Yet another cold morning was sneaking up on the city of adventurers. The sun had yet to rise, but the eastern horizon was just starting to light up. Even though the shops and other establishments were starting to open their doors for the day, no adventurer was willingly going to brave the frigid temperatures yet, and aside from the few odd parties that returned from their quests and the usual guard patrols, the wide streets of Valor were largely abandoned.
By the northern gate to the city, the market square was starting to slowly wake up as the first merchants set up their stalls to get the best and most visible spots for the day. Adventurers often considered the bravery of these few salespeople to be next to none, even surpassing their own, simply because no foe a quest could ever send them to defeat would ever be more terrifying than waking up and heading outside earlier than needed.
By the eastern edge of the square was the shop of a blacksmith, who had the unfortunate yet often rewarding job of providing his services to the sole necromancer of Valor. On some days, this meant dropping everything to work on whatever weaponry the obnoxious brat wanted to ruin next, the most frequent request being for more spears with bone cores. The first couple of times the blacksmith had dutifully prepared the weapons that only ever saw a split second of use before being mercilessly disintegrated, but since then he had wizened up and prepared the parts needed for them in bulk to save time, and so that he only needed to quickly put them together in mere minutes. He’d still ask the necromancer to come back at least a day later though, because the spears still took more effort to make than arrows or bolts, and he didn’t want the necromancer to start thinking they were just as disposable.
However, the reward for catering to the necromancer’s whims was being the sole artisan that benefitted from her above average penchant for dragging the strangest of things to the city with her. It had started with an unusually non-hostile simulacrum, then continued with an entire dragon skeleton and a set of arms for a red inquisitor of all things.
The latest of these curiosities were two, unassuming pieces of metal. One small and quicksilvery in appearance and the other a large lump of what looked like a part of an iron statue.
The smaller of the two turned out to be the less interesting one by far, despite its flawless reflective surface and somewhat odd behavior. It was heavy, roughly on par with gold and almost nothing seemed to leave a mark on it, that is, until the blacksmith took out the heavier tools. Those still weren’t able to dent or scratch the metal, instead it shattered like glass when he made his useless brother hold a chisel while hitting it with the largest hammer he had on hand.
Heating the strange metal didn’t appear to make it any more malleable, after bringing his forge to its limits and making sure every bit of the remaining shard was glowing white-hot and started to melt his tongs, hammering would not dent it one bit – it did however, make it easier to shatter.
At first, the blacksmith was baffled by the glass-like metal – or metal-like glass, but after taking a gander at his opuses on rare metals and bringing the matter to other blacksmiths of the city, the origins of the strange metal turned out to be relatively well-known as far as mysterious materials went.
The qualities of the shard matched something called ‘mauvecast silver’ exactly, and thanks to the delightfully literal and unglamorous way his people wrote, one of the antique dwarven tomes he had explained in detail where it was from, completely without having to decipher it from legends and myths.
A half-dwarven metallurgist and blacksmith called Ern discovered the method for creating it on behest of some unknown benefactor a couple hundred years ago, but he and his notes disappeared before he had the chance to share his findings. Since then, people have tried to reverse engineer the process based on the few samples he left behind but have failed to make it anywhere near as durable.
This made it likely that whoever Anastacia had taken the shard from, was somehow connected to either Ern or his mysterious benefactor, but the blacksmith didn’t care to ponder much beyond that; after all, he was there to make weapons, not to theorize endlessly about things.
The second piece was considerably more enigmatic. Shaped like a piece of a tail from a statue, the scaled surface was extremely well-made and appeared almost lifelike. While the hunk of metal had the weight and appearance of common iron, the list of oddities and unexplainable behavior seemed endless. In the less strange end of things, the hardness of the metal surpassed anything he had ever seen, even the dwarven lake iron he had made Anastacia’s knife out of. After several dulled chisels and a couple of broken hammers, he had to give up and accept defeat. The acids he used to etch even the more resistant materials had absolutely no effect on it either, nor did the enchantments his brother tried to conjure.
The piece of iron had a weird warmness to it as well. Whereas normal metals usually felt cool to the touch, the strange hunk was always warm, regardless of the temperature it was in. The blacksmith even left it outside overnight, only to find that instead of cooling down, it had thawed the ground around it and kept it warm through the night.
Stranger yet, was the fact that it refused to heat up as well. The blacksmith hired five fledgling adventurers to continuously pump the bellows of his forge for three days straight, probably causing some damage to it in process, and in the end, he was still able to pick up the piece by hand. Any attempts to hammer it into shape were beyond pointless, as the metal only gave a surprisingly well-tuned ring on every strike but refused even dent slightly.
No mage, enchanter, shaman, druid, priest, warlock, witch, wizard, monk, scholar, metallurgist, craftsman or even the guild official that usually handled his material orders knew of such metal, nor sensed anything strange in it. Similarly, all manner of dispelling efforts found nothing to disrupt.
Over the days, the tormented blacksmith had grown to hate the accursed chunk of stubborn metal, and even though he should have spent his days working on the flood of new orders the black order had caused, he often found himself just wasting time by angrily staring at it.
Having barely touched his half-assed breakfast, he was now just sitting by the counter of his shop with the lump in front of him and staring at the beautiful metallic scales on its surface. He sank so deep into his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice his brother entering the shop with a small barrel of beer he had bought from the inn on the other side of the square.
“You’re still working on that thing?” Valimir asked and placed the barrel on the counter. “Also, I brought breakfast.”
“You’ve been hitting on women for years now and it has yielded about as much success as the week I’ve spent on this rotten lump of slag.” The blacksmith snarled and lifted his gaze to the pile of drafts waiting on the counter. “But I suppose you’re right, maybe working on a few pieces could give me some fresh ideas.”
“I was going to suggest a break, but you do you, brother.” The dwelf shrugged while looking for his tankard. “And since you brought it up, I’ve had tons of success with the ladies, they all just live in other countries so you wouldn’t know them.”
“I’m a weaponsmith, I’ll take a break when the world runs out of things to stab, smash and cut.” Shrugged the blacksmith. His beautifully crafted, traditionally decorated and perfectly finished tankard was at the ready by his workstation, so he didn’t need to look for before tapping the barrel.
Having found a cup that could serve for the time being, Valimir leaned on the hunk of mysterious iron and patiently waited for his brother to handle the pouring. “What’s so interesting about a lukewarm chunk of metal anyway? You can’t even do anything with it, other than maybe put a bit of chain around it and have a really worrying flail…”
“Are you not curious at all? Part of me wants to know how this was made, but the rest wants to make sure it’s impossible to make more. Can’t have a bunch of indestructible weapons and tools out there, I’d be out of a job real quick.” The blacksmith frowned and rolled open one of the drafts he should have been working on. The immediate look of annoyance on his face told much about what he thought about some of the gear he had been hired to make. “I swear some of these people think that making a sword longer makes it better… and why is it wider at the tip?!”
“Who is it for?” Asked Valimir and peeked over to his brother’s work.
The overworked dwarf went through the list of names in his ledger for a while, comparing the numbers to the draft. “Someone called ‘Magnus the Magnificent’. By the mountain forge, these new adventurers…” He groaned.
“Oh! That pompous moron. I wouldn’t put too much effort into it; he’ll leave the city with his tail between his legs in a quest or two, just doesn’t have what it takes.” The dwelf laughed dismissively. Unlike his forge-bound hermit of a brother, he kept his ear to the ground for any new arrivals to Valor – though mostly for scummy reasons.
“That’s not how I work, unfortunately.” The blacksmith sighed and made a few corrections to the blade, in a vain hope it would somehow make it less awkward to use. “Each of my works has to meet the quality standards I’ve kept for years, even if the design I was given is a crime against all weaponsmiths.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
They passed the time emptying their keg at a decent pace while the blacksmith cursed his clientele and adjusted the designs. He wasn’t usually as spiteful towards the less conventional ideas, but the consistent failures trying to identify the strange sample brought to him had started to get on his nerves – but at least the beer helped.
Like clockwork, as soon as the sun rose above the buildings and its light lit the door to the inn on the opposite side of the square entirely, it opened and out stepped the strange owl-girl neither the blacksmith nor his brother had all too much contact with but knew her to be a waitress there. Her bright white feathers caught light in a bit of an odd manner, and even among the stands and people slowly gathering to the square, she caught Valimir’s eye by happenstance.
The girl looked around confusedly, almost like she was somehow lost, until suddenly, across the entire market square and past the clutter in it, through the window of the shop and past the weapons on display, her stare suddenly snapped towards the dwelf and sent a chill down his spine.
The large unblinking eyes of Holly were locked onto Valimir’s face as she started to approach the shop. Even after he tried to turn away, the piercing glare took the strength to from his knees and made him nervous for absolutely no reason.
“Uh oh… She’s coming here.” Valimir whimpered ominously.
The blacksmith didn’t bother to look up from his work. “Who is?” He muttered gruffly.
Valimir swiftly moved behind the counter. “The weird girl from Rosie’s inn.”
“All women are weird.” His brother grunted. “Even outside this city.”
A knock on the door forced the dwarf to finally put down his drafting equipment and pretend he wasn’t annoyed. As soon as he looked up, he could see the owlfolk’s face, pressed against the window and was overcome by the same inexplicable feeling of dread his brother felt.
The door opened and Holly slipped inside, carefully making sure the door behind her shut properly by opening and closing it a few more times until she was absolutely sure it was as firmly shut as possible. Finally satisfied, she moved on to inspecting her own reflection on some of the swords that happened to be on display.
“How can I help you?” The blacksmith asked in the manner he had done for decades and worked through the unsettling feeling the bird of prey caused with its glare. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you aren’t an adventurer, right? Did Miss Rosie send you to have some knives sharpened?”
The owlfolk stopped what she was doing and slowly turned her head towards the blacksmith, twisting her neck as much as she could before moving the rest of her body. “Make a hat, a special hat.” She demanded and moved to the counter.
“A hat? I don’t really make clothes-“ The dwarf tried to respond as his brother disappeared into the backroom.
“Out of teeth!” Holly screeched and leaned over the counter as far as she could and pushed the owner of the establishment back with her stare.
“You… you want a hat made out of teeth? Why?” Asked the blacksmith and almost fell over as he tried to back away.
The owl girl stopped for a few seconds as the gears in her head visibly stalled trying to find a reason. “Head noises say that a hat of teeth will be needed!” She suddenly remembered and finally leaned back and let the poor dwarf breathe.
By this point Valimir had used his skill in utility magics to vacate the premises as far as he could, abandoning his brother with the lunatic seeking tooth hats.
The cornered blacksmith saw no other way out of his predicament besides playing along and seeing what happened. “Whose teeth should it be made from then?” He asked worriedly.
“Elephoonts. The big ones that go toot.” Holly said excitedly and flapped her hands by the sides of her head to depict large ears.
“Ele- wait, do you mean tusks?” The blacksmith connected the dots in his head, making the whole situation less weird by an order of magnitude. “I have plenty of ivory on me, if that’s what you’re after?”
Holly clapped happily and made a strange hooting noise.
“Can’t be worse than what I already have to work on…” Shrugged the dwarf and quickly popped into the backroom to grab a clean sheet of paper to make a quick draft of the ‘hat’ Holly wanted. He typically didn’t make much in the way of clothes, but thanks to a certain frequent customer of his, working with bone had become almost his specialty – and above all else, it gave him an excuse to not work on the godless abominations ordered from him earlier.
Upon returning to the counter, he found the young owlfolk fixated on the frustrating hunk of stubborn iron.
Nodding and patting the metal understandingly, Holly turned to the owner of the shop. “Such a tough child, but his mother can soften him.” She explained before grabbing the fresh paper and a piece of charcoal from the table. Ignoring the blacksmith, she drew a frankly terrible and barely legible picture of something that could have maybe gone on someone’s head. The initial quality of the draft was already basically useless for the dwarf’s purposes, but every time she drew another line, the feathers lining her arms would smudge the previous ones and add to the chaos.
Seeming rather proud of her work, Holly twisted and turned the paper before shoving it at the blacksmith. “Make this!” She cheerily demanded, placed a single coin on the counter and rushed out as quickly as she could, before the blacksmith could get a chance to say anything.
“What? But- ah, forget it.” He sighed and watched the girl dash around a corner before he had the chance to ask for any kind of details about the other materials, measure the size or any other of the extremely important things he needed to make a product of satisfactory quality – or even ask what she was talking about earlier. “Young people these days…” He muttered and sat down to try and clean up the draft.
Since the entire drawing was smudged beyond use, the first thing he needed to do was to redraw everything that looked like it could have been a line once. After removing a few of the lines and adding a few more, the picture almost started to look like some kind of a circlet – at least remotely.
Through copious amounts of trial and error, the blacksmith managed to come up with a somewhat sensible-looking arrangement of ivory pieces knitted together with a metal circlet. Personally, he would have used silver, but there were no hints toward what it was supposed to be. He would still need some measurements before moving forwards but could already spot a few places the size could be adjusted from, if needed.
Though the request was sudden and odd, and the payment he received would struggle to even cover the beer he drank while working, it was interesting enough to finally take his mind off his consistent failures regarding the mystery iron.
Hours had passed without so much as a minute’s break while he was immersed into his work, that is, until a sudden thump against the display window snapped him back to reality. A bit startled, he glanced up and saw Anastacia pressing her cheek against the glass and staring inside while the priestess behind her pretended to not know the girl.
With a long, draw-out squeaking noise, the necromancer dragged her face across the glass towards the door before finally barging in, with Emilia trailing soon after her.
“I need weapons!” The necromancer barked without greeting or waiting to be greeted.
The blacksmith sighed. “Of course you do, you always do.”
Emilia smacked her friend on the head for being so impolite to the one person supporting her habit of destroying every piece of weaponry she got her hands on.
“… please?” Anastacia continued to avoid invoking any further wrath from her party mate.
“Good.” The priestess nodded. She herself wasn’t there for anything, but after returning from the guild offices, where she had spent the entire morning repeatedly signing countless forms to finalize the contract that now bound both her and Anastacia, she had decided to join the necromancer on her outing to replace her arsenal for their upcoming trip.
While the blacksmith pretended to listen to Anastacia’s specifications for the hundredth time, Emilia’s eyes happened to wander towards the strange piece of iron on the shop’s counter. She recognized it as the one Gilbert and Anastacia had taken along from the baron of iron’s keep but didn’t know much more than that. She also knew it had been taken to the blacksmith to be identified and maybe made into something useful, but since it was still in its original shape, the priestess figured that the dwarf hadn’t had time to look into it.
Oddly, something about the chunk made her feel like she needed to hold it and without even really thinking, Emilia picked up the piece and weighed it with her arms. The scaly surface was smooth to touch, and she ended up fiddling with it absentmindedly while waiting for her friend to finish bothering the blacksmith.
Had someone been paying attention, they would have seen a weird, heavily armored woman caressing a piece of metal like a baby with a warm smile on her face. None of this registered to the priestess herself, of course, as she was simply running her fingers along the grooves between the scales and poking their sharp tips because there wasn’t much else to do with the lump.
All of a sudden, one of the scales happened to catch the edge of her sleeve and snapped off like it was nothing. Cursing under her breath, Emilia checked if someone had seen her break what was likely a unique sample of something valuable. But since her misdeed appeared to have been missed by everyone present, she hid the detached scale into her pocket and placed the metal hunk back on the counter like nothing had happened – just in time as the necromancer returned from the back room she had waltzed into without asking for permission.
“And remember, if you don’t connect the angles right and have the ratios for the lengths of each pattern according to the formula I showed you, or if one of the junctions is botched or doesn’t comply to the priority rules, the spear will explode in my hand. If that happens, it’s you who is going to have to build me a new hand!” Anastacia reminded the blacksmith of the degree of accuracy needed for the patterns on her spears’ bone cores. “Let’s go, Em! We still need to replace my staff and this guy is refusing to hear about my perfectly reasonable concerns.”
Still a bit pale after breaking the piece of metal, the priestess was absolutely ready to escape from the shop. So when Anastacia stomped her way out, she was quick to follow and only gave an apologetic wave to the blacksmith before closing the door after her.
The blacksmith took a few moments to recover from one of the more challenging of his customers, but luckily there was still a plentiful pint of beer left in the keg, and it certainly went far in refreshing his overworked mind and body.
After his first, direly needed break of the day, he was ready to return to the draft of the ‘hat’ he was working on for Holly. “Huh… That’s odd…” He muttered and inspected the drawing.
Instead of the salvaged draft made on top of the messy original one, the paper now had a perfectly pristine plan for a headdress with roughly the same shape but far, far more detail in it. The blurry mess underneath had vanished, each of the pieces now had their specific materials and dimensions clearly written by them and were depicted from several different angles in an extremely organized manner. The blacksmith had some pride in his drafting skills, but even they fell horribly short of the sheer perfection of the plans laid out before him.
He hadn’t exactly paid attention to the priestess, but there was no way she could have altered the drawing in such a manner in only a few minutes, and he certainly had no recollection of drawing it himself, so the reason behind it left him stumped.
Suddenly, the lantern he used for light when drawing flickered, as a raspy female voice whispered to his ear. “Let us get to work, master dwarf?” The excited whisper was accompanied by a firm grip on his shoulder and a large, long-fingered, bird-like hand with massive hooked nails reaching past him to grab a piece of charcoal from the table and offering it to him. “For there is much for us to do.” The voice continued.