As Vesta brought the hammer down on the white-hot piece of Mythril, the quarter-elf smiled behind her protective headgear. There was something so... pure about working with metal. People were often unreliable and may lie, cheat, and steal to get the things they thought they wanted. The metal, however, was true and real. The metal did not deceive.

A spark jumped off the Mythril, landing on the thick leather sleeve that protected her arms. Her smile turned a bit wry as she noted that, just because the metal was honest did not mean that it wasn't dangerous. While some smiths insisted that bare arms were a must, and the scars from such incidents made a smith a smith, she preferred to use the armguards herself. She'd seen more than one smith accidentally make an error when the metal "bit" them while they worked.

Continuing her work, Vesta brought the hammer down, again and again, her strikes falling in time with the thunder of all the other hammers in the forge. It wasn't something she or most other smiths did consciously, it was simply something that happened. Still, there was something to be said for the thunder of dozens of hammers, all descending at once, a metronome keeping time for all the other sounds of the forge.

The thunder of hammers, the smell of hot metal and the sweat of dozens of people hard at work, the feeling of the heat of the forge licking at her through her protective leathers, the rattle of chains as heavy components were moved here and there. All of this and more surrounded her, permeated her. This was her place, her world, her paradise.

The Vulcan Manufactury Group's (VMG) forge was hard at work today, which was easy to hear between the hammer blows in the forge. There'd been a mine collapse at the town of Remus in the Titus barony nearby, and while no one had been harmed, nearly two dozen golems had been damaged badly or outright destroyed. Since the mine owner's contract had included free recovery, replacement, and repair of all golems provided, it was up to the VMG to get the automatons back up and running. Golems were still being teleported in from the mine as they were being unearthed, and every couple of hours a new golem would pop into the delivery bay on the far side of the forge. While teleportation was extremely hazardous to living things, for golems it was the best way to move them from place to place.

Temporary replacement golems had been issued to help with clearing out the collapsed mine and getting things back to normal, but people preferred to work with golems they were familiar with, so the mine workers would want the originals returned, where possible. To some, it might seem odd that people would get attached to something like an Industrial-Grade golem, but as Gramps would often say, "If a smith can get attached to their hammer and a soldier to their sword, it's no small wonder that they'd get attached to the golems they work with every day." As Vesta felt very fond of the hammer she was currently using, a gift that Gramps had given her on her sixteenth birthday, she could understand the sentiment all too well.

Big, burly men worked the forges, pouring molten metal into molds, hammering metal into shape, and chatting to each other as they inspected damaged golems. Apprentices darted here and there, delivering and retrieving tools, bars of metal, and Exponentia crystals to keep the forge powered with all possible speed. In the center of the large building, a massive golem, much larger than the others, stood with its arms held up by heavy chains in what many smiths called the "T-Pose", the cavity where its core would go broken open and looking like a mortal wound. This particular golem was called, for very obvious reasons, a Giant-Grade due to its massive height of thirty feet, and it had taken critical damage to its core during the collapse. It was still being inspected to determine if further damage might have been done. Until the core was repaired or replaced, it was as inert as that much steel could be, so it had to be held up by chains for a proper inspection.

It was a bit of a shame, honestly. A golem's core was, in a way, its heart and soul, the place where all of the instructions and commands that governed its operation were kept, as well as all operational memory was stored. If that was broken, it could be replaced, but in a very real way, it wasn't the same golem as before. You could take a golem's core and put it into any other body and it would operate the same, but put a different core in a golem's body, and it would have a different... feel, a different personality to it, at least according the customers.

Vesta wasn't sure if that was the case or not, as she didn't have as much experience operating golems as she did building and repairing them. However, she'd had it explained to her by a mage who specialized in core engravings that, since each core had to be done by hand, small variations always occurred between cores that would often result in small differences when the golem operated. A different walk, a tendency to favor using the left hand over the right, different postures when at rest, all of this was because of those small variations, so it resulted in golems who acted a little differently from one another. Even just the fact that the mage was using a different stylus for the engraving could have a significant impact on how the golem 'behaved'.

And on that note, Vesta finished her hammering and inspected the shaped Mythril before her. Nodding in satisfaction at her work, she used her tongs to pick up the glowing metal and doused it. After a few moments, she pulled it out and smiled as she admired the finished product. It was a long, thin piece of Mythril that ended in a point, albeit a somewhat dull one. Under other circumstances, she might have taken a file and sharpened it, but given what it was being used for, dull was better.

After confirming that her project had cooled off, she turned to the towering figure standing nearby. "Hedea," she said, making a beckoning motion with her head, "please be a dear and find Domitius. Tell him that I've just finished his new stylus and it is ready for inspection."

It was a simple tool that the mage used for engraving runes into the 'golem core. An easy enough job, but Domitius could be a bit persnickety about the tools he worked with, demanding nothing short of what he thought of as perfection. Still, Vesta was sure that this would meet the mage's near-impossible standards. With a dull tip, it would only engrave when the mage was running magic through it, so there was no risk of a small accidental nick damaging a rune and causing unexpected side effects, and it was long enough that he could do his work without fear of his hand brushing the core.

The tall half-orc nodded and headed off, her body covered head to toe in similar protective gear as Vesta's. It often struck Vesta how cruel the world can be, as so much about how one will be treated is decided by one's birth. Hedea was a half-orc, one whose friendship Vesta treasured. However, since Hedea was a half-orc, in the kingdom of Exaul that meant that she was only half a person and was treated as such under the law.

The most that Hedea could hope for was a life as a servant, using the prodigious strength of their orcish heritage to perform menial labor for others. She could not own property, start her own business, request the legal minimum salary for work, carry a weapon, or expect much protection under the law. It was, however, a vast improvement over how full-blooded orcs were treated in Exaul...

It was a terrible crime, Vesta felt, that her friend Hedea was treated that way. While the half-orc wasn't very bright, she was as kind and gentle as any person could be. Despite being well over six and a half feet tall and having the strength to bend steel rods into a pretzel without any seeming effort, Hedea didn't have a violent bone in her body. That, combined with a beautiful face that her fangs and tusks did nothing to diminish and an impressive figure that her sculpted muscles only enhanced, she'd be considered the perfect woman if she'd been a full-blooded human. However, her gray-green skin marked her forever as an object of disgust, hatred, and fear.

Vesta had heard that there were still free orcs in the badlands to the south of Exaul, and every so often slavers would come back with new captives to sell. She'd asked Hedea if her friend thought she'd be happier there among the orcs in the south rather than being mistreated as she was here in Exaul. Hedea's expression had been unreadable when, after a few moments, had answered "No" in the most bitter and unhappy tone that she'd ever heard the half-orc use.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Vesta had no idea what kind of life Hedea had lived before they'd met, but something about that answer told the quarter-elf that perhaps being a half-orc in the company of full-blooded orcs wasn't any better than being a half-orc in the company of full-blooded humans...

Vesta was pulled from her thoughts when her sharp ears picked the sound of a sudden noise, a discordant note in the symphony of the forge. Looking to the source of the noise, she looked up over to the Giant-Grade golem and saw a large crack had formed in its left shoulder, one that was already widening. Normally, that wouldn't be a major problem, as the chains holding the golem would have also held the arm in place even if it detached from the body. However, her sharp eyes spotted that a link in one of the chains had snapped, and was already stretching open. In a few seconds, the chain would fully give way...

"CLEAR THE GIANT!" she shouted, loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the forge as she began moving. Several people were standing near the massive golem, and there was no time for them to react before the arm started dropping. Spotting a nearby golem core, freshly engraved and ready for insertion, she grabbed the heavy metal sphere, and tossed it as hard as she could into the golem's open chest cavity, hoping that the automaton retained enough functionality to properly link with the new core...

The core slotted in cleanly, and began to glow.

As the chains holding the golem's left arm snapped and the cracking shoulder began coming apart, the golem snapped to attention and assessed the situation. In less than a second, the automaton realized what was going on, that people were in danger, and what the best course of action would be. Activating its emergency retrieval function, the massive golem was immediately teleported to the nearby delivery bay. Half a second later, the immensely heavy arm fully broke off and fell to the ground with a thud that shook the entire forge... well away from anyone it might have landed on. The golem knelt, picked up the arm, and then awaited further instruction.

There were a few seconds of silence as everyone in the forge realized what happened, and then a great cheer went up. "The Forge Fairy strikes again!"

As workers and smiths thanked her for her swift action and saving their lives, or congratulating her on her amazing throw, Vesta put on a brave face as she was inevitably patted on the head and called by her nickname. It was another one of those unfair quirks of birth, her being a quarter-elven. True elves didn't age beyond adulthood, but half and quarter elves simply aged very slowly. Despite being twenty-five, Vesta looked like she was somewhere between ten and twelve years of age, and unless she was an early-bloomer, puberty was at least a couple of decades away at the soonest. Because of that, she was treated more like a mascot and good luck charm for the forge than a real smith. While she was as good as most of the smiths here, she was trusted only with small, delicate forge-work instead of working with full-blown golems despite her strength.

Despite her small stature, Vesta was strong enough to have tossed a metal ball weighing at least twenty-five pounds a distance of thirty yards into an opening a good twenty feet off the ground. She doubted any of the smiths calling her "Kid", "Lass", and "Little Lady" could have managed a feat like that. As someone who'd been helping out in the forges since she was five, she had a great deal of strength in her arms. However, elves, in general, don't get big muscles as they get stronger, they just get more toned, and that was even more so for elven females. So, because she looked like a cute, brown-haired, freckle-faced little waif, she was treated as such despite being the strongest person in the room.

Maybe that would change a little when she finally did grow up, but that had its hurdles. Due to how slow those of elven blood aged, when puberty hit, it would last for over a century. Having seen what many human boys and girls went through during just a few short years they'd endured, having to go through it for over one hundred years was going to be miserable.

Life could be so incredibly unfair...

However, a realization suddenly struck her, and shouted out, "WHO WAS ON THE ROSTER TO CHECK THE CHAINS THIS WEEK?!"

This was a serious matter. Those chains were supposed to be checked weekly, to make sure there were no weak links. It was a long, tedious job that took hours, but it was vital to make sure accidents like the one narrowly averted didn't occur.

Suddenly everything went quiet, and after a moment, someone in the crowd replied, "Felix was supposed to do it, but he's been out all week. Newborn babe!"

That was why Vesta was able to work at the forge today. Since she wasn't an official smith, she was only allowed to do work when someone else was out.

"And who was supposed to fill in his spot?!" Vesta retorted. "Procedure is whoever is set for next week fills in!"

After a moment, a voice answered, "Hadrian!"

As if by some spell, the crowd parted, and Hadrian, a pot-bellied, bald, black-bearded smith of middle age found himself alone. He didn't have many friends in the forge, largely because his work was mediocre at best, and he tended to complete projects last minute instead of as soon as possible which delayed the work of other, more hard-working smiths. The main reason he still had a job at the forge was that they were needing every hammer they could on days like this one and because he was a cousin to a major client.

Scowling, Vesta asked very calmly, "And did you, Hadrian?"

Looking very nervous, the smith in question stammered, "W-w-well I was gonna..." That was a weak excuse since it was supposed to be done on Monday, but it wasn't as if he was the only one who delayed doing a dull job when the forge was busy...

"I CALL BULLSHIT ON THAT, YA FUCK-STAIN!!!"

Stomping through the crowd, the head foreman, Vulcan, walked into view, his steel grey mane of hair and long, bushy beard doing little to hide his furious scowl. A huge man, he had the kind of muscles one could only get by working a forge every day for decades. Infamous for a fiery temper and a foul mouth, he'd seen the Vulcan Manufactury Group rise from a small forge repairing horseshoes in a tiny shed to the single largest manufacturer of golems in the kingdom in less than twenty years. Despite his temper and vulgarity, he was an honest man with a strong sense of justice with no patience for fools, which made him very popular with the smiths working his forges.

It was a common practice to name children after the now-vanished gods, Vesta being one such example, and Gramps own name being another. Some did it as a sort of prayer, to let the gods know that mortals still remembered them and hoped for their return. Others did so as a kind of good luck charm, hoping that the absent gods would grant a blessing upon their child. Many others did so in the hopes that the child would possess the same qualities of the god whose name they shared.

With Vulcan, it had worked, as one could scarcely imagine a man better suited to the forge. Many joked that he was born in a smithy upon an anvil with a hammer in his hand.

Holding up a scroll, Vulcan declared loudly, "I just checked the records, ya tallow-brained bastard son of a whore! Ya marked the chains as checked Monday morning, signed and sealed." Lifting Hadrian off the ground by his leather smith's apron with one hand, the head foreman bellowed, "Ya lazy shit, ya almost got good men killed 'cause ya couldn't be bothered to do ya damned job!"

Hadrian, clearly terrified and struggling to keep from soiling himself, could only squirm like a worm on a hook. Vesta was genuinely terrified that she was about to see the head foreman kill a man. However, after a moment, Vulcan dropped the man to the ground and let out a long, slow sigh.

"If anyone had died," Vulcan stated, his glare fit to slay a man where he stood, "I'd be calling the guard and having ya hauled away in chains. They hang men who cause death through negligence, ya know? Maybe I'd spare them the trouble and take a hammer to ya stones, and then ya head. Count ya lucky stars no one did. Now, pack up ya shit, and get ya ass out of here."

Hadrian, still clearly terrified, tried to stutter out, "B-b-but my cousin..."

With a dismissive wave of the hand, head foreman Vulcan said, "If I explained the situation to him, I doubt he'd be upset enough to cancel the contract. Unfortunately, I won't have to." Turning towards the other workers gathered, he proclaimed, "Romulus was wiped out ten days ago. The Ashen Stag and his bandits plundered the town, razed it to the ground, and burned the olive orchards to ash."

That revelation shocked Vesta, since even a forge fanatic like her had heard of the town of Romulus. Everyone knew that they produced the finest olives in the kingdom, and its olive oil was one of the kingdom's most sought-after exports. While it wasn't unusual for monsters, bandits, or the undead to destroy a village or outpost on the edge of the kingdom, for a town so critically important to Exaul's economy to be wiped out was unprecedented.

Turning back to Hadrian, he added, "Only three survived to tell the tale, ya cousin was not one of them." His expression grim the head foreman stated, "The only reason ya won't be kissing an anvil on the way out the door is pity. So get packed and get gone, before I change my mind."

The threat of one of the most severe punishments in the forge was enough to get Hadrian rushing to his station and gathering his tools. 'Kissing The Anvil' was one of the oldest punishments for incompetence in the forge, and it meant having the intended victim bite an anvil, and then someone kicks them in the back of the head. If the recipient was lucky, he was just not going to be eating solid foods for a good long time, if ever again. If he wasn't, he'd need his shattered jaw wired shut and would be sipping food through a straw for a long, long while.

Walking up to Vesta, Vulcan said, "Come and see me in my office, little fairy. I've got a job for ya and ya grandfather that I need doing."