by Aaron Oster
Grace’s face went pink as she realized what she’d said, but before she could say anything else, like try and back-pedal, Morgan responded.
“You have a good heart, Grace, and a kind soul. Don’t ever let anyone take that from you. And don’t you worry. If I ever feel like talking, you’ll be the first to know.”
He placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a warm smile. The flush of pleasure in her cheeks made him feel genuinely happy, and for the first time in a while, Morgan felt the sadness abate, drifting away on the wind.
“Now come on,” he said, rising to his feet. “We have a smith to meet and a mission to finish.”
“Aww,” Grace complained as he turned away. “Way to ruin the moment!”
“You did well, Morgan,” Lumia whispered as she alighted on her shoulder.
Morgan knew that to be true. His and Grace’s relationship had indeed changed. It was subtle, but to someone with his sensitivities, it was quite apparent. He wasn’t quite sure how, but he knew that this experience had drawn them closer together. Now only time would tell where it went from here.
43
“Holy shit!” Grace screamed as Morgan caught her in a flying tackle and drove her to the ground.
A massive explosion, the eighth one in the last hour, rocked the surrounding area, the force of the blast washing over Morgan’s back as thousands of tiny chips of metal pelted his body from behind.
“Are you okay?” he asked, uncurling his body to reveal the trembling Grace.
There was a line of blood across her cheek where one of the pieces of shrapnel had made it past him, but other than that, she seemed to be unharmed.
“Yeah,” she replied, getting back to her feet. “I’m just getting tired of this asshole dwarf’s traps.”
“Same here,” Morgan muttered, turning his gaze back on the distant house.
They had been stuck advancing on foot for the past hour, after an electrical current had blasted him from the air as soon as he drew within five miles of the smith’s residence. While he could withstand the current, Grace definitely could not. That was not to mention the forty-five minutes he’d had to sit while the girl fixed her hair. Apparently, being zapped by electricity tended to mess that up.
The ground had also been littered with traps. There was a plethora of bombs, pitfalls, steel teeth that tried to snag limbs, and half a dozen other devious and dangerous little presents. It was the reason why it had taken them four hours to move four miles, when it should have taken well under an hour. The closer they got to the house, the more traps there were.
Lumia remained perched on his shoulder the entire time, unable to take flight. Morgan didn’t dare use teleportation either, as he couldn’t imagine what sort of traps the dwarf might have set for that. Despite all of the annoyances, he had to admit that he was impressed with the smith’s handiwork. Never before had he seen such clever use of terrain, nor had he even imagined that any of these traps could exist.
He was already mentally noting them all down to report to Katherine. He knew she had a corps of engineers and that they were constantly trying to develop new ways to defend themselves. This knowledge could save them years of work. There was a light click from his left as Grace’s foot depressed some hidden switch in the ground.
Morgan dashed forward, getting her leg clear of the trap, well before the steel teeth could clamp around her. It managed to shut on his leg, and Morgan let out a sound of disgust as the trap ruined his left boot.
“Damn it,” he muttered, leaning down to snap the trap off.
A mild current ran through his hands as soon as he touched it, but Morgan ignored it. There was probably enough electricity in there to fry someone of Grace’s rank, but to him, it was nothing. Even if it were ten times as strong, his innate immunity to electricity would help him cope just fine.
“Is it just me, or are there more traps the closer we get?” Lumia asked as the ground beneath his feet opened suddenly, revealing a pit some twenty-feet deep. It was lined with gleaming spikes coated in a glowing green substance.
“No, it’s not just you,” Morgan replied, ignoring the current that was zapping him as he landed. “I just want to know how he managed to set up traps in the air.”
“Well, maybe you can ask the bastard when we get there,” Grace grumbled, stepping nimbly to one side and narrowly avoiding stepping on a well-disguised lump in the ground.
“You know what?” Morgan said, holding a hand out to stop Grace from walking any further. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Oh?”
“Just stay behind me and step where I do,” Morgan said, giving her a wide grin.
Then, without a single care, Morgan began recklessly jogging forward. Explosions sent dirt flying up into the air, and gouts of steam, fire, and acid sprayed as he passed. Steel teeth traps snapped at his ankles, and hidden pitfalls opened right beneath him. Morgan ignored them all, walking straight through the booby-trapped space and making more progress than he had all day.
The detonating traps were so loud that there was no way the smith wouldn’t hear them coming. But Morgan was past caring. All he wanted was to make it to the dwarf’s house and get the damn gauntlets re-forged. He peeked back over his shoulder a few times to make sure Grace was following, but other than that, he just kept walking.
A fiery conflagration engulfed him as he drew within fifty yards, and a hail of arrows rained down soon after. Gigantic bounders fell from the sky, splitting down the middle and falling to either side before they could reach him. By the time Morgan reached the smith’s front door, his clothes had pretty much been reduced to ash, but he couldn’t care less. In his opinion, the amount of time this had saved him had been worth it.
The door itself was quite low. Doorways in the North, even normal people’s, tended to be somewhere around seven feet. This one barely topped five, making Morgan’s knock a bit awkward.
“Wait, you’re seriously just knocking?” Grace asked as she approached. “After all we’ve been through, you should just kick down the bastard’s door!”
“That wouldn’t exactly be a great first impression, would it?” Morgan replied, holding his hand out for his pack.
Grace handed it over. He could tell, based on the way she was keeping her eyes fixed at a point on his shoulder, that she found his indecency to be embarrassing. Morgan couldn’t really figure out why. Sure, his clothes were burned, but it wasn’t like he was naked or anything. Pulling a cloak from his bag, he tied it around his waist, then knocked again.
“Go away!”
The voice that came through was gruff and carried with it a foreign accent that Morgan had never heard before.
“We’re not leaving,” Morgan answered calmly. “Not after how far we’ve come to get here.”
“Cry me a river, ya damn trespasser. Get off me land before I blow the lot of ye sky high!”
“I’ve already walked through about five miles of your traps,” Morgan replied. “I don’t think you have anything that can hurt me.”
The door suddenly flew open, revealing a very short and gruff bearded man dressed in a leather apron. In his arms was a strange, cylindrical device some two feet around. What caught Morgan’s attention, was the ominous glow coming from its center, growing brighter with each passing moment.
“Wanna bet?” asked the dwarf, narrowing his small black eyes. “I’ve killed bigger n’ you, boy, and don’t ye think you’re somthin’ special.”
“We didn’t come here to fight,” Morgan said, not making any threatening motions. “We came here because we need your help.”
“And why would I help a human and,” – the dwarf looked him up and down – “Whatever the hell you are?”
“Wait, how do you know I’m human?” Grace asked, peeking around Morgan’s shoulder.
“Not the point!” yelled the dwarf, leveling the device on them.
It was now glowing an almost white-hot, and Morgan could tell that whatever this weapon was, it could probably
hurt even him. He was close enough to feel the massive amount of reiki building up in there and could see the ambient energy being sucked into this thing to fuel it. Somehow, this dwarf was harnessing energy that only supermages should be able to use and had even weaponized it. Morgan knew that he had to diffuse the situation quickly before things got ugly.
Before he could say anything, a very familiar figure appeared from thin air, the ever-present cocky grin plastered across his smug face.
“Ivaldi! How have you been? It’s been ages!”
The dwarf immediately leveled the weapon on Gold and released its payload. A white-hot beam of energy flashed past Morgan, searing through the air and slamming into the grinning god. There was a loud crack and the beam cut off, leaving the dwarf, Ivaldi, clutching a mangled hunk of half-melted metal.
“I know it’s been a while, but that really hurt…my feelings,” Gold said, brushing away some imaginary speck of dust from his robes.
“I was hoping it would kill you,” Ivaldi grumbled, tossing the mess of metal out into his yard. “Well, ye may as well come in then,” he said, turning and trundling into his house.
Grace gave Morgan a confused look, but he merely shrugged. As far as he was concerned, an old acquaintance of Gold immediately trying to kill him was hardly a surprise. Hell, Morgan had tried to do the very same thing on multiple occasions.
“Not even a hello?” Gold called.
Everyone chose to ignore the annoying god. Well, everyone except Grace, who’d jumped in shock and scurried closer to Morgan. He couldn’t exactly blame her. She’d never met Gold before and having some stranger materialize from thin air, then be blasted and survive without a scratch, was probably a bit too much for anyone.
“Morgan, who is that?” she whispered, sticking close to him as he entered the odd house.
“Oh, that’s just Gold. You can ignore him,” Morgan replied, doing his best to dissuade her from asking too many questions about the man.
“That hurts, you know,” Gold replied, following them inside. “Ignoring your teacher is very rude, Morgan. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”
Morgan sighed as Grace’s eyes went as wide as saucers. He decided to get ahead of this before Gold could ruin the poor girl any more.
“Grace, this is Gold. He was my teacher, and he is a nigh immortal being who is supposed to be on another world. He’s also a pain in the ass, so don’t take anything he says seriously. Gold, I’m sure you already know who this is. Now that we’re all acquainted, let’s focus back on the task at hand, alright?”
Grace just nodded dumbly. Clearly, she was having a hard time processing all this information, and Morgan blamed Gold for all of it. He could have come here ahead of time and warned Ivaldi that they were coming. Of course, the ostentatious and attention-seeking man-child had decided that, no, he had to make a big entrance.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Grace,” Gold said with a flourish. “Morgan has already told me so much about you.”
“No, I haven’t,” Morgan cut in, already finding himself distracted by the smith’s foreign house.
“Oh, ignore him,” Gold said. “Morgan’s such a sourpuss! Why, in all the time I trained him, he never…hey!”
The ‘hey’ was in response to Morgan taking Grace’s hand and steering her in front of him, placing himself squarely between Gold and his impressionable student. Morgan took the time to shoot Gold a glare before going back to ushering Grace deeper into the smith’s house.
“I’ll explain everything later, I promise,” Morgan said in an undertone. “For now, let’s focus on this instead, okay?”
Grace gave him a hesitant nod, though it was clear that she had a lot of questions that he’d be forced to answer.
“Fine,” Gold huffed. “I can see I’m not wanted here. No matter. I have other, more important things to do.”
That said, the god drew himself up into what Morgan imagined the man thought of as regal, then vanished. The whole thing may have even worked, had the god in question not flipped him the middle finger and stuck out his tongue like a five-year-old before doing so. Morgan just rolled his eyes, glad that his body was blocking Grace’s view.
“Come on now. Keep up!” Ivaldi’s voice echoed back to them from a dark tunnel that opened up in his living room wall.
Following the dwarf and stooping to avoid banging his head, Morgan entered the tunnel, still lightly pushing Grace out in front of him. She kept trying to hang back, needing his reassurance that he was still there. It would have annoyed him, had she not been so rattled by everything that had happened in the last couple of minutes.
They followed the dwarf’s shuffling walk, Morgan noting that the tunnel curved back on itself several times. By the fifth such curve, he began to notice a dull red glow bouncing off the walls. By the seventh switch back, the walls were glowing a bright orange. The air was also growing significantly hotter, so by the time they finally exited the tunnel, it was well over a hundred degrees.
Morgan hardly noticed that at all, as his attention was grabbed by the majesty of the sight stretching before him.
“Holy crap,” Grace whispered.
And for once, Morgan agreed with her.
44
Ivaldi’s forge was unlike anything Morgan had seen before, and he’d been on the inside of many, many smithies in the last few years. Though he couldn’t exactly say he was a master smith, he had seen enough to recognize when a smith knew what they were doing. That was why Morgan found himself completely dumbstruck when he saw Ivaldi’s forge.
It was massive. The smithy stretched some hundred yards out from the tunnel exit and was so wide that he couldn’t see the sides. Then again, that probably had more to do with all of the items blocking his view than anything else. As the dwarf trundled up to a large metal table and began taking down notes on a very battered piece of parchment, Morgan couldn’t help but be impressed.
The walls were lined with weapons and armor of all shapes and sizes. The collection ranged from entire suits of heavy plate armor to suits made of lightweight leather. There were suits of woven metal threads so fine, that they would appear to be a seamless whole to the untrained eye, and specific pieces that Morgan had never even seen before.
Then, there were the weapons. From swords to maces, axes and spears, the dwarf had them all. There was such variety that Morgan had to wonder if the small man was preparing to go to war with someone. Even the gleaming swords or polished spears couldn’t keep his attention from the most interesting armor in the room.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing to a gleaming suit of armor with two very familiar looking cylinders projecting from its shoulders.
Ivaldi looked up, clearly annoyed at being disturbed, and when he saw where Morgan was pointing, he became even less friendly.
“None of yer damn business!” he snapped, trundling over to the suit and throwing a tarp over it. “Now, just tell me why you’re here, so I can get ye out of me hair!”
“Fair enough,” Morgan said with a shrug.
Reaching into his pack, he produced the cloth bundle containing the silver gauntlets, then brought them over to the table and laid them down.
“I need you to re-forge these into a spear,” he said as Ivaldi eyed the bundle in distrust.
“Why would I ever…” The dwarf trailed off as Morgan pulled back the cloth, revealing the gleaming metal.
“No way.” This time, the dwarf’s voice was filled with a mixture of awe and disbelief.
Morgan stepped back as Ivaldi approached as though in a trance, his eyes fixed on the pair of gauntlets. He reached out a shaky hand, running his rough fingers over the metal and shuddering lightly. This display was starting to make Morgan feel distinctly uncomfortable, and it only became worse as Ivaldi leaned down to lick the metal.
The dwarf went almost cross-eyed, and he began dancing in place, a disturbing grin spreading across his craggy face.
“Morgan, what’s he doing?” Grace asked in
an undertone, a mixture of confusion and disgust on her face.
“Beats me,” he replied, then to the dwarf said, “So, can you do it?”
Ivaldi jumped, as though he only now remembered that he wasn’t alone. He turned slowly, composing himself and cleared his throat.
“Do ye have any idea what ye have here, boy?”
“Yes,” Morgan replied. “They’re weapons designed to kill gods. Unfortunately, I was told that the gods I now have to kill are made of different stuff. I need you to re-forge them so I can finish my mission.”
Ivaldi shook his head, as though disappointed in Morgan.
“This isn’t just ‘some weapon’ designed to kill gods. This is part of an ancient set of armor that was once worn by a god! The armor was lost to time hundreds of years before I was even born! Do you have any idea how many years I’ve been hunting these?”
Morgan shrugged.
“No clue.”
He had to admit that he was surprised at that particular bit of news. He’d been told the gauntlets had been crafted specifically to kill Samuel, not that they’d been some part of an ancient armor set. Morgan didn’t mention that the gauntlets housed another secret, one that he wasn’t about to divulge to the dwarf just yet.
When he increased his power, the gauntlets would extend. During his fight with Samuel, the gauntlets had grown gray wires that stretched over his entire body, and he had a feeling that when re-forged, it would have the same effect. Or at least, that was what Gold had hinted at during their planning sessions.
“Over eight-thousand years!” the dwarf exclaimed. “Do you have any idea how long that is?!”
“You’re over eight-thousand years old?” Grace exclaimed.
Morgan wasn’t all that surprised. He’d met plenty of people that were older than the dwarf. Hell, he was technically older himself.
“Where did you find these?” Ivaldi demanded, completely ignoring Grace’s question.
“They were locked in a tower that required a crap ton of work to beat. And before you ask, no, there were no other pieces, only these. So, I’ll ask you again. Can you re-forge these into a spear?”