Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 231-232 (Patreon)

Arwin plunged an ingot of steel into the hot ball of lava once more. He sent his attention deep into the sphere of molten stone as the mental’s history echoed through it. It had goals and desires, just like every other piece of metal he’d ever worked with.

They were far too loud to just completely ignore. Listening for anything with the metal’s thoughts ringing in his ears was just impossible. It was like trying to hear the whisper of a fairy in a roaring thunderstorm.

For the last few hours, Arwin had been trying to find a way around that. He’d assumed the ingot would have both, or that he could circumvent the song entirely just by listening to its thoughts.

Now he realized that was impossible. Not because the thoughts were too loud or because his class had somehow limited him from doing what the dwarves could, but because it wasn’t his ears he was meant to be listening with.

The song of metal was not a song that was meant to be heard. It was a song that was meant to be felt. Arwin sent his intent into the magic-infused lava in his palms, not trying to decipher the metal within it or listen to anything at all. He just relaxed. He relaxed — and waited.

And, in turn, he felt a faint thump within the lava almost akin to the distant beat of a heart. Arwin instinctively gave the lava a gentle tap, sending a small amount of extra [Soul Flame] to infuse the hot rock and raise its temperature.

The metal continued to speak in the back of his mind. Arwin barely even noticed. He was completely focused on the ball of lava before him. Another distant thump came after the first, then another one after it.

Arwin felt his consciousness sinking deeper and deeper into the lava. The thumps grew louder. It was the feeling that came with the strike of a hammer against metal. The vibration of the hammer in his hand and the warp of metal as it was forged.

Every beat of the song was the movement of metal lungs, breathing life into its still body.

In his previous attempts, Arwin had been so focused on making the future the metal wanted that he hadn’t actually stopped to ensure everything was ready in the present. But now, when he focused on feeling the song, his attention was entirely on the metal as it was now, not what as it could be. The magic-rich lava surrounding the metal could bring change — but it could also bring destruction.

Realization flooded into Arwin’s mind like a river and practically drew a picture in the air before him.

In many ways, dwarven smithing was like raising a plant. Every sapling sought to be a tree, and they needed water and sunlight to grow. But nothing in the universe liked waiting. It wanted to grow faster. It wanted more water. More sunlight. That was a trap. Too much water would drown a plant, and too much sun would burn it.

The metal had desires, but it didn’t know what was best for it. Thus was the purpose of a true smith. Not just to bring the desires of metal out as soon as possible, but to craft it in a way that would allow it to achieve those desires.

Magical energy poured from Arwin’s hands and into the ball of lava as he felt the impurities slowly and steadily melt away from the ingot. He kneaded the metal within the lava like a ball of dough, purging every last scrap of trash within it relentlessly.

He didn’t rush. He didn’t worry about how much magical power he was using. The beat of the song was the only thing on his mind, a symphony played for his ears alone. All the whispering voices in his mind slipped away and a smile pulled across his lips as he worked.

And then it was done. The song faded away and left Arwin in silence, aware of the smithy around him once more. His eyes had closed and his back was soaked with sweat, but somehow, it wasn’t anywhere near as uncomfortable as it had been before.

His mind and the lava in his palms were one. Arwin could feel the ingot perfectly within the orb as if his hands were wrapped directly around it. A droplet of sweat rolled down his brow and dripped into his eye.

Arwin finally let the ball of molten rock lower as he wiped his face with the back of a sleeve and raised his gaze — and he nearly jumped as he found Wallace’s face about half an inch away from his.

“Shit,” Arwin cursed, nearly dropping the ball on the spot as his heart jumped in his chest. “What are you doing, man?”

“Teaching an oaf,” Wallace replied as he straightened back up, a wry smile hidden by his bushy beard. “Did you like my example? I’m quite proud of it.”

“Example?” Arwin’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, now. You could at least say thank you,” Wallace crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I guided you through your first song. Coming to understand the song of a material is not a simple task. I gave your mind a little help to direct its focus.”

“He was whispering something about trees into your ear,” Lillia provided.

 Arwin’s eyes widened. “That was you? How? It was so vivid!”

“Dwarven smithing puts you in a state that isn’t all that dissimilar from a trance,” Wallace said with a chuckle. “All I had to do was say a few choice words and you fill the rest in on your own. I trust you were successful?”

In response, Arwin reached into the ball of magma with a [Soul Flame] encased hand. He pushed through the glowing rock until his fingers wrapped around a mass of metal and he pulled it free.

 The ingot had been turned into a rough sphere about the size of his palm. It was bumpy and uneven, but it glistened like pure silver even though Arwin knew full well that it was just steel. Wallace plucked the ball from his hand and studied it.

“Not bad at all,” Wallace said with a small nod, a smile pulling across his rugged features. “I’ve seen far worse first attempts. I can see you’re not a particularly neat person. Fix that. An organized mind makes organized weapons. None of this… mess. The sphere should be smooth and shiny, not bumpy.”

“I was a little more focused on it being pure than it looking pretty.”

“Function and form are not independent of each other.” Wallace’s words were gruff and firm, but there was a faint note of respect buried deep within them. “A dwarven smith pursues excellence, not mediocrity. The next ball you make will be a perfect sphere, not dragon dropping.”

“Noted,” Arwin said with an appreciative nod. Wallace was far from kind, but there was no doubt in his mind that the dwarf knew what he was talking about. Right now, all Arwin wanted to do was soak up as much knowledge as he could. Just because he couldn’t see the value in something yet didn’t mean it wasn’t worthwhile — he just didn’t have the experience to tell yet. “What about the purity of the metal? Is it good?”

Wallace’s expression flickered and he handed the lumpy ball of steel back to Arwin. “It is good. You may be a clumsy human, but you did acceptably in linking your song with the metal. I have not seen a smith that could feel the song of their materials this quickly in a very long time.”

A small grin formed on Arwin’s lips. “So I’m good?”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Wallace said with an irritable glare. He pulled another ingot of unpurified steel from his extradimensional space and set it down on the anvil. “I would take a dwarf that had practiced a thousand times just to become competent over an arrogant prodigy. Hearing a single song with my guidance is nothing to wet your pants over. Do it again. Then keep doing it.”

“How many times?” Arwin asked.

“Until you can make something that actually resembles a sphere. And, before you ask, ovals do not count. I want something as close to perfectly smooth and round as you can do. If you lack a reference, I suggest looking at your own brain.”

Ouch.

Arwin looked down at the lumpy ball resting in his hand, then over to the new ingot. He could have claimed that his creation was roughly spherical if he really squinted, but it did kind of look more like a hairball. He had a long way to go.

“Something tells me I might not be making it to dinner,” Arwin muttered. “Will you open a portal back for Lillia so the others don’t start worrying? You’ll have to open it again after a bit, though. She isn’t going to leave unless there’s a way back.”

“Hold on. I’m not leaving you here,” Lillia said. “It’s not going to be the end of the world if I miss one day.”

“Can they? You rely on satisfaction and people eating your cooking,” Arwin said, craning his head back to look at Lillia. “And you won’t be gone forever. If Wallace was going to try something, he’d have done it after we were alone. It’s fine. Just cook dinner and then come back.”

Lilla pressed her lips thin, then sighed. “Fine. You’re right. He can open a portal.”

“Perhaps you’d like me to serve you some tea while I’m at it?” Wallace asked, glaring at them. “Do I look like a personal maid to you?”

“Well, Lillia does have some dresses. I’m sure one of her imps can spare one.”

“At cost,” Lillia added. “I don’t have any imps as wide as you. I don’t think you’d fit.”

“I do not want one of your dresses,” Wallace snapped. He blew out a sigh and shook his head, grabbing his hammer from the wall and bringing it over to them as its head heated to a glowing molten color. “But if it gets you both to shut up, then I’ll open the portal. At least I’ll be spared of watching you flirt while in the sanctity of my workshop.”

“Flirt?” Lillia asked, affronted. “We haven’t been flirting. We’ve just been sitting here! I’ll show you flirt—”

A thrum of energy ripped from the head of the hammer and a portal split open behind Lillia, revealing the inside of the Infernal Armory. Wallace pushed her through the portal with the butt of his hammer.

“Three hours,” Wallace ground out. “Be back here. Do not be late.”

The portal snapped shut.

“Thanks,” Arwin said. “I appreciate it, Wallace.”

“I don’t want to hear it. And don’t expect me to sit around massaging your shoulders just because the lass is gone.” The dwarf let out an annoyed grunt, then thrust his finger at the unpurified ingot. “Now get back to work. I don’t want to hear another word from you until you can make something worth looking at.”

Chapter 232

For nearly two more hours, Arwin made metal balls. Over and over, he worked to improve his control. For nearly two hours, he failed.

A pile of metal steadily built on the ground beside him as he tried again and again without pause. At first, his attempts seemed like they were all turning out the same. Dozens of lumpy pieces of metal that barely even resembled spheres made up the majority of his early attempts.

But failure didn’t come without progress. With every attempt he made, Arwin got a little better. The spheres grew a little more spherical. That was great in terms of seeing improvement, but it was less than ideal when the metal balls got round enough that they started to roll away the moment he set them down.

Arwin barely even noticed. He just kept making balls. Even though he was getting better, they still weren’t nearly as round as Wallace’s had been. There were still imperfections and slight malformations.

He was so focused on his work that he completely forgot where he was. All that remained in his eyes was the glowing lava and the metal going in and out of it. Even the metal itself was forgotten the moment after he checked it to determine where he could improve, abandoned in preparation for the next attempt.

Arwin’s concentration was broken as a loud crash split rose into the air. His eyes snapped away from the ball of lava just in time for him to see Wallace’s metal boots go flying off his feet as he fell on his back, having slipped on one of the balls that had rolled away.

The dwarf let out a slew of curses in several different languages as he scrambled upright, kicking one of Arwin’s carefully crafted spheres into the pool of lava in the process.

“By the Earth Father’s many tits, what is wrong with you?” Wallace demanded as he made his way across the smithy to grab his boots, taking care to avoid the other balls that had distributed themselves across the floor.

“Whoops,” Arwin said sheepishly as his cheeks flushed red with embarassment. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I’d already made that many. I thought they were just stacked up next to me.”

“Balls? You thought balls would stack?”

“They were stacking before.”

“That’s because they weren’t damn balls, now were they? Those were lumps,” Wallace snapped. He retrieved his boots and jammed his feet back into them before storming over to Arwin and snagging his latest attempt to inspect it. The dwarf blinked.

“What?” Arwin asked. “I’m not done yet.”

“This is a ball,” Wallace said, holding it out to Arwin. He looked around the room and shook his head. “All of these are balls! You haven’t made a lump in an hour!”

“Sure, but it’s not as smooth as yours was either,” Arwin said. He took the ball from Wallace and ran his thumb along the surface. “There are small mistakes in it. Not as bad as they were before, but my attempts are nowhere near as smooth as yours was.”

“That would be because I have been doing this for longer than you’ve been drawing breath. If you could catch up to me in a day, I’d drive my own hammer through my skull,” the dwarf said with a disbelieving shake of his head. “This is more than round enough. You aren’t going to perfectly master the skill in a single day.”

“You said not to talk to you again until I could make perfectly round balls,” Arwin pointed out.

“I was exaggerating. You weren’t actually supposed to take me that literally. Have you never met a dwarf in your life before? We like stretching things. Makes up for all the stretch our bodies can’t do.” Wallace pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sigh. “I can’t even blame you for this. Very well. Let’s see if you learned anything other than how to repeat motions. Make a perfect cube instead of a sphere.”

Arwin shrugged and went to stick one of the pieces of steel that Wallace had left by his anvil into his ball of magma. The dwarf’s hand fell on his shoulder, giving him pause.

“When I say perfect, I mean relatively perfect,” Wallace said. “Do not build a pyramid in my smithy while I’m not watching.”

“Noted,” Arwin said. A corner of his lips pulled up in a small grin. “I’ll see what I can do.”

The dwarf just sighed and shook his head. “I suppose I can’t expect much better than that. Get on with it.”

Arwin obliged. He gathered his focus and pressed the new ingot of steel into his lava, feeling intently for its song and getting to work shaping it. He’d gone through the process enough times that his sphere-making attempts had started to speed up. Much of that progress evaporated the moment he shifted what he was doing.

Much — but not all. Even though the shape he was making was different, the actual method remained much the same. Song permeated through the steel and his body alike. A trancelike state rolled over Arwin like the lapping waves of the sea as he worked, pouring magic and intent into the ball of lava.

And then it was done. Arwin’s mind pulled itself back to normal and he lifted the results of his work from within the lava. It had six smooth sides and corners sharp enough to pierce through skin if he wasn’t careful.

“This,” Wallace said, plucking the metal from Arwin’s hands and examining it under a critical eye before looking back to him, “is a cube. Not a perfect one, but about as close as I reckon you’re going to be getting tonight.”

“Does that mean I’m ready for the next step?” Arwin pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, brushing off his sore backside before stretching his arms one by one. He’d been sitting still for far too long.

Wallace nudged some of the malformed steel balls into a river of lava with his foot. They sizzled as they hit the top of the river. The two of them watched the metal slowly sink beneath the molten rock.

“I suppose you are,” Wallace said. “Faster than I expected. You’ve outperformed my expectations.”

“Thank—”

“I didn’t think you’d be capable of doing much more than a blind and deaf goblin, but it seems you have proven me wrong,” Wallace finished. Arwin repressed a snort. He wasn’t even slightly bothered by the dwarf’s words.

He’d already long since figured out that Wallace was the type of person who couldn’t give a proper compliment if his life depended on it. No matter how impressed Wallace actually was with anything Arwin did, there was no world in which he’d actually fully admit to it.  

“I’ve always made it a life motto to try and be better than a goblin, so I’m pleased to hear I’ve accomplished my dreams.”

“I didn’t say you were better than a goblin. Just a blind and deaf one,” Wallace countered. His mouth was mostly covered by his beard, but Arwin could have sworn that it curled up in a grin for a brief instant before going flat once more.

“So, what’s next?” Arwin asked, scratching the side of his neck. “I’ve already established the harmony between the myself and the metal’s song, so does that mean I can actually start practicing forging something?”

The other smith inclined his head. “Yes. You now know how to properly prepare metal to forge. Everything has a different song, but the fundamental method for the first step is identical.”

“How many steps are there, just out of curiosity? I’m really hoping you aren’t about to tell me there are forty more of these things just to make a single item.”

Wallace smirked. “That depends on you.”

Arwin’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “On me? I was under the impression you were teaching me how to do dwarven smithing. I thought the whole point was you had a bunch of fancy steps.”

“I am teaching you dwarven smithing. There are two parts to it,” Wallace replied. He nodded to the ball of lava in Arwin’s hands. “That’s the first. Every single dwarven smith does that. There’s no way around it if you want to properly prepare the metal. But the second — that part isn’t so easy.”

“Is this the part where I wait patiently for you to tell me, or am I meant to ask a bunch of really hurried questions and not give you a chance to answer any of them?”

“Oh, I’ll tell you. No two dwarven smiths are exactly the same because we’ve all got our own method of finishing up a project. There isn’t shit I can teach you for the last half. You’ve got to figure it out yourself.”

“You can’t — seriously? Why is it that I feel like I got scammed?”

Wallace let out a bark of laughter. “Then you learned an important lesson. Don’t shit yourself too quickly now. I’m not done with you. I can’t teach you anything else, but I can still lend a little more help.”

The dwarf reached into his pocket and pulled out a small blue ingot. Mithril. The skin on the back of Arwin’s neck prickled in unease.

“Hold on. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. Isn’t it a bit early to risk wasting a material as important as Mithril?”

And I can’t help but notice that Lillia isn’t back yet.

“No,” Wallace replied, all the amusement gone from his tone. “This is the perfect time to use it. The first project you forge as a real dwarven smith, untrained and half-blind or not, will be one that shows your character better than any other. I think I’ve gotten your measure by now, lad. Enough to know you aren’t a bad sort.”

“Was that a compliment?”

“Shut up,” Wallace said, not so much as missing a beat. “I don’t take back my word easily, but I’m giving you two options. I can open a portal back to your smithy right now. Send you back with what you’ve got and pretend we never met.”

Arwin studied the dwarf quietly for several seconds. Neither of them budged an inch.

“And the other option?” Arwin asked, even though they both already knew what it was.

“I give you this Mithril and you forge an item with it. Your very temporary apprenticeship to me ends and I determine if you’re worthy of carrying the title of a dwarven smith or if you need to be purged. There’s no going back from either option.”

“It’s not really much of a choice, is it?” Arwin snorted and held his hand out. “Give me the Mithril. I didn’t waste all this time just to give up at the last minute.”

A real smile creased Wallace’s face. He reached out and took Arwin’s hand, pressing the Mithril into his palm. “Let’s see what you can do then, boy.”

Challenge: [The Dwarven Smith] has been initiated.

[The Dwarven Smith] – Wallace has offered you the same contract that every dwarven smith is given. Forge an item that is worthy of representing your mind, body, and soul.

Milestone 1: Forge an item using Mithril.

Reward 1: Become a Dwarven Smith and upgrade [Molten Novice].