Chapter 6: Chapter 6, in which I visit the Blacksmith

Paige and I spent an hour going over the Logbook and planning out our journey into the Desert City. We agreed that our biggest problem would be the Blood Summoner settlement that was situated on the only road leading into it from this side of the land.

“If you move through that area during the night, I could scout the night guards and even distract them if needed and you could move through entirely unnoticed,” Asrin suggested, then pointed at the map. “ Taking a detour isn’t safer. Going through the mountain trails is risky as well, especially now that the rock dragons are in their mating season. Going west isn’t possible because of the river.”

By the time our food arrived, my stomach wasn’t the only one grumbling. Each of us cleaned out our plates of vegetable stew, even Asrin. I don’t know if it was the fact I was that hungry, the different dimension I found myself in, or that the stew was genuinely that good, but this beat anything I had gotten to eat back home and I told Paige as much.

“You’re ridiculous. Hurry up and get ready, we’re going shopping again.”

***

Once we got to the merchant square, it was a lot smaller than the one in the last town. There was just a single merchant of every type. Actually, had Paige told me to look out for an armor merchant, but there was no one like that in sight.

After speaking with the lovely baker and his old lady and grabbing some fresh bread, Paige dragged us to the butcher.

“We’re going to be on the road for 3 days at least, which means we need at least 2 kilos of dried smoked meat,” she thought out loud. “Hmmm, we can get some carrots…”

“Can we get some potatoes, too?” Asrin chirped from his new favorite place to ride - on my shoulder, like a pirate’s parrot.

Paige shook her head, “No, we can’t guarantee it will be safe enough to start a fire to cook them, they’ll just slow us down if we have to carry them all the way. We can get some dried fruit and some apples as snacks, though.”

This seemed to be good enough for Asrin because he stopped arguing with Paige.

After doing the more than necessary food shopping, we headed to the town blacksmith to clean and sharpen our weapons. 

“How much money do you actually have, Paige?” I asked after once again, she paid for everything at the butcher’s. “And also how do you even summon it, do I have money?”

“I have more than enough, don’t sweat it,” she calmed me down. “And given that you haven’t completed any quests, I guess you probably have none.”

“Yeah, but what about summoning it, how do you do that?” I asked again.

She slowly drew an 8 in the air and then added two dots on top. “You think of the amount you need and when you do this,” she said and opened her palm. “It drops in your hand.”

A single gold coin dropped in her hand.

“Take it and do the same, but put the coin in your palm at the end,” she told me.

I did as instructed and the coin disappeared.

“Congratulations, you have your first coin,” she smiled as we walked into the Blacksmith’s.

We were met by a young apprentice blacksmith who told us to show our weapons for inspection. We summoned them out of our inventory and laid them out at the front table.

“That is Furi bronze,” the blacksmith noted as he examined Paige’s shield and sword. I guess they weren’t golden like I had thought previously. “I haven’t seen anything like this in years, where’d you get it?”

“It’s mine,” Paige simply stated.

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“Alright, I’ll take all of these, they’ll be done by tomorrow morning,” he assured us and we walked back to the inn, where we had another serving of that absolute banger of a stew.

***

We caught up on sleep while Asrin took it upon himself to stay up all night to monitor the street, we didn’t want to get ambushed by the Blood Summoners again.

The little dragon fell asleep in my backpack as we got ready and headed back to the blacksmith to collect our weapons.

Upon entering, there was a lot of screaming going back and forth between the two men, the younger one that we talked to yesterday was shouting at his mentor.

“How can you be so careless, they’ll have our heads for this!” he screamed as he walked to the front of the store and I saw how the color immediately drained from his face upon seeing us.

“What’s going on?” I asked taking the lead, as Paige was still very sleepy and could barely speak.

“There was an issue with the Furi Bronze-” the blacksmith started out, which had Paige wide awake in an instant. “It got stolen overnight.”

“WHAT?!” Paige immediately screamed. “What do you mean stolen?”

“Someone stole your set from the forge last night, we’ve told the mayor and the town watchmen, they are searching for it- if it’s still in town, they will find it,” the man reassured her.

“I need to leave town today! And I am not leaving without a weapon,” she hissed.

“I understand your frustration-”

“No, you don’t, You just lost my set of Furi Bronze sword and shield,” Paige cut me off. “You better have something good to replace it with.”

“Paige, it’s not like they did something wrong,” I stepped in, and put my hand on her shoulder to snap her out of it “Let’s work this out. Getting riled up won’t get us on the road any quicker. Focus on what’s important.”

I then turned to the apprentice blacksmith and told him to show us their best sword and shield sets and he disappeared behind the door he came from. I looked back at Paige to see the gears in her head turning, trying erratically to figure out a plan.

“We can’t let small stuff derail our plans,” I told her. “This won’t be the last time something goes wrong, we need to be ready for anything.”

“You’re right,” she nodded after a second.

There was a loud drop and hiss that came from the back followed by more commotion. The Blacksmith and the Apprentice started shouting at each other again.

“I’m going to see what’s going on,” Paige said and moved toward the back of the shop. I obviously followed her.

When she got a good look at the forge and the Blacksmith, Paige let out a blood-gurgling scream.

“HOW DARE YOU SMELT MY WEAPONS!”

I then realized that the pooling liquid at the heart of the forge was bronze.

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