Bloodsworn

Chapter 2.25 Forging

25.

Victoria’s visit that next morning had been brief. She arrived in a swirl of activity, maids followed behind her with platters of food, and Erak had been forced to sit and eat as he was talked at. Numbers, strategies, and recaps of the situation all flowed over his head as he sat there nodding at the Queen. More and more survivors were finding them, trickling in from the capital or other ravaged towns and cities close by.

Sword of Empire floating above the old dwarven hall was the equivalent of a neon sign pointing towards safety. That the old warship of conquest was now being seen as a shield was amusing. Erak doubted the spirit of the ship would agree with the people who now cowered in her shadow.

It had all boiled down to they were running low on food, weapons, and room. The lower halls were hard to reach and nearly uninhabitable. After Erak and his team had raided the vault there had been a flurry of aberrations which had streamed forth and tested the guards. They had prevailed in their defense but Victoria was now arranging for hunting parties to go down and seek them out.

“Levels increase strength and the monsters are weak. Now is a perfect time to hone our newfound blades, so to speak. A few stronger squads of soldiers will go down, but the militia we’ve built needs to be blooded,” Victoria had explained and that had ended that conversation. Erak didn’t mind. Aside from the chimeras there had been nothing to challenge him down there and he doubted that the newly found militia would go as deep into the bowels of the earth as he had.

When she had finished she had told him to rearm himself and get some rest. They had much to do and little time to do it. Then she had swept out in a hurry and left Erak with several platters of food. He didn’t mind the last part.

“Haven’t had a full meal in too long.” Plates of flatcakes drizzled in honey, bowls of fresh fruit, and piles of meat all disappeared beneath the mechanical proficiency of his fork. Pomp looked on from the side and the slight growl in the back of his throat didn’t abide until Erak tossed him several pieces of fried pork.

They had showered and cleaned themselves again before setting off to find Snowbeard and beginning to work again. In the depths of the tunnels where natural light had never touched, it was hard to keep track of time. Most of their old ways had fallen with the arrival of Essence as their old power sources failed them. Not everything had converted over to Essence reliability either. A few mechanical clocks had been placed about in major intersections, but Erak still felt like he was running late when he entered the forge.

Snowbeard had the forge running hot, heat blasting out of the doorway and infecting the hallway so that Erak had a sheen of sweat as he opened the door. The old dwarf and his apprentices were ready, their tools laid out and fires stoked as ingots of the blue coldforged iron was laid out nearby.

“ Running late!” Snowbeard bellowed at him as he entered. Erak shrugged, there had been little he could do with Victoria holding him up and he wasn’t going to abandon a full breakfast.

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“Doesn’t matter, it took us longer than I thought. I had to go to the archives to find a book that had a passage of the author having read another ancient book that spoke of these methods. My class will help us bridge the gap in what needs to be done.” Snowbeard seemed to mainly be talking to himself as he walked about.

“Bloodsworn, I’ll need you to stand off to the side. Dragon, when I give the word, you are to blast the metal with everything you have. It’ll be once per piece of armor. We’ll be here awhile. Do you have enough reserves to do that?”

“Erak has been generating Essence all night and while I’m nowhere near my capacity, I am certain I can do this,” Pomp said, wriggling in joy at being the center of attention.

“Be ready for when I call. This iron is different. The temperatures needed would ruin most steel or iron to even begin to shape it. Normal water or oil won’t quench it properly either. It needs magic to cool.” Snowbeard rolled his powerful shoulders and began to work.

Erak hadn’t had many chances to watch non-warriors use their abilities, but Snowbeard was constantly in motion and using Essence. Energy built up and around him before entering the fires of the forge, or his tools, or even the metal he worked. He set the first ingot in the flame and then began his casting as he waited.

The blue-white metal refused to heat at first. It sat without reaction as the temperature soared higher and higher before it began to flow. At first it was just a slight tinge of red that slowly deepened into a blood red and then became an incandescent white. Snowbeard’s face was covered in sweat and it soaked his clothes as his apprentices rushed him ladles of water from a canteen down the hall.

Even away from the mouth of the forge, Erak slowly baked. Memories of the boiling lake threatened him, tore at him and reminded him of the pain. Pomp’s presence filled his mind, a cooling rush of power that subdued the sharpness of the memories and laid them to rest as if under a thick layer of ice.

The ring of the dwarf’s hammer filled the room as he pulled the glowing white piece of metal free. Blow after blow rained down with Essence coating the hammer, dwarf, and metal. The shape of a breastplate emerged slowly, but faster than Erak thought should be possible. Seventy-seven blows landed on the armor and Snowbeard seemed visibly weakened as he turned and shouted for Pompous.

“Dragon, now!”

Pomp leapt and floated across the air to hover over the glowing hot piece of metal. His maw opened and Erak felt the pull of Essence as Pomp directed a freezing blast of arctic winds over the anvil. Half of the room should have been coated in a layer of ice, instead the breastplate pulled it all towards itself.

Pomp’s mouth clicked shut and he fell to the flow only to scamper back to Erak and crawl up his shoulder. Pomp sighed and flopped down, not spent, but tired. At the forge; Snowbeard gasped as he ran his finger along the edge of the breastplate and a smile broke free of the confines of his beard.

“This is a good sign. I won’t know until it’s complete, but with how much Essence we’ve put into it. I think we might actually make it to rare,” Snowbeard mused as he picked up the breastplate and handed it over to his apprentices. The dwarf walked out of the forge and Erak peered over to see him guzzling water straight from the large buckets his apprentices had hauled over but kept out of the forge.

“This will be tiring work, but it shall be done,” Snowbeard promised as he set the wooden bucket down, water clung to his beard and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before striding back into the forge and grabbing the next ingot.