Anastacia shoveled sugar into her coffee directly from the large sack Rosie kept in the kitchen. Every now and then when it seemed like no more sugar was dissolving into it, she gave the drink a stir before continuing. After an alarmingly high number of scoops, she finally took one long sip and emptied the cup entirely. She had stumbled downstairs well after breakfast time, but still as the first member of her party to wake up after their late return from the quest. Without a word, she had poured herself a cup of fresh coffee and slumped over next to the sugar sack.
The inn’s staff watched the events unravel in equal amounts of disgust and horror and politely stepped out of the way when the necromancer wandered to refill her cup, but when she tried to return to the sugar, Rosie stopped her and guided her to a chair in a warm place next to the stove.
“Anna, that’s vile. Please stop.” The innkeeper said and began making a sandwich for the tuckered-out necromancer. “So, how was your trip?” She asked, trying to keep Anastacia awake with a conversation.
“It was fun. Saved the kid, brought him home, saw a ghost, lost in cards, got into debt, got a job at a brothel to pay back but used my reward money instead, Emilia hired an escort, ran into some weirdo on the way back.” Anastacia listed what she considered to be the major events of the quest.
Rosie stopped slicing the fillings for Anastacia’s sandwich and struck the knife into the table. “She did what now?” The tigress asked in a bit deeper voice than usual, without turning around.
“Yeah, Emilia spent all of her money on this one lady because she was like magic or something. To be honest, I kind of stopped listening for a while when she flashed me her tits like five seconds after we met.” The necromancer explained as Rosie stormed out of the kitchen.
Yulia had been quietly listening and progressively blushed more and more. “Y… you really don’t know, do you?” She stuttered.
Anastacia frowned. “Know what? I know many things! I know exactly how many times your heart beats in a minute, and I know exactly how much faster it gets whenever Gil is mentioned.” She teased the lamb and grabbed the half-finished breakfast Rosie had started.
The mornings had already gotten fairly chilly, but the inn was kept pleasantly warm by the kitchen stove and some clever piping. A few rooms had also been equipped with small stoves that did good enough job when the nights got especially cold. It wasn’t uncommon for entire parties to gather in a room with one either.
Valor wasn’t far enough north to see temperatures below freezing during the day almost ever and snow was even rarer, so the changing seasons didn’t have much of an effect on how the city operated. Some particular quests stopped coming in because their target was hibernating for the winter, but most of them were replaced by the need to get rid of other creatures ushered out of their dens by the cold. Adventurers that weren’t too keen on cold, often also took longer quests in the warmer areas of the world, or straight up retired until the seasons changed again.
Anastacia and her party had decided to keep on working as usual, as Gilbert was born and raised in what was almost a frozen wasteland and cold didn’t bother him at all, Emilia was heated by Sylvia’s affinity for fire, King was unable to feel cold as far as anyone could tell and Anastacia was able to conjure flames from thin air. As a party, they were unusually well suited for the incoming winter.
“Where’s King? He’s usually within arm’s reach of you.” Yulia suddenly realized while washing some dishes, obviously hoping that the simulacrum would relieve her from that duty since it was one of the more difficult things to do with her prosthetic hand.
Anastacia peeked out from the kitchen. “I think he went to see the blacksmith. He tried to do a bit of pantomime when I woke up, but I only caught like a tenth of it.” She said and emptied her cup again. “Either way, I’m just waiting for Gil to get here so we can go to the offices and get this quest done. King is still classified as equipment by the fuck-ass officials, so he’s not needed there.”
“Oh… Is mister Gilbert not here?” The sheep asked, trying to not look clearly disappointed but not doing a terribly good job at it.
The necromancer shrugged. “He’s not in his room, it’s not much of a mystery.”
Yulia quietly went back to her chores and looked even more broken down than before.
“I won’t even act like I have the faintest clue on how to help you out, but King made me a nest and brought me berries when we met, maybe that helps?” Anastacia said half-jokingly.
The dwarven blacksmith of Valor was quietly tinkering by his desk at his store. Some new adventurers had just returned from their first big haul and were eager to spend the reward money on some custom-made equipment, which was probably a smart move, as their old weapons weren’t even worth smelting into trinkets, and the blacksmith was more than happy to oblige. He was able to put in far more creativity into a weapon when he already had a buyer in mind and didn’t have to make it suitable for most people, and there was the fact that the price of such weaponry reflected the amount of work he put into making them, which certainly didn’t hurt. The order was made for a rapier, a glaive, a set of three axes that had to be somewhat throwable and a proper war hammer, latter of which made the dwarf very happy, no matter how much it played into stereotypes about his kind.
He was just about done with the rough drafts for all of them when he heard something thump against the shop’s window. The dwarf lifted his gaze from the papers and saw the towering stone figure of King looming over the items he was showcasing by the window. “Well that’s a bit unsettling.” He said to himself and headed to the door to see what was going on, typically the necromancer would have already kicked her way inside. He carefully pulled open the door and looked around for Anastacia, who seemed to be strangely absent from the simulacrum’s side. “Can I help you?” The dwarf asked and successfully got King’s attention.
The simulacrum stared at him for a while before lifting up a small leather pouch that sounded like it contained quite a bit of gold.
The blacksmith scratched his head. “Do you want to buy something? You lost the sword quite a while ago, didn’t you?” He asked.
King nodded.
“Well, do come on in then. I don’t think I have anything that’s… well, stupidly oversized on hand, but we’ll see when we get inside.” The dwarf suggested and gestured for the simulacrum to follow him.
The blacksmith couldn’t help but to marvel at the craftmanship on King every time he and Anastacia visited the shop after breaking another one of the weapons he had worked hard to make. Even after what was most likely thousands of years, the simulacrum’s parts fit together perfectly and allowed him to move as smoothly as any piece of technology that was build ten minutes ago. The blacksmith would have gladly given an arm and a leg to get a chance to work with whatever materials were used to build the ancient simulacra, but that was among the seemingly infinite number secrets their makers had taken to their graves with them. The metallic alloy used on they more vital parts was damn near unbreakable and showed no signs of corrosion even after being buried underground for countless years and no amount of heating would make it malleable enough to work with. While the stone parts were at least breakable, that was still easier said than done, and it took considerable effort from multiple people or a cannon to actually achieve that and shut down once of the machines. The current leading theory was that the stone was actually some kind of magically enchanted ceramic material as it matched nothing that had been mined from any part of the world, but there was no way to know for sure, and it was likely that there never would be.
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King wasn’t bothered by the dwarf’s staring and instead just kept perusing the selection of daggers that had been neatly arranged along the shop’s wall. He took a closer look at each and every one of them before placing them back in their place.
“Is there something particular you’re looking for? Maybe you can draw it for me or something?” The blacksmith suggested but got no reaction, the simulacrum just kept going through the weapons one by one and judging them by some measure only know to him and no one else. “Okay then… Well, do ask if you need something.” The dwarf said and returned to his earlier work, feeling slightly rejected.
It took over an hour for King to make a decision and in the end, he walked up to the counter with a pair of daggers that resembled spikes more than knives of any kind. They had no cutting edge on them and instead were more or less just square rods of metal that gradually thinned down to a very sharp point. The purpose of the design was to allow the user to wound heavily armored foes through even the smallest gaps in their armor, like neck and armpits that couldn’t be covered with plate metal for the sake of mobility. The dagger would have little trouble going through ring mail or padding that was often worn under armor.
The blacksmith picked up the weapons and looked down their blades to make sure they were straight. “Rondel, eh? I honestly didn’t peg you down as the stabbing type. Are you sure about this?” He asked, as weapons like that were typically favored by people who sought to bring down something bigger and stronger than themselves.
Suddenly king emptied a small leather pouch full of small pebbles on the counter and rifled through them until he found what he was looking for: two neatly cut large diamonds. He held one of them by the tip of a dagger and presented it to the blacksmith.
“You want me to use these extremely valuable diamonds as tips for your daggers? I swear adventurers just get weirder every year…” The dwarf asked to be absolutely sure about the simulacrum’s intentions.
King nodded.
The blacksmith scratched his head and rolled one of the diamonds between his fingers. “Is there a type of beastie that needs to be killed with diamonds? If you can tell me anything about their hide or armor or whatever you’re trying to puncture, it might help with the design.”
The simulacrum stopped to think for a few seconds before taking one of the daggers and violently plunging it against his own chest. The blacksmith let out a slight wail as the tip of the dagger snapped like a twig and landed somewhere on the floor behind him. The steel tip had done nothing to King’s stone chestplate and the strike had even bent the whole blade slightly.
Stunned by both the display and seemingly effortless destruction of one of his works, the dwarf struggled to find a meaning for King’s actions. He stared at the broken dagger and the diamonds for a while before finally piecing it together. “You’re… you’re going to break other simulacra?”
King nodded once more.
“What has that idiot gotten herself wrapped up in? Shouldn’t she be able to rip them apart herself anyway? I even made those spears for her and everything!” The blacksmith exclaimed and rubbed his brow in frustration.
Before he had the chance to say anything else, King swiftly grabbed him by the face, squeezed slightly and held his index finger over where his own mouth would be, if he were a human, as if to tell the dwarf to be quiet about the matter.
The blacksmith shook himself free and rubbed his cheeks, the simulacrum wasn’t particularly gentle with people who weren’t Anastacia. “She doesn’t know? Are you leaving?” He whispered as if the necromancer could be nearby and overhear their discussion.
King shook his head.
“Oh, well that’s good, that lass really likes you. I really don’t want to be in the middle of whatever you have going on, but I’ll make your weapons for you, it’s my job here after all.” The blacksmith shrugged and picked up the broken dagger. “There’s a couple of things you need to take into account here, first of all, these daggers won’t do. They’re not designed for stabbing rocks. I’ll make you a new pair with a bit different alloy and method, they’ll be a bit more brittle, but by the gods they’ll be the stiffest blades this city has ever seen! That means you can’t stab anything in an angle, or it’ll snap, but with the diamond in its tip, you can probably crack the city wall by stabbing it if you want to.” He declared proudly, clearly starting to get caught up in his own excitement. “Can you show me your arm?”
The dwarf grabbed King’s hand and began measuring his wrist. With its dimensions written down he disappeared into the small room behind the counter for a while and returned with a few pieces of metal. The dwarf then took the broken dagger and quickly stripped it of its handle and finger guard before placing the bare blade on top of the simulacrum’s wrist, so that the blade’s tip only reached ten or so centimeters beyond his knuckles.
“If we strap it here, it should be easier for you to hit them straight, you’ll also get more power behind it this way. I can just anchor them to these metal parts here and here…” The blacksmith muttered and made small markings on King’s arm with a piece of charcoal. “But all this will still only get you so many stabs, won’t it? Even diamond will eventually crack and chip away, it’s not magical after all…” He continued and rubbed his chin while pondering how to further increase the durability of the weapons. Suddenly his face lit up. “But it could be!” He exclaimed and ran back into the backroom.
After a while King heard stomping from the second floor, followed by arguing and then more stomping until the blacksmith returned. With him arrived his dwelf half-brother, Valimir, a well-known scumbag, trouble maker and over all wanker, but a tragically capable utility mage and enchanter. He had previously enchanted Anastacia’s knife with something that had remained a mystery to that day.
“How hard can you make this?” The blacksmith asked and showed one of the diamonds to his brother.
The dwelf’s eyes glimmered when he saw the precious gems. “Do you want the answer in the form of a clever euphemism or not? For a price, I can make it harder than a golem’s morning-“ He said but was interrupted by his brother.
“Aaaaand I already regret this, but if you can harden it, that’ll help us out a lot. Surely you can discount it a bit since it’s me asking?” The blacksmith asked and brotherly patted Valimir’s back.
The dwelf smirked. “This guy is with the compact necromancer, right? Get me a quest alone with her and I’ll enchant you ten of these.”
The lights on King’s armor flared up and he started to hum loudly, looking considerably more intimidating every passing second.
The blacksmith backed off slightly. “How about I’ll just ask him to not kill you?” He quietly suggested.
“Worth the try.” Valimir shrugged. “Calm down big guy, give me the gold for about two hundred kilos of coal, a live chicken, some troll teeth, a bottle of oak sap and a couple of days to work on it and I’ll get it done for free… But you have to tell the necromancer that I’m a good person!” he bartered.
The dwarf let out a deep sigh. “Fine. Just take what you need from the safe and I’ll add it to the cost in the end. I’ll need two or three days to make the daggers or whatever they’re going to be. So, King, come to check up on us in four days and we’ll see where we’re at, okay?” He said and cleared the counter of the clutter.
King nodded and left the shop, probably to find Anastacia as usual.
After sending off his brother to find the materials he needed, the blacksmith sat back down to his table. Grinning widely, he tossed aside the drafts he had been working on earlier and pulled out a clean roll of paper. He was absolutely certain that if there was ever going to be a pair of weapons in the world that were going to be able to kill multiple simulacra, they were going to be made by him!