All those who went on the expedition are granted a great amount of honor. I, whose rear-blow against the dithyok quite possibly saved Fjalar and several other dwarves’ lives, am singled out for a good deal more than average. With it I requisition enough high-quality titanium to fully replace my breastplate, and a large box of salterite so I can transfer the abyssal runes from my damaged one to it. Although the poems now look a little amateurish to me—all that thinking about runes for my amulet has improved my command of the art a good deal—the material itself more than makes up for the lack of elegance in a few of the stanzas.

I also requisition a hollow titanium pole to form Heartseeker’s new shaft, some gold wire so I can re-do the wording of the poems on my boots and gauntlets, quizik, plenty of incandesite and, because I still have a good deal of honor left, some unrefined hytrigite.

It takes me several trips to haul all this from the storerooms to my storage chests in the forging hall. It’s extremely crowded in here—all fifty-nine survivors of the expedition have just as much repairing to do as I have, or even more. For the first time ever down here I am forced to wait my turn to get access to a pit, just as I used to have to do ten years ago.

Nearly eleven years ago now, actually. I remember how shocked I felt when I first came down here, how suddenly those ten years seemed to have vanished. Now, after all that’s been happening, my old life—the Association of Steel, Wharoth, the brutal examinations, the bloody battles, the trolls, Vanerak—seems like it took place an aeon ago, to another dwarf.

It was not another dwarf back then, of course. It was me the black dragon tricked, me who caused the awful calamity—whose exact nature I still do not know, though by the amount of heat I felt in the tunnels I know it was cataclysmic. It was me who committed those crimes and me who must eventually stand trial.

I hope my contributions down here will end up being a point in my favor. Nthazes will vouch for me, I’m sure—so long as one or both of us do not end up falling to the killer.

I spot a dwarf leaving his forging pit and quickly claim it. As I haul my materials down a sense of tranquility comes over me. The heat from the furnace, the scent of burning coal, the clang of hammers all around me, and every other aspect of being here is comforting. I feel like I'm home.

For a runeknight, anywhere with heat, an anvil, metal and tools can be home, no matter which Runethane’s territory it is in or how far below or maybe even above the surface it may be. The forge is where we belong.

Enough reflection, I tell myself: it’s time for work. I start with the easiest tasks to get my hands and arms supple. Using an ordinary hammer I start to even out the dents in my arm and leg plates. The sound of steel on steel is relaxing after so many dozens of hours spent with tricky titanium: steel is a somehow more honest metal, bending how I want it to bend. The major dents are soon hammered out, so I replace my hammer with a smaller one and start to smooth everything up.

It’s not an easy process, since one wrong blow can take half a dozen more very careful ones to fix, but it’s far easier than most tasks in the forge. It’s almost soothing, and it ends too quickly.

Now to repair where the metal has been torn. This requires welding. I heat a rod of steel to white heat and run it along the gashes, back and forth several times for each until I’m satisfied the seal is strong enough not to come apart—though unfortunately they will still be weak points.

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Once the welds have cooled I will polish them; for the time being I move on to my gauntlets and boots. The titanium is simple enough to hammer back into its proper shape, and because it’s a naturally more flexible metal, the weakness incurred from all the battering will not be so much as with my steel pieces of armor.

The runes need a rethink, though. I give my arms and hands a rest and sit down on the steps. It’s time to work with my mind: I frown hard at the thirty poems adorning my gauntlets. My language was definitely too vigorous, too fiery. The one-two rhythm I’ve done for all of them is necessary for speed, but some of the subjects of my metaphors are far too extreme. Does my finger really need to lash out faster than a frog’s tongue?

Heartseeker needs to go faster than that, as fast as possible, yes, but one finger does not. The way I’ve written the poems, individually, unlinked except for a very loose common theme of speed, is not conducive to precise movement. I come up with a new idea for them—they’ll be linked by a stronger theme, and I’ll tone down the metaphors. As for my boots, I think if I erase the central jikthet runes—which means: lock, hold still, stick fast—from the lines that contact the ground when I walk, then remake them using hytrigite for the grafting, some of the poems’ enthusiasm for halting momentum will be kept in check.

Could that ruin the harmonics, though? I do some calculations, and work out that if I was to graft jikthet with hytrigite, a few of the others will have to be re-grafted too. Do I have enough hytrigite to replace all those runes? Only just—if I mess up the refining process I’ll have to come up with another idea.

I won’t do any of the rewriting just yet. It’s always best to sleep on these things, see how the runes look in the morning—it’s strange to think that it’s been eleven years since I last saw a morning, watched the orange glow fill Thanerzak's city from the mirrors above.

My runic ears are next. I take them off and turn them over in my fingers. The right one is bent halfway, folded in on itself, and the left has been crushed from above. A few garnets are missing, and some of the runes are totally unrecognizable. It’s no wonder they aren’t working, though that hasn’t been so much of a problem with torches and shining weapons set about the place.

With a pair of pliers I work at straightening out the right ear and un-crumpling the left. The damage is worse than I feared—they’ll need to be totally remade. I sigh. It won’t be an easy task, yet it’s one I have to prioritize. I need to remake them, and remake them better than ever, before the almergris has been dried enough to be used as a reagent.

From what I hear, the use of one’s ears is vital when working with it.

I should have enough titanium for the task. I double check and yes, I should be able to make them out of offcuts from the breastplate and girdle plates. Melted together with some of the failed rings from my chainmail forging, I’ll have enough for a grand pair, though I’ll have to be careful not to introduce any impurities into the metal.

My fingers and head are starting to ache. That’s enough forging for now—I’m still nowhere near recovered from the expedition, after all.

Yet I find myself reluctant to pack my things up and leave the pit. Not only does the forge feel like home, but it's also probably the safest place in the entire fort. While it’s true that the killer struck here before the expedition, now it’s too crowded for him to dare.

Where, then? Is there a pattern to the locations? Storeroom three times, forges, then on the hunt. No pattern I can see—yet that doesn’t mean I can’t make a prediction about where the next killing will come.

If it comes before Fjalar is recovered, it will be in the infirmary. If Fjalar is the killer, it’ll come there because it’s all he can reach, and if Galar is the killer, he thinks I suspect him, and will want to cover his tracks. Make sure I’m not able to narrow down who it is.

Because once I do figure out who it is, my interrogation of him or them will not be a pleasant one.