In my pursuit of the true metal, I have destroyed nearly all of my tungsten, and the shelves of my storeroom have become startlingly empty. The sight of the bare racks is almost dizzying; I had never imagined I would ever see them like this.
Vanerak gave me resources I thought were unlimited. But that was a false assumption—there is no such thing as an unlimited resource. Metal and gems must be mined, and once it is dry, a mine does not replenish by magic.
Neither will this storeroom. So, I must make the best use of the true tungsten I now have—all thirty grams of it. It sits in my crucible, a pile of powder about half the size of my thumb.
The first thing for me to do, I think, is melt it into a solid piece. One cannot forge with powder, after all.
I pour the true metal into the most densely enruned crucible I can find. I inspect the emptied container under the light and notice that a couple grains remain. I pick them from the corners and place them with the others. Now I turn the furnace on, then up to its maximum setting. The magma river ripples and shivers with its own heat. Onto the ceramic slab goes the crucible, and I wait. Its platinum runes begin to glow bright white, yet the material within remains stubbornly gray. Patience is everything, so I wait further, and eventually the true tungsten becomes dull red.
I wait further. No more change comes over the grains. I pull at my beard in frustration. The furnace is already as hot as it will get! After several more long minutes, the crucible's runes start to shiver and warp, and the sides begin to glow yellow.
I extract the crucible. Trickles of platinum are running down it. I have managed to destroy it, totally, and inside it the true tungsten has grown no brighter. I curse loudly.
Extracting the true metal is easy enough, now that I know the method. But to work with it is another matter. My furnace is not hot enough, and yet how could that be? This is the most powerful furnace I have ever used!
Halax is staring curiously at me. I don't bother meeting his gaze. He has made it quite clear enough that I must work this out myself.
The crucible, at least, is a problem I can easily solve. It may have been the best I was given—but what dwarf puts real effort into a craft that will be used by another? I will make my own crucible, and I will make it well enough to resist truly absurd heat.
I put the true metal aside and get myself a small ingot of ordinary tungsten. I heat it and beat it out into a long strip. I let it cool, then cut exactly with my diamond saw. Now I have a square about the size of my palm. The rest of the strip will become the walls.
Heat and hammer, heat and hammer. I fall into the usual rhythm of forging. The tungsten flattens out exactly as I desire—the process is nearly easy for me now. I equip my runic ears to even out the last imperfections, then I run my fingers across the cold heavy metal and feel its perfect flatness.
Onto the base, just inside from the edges, I streak ground quizik reagent. I cut the strip into four squares, streak more quizik onto the appropriate places, and stick the squares to the base and together. I examine the five plates to make sure their positionings are exact, make a few adjustments, then I place the craft into the furnace and switch it to its lowest setting. I wait a while. I switch it up one setting; the dial clicks. I wait some more. It is vital that each plate heats exactly evenly.
The tungsten gradually becomes red. All at once, the quizik flares brightly. The edges of the craft glow white; I turn the furnace down and let the whole piece cool back to an even red. Only then do I turn the furnace up to its previous setting. Then, again, I wait patiently. The tungsten absorbs more heat.
I repeat the process of heating, waiting, heating, until the craft is one solid piece. I let it cool in the air as I sleep, then after I wake I put it on the anvil, equip my runic ears, and listen to the taps as I get the shape of the craft as close to geometrically perfect as my skill allows.
When I take off my runic ears, a roofless cube of perfect proportions lies on the anvil before me. The sight is satisfying.
Now to enrune. I need no new runes nor altered runes for the poem I have in mind, so for the first time in what feels like several years—is several years, in fact—I have no need to fall into my trance. For once I can avoid the deadly wrestling with the power of the world's blood and simply make a poem.
It is a simple one of five stanzas, one for each outside surface of the crucible. The first tells of a stone plunging toward the magma sea. As it approaches it heats up, then it touches the surface and is bathed in heat. These are the second and third stanzas. The fourth stanza tells of its sinking, of the substance around it growing hotter and hotter, until in the fifth stanza it comes to a rest against the very bottom of the ocean, yet the blazing heat cannot change it in any way.
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I use platinum to make the runes, and quizik to graft most of them, plus a little hytrigite for a few of the key ones. Flashes of pale white and blue light up the forge as if the daycrystals have decided to shine the colors of a surface storm through their facets. The scent of burning magic fills the air and I breath it in deeply.
After the last rune is grafted, I hold the crucible up and find myself impressed. This is a craft I only spent a couple of long-hours on, and did not plan for, and nor did I exert my abilities by some great measure, either in runeforging or metalworking, yet despite the relative lack of effort it is well-made. Very well-made. To make a craft as neat in form and dense in runes would have taken me many long-hours of effort and half a dozen do-overs, if had attempted to make it on my first arrival to Vanerak's realm.
The ease with which I've made this proves to me my skill even more than creating my trident did.
I return to my room in a good mood. I have accomplished a good craft, and what is more, I have accomplished it for myself, not for Vanerak, nor for any other dwarf. I crafted as a runeknight should craft.
As I drink my beer and eat my meal, however, my mood slowly darkens. What good is a crucible without a furnace? I know nothing of magma-plumbing, nor any kind of engineering. I have no conception of how to increase the heat that pours from it. I do not know if it is even possible. I think it will take more heat than magma can provide to melt the true tungsten.
Why not create true iron, then? Or true steel, if such a substance can exist? Or true titanium? But I don't know what I'd make with those metals.
I don't even know what I'm going to make with my true tungsten either. I have a few vague ideas for an improved trident, and an improved helmet, but they are very vague indeed, just sketches of sketches within my mind.
What does it matter? My mood turns black and I slump in my seat. I am never going to be allowed to leave my quarters anyway. What is the point of creating anything? A runeknight crafts to improve his strength, so that he can protect the weak more effectively—or at least earn money more effectively—either way he crafts so he can fight.
My existence down here is like that of some manufacturer-dwarf of Heldfast Hill. A so-called runeknight who makes armor and weapons for others. That's all my runes are, aren't they? Weapons for others.
They have helped many. Saved many even, including Hayhek. But this still leaves a bitter taste. I am not a runeknight up here in this cell. What I said to Nazak was wrong: I am not an artist, but instead a manufacturer.
But not a manufacturer of anything that requires true tungsten.
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Each of the five runeknights gathered in this dark corridor has good reason to despise his or her superiors. Vanerak's cruelty and dispassion has bred the same in several of his second, third and fourth degrees. They take pleasure in making those they dislike suffer, knowing that in all runeknight society, but most especially here in Vanerak's realm, might makes right.
Buyath, sixth degree, has had his poems plagiarized. Hajan, seventh degree, and Ithis, fifth, are both beaten regularly. Kalas, sixth degree, has been denied resources for refusing a marriage proposal from a third degree she despises. Uyat, eighth degree, was forced to mine for a whole ten long-hours, and the taste of rock-dust still pollutes every bite of food she eats.
Until now, they have not dared to act. They have been too scared to take revenge against the injustice of Vanerak's senior runeknights, and the crimes they commit, condone, and ignore.
But things are not as they were a few years ago, when the Second Runeforger was first brought down. Many of Vanerak's best have perished in the seas. Their recent victories have been brought not by Vanerak himself, but by the Second Runeforger's runes, and thus Vanerak cannot claim them as he did the victory of their escape from the black dragon. That escape itself was also something many of the junior runeknights only barely remember, or were not involved in.
And now a new rumor abounds—that their Runethane took no part in the black dragon's slaying, and in fact it was the Second Runeforger and his allies, murdered allies, who accomplished that great deed. Many runeknights heard the voice of the demon—some suspect it did not lie.
These five plan to discover the truth. They have chosen their target carefully: one of the two surviving second degrees who went with Vanerak to hunt down the Second Runeforger. He is confident in his armor and often walks back alone from the caves whose clearing he has been tasked with—other duties besides fighting demons remain to be done.
“Ready?” whispers Ithis. “He comes!”
The second degree, Goluhr, walks through the semi-darkness, oblivious to the five dwarves hidden in the alcove with weapons held ready.
They will find out the truth. Who really killed the black dragon? And what crimes did Vanerak and his dwarves commit up on the surface that have not yet been told?
The first bludgeon, from Ithis' beaked warhammer, crafted especially for this occasion, staggers Goluhr. The second, from Hajan, collides with his visor. The seventh degree hammer shatters—and a shard flies into Goluhr's eye. He shouts at the pain.
The third strike, from Kalas, hits the back of his head and he falls to his knees. Still, his armor is of second degree quality, and he is merely shocked rather than injured, apart from his eye. He retains presence of mind and reaches quickly for his axe.
Uyat's blow is weak, but it still manages to slow Goluhr enough to allow Ithis to strike another blow into the back of his helmet, right where it has been slightly dented. It dents further. Goluhr is dizzied. Kalas strikes in the same spot. Colors explode in Goluhr's vision. Buyath lays in his own strikes, and the runic power of Goluhr's armor is diminished enough that even his sixth degree weapon hurts badly.
Goluhr is still second degree. He shakes off the pain in his skull, stands and punches at the nearest runeknight. It is Buyath, and his breastplate dents at the force. But he has taken the rib-cracking blow like a dwarf, and now he grabs Goluhr's wrist tightly. More blows rain on Goluhr's head. His tungsten helm cracks, and runes blast apart. He groans and slumps. He weakly wraps his hands around the back of his head. The five runeknights continue to rain down blows, breaking his armor piece by piece, destroying the runes by innumerable scratches and dents.
Once it is naught but scrap, they strip it from him and drag him away down winding caves unknown to most, but carefully mapped by them.
Caves too long and too deep for the captive's screams to be heard from.