For nearly two more hours, Arwin made metal balls. Over and over, he worked to improve his control. For nearly two hours, he failed.
A pile of metal steadily built on the ground beside him as he tried again and again without pause. At first, his attempts seemed like they were all turning out the same. Dozens of lumpy pieces of metal that barely even resembled spheres made up the majority of his early attempts.
But failure didn’t come without progress. With every attempt he made, Arwin got a little better. The spheres grew a little more spherical. That was great in terms of seeing improvement, but it was less than ideal when the metal balls got round enough that they started to roll away the moment he set them down.
Arwin barely even noticed. He just kept making balls. Even though he was getting better, they still weren’t nearly as round as Wallace’s had been. There were still imperfections and slight malformations.
He was so focused on his work that he completely forgot where he was. All that remained in his eyes was the glowing lava and the metal going in and out of it. Even the metal itself was forgotten the moment after he checked it to determine where he could improve, abandoned in preparation for the next attempt.
Arwin’s concentration was broken as a loud crash split the air. His eyes snapped away from the ball of lava just in time for him to see Wallace’s metal boots go flying off his feet as he fell on his back, having slipped on one of the balls that had rolled away.
The dwarf let out a slew of curses in several different languages as he scrambled upright, kicking one of Arwin’s carefully crafted spheres into the pool of lava in the process.
“By the Earth Father’s many tits, what is wrong with you?” Wallace demanded as he made his way across the smithy to grab his boots, taking care to avoid the other balls that had distributed themselves across the floor.
“Whoops,” Arwin said sheepishly as his cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I’d already made that many. I thought they were just stacked up next to me.”
“Balls? You thought balls would stack?”
“They were stacking before.”
“That’s because they weren’t damn balls, now were they? Those were lumps,” Wallace snapped. He retrieved his boots and jammed his feet back into them before storming over to Arwin and snagging his latest attempt to inspect it. The dwarf blinked.
“What?” Arwin asked. “I’m not done yet.”
“This is a ball,” Wallace said, holding it out to Arwin. He looked around the room and shook his head. “All of these are balls! You haven’t made a lump in an hour!”
“Sure, but it’s not as smooth as yours was either,” Arwin said. He took the ball from Wallace and ran his thumb along the surface. “There are small mistakes in it. Not as bad as they were before, but my attempts are nowhere near as smooth as yours was.”
“That would be because I have been doing this for longer than you’ve been drawing breath. If you could catch up to me in a day, I’d drive my own hammer through my skull,” the dwarf said with a disbelieving shake of his head. “This is more than round enough. You aren’t going to perfectly master the skill in a single day.”
“You said not to talk to you again until I could make perfectly round balls,” Arwin pointed out.
“I was exaggerating. You weren’t actually supposed to take me that literally. Have you never met a dwarf in your life before? We like stretching things. Makes up for all the stretch our bodies can’t do.” Wallace pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. “I can’t even blame you for this. Very well. Let’s see if you learned anything other than how to repeat motions. Make a perfect cube instead of a sphere.”
Arwin shrugged and went to stick one of the pieces of steel that Wallace had left by his anvil into his ball of magma. The dwarf’s hand fell on his shoulder, giving him pause.
“When I say perfect, I mean relatively perfect,” Wallace said. “Do not build a pyramid in my smithy while I’m not watching.”
“Noted,” Arwin said. A corner of his lips pulled up in a small grin. “I’ll see what I can do.”
The dwarf just sighed and shook his head. “I suppose I can’t expect much better than that. Get on with it.”
Arwin obliged. He gathered his focus and pressed the new ingot of steel into his lava, feeling intently for its song and getting to work shaping it. He’d gone through the process enough times that his sphere-making attempts had started to speed up. Much of that progress evaporated the moment he shifted what he was doing.
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Much — but not all. Even though the shape he was making was different, the actual method remained much the same. Song permeated through the steel and his body alike. A trancelike state rolled over Arwin like the lapping waves of the sea as he worked, pouring magic and intent into the ball of lava.
And then it was done. Arwin’s mind pulled itself back to normal and he lifted the results of his work from within the lava. It had six smooth sides and corners sharp enough to pierce through skin if he wasn’t careful.
“This,” Wallace said, plucking the metal from Arwin’s hands and examining it under a critical eye before looking back to him, “is a cube. Not a perfect one, but about as close as I reckon you’re going to be getting tonight.”
“Does that mean I’m ready for the next step?” Arwin pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, brushing off his sore backside before stretching his arms one by one. He’d been sitting still for far too long.
Wallace nudged some of the malformed steel balls into a river of lava with his foot. They sizzled as they hit the top of the river. The two of them watched the metal slowly sink beneath the molten rock.
“I suppose you are,” Wallace said. “Faster than I expected. You’ve outperformed my expectations.”
“Thank—”
“I didn’t think you’d be capable of doing much more than a blind and deaf goblin, but it seems you have proven me wrong,” Wallace finished. Arwin repressed a snort. He wasn’t even slightly bothered by the dwarf’s words.
He’d already long since figured out that Wallace was the type of person who couldn’t give a proper compliment if his life depended on it. No matter how impressed Wallace actually was with anything Arwin did, there was no world in which he’d actually fully admit to it.
“I’ve always made it a life motto to try and be better than a goblin, so I’m pleased to hear I’ve accomplished my dreams.”
“I didn’t say you were better than a goblin. Just a blind and deaf one,” Wallace countered. His mouth was mostly covered by his beard, but Arwin could have sworn that it curled up in a grin for a brief instant before going flat once more.
“So, what’s next?” Arwin asked, scratching the side of his neck. “I’ve already established the harmony between myself and the metal’s song, so does that mean I can actually start practicing forging something?”
The other smith inclined his head. “Yes. You now know how to properly prepare metal to forge. Everything has a different song, but the fundamental method for the first step is identical.”
“How many steps are there, just out of curiosity? I’m really hoping you aren’t about to tell me there are forty more of these things just to make a single item.”
Wallace smirked. “That depends on you.”
Arwin’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “On me? I was under the impression you were teaching me how to do dwarven smithing. I thought the whole point was you had a bunch of fancy steps.”
“I am teaching you dwarven smithing. There are two parts to it,” Wallace replied. He nodded to the ball of lava in Arwin’s hands. “That’s the first. Every single dwarven smith does that. There’s no way around it if you want to properly prepare the metal. But the second — that part isn’t so easy.”
“Is this the part where I wait patiently for you to tell me, or am I meant to ask a bunch of really hurried questions and not give you a chance to answer any of them?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you. No two dwarven smiths are exactly the same because we’ve all got our own method of finishing up a project. There isn’t shit I can teach you for the last half. You’ve got to figure it out yourself.”
“You can’t — seriously? Why is it that I feel like I got scammed?”
Wallace let out a bark of laughter. “Then you learned an important lesson. Don’t shit yourself too quickly now. I’m not done with you. I can’t teach you anything else, but I can still lend a little more help.”
The dwarf reached into his pocket and pulled out a small blue ingot. Mithril. The skin on the back of Arwin’s neck prickled in unease.
“Hold on. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. Isn’t it a bit early to risk wasting a material as important as Mithril?”
And I can’t help but notice that Lillia isn’t back yet.
“No,” Wallace replied, all the amusement gone from his tone. “This is the perfect time to use it. The first project you forge as a real dwarven smith, untrained and half-blind or not, will be one that shows your character better than any other. I think I’ve gotten your measure by now, lad. Enough to know you aren’t a bad sort.”
“Was that a compliment?”
“Shut up,” Wallace said, not so much as missing a beat. “I don’t take back my word easily, but I’m giving you two options. I can open a portal back to your smithy right now. Send you back with what you’ve got and pretend we never met.”
Arwin studied the dwarf quietly for several seconds. Neither of them budged an inch.
“And the other option?” Arwin asked, even though they both already knew what it was.
“I give you this Mithril and you forge an item with it. Your very temporary apprenticeship to me ends and I determine if you’re worthy of carrying the title of a dwarven smith or if you need to be purged. There’s no going back from either option.”
“It’s not really much of a choice, is it?” Arwin snorted and held his hand out. “Give me the Mithril. I didn’t waste all this time just to give up at the last minute.”
A real smile creased Wallace’s face. He reached out and took Arwin’s hand, pressing the Mithril into his palm. “Let’s see what you can do then, boy.”
Challenge: [The Dwarven Smith] has been initiated.
[The Dwarven Smith] – Wallace has offered you the same contract that every dwarven smith is given. Forge an item that is worthy of representing your mind, body, and soul.
Milestone 1: Forge an item using Mithril.
Reward 1: Become a Dwarven Smith and upgrade [Molten Novice].