Universe's End

As much as Rory had tried to lie low before, it was all thrown out the window as the girl's stomach grumbled like a trumpet from the heavens themselves.

Which was how Rory found himself in his current predicament, at a food stall, grabbing some grub for Roxy, as people silently watched from afar.

Or mostly silent. With Rory's senses, he was able to catch snippets of their conversations.

"…. Is that the Founder?"

"… What is that next to him?"

"… a girl, obviously."

"…horns, though?"

"… Protector isn't human, and neither is the Forgemaster."

"… even come from?"

Sighing, Rory tried not to let the whispers get to him. When it was just him, he could do a good enough job at avoiding notice, silent, quick, and a few tricks for avoiding the common gaze.

With Roxy, those went out the window.

They don't mean anything by it, Rory. You know how people are.

"This is yummy!" Roxy said, waving a piece of meat on a stick glazed in a sauce somewhere between syrup, barbecue, and honey with a hint of flavor that could vaguely be likened to mango.

"Is it now?" Rory asked good-naturedly. He'd gotten one for himself, but he had yet to take a bite as he instead observed those observing them.

That, and he could go far longer than a lower-tiered without eating. He wasn't specifically all that hungry, not with the way his stomach was doing flips.

"It's SUPER yummy!" Roxy's eyes widened as she took another bite, before snapping forward and chomping the rest of the meat on a stick down in one gulp, biting straight through the stick.

A wild child.

"Want mine?" Rory asked after a moment, the girl clearly saddened at the sudden loss of her breakfast.

"Really!?"

"Go for it, squirt," Rory said as he rested his hand on her head. Her 'hair' was made of countless strands of tiny twisting beads, almost like organic black pearls, feeling smooth to the touch rather than, well, hairy.

"Yes!" Roxy cheered as she took the alien kebab and promptly gulped it down in two bites.

Feeling the corners of his lips twitching, Rory suppressed a smile.

Probably need to teach some manners, but for now, let's not come down on her when I've known her for exactly one day.

Walking through Ehkorrus at a leisurely pace, Rory listened to the girl's excited chatter, a million and one questions that often required Rory to stop and briefly explain.

It was surprisingly lovely. In fairness, when Apostolos was young, he'd had nowhere near the same general curiosity as Roxy, but there had also been far fewer sights and scenes to take in back then.

Continuing his many explanations, they paused briefly as they stood before the foundry.

"What's this place?" Roxy asked, all the delighted wonder in the world that only a child could have.

"It's where we make stuff and work with metals. It's called a foundry."

"Oooooo," Roxy said.

"Well, come along, I've got some responsibilities inside."

'Dragging' the girl along, Rory made his way inside, workers bustling about, only to stop and do a double-take as they saw Rory and Roxy.

And it's only going to get worse.

Mentally bracing himself, Rory meandered until he locked onto the familiar booming voice of Gil. Not bothering to wave or call out, Rory flared his aura for a split second, making a point of keeping the aura shrouding Roxy even.

"Oye," Gil spun around, a smile on his face already. "You made it. Half expected something to come up."

"Quite a few things did come up," Rory said with a sigh.

"Uh-huh, would the little squirt be one of those?"

"I'm Roxy!" Roxy planted her feet wide, hands on her hips like she was ready to take on the world.

"Aye, nice to meet 'cha 'lil lass," Gil grunted before turning to look back at Rory. "What's the story here?"

"It's a bit of a long story."

"Dad found me!"

"Dad?" Gil asked, looking between Rory and Roxy with a curious face. "Only one in Ehkorrus who got the sort of oddities that would even remotely come close would be the She-Witch."

"No, I did not knock up Mariah." Rory groaned. "Anyway, unless I can time travel, none of that would make sense."

"Didn't say you did," Gil chuckled. "Just saying 'eryone else here looks human for 'a most part, sides maybe Apostolos, and e'en he only looks a 'lil off. So, if it weren't a girl…. A project?"

"Nah, none of the above, hence why I said it's a bit of a long story."

"Aye, a different day then. Bring your kid to work day, I can get 'hind that." Turning to look at Roxy, who was eye level with him, given his short stature, the gruff dwarf placed his hands on his hips as he puffed his chest out. "This here? A noble place. And it's all thanks 'ter 'ya dad there."

"I'm not actually- you know what, never mind."

Roxy glanced around, eyes wide, before looking at Rory.

"You built this?"

"Not technically," Rory said. "I just laid the groundworks."

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The technicalities didn't matter, at least not to a maybe-ten-year-old girl. Hopping back and forth from leg to leg, her tail swished behind her in excitement.

"Dad is so cool!"

Well, at least someone finally recognizes that.

"Aye, and he even promised a bit of a show for us all," Gil said, looking Rory up and down. "So, what will it be? Using pneuma as an extra 'hand' has already been long accepted thanks to what'cha told me years back, even if most still ain't got it in 'em."

"True Folding," Rory said, withdrawing an ingot from his inventory and handing it over to Gil. It wasn't anything special, just a bar of generic enriched iron, but it was generic enriched iron +1.

"Oye, the hell?" Gil said upon grabbing the ingot, eyes narrowing. "Now, I been 'round enough enriched iron to recognize some by sight, smell, hell, even taste. This here ain't making any sense. Hefty little fatty."

"Curious?" Rory asked.

"Course I am…. Enriched Iron +1?" Gil questioned after taking a moment to examine the ingot properly. "Curious might be putting it lightly now."

"Well, gather your workers and bring them to me."

"Aye, if that's your wish."

Snapping a salute, Gil marched off, hollering as Rory chuckled at the display before turning to Roxy.

"Now, follow me, I've got to find a good spot."

Finding a usable anvil and forge setup that had more than enough room nearby to gather, Rory waited with his arms crossed, Roxy poking about the tools and equipment under his watchful eye. Soon, a crowd began to mill in as those working were given the memo. Growing by the second, Rory kept his composure, maintaining a blank expression, only cracking a smile when Roxy ran over to ask a question.

That's a lot of people.

The final crowd must have been around two hundred strong, at least a few percent of the total population of Ehkorrus calling the foundry their place of work.

Not sure if I should be surprised or not, not like I know what an appropriate workforce looks like as far as city planning goes.

"Alright, ya louts!" Gil marched out in front, his eyes warning of discipline if anyone stepped out of line or interrupted. "Today, we have a rather special guest that some of y'all may have already come to recognize. Lord Founder of Ehkorrus, the Architect, and the most skilled smith to exist. He will be demonstrating something for everyone, so make sure to take in every moment as if it were 'yer last."

Alright, maybe laying it on a little thick.

"Welcome," Rory began, making it a point of adding some aura to his voice.

Gah, still tickles the throat. Whatever, just push through.

"I shall not waste your time, so I shall get to the point."

Having said his share, mainly in a way that would avoid talking more than he had to at risk of coughing from the tickle in his throat, Rory started by summoning two bars of enriched iron. He could have started with something like promethium to really drive the point home, but using enriched iron would hopefully make it easier for the workers to understand, given their familiarity with the metal.

Right, and time to work.

Letting the outside world become little more than a bullet point to his conscious mind, Rory focused almost entirely on hammering away at the two ingots, heating them and folding them together with perfectly placed hammer blows. Gradually, the two bars merged into one, while maintaining the size of a single bar, as the second bar's worth of material was folded into the empty space between the matter.

Wiping his brow, Rory let his focus extend back out.

Confusion, astonishment, a bit of awe here and there. About what I was expecting.

True Folding was a technique that was utterly unknown to anyone aside from Rory and Zoey, who'd been forced to listen to his lectures on more than one occasion. It was, in essence, the alteration of the density of an item, but on a massive scale. In their old universe, iron had a density of about 7.87 grams per cubic centimeter.

Thank you, trivia night, for that little factoid.

While density could be slightly adjusted by heating or cooling, pure iron at room temperature couldn't have its density doubled outright.

But in this universe? A bar of +1 iron, if 'iron' from Earth still existed, would have a density twice that, closer to 15.74 grams per cubic centimeter.

Or something along those lines, probably some weird conceptual bullshit involved that doesn't make it that cut and dry, but not important for now!

"Here," Rory said before tossing the bar to Gil, who caught it. "Pass it around for everyone here to see for themselves."

Curiously, it wasn't just the crowd that seemed intrigued. In fact, the most intrigued person of all seemed to be Roxy, whose eyes were wide as if she were trying to drink in everything happening at once.

She really is curious about everything.

Letting the bar of enriched iron be passed around, Rory waited until it made it's way back to Gil as Rory withdrew two more bars from his inventory.

Unlike the enriched iron, a rather 'regular' material, the two bars that appeared in his hands instantly drew the attention of every worker who could sense a remarkable metal when they saw it.

"This here is promethium, an alloy I created in my journeys elsewhere. It is rare grade, and extremely resistant to heat. I will once more demonstrate True Folding, this time using material of higher caliber."

Again, Rory slipped into a nearly trancelike state, the only difference being that he spun off a single mental thread to observe Roxy as he worked.

Given the girl couldn't have been more than ten years old, at least by human maturation standards, one would have typically expected the girl to have lost interest at some point. Still, for the entirety of his work of folding the two bars of promethium into one, her eyes stayed locked onto what he was doing.

Is that a sensen trait, some insane amount of focus even for their youth?

Even amongst the tiered adults in the crowd, there were moments where their attention lapsed, even if for only a handful of seconds. It simply was impossible to have that level of focus, unless your name was Rory.

Or, apparently, Roxy.

Genuinely impressed with her, Rory decided to keep going after he finished working on making a bar of +1 promethium, purely for her sake.

If only I had a proper forge for this.

With either the stellar forge, the off-brand stellar forge, or his volcanic workshop it would have taken him half the time, but each time Rory needed to reheat the promethium he was required to imbue the forge he was working at with a large influx of blood flames, taking advantage of his fine-tuned control of the blood element that made up half of his blood flame to target the heat precisely.

It was far from the most efficient forging method, but Rory didn't feel like turning the demonstration into a field trip to visit Astra, lest the crowd annoy her, and she decided to eat a few of them.

By the time he was done, Rory held a new hammer for forge work, the head made of +1 promethium and the handle a branch from his own home.

"And there you have it. The art of True Folding. Use it to enhance your abilities and continue to aid Ehkorrus and its growth."

Having said and shown his share, Rory waited as the audience began to whisper until, at last, a single clap broke out, quickly turning into a thunder of applause.

Alright, well, now that's just God damn awkward. Then they all clapped. Sheesh.

The clapping went on for only a short while until Gil took charge of the situation, walking back out to stand in front of the audience.

"Alright, ya' bunch of lunks, consider yourselves blessed with a secret art. Whether any of y'all were smart enough to understand an ounce of that is questionable, but even the act of witnessing it should be something you tell your children stories about!"

Again, laying it on a bit thick.

"Now git!" Gil shouted, waving his arms off like he was chasing the crowd away.

Which, Rory supposed, the man probably was.

Dispersing quickly, unwilling to risk the Forgemaster's ire, soon it was once more just Gil, Rory, and Roxy.

"I apologize for taking up so much of your workday," Rory said after a moment. He'd dragged it out longer than he meant, but he'd had reason for that.

"Nah," Gil grunted, beaming at Rory. "That was something. Aye, I admit, at first it looked like you weren't doin' much but smacking a few bars with a hammer, but I got the sense of what I was seeing even if I couldn't fully understand how."

"So you think you can recreate it?"

"Fuck no," Gil snorted, a rolling boom of laughter following. "But I know it's possible now. Something to chase, and hopefully I can be 'doin it myself not long from now. That aside, why the hammer?"

"Oh, this?" Rory asked, waving the newly crafted hammer around. "It's not for me."

"Oye, I appreciate it-"

"And it's not for you either," Rory laughed as Gil winced, the clear look of someone who'd just recognized they'd done something awkward. "Roxy, c'mere, would you?"

The quiet Roxy suddenly ran forward, her heterochromatic eyes wide.

"I saw you were quite enthralled, so I made this for you," Rory said, before handing her the hammer.

The girl, her hands trembling, took the hammer.

Or tried to, but the minute her smaller hand grasped the handle, she staggered from the weight, the hammer clattering to the ground.

"Sorry!" Roxy said, her face a look of horror.

Huh, a little strong of a reaction…

"Don't worry, it's not fragile," Rory said before picking the hammer back up and offering it to her once more. "Just be careful, it's a bit heavy."

Awkwardly lifting the hammer like the pre-pubescent second coming of Thor, Roxy's face turned from horror back to elation.

I might have found myself a mini-me.