After my speech, I'm at last able to get back into the flow of hammering, and soon the forging-trance takes hold of me. My arms and tools become extensions of my will to create. The shape of the pick becomes more distinct, smoother and more perfect with every beat and every clang. Sparks dance on the ceramic of the anvil. The scent of semi-molten steel is intoxicating.

Reheat, hammer, reheat—until the craft is done. However I don't have that luxury. The sand in the timers is flowing quickly. Soon the short-hours I've allocated to forging the head of the pick are over, and I must place down my hammer and be satisfied with what I've managed to accomplish.

I watch the bright glow of the steel fade to red, then to gray, then it is cool.

It's well-crafted. Yes, well-crafted is the right description. Not brilliantly crafted, not a masterpiece. It is merely good. There are imperfections—the point is not quite as bent as I designed. The angles of its triangular cross-section are accurate to tenths of a degree, but not hundredths. The counter-weight is off by a few tenths of a gram.

I want to continue. I want to make it better, correct each and every minor flaw until the dimensions are perfect beyond question.

Again, I do not have that luxury. With a heavy heart I heat the steel one final time, and quench it. Steam hisses and billows around me. I take another look at the pick-head, force myself to smile and try to feel satisfied, and lay it aside.

It's time to do the haft. I feel apprehensive: I'm not experienced with aluminum, and never have I attempted to shape the way I'm about to.

First, I re-check my designs. They seem to be in order, but I check them again regardless. I am about to check them for a third time, but realize I'm simply procrastinating, putting the task off out of fear.

My design is this: I will roll the aluminum sheet into a tube, elliptical in cross-section, and bent according to how I will best be able to grip and swing for maximum power. Until now I've always purchased ready-made tubes—Heartseeker's original haft was such—yet I do not have the budget for that, and also I have decided that buying ready-shaped metal is not at all befitting a fifth degree, let alone a fourth degree.

Why leave half the crafting to mere metalworkers? I am a runeknight; I can do far better than them and their crude ways.

I grasp the aluminum in one hand and lay it against the horn of the anvil. I begin to beat it curved, very gently—aluminum is very malleable, and I don't want to alter the thickness of the sheet any, just shape it.

It's a tough and awkward job. The long sheet is unwieldy and heavier than it looks, making it very difficult for me to angle my strikes.

Each blow of the hammer I must carefully aim. Now I know why metalcrafters use mechanical devices for this job—probably many runeknights do as well. But I don't have one available. I just have to strike as accurately and gently as I can manage.

After a full short-hour's work, the sheet is finally bent enough along the vertical axis that I can transfer it to the top of the anvil. I hammer it into a tube. This takes me another full short-hour, so cautious am I with my strikes. It's proving even more difficult to shape than titanium, which I at least developed a common understanding with. Aluminum is an enigma to my hand.

It makes a kind of sense: steel, bronze, and titanium have been used by dwarves since very ancient times, while aluminum is a more recent extraction. Our ancestral instincts do not know how to deal with it.

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Or maybe I'm just making excuses for myself. I grit my teeth and continue to hammer away. I flatten out the tube—the cross-section needs to be the precise ellipsis I designed.

I concentrate: whatever Barahtan is creating will not be easy to get through.

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“What in hell is he doing?” fumes Batarast. “That's no job for a runeknight!”

“With all due respect,” one of his senior guild members says, “this is a technique that the Runeking himself is said to be perfecting.”

“He's destroying his own runes! Killing them!”

“Not destroying them. Incorporating them. Binding them to the metal.”

“That's what the reagent is for! He's throwing that away as well!”

Batarast tears at his beard. He shouldn't have upset his son so—no, the incident in the guildhall was Barahtan's own damn fault. The boy's too sensitive, that's the problem. And now he's decided to embarrass everyone by using some fool technique.

“Runeking Ulrike is doing the same,” another one of his guild members says. “That's why his palace is also a foundry.”

“I know that!” snaps Batarast. “But the Runeking's capabilities and those of a fourth degree are as different as chalk and diamond.”

“Lots of runeknights are making their own alloys nowadays,” his wife says. “I've seen some very fine jewelry by them.”

“What's in the shops isn't made by runeknights.”

“No, no. I've seen it out and about.”

“This isn't jewelry. It's a damn greave! A piece for protection. If you don't take its crafting seriously, you could die. That's his damn problem—never takes anything seriously.”

“That's not entirely true,” says another guild member. “He's often serious.”

“To you it may look like that. I am his father and I know better. Now shut up, all of you!”

The dwarves of the Firefly Gleam Agglomerate know better than to disobey their guildmaster. His tempers are famous. So they continue to watch their champion in silence, hoping that he knows what he's doing. Runic alloying is a new technique and a very fickle one. The heat must be measured exactly, the reagent layered in just the right quantities. Many runes are inappropriate for it, severely restricting the vocabulary available to the crafter.

Down in the arena, Barahtan places the next sheet into the mold and returns everything to the furnace. A glow like gold illuminates him. He, at least, is certain that he knows what he's doing, certain of his absolute victory. He's practiced runic alloying many times before, and this time he will finally get the technique right.

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I bow my head in dismay. Upon the anvil is a rod of aluminum, elliptical in cross-section, and bent according to my triple-checked calculations. Yet it's not what I envisioned. A sketch on paper is one thing, the craft in shining metal quite another. What I have created is, simply put, not good enough. In fact, a metalcrafter could probably have done better. A good deal better.

I have burned through six short-hours on this, this battered lump, this drainpipe. I spent seven on the designs, sixteen on the head as planned, and now with these six more gone, I only have forty-one left. This is a lot—nearly four days.

But I need that time for my runes. They are my strength and I need to make them perfect, utilize my power as I have never utilized it before.

Yet I refuse to attach the head of my weapon to this crude pole. No, I must restart. I begin the slow process of unfolding the tube, returning it to its original state: a flat plane, smooth and unbeaten.

Another short-hour passes, then another. The sheet is not yet pristine. I curse at it under my breath. This does not help—my hammer strokes become ragged, and the aluminum sheet resists my will.

I am tired. Very tired indeed, and my arm aches. I know I can't waste time sleeping when I'm already behind, but it seems I have no choice. I won't be able to remake the haft with my mind and body at the point of collapse.

So I trudge over to the hollow in the sand beside the furnace that is my sleeping spot, and curl up without even bothering to take a ration. My sleep is dreamless, and I wake feeling heavy. Was there something in the water I've been provided? No: the lack of rest over so many days is simply taking its toll.

Nevertheless, I must persist. If I fail now I am dead or worse than dead, and my death-wish is fully gone. My path to atonement, since I cannot get it through this trial, will be through my hunt for the black dragon. I cannot fail before I've even taken the first step. I stand up, brush the sand from my beard, and return to the anvil.

Curl, hammer, bend—and it is done. The haft is complete, and it is better than my first attempt. Drenched in sweat, head pounding, eyes aching, limbs trembling, I fall down beside the anvil and pass into blackness.

When I wake up, I have only twenty-five short-hours left for the runes. Only a couple days. I drag myself to the writing desk and get to work.