I lay down my mallet, and a terrible fatigue, until now staved off by the forging trance, takes hold of me. I stumble over to the dividing wall and lie down in the sand. I shut my eyes. When I open them again, I see that a full long-hour has passed since this round of the contest began. I have only two left.

I push myself to my feet and walk stiffly back over to the anvil. I sigh in relief—the steel is perfect. I have transformed the ugly mass of iron scrap into a gleaming sheet rippling with patterns of light. It is beautiful, though since it must break, this beauty is tragic.

Now to divide it according to my design. The first layer must slow the sword's blow and damage its edge. There are probably a few ways to give a shield such an effect, but the one that comes to my mind is to make the steel rough and jagged and write a poem over it that enhances this quality.

I take the diamond edge cutter and saw the steel sheet in half. I slice off a strip from the top of each half also—these will later become the grip. I put them aside along with the half that's to become the inner layer.

Now to shape the outer layer. Since the steel is still not quite the height and length specified by the judges, I first have to heat it again and hammer it thinner toward the edges. This is a risk—should Barahtan strike down the side, my craft could fail without causing enough damage. I predict he won't go for such a cheap tactic, though. He wants to completely crush my craft, not win through a trick. He'll aim to cleave it clean in half.

I hammer out the glowing sheet to the correct size, then examine. The edges are nearly too thin, but this'll have to do. Next I hold the sheet along the horn of the anvil and carefully hammer it convex. I take great care with each stroke, and listen deeply to what the clangs from the steel are telling me.

Once both shape and sound are even, I lay it face-up on the anvil and take up a small metal-chisel. It's diamond-edged just like the cutter, so I'm going to have to be very careful with it. I hold it above the metal, yet do not yet strike. In my mind's eye I envision what the steel will look like once I am done, and I hold that image in place. My strikes must correspond exactly to it.

The process is painstaking. Dig in with the chisel, bend the splinter up, withdraw the chisel carefully—and each splinter must be the same size and be raised at the same angle. My sleep has not completely cured my fatigue, so my hands are still aching from my work with the mallet. It takes a great deal of willpower to keep them from trembling.

Halfway down the piece, with close to two-thousand splinters raised, I'm no longer able to keep my fatigue under control. My fingers begin to make mistakes. The angles go wrong, the sizes too—I cut too deep. Shit! This has to be perfect!

I lay down my chisel and take a step back. I take some deep breaths. This is no time to panic. I just need to rest my hands, that's all.

I spend the next half short-hour pacing around the arena with my eyes closed. While I rest my hands, I work my mind hard. I go through variations on the theme I've decided for the first poem and consider what script I'm going to use. It'll need to have wide, looping runes to weave around the jags.

Once my hands have stopped trembling, I return to the anvil and restart the chiseling. It takes me another full short-hour to complete. I step back to examine the piece in full. What was a gleaming perfect sheet is now rent and hideous. Yet there's also a perfection to its ugliness which is strangely pleasing. It brings to mind the spiked shell of an underwater animal, beloved by none yet also bothered by no predator.

Stolen novel; please report.

The spikes are razor sharp.

I take the sheet off the anvil and prop it against the wall. Now for the inner layer of the shield. I heat then hammer it into the same size and shape as the outer layer. But now instead of making it rough and jagged I must do the opposite. I must polish it as cleanly as I can so the runes take with no issue.

Ah, I've nearly forgotten! The handle. I need to attach it now or the heat from welding will disrupt the polish. I spend a short-hour shaping it, then just before I'm about to weld it, I decide it isn't good enough.

Yes, for this contest, the quality of the handle will have little impact. But I'm beginning to understand that a craft must be perfect in all its details. A bad handle might not seem to be an issue, but the runes can tell it's there, as can the metal.

So I spend another two short-hours on it, carefully shaping then welding. I examine it—decent though not brilliant. I grimace; I simply don't have the time I want.

Now, finally, to polish the outer layer. I take the finest-grain polishing cloth and get to work. This job isn't nearly so strenuous as the chiseling was, and I quickly fall into a rhythm. It's very satisfying work: the pattern of rippled light becomes more and more vivid.

One short-hour passes, then another. I realize that I could do this forever, making the surface smoother and smoother. Maybe this is one of the keys to making a truly brilliant craft. Perhaps the greatest runeknights are those willing to spend a year, a decade, a century just polishing so the runes can take to the metal a fraction more cleanly.

I only have one long-hour and a half, though, and need every second of them for the runes. I apologize to the steel for not being able to make it as perfect as it deserves to be, and put the polishing cloth away.

To the writing desk I go, to write out the poems that must save me.

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For the first two contests, the area of stands that the Firefly Gleam Agglomerate occupied was the liveliest in the whole arena. Now it's as quiet as a funeral. Batarast sits at the center, arms folded, watching his son in silence.

The sword is going to be a great one. The way Barahtan works the titanium is masterful, each stroke calculated and yet not so—his great skill works without conscious thought. The glowing metal extends, takes shape, starts to show an edge. Even in this early stage of the process it is beautiful. Whatever runes he chooses will take well to it. Supremely well.

His son shamed himself in the last contest. He nearly lost; his craft was nearly pierced through by the traitor's pick—a ridiculous weapon. Some of the guild members even claimed it was pierced, that they saw a needle-beam of light coming from it.

This drove Batarast into a rage. They won't dare say that again.

No matter what happened in the last round though, this sword will redeem the guild's honor. Batarast is sure of it. The traitor's chance at victory through obliteration will be turned against him, will become defeat by obliteration. Then Barahtan's near loss will prove not a flaw in the guild's legend, but an enhancement. Every hero needs a strong foe.

Batarast smiles.

“Cheer up, guildsdwarves,” he says, breaking the silence. “Our legend is about to begin.”

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Vanerak watches Zathar work with growing distaste. The young dwarf is more devious than he'd anticipated. It seems his embarrassment of a helmet was not the first stumble on the road to humiliating defeat, but merely a lesson learned.

Almergris. Vanerak has never worked with the substance, but he knows well its properties. It gives malice to the runes it touches, making them blaze and burn. He's heard that the deep dwarves of the fortress below only use it for light, but in that case they're using a mere fraction of its potential. Several legendary crafts have used it to far more devastating effect.

It could definitely be manipulated to destroy Barahtan's sword. With enough skill it could be manipulated to destroy Barahtan himself.

Vanerak can see Zathar being vicious enough to do that. Killing for gain is clearly in his blood, no matter how much the young dwarf tries to deny it.

Vanerak shakes his head. Denying one's nature is never a good idea. Vanerak has seen many a dwarf with enough greed and cruelty to make it to the top stumble on a half-hearted attempt to do good.

Zathar seems to want to head down that path himself. Slaying the black dragon! An idiot's errand. For one thing, no one is sure where the monster has flown off to. And for another, it would take the power of at least a Runeking to slay it.

Even Vanerak is far from having that power. Unless he gets his hands on Zathar's runes, that is. He doesn't want to slay any dragons though. That was Thanerzak's obsession.

Vanerak has more interesting objectives in mind.