It almost feels more comfortable, somehow, to be forging down here in the caves with raw magma for heat, tongs of rough iron, and a simple large rock for a hammer. Sure, it’s harder to be accurate, and my tools break several times. But up in the guild’s forges there was always the annoyance of someone peeking in, or banging at the door claiming they’ve booked it for this time even though they haven’t, or Guildmaster Wharoth’s accountant trying to overcharge you for everything. Somehow forging down here is more pure, closer to my dwarvish ancestral nature.

If my forefathers managed with magma pools and rocks, why can’t I? We wrap our arms in salamander skins (the trolls hunt them on occasion by throwing rocks from a long distance) and begin.

First order of business is thick steel plates. Armor is always best when each piece is composed of the same metal, and there just isn’t enough titanium, tungsten, gold et cetera for a full set that’s thick enough to stop a troll’s hammer.

There isn’t enough steel either, but we can make it from iron. I find a tungsten breastplate, hammer it into a more concave shape—bloody hard work—chip off the fire-resistance runes so heat can penetrate through, and use it as a crucible. I place twisted iron in, semi-submerge the crucible where the magma is shallow, and when the iron is a runny white-orange mass, drop in algae which becomes instantly carbonized.

I mix using a titanium sword. I feel like a mad cook creating a soup for a fire-snake of the deepest magma seas.

Hayhek forges himself a basic chisel and hollows out some shallow rectangles of various sizes in one of the few exposed sections of floor. We very carefully pour the molten steel into the hollows, wait for it to cool, and prize it out.

We repeat this process until we have enough steel to work with. It takes several sleeps—I’ve stopped counting time in days and, funnily enough, that seems rather natural to me. Why should dwarves measure time in terms of the sun and moon?

“Can finally the forging begin now?” asks Dwatrall.

He’s wrapped head to toe with the rest of the trolls’ stock of salamander skin. Only his gray-green eyes are visible, and with his trollish form hidden I can almost imagine that he’s some kind of overgrown dwarf.

Despite his wrappings he’s been sweating and scratching all through the process. Even when we told him there was nothing to do but wait as we chiseled and stirred, he insisted on staying in the forge asking incessant questions.

“Why does carbon make iron strong?”

“Because the carbon changes the grain structure of the crystals,” I answer. “Making the metal harder to deform.”

“Why is it harder to deform?”

“The crystals are smaller, and in a less regular order that makes them more resistant to being forced one way or another.”

“What’s a crystal anyway?”

“A regular arrangement of pure particles.”

“Pure particles?”

“The smallest possible form of a material, a tiny ball that cannot be divided under any circumstances.”

“Exactly how tiny are these pure particles?”

“They’re...”

And on, and on.

I don’t mind, because although his queries come in an unending torrent, no two are the same. Once I give him an answer he’ll never forget it. It’s quite uncanny, though he finds our ability to stop remembering things more so.

“Trolls never forget,” he says. “Though most of us don’t take in much in the first place.”

His grammar improves immensely too. Soon he’ll be more eloquent than Hayhek and I both put together—not that Hayhek says much. Despite his age, he seems rather less knowledgeable than me.

Once our steel plates are prepared it’s time to transform them into sections of armor. The process is as it always is: heat, quench, hammer, heat, quench, hammer, heat... Sometimes hammer while cold. Slowly my new suit comes together, thicker and better formed than any I’ve made before.

“How do you do it?” Hayhek asks me one time.

“Forge?”

“So quickly. So easily!”

“It doesn’t feel easy to me.”

“It looks easy!”

“Show me what you’re doing.”

I watch him work on a small rectangle he’s trying to turn into a vambrace, and his technique is to my eyes rather lacking. He’s cold-battering it into shape around a vaguely pointed part of his stone anvil, but putting in far too much strength.

Stolen novel; please report.

“You should be more gentle. Stop attacking it.”

“Gentle? It’s metal, needs a good whack.”

“Whoever told you that? You’re working with it, not battering it apart.”

“Easier said than done.”

“You just have to feel it through your skin... We’re dwarves, we’re born to this.”

“Maybe I’m just out of practice.”

“Out of practice?”

“Haven’t made anything in ten years. Didn't have the money.”

“Well...” I gesture to the stacks of armor and weapons of every kind of metal I’ve heard of. “No need for money down here.”

“Money is important to dwarves, yes?” says Dwatrall.

“It’s everything,” says Hayhek. “The more you have, the more you go up.”

“Interesting. In troll society, it is having big fists that makes you go up. And you either have those or you don’t. Can’t make them bigger through determined work.”

“Hah!” Hayhek barks. “If you want gold, determined work isn’t going to bring you the whole way. It’s about who you know, Dwatrall. If they like you or not.”

“If they see you working hard,” I say, “They’ll like you.”

“Easy for you to say. You work hard and make something incredible, Zathar. The rest of us work hard and make something decent. Not enough to impress anybody.”

I shrug and get back to my hammering. Dwatrall returns to his too, watching my methods closely. Although he has the brain to remember what I tell him, his application is rather clumsy. Steel chips and pings off the ceiling and into the lava, pings down the exit tunnel, nearly gets in my eye a few times. His hands aren’t suited for the delicate job of wielding a hammer.

“Hard this,” he says in a tone of abject frustration.

“You need to work with something heftier,” I say. “Give me a while.”

I pause the construction of my armor for a few sleeps to chip out a square in the stone floor that’s five foot by five and two inches deep. I take up the pieces he was working with and melt them down in the tungsten crucible, pour them into the mold. Many hours later it's cooled.

Dwatrall is the only one strong enough to prize out the massive sheet.

“Excellent,” he says. “And watch this. Here is how trolls shall forge.”

He lays it on the floor, for it’s too big to rest easily on even his troll-scale anvil, and he hammers and bends it, shapes it into a sharply angled breastplate with naught but his hands. It doesn’t even take him a day, or rather the space of time between two sleeps. Hayhek backs away from the finished piece, mildly frightened, when Dwatrall holds it up. I clap.

“Very impressive.”

“Biggest piece, so it was easy. Next few will be harder.”

Our forging continues. Hammer-blows ring and steel groans. The plates are done—now for the rest of it. Chainmail would take too long to put together, and is likely impossible for Dwatrall to manage with his bulky fingers and long nails. Instead we have been preparing amphidon skin leather.

First we scraped away any excess flesh. Then we stretched the skins over the roof of the forging-cave to dry out as we worked. The smell was, unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, drowned out by the stink of Dwatrall’s sweat and did not trouble us while we worked.

Then we soaked it in the waters of the troll’s grotto to get its flexibility back, and now it’s ready for use.

“It’s green,” Hayhek says. “I hope the algae hasn’t done anything to it.”

“It’ll be fine,” I say.

We form the leather into overalls and rivet the plates to them. This is the most tedious task of all, for each steel nail must be forged by hand. And as for drilling holes into the armor plates! There are no diamond tipped drills here, just the tips of tungsten and titanium blades that must be turned awkwardly and very slowly.

How long have we been down here, forging like the dwarves of old? I have lost count. Up in the city we had weeks, and months, and years to measure by, but down here are only sleeps and meals and I’ve long since lost track of them.

Three months or so have passed, is my estimate.

“I make it four,” Hayhek says. “We’ve used too much time. We should have hurried.”

“No,” I say firmly. “Wharoth always told me not to hurry. And look what we’ve created! Even un-runed, they’re beautiful.”

“Indeed they are,” Dwatrall agrees. “And I know just the place to admire ourselves in them.”

He leads us back toward the entrance to the main grotto, then turns off down a side tunnel. It climbs up fifty feet or so until we emerge into a cavern perhaps thirty feet in diameter with one of the most incredible natural features I’ve even seen.

“Unbelievable...” Hayhek whispers.

I step closer. The cavern is divided in half, one half higher than the other. The divider is a long ridge of silvery ore, down which water flows. The flow has been continuing for so long uninterrupted through the ages that the silver is smoothed to a mirror. A soft glow from ridges of fungi on the ceiling lights all in gentle white.

And in the mirror, we look upon ourselves.

My armor is perfectly formed. I had no rulers or compasses to measure with, yet each leg plate, vambrace, and sabaton is a perfect copy of its opposite. The plates are thick, lending the suit a sense of weight and solidity my armors until now did not have. Yet despite this solidity, they are balanced and fitted so perfectly to my body that I feel nearly as agile in the armor as out of it.

Of course, there are no runes yet, but I have prepared for them. The flat portions of the vambraces line up with where the line of runes on my gauntlets point. And my helmet has a crescent flare just over the eyes, onto which I plan to graft something very interesting indeed.

“Yours is superb,” Dwatrall says to me. “I have a great deal to learn. Yet I have learned a great deal already! This is the first suit of armor worn by a troll.”

It certainly has a trollish look to it. No part is symmetrical, nor smooth, yet each is fitted in such a way to make his massive form even more so, and the effect is such that I can’t help but be impressed.

Hayhek sighs as he looks upon his own. “I just can’t get it right without proper tools.”

“It’s not bad,” I say. It really isn't, if a bit plain.

“Nothing compared to yours, though. Yours is... It’s very well made, Zathar. I can see why Yezakh took such a shine to you.” His shoulders slump. “Ah, I really should have spent more time down in the forge.”

“Runes are more important than the frame. You’ll be powerful once they’re on, damn powerful. Your wife will get to see that, and your daughters too.”

He wipes tears from his eyes. “I hope so.”

We continue to admire our crafts for a long while, then return to the forge to plan our expedition for reagent.