Runic ears complete, I return to forging my waist-plates. Now that I can pick up on subtleties when I ring them with the chiming rod, I’m able to iron out all the minor dents and unevennesses with relative ease. It’s still a tough, oftentimes frustrating process, but I don’t make any major mistakes.
I heat treat them carefully, and am very happy to see that each comes out the furnace unwarped. Now it’s time for the runes.
New runes, not ones of abyssal scale. The poems on my old belly-plate and short waist plates are too small to go well on my new armor here. I’ll find a way to utilize them on my breastplate.
I’ll be using gold and incandesite. I’m not planning to do anything fancy with them: just some regular poems composed of runes of strength, toughness, hardness, and lightness. I want to make something reliable, since these plates are going to be protecting some very vital areas indeed.
On second thoughts, perhaps gold and incandesite is the wrong choice for them. Silver is a bit calmer. Then again, gold does have good affinity with titanium, and incandesite is the reagent I’m most experienced with.
I decide to stick with my decision and begin to twist the golden wire into shape, paying more attention than I ever have before to make sure each rune is exactly how I remember it. I think hard on every angle, every length. Every five runes I read back to check the previous ones have not altered on their own.
I read over the first poem. It’s a twenty-six line, three stanza narrative about a ball of molten steel caught in the current of a river, gaining in strength as it cools and takes hammer-blows from spires of rock. The story is not physically accurate, of course, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s a metaphor for the toughening of metal by hammering and quenching.
Not a single rune is altered. I double-check each one, running backwards through the poem so I don’t get distracted by my own clever wording and turns of phrase, and am pleased to see that each is exactly as I remember it from the dictionaries. Will they stay that way? Time to see. I brush incandesite onto the reverse of the first rune, position it at the top left of the titanium plate, heat up a rod to white heat, touch the rune with it. The incandesite powder flashes brilliantly—in my runic ears I hear a joyous hiss—and the rune is grafted.
It is unchanged. I do the next one, and the next. I inhale the scent of molten metal. The strokes stay as I wrought them. One by one I graft each rune until the poem is fully embedded into the titanium.
Anxiously I read over it once more, and am relieved to see the runes have stayed the same. I let out the breath I’m holding and move on to the next plate. Upon it I inscribe a similar short epic, this time about a stone growing smoother and harder over time as it rolls down a tunnel. The other six also take narratives of the same structure.
I keep the epics as grounded in reality as I can. They’re not particularly inspiring, but again, I’m aiming for reliability here.
Over several sessions of many painstaking hours of grafting, all eight plates are complete. I twist some fasteners into shape, polish them, and make sure they’re all exactly the same dimensions. Then I fix the titanium plates both to each other and to a thick belt of leather.
My craft is done. I try it on, do a few circuits of the forging pit. I tap each plate with a hammer, jog around the anvil half a dozen times. I nod. This armor is serviceable.
A strange sense of disappointment weighs down on me. I take off the armor, lay it out on the anvil, and read over the poems once more, this time not checking for accuracy in the runes, but just trying to read as another dwarf might, letting my eyes flow along the lines.
My epics are dull. They’re well-structured, including everything the textbooks say a short epic ought to, yet the turns of phrase I found so clever when drafting them now seem cliché, uninspired. Each tale reads like a facsimile of some better classic. There’s no flair to them, nothing to spark runic energy.
Well, that’s what I wanted, isn’t it? Reliability, not flair. But all the same this is far from my best work. I run my hands along the lines and the energy within feels somehow lethargic.
I remember what Nthazes said about my amulet: don’t over-plan your poems, let them flow naturally.
I look over at the titanium that’s to be my breastplate. Should I take his advice when enruning it? When I add to my poems of abyssal scale, should I forgo checking each rune for accuracy? A cold sweat forms on my brow despite the heat of the forge, for I know that if I let the runes flow as my fingers please, they will warp and alter.
My runic poems will be better for it. That is for certain—this uninspired craft proves that. Yet I am fearful of what this strange ability might mean.
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Too fearful of my ability, I don’t return to the forges. Instead I spend my time in the meal hall, drinking and eating and sleeping. Because of my battered armor I can go on no hunts, so I perform other tasks: cleaning, carrying materials, bringing food and water to the wounded. I make myself useful in the kitchens, applying myself to the stewing of meats and vegetables.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
My recipes come out as I intend them.
I use one worry to dampen the other: I think about the killer. When will he strike next? Where, and most importantly, how?
I think over the circumstances of Utlock’s killing again and again. I dismiss one theory after another. Could Fjalar have concealed the weapon in his mouth? No, that would've been incredibly dangerous, and anyway he was opening and closing his mouth, moaning in pain and trying to talk to us as we bandaged him. Could he have concealed it in a flesh-colored sheath strapped to his leg? No, we would have noticed the bump.
Perhaps the weapon is not a dagger but a very long, thin sword, and Galar reached back with it to stab Utlock. But that’s also ridiculous—he couldn’t have concealed such a long weapon. Besides, why would Galar have taken such a risk? It’s not inconceivable that draining Utlock’s blood somehow replenished Fjalar’s, if Fjalar indeed committed his murder. But Galar was in no such life-death situation.
It’s hard to imagine Galar taking such a risk with dwarves standing all around, especially considering how each murder up until Utlock’s was committed when the victim was alone. Even when he killed two at once, the killer likely struck Yalthaz when Danak was in a different part of the storeroom.
And methods aside, what’s the ultimate motive behind all this?
Why take their blood? I presume it’s being stored somewhere—though what absurdly powerful runes can transport it in an instant from weapon to vessel, I cannot imagine. Unless the killer is using some kind of foul shadow magic to absorb it, but again, why?
Maybe collecting it to boil down to iron. Yet despite tasting and smelling strongly of the stuff, blood actually contains surprisingly little. Macabre dwarves in ages past have tried and failed at such crafting.
I sigh and curl deeper into my blankets. My fists clench and unclench as I work myself up to the task I’ve set myself: talk to Galar, soon, with all the deception I'm capable of.
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How soon? I can’t keep putting it off forever, yet I can’t bring myself to go back down to the forges. Each time I try to muster the courage, I find myself turning back into the meal hall for another beer, or walking down to the kitchens to lose myself in the distraction of the pseudo-forging.
Until one meal I listen in on two dwarves sitting opposite me:
“The almergris is almost ready, I hear. But are you ready?”
“No. I’m damn scared.”
The first speaker is a third degree, I think, or one of the more experienced fourth degrees, and the second is probably ninth or tenth. Eighth at most.
“Why’s that, then?” asks the first speaker.
“Because I’ve heard the stories, uncle.”
“What stories?”
“You know full well,” the nephew snaps. “About dwarves getting their eyes burned out. Those ones.”
“Ah, those ones. Once you forge better ears though, you’ll start to think less of sight. Who knows? Maybe you’ll craft something so good you’ll stop needing your eyes entirely.” He laughs darkly.
“It’s not a joke!”
“Oh, I’m just trying to lighten the mood a little. Cheer you up.”
“You’ve got a funny way of going about it.”
“Really, though, the danger’s overblown. Blindings are rare.”
“Only because most of us aren’t crazy enough to touch it.”
“Using it is a necessity now.”
“That doesn’t make me any less nervous. Instead of mocking me for being scared, how about you give some advice?”
"Advice from your old uncle, eh? First I've heard you ask for it."
"Just give me some."
“All right. Keep your eyes closed.” The older runeknight’s tone takes on a more serious tone. “Use a longer heated rod than you’re used to when grafting. Don’t leave the reagent anywhere near the furnace. And keep your eyes closed. I’ll say it three times it’s so important: keep your eyes closed.”
The younger dwarf is silent for a few moments, then he nods. “Thank you.”
“And one more thing—don’t be anxious. Almergris isn’t from a rock. It’s from something alive that died in great pain, killed by none other than us. If it senses weakness, you can bet things will start to go wrong.”
"I'll be careful."
"Not careful. Confident."
“Excuse me,” I say. “How long... I mean, how ready is the almergris?”
The third degree looks at me, frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, is it half dry, or three quarters dry, or what?”
“Four fifths, maybe. That’s what I've heard.”
“Thank you.” Abruptly I stand up.
"Where are you going, up-abover?" the younger dwarf asks suspiciously.
"Forges. Where else?"
No longer can I afford to waste time: in the chaos sure to ensue when the mass light-forging begins, there’ll be little time to spend on investigations.
"That eager to start, eh?" the third degree chuckles.
"Maybe." I look directly into his eyes and lower my voice. "By the way, I've heard a rumor going about, lately."
"Oh?" he says, cautiously.
"I've heard the new weapons of light are not for purely defensive purposes."
He shrugs. "Can't say I've heard that one."
The younger dwarf looks terrified. "What the hell do you mean, up-abover? What rumor?"
"There's been talk that we might go down the Shaft."
The younger dwarf's eyes widen. His uncle scowls at me.
"That's just a rumor. Don't worry yourselves about it. No one's been down the Shaft since it was first breached. The Runethane won't send us down there, no way."
I detect a hint of uncertainty in his voice.