My fingers are shivering in anticipation of this final task. Upon the anvil lies my weapon, coils of golden wire, a cup of incandesite and a small, paper-thin sheaf of hytrigite. Next to these are drafts for my poem, with some large sections completely dashed out and others re-written.
The ending—I am not sure what it will be. I will have to trust in my trance for its creation, even trust in whatever resides in the sphere. I must go as deep into my power as I dare and find inspiration there. Yes, it is dangerous to give up control—yet I have no choice. Control is a luxury, not a necessity. A cursed weapon will kill Vanerak just as dead as something completely under my power.
Beside me is a bucket of water, and I've found some healing chains also, up in an alcove behind the guards' seats. Hopefully I will not burn so hot that I cannot apply them to myself. I try not to remember how painful it felt to have flames dancing on my skin.
I step back. It is time to begin. Vanerak could be back at any second. It has been a long time already—he might already be close to the magma shore, if he is not dead, or in the sunken city deep in study of runes that will somehow render my power obsolete.
I shut my eyes and wait for the trance to take hold. It does suddenly, comes in a blazing rush of heat that envelops me from all sides. I gasp, then my body vanishes. A heavy presence looms behind: the sphere.
I waste no time in willing the power forth. It responds immediately, sending ripples through the magma as it pours upward over the sphere. I brace; a moment later the sphere blasts it through me. I struggle to wrestle with it, master it. Somewhere my ruby is burning cold.
With all my effort I manage to turn the raging torrent into a mere beam of blistering heat piercing through my heart. Now, power mastered—to a degree—I can work.
I concentrate on remembering the poem. The first line comes to me, telling of demons and dwarves at war. Its beginning two runes need no alteration: there are as powerful as they can be in this script. The rest of the line, though, doesn't quite fit with the runic flow as it will likely be at the twin end stanzas. This poem is a saga, a narrative, and start and end must be well-linked.
Rune by rune I re-compose. The flow of power becomes faster and more direct. A line changes here, bends there, and connotations change. While first I'd envisioned something more ordered, with battle-lines opposing one another, instead a melee forms, of dwarves slashing wildly and brutally yet being overcome at every turn. Many are possessed and kill their own kind. More demons join the fight, then more dwarves to face them.
The magma, for this is of course where the battle takes place, bubbles and roils. I had not intended for the battlefield to become this way, yet it does, it must. Within it the melee degenerates further into a killing frenzy, dwarf against possessed against demon, and in the chaos it is starting to become difficult to tell friend from foe.
Molten metal mixes with the molten stone to form rivers within currents, that froth with blood-steam.
All this is just the saga's prelude. Now for the core of what I am to say—the grand slaughter. The violence increases further. Heat and darkness and sound and force become as one, and as they do so, the terminology I choose becomes less concrete, becomes metaphor.
Who kills whom? When a dwarf's weapon pierces order to create chaos, what does it pierce: dwarf, or demon? Possessed or friend? To read from the context of the prelude stanzas, one would assume that dwarf is killing demon—yet this is not set forth in concrete terms. It is left up to interpretation.
Order creates chaos. Chaos churns further chaos. What exactly does this mean? The runes do not speak in specifics. When a point pierces the heart, what is the heart? The inner sphere of a demon, or the key stanza of a poem? I liken demons to poems themselves; I say they are arranged lines of power just as stanzas of a poem are arranged lines of power. When the lines are destroyed, is a demon being destroyed, or the weapon and armor of a dwarf?
The runic flow's increasing complexity is beginning to trouble me. I need to reign it in or else expand it and re-bind it in some clever way. With only a little hesitation, I loosen my hold on the power.
The sudden influx of heat knocks me off balance. My sense of the magma around me tilts and quakes. I struggle to regain control, wrestle it, compress it. Somewhere, far away, my flesh is starting to grow hot. My ruby turns cold. I ignore these distant sensations; I must trust that I will survive. I've done this before—survived each time.
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I must push further! I reach the stanza that will wrap around the final section of haft before the bifurcation. How to end it? This is the moment in which inspiration must come.
Originally I had envisioned a triple-ending, of demon killing dwarf on the left, dwarf killing demon on the right, and dwarf killing possessed on the central. How can I alter this to work on only two tines? But now that I am in the depths of the trance, this original idea seems half-done anyway, unfocused. The killing of dwarves cannot be so obvious.
I struggle to think amidst the rush of boiling power. How can the battle end? With death, naturally, but whose? Demons' on one, dwarfs' on another? No, no! I must maintain the deception that this poem is only for the killing of the demons and its haft-spike a mere afterthought toward dealing with the possessed.
I cannot think of a solution. I release my grip on the power a touch further.
As if it is a bar of metal suddenly heated to white that I'm grasping, my grip releases completely. Somewhere, far away, my body cries out in pain. I guess that flames are leaping on me. So I must finish now.
How to end? How to end this saga of violence and chaos? A dwarf strikes—or is it a demon? The strike is a lance of force piercing the heat—or is it heat itself? When it hits, the ordered lines of the demon—or the order of runic flow—or the life of a dwarf, a careful balance of blood and flesh and bone and the thought that gives these materials purpose—the order is sundered and mixed into the boiling stone and blood and metal.
Chaos turns to order, says one tine. The blow that breaks apart a creature causing disruption, breaks open the way for peace.
Order turns to chaos, says the other. There can be no peace, and order itself is a meaningless concept. There are only various patterns that shift.
The two end-stanzas agree on one thing, one sub-theme, however: change. Chaos to order, or order to chaos, or chaos to more chaos: there is change inherent in whatever process the deadly blow enacts.
In the end violence is done and the battle comes to an end. And just as the battle in the saga comes to an end, my battle here does also. I feel some pride at this: I am done, I have finished, and my power did not gain control over me. I mastered the rabidly thrashing tide of world's blood-heat and poured it into my poem. My will triumphed, this time. Now all I have to do is release the flow and exit my trance.
I will the power to die away. It increases. I attempt to thrust it back in the direction of the sphere, and it refuses to change course. I try to squeeze it, force its width smaller, like I did when I first entered the trance, but my strength is no longer enough.
My celebration of victory was premature. If I had a mouth I would shout in terror. White heat starts to overwhelm me. My soul—or whatever part of me is down here—has started to burn, and the pain is like nothing else.
It cannot end this way! My ruby is refusing the heat, condensing cold around it. I reach yet cannot grasp. It is too far away. I have to swim up, but if I direct even the merest part of my efforts away from wrestling the power, instant incineration will follow. I am in the position of someone grasping a ledge that is just below the top of a cliff. Safety is within a half-yard's reach, yet I cannot cling with just one hand. The moment I try to reach up, I will fall to my death.
There must be some way out! But I cannot find it. All I can do is grip, grasp around the power to stop it from increasing further. How long can I grip for, though? How long will the sinews of my soul last?
I start to feel my grip loosen.
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The net of chains, runes of hope and life glistening, sails through the heat-shimmering air of the forge, cooling and stilling it as it passes. Gently as a silken blanket, it lands upon the dark-bearded dwarf before the anvil. At its touch the flames dancing over his skin turn to steam and smoke, vanish in the air. A second later water from a wide bucket turns to drops like diamonds, flying. They soak the dwarf and cool his reddened skin. His eyes open then roll up, dark blue to red-run white.
To his knees he falls, then he slumps back, hits the floor with a thud.
“Let me slay him, Runethane!” says Nazak.
“That would be a waste,” says Halax.
“I also think we should kill him,” rasps Helzar.
Vanerak remains silent as he watches Zathar's twitching body. There is life left in the young dwarf still, a little. His fists clench—and he gasps, sucks in life. His breaths become even.
“He cheats death again,” says Nazak. “He won't cheat my axe to his neck, though. We must kill him.”
“A waste,” Halax repeats. “His ruby fascinates me. I would learn more.”
“He will not teach us.”
“He has taught us plenty.”
“You're outnumbered, Halax,” Helzar rasps. “Two to one we should kill him.”
“It is our Runethane who will decide, not us.”
“Runethane Vanerak, let us make a decision now,” says Nazak. “There is no time. We must not let the demons regain their strength.”
Vanerak kneels down beside Zathar's prostrate figure. He grasps him roughly by the shoulder, shakes him hard. The young dwarf's eyes flicker.
“Wake up, Zathar,” Vanerak commands.
He does not wake up.
“We should kill him,” Helzar rasps again. She is looking at Zathar's weapon with sudden alarm. “He has grown in power. He's a threat.”
“Or an asset,” says Halax. “And we are too few in number to be choosy.”
“Wake up, Zathar,” Vanerak repeats, and shakes him harder.
Still Zathar does not stir. Vanerak raises his hand and brings it down hard to the side of Zathar's face. Zathar shouts in pain and shock—and his eyes open.
“You have awoken,” Vanerak says. “This is good. I must make a decision, and I would hear what you have to say for yourself before I make it.”