The next morning, over a simple breakfast, Hagor suggested we come with him to his forge, which he and Magor ran as a father-son duo:

“It will be a good experience to meet some new people and learn a bit about Maegar craftsmanship.” He said proudly, in between mouthfuls of egg.

Victor and I were both ecstatic about the offer and, to my surprise, Al seemed extremely interested as well. Ann turned him down, saying that she preferred to do some exploring, which Julia seconded. Hearing that, Philorena chimed in:

“Oh, that sounds nice! Mina, why don’t you show them around?”

That got a surprised and frustrated reaction out of the Maegar girl, who raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips in displeasure:

“But Mom, I have to study! Second rank exams are coming up and teacher says I have a good chance at passing!”

“You don’t have your usual lessons tomorrow. Teacher is giving you a break exactly because it is good to take a few breaks while studying. It helps you hold on to what you’ve learned. Take a break. Make some new friends!”

I looked over at Ann and Julia, both of whom were eyeing Mina with some skepticism, and wondered if that was terribly likely. As if reading my mind, Philorena added:

“At least be a good host to our guests. Understood, young lady?”

Mina nodded begrudgingly, which ended that conversation. Lynn ended up electing to help Philorena with the household chores and watch Eithan, so she waved goodbye at us as we left for the day. Goran had also decided to come along with us, thanks to Hagor’s insistence that he needed to rest a bit from his incessant hunting, so the six of us made our way down the well swept streets of Mahria towards the smithing district. I noticed that we were heading in the direction of some of those larger buildings I noticed earlier, with the pylons that stretched to the ceiling, and I began to suspect I understood their purpose. I decided to ask anyways, though:

“What are those pylons coming out from the tops of those buildings?”

Hagor beamed at the question, proud as punch to talk about his work:

“An excellent question, my friend! Those are smokestacks. Without them, all the smoke from the forges would eventually fill this cavern and make it unlivable. They bring the smoke up to the ceiling, where there is a network of tunnels that help to disperse the smoke emanations around a wider area. Wouldn’t want our location to be given away by pillars of black smoke, after all!”

That made sense, but I still had my doubts:

“Pardon, but wouldn’t you seem to have a lot of smithies here. How can you disperse enough of the smoke to avoid giving yourselves up? Especially if you are working with high quality metals.”

Tougher metals, like Gwyniron, had higher melting points. That meant you needed more heat to work them. That meant burning more fuel, which meant more smoke. I remembered how smoky the village smithy could get when they were trying to make Gwyniron weapons, and if they were doing that type of metalwork on a larger scale here, then I couldn’t see how they could still avoid detection. No matter how extensive their tunnel networks were, you would assume that some of the less friendly mountain dwellers would notice eventually.

Goran though, only beamed further and waggled his eyebrows at me:

“You shall see in good time, my friend.”

With that, we entered fully into the craftsman district. The hammering of the forges was only just getting started, as the workday had just begun, but it was still ubiquitous and cacophonous. The shouts of morning greeting and early orders echoed from every building around them, errand boys and girls occasionally rushing out from a workshop to deliver a message or fetch some supplies. Despite the smokestacks, the scent of coal-fires wafted on the air, alongside scents of ash and sweaty workmen. The whole scene was very black and gray, thanks to the color of the buildings and the light sprinkling of soot and ash that permeated the air. But it also had the tint of sunset orange from the lights overhead and the firelight coming through the windows of the building, making it feel like we were walking through the ash at the bottom of a campfire.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Hagor brought us to a high spired building near the end of the main street that was wider and slightly taller than the others. The inside was divided evenly in the center, with boxes of materials and equipment in the three rooms on our right and three separate crafting rooms on our left, divided by a central hallway that we walked into as we entered. The first room on our left simply had two wooden workbenches on either side of the room, each bench topped by wood and stone carving tools. The middle room was a normal looking forge. The pylon sat up against the center of the far wall, with plenty of room for the coal fire and an opening to insert metal. An anvil sat in the center and the cooling table sat on the right. The third room, bizarrely enough, was nearly an exact replica of the second. Instead of the pylon forge, however, there was just a sleek, black, and almost entirely enclosed kiln that looked like someone had just decided to put a dome of rock on top of a pillar. This dome had three horizontal rings of strange glyphs that circled its body, with further glyph connecting the second and third rings in a diamondlike pattern. It only had a relatively small opening wherein one could put materials.

We spent some time ogling the various rooms as Hagor explained each one to us:

“The rooms on the right are storage rooms, of course. The first room on the left is our scripting room, while the last two rooms are the normal and specialty forges. The specialty forge answers your question, young man, as-“

“What is scripting?”

Victor interrupted, his normal politeness giving way before his natural curiosity. Hagor raised his eyebrows in surprise, giving no sign he was irritated:

“My apologies. I did not realize you were unfamiliar, but I have heard that more remote regions have lost the art. Those glyphs that you have seen on my door and my forge can affect reality, based on their composition and with the proper power source. I can explain by showing you our specialty forge.”

We all filed into the third room and gathered around the strange looking pillar with a dome on it. Hagor gestured to the rings of glyphs on top of the dome:

“This script type is an effect script. It is the most common, and it is called that because it creates an effect in an environment that is dictated by three different things. The command glyph, the type of power, and the directional glyphs.”

He pointed at a specific glyph, now. A slightly larger central figure that was different from the others because it had a circle drawn around it:

“This is the command glyph. It determines, in broad strokes, what the type of the effect will be. This glyph is always circled, and it needs to be connected to power glyphs and directional glyphs to do anything. This symbol means ‘Emit’.”

The circled symbol in question was this: 発

“This is a slightly unusual glyph. It simply creates a basic effect that is determined by the nature of the power it is given. Right over here.”

The middle and topmost circles of script were connected by a diamond shaped script at the center of the forge. This consisted of two symbols coming out diagonally from the top of the “Emit” command script (looking like this: 人) that were connected to two more symbols (力) that connected to two more 人 marks, inwardly diagonal this time, before connecting to another, singular, circled command glyph (固). The central diamond looked like this:

（固）

人　　人

力　　　　　 力

人　　人

（発）

Hagor was pointing to the characters on the right and left wings, and I noticed that there were indentations where these symbols resided. Almost like you were supposed to place some sort of item or connector there. Hagor continued:

“These symbols mean ‘Power’, and they are connected to both command glyphs by those lesser glyphs. We insert our power sources on those indentations, where they attach and activate the script. The topmost command symbol means ‘Reinforce’. That will obviously improve the structural integrity of the dome when activated. But the type of reinforcement will be partially affected by the type of power. Speaking of which.”

He hurried out of the room and returned with a scripted box. He gently removed the lid of the box and placed it to the side. Suddenly, the entire room was swelteringly hot. He stuck his hand in the box, removed something, and quickly place the lid back on. The room cooled slightly, but much of the heat still lingered. A fact that wasn’t helped by the warm rock held proudly in Hagor’s upraised hand. It burned with a bright copper light, and I could clearly see waves of heat emitting from it.

“In your tongue, this is called Orenrock.” He said proudly, “A special stone, imbued with the heat of the mountain. And an outstanding power source.”

He placed it on one of the “Power” symbols, where it almost seemed to attach, like it was attracted. The symbols began to light up orange, as Hagor further explained:

“The internal energy of the Orenrock is much greater even than the amount it naturally emits. The ‘Emit’ symbol further amplifies that natural heat, which is where the directional symbols come in.”

He pointed to the symbols that ringed the dome, flanking the ‘Emit’ symbol and repeated multiple times (said symbols:平中):

“These tell the script to focus the heat generated by the ‘Emit’ symbol inside the dome, and to spread that effect evenly. If I just told it to focus the heat inside, it would radiate primarily from the place where we have the command sigil, which would be bad for the forge. The ‘Even’ symbol ensures that the heat will come evenly from each portion of surface area within. You can see that the ‘Reinforce’ symbol is also being powered, and it’s ringed by the same symbols. Since it’s being powered by Orenrock, the reinforcement being done has an emphasis on heat resistance. It has the same directional glyphs as ‘Emit’, of course.”

He took a bit of a pause here, to allow all of this to sink in, before saying:

“The finishing touch is with the script on the bottom. As you can see, it has none of the normal attributes of the other scripts. It is just one symbol (-|) repeated. This just acts as a natural barrier for the effect of the script proper. Otherwise, it would try to heat up the whole earth, and would naturally do basically nothing. This ensures that the effect is focused within the forge alone. This is only necessary for very open-ended scripts like this. Others are naturally contained, so script barriers aren’t needed. Like the ‘Lock’ script on my door.”

“We use this forge for our toughest and most valuable metals. It is more expensive than a normal furnace, but it can get very hot, and it creates no smoke. Which answers your earlier questions about how we handle our toughest jobs with no smoke! Any more questions?”

We practically jumped down the man’s throat with more questions.