“Hey Dorian,” A rough voice rang in his ears “Time to wake up, come on we have work to do.”
Drowsily Dorian opened his eyes to see a familiar bearded face. His father was a simple man, he used to be an adventurer, now he was just the local smith. A rough looking face with a thick salt and pepper beard. Scars crisscrossing his body, showed the type of man he was.
Working in the forge is how he and his father earned their daily bread. Being fifteen now closing on sixteen he reached the age where he could work together with his father. His mother had a different job she worked at the school. She ran the school actually, The people in the town had gotten used to the school and gladly sent their children to attend. It was however only a local occurrence. As far as Dorian knew none of the nearby towns had anything like a school.
“Stop daydreaming we got stuff to do.” His father told him motioning Dorian to move.
Following his father he entered the forge his father had built just outside their house. The house was a simple, yet cozy cottage. Handmade by his father and mother, it was his home. The only place he could remember living in. The oaken beams and the straw roof were the first things he saw when waking up, and the last things before he went to sleep.
The forge itself was handmade just like the rest of the house. Stones from the surrounding countryside made the oven. This very oven is what he was fervently trying to heat up. Putting the coal into the forge he added some firewood then started the fire. He used the bellows to pump air into the furnace to heat the coals as much as he could.
He took the iron ingots from the pile in the corner and used a metallic tong to put the iron into the oven. They would then wait for the iron to liquidise before pouring it into a mold of, in this case, a shovel Once the iron was red hot and ready to be shaped, his father would take out the iron and then start hammering it into form. Mostly they would do barrel fittings, horse shoes, cart wheels, and the like.
On some rare occasions they would get a customer that would order a weapon. Which his father was somewhat proficient in, his father was after all a renowned weapons smith. Usually these weapons were only boar spears or axes. Used by the lumberjacks and the local hunters. Living out here on the edge of the wilderness, meant there were plenty of animals to be hunted. The locals took full advantage, more often than not it would be their prey that the hunters brought in, that ended up on the dinner table.
Dorian had repeated the movements and small rituals at the forge often enough that he could now do them without tasking his mind. He could just dream on about whatever took his fancy while steadily working away at the forge.
After all it wasn't that difficult to put something in the oven, heat it, then repeat it. It was not that he disliked this kind of mundane task. He rather enjoyed the simple labour. It gave him time to be with his thoughts.
His father wasn't much of a talker so his thoughts could roam undisturbed. Every other day he and his father would switch tasks. Now he was the one heating the fire. Tomorrow it would be his father and he would be the one creating the barrel fittings and horseshoes.
The act of creating something from an iron ingot was something Dorian took pride in. Creating something from something else, it just had something, for the lack of a better word, magical to it.
Today however they had a customer Dorian had never seen around these parts before. The man wore a dark cloak snuggly fitted around armour that had seen some usage. The Armour was still in good condition however. Whoever this man was he did take good care of his possessions.
Surprising actually, if you looked at how haggard the man was. The contrast between the haggard man, his well kept horse and the armaments in good condition was simply astounding.
“I'm needin' a new blade.” The stranger rasped with an accent unfamiliar to Dorian.
“What kind of blade do you need?” His father asked.
The hooded man licked his lips and took a blade from the horses saddlebags and put them in front of Dorian's father. The blade was straight, yet slightly curved at the edge. Only on side was sharpened “Like this, different steel possible?”
“Let me see this steel.” His father said leaning forward.
The stranger took something else from his horses saddlebags. This time it was two pieces of an extremely dark steel. The steel was different from any kind of steel Dorian had seen before. It was pitch black. It was almost as if the steel absorbed light, the area around the steel was somehow darker.
His father's face however kept its neutral look. “Won't be a problem.” He informed the stranger.
The stranger stared at his father for a few seconds before nodding and putting the steel on the counter together with the broken blade. After a moments thought the stranger added a pouch to the items on the table.
“Could i ask for some special additions to the blade?” The stranger asked. His father nodded and the two started discussing the peculiarities of the blade and smithing techniques. Dorian having heard these conversations more times than he could count went back to the oven and started heating more iron.
A blade like that, his father would leave until the end of the day. He would tell the stranger that the blade would be ready for pick-up tomorrow. His father always did weapons requests last. If there was any particular reason for this Dorian didn't know. What he did know however was that when creating a weapon he did it with even more care than he would make the usual items.
This in itself was saying something. His father created every item he made with extreme care. Sometimes even people from other villages would come to his smithy to get something fixed. Mostly because his father's iron made barrels lasted longer than the ones made by any of the other nearby smiths. The wheels he made took longer to break.
For the hunters the most important thing was that the boar spears never broke when they were being used. More to the point, they asked his father to check their weapons before they went out on a hunt. If his father told them the weapons were in good condition they would head out with their minds at ease.
It had become a local tradition of sorts. Hunters would ask his father to give their tools and weapons a one over before heading out. It had become a lucky charm. One that had never failed them before. This was more than enough reason for the hunters to keep coming for their check ups.
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His father didn't ask any payment when doing this. It didn't take him long to do either. If it helped the hunters come home safely after a day's or sometimes a week's worth of work. Then he would gladly do so.
A day's work at the forge would vary in length depending on the amount of work that had to be done. Today they finished the last of the orders around noon, the only thing that remained was the blade.
The blade however had been a special order and required a certain special ingredient. This special ingredient could only be provided by one person, Dorian's mother. Yes, she may be a teacher at the local school. More importantly, she was a sorceress, and one that was quite powerful.
She was already heading down to the forge. He could see her walking down the street with her eye catching fiery hair. His mother was quite the looker people kept telling him. Of course seeing as she was his mother Dorian never really noticed. Mothers would stay mothers no matter how good-looking they seemed to others. Their children would always view them the same, perhaps there were exceptions out there. None that Dorian had any knowledge of, so as far as he was concerned did not exist.
Mother's will do what mothers do. Usually this would involve a lot of worry, a bit of nagging, and way to many rules. His mother, although lenient in most cases, was no different. His mother set the rules in the house. Normally this would mean the husband enforced them. In some cases the husband also set the rules but that would depend on the family.
In his family his mother definitely needed no assistance in enforcing the rules. She was a walking cataclysmic event when she was angry. She and his dad had a fight once when he was younger and his mother had really lost her temper. The result? Well lets just say that the house needed to be rebuilt after.
This of course was noticed by the people around town. Everyone made sure not to anger the short fire haired sorceress. Now that he thought about it, her hair fit her personality. Strange how he hadn't really thought about it that much. Perhaps a sorceress hair would change color depending on her element. But that was food for later thought
“So what are these two handsome fellows up to,” His mother said with waggling eyebrows.
His father greeted her with a warm smile. “Somehow you always know when i need an extra hand at the forge.”
“What can i say, a woman's intuition is the most potent of magics” His mother said giving his father a teasing wink.
Rolling his eyes his father turned back to the forge hiding a small smile. Dorian put his finger in his mouth and made a puking gesture at the flirting of his parents. Before being able to finish the gesture his mother sent a kick his way. Deftly avoiding it he stuck his tongue out at his mom. His mom reacted by jumping on his back and smacking him on his head. Running around wildly while trying to avoid the tiny fists of his mom. He started laughing.
With a sudden tackle the laugh was cut of short as both he and his mother hit the ground, courtesy of his father. With the 3 of them wrestling around in the dirt the other villagers that happened to be passing by just chuckled and watched them go at it.
It wasn't the first time this had happened and it hopefully wouldn't be the last. It didn't take long before a small crowd was looking on at the families wrestling match. Most of them were even cheering them on. The family was quite popular in the village with his fathers help for the hunters his mothers school and their way of treating everyone else.
After a few minutes of wrestling a flash of light occurred and Dorian and his father were sent flying through the air before landing in ridiculous poses a good distance away from where they had been. His mother stood up grinning and made muscle flexing poses at the crowd who were all whistling and cheering at her display.
“Every time!” His father muttered under his breath. “Damn magic is so unfair!”
Laughing Dorian patted his dad on the back and gave him a hand in getting up. “Without that magic though we wouldn't have nearly as much profit as we do now!”
“True enough, but one day i will beat your mother at wrestling, although in bed shes helpless!” His father said with a booming laugh.
Dorian looked at his father and tried to erase those words from memory. Imagining his parents having sex was definitely NOT on the list of things he wanted to do today.
The crowd was already dispersing with a mood turned for the better. The Liftfuor family had that affect on people. Walking back to the forge after exchanging some words and jabs with his mother his father asked her to take a look at the metal the stranger had brought in.
His mothers hands glowed for a moment as she swept her hands across the dark black metal as she was studying its properties and peculiarities. It only took her a few minutes before she nodded to her husband and started chanting some words. With a flash of light and a wave of her hand she spread a white hot flame over the coals.
The coals immediately started lighting up more than they ever would under the pumping of the bellows. The flame had also changed its properties now that magic was involved. It now seemed like someone had put a rainbow inside of the furnace and had managed to set it on fire.
The colourful flames spread themselves over the coals with ease, lighting up the furnace and sending incredible heat waves throughout the smithy. His father now took a special set of tongs from his tool bag and put the black metal into the furnace.
After a few painfully long minutes he could take the glowing metal out of the furnace and start his work on it. Dorian never ceased to be amazed when he saw his parents do this kind of work. As of yet this work was far beyond him. His parents moved around each other and did things together with a sense of harmony he only hoped he could find in someone.
His fathers muscles and his mothers magic always managed to create things that he could not call anything else than small human made miracles. He knew that the weapons his parents forged were near priceless and the strangers who arrived here for the weapons knew exactly who they came to see.
He was pretty sure that his parents must be extremely famous in the world of smiths. The money that they got from these weapons was more than enough proof of that. The money they got from one of these weapons was more than enough to finance the entire population of the village for a year.
Of course they never really did tell anyone about this because it would cause quite the commotion. His mother used those funds to finance her school as well. She even gave some small magic classes to the very few locals that had any talent in magic.
Although his mothers speciality was in fire magic she was more than knowledgeable enough to teach others about the other basic elements as well.
It took longer than usual for his parents to finish the blade. Before the sun was entirely down the blade had been completed. The weapon they had created this time was strangely entrancing even to Dorian who had seen weapons of extremely high caliber more than a few times.
The blade as dark as the night had silver-ish engravings running along the blade. His father gave the exotic looking blade a few test swings which sent small slashes of air into the ground leaving gashes in the earth. Nodding with a sense of content he put the blade into the sheath the stranger had given him and it fit in there nice and snug.
The blade would be picked up by the man tomorrow. Before the days end however there were still some things that would need to be done.
His father sent him a glance and grinned. Dorian sighed heavily, now that it was nearing the night it was time for him and his father to have another practice match. It had become a bit of a family tradition over the years. Every night while his mother was cooking dinner his father would drag him out to the forest and they would practice the arts of combat.
The art of combat at least was how his father referred to the way they fought. For the last 7 years every day he would get his ass kicked by his father with a wooden blade. The next day without fail he would wake up with sore muscles and a few new bruises.
His father however seemed to take great pleasure in teaching his son how to fight. More to the point his father was extremely good at it. Moving through the forest, stealth, tracking, reactive instincts and reflexes had been honed in Dorian for years.
Although he had yet to test his mettle against any real fighters he knew that apart from his father, and perhaps his mom, there was no one in the area that could defeat him in a fight.
But tonight he would get his ass kicked.
Again.