Reincarnated as a Dwarf

My First Rune

Looking around, I realized that I had finished just in time. The defenders were down to their last three students. One of them was the overly aggressive girl who had been pulled earlier, apparently she had challenged the Elder and had gotten put back in the game. 

“Finished already?” Elder Threrburk raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Let me inspect it, and if I find you have either not finished it, or done a shoddy job, then you will be cleaning this place by yourself for a week.” 

With a respectful nod, I handed Elder Threrburk the dagger. He took it with experienced hands and began scrutinizing it with the eyes of a hardened warrior. Examining the heft, the balance, the grip, and finally the edge.

“Ancestors beard.” He muttered to himself. “I don’t know if it was luck, or the gods playing tricks, but the lad somehow managed to add a magic rune to his weapon in a half hour! Let’s see, it appears to be the rune of… Beer?”

Elder Therburk cleared his throat and glared down at me with a mix of curiosity and distrust. “Kvalinn, I will need to hold onto this dagger for now. If I need to confiscate it then you will be compensated accordingly.”

“Wait a minute! Did we win?” I asked in a panic. I didn’t really care about the dagger but I definitely did not want to get all the first years mad at me by forcing them to clean this giant hall.

“Hm? Oh right, the game.” Elder Threrburk had gotten lost in thought as he gazed at the dagger, and my question didn’t really change that. “Yes, the first year students win, you don’t have to clean the youth center, now go do whatever.” The Elder then wandered off, his zoned out eyes indicated that he was deep in thought. 

“You did it, Kvalinn! You won the game!” Zikruk excitedly patted me on the shoulder. He had been eliminated early in the game and had been forced to watch from the sidelines. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen first years win a game of shieldwall against older opponents before! Watching you work was amazing!” 

The other students came forward with their own congratulations  and thanks, even our former opponents, the fifth years, congratulated me.

“Thanks for not getting us stuck with cleaning duty, Kvalinn”

“Awesome job!”

“Not bad for your first game, little one.” 

That last comment was a little unwarranted, since the kid who said it was barely a foot taller than me. But since I was only two feet tall I couldn’t complain too much.

To celebrate our victory, I opened my tin of cookies and shared it with the group. It was surprisingly popular, especially among the girls who enjoyed the sweetness, even though it was just made with honey instead of sugar. Most of them agreed with my father and said that they would go better with beer.

The girl who had been kicked out of the game earlier walked up to me when I had finished giving the recipe to someone from the baking clan. She had bright and eager eyes, with long chestnut hair that was arranged in a cute looking braid down her back. 

“Hey, Kvalinn. Can you make me a weapon too? All I have in this town is my hammer.” I was a little surprised that she didn’t use any of the ceremonial greetings that I had been forced to memorize, but my yankee money making senses from my previous were yelling at me to ignore the slight and just make a deal.

Before I could proudly accept my first commission though, Elder Threrburk bellowed from across the hall at her. “Bekhi Mubrimssdottir! Even a surface dwarf such as yourself should know that informality of that level  is only acceptable among humans and halflings! Zikruk, teach her the proper greetings before she offends someone irrevocably at school, and make sure Kvalinn doesn’t sell her a weapon.” He then moved to instruct some other kids in their training and left Zikruk to teach her the long greetings I had learned the other day.

A surface dwarf? Does that mean she lives above the ground? Or just near it?

Zikruk grimaced and looked like he was swallowing the urge to say something mean to the girl, but held his tongue as he followed the Elder’s instruction. Taking out his hammer, he gave the formal introduction with the tone of voice that you would take teaching an extremely stupid person..

“Greetings, Bekhi Mubrimssdottir. I am Zikruk Aundarordsson of the Merchant clan. May the ancestors see fit that our endeavors together meet with honor and profit.” Zikruk lowered his hammer and put it away with a sigh. “That’s the correct way of giving a greeting to someone you don’t know personally but know their name.”

“Great!” Bekhi’s face looked slightly hurt by Zikruk’s tone, but reached for her hammer so that she could imitate the greeting. But since I didn’t want to hear yet another long and boring greeting, I raised my hand to stop her.

“That won’t be necessary. Thanks to Elder Threrburk I know your name, and you know mine. Now, let’s talk weapons. I can only make daggers so far but they are of fairly decent quality.” I would have continued my sales pitch but Zikruk hastily covered my mouth.

“Kvalinn stop!” He then glared at Bekhi. “Dwarves from craftsmen clans are not allowed to sell their work until they have been given permission from their clan.”

“Aww! So I can’t get Kvalinn to make me a weapon?” 

“No. Not for another twenty five years at minimum!” 

The disappointment on Bekhi’s face was palpable. Evidently she really wanted me to make her a weapon. Eventually I managed to pry Zikruks hand off my mouth to ask him a question.

“Hey, Zikruk. You said I wouldn’t be able to sell my work until I had permission from my clan, but what about trading for it?”

Zikruk was caught off guard by my question, but once he recovered himself he began thinking it over. “Hmm, it’s not strictly forbidden in the book of laws, so that orphaned dwarves can trade for food to survive. But it’s also not exactly looked well upon. If you’re serious about this Kvalinn, then I’d recommend an under the table deal. Facilitated of course by your future exclusive merchant.” He gestured to himself with a flourish that looked severely out of place among five year old kids. But Neither Bekhi nor I laughed, I’d get to make my first weapon for commercial use, Bekhi was getting a weapon she wanted, and Zikruk would get a promise from me to sign with him to be my exclusive merchant. Everyone was happy with that deal. 

“I have to head home to help with chores in a bit,” Zikruk said, “but we can arrange the details of the deal at school next week.” 

“Ok! I’ll look through what I brought from home and see what can be traded. Bye, Kvalinn!” With a cheerful smile and wave, Bekhi left the youth center and raced down the street.

Zikruk looked at me oddly as I returned the wave. “Kvalinn, you realize she’s a surface dwarf, right? There’s no need to be so polite. I’ll bet she’s just here to marry into a clan that her parents want connections to.”

“Does it matter where she’s from?” I said absentmindedly. “A sale is a sale. Besides, she seemed nice enough.” 

Not having anything to say to that, Zikruk gazed at me curiously for a few minutes before another game of shieldwall was announced and we joined in. This time I had to fight with my hammer and I realized very quickly that the TV and anime I had seen in my previous life were completely worthless as teaching aids. 

We kept playing and practicing until lunch time. After lunch concluded though, all the fifth years and below were kicked from the youth hall. Apparently they didn’t want parents complaining about kids not helping at home, and also the training for the older students became substantially more dangerous in the afternoon and they didn’t want us smaller kids getting hurt. 

“Welcome back, Kvalinn.” My father said as I returned home. “Hurry and get to your station, I need your help getting an order of knives ready for Aundarord by next week. Did you finish the one you brought to the youth center?” 

I set my bag down in the corner and donned my apron. “It was a lot of fun out there, but unfortunately we can’t use the dagger I was working on. The Elder in charge took it.”

My comment caused my father's hammer to pause midswing, and his voice was dark and worried. “Why would an Elder take interest in a dagger forged by a beardless youth? Did you use your rune? Tell me you didn’t show off your rune!”

“I didn’t! Well, I didn’t show it at least,” That seemed to assure father a little, but not by much, so I took a deep breath and continued. “We played a game called shieldwall and the Elder gave me a half hour to finish my dagger before declaring the other kids winners. So I put just a little magic into the weapon to speed up the work. But instead of just creating the dagger I wanted, a rune appeared on the knife that I didn’t carve.”

“Ancestors' beard. This could mean trouble.” Father gave a tired sigh and put down his hammer. “Did the Elder say what the rune was? If it turns out to be a major class, or, ancestors forbid, a disaster class rune, then our secret is as good as known.”

“Umm, Elder Threrburk said it was the rune of beer. Is that important?” I had instinctively reached to cover my right hand, the one bearing the rune of forging. I didn’t want to be homeless at five years old!

“The rune of beer?” Fathers voice had shifted from dark and ominous to surprised so quickly that it nearly gave me whiplash. “Is the rune that appeared?” He took a piece of wood and charcoal and sketched out the rune. It frankly looked like a mix of Japanese Kanji and Norse letters. 

I quickly nodded when I saw it. “Yes, that’s the rune.” 

“Interesting, I’ve never once had anyone ask to have this rune carved on their weapons, or encountered a magic weapon with this rune. So I have no idea what the effects of the rune would be. Here, use this and show me exactly what you did at the youth center.” 

Father set a small dagger that was around eighty percent finished on my station, then grabbed a shield that he had taken to keeping nearby when I was using my Rune of Forging, since sometimes I put too much magic into a creation and it would explode and send shrapnel everywhere. 

I attempted to follow the same exact steps I had done before, putting in a little magic from my rune and singing the silly beer song. It felt a bit odd working while father was behind a shield, and staring at me so intently but he had mentioned offhandedly before that rune crafting was extremely dangerous so he was probably just being cautious. 

Just like at the youth center, when I sang the last note of the song, I felt my rune activate with a burning sensation and the Rune of Beer carved itself in the dagger. 

“It’s finished, father.” I quenched the knife in water and put it on his station. “It should do the same thing as the other dagger I made.”

“It’s done? Where’s the boom?” Father peeked out behind his shield to curiously look at the dagger sitting in front of him. “Interesting, it’s definitely the rune of beer. Now what does it do?” 

He swung the dagger experimentally a few times, tested it against the shield, and poked tonight's dinner meat with it. But it didn’t seem to do anything out of the ordinary for a normal dagger. Finally, father tested the edge and cut himself with the weapon.

“Aah, so that’s what it does.” Father nodded in understanding before enlightening me. “It would seem that this rune has the power to make people feel drunk. It feels like I *hic* just drank from a cask of *hic* XXXX beer. Maybe even XXXXX beer. Straight from the *hic* king’s cellar.”

I reached for the dagger in awe. Was it really that powerful? Father instantly sobered and bellowed at me before I could touch it though.

“Stop! Don’t touch that dagger! If you were to so much as scratch yourself then it would be a death sentence! You’d need to be at least a hundred, maybe two hundred, years old before you can safely consume beer that strong. I can see now why the Elder was so concerned about the weapon you crafted at the youth center.”

Father grabbed an iron box that he normally used for lunch and shoved the dagger inside. “I’ll talk to Aundarord about how to safely sell or dispose of this later. If we can sell it, then it will likely fetch a rather nice price. Runed weapons are rare, and usually very powerful, although I’m not sure how much people will pay for a dagger with the rune of beer.” 

Both of us looked at the box containing the dagger with uncertain expectations. If it sold for a lot, then father would likely spend the money on some high class beer for himself, and tasty food for me. Eventually, father shook himself from his daydreams.

“Alright, that’s enough talk. Like I said earlier we need to get to work on the knives for the order. Get to work on shaping the daggers Kvalinn and I’ll finish them. Make sure you do not add any runes, or use any magic. Actually, wait a minute.” Just as I was about to start working on the daggers, Father pulled out a large box and plopped it beside me. “I had some time to kill while you were at the youth center so I made some crossbow bolt points for an open government contract. Practice controlling your magic on them, and maybe the Thane will pay better if they have magic.”

I looked down at the large box containing the arrow heads. There must have been at least a thousand of them! And this was done in his ‘time to kill’! I evidently had a long way to go before I reached his level of craftsmanship. 

Picking up the first arrowhead, I began experimenting with the forge song and the amount of magic put into each one. Sometimes upping the pacing of the song, reducing and increasing the amount of magic, and hammering more or less at the metal. By the time I finished with the last one, I felt that I had a pretty good feel for how to keep my rune under control. I went to bed that night confident that I wouldn’t cause any more incidents that would make me stand out or cause me to be exiled from the mountain.