Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 229-230 (Patreon)

Arwin sat beside the anvil, studying the rivers of lava as they rolled by in the floor around him. After Wallace’s proclamation, the dwarf had just gone off to the corner of his workshop and started fiddling with a piece of metal. It didn’t seem that he planned to give Arwin any more help until he got stuck.

That was fine with him. Wallace had basically said exactly what he needed to do. Arwin needed to find a way to fill lava with his intent and make it an extension of himself, and he was pretty sure that wasn’t something that would only come through practice.

A bead of sweat rolled down the back of his neck and he wiped his brow. The heat in the forge was oppressive, and it only grew worse with every passing minute. It was almost impossible to completely focus himself on his task when it felt like all the water in his body was doing its best to escape him. Even though the lava had cooled from running through the passageways, it was still hot enough to singe the hair on his arms.

Arwin formed a gauntlet of [Soul Flame] around a hand and dipped it into one of the rivers of lava, scooping a palm-sized puddle of it free. The thick molten rock was like taffy in his hand as he squeezed it.

What kind of intent am I supposed to be infusing this with? It’s not like I’m trying to make something in particular. I’m just trying to connect with the stone… but it isn’t magical, so Stonesinger won’t let me cheat and just speak right to it with a vision.

He sent his thoughts forward, probing the hot stone to see if there was any sort of feeling or thought he could get from the stone. There was a flicker of something within it — the faintest acknowledgement that there was indeed something, but he got no real response. His brow furrowed and he focused harder. Arwin pressed his mind into the stone, opening it to try and pick up on anything that it may have been willing to share.

A dancing sea of light flashed through Arwin’s head. Flashes of thought and desire flitted about, vanishing before they could properly form. It was an avalanche of different materials, all mashed and melted together into a conglomerate.

Arwin stiffened and jerked his head back, nearly spilling the lava in the process. There were too many voices. Too many desires. The lava wasn’t a single material that he could reach out to. It was like someone had mashed a thousand different souls together and destroyed them all in the process.

I don’t think I can speak directly to this. There’s no way I can handle all these voices at once. I’m not so sure the lava actually has something it desires to be… and even if it did, it’s not like I’m actually making the lava itself into anything. I’m just using it as a tool.

He let the puddle slide off his palm and back into the molten river. The [Soul Flame] covering it flickered out and he leaned back against the anvil, resting his chin in his palm while he dug through his mind in search of a solution.

It’s too early to ask Wallace. I’ve barely even done anything yet, and I don’t want to just have the solution handed to me. Maybe that’s childish, but the Mesh already did that when I was learning the first time. I want to figure something out myself now.

The dwarf had said that he needed to make himself one with the lava. He had to find a way to do that, and it didn’t seem like the current approach was the one. There had to be a different way he could do it.

A minute trickled by. At some point, Lillia stepped away from the wall she’d been leaning against and made her way over to the anvil behind him. She brushed it off before sitting down on top of it. Lillia squeezed her legs between Arwin’s back and the metal so he was leaning against them. She set her hands on his shoulders and gave them a small squeeze.

“You look constipated,” Lillia informed him.

Arwin’s thoughts broke and he let out a snort of laughter, craning his neck back to look up at her. “I was trying to think.”

“It didn’t look like it was working very well.”

“It was not,” Arwin admitted with a sigh. He let his head lay back against her knees and let out huff. “I can’t speak with the lava in the same way that I can with metal. It’s rather frustrating.”

“I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to help there. I don’t speak to my food while I cook it. That’s honestly probably for the best. It would be unsettling at best if I did,” Lillia said with a smirk. “I’m just here for moral support.”

Arwin’s nose scrunched and he grimaced. “Yeah. That would be creepy — and moral support is appreciated.”

“Keep at it, then,” Lillia said with an encouraging nod, giving him a small nudge in the back of his head. “Don’t mind me. And try to move a bit faster, would you? I’m cooking alive over here.”

“It’s probably cooler by the wall, you know.”

“The whole damn workshop is painfully hot,” Lillia grumbled. “And if I’m going to cook, I’d rather be here than there.”

Arwin gave her a small smile, then straightened his head again to look back down at the thin river of lava flowing before him. He summoned [Soul Flame] to his hand once again and scooped another puddle free, studying it intently.

Magical energy gathered in his palms as Arwin sent it out, trying to infuse the lava. The power tingled against his fingertips and slipped past it, failing to accomplish anything. He didn’t have a specific intent, so there was nothing to infuse.

Maybe this is because I don’t understand lava enough. Perhaps I have to get more familiar with it before I can try to control it. It’s not like [Molten Novice] is a skill I can choose to activate. It’s passive.

His lips pursed and he summoned a [Soul Flame] gauntlet on his other hand so he could pass the lava between them. It was surprisingly fun to play with. Kind of like a stress ball with enough heat trapped within it to burn through unprotected flesh in instants. It was even fun to look at.

Bubbles of warm orange glowed around dark ridges like molten caramel. Arwin squinted at the lava cupped in his palms.

It almost looks tasty.

Arwin bit back a dark laugh at that thought. Eating lava. There probably weren’t many intelligent people who’d ever had that particular thought. It didn’t seem like Jessen had enjoyed the taste too much, but perhaps he’d just been slightly preoccupied at the time.

He shook his head to keep his thoughts from drifting too far. It had been almost an hour since he’d sat down by the anvil and started fiddling with the lava, and he’d still made no progress in the first step of many.

There was no chance of getting back before dinner if he didn’t speed things up. Arwin pursed his lips and squinted at the glowing mass. He had to find a way to connect with the lava. To make it one with him.

Another droplet of sweat joined the rivulets rolling down his neck. His mouth was parched and his throat dry. The workshop was ridiculously uncomfortable. He had absolutely no idea how Wallace could concentrate for any amount of time in this environment.

And then there were Lillia’s legs pressed against his back and her hands on his shoulders. Her presence was comforting — and it also reminded him of her food. Arwin’s stomach rumbled.

I don’t know why, but I’m starving.

He looked down at the lava. His eyes narrowed as a thought tickled the back of his mind. Then his head tilted to the side.

Huh. I need to become one with the lava. I was approaching it in a really philosophical or magical way… but what if Wallace was being way more literal? [Soul Flame] can cover any part of my body. Not just my hands. If I was to — no. That couldn’t be right… could it?

Arwin glanced to the dwarf. He was still in the corner of the smithy and had taken to fiddling with one of his tools. It didn’t look like Wallace was paying him and Lillia even the slightest amount of attention.

There was no way the dwarf went around eating lava. The only reason Arwin could eat magic at all was because of his class, and he was pretty sure that [The Hungering Maw] wasn’t something that every single dwarf had access to.

That said, he couldn’t think of a single other way to go about this. His magic couldn’t penetrate the lava and he couldn’t speak with it. There was no way to start a vision with a non-magical material, and he couldn’t start crafting until he could connect to the lava.

Fuck it. It did look tasty.

Arwin lifted the lava. His mouth erupted in a warm, tingling sensation as he covered its entirety with [Soul Flame]. His lips pulled apart and tongues of flame lapped out, escaping into the outside air.

For an instant longer, he hesitated. Then his jaw set. Lillia couldn’t quite see what he was doing because of her position behind him. That was probably for the best. He lifted the lava to his lips and poured it in.

Arwin bit down on molten lava, and to absolutely nobody’s surprise, it tasted like stone. There was no other way to describe it. He was chewing a stew of hot, gritty rocks. What did surprise him was that he didn’t actually hate the texture.

It was thick and dense, with just enough crunch to give his teeth something to do. Even though the lava didn’t taste all that great, it was kind of entertaining to chew on. Toddlers would have loved it.

Well, provided they kept their faces from getting melted off.

Arwin continued to chew, mostly because he had absolutely no idea what else to do. There was no way he could actually swallow the lava. It wasn’t magical. His body couldn’t digest it, and even if he could keep it from burning him with [Soul Flame], he did not want to get stuck with a giant chunk of stone in his stomach.

What the hell do I do with the lava now? Why did I do this?

Arwin continued to chew, mostly because he had nothing else he could do. Seconds ticked by. Sweat rolled down his back and soaked his shirt — and then his head tilted to the side. His mouth was tingling.

It wasn’t the [Soul Flame]. Not exclusively. He could still feel the magical fire lapping against his cheeks, but there was something more. The flavor of the lava had changed. Not just that. The tingling was a sensation he’d felt before. It was the feeling of the Mesh filling an item with magic.

 Arwin cast his attention inward toward the lava and bracing himself for a myriad of voices to slam into his mind once more. His eyes widened and his breath caught in his chest in surprise.

A delighted grin pulled across his lips. He’d done it. The cacophony was gone. All the voices had vanished. It was as if the lava had been purified, all the different desires stored within it mashed into a single, cohesive extension of Arwin’s own will.

He was so caught up with his success that he didn’t even realize that Wallace had walked over to check on how he was doing.

“So, have you figured out that you need to knead the lava until…” Wallace started as Arwin’s lips parted to reveal a ball of bright pure-yellow lava he was chewing on. The dwarf stared at him, aghast, and his mouth dropped open in disbelief. “By the Earth Father’s bedridden mother-in-law, are you eating lava?”

Chapter 230

Arwin carefully reached into his mouth and pulled the still-hot lava from it with a [Soul Flame] encased hand. He looked down at it, then back up to Wallace before clearing his throat, sending a small tongue of flame flicking out in the process. “Eating would imply that I was swallowing. I didn’t swallow any. I was chewing lava.”

“I am not about to argue semantics with a man that sticks lava into his mouth. Were you pelted against a wall as a child? Or perhaps yesterday? What could have possibly possessed you to — wait.” Wallace stared down lava. His eye twitched. “You connected with it?”

“It did seem like a fairly logical next step,” Arwin said sheepishly. “I couldn’t put my intent into it like a normal piece of metal, so I went to drastic measures.”

“Your idea of drastic measures is sticking things into your mouth? What are you, a toddler? At least you didn’t shove it up your arse,” Wallace grumbled. [Soul Flame] gauntlets erupted over his hands and he plucked the lava from Arwin, examining it closely for around a minute. A disbelieving huff slipped from the dwarf’s eyes and he handed it back to him.  

“It worked, then?” Arwin asked.

“Somehow. I’m not even sure what to tell you. I’ve taught a few dwarven smiths in my time. Enough to say that never once have I had a dwarf stupid enough to try to eat lava. A few gave munching rocks a shot, but they wised up after they cracked a few teeth. Well, most of them.” Wallace hesitated for a moment, then shook his head. “We don’t talk about Rockchomper.”

“Hold on. Now you have to,” Lillia said, leaning forward slightly as a small grin pulled at her lips. “Was his name Rockchomper before he started eating rocks? Or did he earn it?”

“The former. It was an unfortunate coincidence,” Wallace said. He thrust a finger in Arwin’s direction. “Though I’m thinking this one may be deserving of a unique name of his own. If I catch him trying to eat my Mithril, I’m ending him then and there. I won’t need to see the results to know he’s a madman.”

“Noted,” Arwin said. “Just out of curiosity, what was the proper method? You mentioned kneading?”

“Like bread?” Lillia added in.

“Like bread,” Wallace confirmed with a weary sigh. “You were meant to realize that the lava is a multitude of desires and goals that could never all be satisfied. They’re memories of the materials that once were. By kneading it, you can slowly inject your magical energy and push out the excess thought until only you remain. That also infuses the lava with [Soul Flame], allowing you to raise its core temperature enough to melt almost anything. And, evidently, you can accomplish the same by chewing it as well.”

“I believe you’re informing me that I’ve just discovered a new technique,” Arwin said. “That has to count for something.”

“Don’t push your luck,” Wallace said dryly. He nodded to the lava in Arwin’s hands and set the ingot of steel he’d procured a short while ago on the anvil beside Lillia. “Move to the next step. Gather more lava. Prepare your forge and then melt this down. Find its song. And for the love of the Earth Father, don’t eat the damn thing.”

“No promises,” Arwin said with a wry smile. “I’m going to stick to chewing the lava if it works just as well as kneading. Leaves my hands open.”

“To do what?” Wallace asked, aghast. “Why do you need your hands free while you’re forging? The whole point is to put the damn things to work!”

“Not sure yet. I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” Arwin replied, unable to keep himself from chuckling at the indignation in the dwarf’s voice. He scooped up another handful of lava from the thin river and poured it into his mouth.

Wallace threw his hands up and stormed back over to the corner of the room, muttering to himself. He started humming to himself as he pulled a dagger from a dimensional space and started tapping it against the wall impatiently. Lillia snickered under her breath and nudged Arwin in the back with her knee.

“Antagonizing the dwarf? Really?”

“Hey, you’re laughing,” Arwin said through a mouthful of flame and lava. “And he’s a bit stuck up. The best part of anything is learning how to do it. Experimentation is how you grow. If I was still following exactly what the Mesh wanted me to do, every item I made would just do random shit. Besides, a little ribbing isn’t going to hurt anyone.”

Lillia rolled her eyes and squeezed his shoulders as she flashed him a small grin. “I got about half of that. Don’t speak with your mouth full, you oaf. Just get back to work and let me know if you need anything.”

He didn’t mind following her suggestion. It was rather difficult speaking with a mouthful of lava anyway. Spraying food when you were speaking was already gross enough — he didn’t need to start spitting literal fire on accident.

Jessen really should have warned me about this. He was the pioneer of chewing lava, after all. I suppose I should have expected that raging asshole to keep it all to himself.

Arwin finished chewing his lava a few minutes later, which was not a situation he ever really would have thought himself to voluntarily be in, then pulled everything from his mouth and gathered it in his hands.

Wallace didn’t actually knead anything when he made the lava ball. I wonder if that was to avoid giving me any hints, or if it was because he’s gotten good enough to connect to the lava without having to do extra steps.

I suppose it doesn’t matter right now. The next step is listening to the song of the materials, huh?

Arwin held the globby ball of hissing lava in one hand and grabbed the steel ingot, pushing it into the molten mass with a hiss. He listened intently, focusing his thoughts on the ingot as it entered the lava.

For a flicker of a second, he heard it. Arwin watched it move from the mine to the refinery and then from hand to hand. Images flickered through his mind with such speed that he could barely keep track of them.

He could feel its desires perfectly through the lava. The metal wanted to be a sword. It was completely and utterly fixed on it — but there was no song. At least, no song that Arwin could pick up on.

Maybe song is a fancy way for the dwarves to say they can speak to materials in the same way that my class lets me. It’s pretty easy to tell what —

Arwin’s thoughts faltered. The stream of desires from the ingot was faltering as the lava encasing it started to melt the metal. It wasn’t just taking the metal, though. The magical power Arwin had infused his lava with was eating into the desires of the ingot and taking them as well.

By the time he realized what was happening, it was already over. The stream of desire from the ingot evaporated like a droplet of water under the desert sun, and then there was nothing.

Wallace strode back across the smithy and slapped another ingot down on the anvil with a loud clang. Arwin glanced up at him. He hadn’t thought his failure had been that evident on his face.

“How’d you know?” Arwin asked.

“You didn’t listen to the damn song,” Wallace replied. “Sounded like a screeching old bat, you did. That was horrendous. Do you have any talent at all when it comes to anything other than sticking things in your mouth?”

“I was trying to listen,” Arwin said defensively. “It was speaking to me. Just… not singing.”

“Speaking? Don’t be daft,” Wallace said. “You were daydreaming. Materials do not speak. They sing. Do it again.”

Arwin picked up the new bar of metal. He studied it for a second, then pressed his lips thin in determination and pushed it into his ball of lava.

***

 Three hours. Twenty-five bars of metal. Countless new balls of chewed lava. Arwin’s jaw ached and his backside was sore. He hadn’t budged from his spot once. The only thing that had spared his back and shoulders from pain was Lillia, for which he was eternally grateful.

He was not, however, anywhere near as pleased with the damnable bars of metal that Wallace had been wordlessly handing him over the past few hours. Arwin had dealt with enormous monsters. He’d battled hordes of enemies and emerged victorious as the Hero.

Now he was losing a fight to an assortment of inanimate objects. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t hear a single note of the song that Wallace was talking about. The metals told them their desires, he melted them, and then there was nothing.

Arwin tried controlling the temperature of the lava to prevent the metal from breaking down as quickly. He tried heating it faster. He tried chewing the metal when he didn’t think Wallace was looking.

Nothing worked. The very instant he stuck the ingots into his ball of lava, they were as good as dead. Either not a single one of them knew how to sing or he was completely tone deaf. Hours of frustration made his stomach clench and teeth grind.

What the hell do I have to do? This is infuriating.

A clang split the air as Wallace slammed an ingot down on the anvil and strode back to whatever it was he was doing. Arwin grabbed the ingot and glared at it, as if hoping to cow it into submission.

Sing, you little piece of shit. Rap. Opera. I don’t care. Do something. I’m starting to wonder if Wallace is just screwing with me.

“What did the ingot do to you?” Lillia asked, resting her chin on the top of Arwin’s head. “That’s a lot of annoyance for a brick of metal.”

Arwin blew out a sigh. “Yeah. I can’t hear the stupid thing sing. It just speaks. No matter what I try, I just can’t hear it.”

“Do you think talking it out would help?”

“I think that’s what we’re doing.”

“Oh, it is. I just wanted to make sure,” Lillia said, and Arwin could hear the hint of amusement in her voice. “So, what are you doing wrong?”

“If I knew that, I’d fix it. Your food doesn’t sing to you, does it?”

“No and thank the gods for that. Food that spoke to me would be bad enough. Having it sing to me while I chopped it up would make me comically evil. It’s just food. Sorry.”

“Figured.” Arwin studied the ingot in his hand. There was no point just sticking it into the lava. He hadn’t heard so much as a peep from anything yet, and he didn’t want to just go around wasting metal. “I wonder if my class is somehow keeping me from hearing the song because I can hear metal speak.”

“Have you tried tuning it out?”

“Yeah. Didn’t work.”

Lillia let out a thoughtful hum. She leaned more of her weight onto Arwin’s back and wrapped her arms around his neck, drumming her fingers gently on his shoulders in thought. Arwin moved the ball of lava a little farther away to make sure it didn’t get too close or burn her. The heat was almost entirely gathered in its core, but he didn’t want to take any risks.

“Wallace was talking about harmonizing things,” Lillia mused. “Maybe you need to use the lava to listen? It’s a part of you or something, right?”

“That was one of my more recent attempts. It didn’t work, unfortunately. It’s an extension of me, but more like a hand than an ear,” Arwin said. Some of the frustration built up in him drained away. It was hard to remain annoyed with Lillia’s presence against him. The gentle drumbeat of her fingers against him was oddly comforting.

Arwin paused.  

“What is it?” Lillia asked, freezing. “You just stiffened.”

“Wallace never said it was a vocal song,” Arwin muttered, looking back to the ingot. Wallace’s humming in the background grew louder, joined by the rhythmic taps of his dagger against the obsidian wall. “I’m listening for the wrong song.”

“What do you mean?” Lillia asked. “I thought you said you couldn’t hear anything.”

“I can’t,” Arwin said, lifting the bar of metal and running his thumb over its surface as his eyes lit with realization. “Because it’s not a song that you sing. It’s one you feel. Thanks, Lillia. I think I know what I need to do.”