Agni and Isolf Stand Before Nordri

So stood Agni and Isolf before Nordri, one of the first dwarves and now called the Last. He did not notice the adventurers at first, not over the ringing of his hammer. Though gods are few and true heroes fewer, the dwarf had not left his forge since the Great Winter but to pull frozen knives of eiter from the river Gjoll, or to take his pick, Spritta, to the iron-rich veins that course through the bottomless depths of Svartalfheim. Uncounted swords, axes-heads and spear-points covered the ground at his feet, each one glowing bright with runes and well-shaped. He was four feet tall to the inch, and black as a corpse with soot and ash. His hair was wiry and knotted and no less dingy, so that altogether he was nearly invisible in the darkness of his lair. Not a scrap of cloth covered the dwarf - his shirt was made of fine-spun gold coiled around well-shaped gemstones of every color. Three fat rings of gold, pure and solid by the look of them, ran down each arm. His trousers were banded silver and red-gold. He was barefoot, though his gnarled feet resembled piles of slag. He turned to face them now.
His face was wide and flat, and beardless. His heavy eyebrows were each pierced with three delicate golden rings, and his ears were bejeweled to match his shirt. His eyes were small and vacant and white, but searching. The last dwarf was utterly blind.
“Heill,” Agni called. “I am Agni Volmundson, called Agni the Christian. This one is Isolf Skogason, called Moss-neck. We heard your call on the tongue of birds, having tasted dragon’s heart-blood. We followed their strange chattering over rivers and through mountains until we were at last led to the yawning mouth of the underworld. Like brave Hermod, we rode through valleys so deep that we saw nothing, and we challenged the giantess Modgud to enter your domain.” Agni knelt, pulling a silk bag from his shoulder and carefully undid the bindings. He lifted the contents of the bag up towards the dwarf in open palms.
Agni began to speak, but at once the dwarf’s nose set to work, as a hound picks up a scent. He sniffed the air long and hard before taking heavy steps toward’s Agni’s outstretched hands. The dwarf began to speak. The words were not dissimilar from Agni’s western dialect, nor Isolf’s eastern, but it was undeniably different. As the two adventurer’s listened, it became evident that his language was an ancient thing which, unlike their own, was not diluted by time.
“A king’s steel…!” the dwarf then exclaimed, displacing a cloud of ash from his throat. His thick fingers reached into the silken bundle he was presented, and they traced over each of the six pieces held within. The dwarf spoke to himself, naming the steel’s virtues. “It is the sword of Saint Olaf. When the snows began a vision sent me to Miklagard, where I found it laying broken on his altar. I have carried it with me ever since, vowing that it not be remade until I found a man worthy of carrying it into battle. I know now that Sigurd Magnusson yet lives – and while he lives there is hope!”
“…Not since Regin reforged the blade of the Volsungs has such a weapon been in mortal hands…”
“The birds proclaim the rise of a new Fire King in the south to lead the sons of Muspel. Rime-giants ride into the realms of men from the north, threatening to lock the land again in endless winter. Only united can mankind stand - “
Without pause, and though unaware of men’s presence, the dwarf debated with himself the qualities of the sword he now beheld against those of the greatest swords forged by human or dwarfish hands -- Gram and Tyrfing, Dainsleif and Mistilteinn, Hofuth and Laevateinn, Naegling and Hrunting, Hrotti and Skofnung, and even Legbiter, worn by Magnus Barefoot, father of Sigurd Magnusson.
The conversation continued for some time, one-sided as it was, Agni’s entreaties failing to catch the dwarf’s attention amid his own ramblings, until at once Isolf proclaimed the last dwarf must be not only blind, but deaf, and touched by the madness that affected so many of his kind in their dying days after Ragnarok.
Isolf then found some wood, not yet burnt to charcoal, and split the logs into sheets onto which he carved in the old alphabet their story. He proffered the inscription to the dwarf’s fingers which immediately began to trace the letters. The dwarf’s face then went solid and he began to nod in understanding. Wordless he read, wordless he took up the pieces of St. Olaf’s sword, and wordless he carried them to his great anvil. There he notched each piece with his chisel.
“It surprises me that the dwarf has such reverence for Olaf’s legacy,” Isolf said. “I did not think that he would be so easily won to our cause.”
“It is not for Olaf that he helps us,” Agni said. “The dwarves were no better than maggots, festering in the flesh of fallen Ymir. They were given reason by the gods themselves, and raised up to serve them. His race is dead, and the gods are silent.”
The dwarf carried the sword from his anvil to his forge, which was shaped like a great wolf’s maw and built into the natural stone walls of the dwarf’s lair. He never had need to stoke the flame – it burned hot and bright, and would so long as the dwarf drew breath.
“Dwarves want for nothing but to put their craft in the hands of gods, kings, and heroes.”
The dwarf took nine ingots of eiterstal from a great black chest. Agni and Isolf had encountered the metal only rarely on their journey. Eiter is a poison brewed in the spring Hvergelmir by countless snakes and the dread wyrm Nidhogg. It was eiter gave rise to the giant Ymir, from whom all of giantkind was born. And from the giants, of course, would come Odin and his brothers. As charcoal is to steel, so is eiter to eiterstal. The gods carry weapons of eiterstal, for it is the best of all metals, and they likewise ringed and armed their champions with the metal.
White hot, the pieces of the sword were joined. The dwarf bent the strips of eiterstal around the joints of the sword, and likewise up the length of its center on both sides. He worked with his bare hands in the fire. The metal, impossibly hard, was molded by his fingers with no great effort. The flames did not lick him, nor did the metal scar his fingers. He ran his rough hand over each surface of the blade, turning it in the flame, pulling the eiterstal out to coat the blade and its edge.
He then removed the sword from the forge-fire, quickly bringing it to the anvil. With his great hammer he struck each joint lightly. He returned the blade to the fire till it again glowed white, and then he tapped each joint.
Agni and Isolf could only watch as the dwarf finished his labor, as one might watch a sporting contest or duel. The blade was quickly scrubbed and polished. The edges were smoothed out and then sharpened by file and whetstone. The hilt, ivory, was rimmed with gold and the handgrip wound with gold thread. No gold or silver was laid into the blade - no craft, not even that of the dwarf himself, could hope to compare with the wondrous shapes eiterstal takes when heated.
The dwarf held the blade up, as if admiring it with his sightless eyes. Then, taking a finely-pointed chisel also made from eiterstal, he began engraving runes all about its surface. Here, he cut the tyr-rune thrice, for victory, and there, runes so that the sword’s cuts could not be healed. He sung nine charms over the blade, and cut runes over the whole of the blade until every inch not covered by plumes of eiterstal was covered in runes.
He took a handful of glittering dust from a barrel to the left of his anvil. He rubbed the stuff into the runes, and then blew off the excess. From a barrel to his right, he took a handful of inky black liquid, foul as a bog, and ran it over the length of the sword. He shook the liquid off, and the runes there glimmered for a second. He paused, and setting the sword aside, collapsed into his arms at the workbench. Agni took the sword, the dwarf not seeming to notice.
“This,” Agni said, “is the sword of a king.”