“You are doing better than on your last attempts,” notes Halax.

“I am pleased that you have noticed, honored runeknight.”

“You seem more focused. More so than I have seen you be for some while.”

“To close in on the true metal brings about a similar degree of focus in all runeknights, surely. Or am I incorrect?”

“Some fear it; they shy away from using it. Or some become so taken by it that the rest of their crafting suffers.”

“I see. But not with me.”

“Perhaps not, Zathar Runeforger, though it did seem to me that something was clouding your mind until this latest attempt.”

“I was just tired, honored runeknight. And now I am not. That is all there is to it.”

“Very well, Second Runeforger.”

Does he suspect something? I don't think so—it's just his usual curiosity. I disposed of the letter totally—tore it to fine shreds and mixed it into a meal. As for the fragment of armor that had been attached as proof, I dropped into the lava of my furnace to be swept into the tungsten pipes. Likely it is at the bottom of the magma sea by now. There is no way that anyone saw me do this, for I made sure to hide the movement completely with my body. And if someone had spotted my action, I would have been questioned soon after.

My circle of steel is complete, and all but two of the heat-taking rods have been forged and bent into shape. I begin work on the next. The rough square of its cross-section turns circular, then curves exactly how I have sketched my design. Compared to working blazing white, yet still solid tungsten, soft yellow steel feels almost easy under the hammer.

I let the rod cool, then check with sound and touch—reheat and make a few adjustments. Once satisfied, I immediately I move onto the next. My ruby blazes—I need no break.

Once this final rod is complete, it is time to cut the diamonds. My earlier six attempts all utilized rubies, but this was an error. I was trying to absorb the heat, or sometimes create additional heat, but the looping power in the circle of steel will create enough—so the purpose of my gems should be purely to focus it. Diamond will work better for this than ruby. It is also, quite simply, a more powerful material.

I'll turn another of Vanerak's gifts against him: the claws of the diamond-skin troll are what I'll use. They are flawless—so far as my admittedly inexpert eyes can tell—and long, already partly in the shape I need to channel and focus the heat.

I take them from their shelf and lay them upon the anvil. I inspect each in turn, holding one after another up to the daycrystals. I draw out their exact shapes on paper, and sketch dotted lines where I will chisel then sand. I will have to be extremely careful; there will be no second chances with these gems.

Hands trembling a little, I place the first diamond into the vise. I focus. My ruby burns—Vanerak's own gifts will bloody him, I think to it. My hands cease their tremors. A sensation of cool stillness comes over me, and I strike hammer to hardened chisel—my diamond saw would not be able to cut its brethren, so I must use this more difficult method. There is sharp crack, high-pitched, and a sliver of diamond falls away. I step back and compare the cut I just made to the one I sketched. It is nearly the same. I have been careful enough. I will have to do a little more sanding—but I have not marred the gem.

Another cut, and another. I spend many minutes angling each one. With the gray haze gone, I see where I must strike. My purpose is clear. Crack after crack sounds, and the diamonds come into rough shape.

Now I must sand them into exact shape. A while ago—quite a while ago, when I was making my heat-mask, I requested a tool for this from Nazak. It came late, but I have it now—a spinning disc of bright chrome, rough, and enruned on the other side to increase its hardness tenfold. Nothing weaker could scratch a diamond.

I grind each plane of the diamond. A thousand glittering rotations barely evens out a surface. It takes a thousand more, and then ten times that, before a facet is ready for polishing, and between the diamonds I have several hundred facets. My fingers ache. My eyes ache. My ears hurt from the keening. I breath diamond dust and cough, and even though it is supposed to have healthful properties, my lungs begin to sting.

Many long-hours this takes me, and the finer polishing after with a different wheel takes even longer. Every aspect of every piece I forge takes many long-hours now. That is the meaning of patience; to abolish one's sense of time, and realize that it is not the process, but the finished piece that the runeknight is judged on.

Outside the forge, however, time still exists. I start to understand, from the few times I look up from my forging, that events in the underworld are moving faster and faster. Nazak returns, looking tired and battered. He has been fighting—he has lost dwarves. Those guarding me change frequently. Several once regular faces do not return. The quality of the armor of those guarding me drops too: I have been moved down on the list of priorities.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The war in the magma sea is taking a toll. Despite my runes, losses are growing again. I feel a pang of fear for Hayhek—does he still live? Still no one comes to talk to me—Vanerak has surely disallowed it—it hits me that maybe the contents of the letter is the reason. It was not addressed just to me, after all. Likely it was disseminated throughout the realm. Vanerak did not want anyone slipping me a copy or whispering its contents. He guessed correctly the effect it would have on me.

I push my worries about the outside of the forge to the back of my mind and focus on the diamonds. Now that they are finished, they must be set into the rods' sockets. The welding process is tricky and requires my full concentration. By the time I have completed this painstaking work, my mind has returned fully to the metal.

Now for the runes. On this attempt as on all the others I have planned out the runic poem manually, for I cannot risk the runic flow being altered. I unspool long strands of platinum, measure, twist and fold, clip. Long lines of runes stretch themselves across the anvil. My poem is simple: an ode to heat, increasing as the magma sea churns. This is conveyed: that the totality of the great mass of the magma sea's heat is far, far greater than what a simple little artificial river could create. The looping represents the endless amounts of the magma and its heat; then on each of the rods is a stanza detailing the up-swell of great eruptions.

The stanzas on the diamonds are dissimilar. They tell of heat moving, not its creation. They speak of heat as something that affects what it touches and affects with purpose—not necessarily destruction.

Runic flow is extremely important to this poem, even more so than it is to most—my craft is technical. Some of the alliterations and metaphors are slightly unnatural out of necessity. I could rework them and increase the total power of the poem, yet it is not power that I desire, but perfect focus. Everything must align exactly.

I decide that a few key runes do not fit well enough, and go into my trance to alter them. Within the sphere's directed heat, the meanings change slightly as well as the runic flow, and I end up having to rework several long lines.

I read over again, and again, recheck my the runic flow calculations again, and again, and again, over half a long-hour—and finally it is time to graft. I have no trouble here. Quizik, of which the mix mostly consists of, makes the runes easy to align. I heat a tungsten rod, tap gently. Gray-red flickers brightly and constantly until my work is done and the runic furnace stands completed before me.

It is like a maw of metal, the troll's claws its teeth. Its runes quiver with potential power. Its center emanates a sense of future burning.

“You've thrown away your earlier qualms, I see,” says Nazak, as I place my enruned crucible in the furnace's center. “You plan to work the true tungsten.”

“That I do.”

“Into what craft?”

“I have not yet decided, honored runeknight.”

“Armor would be desirable. The demons have been striking far more ferociously since we broke into their city proper. And there is a great amount of them.”

“I am glad to hear that we have broken into the sunken city, honored runeknight. I had not been told this.”

“It does not matter to you. Your duty is to forge—you have not made up fully for your crimes, traitor.”

“Of course not, honored runeknight.”

“You made a weapon to tear apart the demons, traitor. Yet not armor to resist them. Why not?”

“I felt that my current armor was strong enough. It did not occur to me to make a new suit.”

“It could be improved. One's crafts can always be improved.”

“Yes, honored runeknight.”

He leans forward. “Your runes of magma, and of demons, do not contain any vocabulary about throwing the demons away. Repelling them from my dwarves' mouths and eyes.”

“That is because they are runes of magma, honored runeknight. To repel is not a property magma has. It heats and crushes. It is destructive, not evasive.”

“None of the normal scripts have such restrictions,” Nazak counters.

“My abilities are not totally the same as the First Runeforger's. Or maybe they are, but are not yet fully developed.”

“Then why not create a new script?”

There is something desperate in his tone. How many of his dwarves have burned within the sunken city?

“It is not so easy. You've seen me burn before, honored runeknight, when I push myself.”

“You survived. We have healing chains.”

Healing chains, I think bitterly. Those that you refused to use on Xomhyrk and his brave Dragonslayers as you watched them die! And then you killed many yourself!

“It is not so simple,” I say. “I would need to spend a long time reflecting on evasion. On air, perhaps, its currents and gusts. Then I would be able to put the meanings into new runes. But they would be a new script, and not suited to molten stone.”

“But you could try.”

“My crafts are my own, honored runeknight. I would ask that you respect this—”

“Your runes are for us all!” he snaps. “Why do you think our Runethane deigns to keep you alive, to give you such a wealth of his resources? For his realm! For his runeknights!”

He is angry; anger rises in me also. What right do you have to speak of wishing to protect? You who have helped Vanerak with each and every one of his evils! Hypocrite!

I keep my anger out of my voice. “I cannot make what you ask, honored runeknight Nazak,” I say coolly. “It is beyond my abilities. Could you not utilize the runes I've made already to repel the demons? Place thorns around your helmets?”

“It has been tried,” he says bitterly. “It does not work. To harm something you must put purpose behind it. Armor is to guard and weapons are to harm. Nothing good ever comes of mixing their functions.”

Nthazes gave a similar explanation when pressed on why the dwarves of the deep did not create armor of light. To focus your armor on giving you offensive power will inevitably reduce its defensive potential. Braztak was an extreme example of this—the incredible power his armor gave him could only come when his life was nearly at its end.

“Yes, honored runeknight. That is as you say. I apologize for the foolish suggestion.”

“I should have known better than to ask,” he spits. “Go back to your forging, traitor.”

“Yes, honored runeknight.”