Whenever he was hired to braze a bowl or mend a pot the old man would become sullen. Why must I -- a man who has dedicated his life to penetrating the secrets of living metal -- the greatest of the technologies developed by the Old Men[1] -- be forced by my dire circumstances to this dull work? Finally in Eithan dumb metal worth shaping.

The old man forced into Eithan a gray slick sludge. The old man injected into Eithan the old men’s hideous ⌈nano-machines⌋, that crawled around in his blood and caused great pain. The old man lay into the hissing metal coffin Eithan, and as it spun and steamed Eithan screamed as the sludge and the machines were drawn out from his guts into macerated muscle and softened bone.

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But still Eithan came back again and again, and again, and again, and in the course of the years his skin boiled off and flaked away and what was left beneath became as like a thick ingot. And then the hydraulic press was brought out, and also the powders of silicone--.

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[1] Not the same as the old man -- a different group -- long dead -- the original users of the Legendary Iron Body Technique, the hideous ⌈cy-borgs⌋, were their lapdogs.