I wrestle with the white-hot power streaming through and around me. It's as if I am fighting a snake many times my size and, try as I might, I cannot master it. I scream out. Runes flash through my mind, a dozen shapes a second. I struggle to catch hold of them, manipulate them, change their meanings. But they do not change—they are made not according to my will, but according to the will of something else.

Or someone else.

The power expands, scorching me. I scream out—at least I feel as if I do—and try to force it down. It refuses. Runes continue to flash, so fast that they appear not as a series of individual symbols, but as one constantly twisting shape. I search around for the ruby, for its healing cool, yet do not find it. There is nothing to save me.

What are those outside doing? What is Ugyok doing? Am I not burning like a torch yet?

I feel a cold splash. For a moment, the forge comes into view, lit bright by flames. Then I'm plunged back into the magma, back to my fight for control of the power. I grip it as if strangling it, manage to force it back a touch. The onslaught of runes slows until I can make out the shape of each clearly. All are circles with sections oddly cut out—the runes of darkness.

I know I must attempt to change them, or at least attempt to understand what I'm seeing, but I've lost my place in the poem. I do not know what I'm writing about.

Cold splashes across my face once more. I see the forge, and the terrified faces of the three watching me. I can feel heavy chains lying over my shoulders, and more being tied about me tightly. Healing cool pours from them, but the strength of the heat is greater.

The ruby—I see it. I reach for it and manage to grasp it. The heat dies away and the sphere vanishes. The forge appears. Pain explodes on my face, my hands, everywhere. I'm burning, flames flickering on my skin and in my hair.

One of the tenth degrees throws over another bucket of water and the flames are turned to oily smoke. It drifts upwards and fades. I sway, and fall to my knees.

"Like a torch indeed," I croak through my heat-scorched throat. "You obeyed me exactly. Very good."

I reach out and place my hands against the anvil. It feels warm.

"Guildmaster?" says Ugyok. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Just... just let the healing chains do their work."

I remain on my knees, panting painfully. Out the corner of my eye I can see the two tenth degrees staring in wonder and horror at me.

I am fine. The pain is already starting to vanish. My craft is what I'm worried about. What has happened to my echo-eyes? What dark runes did I write upon them?

Eventually, despite the remaining agony, I can bear to wait no longer. I grasp the edge of the anvil and pull myself up. I look upon my craft, and am not surprised by what I see in the least:

One of the halves is just as I envisaged it, a shining work of titanium inscribed with a saga of wind bringing light to an otherwise lightless world. The flames' glow that catches on it is reflected in many colors, just like I wrote rebounded from the oily sea.

The other half is dull. It almost looks like tungsten; titanium's characteristic pale sheen is all but gone from it. Most of the runes are those of darkness. The light that reflects from it is robbed of color, made gray.

I had intended to make the two poems mirrors of each other. But I can tell, even before I begin to read, that the second is not a mirror of the first, but its opposite.

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I read. It describes not the creation of light, but the erasure of it. The wind flows back across the brilliant beach of gemstone sand and multi-hued liquid, and as it moves, it takes all brightness away with it. Diamond becomes nothing, the colors become nothing. All becomes still; no movement can be seen.

The dwarf the poem mentions, however, does not have his sight robbed. Quite the opposite: he sees in darkness. Different shades, different states of unbeing are visible to him. He has become one with the dark, and his meaning is reverted. A dwarf is not a being that creates light, but a being which removes it. That's the connotation of the dark rune for dwarf: dwarves kill, destroy, erase from history.

True enough, I reflect bitterly. How many have I killed? How many souls have been burned to ash because of my actions?

I continue to read, up until the poem's abrupt, mid-line conclusion. The climax of the poem has not yet been written. Ugyok and the tenth degrees took me out of my trance before my fingers had the chance to twist the final runes into shape.

I see what my final task must be. The poem won't need any more new runes. I've already created all that are needed. I must finish it by hand—yet, should I?

I could make another ear. It would take time and money, but not so much. I will not even have to go into my trance to create another poem, if I'm just to copy what's on its partner. This one, with its dark verses, I can hide away somewhere or even destroy: melt it or mine it into silver smoke and a few grains of true metal.

True metal—to burn it away, from such a well-made craft—that would be a waste I can't abide.

So what if these runes look unseemly? So what if others might look upon them in horror? Light and shadow exist together, don't they? I can't deny this. No one can deny this. Darkness is not necessarily a force for wrong—I've ended lives that deserved to be ended too.

I won't insult my craft. I won't insult my own runes. I'll finish this poem and see how it works. I already told my guild I wouldn't throw out my runes of darkness—so I won't. I'm committed to this path.

"Thank you for helping me, you three," I say. "However, it's time for me to continue this work alone. Return to the guild."

"It's been an honor," says one of the tenth degrees.

"A great honor," says the other.

"See you later, guildmaster," says Ugyok. He looks vaguely disturbed. "I hope the rest of the process works out."

"It will. I'm sure of it."

They leave. No doubt the tenth degrees will tell their tale to everyone they meet—good. And they won't understand the fact I'm making two scripts rather than one—better. That's the main reason I had junior members undertake this duty. It impresses them, but they're too inexperienced to understand what it is that I craft.

I take a fresh sheaf of paper and draft the final stanza. It comes to me easily, as if it's already buried inside my head somewhere, and I only need to dig it out.

Making runes with a pen is one thing, but far different with metal. I sometimes forget how tricky the process of precisely cutting and bending wire can be, especially with pieces of metal this small. It's extremely fiddly, and made even more difficult by the wretched state the tips of my fingers are in. They are cut, stabbed, dotted with blood, and my nails are ragged.

I don't feel the pain of my body when in the trance, only the burning of my soul. The latter is worse, but the former is none too pleasant either.

Then, I must graft. Jasperite is not easy to work with, not when grafting runes made from such fine wire. I can't seem to get it to light without melting the platinum. I ruin several carefully twisted pieces before I finally work out the trick.

There are no flashes when I graft the dark runes. The metal around it instead becomes a touch duller. Just as the last vestiges of light are robbed from the world in my poem, the last vestiges of shine are robbed from the titanium.

Finished. In my poem, all light has vanished, and the final description is a description of nothing at all. I step back and examine the pair of crafts. So alike, and yet so unalike. Their asymmetry accentuates their quality.

Now I must equip them. I dread this—yet I must do it. I raise my helmet and place it over my head. I draw down the visor and vision vanishes. I reach out and grasp the two echo-eyes. I bring them toward my temples.

I hesitate. What if I can't remove them? What if they are as powerful as my ruby is? But I don't think so—I don't sense the same quality of life that I sense from the gem on my chest.

With two clicks, they lock into place. For a moment, nothing happens.

Then light floods over the inside of my visor, yet what I see is like nothing I have ever seen with eyes of flesh. Colors, light, everything—it is all wrong, all new. Blackness and shades of nothing—they are here too, impossibly.

And all is rippling in time with the low roar of the braziers, except they are not roaring, for I can hear nothing. All I have is sight; all sound is gone.

I turn my head and my mind spins dizzily. I fall down and my helmet clangs on the stone floor.

From the clang erupts color, and I can make sense of none of it.

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