I stare at the empty space on the anvil where, a few seconds ago, sat the true tungsten. The metal is destroyed, dead, and I am its killer. First I destroyed a kilogram of good, useful metal to gain its essence, and then I wasted even that. I am worse than a miner. At least miners only smash rock to powder; they cannot annihilate metal as I have done, twice over. I have done far worse than they ever did.

I look at the last remaining coin of true tungsten. Should I even attempt to shape it? The right, noble thing to do would be to ignore it, never touch it until I am far more able with hammer and heat. My current skill is not worthy of this caliber of material.

Yet Vanerak is on his way or else the demons are. I cannot afford to wallow in despair. I must mourn the metal later. Right now, I need a weapon. I force my grief away and focus my thoughts on my options—could I make a spear? One point for the demons, one point for dwarves?

My poem I've drafted for a trident, though, and it would take far too much time to rewrite it. So I have no choice but to attempt to shape the last disc of true tungsten. I can make a bident, a weapon-catcher. I will not have to change my poem, nor my craft, by too much.

Hands trembling, I grasp the last disc in my tongs. Into the crucible I place it, then the crucible into the runic furnace. I shunt the offset part into place and blue heat blooms in the steel's center. The disc is a white dot at the sphere's midpoint—it almost looks like hytrigite, white life in a blue shell.

I take the crucible out, the disc out the crucible. Furnace off, disc in place. I raise my hammer, calculate cautiously. My hands are still shaking. I put the hammer down. I cannot afford to be off by even a millimeter. Each strike must be perfectly angled, have the perfect amount of force. And I must make thousands of these perfect strikes. I doubt myself—how could anyone but a Runethane or Runeking perform such a feat?

It seems impossible. Yet if I am to fight a Runethane on equal terms I must be as skilled in the forge as he is. Every runeknight knows that more important than the fight itself is the forging beforehand. My weapon must be as powerful as his mirror-mask and pollaxe.

Can it be done? The only answer is to hammer. So hammer! I accept a sip of water from an awed-looking eighth degree, raise my hammer, breathe, slam it down. A harsh note reverberates. Again! Another note, just as harsh. The disc folds slightly and the shadows cast by its intense glow change a little. Once more! Twice! A third time!

A note rings every few seconds. This pace is too slow. I must increase it yet lose no accuracy. Faster! Down, bounce, up. The anvil shudders with the force. It might shake itself apart, for surely untrue metal cannot stand the impact of the true. I pause. I am distracting myself. I must focus completely.

Strike, up, strike. A hundred times, a thousand. The disc is bent in half. I heat it, tilt it, hammer again, and again, continuously, a strike every second.

Time vanishes. The forge vanishes. There are only the notes, one a second, becoming gradually more solid as the metal thickens with each fold. Pain vanishes, thirst vanishes. I am not aware of the eighth degrees. I forget even what purpose is driving me to forge so frantically. I am absolutely focused and absolutely patient.

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A blazing sphere rushes at Hayhek's face. He slashes and Zathar's runes do their work—the demon's lines of heat snap, complexity turns to chaos then fades into the ambiance of the magma. Another demon comes—Hayhek cuts it apart too, yelling into his helmet the whole time.

He thrashes with his legs, trying to regain some control of his downward-plummeting movement, trying to get closer to a group of runeknights to his left, but it is useless. The magma has become too liquid. It is thinner than water and run through with bubbles of superheated gases that batter his armor like a rain of something solid.

A violent tug on his face nearly breaks his neck. He is suddenly facing directly upwards. His breathing cable has become entangled with two others.

“Shit!” he yells into his helmet. He attempts to swim up, but a rush of bubbles hits him from below and he plummets further. “Shit!” Another demon rushes at him, gets right close to him. Loops of heat extend toward the gaps in his armor.

“Die! Die!” He slashes frantically. The loops fall apart. “Die!” he screams, and cuts right through the demon. It comes apart violently. Heat whips at him.

More replace it. A seemingly endless stream is pouring out from the grand entranceway below and into the runeknights' formation—if it can be called a formation. The sudden rush of heat and liquidity has thrown the ranks to chaos. The largest bands of runeknights are of four or five. Many are on their own, and some of those are no longer being swarmed by the demons but are glowing hot and swimming up toward the breathing cables.

It is a complete disaster, complete disarray. In battles below the magma, never let anyone be above you. Hayhek grabs onto his own breathing cable and pulls himself up to the knot. He starts to untangle it with one hand, while slashing wildly at the demons with the other. They are getting thicker. The heat is pushing his runes as far as they will go—it is getting too hot to breathe easily.

A squad of five runeknights led by first degree Helzar breaks out of the thickest melee below and thrashes upward toward the possessed. She sticks one with a spear. It spins down, slashing wildly, and is stabbed through the throat by one of her lieutenants. The possessed highest up, in a fit of rage, grips a cable at random. A runeknight nearby Hayhek clutches at his face and begins to thrash. A second later that possessed is impaled too.

Hayhek manages to untwist his cable. He takes one deep breath, allows himself just one moment of respite, then focuses down at the main melee beneath. That is where nearly all of the highest ranking runeknights are. It is where he should head too. As fifth degree, he is also one of the higher ranking runeknights.

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Someone grasps his shoulder. He slashes wildly, assuming it to be one of the possessed. The dwarf blocks with his own weapon. No heat floods into his armor—this dwarf is not possessed. Hayhek focuses on the dwarf's visor. He can make out a triangular pattern.

The runeknight pulls him close so the front of his helmet touches the side of Hayhek's.

“We're retreating!” he says. He sounds as if he is shouting from far away. “We're going back!”

“Who gave the order?”

“Fuck the orders! Do you want to live or do you want to die?”

“The Runethane will kill us!”

“He is surrounded! He can't win! We can't win!”

Hayhek's heat-vision gives him a view of below even while he faces front. It does not seems to him as if the Runethane is being overwhelmed. Each strike of his pollaxe cuts through three or four demons, and Nazak and Halax beside him as nearly as deadly. Blow by blow, they are cutting their way toward the entrance.

He can see above simultaneously: Helzar and her squad are stabbing possessed with ruthless efficiency, protecting the breathing cables.

“We can win!” Hayhek yells.

“You think that! Others don't! Pay more attention, runeforger's friend! Look above! See!”

Hayhek focuses his attention further up from Helzar. Like a cloud of bats runeknights are rising from the battle, crawl-swimming with all their might to get away. The suddenness of the demons' assault has broken them—and before the demons themselves even reached them!

“Fools!” Hayhek shouts. “They'll be massacred!”

“The demons don't care about those retreating! They aren't chasing, can't you see? We're the fools!”

“When the Runethane gets them—Helzar and her—”

“They won't, Hayhek! Once we're back to the realm, we're taking our families and leaving it! We're going back to Allabrast! Vanerak has broken many of the Runeking's codes—we have a perfect right to!”

“We'll be caught!”

“Never! How will they catch us, even if they do survive? Come on, Hayhek! We can be free of this place! And we'll free the runeforger too!”

Hayhek clenches his jaw. He focuses down, then up. Can they really do this? Really escape? He wishes it were so. He does not want his daughters, hell-bent on becoming runeknights themselves against his wishes, to be thrown like rags into the furnace-glow of Vanerak's ambitions.

A runeknight struggles up past him, then another. A possessed, glowing with patches of heat, is giving chase. Hayhek cuts its arm and leg. The tooth-visored runeknight finishes it off, then presses his helmet against Hayhek's once more.

“Well? Are you coming or not?”

Hayhek focuses below again. There are more demons than dwarves now—he can barely see Vanerak—and they continue to flood from the entranceway. He focuses up and make a rough count. Over two hundred runeknights are scattering away.

He makes his decision. There is only one right choice: to protect his family, and he cannot do that if he is dead.

“Let's get away!” he yells. “Out and up!”

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To others, when they watch him fight, Vanerak's pollaxe seems to move almost automatically. A place it needs to be appears, and then it is parrying or striking as the moment calls for. It has a life of its own, many whisper. Can you not feel the force from it? It is a true weapon of a Runethane.

Vanerak sees the movement of the demons and strikes. A wave of force, perfectly angled to pass through as many of them as possible, does so. They fall apart. He kicks and his great strength pushes him into the entranceway. More demons rush and are annihilated. The sheer force of his true metal weapon is more than enough to destroy them, no runes of discord required.

Kick by kick and cut by cut he advances further. The tunnel curves upward. The demons redouble their fury. Heat claws at him from behind. His foilsuit repels them for vital seconds in which he spins and slams down his weapon's hammer-side. Force stuns them, then the axe-side disintegrates them. He spins back and continues his slashing advance. Lines appear in the stonework. His true metal weapon can cut what ordinary metal and magma cannot even scratch.

Forward is the only way. The cages and spiked traps Halax pointed out to him hinted that his instinct was right, and that the center was where they must head. This mass assault proves it further. The demons do not want him to advance. Their secret knowledge, whatever it is, lies ahead.

Strike by strike he continues to push through. The demons give up on attacking him directly and flow over his head. He slashes, but they are too quick and he cannot destroy all of them. No matter; Halax and Nazak will kill them.

He slows his advance, stops. Halax and Nazak: where are they? He cannot sense them. He focuses backwards. They are right on his periphery, retreating. Conducting a fighting retreat, but retreating all the same.

Has the battle behind soured? He and his elites should have stemmed the tide of demons for the rest of the army. Are too many making it out?

Further up the corridor, still a little way away, is a staircase. On the walls flanking it—Vanerak's heat mask allows him to make this out in great detail—are engravings of a procession of dwarves in armor thick with runes. Legible runes. They are kneeling, armored heads bowed low. Their spears and swords are enruned also.

They are runeknights, the first runeknights. Who might the first runeknights have bowed to? The answer is obvious. Vanerak thrusts forward. His focus is fixed on the staircase; he ignores the demons rushing over him. At the top is a sudden blankness. The staircase continues into open air, it seems, and out of the magma there will be the answers he seeks, the final confirmation of his theory of the creation of runes.

But he has overextended. He focuses behind again. Halax and Nazak are out of range of his heat-vision. He must go back, sort out whatever is going on behind. He may be Runethane, but even Runethanes need to breathe. His cable, true metal though it is, is not invulnerable.

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Patience and focus take me through the thousands of perfect beats, and finally, though I know not how long it has taken me, I finish.

I make the last adjustment on the third spike. I tap to confirm, and the tune rings clearly. I tap each again, just to make sure. Their violent harmonies are almost pure and a deep sense of relief comes through me.

Upon the anvil are three spikes of true metal, solid beyond solid, heat-resistant beyond the hottest depths of magma, sharp enough to pierce whatever I thrust them at. What is more, they brim with life, with the feeling I have been searching for ever since the end of the trial. It thrums from them, and once enruned, will thrum louder.

I stand here for a while, just running my fingers over them, caressing them. I whisper that I am sorry for the loss of their sibling. They do not seem to hear nor care. I do feel some emotion from them, though: desire. They want to be enruned. To be given purpose.

“Once you are welded,” I whisper. “Once you are welded!”

Now to alter the frame of the trident—

The door shivers. I turn in alarm. It shakes again, and once more, twice more. It is being drummed upon. The beats increase in frequency. Someone is trying to get in.

Time did not pass for me here yet it did outside. Fear clutches at my heart. I have been too slow. There was never any doubt about that, I suppose. Forging cannot be rushed. I was a fool to ever think I had a chance at winning this race.

“Form a barrier!” yells one of the eighth degrees. “Protect the runeforger!”

The victor has been decided. And whoever it is, it seems they want something to do with me, for good or ill. Likely ill.

I grasp my forging hammer tightly.