I pick up the two triangles that are to become my ears and suddenly doubt myself. It’s been too long since I crafted something. Shouldn’t my first attempt after such a long, stressful break be something simpler? Repairing the basic shape of my boots and gauntlets hardly counts as forging, after all, and my ears need to be perfectly symmetrical. I remember just how difficult crafting my last pair was.

Yes, I should save these for later. I’ll do my waist plates first; I put down the triangles and pick up the larger half ovals. There are eight, three for my front, three for my back, and one each for the sides. Each apart from the front and back central ones will be curved down its vertical to fit around me neatly. They will protect me from my lower belly nearly down to my knees.

I start on the side plates first. I place the first on the anvil, with one half leaning off the edge, and begin to cold hammer it roughly into shape. The clang of hammer on titanium rings in my ears, slightly muffled because of the protective cloth on the anvil. Vibrations shiver through my fingers, waking up my muscles, and blow by blow my strikes become smoother.

One half becomes evenly curved, then the other. I hold the plate to my hip to make sure it’ll be a good fit. I think it will, though I'll only be sure once they're all done and linked together. I do the opposite side plate then compare the two.

They’re not symmetrical; the left is a little more harshly curved than the right. I sigh. Though being in the forge does feel like being at home, it can be a frustrating place to live.

I lay them aside and start work on the four that’ll go between side and center plates. Only half of each needs to be curved—for example, the front left one will be curved at the left so it can overlap the left side-plate, but its right side will be straight to neatly overlap the middle plate.

My hammer-arm is beginning to grow heavy, and my fingers are starting to ache from the vibrations humming through them. Sweat drips into my eyes and I blink it out, wipe off my brow and soggy beard. My clothes are damp and sticking to my skin, and I can hear my breath becoming ragged.

I take a draught of lukewarm water. It’s not very refreshing. I consider resting but resist the urge. Endurance is a vital attribute for a runeknight: one can never have enough of it.

I pick up two plates at a time, push them against my waist to see which fit best with the curve of my body. The right side-plate and back right corner plate seem the most snug, and still seem that way when I equip my leg plates. They go neatly against the armor. Maybe a little too neatly. I try the left side-plate, but it’s too harshly curved to fit well.

Very carefully I make the curve of the right plates a tiny bit wider, fit them again. Perfect—hopefully. I take another few gulps of lukewarm water, stretch my hands and arms, crack my shoulders and neck, and start hammering the other plates to make them even with the two best-fitting ones.

The work is not only exhausting on my arms and fingers, but also on my eyes. They start to twinge with all the effort of making everything even. It’s not good enough to just place one on top of the other, like stacking bowls, to make sure their curvature is the same—such a primitive method done with pieces as big as these can fail to reveal all sorts of inadequacies of form.

Eventually I finish hammering them. Each is still rough, beaten, with a hundred different slight bumps and depressions that must be evened out, but they’re symmetrical enough for the next stage.

My hands are shaking and every muscle of my arm feels like it’s been itself beaten with a hammer, so I call it a day—though I’m honestly not sure how long a day even is anymore.

After a sleep and meal, and another sleep to heal some of the stiffness from my arms and hands, I’m back in the forge. Each plate will be linked to the ones over or underlapping it as well as a thick leather belt which will go underneath them all, so it’s time to make some holes.

With a hand drill, I carefully carve out three holes along the tops of each plate. This is a harder process than it might seem at first glance, for each hole must be even sided and smooth. Although the size and evenness of each hole won’t affect the structural integrity of the metal in any way, it’s a fact that the more perfect a plate is, the better the runes will take to it.

My eyes flick to the triangles that are to become my runic ears, and I feel slightly nervous. Was my smelting really pure enough? The runes on them are going to have to be extremely precise, more precisely made than any I’ve crafted so far, and when making something with such fine details, even the smallest unevenness or impurity can cause disproportionate harm to the final craft.

Stolen story; please report.

I refocus myself. Those can be inspected later, melted down and re-smelted if necessary. After at least an hour of drilling, the holes in my waist plates are complete. I thread leather through to link them and wrap them around myself.

The fit is more or less perfect, and should be completely perfect once the titanium fasteners are done, since they’ll be a bit tighter than the leather, which I now untie.

It’s time to turn these roughly beaten plates—roughly to my eyes, at least, they’re smooth as still water compared to my first couple sets of armor—into pieces I’ll be proud to walk around in.

I begin to hammer with tiny, light strokes. My eyes strain to look for the smallest imperfections, the tiniest bends in my reflection. After doing one, my vision is slightly blurry. After another hour on the next, my vision is properly blurry, like I’ve had too much bad beer, and the whites of my eyes have become a bloody red in my reflection. I rub them and sit down on the steps.

The plates are not quite smooth enough; I can feel it, even if I can no longer see it. Seeing with sound, that’s what I need to do. I pick up the smoothed one and tap it with a chiming rod. The ring is very slightly uneven. Very gently, I brush my fingers along it. There’s some imperfections, extremely slight. Worryingly, I think the left side of it might be half a degree more curved than the right, but I can’t tell for sure.

Am I being too perfectionist? No. A runeknight quests for perfection; that’s his—or her, if you’re not down here—final goal for each piece, even though very few can ever reach it. If there’s a way I can make the plates more even, improve the runic harmonics just a fraction, I must take it.

And that way is to forge my new runic ears. That’s how I can gain perfection. I need to quit putting off the hardest work and instead commit myself to it.

I swap the half-done waist plates for the two hand-sized, unpolished triangles. First, I must check again for imperfections. I wet a cloth and place it over my eyes, lie back to try and relax them. Then I climb out of the forging pit and stand directly under one of the ancient maces hanging from the ceiling.

Trying to ignore the sense of disgust that comes from seeing this ancient and beautiful weapon being treated as nothing more than a chandelier, I hold the triangles up to the bright light for inspection. One side is slightly duller than the other, but it doesn’t seem to be scratched in any way. This puzzles me.

Was there a gap between metal and lid? A slight one, of course, since the titanium shrank slightly while it cooled. But this shouldn’t have affected the color. I go to my storage and bring the mold to my forging pit, inspect it.

I curse. So that’s what’s gone wrong. There’s a slight layer of dust on it. When preparing the mold I cleaned it thoroughly, but I must have neglected to clean the inside of the lid enough.

Maybe I should have let the metal cool in the crucible, then heated and hammered out the resulting cylinder. I was worried that if I did that, I wouldn’t get an even square. Looking back I suppose I could have just sanded any unevenness away.

Fortunately, the impurities are only on one side. I nod confidently. A good, harsh polish should remove the dust embedded into the metal. It’ll make the sheet a fraction of a millimeter thinner, of course, but as long as the polish is even this won’t affect how the ears work.

So this is how I spend most of the rest of the session: polishing until my hands are numb and my wrists and forearms are cramping. I nearly stop there, but decide I might as well even up the sides too. I place the triangles together in the vise and polish the edges until they are perfectly straight, or at least as straight as I can get them with my senses unaugmented.

I wonder how the senior runeknights up above made their crafts so perfect. None ever used runic ears, nor did I ever see anything like runic eyes. Maybe it’s just a century’s worth of instinct. Something else too, perhaps. There must be many closely guarded techniques I’ve never been privy to—down here also. I certainly don’t think Nthazes has given me his full knowledge of how to forge runic ears, though this is likely because he doesn’t think I’m ready to understand, rather than because he’s jealous of his secrets.

After another good couple of hours polishing, I judge that the impurities are gone, and I prepare to start the curling process. I’m only two strikes of my hammer in when I hear shouting from up above:

“Look! Look!”

I rush out my pit at the same time everyone else rushes from theirs. A tight crowd presses around me; I can’t see anything but a sea of sweaty hair and the occasional helmet. I'm pushed forward, shoved back, get my toes stomped on as dwarves try to make their way either to the commotion or away from it. I shove forward—if there’s been a killing, I need to know who’s there.

I hear more yelling from the front, then crying.

“What’s going on?” I ask the dwarf in front. “I can’t see!”

“Neither. What’s going on?” he asks the dwarf in front of him.

Eventually my question, and doubtless many copies of it, filters to the front, and the answer filters back. No killing, apparently. A tenth degree just thought he saw a shadow and collapsed in shock. He’s already being helped up to the meal hall for some strong beers and calming words.

The crowd disperses. I shake my head, go back to my forging pit, then decide to call it a day—or a session, or something. I need a drink myself, and another good sleep.