Forging Ahead

(co-written, JC and Kris)

The heart-breaking came sooner than Forge would have hoped.

She studied her design carefully, triple-checking every measurement, every detail as Grummen heaped wood into the fire in the smithy behind her priory. She usually used this place for ornaments: jewelry, religious symbols, the occasional plough or wheel repair. Now it was to create a weapon of war.

Grummen grunted with satisfaction as the fire grew hotter and eyed the assembled materials, a record of his slaughters. The half orc drained the rest of his tankard and looked over to the old elf’s shoulder at the diagrams with satisfaction. The scribbles were a mystery to him, but the carefully drawn axe they surrounded would be a thing of beauty once created. “good axe” he grunted at Forge. 

Forge smiled, turning to look at her grandson. "Of course it's a good axe," she said, clapping him on the arm. "You don't think I'd design you a mediocre axe, do you?"

She picked up the parchment and reviewed the smelting formulae; adamantine ingots, hellfire steel, a litany of material components and divine sigils to get worthy metal. Involving the pile of…trophies, had been a challenge. The axe itself was simpler than she had expected from the histories of the cults of the scarred eye, equally suited felling timber as foes. If not for the profanity of the carvings in the metal and the sickening inlay along the handle it might have been beautiful. It was a disquieting thing, something that, in her younger days, Forge might have sought to purge of the evil that plagued it. A waste of good metal, she would've said.

But Grummen didn't seem to see it that way. It was a good axe. And, Forge thought, there was something fitting about his wielding it. He'd been a disquieting figure himself when he first showed up in Quillpond, all glowers and ornate scars. The kindness he carried with him wasn't obvious, but it was as vast and deep as the sea he'd once sailed. This blade might be the same. It just needed to be tempered with a little bit of oxide, and a little bit of love.

To combine the hellfire steel with the adamantine would be no easy feat. Even with several centuries of experience behind her, it would take all Forge's skill to produce something usable - let alone something worthy of being wielded by her grandson.

She stoked the bellows, watched the fire grow to a bright gold color. "Are you ready, dear?"

Grummen grunted in the affirmative and smiled and began to pump the bellows in time with a dreadful chanting song. Forge did not understand the words, but she did not need them to recognize a war chant, or a hymn.

Forge watched him for a moment before turning to the pile of weapons in front of her. The mundane ones were easy enough; they'd come first.

She hadn't chanted any hymns for safety when he'd told her he was going to Evershoal. She hadn't murmured his name as she passed by the idols and reliefs that decorated the celestial Nexus. She hadn't whispered her hopes for him as she ran her holy symbol through her fingers. All of that was ritual. It was important to Quillpond, and so it was important to Forge, as well. But the truest form of prayer, for her, had always been the ring of the hammer. To truly pray was to bring one's vision into the world. This weapon would hold all her wishes for Grummen, all the good times they'd shared. As she worked the metal - heat, flatten, heat, fold - she thought of all the things she loved most about him. His loyalty to the people he loved. The way he'd shown off for her when he caught a fish half as tall as himself. His tone of voice when he told a joke to someone he knew would understand him.

She placed the first of the Adamantine ingots in the fire, tried not to feel nervous about it. She'd only worked with the material a few times before, but she'd done her research, and she was confident in her plan. The first in ingot would be tempered in with the material of the axe itself, giving it a hardness and a hefty far beyond what ordinary metal could achieve. The second ingot would coat the outside of the blade, protecting it from wear and giving it a wicked edge.

Still singing, Grummen placed a carcass from the pile of trophies into the flames. The head a drake, killed between the Bosco farm and the Zanata estate. It smelled a bit like the smoked meat from the festival last year, which Forge tried not to think about too hard as she added a fistful of the drakes teeth to the adamantine ingot and watched them dissolve under the heat.

 A set of scimitars from the druid-wood were next. Melted down with a set of metal boots and an Oread’s Scimitar, from their journey through the corn maze. After being infused with a splash of holy water and powder from grinding the carnelian shards, the shimmering reddish alloy was extruded into wire and left to cool. Grummen thought back to the strange journey of meeting the unicorn, and felt the place on his hand where the butterfly sigil had appeared.

Forge turned her attention to the pile of scimitars and sickles; A dull iron cut through with veins of glowing hellfire. This would require more brute force than craftsmanship to break down, so she traded places with Grummen. Each hammer strike ringing like an infernal bell against the blades; folding together into a workable slab of metal before Forge went to work with the rituals needed to break the metal from its connection to the lower planes. She would help create this profane implement, but she had her limits.

And now the hard part, alloying the adamantine with ingot. Carefully hammering the blocs out into sheets and then pounding them together, more powdered carnelian and silver between the layers. Grummen burned a set of leather caps, the smoke and stench wafting over the flattened ingots as Forge began to fold them. The sun had set and a Sonnlinor’s moon had risen, fortuitous for this kind of crafting. She continued to fold the metal, over and over by moonlight. As she sprinkled in the ground ogre bones (Grummen insisted), the metal hissed and spat, a revolting black ichor sludged out of the alloy like pus from a wound and fell acridly to the floor, still curling a sulfurous indigo smoke.       

Over the course of the process Grummen added things from the pile he had assembled. Things she had forgotten he’d gathered over the past year. A grick beak (he must have neglected to mention that story), a long coil of dead vine blight, hardtack, snakeskins,   

Grummen stopped, holding a broken and twisted plank of wood. It was old and stank of saltwater, a whisper of what must have once been red paint on the corner. 

Forge did not know how he had kept part of the shipwreck without her noticing all these years. She had thought it all burned in the pyre on the beach. 

She held her Hand out for it. It was heavy for its size, and it carried a strange aura: evil, yes, and blood; but also camaraderie, laughter, shared joy. And grief laying over it all like a blanket.

Forge set it down and retrieved her jar of moon lily dye. On the plank she wrote a deep blue inscription, an old Elvish song for a coming-of-age ceremony.

The sun to light the road ahead of you

The stars to be your guide

The ground below to make the walking fair

Your family by your side.

It wasn't a prayer so much as a promise: wherever you go, your loved ones are with you. Forge looked at the plank for a long moment, then handed it back to Grummen. She was sure he had not cried, must have been the rain, or the smoke curling into the sky as the plank burned.

They finished the head of the axe together, carving the patterns of floral finger bones into the metal. The grooves and wickedly curved edge glittering red as if with their own light against the dark adamantine alloy. For the handle, Grummen joined and laminated the staves of a cider cask together with an unearthly wood. Small grooves were cut to accept the delicate wire and a wrap of leather tanned from darkmantle and fish. The subtle pattern of inlay and wire changing along the shaft from waves, to leaves, to flowers. 

At long last, Forge stepped back from the work and wiped her brow. "Good axe," she said.

Grummen hugged her like he had not since he was a boy, and the axe aloft to roar at the sky in victory. 

He cut an impressive figure, holding the adamantine axe. "My little warrior," Forge said, reaching up to grasp his shoulders. "You'll write me, won't you? You can ask Mari for help if you don't want to write yourself, but for the love of all the gods keep in touch."

Grummen looked down at the elf and smiled. “Mari write, Grummen visit”