I stab with Life-Ripper's single point, yet do not aim at any place I've aimed before.

  When fighting like a dwarf, you aim to destroy your opponent's armor first. A spear, however, is not so useful for this. It is an exception. When you fight with a spear, or any kind of short stabbing blade, you aim to get through the gaps in your enemy's armor. No matter how well-made a runeknight's protection is, there will always be joints, spaces protected only by chain or thinner plates.

  Vanerak's armor has very few of these. His plates overlap cleverly, so that even when he extends his body to stab or swing, the gaps stay covered. Yet there are weaknesses—one is the gap between thumb and forefinger on his lead hand. There are interlocking plates there, but I judge that they are thin to allow him flexibility, otherwise it would be impossible for him to manipulate and block with his pollaxe so deftly.

  I aim, not at any part of his body, but at his weapon. He moves to block—that does not matter—I am aiming to contact his weapon anyway. Life-Ripper hits the head with a loud clash. White stars flash as my true tungsten grinds against his, down his. I am thrusting the single-point along the haft of his weapon. It is a guide to my true target.

  He twists his pollaxe to riposte, yet my momentum is too great—I increase it by pushing off from the pedestal of skulls behind.

  My point contacts the center of one of the thin plates. It hits at a slight angle, draws a thin trail of tiny sparks across to where one plate overlaps another. There, the side-momentum halts. All the force is once again pushing forward, and the point pierces through the plate, continues to pierce, deep into his hand.

  He yells in pain, pulls away, throws his hand back. Two and a half inches of Life-Ripper's tapering point are coated in blood. More drips from Vanerak's gauntlet, splashes on the floor. I pull Life-Ripper back, stab at his mirror-mask. With one hand disabled, he is not fast enough, and I hit directly—yet cannot pierce, or even dent.

  I overbalance and come in too close. His pollaxe is low and he yanks it back, hooking the back of my knee. I fall. He hammers down. Even one-handed, the blow is fierce and dents my breastplate. He makes to stab at my neck. I catch the pollaxe in Life-Ripper's twin points and push it away, manage to roll up to my feet.

  I try to disarm him, but he predicts the effort and extracts his weapon with violence. He steps back. He grasps the haft with his bloody right hand, and I see that the movement is painful for him.

  He shouts and charges. It is obvious where he aims to strike: my left side where Nazak cut through and he crumpled further. I stab at his weapon, aiming to stab into his left hand, yet I've misjudged the sheer amount of force in his blow. All his anger at me, who was but a slave to him, now being able to break his armor, he pours into this one hammer blow. My ribs crack.

  My ruby burns and the pain vanishes in a burst of blood-lust thrill. I push forward, holding Life-Ripper vertically. I press right up against him. His pollaxe is caught between us.

  “Murderer!” I scream, and I plunge Life-Ripper's single point down, scrape it down his left shinguard until it catches in where two plates overlap on his foot. The true metal point goes right through, stopping only at the floor.

  He yells in pain, shoves me away with all his might. He brings up his pollaxe, and with three-quarters power strikes with the axe-blade—

  I am lying on the floor a few paces from him. An incredible pain has filled my skull. It might be emanating from my right cheek, yet its sheer intensity makes this hard to pinpoint. It is a solid pain and completely overwhelming in its solidity. There is no bone or flesh within my helm—these have been transformed to agony. I gasp and the agony explodes like fuel bursting into flame. My vision vanishes once more.

  When it returns, Vanerak has advanced another step. He swings down one-handed. I roll. Vanerak's blow smashes the floor. I keep rolling, retch into my helm when I stop. Wet vomit coats my beard, which is already wet—dripping with blood.

  My right cheek is cold. That's where is axe went through, cleaved right through the metal and through flesh and into bone, deep. Some teeth are out of place. Blood is streaming even from my tongue. If Vanerak's blow had been fully two-handed, his blade would have torn my jaw off.

  I hold Life-Ripper up to guard. It is flexing in my vision, and feels strangely light, impotent. The vast room is tilting around me. Vanerak steps in to strike—and slips on his own blood, crashes to one knee.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  I stab but my stab is feeble. He knocks it away, strikes with violence. I fall back to avoid. Cutting force gashes my armor at my belly and I crash down. The back of my helm knocks against the floor and pain rings through right to my eyeballs. All goes black again.

  Blood chokes me. I cough it out, struggle desperately up. Vanerak has stood up also. He swings. I block the line of force, stagger back three or five steps.

  He limps forward, swings again. The cutting force is not so strong. I ward it off with Life-Ripper. The white sparks blind me. The screech of metal deafens me. I retch again, and bile burns in my cut mouth. I stab, weakly, but am far out of range.

  My ruby is burning furiously, yet its strength is not enough. It cannot overwhelm the injury Vanerak has dealt me. My balance is destroyed, my strength drained. I can no longer fight.

  But neither can he. He limps forward too slowly. Life-Ripper's power of distortion is concentrated in the twin-points, yet the single-point contains the message too: beginning and end are linked. My stab through his foot has torn his flesh apart, and I've torn apart the inside of his hand as well.

  I pace back further, rock back, fall down. I heave, stand back up, retreat further. He limps onward, yet despite my pain-drunken stumbling, he cannot catch up. I widen the distance between us to ten steps, then twenty, now thirty. I look to the wall and see the vague squarish shape of the gatehouse. I turn and stagger at it, widening my steps as much as I can. I reach it, glance back again and see that Vanerak is now more than fifty steps away, though still limping onward.

  Down the steps I hurry. My injuries burn pain through my flesh and bone and innards. Not only my head, but my left side, cut and crushed, is aflame too. The hole in my ribs at the right stabs with pain each time my right foot impacts stone. My right foot itself hurts too—bruised, it's swelling up against the metal. My left arm is weak and painful too.

  Someone groans. One of the second degrees is clutching his head, where I stabbed it. The wound wasn't fatal. Worse—at the far side of the stairs Halax is sitting up, and staring at me. He has removed his helm and upper plates, and has managed to wrap healing chains tightly to his flesh. His face is pale from blood loss, but his eyes are sharp as they follow me, and all the more terrifying for being filled not with malice, but curiosity.

  Neither pursue. They are too badly injured. I reach the end of this wide staircase where it turns to become the thin spiral one. I look back. Vanerak has emerged from the broken gate. He is standing still. Scarlet blood is running from right gauntlet and left boot.

  We stare at each other. His eyes lock with mine—I can feel his gaze even if his mirror-mask reveals nothing.

  Our duel has ended in a draw. A draw! We equaled each other in skill and craft. I equaled a Runethane! I fought him to a standstill, injured him, and yet all the same feel nothing but bitterness. I swore to take revenge, and have not been able to take it. He lives, and he lives to learn the secrets of the First Runeforger.

  I turn away. I can do nothing else. I must run, heal, forge, and hope one day to face him again.

  Down the spiral stairs I stumble, one hand against the wall to balance myself. My breath fails me several times and I have to stop and dry heave. I remove my helm, try to scrape some of the vomit from my blood-matted beard.

  Can I hear scraping steps behind me, or is this just my frightened imagination? I hurry down, down, down toward the heat. Bright magma blinds me and I shade my eyes.

  The blow to my head addled my wits. My armor is cut apart in several places. How am I going to swim through the magma sea in it? I will be burned terribly.

  Glinting silver coils lie on the stairs. I kneel down and pick them up. Breathing-cables, and not just mine. We left them down here when we emerged, ready to be picked back up when it was time to leave.

  I will tie them around my armor like bandages. They are at least as resistant to heat as my armor is, and should hold back the burning tide, at least for a while. I hope my runes hold too. Probably I will not be able to make it all the way back to the magma shore. I will have to find some alternative escape.

  The tying proves a difficult process. My hands are weak and shaking. The metal cables are hard to knot, and my first attempts do not satisfy me. If even one thread is loose, the magma will have free reign to destroy my flesh.

  Eventually I manage to seal my arm and chest wounds. Next I must wind it around my face, yet before I do that I must equip a heat-mask. I choose the one I came wearing. I listen closely, to make sure the scraping from earlier truly was my imagination, then secure it. Blackness falls around me, apart from the circle of heat at my feet.

  I blindly wrap more cable around my head to cover the breach in my helm. I use a lot of cable, and my head becomes heavy, and my heat-vision one-quarter obscured. I tie it off, and throw the rest of the heat masks and breathing cables into the magma to hinder Vanerak and Halax.

  Now I must dive. I must leave this place, leave my promise of revenge behind, and return to the magma shore. Still, even then, I will not be free of Vanerak. Part of me remains a prisoner to him, part of my mind remains trapped by him.

  This will remain the case until I return to slay him, or else he comes to slay me.

  That time will not come for a long while yet. When it does, he will be more powerful even than now. But I will be stronger too. I know the secret of true metal and I will use it. I have peered into the past, and know what lies inside the sphere. I will find a way to use that knowledge too, to improve my runes further. Make new scripts of great power.

  When we meet again, there will be no draw. I will have my vengeance. I will kill him!

  I will!

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