Legend of the Runeforger: A Dwarven Progression Fantasy

We make our way to the forges, but we don’t prepare any materials just yet. Instead Nthazes takes off his ears, lays them on the anvil in front of me, and launches into an explanation of how they work:

“They’re shaped like regular ears, you see. The sound is funneled into toward the induction point by the various curves. These runes here are poems of speed, as you can probably tell, and they increase the pitch of sounds too low to hear. These are the opposite, and decrease the pitch of sounds to high to hear.”

“Won’t they end up overlapping with sounds of a regular pitch?”

“They would, but actually they aren’t lowered or raised to pitches within regular hearing range, just close to it.”

“So how do we hear them?”

He turns his ears over and taps his finger near the base, where there is an extremely complex runic poem written in a dense script of platinum wires. I wince imagining how tricky it would have been to graft them.

“Can you read it? Are you familiar with the script?”

“Yes, I can read it. Jorthan IV script, discovered by its namesake in a ruined fortress on an island in one of the magma seas.”

“It’s a good one for this kind of work. Complex enough for intricate poems, but relatively easy to make small.”

“I’ve written a similarly structured poem for my helmet, except that was to amplify my sight. I take it this one affects your ears.”

“Yes. Increases the range of pitches you can hear by a little, and the volume of everything too. Don’t worry if you don’t feel up to writing one of this complexity though. Your first pair doesn’t have to be so intricate as mine.”

“That’s a relief. I want to take my time with these, of course, but not too much.”

“They’ll be done when they’re done. Now, getting into the finer details...”

What follows is a lecture longer and more complicated than any of Jaemes’. Nthazes instructs me in what runes are most useful, which are traps that seem useful but can create major fluctuations in the flow of air to the induction gem, how thin the metal of the ears must be to strike a balance between ruggedness and efficacy, what gems to place and where... Anything and everything about their construction. It turns out that he’s forged six pairs so far, one for each degree he’s ascended. He’s in the middle of forging a new pair as well, which he wants to find a way to incorporate aluminum into.

I would very much like to know how long each pair took, but of course there is no use asking that.

“And like I said before: both ears need to be exactly symmetrical. They’ll still work if they aren’t, but you’ll have a hard time staying balanced in combat. And if you misjudge where you are in the middle of a fight... Well, I don’t need to tell you what that might result in.” He stops to catch his breath. “Now, did you understand all that?”

“I think so.”

He grins. “Really? Let’s do a test: what did I say about the induction point?”

“You said it presses into the helmet by means of a bulge of harder metal. And the most engraved gem, though not necessarily the largest, will be embedded into the air-facing part of it.”

“Why will that gem be the most engraved?”

“Because its role is to vibrate at the exact frequencies of the air channeled onto it, and also to eliminate the vibration of the air once it has passed to prevent interference with the next sound that comes in. So of course it requires the most complex runes.”

“Excellent,” he says, sounding slightly surprised. “You have a good memory. Ah, but you forgot one thing.”

“A rune of—”

“No, no, not about runes.”

I scratch my head.

“The most important thing.”

“I’m not sure. The setting of the gem needs to be cooled to—”

“No, not about setting. More general.”

“Symmetry again? The poem on the gem must be the same as its counterpart on the other ear.”

“Yes, exactly. Never forget symmetry. Even the most finely crafted ear, made from the best and purest materials, is useless without an exactly symmetrical partner. If you want to stay alive, that is.”

“I’ll be very exact.”

I wags his finger. “Very won’t be good enough. You must be exactly exact.”

“I understand. Is it really possible to get everything exactly the same, though?”

“No, to be honest. There will always be small differences. But they must be kept to an absolute minimum.”

“I’ll be as careful as I can,” I say solemnly.

After completing a few more tasks, one of which is the exhausting job of carting a massive pile of imported steel down to the storage halls and sorting it by size and quality, I finally have enough ‘honor’ to purchase the gems and reagent I need to create my ears.

I start by cutting out a half oval of thin steel. I put it into the vise, and am just about to start hammering it into a cupped shape when I remember what Nthazes said about symmetry. I remove it from the vise, place it over the steel sheet and trace around it, then cut out another.

After a great deal of trimming and grinding, I am satisfied that the two pieces are exactly the same dimensions, and I begin the process of hammering the first into a shallow half-bowl. They have a word for this shape down here, galoyth. It is fairly simple to create, just like a pauldron, really, but getting the other piece to match it exactly is an absolute nightmare.

When I was making the iron plates to fit the remains of my steel they were slightly smaller, so I could test the fit by placing the steel on top of them. But these are exactly the same size, so one does not fit inside the other. I have to eyeball it, but the uneven light from the furnace plays across each slightly differently.

No matter how much I tap at them, I’m never satisfied they’re exactly symmetrical. I feel like hurling my hammer across the forging hall. The more I tap, the more sure I am that I’m making them just plain misshapen. More than once I kick my anvil in frustration.

“You’re going about it wrong,” says Mathek, a seventh degree runeknight, one mealtime after listening to me complain. “That’s not the way to judge something’s shape.”

“What is, then? There are tools to measure curvature, but I’ve never seen one down here, and don’t know how to use one anyway.”

“You don’t need any kind of tool.”

“What then?” I say, trying and failing to keep the frustration out of my voice.

“You have to use your ears,” says Commander Cathez.

“I haven’t made the bloody things yet!”

“I mean your normal ears. The things sticking out above your beard.”

“How in hell am I meant to measure a piece of metal using my ears?”

“You listen to it of course,” says Mathek, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“What? How?”

“Hold them close to your ear in finger and thumb, like so,” says Commander Cathez, demonstrating with a slice of mushroom, “And give it a little tap with a chiming rod.”

He taps the mushroom with his fork.

“What’s a chiming rod?” I ask.

“You find them in bells usually,” Mathek says. “But the ones we have are separate. Every forging pit has a few.”

“Just make sure to hold the metal as lightly as possible,” Commander Cathez tells me. “Or you’ll interfere with its natural note.”

After taking a short break to work on repairing my breastplate, which now seems an easy job in comparison, I decide to try out Mathek’s advice. With thumb and forefinger I gently dangle one of the pieces next to my ear, and with my other hand give it a slight tap with a small chiming rod I found in a drawer in the forging pit’s wall.

It rings. I tap it again, and it rings in a slightly different tone. I need to make sure my taps are delivered with the exact same amount of force each time. I tap again. This time the note sounds the same as the first time—I think.

I get the feeling my ears aren’t trained quite well enough for the accuracy needed, but I keep on practicing until I can get the note to sound exactly the same three times in a row.

Then I do the same with the other piece. It sounds slightly deeper, and has an awkward reverberation to it. By running my fingers over it I detect the slightest of creases along the middle left, then I confirm this with sight.

If my ears aren’t good enough to use on their own yet, that's fine. I’ll use all my senses.

Buoyed with a new feeling of confidence, I gently hammer out the crease. Then I listen to both pieces again. Their sounds are close, but not quite the same. I detect more asymmetries, iron them out.

And eventually, after many, many days of painstaking work, each feels, looks, and sounds exactly the same to me.

The first and second stages are done. They were the easy part.

I ought to dread the fiddly work I must undertake next, but somehow I don’t. This is true forging done with proper care and precision. I believe I am finally starting to learn the virtue of patience which Wharoth always told me is the most important quality for a runeknight to have.

It is a good feeling.