The girl managed to finish sewing the man’s clothes at the exact hour he walked back into the kitchen. She had assumed from the halting of the rhythmic hammer strikes he’d either put the piece back into the forge or finished it.
She’d very carefully sown every detail by hand and his latest piece was slung over his shoulder. Both their eyes were drawn to one another’s recently finished works. He began carefully tracing the seams with his fingers with an appraising gaze as her eyes glossed over the faint subtle details on the halberd on his shoulder.
Faint glowing blue metal carved in intricate gold patterns over the blade and hollow shaft of the halberd. She wasn’t too well versed in weaponsmithing but the beautiful Damascus steel that made up the majority of the piece captivated her. every bladed edge was made from the glowing blue metal. the shaft was made from true Damascus and the pike on the back end of the axe has a black rough forged wrought iron texture.
He swiftly set the piece down on the table and began donning the fresh vestments as the girl began to take a closer look at the halberd, she hesitated even to reach out and touch it as if its beauty could be marred or destroyed by her hands.
She rushed over to the sink and began washing her hands as if the intense striking polished beauty of the piece left her feeling dirty. He began moving about in his clothes testing his range of motion and getting a feel for how comfortable he’d be in his clothes.
[“Master?”]
“Yes, archive?”
[“May I also request clothes?”]
She looked at him pleadingly and he gave her a questioning stare. She tried her hardest to entreat him, but his cold glare showed his intense indifference to her discomfort. As if the shift in mood had brought her back to reality the girl tore her eyes away from the weapon and looked back to the scene where a naked woman was wrapping her arms around the man’s neck and imploring with her eyes while he stood unmoved and unmoving.
“I can make her clothes if she needs them.”
“She doesn’t but that’s kind of you to offer.”
[“Master, if she wants to make me clothes, let her make me clothes.”]
“Now, now there’s only a limited supply of fabric and this has to last us at least another few centuries, it’s not every day someone grateful enough to bring us clothes comes along, just wear that rag over there.”
“I-I can bring more fabric let me make her clothes.”
[“Master?”]
He seemed to be contemplating for a while before he responded.
“Fine… when you’re done with that, I have another request.”
“And after that, you’ll train me?”
“I have a very specific way of securing payment from those who come to train from me this is just a request to see if you won’t be ungrateful after you leave.”
“I’d like to be trained sooner rather than later…”
“Ah, another one wants to be an ungrateful student maybe instead of training heroes I should just let myself wither away and die. No one wants a geezer who’s never left his cave of vast unknowable knowledge in this day and age anyway.”
“Nonononono, that’s not what I said. I just… my home is in danger… I want to save it as soon as possible.”
“Then you better fulfil my requests, or you won’t get trained.”
She began sulking and pouting but soon after agreed. He asked her to bring back to his cave some food seeds for planting himself a garden and the hair of various livestock animals. She left as soon as he showed her the door. She had completely forgotten to take archive’s measurements. A fact she only realized once she’d already left.
As she descended back down the mountain for the second time, she noticed that none of the obstacles that stopped her the first time she ascended the mountain were a problem for her. It was as if she knew the way now after only ascending it twice.
Within the hour she was at the foot of the mountain again marvelling at how much faster she’d gotten simply from ascending and descending the mountain. She wondered in her heart if even this was training.
She ran off with a smile towards the nearest town looking for the things on his list. A list he never verbally communicated to her, but she seemed to understand implicitly. She did not yet realize he never specified what exactly she was to retrieve only that’d he’d given her vague instructions.
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Within the mountain he walked up to his storage room and began preparing a table. By the table he set a scalpel, a beaker 20.32cm in diameter by 10.16cm tall, filled three-quarters of the way with a rose-coloured fluid that seemed to grow in the dim light of the laboratory, and a syringe loaded with a pale white almost transparent fluid.
She ran from shop to shop hurriedly filling her bag with seed from any farmer who would sell it and pelts from any hunter who she met. Slowly and steadily, she spent a couple of hours collecting items from a list she had no idea he’d given her the day they’d met.
He continued cleaning and preparing the room in the time it took her to return. She didn’t know why but she felt compelled to buy a bathrobe. She reasoned that since they were one size fits all and Archive had told her she needed at least the bare minimum cloth that this was why she’d need it and bought it anyway.
The girl’s wallet grew lighter and lighter as time passed on and she managed to ascend the mountain before the day’s end. She reached the door the moment he did, and he opened it when he saw her on the monitor returning with what he’d asked of her.
“Will you train me now?”
“One more thing.”
“You want me to descend the mountain again?”
“No, not that. What I want from you is half.”
“Half? …what do you?”
“You see both women and men contain within them the ability to have children.”
The words he spoke began to dye her face red obviously in misunderstanding.
“And both men and women contain said ability in two separate parts of themselves. Perhaps you wouldn’t know coming from the time in which you live but it has always been that this is the price of my training throughout all the time I’ve lived in this mountain.”
“You want half my children to be yours?”
“Half your potential children. Be at ease I will not make you completely unable to mother offspring I simply want to take away half your ability to produce them. There should be next to no interference in the process itself in fact it probably won’t even bother you in the long run.”
“The price of your training is to have children with me?”
“I’m not asking you to mother my children, tell you what just follow me.”
He turned and walked while speaking and she followed in a mix of curiosity and confusion. He led her to his lab. On his way, he explained female anatomy to her in the simplest terms possible to this person who had no concept of biology as a study.
“In short, within you are two organs that are used to produce offspring and you only really need one to successfully have a child so what I’m asking for is really not much.”
“I’m not sure I understand but if it saves my village, I’ll do it.”
A smile crept over his face. The door to the lab swung wide and he asked her to clean herself before they began the procedure to prevent illness. She seemed confused at the sudden request, so he explained to her how running water works showed her the bath and even offered to turn the other way when she cleaned herself.
After about a half-hour she emerged from the small metallic room barefoot and wearing the oversized bathrobe she’d bought with Archive in mind. He beckoned her over to the table he’d prepared and had her lie down. She nervously covered herself with the thick fluffy robe and he prepared himself to start the procedure.
After washing his hands and preparing he pulled a small booklet from his pocket and began slowly quietly chanting a spell that was familiar to her. Before she could raise an objection, her eyelids grew heavy, and she began to fall asleep. He chuckled to himself grabbed the syringe from the table and forced the liquid into her body as fast as he could.
Her body jolted awake at the sting of the needle but very soon after drifted back into a stupor. When she’d fallen back asleep, he began pushing her a bit to make sure she was asleep before finally slapping her across the face. The loud smack resounded in the empty chamber, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Honestly, why even make a sleep spell if it stops working the second damage is taken.”
He shook his head and disrobed her. Taking his scalpel in hand he very carefully made his first incision, peeling back the skin and looking in he found what he was seeking and removed the little ball of flesh attached to the parallel tubes and put it into the beaker at his side.
He took a ring from his hand and placed it on her finger. Slowly but surely with bated breath he watched as her wound closed itself and her body left not even a scar. He took the ring and replaced it on his finger before making an incision again and finding to his delight that the piece he’d taken had regenerated with the cut skin.
By the time he was finished he’d filled the beaker and taken out a new one. One final ball of flesh he put in the new beaker before handing off the full one to archive who’d taken the bathrobe earlier and had her hide the full beaker.
He set his ring back on her finger and let her wake up on her own. She slept for quite a while after she’d healed so he simply took back his ring and left her naked and covered in blood on the table.
When she finally awoke, she saw him smoking a cigar and staring intently into the jar with the sole ball of flesh inside. She looked down in horror to see herself covered in blood and wordlessly began trembling with quite inquisitive almost words escaping her tired lips before she finally realized that under all that blood, she was naked.
“So? You’re finally awake.”
Her eyes darted between him and the little orb in the beaker and when he saw her look at herself and back to him, he answered the question her eyes asked.
“Ah, you see, you had such a lovely white bathrobe I didn’t want to sully it with the blood that you are covered in now.”
She fainted at his reply, and he seemed to understand why.
“Maybe I should have cleaned the blood off before she woke up.”