyes? We usually feel heat on our skin. Why not have something that enhances that sense already?”
“A most acute question, runeforger. Some dwarves think that sight, hearing, feel, scent and taste are the only senses we have. They forget several others: one of which is our sense of heat and cold. Indeed, to enhance that would seem logical. Yet sight is the predominant sense, and I judged that it had the greatest potential to be adapted. You are welcome to try a different idea, of course, as many have, though none have succeeded as of yet.”
“As I said before, I wish to waste no precious materials through arrogance. I am happy to work with your ingenious method, honored runeknight.”
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“For your first attempt, that would indeed likely be best. If anyone has potential to improve the design upon further crafts, however, it is you, runeforger.”
“In future I will be happy to make such an attempt, for the betterment of all dwarfkind. Yet my understanding of the craft is as of yet still vague.”
“Then continue your questioning, young runeforger.”
“My next question is in regards to the particulars of runic flow. The calculations I have made on my preliminary designs suggest...”
My question is complicated, and his answer even more so. I do not understand it fully. I inquire further, and he has no issue explaining the runic flow particulars in even more exacting, almost pedantic detail.
He does not talk down to me in the slightest. And while many senior runeknights view the questions of their juniors as annoyances, he seems happy to explain. He is friendly to me—and yet his stare is still unnerving, penetrating in a way that Vanerak's is not. I cannot tell what Vanerak thinks because of his mask, yet even though Halax's face is bare, I cannot read him at all either. And his grip on me during Pellas' torture was unwavering.
Once my questioning is done, he wishes me luck. I turn from the barred window and make my way to the forge storeroom. It's as well-stocked as ever, which I am a little surprised at. I'd half expected Vanerak to reduce my allotment after my betrayal of him. Yet then again, why would he bother?
No matter what I make, I will never be able to break the true metal of a Runethane. He knows this just as well as I do.
I banish an image that comes to my mind—of Pellas hanging dead and torn, and her shape distorted in his mirror-mask—and get to work on the tungsten that will become my heat-mask.
I lay out the tungsten sheet before me. That is all I have taken from the stores: a single point three millimeter thickness tungsten sheet, seven by thirty-eight centimeters. I could have taken some pre-formed rods as well, but why should I rely on the shaping ability of mere metalcrafters? I can do better. I can honor the metal as it deserves.
I cut off five strips with my diamond saw. My hand does not tremor: all thoughts of outside the forge are beginning to fade, leaving only me and the metal.
I cut the strips in half again, so that I now have ten. My first challenge is to reshape them into rods. How many strikes must I give each one until this task is done? The answer is thousands.
I switch on the forge. Bright magma runs in it. I place in one strip. Quickly it glows to bright white. I withdraw it with my tongs and begin to tap it into shape. First I fold it lengthways, then I hammer away, each stroke calculated, yet also imbued with the violence tungsten expects and needs, until the strip is nearly but not quite the same thickness as before.
Then, I repeat the process, folding, hammering until slightly thicker, again and again until the strip is not a strip but a bar oblong in cross-section. Now it is time to test if I have hammered it correctly. I begin to beat it along its short side, trying to turn the oblong into a rough square.
There is a warped clang and a lessening of resistance—the bar comes apart in the middle, two layers not quite bonded separating in a sudden failure.
I yell a curse. I thought I was better than this! I thought I'd improved! I turn from the fiery heat of the anvil and furnace and take some deep breaths. I failed plenty of times while making my new armor, didn't I? Had I forgotten that during my lone confinement? I had—I thought very little of forging then. To think of my armor was to think of Vanerak, and feel terrible fear.
That fear comes again. I clench my hand around my hammer to try and drive it away. I'm in my world of metal right now. Vanerak may enter when he pleases, true, but I will not bring him into here out of my mind.
I must make my apologies to the metal. I hammer it out back to the same thickness as the others, fold, beat it into the same thickness again, and repeat until I sense that the metal has forgiven my foolishness and weakness.
No senior runeknight ever sold their failed crafts to a scrapper. Ruined metal can always be brought back into pristine condition, if one has the patience and will. No matter how much one botches it.
I restart the process of shaping the rod. This time I hit harder, properly show the tungsten that I respect its strength. White sparks dash against my face. Some nearly get into my eyes—but dwarven eyelids blink fast and are thick. A few hairs in my beard are singed to charcoal—but my beard is that color anyway.
Once the cross-section is oblong again, I move to the next stage. Only a few strokes later and I am cursing—the rod cracks down the middle. It is not so catastrophic a failure as my last one, but it is still unacceptable.
Again I repeat the process. And again! At some point, or several times, I accept a skin of water, gulp it right down, then I am back in front of the furnace heating the rod to white once more.
On my fifth attempt, I finally succeed in turning the rod's sides even. Now for an even more delicate stage. For the first time in what must be at least a hundred long hours, I equip my runic ears.
My sight fades and my hearing becomes a hundred times as acute. It is not like how equipping the heat-mask felt: that sense was relatively crude, the equivalent to being blurred or muffled. But in this blackness I hear detail upon detail layered upon detail.
The rods of a heat-mask do not have to be round, yet for the design I have sketched, similar to Halax's, I need mine to be. Tap by hard tap I go down the rod's corners, turning its square cross-section into an octagonal one. Then I go down the edges again, until the cross-section has sixteen sides.
I repeat, listening carefully to the chime the rod makes on each stroke. Sixteen sides, and now thirty-two. If I were to rely on my eyes for such a delicate task, they would see barely anything past the hot tungsten's brightness, but my ears have no such issue. There is only minor disruption, from the air's rippling. I flatten the edges perfectly.
Could a heat-mask be used during forging too? One not created for submersion in magma, but to sense a wider range of temperatures? It is an intriguing thought, but I have too many other crafts to create to explore it now.
Over the next several long-hours I turn the other nine tungsten strips into round rods. I fail many times—not a single rod is not broken at some point in the process, and I spend more time undoing my mistakes with a hundred times a hundred beats of the hammer than I do progressing my craft.
Eventually, though, it is done, and now the time has come for an even more difficult and precarious task: welding them in perfect position to the main sheet.