While focusing on keeping the steel strip at the perfect temperature, Rane continuously pounded the steel. Sweat poured from his brow, though the only heat in the room emanated from the strip of steel in front of Rane. It needed to be pressed out longer, and the tang had not even taken shape at this point. It was a long way from being a sword. Breathe in, breathe out, strike, repeat. Keep the heat of the metal consistent. That was the real key. Focus on the ambient in everything, and maintain the level of energy keeping the metal malleable. Breathe in, breath out, strike, repeat. A drop of sweat dropped from his brow, slightly cooling a small section of the strip before quickly returning to its previous dull orange color.
There was much to think about, but it could not be done here. The combination of ambient manipulation and physical labor pushes one to fatigue. Ambient does not run out, because it is everywhere, in everything, an individual simply may become too weary to deftly wield it. The cadence of the hammer strikes became irregular, and the metal began to shift between orange and yellow in places. Rane let his arms drop to his sides as the strip of steel, now vaguely sword shaped, slowly cooled. He had a long way to go. A skilled swordsmith could make one in under an hour, making the metal take any desired shape through the careful usage of ambient.
“That’s all you got?” Staal said as he opened the door to the back. “You’ll need to make improvements to your stamina and control if you wanna turn a real profit. It's been two hours and, well, you’ve got something resembling a sword, which isn’t quite the same as having a sword, no?”
“It’s better than when I started.”
“If it wasn’t better than when you started, you wouldn’t be allowed within 49 meters of the anvil. ‘Better’ ain’t the goal, son, and neither is ‘good enough’.”
Rane did not respond. There was nothing to say that was not just a poor excuse. When he was at an anvil, he could focus well enough, but getting there was the problem. There was much to do, and money that had to be made now. Staal’s smithy made enough money to support his mother and himself, but they lived in the Southeast district. A smith could only sell so many nails, axes, spades, and shears to a population that lacked the money to buy them. One could sell swords and spears to the military, but they, of course, had their own skilled smiths. His thoughts drifted to where he would get his next odd job. There were several families in the West district that would pay for short term workers.
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And so he found himself early the next morning, clearing waste and digging a new latrine in the yard of the Kenly’s. As he looked around the yard, he considered how large an area one needed to possess in order to call it a courtyard. The Kenly’s ran a successful mercantile operation, but were definitely short of the sort of wealth that would put them in the North and Central districts. He began to think about the closed sections of the North district that he had been chased away from as a child, or at least a younger child. He had faced his 14th winter a few months ago. At his current age, rather than simply being shooed away, he could possibly even be jailed for trespassing. Rane was broken from his daydream by another shrill voice, much like the ones he had heard in the North district.
“If you aren’t going to do the work, you can beat it with no coin, ditch dreg,” said Ma’am Kenly.
With his head lowered, he quickly replied, “Yes, ma’am.” He expected to be treated this way. It was not actually that the Kenly’s held much higher status than his family, despite having much more wealth, but rather that the Kenly’s just held themselves in rather high regard. They seemed to think that by ingratiating themselves with a few friends of a distant Baron, they could get peerage. In reality, their business did not have nearly the economic sway to grant such a title.
Not that this bothered Rane in the slightest. He had organized most of the local helping hands, all boys around his age into up charging for this family’s chores. They could only ever find out by speaking with their neighbors about the price of their part time custodial staff, a topic that Rane suspected that the prideful Kenly’s would be unlikely to broach. And so, he continued to work, a light smile not visible under the light scarf covering his nose from the dust and smell of waste.
The following day he would work the forge again. He struck the metal again and again, striking a cadence as if he were setting the rhythm for a traveling bard. Staal was working with him, their timing matching, but slightly offset, creating an aggressive harmony. They needed to make thousands of nails. It was monotonous, meticulous, and exhausting. Rane hadn’t made any significant progress in ambient control in months. As such, he was producing the cuts of metal for Staal to do the finer shaping on. The repetition of the process didn’t allow him to lose focus. Time was money, mistakes meant loss, so lack of efficiency meant loss of money. In Auryck, that wasn’t something one could afford. The shadow of the evening sun passed fully across Staal’s face, marking the time for the day's end.