After observing a few more mock-battles, as well as some tactical drills the Runic League and other prominent guilds have developed, I return to the forge. A sense of dread settles in my heart. This hour I must make the runes—runes of a script I do not yet dare to name.

And even the preliminary step is going to be a challenge.

From my shelves I gather three different reagents. One is glasolite, harsh and difficult to work with. The next is a rare one, yelgrine, distilled from the organs of a certain kind of armored crab. It has special, poorly understood properties.

The last is salterite—the anti-reagent, the one many dwarves will never admit to owning. It is a killer of the other reagents, a remover of runes, yet this hour it is going to be used in their creation.

If all goes to plan, that is.

My search in the ninth level of the library was not completely fruitless. Although the scripts the Runeking pointed me toward turned out to be a dead-end, I did find some helpful information on other topics. One tome I found was about certain rare reagents and their uses. Of course, I was not allowed to borrow any of the books—how Vanerak stole that stoneleaf text from the ninth level remains a mystery, even to the Grand Librarian—but I committed several pages to memory.

I pour the glasolite powder into a polished quartz bowl, procured especially for this purpose. The reagent's tiny crystals glint brightly. I weigh it, add a little more. Next I add the yelgrine. It's a blue, jelly-like substance which pours down the glasolite and reforms into a ring around the edge of the bowl.

The two must be mixed thoroughly. I do so, with a quartz rod.

They refuse to come together. I stir faster. I stop to inspect, worried I'm doing something wrong. But since a few of the jagged glasolite grains have taken on the cyan color they're meant to, I probably just need to take more time.

I continue to stir. After an hour or so has passed, about half is mixed. I continue stubbornly. It takes two hours for the rest to come together. I step back, feeling oddly light-headed and tired. Strange—it usually takes many, many hours of using the hammer before I get into this state.

I clench my fists hard and shake my head. I need to focus. The next part of the process is the most vital. I take out a hexagonal salterite crystal and weigh it. It's little too heavy, so I use a small hammer to break off a part. The end shatters with a piercing scream and an acrid stench fills my nostrils. Green light flickers in the crystal's depths. I feel a little sick. This is not a substance I wish to be working with, yet it is the best choice for the runes I must create.

Runes I don't wish to be working with either, yet what choice do I have but to make them?

I put the broken crystals into the glass bowl and pick up the third tool of the set, a heavy pestle with a lead-cored spherical head. I begin to grind, circling the pestle around the bowl leftward as the book instructed. I don't know why the movement has to go this way—but this was a point the recipe's creator emphasized, so I dare not disobey.

The crystals break oddly as I grind them into the mixture, always forming perfect hexagons. Their foul smell intensifies, then changes as they begin to combine with the blue powder. It becomes like spice, hot, like a million invisible burning sparks. The heat increases. Sweat beads on my forehead as if I am working hot metal.

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Still I grind on, ignoring the heat and the sense at the back of my mind telling me that I ought to stop, that something is going wrong. The powder starts to change color from blue to purple, and now it begins to darken.

The instructions said nothing about it darkening. Heat flares up, intense heat—it is as if flames are licking at my face. I cry out; cover my eyes and duck down.

A second later the forge reverberates with an explosion. Daggers of crystal shatter to sand against the walls and ceiling. Something clinks down beside me. I look. It's a lead sphere—the core of the pestle.

I stand up, cursing loudly. I kick the anvil violently. It shifts a little. Pain shoots up my leg, and I curse louder.

Someone knocks on the forge door.

"Don't bother me!" I yell. Then, after a short pause, I add: "Find me another quartz bowl! From the kitchens, even—and hurry up about it!"

I sit down with my back to the anvil, still fuming. What went wrong? I went over the recipe for this mix a dozen times. There is no possibility that I made a mistake with the instructions. I am a Runethane. I do not make stupid errors.

But I must have done something wrong. I clutch my hands to my temples, squeeze. What was it? I measured everything meticulously, stirred exactly according to instructions. Was it the quartz? Did that have some reaction with the powder? Should I instead procure a diamond bowl?

I think harder, and when it comes to me, I stand and kick the anvil once again. I've made a properly stupid mistake. In my time as Runethane, in the relative peace before the war, I truly have grown lazy.

Glasolite is dangerous to mine because, when hit, some of it diffuses into dust. Thus, when I ground it into the yelgrine, I lost a few grams to the air. That threw off the ratios, and the salterite overwhelmed it, and the whole mixture blasted apart.

A few short-hours later, after procuring a new quartz bowl, pestle, and stirring rod, I restart the process. This time, however, I make a lid for the bowl. It's just a simple piece of leather, with a hole in it I can put my hand through to stir and grind, but it should do the trick.

I inspect its underside once the glasolite has become blue, and it's coated with white dust. I brush it in, begin to stir again. I weigh the bowl—there is still a little missing and so I add some more. I stir with the lid on again, very carefully.

Now I add the salterite. The acrid smell is fainter than before, and diminishes as I grind. The hot scent does not appear, and instead of turning black, the final mixture is a rich violet, just as the instructions described.

Done. I prepare the wire, a thin spool of silver. It is a volatile, cold, yet powerful metal. Shining bright at first, it quickly tarnishes to black. Brilliant life to dark death. It reflects the script I am now to create.

A script of death.

My heart grows ill with fear at the idea of using the world's blood to make such things. But yet again, what choice do I have? My weapon that I am to craft after this knife is to tell of the death of Uthrarzak, and I can think of no better way to create such a poem other than out of runes imbued with death itself.

It can be done. I have made runes for death before, in my scripts of ice and magma both, and thus it is surely possible to create a whole script imbued with the meaning.

I stack the half-millimeter plates into a chest and lock it. I don't want to enrune in my trance, just make the symbols themselves. Creating the reagent was just a way to put off the task; I don't need it yet. I put the bowl away, too, into one of my larger chests. I lock it.

I do not trust myself. Myself—or whatever part of me creates the runes when things go awry. And I feel sure that I will lose control this time. My runes of darkness caused me great trouble, and death is worse than darkness. Darkness is just what follows; death is the painful transition also.

But again, what choice do I have? I step away from the anvil, my whole body shaking. If I am to kill a Runeking, my poem will have to be about more than just cracking open armor or cutting into flesh. It needs to speak of his death itself. If it is powerful enough, the poem will become prophecy, just as Runeking Ulrike said.

Prophecy is something we dwarves do not believe in. We hold freedom and the potential to master one's fate through skill above all else. Yet if prophecy can be made real, it can surely only be done so through runes. Runes of an absolute, inevitable concept—and in life, the only true inevitability is death.

I let out a hiss of frustration. I have put this task off for long enough. It is time to sink into the magma sea once more.

I shut my eyes and will the heat to come around me.

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