The four runeknights wade out from the shore. Molten rock runs down their armor to meld with the black fringe of the sea.
The first to remove his helmet is the other fifth degree. He is Volot, named for the script, and he was born and raised in Runethane Thanerzak's realm under the sunlight mirrors. He and Hayhek have never been friends. He is too volatile, his actions sometimes bordering on the berserk. But for once, Hayhek feels that his raving is justified:
“That fucking Nazak! That fucking idiot!” Volot sweeps his hand across the magma sea. A few semi-molten beads of glass fly off into it. “Dead! They're dead!”
“My brother,” one of the sixth degrees says in disbelief. He starts to cry. “My brother.”
Hayhek grips him by the shoulder. The movement makes him wince—within his armor, his own shoulder is a burned, sticky mess.
“He died as a runeknight should,” he says quietly.
“You're wrong, graybeard!” rages Volot. “Runeknights shouldn't die for nothing!”
“It wasn't for nothing,” Hayhek says. “We have found out another route that doesn't work.”
“None of the routes work! The demons are everywhere!”
“It's hopeless,” says the other sixth degree, a relatively young runeknight with a blonde beard specked with black burns. “There's just too many.”
“Numbers aren't the problem,” spits Volot. “Nazak's the problem. The demons are smarter than him. He says they're mindless. He's the mindless one!”
“You should be careful about shouting that,” Hayhek whispers.
“I don't care who hears it! Fuck, they're all dead!” A look of utter hopelessness comes into his eyes, dulling them like glass suddenly clouded. His voice quietens. “All dead, again.”
“If we get enough shards,” says the runeknight who just lost his brother, between sobs, “if we go back, get those three—then maybe—”
“Shards! They're useless,” says Volot. “Doesn't matter how many we get. We can't use their runes. Fuck, why are we even going for them in the first place? Don't we have the traitor to make runes for us? Isn't that why our Runethane's keeping him alive?”
“Runeking Ulrike's word is law,” says the blonde runeknight. “He must have some plan in mind. What we learn here, maybe he can use to defeat Uthrarzak.”
“We're not learning anything,” says Volot. “We're just dying for nothing.”
“We will have new weapons soon,” Hayhek says. “Once the Runeforger extends his script again, we'll be able to kill the demons more easily.”
“There's no proof of that. Just faith. Faith in a traitor.”
“He's the only hope we have.”
“Some hope!” sniffs the bereaved runeknight.
“Even if we can reforge our weapons, it's still hopeless,” says Volot. “There's no strategy.”
“Commander Nazak is smart,” says Hayhek. “He's a first degree. He must have something in mind.”
“If he did, he'd tell us. He won't, though—he has nothing.”
“The Runethane is pressuring him,” says the blonde runeknight vaguely. He seems a little addled by the heat. “He doesn't want us dead. But he has to look like he's fighting hard. While the Runethane—”
He blinks, stops himself. A heavy silence falls over the four. None look at each other. Yet no one raises a word of disagreement or reproach either.
“Let's get inside,” Hayhek suggests. “It's not safe, standing out here.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
The others nod, and then the four survivors make their way toward the gate, the square of shining metal set into the black of the cliffs.
----------------------------------------
I chose to forge my heat-mask before my weapon not because I wanted to practice further with tungsten, nor because I wanted to develop my script further. It was simply because of fear and self-loathing. The shape I've decided on is one for stabbing, then tearing. I drew it and it made me sick. It reminded me of Pellas' death.
But if I am to keep Guthah safe, and help Hayhek, I must suppress what my heart feels.
My weapon is to be a barbed trident. My sketch of its head, laid out on the desk, is wrong. It flies in the face of the principals of symmetry, order, neatness—everything a runeknight is taught to bring to perfection in his crafts. Instead, each prong, spike and needle is aligned with none other. And the poem I am to put on them will be similarly unstructured.
Before thinking of the runes, however, I must make the craft itself, and forging such complex geometry is going to be difficult—that is an understatement. It could turn out to be the most difficult forging I have ever attempted.
How am I to approach its construction? Until this moment I have assumed that I'll be welding the various pieces together. If I accomplish this well enough, there will be no disruptions to the runic flow, nor will there be issues with the basic physical integrity of the weapon either. Yet my craft is to have too many thorns and spines. To weld each of them perfectly seems an impossible task. Even with steel it would be difficult, and I am of course going to have to use tungsten. Nothing else can resist heat well enough.
There is another way. It's a way I've considered a few times, briefly, then discarded as too difficult. Instead of creating a spear and welding various bits on to turn it into a trident, I could instead fold and twist a sheet of tungsten into the shape I need.
Could this be done? I start to seriously consider this method. I trace the outline of a possible shape on a new piece of paper. I use my beard-razor to cut the shape out, then I attempt to twist it into a trident, curling it in on itself to make a tube, folding various parts to make thorns, curling two pieces that jut out into the mis-aligned prongs, then I fold out and curl some other spikes.
It keeps unraveling and I feel like a fool, a child at play. This isn't going to work. Besides, I will still need to weld it along the seams.
But as I walk down to the forge—escorted, of course, though my mind is too fixated on crafting to notice the guards much—I find that the idea will not let go of me. It is so much more elegant that forging separate tubes and crudely welding them to each other. If I were to pull it off, it would be much stronger too. This craft needs to be just as strong as my armor; it needs to be able to resist the pressure and heat of the magma, for if it fails catastrophically in the midst of combat I'll be just as dead as if my armor were to collapse.
How to pull off the welds, though? They will need to be long, and accomplished perfectly, without the slightest irregularity. They won't be simple circles, but long spirals, branching spirals. And welding has never been a particularly strong skill of mine. Only during the dragonhunt did I manage to finally get a knack for it, yet even so, I am not confident.
Perhaps I should give up on the idea of a trident entirely, as a good idea, but one I do not have skill to pull off.
No. That would be cowardly. My idea has too much potential for me to toss it away like that. Its form matches exactly with the kind of poem I need to make, with the kinds of runes I need to make to help Hayhek and the others fighting the demons. With the kinds of runes Vanerak desires.
I need to find a way to make this craft work.
As soon as I arrive in the forge, I find myself a tungsten ingot and get to work heating it. Even though my trident is to be a reasonably long, two-handed weapon, the ingot is not so large. The sheet I'm going to hammer it into must be thin if I'm going to be able to fold and twist it. Paper-thin.
Tungsten is entirely the wrong metal for this sort of craft. It's too heavy, brittle. Lead is what I want, or gold, something that can be warped even with bare hands then hardened with runes later. Doubt assails me once again: can I really pull this off? Can I really fold a sheet of tungsten so intricately as my design calls for using a hammer and tongs?
I must try. The ingot glows white. I let it heat further. Its white light becomes blinding, and I judge that it is ready to work. I pull it from the furnace and take my hammer to it, violently. I beat it, extrude it until it is a foot in length and half a foot wide. The halo of heat around it sends sweat pouring down my face and arms. The white metal is thin now, but must become thinner. It must become almost like metallic paper.
I reheat. Metalcrafters do not make tungsten sheets so thin. What use could there be for tungsten, already brittle, to be like paper? Ordinary runeknights would not try to use such a contradictory material—yet I am a senior runeknight now, am I not? Vanerak judged my armor to be nearly second degree level. And senior runeknights have the skill requisite for more unconventional crafts, made of stranger materials.
Senior runeknight! How many years have I lived? Thirty, or so? I've lost count—even so I know I'm young, younger than nearly every fourth degree out there. Am I really so arrogant as to call myself equal to a second degree? To pretend I have that level of skill?
And how am I going to weld this sheet?
I pull it from the magma furnace and flatten it out further. There are uneven patches, rises in thickness. I hammer them brutally. I am using the largest hammer I have, and each blow seems to shake the very forge. Some of the lower ranking guards, looking out through their barred windows, wince at each clang.
Now is not the time for subtlety. That will come later. Right now I just have to make this metal flat.