An Old Legend

The Magical Blacksmiths of the Church and their Impossible Weapons and Armor

Pt. 1

"It has long been known the blacksmiths employed by the Church produce equipment unlike any other smith from any of the cities can muster. The armor, though somewhat rare to see, always shines with a radiance found only in the light of the long-forgotten Sun or the seldom seen Moon. Each piece appears molded to the body of the wearer, yet they remain unencumbered by it, with their physical abilities left completely intact or even, by some accounts, improved by a significant margin. These armor sets, however, are an incredibly rare sight. The most common set to see is the golden armor worn by the Guard Order of the Old City, and for the vast majority of people, that is the only type they would even have a chance to see.

"There does exist more armor outside of that, however the only time it is ever seen is in the direst of circumstances, those so dire that, even with the help of those in armor, too few are left alive for rumors to spread. In the accounts we have, they are only seen in use against beast waves that threaten a major city, beyond that which only a team of Heros could stand against. The only record of these armor sets come from accounts of said Heros who happened to bear witness to its use, and it is from these accounts that we can be sure of the existence of multiple sets of armor outside of those made for the Guards. There exist only six accounts of these armors, three of which are of the same figure, leaving us with proof of only four different armors. Assuming they are worn only by a single person, this also leaves us with only four individuals deemed worthy enough of this armor.

"The armor seen most often is of a deep red color, worn by a figure described in each account as 'towering' or 'hulking', even from a great distance. The armor itself is ferocious in design, with many layered sections and sharp points and edges. The gauntlets of the armor have short, wide blades built into them directly, coming out over the back of the wearer's hands, who fights using hand-to-hand techniques in a flurry of slashes and dismembered parts. Unlike the other armored figures, this one has not been observed to use any magic nor sweeping attacks that cover a large area, instead meeting waves head on, steadily walking through them until reaching the lead beast of the wave, always a truly monstrous figure that strikes fear into even Heros, wherein it is quickly dispatched. At that point, those called to defend against the wave arrive to clean up what remains of it, and in the chaos, the armored figure disappears just as quietly as they arrived."

***

Walking out of the church, I once again basked in the golden glow of the city. Before me was a large square, the largest one of the city, and behind it stretched a road that led unobstructed to the outer wall of the city. The entrance to the church, and by extension the road leading from it, faced east. About halfway between the church and the wall was a square with a fountain. On each of the four main roads there was a square with a fountain, and secondary roads ran through each of the squares perpendicular to the main roads. Where the secondary roads met there was a square, smaller than those on the main roads and missing their fountains.

I walked down the main road extending from the church.

All the buildings of the city were roughly the same height, either three or four stories. The buildings with four floors were slightly taller than the buildings with three. Judging by the window spacing, each of the floors for the four-story buildings were shorter than those of the three-story buildings, hence why they were still close to the same overall height. I assumed there to be a limit placed on building height, since I'd expect heights to gradually increase approaching the city center, as they did in my town.

The city was built on a grid, with there being space for four standard buildings between each side street. Despite the whole being circular, there weren't any accommodations made to the buildings themselves to keep the grid aligned. Instead, the streets that looped around the city were expanded or reduced to fill the right angles created by the grid. The sizing of each of the blocks was tuned to minimize the changes that needed to be made to the roads. Naturally, the farther away from the center of the city, the more the roads would need to be adjusted in order to keep the circular pattern of the city, but instead of simply keeping empty areas of road, the spaces were expanded into more public squares for people to use how they wished. The buildings didn't extend all the way up to the walls, and the space between them was used as the final spacing measure to keep the city circular. Very little of this was immediately visible from ground level, however I had seen maps occasionally in my time in the library where this all was shown, and knowing what to look for, I noticed some of the evidence of this construction.

All the buildings themselves were all made of the same white stone with shingled slate roofs. The roofs sloped into gutters that ran along the street, which I found odd as in the week I had spent here, I had never seen it rain in the city once. This stood directly at odds with the world outside the city where there were only a handful of dry days in a year; it was always at least misty, usually drizzling, and often outright raining, yet the city was bone dry, making the rain diversion system present throughout the city seem unnecessary.

After walking for a while, I arrived in the east plaza. The space was four city blocks wide on each side, plus the space for each of the main roads which crossed through it. In the center was a fountain roughly two houses wide. When we first entered the city, we passed through the north plaza and by extension the fountain in the center of it, and while I didn't notice the design of that fountain at the time, I immediately noticed this one. Its design was the same as the one in my town, albeit larger.

There was a market set up in the square when I arrived. Wooden tables and multi-colored awnings covered the whole area, with hardly any room for walking between them. There was a wide array of goods on offer, from food and tools to children's toys and alcohol, the latter two placed consistently close to each other. There were hundreds of people milling throughout the market, with seemingly dozens at every table, the cacophony of their voices nearly deafening.

I paused when the sight entered my eyes. A few days of travel away or less, there were dozens of cities where, at any moment, life could be entirely upended; where a whole city could be wiped off the map in a matter of a few hours, and the people there lived accordingly. Then there was this market.

I weaved my way through the crowd, behind people bent over, inspecting jewelry displayed against a maroon table cloth, behind people holding new tools, barraging their makers with questions of their quality, behind mothers inspecting produce while their kids clung to their clothes while looking at the candy displayed across from them, behind other parents attempting to corral their kids who'd no doubt gotten into said candy, likely as a freebee from the sellers, and finally, I ended up in the middle, the gentle sound of flowing water in the fountain helping to diminish the sounds of the crowd.

There was a suspiciously large area left clear around the fountain. There was nothing I laid eyes on in the market that jumped out at me, but even if there was, watching people sort out their money made the thought of getting things essentially free very unappealing.

I stood there for a while watching the crowd. The more I watched, the more the novelty of the market subsided. The blurred movement of the crowd came more into focus. I watched a child's face light up with joy as their parents finally caved and got them a toy they wanted and would surely only use for a week; I watched the bitter expression on a stall keeper's face as they were out haggled and forced to sell below what they wanted. I saw people simply out to enjoy the day walk past people on a mission to get everything they wanted in as short a time as possible.

As I stood there, someone seemed to materialize out of the crowd, walking towards me. He was wearing simple clothing of just high enough quality to not stand out amongst the people around him, and he was holding something wrapped in brown paper in either hand. I had seen him before; it was the man who had introduced himself as Vulper. When he reached me, he offered me one of the things he was holding. It was a baked potato with a thin wood spoon stuck in it. I took it and he stood beside me, also watching the crowd. I scraped out a spoonful of potato and ate it. It was scalding.

In between bites, he started talking.

"So, where'd you get sent?"

"We leave for Burvil later today."

I made a few slits in my potato to help it cool down.

"Strange."

"How's that?"

"Burvil's situation is tense right now. The families on the Church's side have been declining for the last few generations, leaving a perceived power vacuum."

"Perceived?"

"If you walk past a sleeping bear and it doesn't kill you, does it mean the bear can't kill you?"

"No."

"Same principle."

"I see."

"Do keep in mind though, they'd be stretched thin if they needed to cover the whole city for whatever reason."

"Well, that's a good omen, thanks."

"Hey, what's going to happen will happen. Better to address the worst case and prepare for it than allow superstition to cloud your judgement."

We stood silently for a while, quietly eating while watching the crowd.

"So, what are you doing here? I thought you said you had something to do?"

"Just finished a job. I like to come here to refresh - remind myself how many normal people there are."

"Normal people?"

As he started answering, I caught something in the crowd, and judging by his silence, Vulper had seen it too. A man, neither young nor old, had slipped a hand into a woman's bag and pilfered a coin pouch. She didn't notice immediately, as her attention was split between the person selling pottery she was talking to and the small child clutching the hem of her shirt, nor did anyone in the crowd seem to notice, but our position gave us a clear line of sight. As the pickpocket moved his hand away though, the woman turned, the strap of her bag catching his wrist. She turned around quickly, immediately seeing the thief who had bumped into someone walking by in his hasty attempt to flee. The woman took a step forward, but then stopped as a look of consternation flashed across her face. She clearly wanted to chase him, and if she did, she could likely catch him, however, doing so would mean leaving her child.

The woman looked down at her child, now pointing at the thief running away from them and saying something. She sighed and a bitter smile crept onto her face. She patted the child on the head and said something, prompting a confused response from the child. As she started explaining something, there was a flash further down the street. Seemingly from nowhere, a figure clad fully in pale-gold, plate armor had appeared in the street, holding a tower shield in one hand and a longsword in the other.

The figure appeared so unexpectedly in the path of the thief that he didn't even have time to process its presence, let alone stop. He missed a step as he unconsciously tried to avoid running into the armored figure, but even if he could've stopped in an instant, he could do nothing about the figure striking out with their shield, smashing nearly the whole of the man's front. He wavered in place, but before he could fall down on his own, the figure threw a punch with their other hand, still holding the sword, hitting the man in the side of the head. Before he could be sent tumbling into the nearby stall though, the figure grabbed his hair with the knuckles of their sword hand, still not letting go of the sword. With his momentum stopped, the figure let go, allowing the man to fall to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut. All movement in the surrounding area had stopped as everyone watched the scene.

With the man sufficiently incapacitated, the figure drove the sword into the grout between the stones of the road, as well as through part of the man's clothes, effectively pinning him to the ground. They then bent over and picked up the fallen coin pouch, which the thief had dropped on the spot upon being hit with a metal shield the same size as him, with their now-free hand. They then walked over to the woman and returned her money. Before they left, they knelt down and patted the child, who was looking at them with starry eyes, on the head. As the figure turned to leave, their eyes passed over the two of us and lingered. I couldn't see their eyes, yet it was clear they were looking directly at us, and merely their gaze was enough to spark a fleeting terror. It came and went in an unforgettable instant as they turned, walking back over to the man, of course still on the ground, retrieved their sword, picked the man up by the back of his shirt, threw him over their shoulder, and walked away, once more disappearing into the crowd, who quickly returned to their normal state.

When the thief had started to run, I had started to move, but he had been dealt with before I could even take a step; I didn't even have the time to drop my potato to run. For everything that followed, all I could do was watch in awe. Vulper, on the other hand, hadn't even flinched; he didn't even stop eating. I returned to my spot next to him.

"What was that?"

"City guard."

I stared blankly into the fluid crowd.

"I see."

"Nothing above ground in the city happens outside of their sight. Never forget that. Their mission is to protect first and foremost, and their record is flawless."

"Is that why Heroes almost always come from the other cities?"

"Yep. The only exceptions are those like me who come out of the northwest."

"Why's that?"

"People need more hope there."

"I see."

The two of us stood there eating quietly, continuing to people watch. After a while, the noise turned into a blur in the back of my mind, and the scene became strangely peaceful. We remained there until we had finished eating, wherein Vulper gestured for me to give him my garbage. I did and, after compressing both mine and his own into a form small enough to fit in in his palm, he incinerated it in a brief flash of fire.

"It should be about time for you to go."

"Do you have any advice?"

"Don't be an idiot."

I waited for more, but nothing came.

"That it?"

"That's what it boils down to. Nothing good comes out of making hasty decisions. Your hand is forced sometimes, but if you have time, use it, and always remember that deciding to not act is still an action. Like it said though, it boils down to 'don't be an idiot.'"

"Any more advice about Burvil's situation?"

"Too many variables to say anything concrete. I 'spose it'll be good to remember that whatever you do will reflect back on the Church, so again, don't be an idiot. Remember that public opinion is the only judge that will matter in the end. Whatever you do, so long as the people don't see it as a bad thing, it isn't. The reverse is just as true, of course. Every group will eat their own if it means keeping their standing in the public eye, and I hope that you're the one to use that to your advantage if it is used at all."

"Again, with the bad omens. I doubt we'd be sent into anything we couldn't handle, especially as a first mission."

"You're right, but still, keep your eyes open."

"Understood. I'll get going now."

I gave him a small wave and started walking away.

"Hold up."

I paused and turned around.

"I never got your name."

It took me a second to recall my new name.

"They're calling me Slate now."

He nodded, I nodded back, and then I left, walking back through the crowd towards the church.