I prepare my reagent mix—as always, with utmost care—and place it next to the knife-sections. On the other side, I put my coils of thin silver wire. They material looks like spider-wrought threads. I look carefully. Yes—like a spider's threads they are, delicate yet so perfectly made for dealing death.

Some dwarves greatly honor spiders, who, in their own fashion, forge their own weapons just as we do.

But I am trying to put off my own forging with these thoughts. I refocus and, after going over the draft of my poem one more time, step back and shut my eyes. For a while, I feel no hint of the heat of magma coming around me. Then it comes all at once in a rush of blazing power. With it, as always, the sphere arrives, its presence like a heavy shadow falling over me. It tries to push me down.

I steady myself. I must maintain concentration right from the start; this poem must be my own. Into my mind I bring the first rune: dway. The dwarf sees the knife this time, though. He thinks he can stop it, halt the silver line aimed at his heart, but cannot.

None of this can be said literally in my script of death. There should be no rune for thought, I decide. Instead, what goes through his mind is couched in terms of absolute prediction. Inside that mortal machine, a false vision tells him that the death will go to someone else, and his own will be put off until longer time passes. Yet the moment the knife pierces through his already-ruined breastplate—armor, in my script, is defense against death doomed to fail—the predictions change. He sees the ultimate truth, that he is mortal. That he has an end, and that end has come.

I struggle against the heat. The runes I strive to remake are resisting their own perishing. Runes for metal and magma never gave so much resistance, for those materials are constantly in flux, but the runes of death understand that transition of form can never be undone. They understand their own unmaking, as if they are living, fighting creatures themselves.

It is only the first stanza, and my body above is beginning to sweat. I've gone back on Brognir's suggestion that I have third-degrees attend me; I still cannot bring myself to show this script to anyone. If I should start to burn, I will pull the healing chains over my blackening flesh myself.

As my struggle against the runes and heat continues, my poem lengthens. The knife slides through skin and meat, cuts against the ribs—bones are easy to render in this script. Ribs are a pointless cage for something doomed, in time, to cease its beating regardless.

The sphere shivers. More heat burns through me. Just as I think I have my forging under control, it is trying to throw me off. I focus harder, trying to keep my mind from the hot pain through me. I must think of the next stanza, how the dwarf feels as the metal approaches his very heart.

Terror—is that what he should feel? But he has already felt as much of that as he can. Peace, then, the opposite. No. Peace has too many kind connotations to it. Stillness? But I will write about that at the ultimate moment of his death. What did I write in my draft? I cannot remember. The heat from the sphere is burning the memories like flame to paper.

He feels—nothing. There is no more emotion for him, just emptiness. Death brings only absence.

As the knife finally pierces his heart, the heat becomes like that of a pyre suddenly doused with black oil. I cry out, in the forge. I can hear the distant echoes.

My resolve wavers and I try to flee, to reach out for the coolness of my ruby. I can't find it; I am dragged back down into the churning heat. The runes are twisting according to some other's will, in terrible ways, their meanings turning indistinct and unknowable as if they lie beyond the ultimate veil themselves.

With an inner scream of rage at my own weakness, I regain control. The dagger is right through the dwarf now, has cloven his heart right in two. Crimson is streaming out the wound. The dwarf can see it, feel its dying warmth, hear it dripping onto the hard stone below. The sounds of the battle have long faded, I realize. He stands in a field of stacked bones.

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I don't know the message behind this, the intent. That was decided when I lost my grip. I cannot afford to lose it again, and struggle to keep hold as I continue, taking the dwarf into his very final moments.

He falls to his knees, described as going to a posture of defeat, kneecaps bruising on the cold hard ground. His vision of the bone-strewn cavern darkens. This is the end, and everything is fading.

The lance of heat through me widens and intensifies. It wants his last moments. But it won't have them. With the last of my strength, I put together the last stanza and the last runes, and pull myself from the magma, gasping.

I am in the forge, screaming in agony. Pain is ravaging every inch of my skin, and my fingertips are bright with flames. Through a haze of burning red and gray, sour smoke, I see the chains piled on the nearest shelf. I grab them and pull them over me. Their weight feels very great, and I fall to my knees just as the dwarf in my poem did.

The pain fades; life returns. My ruby becomes like ice, and coolness spreads throughout my body. The red on my skin changes to white, and the flames at the ends of my fingertips flicker out.

I stay there for a while, on my knees, hands pressed against the floor, panting heavily. My exhalations are hot, burning my throat. I cough up spots of dark blood. But I am alive. I got through the battle. My craft is complete.

No, I remember, shaking my head. It is not complete. It is time for the final test of my welding-powder. Groaning from pain and exhaustion, I force myself to stand. I shrug the chains off me and they clank heavily on the stone. I stumble out of them, and start to sweat again. Pain comes onto my skin, but I judge that I am healed enough.

To put off this task is cowardly. I must do it with complete commitment.

As I expected, most of the poem has been grafted and only the last stanza remains to be imbued onto the metal. I take a cooled rods from the bucket, which I must have retrieved in my trance, and start work.

The coldness in my hand, and that from my ruby also, diffuses through me. My movements slow. After I touch the rod to the final rune, the negation of all, I feel as if my own self has been negated. Everything around me becomes still and lifeless, stopped in time. My own actions are pointless repetitions of things that have been completed a thousand times before.

I brush the welding powder onto the gleaming knife-sections. This task seems more difficult than it did when I was testing it—the powder is refusing to spread out, sticking fast to the metal and to my brush as well. I have to use a stiff piece of wire to push the resistant grains around.

It is dull work. I want to give up, take a rest, go back up to my chambers and drink wine. This feeling is just from the runes, I tell myself. It is not my true desire. I am a Runethane; I do not give up at the forge.

When I finally finish, I am breathless. My hands are shivering. How long did it take, to move each of those grains individually? Far too long. And to what end? Why move things around when in the end—

I calm myself. It's time for the next stage. I walk around the back of the furnace and set the heat to seven-hundred eight-eight and a quarter degrees. I wait. The mercury reaches the appropriate level and I insert the craft.

I watch. The metal begins to glow. My fists clench. My palms and fingers are slippery with sweat. Any moment now, and the craft may die.

The powder between the layers flashes bright white, dims to gray. The whole blade becomes shadowed, and the fire at the back of the furnace dies. Flames flicker over the metal, the same kind as last time, yet they are faint, and quickly dissipate.

All heat from the furnace abruptly vanishes. A cold wind seems to blow through the forge, like the wind that blew over us before the dragon's mountain. I shiver. There is another element to this coldness that natural wind does not have.

Can it be? Can I have succeeded? I do not want to believe it. I reach into the furnace and open my hand, close it. My skin goes cold and numb where it touches the metal. In this moment, beyond hope and fear, I know I have succeeded.

I draw out the long knife for examination. The silver runes are uniformly black, vivid etchings on the bone-pale titanium. I hold it edge on. I will not need to sharpen it—the blade knows what it is meant to do, and its edge is a razor already.

A grip, now, is all this needs. I have a piece of leather prepared already, made from skin of the dead diamond troll. I cut it carefully, wrap and sew. It seems to squeeze around the handle, like drying skin contracting around bleached bones.

I hold the completed weapon before me, edge out. I slash. The air whines and my ruby hums with pleasure. This knife, it knows, is the metallic embodiment of something no bloody battle can ever lack: death.

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