Rise of the Living Forge

The smile vanished from Reya’s face instantly, replaced by wide-eyed disbelief. Her mouth dropped open and her gaze fixed on the armor in Arwin’s hands. She started to reach out, then caught herself and pulled her hand back.

“You made that for me?”

“I told you I was going to outfit us, didn’t I?”

“Well, yes, but you’ve only made yourself one thing so far,” Reya stammered. “And I didn’t think you meant you’d make me more magical equipment. I thought it was just going to be a leather cuirass or something!”

“I haven’t figured out how to work with leather yet,” Arwin said. “And I did consider making myself some more scale equipment, but I already know how to make a chest piece and I haven’t figured anything else out yet. Do you want it or not?”

“I can’t afford anything like this,” Reya said. “It has to be worth at least a few hundred gold. If you sold this–”

“I’m not selling it. I decided when we went out to the market a little while ago,” Arwin said. “I won’t be selling magical equipment to anyone I don’t know.”

Reya blinked in surprise. “What? But you could be rich! If you can make stuff like this, the Adventurer’s Guild would pay thousands of gold just to keep you on staff! Or if you wanted to remain independent, you could probably earn even more.”

Arwin’s features darkened and he shook his head firmly. “I won’t be working for the guild, and I’m not outfitting anyone that isn’t with me.”

Reya bit her lower lip. Her eagerness finally won out over her humility and she edged forward, carefully taking the armor from Arwin’s grip. She ran her hands over its surface in mute awe, then quickly pulled it on over her shirt.

She twisted her body, then stretched her arms over her head and swung them around in a few circles. The scale mail clinked slightly with her movements, but it didn’t impede them.

“Whoa. This is incredible. I’d have thought it was a Unique item if it didn’t clearly say it was Average,” Reya said. “This is the nicest thing I’ve ever owned. Other than that dagger you gave me, that is. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to pay you back.”

“Your continued work will be more than enough. I need my allies to be competent,” Arwin said with a wave of his hand. The delight in Reya’s eyes was a little too much to handle. It felt eerily similar to the gazes people had given him when he was still the Hero.

But, at the same time, it was different. Arwin had fought forthose people, but he’d never truly known any of them. They’d just been a teeming mass in the back of his mind – an ideal rather than individuals.

“It fits, then?” Arwin asked, breaking himself from his thoughts to make sure the silence didn’t stretch on so long it grew uncomfortable.

“Like a glove,” Reya said. She glanced at her hands, then cleared her throat. “Actually, it fits like scale mail. But it does it really well, you know? Kind of like a glove, but for my chest.”

“I get the picture, I think,” Arwin said dryly. “I’d suggest putting another shirt on top of it, or you might get people getting a little too interested. Once you’ve got a Class, you’ll probably get something that lets you conceal the equipment you’re carrying. Then you can wear it normally.”

“I’ll make sure to do that,” Reya said seriously.

“Good. In that case, we’ve spent enough time on this. Did you hear anything interesting this past day? Is the thieves’ guild actually holding up to their word and avoiding us?” Arwin headed over to the pile of metal scrap and started to shuffle through it in search of something useable.

“Yeah.” Reya gave him a nod. “At least as far as I can tell, none of them have shown up in the area. I don’t exactly have much of an information network, but I’ve been prowling around the street and it’s been mostly empty.”

“Mostly?” Arwin found a large piece of iron riddled with impurities and picked it up, turning it over in his hands to try and feel it out. “What’s that mean?”

“Well, Lillia’s been doing her best to get more people in the area, and I think her efforts are kind of working. She’s been going out to some of the other streets and even the edges of the city, trying to bribe beggars over to her tavern with free food.”

A small grin flitted across Arwin’s lips. He brought the piece of iron back to the forge and set it in the hearth, letting fire roar up around it and starting to work the bellows.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Is that so? And that’s working for her?”

“Well, I did say kind of working, not working. I think most of them took the food and left, but I do think I’ve seen one guy come back twice. Her tavern is pretty creepy.”

“It is,” Arwin agreed through a grunt. “She should really play into it more if she wants to draw more attention.”

With the enhanced heat of his [Soul Flame], the iron was soon glowing hot. Arwin took it from the forge and grabbed his hammer, starting to beat the impurities out of the metal.

“Play into it?” Reya tilted her head and waited for gaps within Arwin’s strikes to speak. “What do you mean?”

Arwin didn’t respond until the iron started to cool down and he was forced to return it to the forge. He brushed the flakes of metal away while the piece he was working on heated once again.

“If she’s not going to be able to get rid of the creepy aura, she should pretend like it’s intentional,” Arwin said. “Think about it. Instead of a shitty old building in the corner of the road, it could be a haunted tavern.”

“Nobody would want to go to that,” Reya said with a shudder. “Ghosts are terrifying!”

“It’s fake,” Arwin said.

“What do you mean? I thought you said she should make it haunted.”

“No. She should act like it’s haunted,” Arwin corrected. “Think about it. People can pretend like the tavern is haunted, and her servers can wear sheets or something and pretend to be ghosts. Maybe that’s too much, but you can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? She could have a spooky theme. The Monster Tavern, or the like. People love stuff like that.”

“Huh. I never thought about that, but it would be kind of fun to get waited on by a giant hulking monster,” Reya mused. Her eyes lit up and she burst into laughter. “Wait. I’ve got it. Lillia could pretend to be the Demon Queen! Could you imagine that? Go to a tavern and have the Demon Queen herself waiting on you. I bet she could find some people to dress up as monsters from the horde. Adventurers would love it!”

Arwin turned away from the forge to stare at Reya, but she was so busy laughing to herself that she didn’t even notice. His eye twitched.

I can’t tell if Reya is an idiot or a genius. She somehow stumbled onto the actual truth of the situation and doesn’t even realize it.

“Perhaps that would be funny,” Arwin said with a small grin. “I’m certain Lillia would find that idea fascinating. You should suggest it to her.”

“I will,” Reya said with an excited nod. “Probably tomorrow, though. It’s kind of late.”

Arwin pulled the metal from the forge and went back to work on it, pounding out the impurities. He once again worked until it cooled, then returned it to the flames. He glanced out the cracks in the wall at the dark purple night sky. Reya was right – it had gotten pretty late.

“I’ll be wrapped up here soon,” Arwin promised. “I just want to get this finished up before tomorrow.”

“What are you making?”

“I haven’t quite figured it out yet,” Arwin replied. “I’ll let you know once I get there.”

That wasn’t entirely true. He did have an idea of what he wanted to make, but he didn’t want to say it out loud yet. Saying it felt like a curse. Logically, he knew it wouldn’t change anything, but that didn’t change a thing.

Reya just shrugged and watched Arwin silently as he pulled the metal from the fire once more. He set it down on the anvil once more, but this time, he wasn’t just trying to remove the impurities. He was shaping it.

Faint shimmers of magic guided Arwin’s hands as he hammered the iron into form. He’d chosen this piece for a specific reason, and it wasn’t because it was the highest quality piece of metal he had.

In fact, it was one of the worst ones. But, despite that, it had a desire. He could feel the faint draw the metal had – the longing to become something. But, unlike much of the other pieces in the pile, this one didn’t want to be a sword or a dagger.

It didn’t want to be any sort of weapon. No, this piece wanted to be a pan. That was it. A simple goal, and while Arwin would swear up and down that it wasn’t the one he’d set out to make, it did happen to coincide with the request that Lillia had given him.

Strike by strike, the piece of metal slowly flattened out and started to take a flat, roundish shape. It wasn’t perfectly smooth, nor was it even close to it. But, as the bed of the pan started to take form in Arwin’s hands, he still found himself satisfied with it.

He returned it to the forge once more to finish shaping it, then set it down and grabbed another piece of metal. He heated and shaped it into a handle, then used two nails to connect the handle with the bed, putting it back into the flame and twisting the tips of the nails down into rounded nibs with [Scourge].

His work completed, Arwin took the pan from the fire and set it on the anvil to cool. It wasn’t magic – the Mesh didn’t recognize his work as anything particularly special, but he didn’t care. It was a good pan. At least, it felt like it would be. He was far from a pan expert.

“Can you give this to Lillia when you get food from her tomorrow?” Arwin asked. “She asked for some utensils. I’ll look into making some utensils for her later.”

“Okay!” Reya said. “Why don’t you give it to her yourself?”

“I’ll be busy tomorrow. I’m going to be going hunting again.”

“You are?” Reya blinked. “Am I not coming?”

“Not until I get a better idea of what we’re fighting in that forest. You can come next time,” Arwin said. “I imagine that you’ll be given a Class fairly soon, but we can’t have you getting killed before that.”

“Okay,” Reya said, a note of reluctance in her voice. “By the way… what is it that you actually want?”

Arwin tilted his head to the side, holding his hand out to draw the fire out from the forge. “What do you mean?”

“Well… Lillia wants to have a tavern. What do you want?”

Arwin’s brow furrowed. He almost said that his only goal now was to live a peaceful life, but that wasn’t so true. The Adventurer’s Guild had to be dealt with, and the more he forged, the more he realized that he wanted to do more. Just living wasn’t anywhere near enough.

I was mostly improvising when I spoke with Briggs, but maybe I spoke more of the truth than I realized.

“You know what? I think I’d like to start a guild.”