I awaken on my back with cold chains wrapped tight around me. They are nearly cutting into my flesh. My panic is such that my heart nearly stops; I have been imprisoned again—my craft was a failure—Vanerak is going to force me to watch Guthah be hurt and maimed, healed, then maimed again—but the color of the light here is familiar. I focus on its source: the wormlight glass globe.
I am in my quarters. The chains are not binding me, but healing me, and they are thin and almost weightless. I breathe out. Vanerak is not so enraged, then. My craft must have been a success. I hope my suffering was proportional to the degree of that success: even the memory of the pain I suffered in the magma is pain in itself. Stinging tears form in the corners of my eyes. I was ablaze!
Dreading to imagine the damage, I slowly lift up my arms to examine my burned skin.
But the healing chains have done their work: there is a marbled, reddish tinge to my once enamel white flesh, yet I have seen worse. I grasp my beard and lift it up also. It does not crumble to ash in my fingers—though the stench of smoke is still strong from it.
I have not suffered like those the black dragon burned suffered. I suppose that is a good thing, though maybe Vanerak's runeknights will see differently.
I go back to sleep. When I wake again, the cold of the chains has diminished a little. I feel like I could attempt some more movement, and gradually I sit myself up. I look around the room, but my twisted trident is nowhere to be seen. Vanerak must be examining it.
Am I ready to face him? He will want a full account of my runeforging. As soon as I knock on my door to call the guards, the sand timer is set—he will be on his way.
I grit my teeth and swing my legs off the bed. I stand, lurch and stumble to the door and hammer hard on it. Best get my interrogation over with. It will not do to test his patience.
Almost immediately the door flies open. Halax is standing there, and for the first time his expression is readable—shining with joy. His grin is splitting open his red-bearded face, and his eyes are nearly bulging. He stares right into mine as if he's searching for something behind them.
“You have finally awoken, Runeforger!” Even his voice is overflowing with joy. It sounds unnatural.
“Yes, honored runeknight,” I say.
“That is excellent news. I was beginning to worry that your healing sleep was going to be a permanent one, or at least one that lasted too long for even my own expert patience.”
“How long has it been?”
“For nearly twenty long-hours you have lain in your chains. Your flesh was cooled and your blood and heart slowed almost to a stop. Anything less, had the chains not been wrapped tightly enough, you would have starved and thirsted in your healing sleep.”
“Then I thank you and our Runethane most greatly.”
“I accept your gratitude most gracefully, and hope I have cause to give you some of my own soon.”
“You mean to say, you hope my trident works as it should.”
“Indeed. You are most sharp, Runeforger. I think it will work—I have placed my hands near it, though our Runethane has not permitted me to touch it, and I felt the runic flow. It is most powerful and violent.”
“Where is it?” I ask, suddenly anxious. “Please tell our Runethane that I must have it.”
“You will. You will have it, and you will decipher its runes for us. Even our Runethane has had trouble with them. They are truly unique.”
“I'll decipher them for you. I'll do it now.”
“You are most upset at being separated from your craft.”
“I am merely eager to be of help. I don't presume to ask you to bring it to me, not at all.”
“But you wish us to, of course! That is very understandable.”
Partly I wish to have it before me, yes, and partly I wish to never see its barbs again. However I do not speak this thought; just nod.
“I will relay the news of your awakening to our Runethane personally. He will be glad.”
Stolen story; please report.
Halax orders some of the guards to bring me a large meal and plenty of beer, then leaves to go to Vanerak. My breathing becomes quick and panicky. He will be here—if my runes are poor—the consequences will be terrible—but when my meal comes a terrible hunger comes into my belly like a void, and my throat is suddenly parched. These physical needs overwhelm my mental anguish for the time being, thankfully.
Once my meal and beer are finished, I sit down heavily on my bed. Life seems to flood from my belly into my flesh and skin, and the reddish marbling fades slightly—though I suspect it will never truly vanish.
I am just beginning to doze off, the coolness of the healing chains pulling me back into my healing sleep, when the door opens abruptly. The noise startles me and I leap up. I see him there, mirror-mask reflecting my room, and I bow deep.
“Greetings, my Runethane!”
“Greetings, Zathar Runeforger. We have much to discuss. But first, here is what is yours.”
From behind him emerge two guards. They are holding a large white cloth between them. It is partly torn up. Barbs stick through it.
“Your craft has not been touched,” says Vanerak. “You are its creator and thus you should be the first to touch it. You still have that right.”
“Thank you, my Runethane! You are most merciful.”
“Take it,” he commands.
I obey, hurry over and tear the cloth away to reveal my barbed trident—and it repulses me.
It radiates pain, wrongness, brutality. The dark reddish tungsten is the color of dead flesh. The golden runes gleam with power, but that gleam is disturbed and rippling, forming waves that clash, combine, and reflect each other unnaturally. This power reaches its apex at the three points. Concentrated to extremes there, it as if it has formed into diamonds of runic power that want to leap out and tear, annihilate, ravage. Lesser extremes of power bead on the tip of each barb also.
Worse than all this, though: its basic form simply reminds me of the barbed spear Helzar used to tear Pellas open and wrench her blood and entrails out through her belly. The memory surges into my mind's eye and I almost gag.
Nonetheless, I must grasp this gross weapon. Vanerak is standing right here. I reach out and clasp my right hand around reddish haft.
I gasp. The tungsten is painfully hot, the temperature of iron just before it breaks into red heat. An instant later and power shivers into my hand and up my arm. It is as if something has broken into my flesh and is pulling at it, from within, trying to tease the fibers of my muscles apart. I suppress the urge to dash the trident to the ground and grip tighter, scowling.
My ruby shivers with its own power in response. At that, the feeling of warping wrongness through my flesh subsides as little. Still, I feel sick. This craft is not one that should be wielded for long periods of time—it's maybe similar in type to Gutspiercer.
At least this craft creates in me no desire to go berserk, yet. Maybe this will change once I plunge into the magma sea to face the demons there for a second time.
“You will transcribe the meanings of its runes now,” Vanerak orders. “And you will overlay this with the runic flow calculations also.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
I take the twisted trident to my desk and prop it against the wall. I get to work. The first half of the poem, the stanzas on the haft, I can remember smoothly and the work goes quickly and easily.
Now I come to the first barb. I hear movement—Vanerak has taken several steps forward. He is all but looking over my shoulder. For the first time since making this craft I see my face clearly—when he first came in I was focused on the covered trident. The skin around my eyes and of my forehead is reddish and patterned faintly like it's been splashed with watered-down blood.
“Pay no mind to me,” says Vanerak coldly.
“Of course, my Runethane.”
I return to transcribing the poem. The rune for magma-distorted is difficult to write, and I scribble failed copies out three times become I get it right. The angles are too uneven, going against anything I've written before. As far as I know, the First Runeforger made no script similar to this.
And then comes the rest of my poem. The lines split into three, run back down their prongs, rejoin, split apart again. Parts of it can be read crosswise. The runic flow goes everywhere and yet is battered back everywhere by contesting currents. My temples pound as I struggle to calculate it.
“You know this runic flow,” says Vanerak. “You have written it already, and it glows from the weapon at your side.”
“Yes, my Runethane,” I say.
I clench my fist—or rather it clenches involuntarily. I force my grip to relax. I reach out to the weapon's upper part, lay my palm across the tungsten lightly. I feel the power and the runic flow becomes clearer to me. At the same time, my flesh crawls. The very metal and runes feel as if they are shifting in my grip, bulging into invisible barbs to prick my skin bloodlessly.
But I bear it. I write the runes and describe the runic flow, turning the trident gently when I must, and in a matter of dozens of minutes am finished. Relieved, I pull my palm away from the trident, stand and bow to Vanerak, and give him the papers.
“Thank you, Zathar Runeforger.”
“You are most welcome, my Runethane. I am overwhelmingly humbled to be of service to you. Will you also take my trident back with you, for further examination?”
“You sound almost keen to be parted from it—from the weapon you promise is to be our savior against the demons.”
“Never, my Runethane! I am honored to have created it. I merely wondered that—”
“You are to keep hold of it here. Remember your spear-fighting while you recover. Train it lightly, then arduously over the next two long-hours.”
“Yes, my Runethane.”
“You are to show us what it is capable of under the magma seas. And if it proves worthy we will begin the mass-forging.”
"The mass-forging, my Runethane?"
"We will forge new weapons to battle against the demons, in preparation for a great assault."
"I see, my Runethane."
"Goodbye for now, Zathar Runeforger. I can see that you are still fatigued, so I will hear an explanation of how you created these runes later. My own crafts beckon."
"I hope you have the greatest success with them, my Runethane."
"I believe that I shall."
After that remark, he leaves with my papers and I slump back into my chair, trembling, my eyes averted from the twisted tungsten.