I lie there on the stone, staring up, trying to understand the view laid onto the inside of my visor. The shapes are familiar, yet every color is wrong. Instead of stone gray, there is shimmering, liquid blue. The braziers on the wall do not give out light, but instead a kind of blur that extends to cover the whole room.

I stretch out my hands and see that they are a kind of muddy green, but for the nails, which are blue like the ceiling. I sit up and look at the anvil. It is purple. I stand up and look around further, trying not to stagger as I do so.

It's hard to make out exactly what the flames in the braziers look like. Their principal feature is not their color, which is a kind of dull green or yellow, but the ever-shifting blur which extends from them. It's this blur, I think, which is lending the whole room form.

When I wore runic ears, there always had to be some sound to give everything shape. Here, that sound-shape is shown directly to my eyes—just as I had envisaged.

Could it be that this craft is a success? I hardly dare to believe it as I walk carefully around the shelves, examining the various tools and pieces of metal. Each time my shoes slap on the floor, the colors brighten and the images sharpen for a moment before fading to their usual condition. The louder and clearer the sound, it seems, the brighter and clearer my vision becomes.

Could I take advantage of this phenomenon in some fashion? The dwarves of the deep rang bells at intervals to sound-illuminate their surroundings. Perhaps I could create some kind of runic bell.

I pick one item up after another, examine them. Color depends on texture—smooth is blue or purple, and rough is red. If something absorbs sound totally, or if sound cannot quite penetrate its crevices, it is black—blacker than I ever thought anything could be.

So black, in fact, that I am unnerved. A lightless cave—that's the darkest place that should exist. But the blacks in the crevices from where no sound reflects are darker than this.

Light and darkness—those are the two halves of my poem. I decide to test something. I take up Life-Ripper and open the door. Its creak makes everything shimmer, and then when I close it behind me, a pulse of brightness travels down the corridor.

Then, silence. And silence to me is now dark beyond dark. I am in a realm of total nothingness, even darker than what surrounded the stairs that led down to Runethane Ytith's throne-room.

I tap Life-Ripper hard against the wall. The tunnel stretches out before me, pale blue, then just as quickly darkens and vanishes.

It's as if the floor has suddenly dropped out from beneath me. Vertigo assaults me and I fall to one knee, waving my arms in a futile effort to balance myself. I try to stand, but cannot. There is no indication of direction. That sense seems to be gone also.

This darkness is not just the absence of light. It is the absence of everything. It is the darkness of death, what follows after you perish and your world vanishes.

I lash out with Life-Ripper and it hits the wall with a clang of color. While the light lasts, I quickly stand up. It's fading—I tap again, step forward, tap again. This way I can walk.

With runic ears, I could hear the subtle currents in the air. These ears are not so sensitive. Perhaps I should have asked Nthazes for more advice about the gem-arrangements. Worse than that, though, is the complete blindness they curse me with in the absence of sound.

But perhaps this can be mitigated. In the heat of battle especially, there is never silence. Though—everything might become an incomprehensible blur. I will just have to find out.

I return to the forge, tapping with each step, before removing my helm. My vision is oddly dimmed for a few seconds afterwards but soon returns to normal.

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I lean on the anvil and think hard. Are these crafts a success? Certainly, they will prove invaluable in a fight. If I fight dwarves or trolls wielding my mace of light, I will have vision and they will not. And of course, they will prove invaluable when in battle against the darkness.

Moreover, getting around with vision is easier and more natural than doing it with sound, no matter how powerful your runic ears. I will understand exactly where I am and what I am doing.

Yes, these crafts are a success. I shall wear them. But despite this, it's hard to feel totally happy about my creation. It is half not mine, but half made by the strange instinct or being housed within the sphere. And Hayhek is right: the runes of darkness, once seen on our armor, will be viewed with extreme suspicion.

Within the upper reaches of Runethane Halmak's castle, within a small yet richly decorated private chamber, one young, blonde-bearded dwarf, greatly blessed with good blood and a large fortune, talks to an older one who is rather down on his luck with hair just beginning to turn gray.

"I'm not sure about this, Benkal," the older one says hoarsely.

"What is there to be unsure of? You bribed heavily for it, and now I'm going to pay you twice that back."

A guilty look appears on Henthan's face. "Ah, about that."

Benkal frowns. "What about what?"

"About the bribing."

"What about it?"

"We're not all as rich as you and your uncle, you understand. Some of us are rather down on our luck. Even with the extra you loaned me—well, I judged it wouldn't be enough."

Benkal frowns. "So then, how did you get it? Are you trying to tell me you stole it?"

"I may have acquired it by less than honest means."

"You stole it."

"Yes," Henthan admits.

"They'd have killed you if they'd caught you."

"Well, they didn't."

"How in hell did you manage it?"

"It wasn't so hard. They were in the middle of a celebration. I snuck right in."

"They didn't notice?"

"They were drunk, and I already have their dictionary of magmatic runes. My sword uses them."

"You planned your deception carefully."

Henthan shifts uncomfortably. "Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get ahead."

"They took you as one of their own, you swaggered up, and grabbed one? It was that easy?"

"Not quite. Took quite a bit of talking as well." He shakes his head, smirks a little. "You know, there's no test to enter their guild. They just want to grow as quickly as possible—they don't care who joins."

"I see. The heavier the hammer, the better. That's their way of doing things."

"Well, I don't know. Maybe this Zathar is planning to have the worse ones cut up in a battle, in some kind of trial by blood. You never know with his sort. With the higher degrees."

"True enough. What did you talk about to persuade them?"

"Nothing important. Just forging, and I made plenty sure to praise the new runes."

"The so-called new runes."

"His guild is so convinced they're new that they almost made me believe."

"I think you'd had a bit too much to drink by that point."

"Perhaps a little too much. Anyway there's more. More than what you originally asked for. One told me a secret."

"Oh?"

"A deep, dark secret."

"Quit leading me on and tell me."

"For the right price."

"I'll decide its worth once you've told me. Spit it out, graybeard."

"Of course, of course. Well, it's this: Zathar's not just making—or has dug up, I mean—one new script, but two."

"Two?"

"Two. One of light, and one of darkness."

"Darkness?" Benkal frowns. "You're certain? After all the horror he apparently went through down there?"

"That's right. Look."

Henthan pulls from his back pocket what Benkal has been waiting long-hours for with baited breath: the dictionary. And not the ordinarily available one—the one only given to the innermost members of the Runic League.

At first, Benkal is a little disappointed. It doesn't look like much, just a few dozen pages of paper rather roughly bound. But as Henthan flicks through the pages, Benkal starts to wonder if perhaps his uncle and the Runethane could be wrong. These runes are nothing like Bezethast script, nor like any other script he has ever seen. They are like bursts of light rendered in ink.

"Ah, here," says Henthan, ceasing the page-flicking. He points. "These ones."

Benkal takes the dictionary and pulls it up so he can look more closely. These runes are the opposite to those of light: they are circles with sections cut out cleverly so that it almost appears as if light is being pulled into them and devoured.

"Fascinating," he whispers. "Truly fascinating. This Zathar has mined out something very interesting indeed."

"That figures. He was a miner once." Henthan licks his lips. "About the gold. The price, well, I know two times nothing is still nothing, but..."

"Does four hundred gold pieces satisfy?"

"Four hundred!"

This is more than twice what Henthan was hoping for. To drop such a figure so easily—he once again understands that skill is far from the most important factor to advancement.

"Is that happy surprise or anger that I hear?"

"Joy, my young friend. Joy!"

"The figure includes the price for your silence, naturally."

Henthan bows low. "I understand completely, honored runeknight."

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