Chapter 79: Chapter 68 – Forging a Weapon with Heart and Soul

"Wat's dat I hear? Ye wanna buy me work wit' gold an' silver!? Begone with ye and yer silly money! Don't bother me 'nless ye got a challenge worth me time, ye git!" - Faust Anderlecht, famed dwarven blacksmith from Ur-Teros, circa 12 VA.

Palace of Bones, Tohrmutgent, Lichdom of Ptolodecca, seventh day of the fourth week of the sixth month, year 64 VA.

 

That summer day, grandpa Aarin had summoned Aideen over, saying that his blacksmith friend had arrived and was ready to work on her weapon. She naturally came by, with her old weapon and a sample of the Gè in hand to give the blacksmith as examples.

 

He brought her down to a lower level of the cathedral, where they passed by catacombs made of bones, what looked like the dungeons, and other nondescript rooms she could not name. Their destination was a large forging area which would have had enough room to house a good fifty blacksmiths working in tandem, but instead there was only one blacksmith waiting there.

 

The waiting blacksmith was an old dwarf - Aideen still had a hard time telling dwarven gender before they speak, and even then it was difficult - with a wild, bushy beard that covered the frontside of his entire torso, in contrast to his shiny bald head. All his remaining hair had turned grey with age, yet his brown eyes still held an energetic spark in them. He was broad and muscular to the extreme, beyond most dwarves Aideen had seen in her life so far. Broader than he was tall, even.

 

"Faust, my old friend! How has life been treating you?" The Bone Lord said cheerfully to the old dwarf, to which he received a grunt in reply.

 

"Same ol'. Jus' last year sum' nincompoop of a noble brat thought gold would've made me work for him. Can ye imajin' da gall he got!?" Replied the old dwarf with a deep, booming masculine voice. "Me be here not cos' ye'd owe me a favor or sum' such crap, but cos' ye said ye'd have a nice challenge fer me. So spill it."

 

"Sure. Aideen, child, would you show Faust there your weapons and tell him what you have in mind?" Replied the Bone Lord with a grin.

 

Aideen did as she was bidden, and showed the weapons to the old dwarven blacksmith, who clicked his tongue when he inspected the place where the chain was once broken and replaced. He also eyed the sample Gè head she brought with curiosity, and nodded along as Aideen explained to him what she had in mind.

 

"Me thought ye said dis'd be a challenge, old bones?" Faust queried to the Bone Lord with a raised eyebrow. "Jus' sumtin' with' dat kinda gimmick be pretty easy."

 

"That's because I want you to make it with this," replied the Bone Lord as he extracted three rather large ingots of metals from his storage and tossed it towards the dwarf. The ingots landed on the anvil with a heavy thump, and oddly didn't bounce in the least. Aideen saw that they were all of a shiny jet-black metal, roughly the amount needed to make the sort of weapon she asked for.

 

"Och ye daft rich bony bugger!" Cursed the dwarf as his eyes widened at the sight of the ingots. "Dis much pure Adamant fer one weapon!?"

 

"Challenging enough for you, yes?" Replied the Bone Lord with a smirk and a teasing voice.

 

"Me gonna be needing a cadre of fire mages to work this, ye know dat?" The dwarf asked again, to which the Bone Lord just clapped his hands twice, and shortly after two cadres of mages walked into the smithy in an orderly manner, as they gave bows of respect to the Bone Lord, Aideen, and the blacksmith.

 

"Two cadres, all of them fire mages, they can rotate in shifts so you always have enough going," said the Bone Lord. "Anything else you'd need?"

 

Faust shook his head, and set the mages to work at once. A whole cadre of twenty five mages had to concentrate their magic together before they could get one of the metal ingots to glow red hot, at which point Faust began his work, not with hammer and anvil, but with magic as well.

 

Aideen watched fascinated as the red-hot metal slowly morphed and took shape under the metal mage's ministrations, and noticed that the first thing he made were the blades for her weapon, though they were in separate pieces, with some holes on their tang.

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What followed was a series of small gears and finicky looking pieces being carefully crafted out of the still-glowing metal, all of them looking small and fragile to the touch, yet also somehow giving an imposing feeling. Aideen was not aware of it at the time but as Faust worked the metal bits he also simultaneously inscribed enchantment runes, tiny microscopic ones, into each and every component piece.

 

It took hours before the smith was done with the small components, and he wiped the sweat off his brows, then bid the mages rest for the time being while he had a quick meal and drink. Not fifteen minutes later he was back at work, this time with the second cadre of mages.

 

He took the half that was left of the first ingot and had it heated again, along with a second ingot. This second ingot he then divided into two parts, a large part that was roughly three fourths of its mass, and the rest in a smaller chunk. He affixed one of the smaller parts to the remaining half of the first ingot, and spent a good half hour ensuring that it combined properly, before he shifted the glowing hot metal mass first into a sphere, then into a smooth cylinder roughly seven tenths of a meter long.

 

One end of the cylinder was split into two parts that were opened wide, and in there, he affixed many of the small pieces he crafted earlier, as well as the blades he crafted, before he had the other half fall back on top of the components and sealed the slight gap with some cleverly affixed thin plates he crafted beforehand.

 

The process was repeated in an identical way with the remaining components and the three-fourths of the second ingot from earlier, and Aideen watched as he once again assembled the many small pieces to create some sort of contraption within what she recognized as staves much like what she asked for.

 

Meanwhile, the third ingot was used to form the middle piece - this one done without any contraption within it - with what appeared to be half a chain link on either end of the stave. Three more chain links were shaped on each end from the remaining metal, with the last of them linked to a similar half-link at the end of the other two staves.

 

Faust then dunked the whole weapon into a long tray filled with oil, which was set aflame as the still-hot metal entered the oils, and waited until the flames had died down before he fished the weapon out. He then tinkered with it for a moment, with his hands this time instead of with magic, before he proffered the weapon, now in the form of a long staff over two meters long, made entirely out of the shiny jet black metal, to her.

 

Aideen accepted the offered weapon with both hands, and was instantly glad she did so. While the staff looked to be of roughly the same size as her previous one, it was over twice as hefty, and she almost let it drop in her surprise. It would take some time for her to get used to the added weight, but she did not mind it.

 

"Da' connecshun' 'tween da' staves be done da' same way as yer old one, so jus' twist it like ye 'sually do," said the old dwarf in his thick accent. Aideen looked closely at where the staves were joined, and yet she could hardly see even the slightest gap, so closely fitted it was.

 

Even so, she shifted her hands to hold it at the usual positions, and twisted, and the staves smoothly detached into the familiar three-sectioned form she had trained with. She also tried to twist them back on, and found it to work just as smoothly, yet the joint was near impossible to separate unless she twisted it while holding that exact space she was used to.

 

"Be needin' pressure from yer hand at da' rite place, else it won't split," said the old dwarven smith with an amused smile when she turned and gave him a questioning look. "Try twist it da' other way 'round 'alfway up da' end poles.

 

Aideen did so, and to her surprise, when she did as bidden, the mechanism inside the weapon was triggered, and both the spearhead and the dagger-axe blade emerged from within the staff and affixed themselves firmly into position. When she twisted the same spot in the other direction, they went back inside, with not a seam visible where they had been.

 

"No need ta be worryin' 'bout it breakin'," said the old dwarf as if he read her mind. "Sumtin' dat' can break adamant wit' endurance enchants on it, ain't invented yet!"

 

"He said it, child. Dwarves prize adamant greatly because it's nigh indestructible, and only workable with magic," said the Bone Lord from beside her. "You can go play with your new toy first, let us old chaps catch up here~"

 

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