It is important for a dwarf to choose exactly the right weapon to suit his fighting style. The more muscular warrior might choose a mighty two-handed hammer to crush the heads of his foes. A nimble one might choose a needle-point sword to stab through his opponent’s visor and the gaps in his armor. One who favors disabling his enemy before killing him might choose an axe, to sever limbs and splinter shield.

I didn't really choose to wield a spear, of course. It was the only thing I could make on short notice—a rather primitive and embarrassing alteration of an iron weapon forged for practice. Yet I won two battles with it. Why change things?

My next weapon will be a spear as well.

First the haft. It is considered cheap to use wood for the handle of your weapon; not only does it tend to catch fire around magma, the only wood readily available underground is of dried mushroom stalks and isn’t particularly strong. So for my new weapon’s haft I buy a long pole of aluminum. It’s slightly more expensive than steel and not quite as tough, but it’s light.

Now for the spearhead. I plan to make it steel, as long as my forearm and tapering, perfect for stabbing through even the most minute gaps in armor. Possibly it will even pierce through fine chainmail.

After two weeks of forging and one of sharpening, it is done. I hold it out at arms length to admire. The forge’s fire flickering over it makes it look like a flame itself, a razor sharp candle-tongue of red and yellow.

I spend another night welding it ever so carefully to the aluminum haft. I do not use an ordinary technique, but an advanced method, accomplished with two thin, perfectly stenciled circles of incandesite, one on the haft and one on the spearhead, that must be aligned to each other exactly, and kept aligned throughout the entire heating and hammering process.

For a heart-stopping moment I think I’ve done it wrong, but then comes the characteristic flash of blinding white my textbook notes as the mark of completion, and weapon and haft are bound.

And now it is time for the salamander scale runes.

First I have to shape them. I have to buy special fuel for this, for ordinary heat cannot melt the black carbonite. The fuel is called dragon’s blood, although of course it has nothing to do with dragons—it’s a ferment of mushrooms harvested from deep below.

I separate the scales from red membrane, scrape them clean but for what I meticulously measure to be the exact right amount of residue, and heat.

My first attempt results in a bang that sends black fragments into my hand, fire into my beard, and brings a good dozen guildmates running to see what’s happened.

“Careful with that,” Whelt warns. “Didn't the guildmaster tell you to practice with ordinary scales first?”

“I’ll get it next time.”

“You just ruined the equivalent of an egg-sized diamond.”

“No need to exaggerate. I’ll get it next time!”

And get it I do. The next scale softens into a black sticky semi-solid—despite the heat its color eerily does not change—and I shape it into the rune I want.

I repeat with the next scale, and the next. Then it is time to leave them a day to cool.

I return to the forge to inspect, and my heart sinks in horror. They’re cooled, but their shapes aren’t quite right. They’ve come out slightly twisted. My head spins and I nearly fall down, as I realize the enormity of my failure. The shape of each scale is a good several millimeters off from the diagrams in my dictionary, and I have none left.

Well, I’ll just have to hope, I tell myself, as I align them along the razor edges of my spear, a tiny speck of incandesite under each one.

It takes just a tap to graft each one to the metal. Generally speaking, the highest quality runic materials take to their metal like fish to water, dragons to fire. Once the runes are grafted, the spearhead begins to glow softly, not brightly as I’d hoped.

The spearhead isn’t the only part that I’m going to enrune though. I welded head to haft with a special technique for a reason, and that reason is multiplication. Through the incandesite bond, the power of the runes on the haft can flow up and resonate with those on the spearhead.

So to the haft I graft platinum runes—the thin wires I used to make them took nearly the last of my funds—of resistance to downwards force and friction.

And as I put the final syllable into my poem spiraling around the haft, I breath a sigh of relief. Light circles up and in turn my salamander runes of flesh-seeking flash too, a black flash, an anti-flash that saps the firelight from the forge in an instant of darkness.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

They flash again, once, twice, then a third and fourth time in rapid succession, five, six, seven, uncountable times like the rapid blinking of abyssal eyes.

My relief turns to apprehension. I step back, nearly to the wall. The spearhead isn't flashing anymore—it is solid black, a hole of light-sucking darkness. I can still see the fire in the forge, but it’s faded, unglowing.

The spear rolls off the anvil, falls to the floor, points toward me. It creeps forward.

Someone knocks hard at the door.

“What the hell is going on in there?”

I grin fiercely.

“One minute!” I shout.

What need is there for apprehension? This is my weapon, is it not? I kneel down, grip it firmly in both hands, raise it up. The black glow fades until it is but a dim halo, like a dark twin to the glow of the cavern mirror reflecting the moon through thick fog.

You will obey me, I think. You are mine. You are mine, my art, my weapon.

For the first time I feel truly the dwarvish thrill of creation. We are all small gods, in our own way. We create. That is what drives us—the desire to create the most beautiful art we can.

It is this, not power, that takes the truly ambitious of us up and up.

Guildmaster Wharoth forces open the door. He looks at the dark spearhead and a sheen of fear-sweat appears on his forehead, as if certain terrible suspicions he has harbored for some time now have just been confirmed to him.

But he just says: “Well done. I knew you had talent.”

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

In the very core of his castle, in his vault-room into which none but he is allowed, underneath his blankets of foil, Runethane Thanerzak awakens from a nightmare. It is the same nightmare he has every night.

A terrible noise fills the vault-room. It is like the sound of a baby pig being slowly torn in half on the rack.

Runethane Thanerzak comes to the same realization he does every morning. The terrible noise is the noise of his own scream. He shuts it off with fearsome effort, and climbs out of bed.

He looks at himself in the mirror—the only mirror he allows in his castle. He comes to the same dreadful conclusion he comes to every morning, that his nightmare was not a nightmare. It is reality, replayed in the darkness every single night for the last three hundred years.

He puts on his clothes. They are soaked with numbing drugs, but the process is still excruciating. Gradually, though, the pain fades enough for him to equip his armor.

He turns the combination on the vault door and walks out. Servants bow before his masked, impenetrable figure. He barely notices their existence, closes the door—a series of thuds confirm the locking mechanism still works just the same as it has for the past three hundred years.

Through his corridors he strides. They slope upward—he has no stairs in his castle, for raising his legs past a certain shallow degree causes him intense pain when his thighs press up against the plates of his tungsten armor. Smoothly yet slow he moves, flanked by guards wielding long, sharp spears, until he comes to the doors of his council chamber.

His guards swing them open and he enters. His council, all runeknights of the first degree, are seated, but he remains standing, for reasons that should be apparent by now.

“Greetings, Runethane,” says his right-hand dwarf, whose mirror-like helmet is veiled with a thin layer of gauze.

“Good morning, Vanerak.” The Runethane’s voice is rough as sand. “Congratulations on the success of the last few exams.”

“Thank you very much.”

“Though I do remember asking you to raise the pass rate after the first one.”

“I have made an effort, bringing in smaller salamanders. But initiates these days are so weak.”

“Are they really so poor?”

“Indeed.”

“Nevertheless, I would like a pass rate of eight percent, rather than two. And at least a sixty percent survival rate for the losers.”

“Very well. We’ll use regular salamanders from now on.”

“No, no more salamanders. Too predictable, and dragons are unpredictable beasts. Some other monster.”

“I’ll make the arrangements.”

“Good. Ganzesh, how goes the redeployment?”

“It goes as you ordered, Runethane,” says Ganzesh. He is one of the newer additions to the council.

“As I ordered. Do I detect a hint of dissatisfaction with said orders in your tone, Ganzesh?”

“I am merely worried that Runethane Broderick will sniff out more opportunities to strike at us.”

“Broderick is an upstart. We have nothing to fear from him—in a mere three months I will have what I need to cleave him in two. But for this to happen there can be no interruptions from the real threat.”

“I understand, yet there are rumors he has called a most powerful runeknight to his ranks.”

“Rumors are not reality. The beast lurking in the forest is reality. Continue the redeployment. Every inch of the mountain must be defended.”

“Of course, Runethane.”

“Good. Is there anything else that needs must be brought to my attention?”

There is not, so he leaves the council chambers and walks back down the spiraling corridors, flanked at all times by his spear-wielding guards, until he is back before the circular door to his vault-room.

His guards and servants vanish from the antechamber. He turns the combination and enters, closes the door behind him. The locks thud reassuringly.

There are only three pieces of furniture here: the bed, the mirror, and a tall closet.

He does not keep his clothes and armor there—they hang on the wall.

No.

Very carefully, he traces the runic code on the closet door. There is a click, and it swings open.

Within is a key of diamond as long as his arm, glittering brilliantly despite there being very little light to glitter on it.

It is the key to a small hatch in the wall of his forge.

It is also, in a way, the key to his hate-filled heart.