Hardrick is ready to forge. He spent the morning scraping out his family's entire savings from various accounts, and the afternoon buying materials and tools. Now he's rented out the best forge he could find for the night.

He has eight hours until dawn. He does not know if this will be enough for his ambition.

He takes out his metal. It's a bar of steel nearly as long as he is tall, of the best quality. With his tongs—extendable tungsten with heat proof rubber grips—he places the bar in the furnace.

Not five minutes later it's glowing white hot.

He lays it on the anvil, and begins.

----------------------------------------

The route the dragon told me is a winding one. I travel up, down, east and west. The tunnels go in great loops and spirals, until my dwarven sense of direction fails completely and I have no idea how deep I am or how far from the chasm. At several points the tunnels narrow so tightly I can’t proceed without sucking in my stomach and holding my breath for minutes at a time.

Even after I emerge from these sections, through which nothing even an inch wider than myself could squeeze, I can sense the dragon’s presence—a hot dryness on the back of my neck and a sense of dread. It’s tracking me, and though I know it wants me alive, it’s not a pleasant sensation.

The route is so complex it takes every ounce of mental effort I have to stay on track. But in those moments where it straightens out for hundreds of yards at a time, with no side-paths to get lost down or curtains of fungus to hack through, one thought dominates my mind:

My brother is alive.

Alive!

He was robbed the very day he dug that lump of salverite from the wall, beaten, had his thumbs crushed. I begged him to stay with me, to wait for them to heal, but even as a naïve fourteen year old I could see his hands were beyond repair. A week after the assault, he threw himself into the chasm.

Somehow survived. Must have hit something to break his fall on the way down, though if the dragon spoke the truth about him falling further down, it was likely more than a mushroom. There’s a river at the very bottom of the cavern—maybe into that.

And with two broken thumbs, he forged an artifact of great beauty.

My heart swells with pride. Of course he could do that! It’s in our blood. We’re destined, both of us, to rise and rise, up to the very top!

If only I could meet him. He’ll be proud of what I made too, I’m sure of it.

My route ends at a rusted manhole cover. I break through the decayed steel and emerge into Thanerzak’s side of the city as the dragon promised. And lucky for me it’s night; no sunlight beams from the mirrors up high.

I’m exhausted, covered in cave-slime, dressed in rags, but alive and more importantly carrying an artifact hopefully well-crafted enough to earn me entrance to a guild.

First though, I need to find a guild to gain entrance too. They're fairly recognizable, so if I find a spot high up, I’m sure I’ll be able to spot some. I climb up a ladder attached to the side of disused warehouse—rather tricky with one broken arm, but I manage.

Across the city I see them. I can tell by their shape: a long hall, faintly glowing from the forges within, next to sparring halls, accommodation, and some other buildings, all enclosed by a high fence. Though the general layout of each is the same, the sizes are not: some nearer the mountain are nearly districts in themselves, while the ones out here on the outskirts are barely a hundred yards a side.

I climb down the ladder and make my way toward the smallest. None of the bigger ones will let me one step inside their gates in my state, no way.

Dawn is still a couple of hours away, so I try to get some sleep slumped against the wall in a nearby alley. Nightmares of failure torment me until the mirrors above the city let loose the surface sun’s light. I peek out at the guild I’ve chosen.

Its name, written in wrought iron above the gate, is Dhal-Hart-Zthak, meaning ‘Association of Steel’. Nothing too grand or imaginative, and the guildhall is even shabbier looking than it did before the sun came up, but it is what it is. I wait until a runeknight walks out from the apartments across the street and unlocks the gate.

I hurry to him, ignoring the curious looks I get from other early risers.

“Excuse me!” I say, holding up my hand in greeting. “Excuse me!”

He turns to me, and wrinkles his nose. “What is it? You a miner?”

“I’d like to apply to join. Can I do that today? Now?”

He raises his eyebrows. I suddenly feel extremely self-conscious, excruciatingly aware of the difference in our appearances: him in gleaming runed steel plate with a bronze axe at his hip, and me in slimy rags clutching a half-blunt knife in my pocket.

“Please? I have a craft for you to examine.” I hold out my knife handle first. “That’s how this works, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he says slowly. “Well, anyone can apply. You might have worn something decent though. First impressions and all that.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“This is all I have.”

He sighs. “Well, can’t be helped. Wait out here while I get the guildmaster.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

He leaves me waiting. I begin to worry that the guildmaster is just going to order him to boot me back out. And if this place won’t accept me, which will? The walls of the guildhall are covered in mold. The ground is not even pavestones but dirty gravel. The air smells of thick smog from low-quality coal. The fence is rusted, and the fact the runeknight emerged from an apartment across the street implies they don’t even own their own accommodation.

To my relief, when the runeknight returns about twenty minutes later he tells me to follow him, and that Guildmaster Wharoth himself will judge my craft.

“Thank you again, it’s an honour.”

The runeknight shakes his head. “I wouldn’t be so happy about it. He’s in a foul mood. Nephews were on the piss all night. One of them would be judging you if they weren’t both so hungover, but now he has to do it, right in the middle of his work.”

“Oh. I’ll... I’ll try my best not to make his morning any worse, then.”

“That’s the spirit. Round here.”

Between the back of the guildhall and what looks like a small sparring hall, they’ve set up a table on the gravel. I guess they don’t want me dripping slime indoors. The runeknight gestures for me to sit down on a chair in front of the table, while he takes his place behind, on the left of the dwarf who must be Guildmaster Wharoth.

He looks just as I imagined a guildmaster would look: gray and grizzled. His slate-colored beard spreads over his chest. Unlike the two runeknights either side of him, he’s not wearing armor, but an apron of thick salamander skin, blackened from years of use. His bare arms bulge with muscle.

“Well?” he demands. “What have you got to show us?”

“This steel knife.” I place it on the table. My voice is quavering. “I forged it yesterday, the runes are a kind of copper.” I swallow. “The handle’s a bit crude, I know, I couldn’t get proper leather.”

“The handle isn’t the only thing that’s crude,” laughs the runeknight to the right of the guildmaster. His beard is a flaming red, oiled and perfumed even this early in the morning. “What did you do to this steel? I don’t think I’ve ever seen something so badly abused.”

“The metalwork does leave a lot to be desired,” agrees the first runeknight. “What do you think, guildmaster?”

Guildmaster Wharoth’s eyes meet mine, and they’re brimming over with anger. “What the hell were you thinking, bringing us this, and dressed in rags to boot? We’re a small guild, so you think we’re letting anyone in, is that it?”

“No! I... I put a lot of effort into it. It’s a bit blunt, but the runes...”

“Blunt?” He snatches it up off the table and holds it up to his eye. “Whelt, get me my glasses... No, I don’t need them. Even I can see this thing’s blunter than my backside.”

“The runes are good,” I plead. “Take a look at them, please.”

The one with the red beard, Whelt I think, takes my knife from the guildmaster and examines the runes.

“What kind of copper is this?” he sneers. “I’ve met whores more pure.”

“It was from a bat.” The quavering of my voice worsens—this is going even more badly than in my nightmare. “In the caves.”

“A bat?” says Wharoth. “Give that here, Whelt.” He squints at the runes. “A Thalat-Cur, you mean?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what it’s called. I’d never been down there before.”

“A poor choice,” says the first runeknight. “Their copper makes terrible runes.”

“It does,” agrees Wharoth. “They don’t stand up to power well at all.” He puts the knife up to his ear for a second. “Must be why its hum is so uneven. Stable, though. And...” He frowns at the blade. “Read out the runes for me, boy.”

“Zhakth-Madthaz, Gthal-Then, Halat,” I say.

He squints at the last rune. “This one isn’t Halat. Halat isn’t curved like this here. Someone get me my glasses!”

The first runeknight hurries into the guildhall and finds Wharoth’s glasses for him.

“That’s better. Yes, this isn’t Halat. I haven’t seen it before. Where did you learn it?”

His eyes aren’t angry anymore, but curious.

“My brother’s dictionary,” I answer. “Look.”

I take it out my pocket. It’s in even worse shape than before my journey through the tunnels, but the page with Halat is intact. Wharoth examines it.

“This is Halat. What you have written is not. Compare them.”

I do so. The guildmaster is correct: the rune I drew is one stroke different.

“It works though,” I tell him. “You can test it yourself.”

“I shall.”

He pricks his finger with the tip. Blood spurts out and runs up the blade, wrapping it in vines of liquid crimson. He pulls the knife away, but the stream of blood from his finger continues to flow toward it, up through the air.

He squeezes his cut finger against his thumb to stop the bleeding. He continues to stare at the blade for a good few minutes, watching the red dry on it.

“Weird,” Whelt offers.

“Very,” agrees Wharoth. “Very interesting, too.”

I try to calm my breathing. “Does that mean...”

“We’ll confer. Go back to the gates and wait for us.”

I bow and hurry to obey. I stare out at the street through the bars, heart pounding in my chest and in my ears. I can’t bring myself to turn around lest I see the guildmaster walking toward me shaking his head, a grim expression on his face.

“We’ve decided,” come his voice from behind. “Turn around!”

I do so and look at him. His face his not as grim as I feared.

“You’re in, two to one in favor. Your metalwork is shit, but a good job for having one broken arm.”

“You noticed?”

“Of course. Didn't want to show weakness in front of us, that right?”

“I guess.”

“Hathat’s running a bath for you, can’t have you walking around in that state. Oh, and what’s your name, short-beard?”

“Zathar.”

“Courage, in certain readings of certain scripts. Appropriate.”

I frown in confusion. “Certain readings?”

“Runes are complex.” He laughs. “You’ve got a lot of studying to do.”

“I know. I’m really in, then?”

“Yes.”

I bow deeply—deeper than I’ve ever bowed before. “Thank you so much. You don’t know how much this means to me. Thank you. Thank you.”

My tears fall to the ground like rain.

“Thank you so much.”