Suicidal defense. That was the first idea that came to mind when considering the theme for the outer layer's poem, and no better one has yet come to me. I envision a gleaming formation of armored dwarves, waiting patiently for a force which is far stronger than them to extinguish their lives. They have no fear. They will do their duty—they will inflict as much damage on the enemies' armor as they are able.

I begin to write using a script I only half know. It's called Galathak Third, and is composed of runes of wide loops and broad angles. Unlike most scripts, each rune is joined to the next, and it reads in an outward-curling spiral. I'd prefer to use runes I'm more familiar with, but this is my best choice for going around the steel splinters which will dig into Barahtan's sword.

It's hard going. I have to reach into the deepest recesses of my memory to find the words I need: sticking, grasping, tearing and grappling. That's what the soldiers in my poem are doing. They strike with axe and spear and hammer, trying to tear apart their enemies' armor. When their weapons break, they grab onto the metal plates with their hands and try to wrench them off.

Blood fountains as they fall, yet they don't spill it in vain. By the end, the opposing army is battered and vulnerable.

Well, that's the first draft at least. The runic flow doesn't quite work. I revise, hacking out whole lines and replacing them with better ones or sometimes ones that turn out to be inferior and have to be hacked away themselves. The nature of Galathak Third makes this process harder than with a more ordinary script: since everything is so closely linked, changing one single rune means I have to change the next ten and the prior twenty.

The sand in the timers flows so fast as I write that I'm beginning to suspect the judges have tampered with them, but that would serve no purpose unless they did the same to Barahtan's. I'm just tired. My head begins to hurt, and my hands too. My writing stick becomes a gray stub and I have to pull out a new one.

Eventually, though, I think I've drafted something worthy of being transformed into metal. Without taking even a single minute of rest, I take the paper to the anvil along with the platinum wire. I cut four feet from the coil and begin to twist.

I fall into a forging trance almost immediately. Except this time it feels different—as if I've suddenly been plunged into water. My fingers blur even faster than usual. Wire catches the edges of my fingernails and tears the flesh. This happened when creating the poem for my war-pick also, yet this time I feel no pain and the scent of blood is heady, intoxicating. My fingers speed up, moving slickly along the wire.

And the runes alter. The soldiers of my formation become miners armed with war-picks. The enemy army becomes trolls with skins of titanium. The battle becomes brutally bloody: miners are crushed to paste, guts spill, troll-skin is flayed. I hear the screams, smell the blood and viscera, and my fingers blur faster and faster.

I finish the very last rune and pain in my fingers—more than one has been cut, I suddenly notice—floods my hands. I cry out and clutch them to my chest, then sink down before the anvil, whimpering with the pain. Blood stains my overalls.

My breathing is labored; my heart also seems to be straining. What has just happened? My powers have never exacted such a toll from me before. With a terrible sense of foreboding, I stand up and examine the poem.

It is excellent. Even ungrafted, without the reagent to breath magic into it, the bare runes radiate power. Not a single angle is off by even a degree; each circle is a perfect one. Even the geometry of the half-oval shapes in the more complex forms is without the slightest error.

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As for the scene the runes speak of, it's even bloodier than that the runes of my war-pick described. The description of the skin of the trolls being rent away is particularly sickening.

I groan. What is this? This part of the craft is meant to be for breaking metal, not flesh! I am in despair. These runes are not suited to their task. They will fail on first contact.

I look at the time and see that I have only just over one long-hour left. There's no time to redo anything. I have no choice but to start work on the next poem, the main one, the one which I will graft with the cruel almergris.

Shaken badly, I sit down at the desk and grip my writing stick. Dried blood cracks and flakes down onto the page from my fingers. I start to write.

Where the last poem was a more free-flowing one, all a single stanze, this is more technical. Precise. My runic calculations must be exact—this goes deeper than the realm of art.

This is the kind of poem that takes hundreds of failed experiments to perfect, and I must get it right my first try.

It is kin to the poem that wound around the inside of Galar's trident. The craft that when pushed too far killed its creator.

I understand the principle, yet I do not know the words, the runes. My hand falters.

I have to get this right and every rune I write is wrong! The sand flows down. One short-hour passes, then another, and another. I am in my final long-hour. Still the runes do not come. Not a single idea that comes to my mind works.

Perhaps I've been too ambitious. Galar and Fjalar's skills were far above even Barahtan's—they'd have been first degrees if they'd been willing to take on the responsibility. And the trident was the pinnacle of Galar's skill. It put even Runethane Yurok's great mace of light to shame. It cut apart the deep darkness like it was naught but ordinary shadows cast dimly by the glow of a faltering torch.

I must take a fraction of that power. Is it within me to do so? If it is, the key is within my abilities. Until now I've never tried to understand them, yet in order to advance, I must.

I shut my eyes and think of runes. First those of one script pass before my mind's eye, then those of another, and another. Faster and faster they blur. At first the runes appear as metal, then they change to something else, something fiery, of pure and undistilled magical power.

My hand rises and moves back to the writing stick. It grasps it. I begin to write. I see the path, I see what I have to do. I look into my heart—I see the fire beneath the magma sea—runes spring from it—

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I awaken inside a sphere of metal. The walls are mirrored—yet I cannot see my face and body, only my shadow, repeated endlessly. The air is cold on my naked skin.

Where in hell am I? I try to stand up and realize that I can't see my body because I have none. I feel cold because the air is passing through me. I am trapped, totally, my soul caught in an impossible prison.

The walls of the sphere are enruned with runes so small I cannot see them, yet I can feel their power.

Has Vanerak caught me? No. This is different. The runes that surround me are beyond even him, beyond the Runethanes, beyond the Runekings. These runes must be those of a Runegod.

Perhaps they are beyond even that.

If I had a body I would freeze in terror—I am not alone in here. I can see the shadows of two others.

Double-shock: the silhouettes are familiar. One evokes love, the other hatred—

A bright hole opens at the top of the sphere and I am ripped up and out of it. A torrent of fire consumes me and my soul is thrown through the magma sea and—

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I awaken at my anvil. The remaining eight feet of platinum wire is in my hands. Runes are still rushing in my mind, of a dozen different scripts all combined into something greater, something pure. It's as if my mind is a furnace into which many different metals have been poured, creating a substance somehow purer than any one component of it.

The runes flow from my fingers. I work faster than I ever have before. One perfect stanza after another—twist, clip, twist—the runes appear upon the anvil's white ceramic as if torn straight from my mind.

However I am not possessed. In fact, I write with greater clarity than ever. I know exactly what each rune is and why I shape it so. But I must work fast—the knowledge is draining from me.