“Fly up high, very high, and see the egg and exist as a secret that knows all the secrets, understand me? Don’t you dare understand me. Understanding me is a crime to the brain-havers of the mooncycles!” Valpatia, master of The Metal And The Ice workshop, raved.

“What have I gotten myself into?” Gi whispered to himself. “Even entering The Sparks was easier--”

The old, cable-haired, brown-skinned woman of enough height to, with the help of a small hop, touch Gi’s shoulder, slammed a hammer on his forehead. The world twisted, Gi’s stomach twisted and he stumbled. Valpatia’s skinny, but hard hand slapped. The twisting stopped right as his back hit the wall. Gi’s cheek blazed. The entire blueprint room came into focus. It was round and its walls held overloaded shelves and pipes. A black spiral went down the red floor, towards the center where the giant sketching table stood, black from soot and thousands of blueprints. Beside the table stood a human-sized magnifying glass. A circle of machinery, tied by wires to the ceiling and the floor, floated around the table and the glass like a halo.

“I may not hear the whispers of the gods, but I hear what you whisper!”

There it was again -- the mad raving. Gi could understand an ancient crafting text, but deciphering Valpatia’s words fried his brain and sent smoke fuming from his ears. Now, the master stopped and wobbled into the corridors, waving after herself. Gi collected his strength and temper and followed Valpatia.

Every crafting part imaginable laid about in the corridors of The Metal And The Ice, which overlooked the heart of Wirehaven’s Crafter’s Nook, the Centercity of henches. Gi loved a fair amount of personal chaos in his workshop, but here, there was just too much. Too many times he stubbed his foot to the cackling of Valpatia. Too many parts that were either too old, too broken, or too obscure to ever be used.

Valpatia stopped in front of a sliding door. The workshop’s entrances were all marked with murals, except for this one, which seemed to lead into oblivion. Twirling her hair around her skeletal finger, Valpatia ordered her CHEK to open it. As the strand of hair buzzed around her finger, the door opened.

A stale, cool, iron air befell the workshop. From one look inside, Gi’s jaw dropped. “Oh, machines…”

Gi’s eyes scanned weapons of unimaginable, uninspectable power with edges that defined perfection. There were Extensions that could turn a cripple into a god. Tools that built cities in instants. And on every surface, glowing wires twisted into rituals, inside of which, the outlines of faces, mirrors and flowing metal poked out.

“Uh oh. Not. Here.” Valpatia shook her head, ordering to close the door. Before it could, she gripped the metal herself and slammed it shut, her Extensions gaining a slight hue, her cable hair puffing up. “Along you move. Nothing to see here -- I saw it all for you!”

Gi moved along, but couldn’t shake the amazement and curiosity. He’d do anything for another look inside the room.

The corridors ended in the forge room, whose sliding door was marked with a maroon mural of a giant with a hammer, melting in its grip. In the forge room’s center, four cooling tanks flowed into a massive anvil. An Electro-Hammer laid on it, hooked up with wires. Off the ceiling, a maze of pipes hung, navigated by little tarants, like in Mec’s Machine Parts. A system of long-armed creatures would’ve made Gi’s crafting in The Sparks thousands of times faster.

Raising her arms, Valpatia said, “Tools! Parts!” Everything she asked for dropped into her grip and a moment later, all the tarants soared past.

“Huh. No safety clothes. No Goggles,” Gi mumbled to himself.

Valpatia dropped the parts on the forge, wired them together and turned towards the cooling system. The master hopped by every tank, with all her strength, flipping heavy switches. For a moment, the tanks quaked the ground. A blue light flowed from the cooling system to the anvil, and Valpatia raised her hands once more, an Electro-Hammer dropping into her grip. It had a wooden handle. Custom made. Dangerous. Gi took a step forward -- excitement bubbled in his blood.

The master slammed the parts atop the anvil.

The forge, Valpatia, the blink of light -- it all got further away. Gi’s feet couldn’t touch the ground. Then his back slammed into the wall and he yelped. The wall held. Upright, he laid on it for a moment then stepped forward. Another shockwave pinned him down. And another. For a minute, a cycle trapped him: shockwave, damage message, step forward, repeat.

At last, it finished -- Valpatia dropped the Electro-Hammer. It thudded and with bare hands, the master started molding the steelmeat.

Gi unstuck himself from the wall. He stretched, rubbed his muscles. His jaw dropped.

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The metal that Valpatia held glowed pink and white. Gi couldn’t believe his eyes. He focused on the metal and activated [I Feel Your Power, I Burn From Your Heat, I Freeze From Your Cold], a perk he’d picked up somewhere in the wasteland.

His white scars started blazing from the heat. He shook, grit his teeth, slammed the wall -- all to withstand the immense temperature until the perk stopped.

“How? She’s molding it like clay,” he uttered to himself. “How?!”

“Attention! Pay it when the master is working!” Valpatia snapped, flinging her arms out of the soup of metal. In a flash, one of them, still dripping with pink steel, snatched Gi’s chin. He gulped. Slowly, the hand pointed Gi’s face away from Valpatia and towards the steelmeat. Her other hand pushed his head closer until hot sweat covered his cheeks. Valpatia let go and continued. “It’s the cooling system. Crafters of the land think about their big tools, strong metals and obedient slaves! No! No, no, no... It’s the cooling that matters most! No need for those distractions when we have this. Now, look closely into my creation: you should be able to make this with your hands and your fingers, and when you do, you will have to craft something far superior. That is the quest, until the day I’m dead.”

When Valpatia finished battering the steelmeat, it took the pyramid shape of a levita engine core. Though instead of wires, the master molded energy pathways, letting the current flow freely. In case the energy backfired, the pathway shut. That seemed like a mistake: it should set the core’s temperature to the peak of an Electro-Hammer’s strike and turn the poor lunarists piloting the levita into a blood buffet. But here, Valpatia installed wires collecting all the heat and sending it back to the beginning of a pathway.

Valpatia was, without a doubt, the strangest person Gi had ever met.

When he knocked on the raggedy workshop’s doors, she’d dragged him inside in the flash of a second. No questions. No weird looks. Then she started ranting, raving, showing the place around. And crafted one of the finest steelmeats Gi had seen.

This was the perfect corner of the world he had needed all along.

“Huh, you never know how powerful you are,” he said, “until you see someone blow you away completely. Incredible.”

“Indeed, incredibilities, capabilities, look away from the sky’s egg and grab a hammer. Pyramids are where you begin!” Valpatia patted his shoulder.

In smoldering heat, arms black from fumes and metals, over hours, Gi put together hundreds of pyramid-shaped shells. All of them fell to a large pot to be molten and reused -- none were even close to Valpatia’s standards.

[Crafty Hands For A Crafty Being] leveled up twice during the day. Whilst he worked himself dead, Valpatia whizzed around, reading crafting theory from ancient books, interspersed with a bit of her personal advice. As the day gave way to night, Gi dropped his tools and looked at a perfect pyramid shell.

“Sturdy, but not too stiff and won’t fall apart from an energy pathway meltdown. Just what you wanted,” he said, only half confident in his words.

The Metal And The Ice was a new workshop. The tools he needed were in places he least expected them to be. They were far more powerful as well. All of that messed with his flow and his focus, and an itch of worry kept telling him he missed a mistake.

Valpatia grabbed the fresh steelmeat and raised it above her head. She would throw it in the pot, Gi was sure. The wires of her hair, like snakes, slithered up and grabbed the invention. They weighed it. Holograms, analyzing the steelmeat, popped into existence.

Valpatia nodded along, eyes narrowing in apparent amazement.

Then the holograms vanished and her hair dropped the steelmeat into her grip. And she tossed Gi’s masterpiece… into the pot.

He slumped as depression took hold, pestering him with doubts and curses. Valpatia snatched his belt and his tools, cleared the anvil, and began crafting something. Before the minute could pass, there was a new pyramid core atop the anvil. She pointed at it.

“It’s obvious now, like the lies of the saints -- you have no idea what you actually have to do!” Valpatia said. “You must craft it like this. Exactly like this. Practice until nightfall, when you’ll sleep with the tarants.”

Valpatia threw her work into the pot and left Gi alone with the night and the metals.

He worked until neither his body nor his mind let him. As he swayed into the corridors, Valpatia emerged from the shadows, leading him into an unmarked dark room, flooded with piles of trash, crates, and tarants.

The little, long-armed creatures communicated in odd whispers and scratches.

Gi enjoyed the company, but found not knowing their language uncomfortable. The tarants had to be discussing something. And that something had to be very intriguing. Only if Gi had [Animal Tamer], like Tenner.

Gi couldn’t fall asleep. He was as tired as a hench could be, but his thoughts kept running in circles, forbidding him from rest. He needed a distraction. Gi tried deciphering the tarants’ language. It went well. Yes, he even got a few words down. But then, he confused himself and shook his head to clear it of strange whispers and squeals.

After the sleeplessness began to drive him mad, Gi took a look at the thoughts in the back of his head.

“I miss my workshop. The grit of The Sparks. The familiar tools. The rumbling of The Wasteland Caravan,” he whispered to himself. “But that’s not it -- I love this place, too. I can feel its energy flowing in my blood.”

He paused for a while and the tarants went quiet too.

“Huh…I’m no longer a craftsman,” he realized. “I’m an apprentice in a death race to become a master. I always crafted to survive, but it’s never been this hard. From today, I have to push myself to insanity, because if I’m not a master--if I haven’t crafted the most powerful weapons in history--by the time Ames and Tenner knock on my door, we will be shattered into dust. And if I end up a master in time, we will change the world. That’s a bit of pressure. At least I get to craft every single day from now -- is there anything better in the world than that?”