'This boy, he is strange.' A burly man sat on a chair that made him look like a giant, and it was hard to believe he had not yet broken it. He stroked his slightly hairy chin pensively, his eyes softly closed. Dwelling in his mind, he did not respond to anything the boy in front of him did.
'His presence, his demeanor, even his actions are very unusual for a small, naïve boy that likely has amnesia of some sort.' His thoughts drifted more toward concern, but the suspicion never quite disappeared. 'He is either incredibly lucky or gifted, being able to pick out what should be the best weapon in my entire stock, the only one that I won't sell or give up faster than I would my soul.' His mind wandered toward rambling, the ghost of a smile dancing on his chapped lips before he shook his head, furrowing his brow as he pulled himself back.
'No, no, I can't think about that, especially when there's another option: he's hiding something. His features remind me of someone I know well, to a fearful degree. This would explain him understanding the quality of that steel, and it would explain a lot about his demeanor. He's not absent-minded, rowdy, and fickle like the other boys, and if he was, he is too good at hiding it to be any of those things.' His expression stern, he opened his eyes slowly, only to find a boy with gray hair looking at him with an expression of both confusion and concern. It took all of his willpower to avoid breaking out into laughter. This resulted in something of a twisted half-open smile with one half-closed eye, and seeing the response to this from the boy caused his resistance to fall apart with a snort.
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After half an hour of uncomfortable, awkward, silent poking at a dish of a scant pile of coarsely mashed potatoes and slightly overcooked meat, the man spoke.
"I am going to sleep. There's an extra room, you should head to bed as well." He suggested to the boy as he stood up to retire.
"Should I at least know the name of the man whose home I'm staying in?" Angra shot a sidelong comment in a tone that seemed almost snarky, but not quite.
Immediately, the flustered man stammered as he responded. "W-well I've been waiting for you to ask! I'm known around here as Vestinarius, but you can call me Vestinarius." He gave his most charming smile (which wasn't quite that charming), and returned the question. "How about you, might I have the label of your personage?"
"Mh. Angra." This was the terse response he got as Angra walked off, shutting the light wooden door behind him as he went into the wing of the smithy.
Vestinarius only sighed as he turned to take the other door and retired to his room.
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Despite his heavy sleep and 110-decibel snoring, though, Vestinarius found himself awoken by the unmistakable sound of metal beating against metal. Sneaking down to the door, he easily opened the heavy iron door by just a crack, enough to watch Angra as he worked.
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The metal he was drawing out was old rusty scrap, stuff that was totally unusable without prior treatment. 'What are you doing, using that?' He almost shouted angrily, but stopped himself, curiosity outweighing criticism. Anyone who could find quality in metal at a glance had to understand that a sword can only be as good as what's used to make it.
Angra's expression was stern to the point of being grim, but his eyes held a spark of confidence trapped in an eternal dance with the reflection of the bright orange flames of the forge he heated the metal with.
Removing the corroded scraps of metal he had placed in the forge, he poured a small vial of water below the metal before beating the hammer into it. He repeated this process, ending up with a pile of flattened pieces of metal with far less visible rust.
'I'm surprised it actually worked. It was just a theory, but it does turn out that applying both steam and the hammer impacts causes a great improvement in the quality of the metal.' The normally aloof Angra was excited to try out techniques he had accumulated but been too nervous to try with actual half-decent metal.
Using this technique and combining the small pieces of flat metal he was left with, Angra beat a drawn-out length of iron from the scraps, the metal now unrecognizable from its previous state. He sighed, turning away and wiping the pitch-black soot and grime from his face that still shone with sweat. 'And now, the absolute worst part of making a sword: waiting.'
Luckily, this forge was equipped with a useful furnace. Less luckily, he had absolutely no idea how in hell he could use it. Ambiguously lucky it was that an old man was hiding behind the door.
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Around the same time, miles above, Asha's window was wide open. She had forgotten to close it as she shivered, holding her blanket tightly to her body. The freezing water that soaked her body was indistinguishable from the tears that fell down her face as she gripped the forbidden weapon in her hands by its ice-cold crystalline grip. 'He really isn't coming back…' She thought to herself, her shoulders shaking for a thousand different reasons. As the reality of the loss of her only friend set in, her grip on the sword became ever tighter, as if she feared its very existence would shatter, disintegrate into sand, and fall away in the whims of a midnight wind, forever to be forgotten, lost in the vast ocean of time. It was in this position that she drifted into sleep, the cold no match for her exhaustion as her eyes fell shut.
Her grip on the weapon never loosened.
Author’s Note:
This chapter is both shorter than usual and late. Sorry about that, but life is being mean to me >.<
I’ll try and make next week’s chapters better, but for now, I’m still busy as all hell and trying to find time to write. On top of that, it took absolutely forever to map what I want Mr. Oldman (Vestinarius)'s personality to be.
Sorry, and thank you for reading!