by Simon Archer
“I need something hard enough to break her staff,” I whispered the words aloud.
“And that would be?” Katlynn prompted.
I held the copper pipe in my hand and ventured over to the anvil in the center of the room, like a museum piece. Katlynn watched with a skeptical expression as I picked up the hammer that had been pounding against a now cool piece of steel only a minute ago. I hesitated before wrapping my fingers around the handle, thinking the tool might spring up and start working on its own again. But the inanimate object stayed still as I picked it up and held it over my head. The pipe was in position, and with one solid stroke, I slammed the hammer down on the copper.
There was a sharp twang that pierced the air, a signal of the copper breaking. When I looked down, I saw the once circular pipe now flattened to a pancake where I had smacked it. I felt a smile crawl on my face.
“Hey Katlynn,” I said, even though I continued to look at the damaged copper.
“What?” the ghost said hesitantly.
“I’m going to need your help with this one,” I said, a confident laugh tickling at the back of my throat.
My half-sister and I spent the next six hours creating a maul designed to smash right through Phae’s copper staff. The head of a maul was like a hammer, but it was thicker and flat on both sides. That required a lot of steel to forge together. It was difficult to manipulate that much steel at once. Where I needed my ghostly sister’s help was with the fire.
“No way!” she protested the minute I asked her for the favor. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Come on, Katlynn,” I begged. “The coal fire isn’t going to get hot enough to heat up this much metal. I need as much time as I can to carve out the shape of the metal, and the Eternal Flame is the hottest element I know of.”
“You’re asking me to be a flame for the next six hours,” Katlynn laid out.
“Essentially, yeah,” I agree, not understanding what the big deal was.
“It’s really uncomfortable, you know,” Katlynn informed me. “And I wanted to watch you work.”
“As flattering as that is,” I said, calling out her bluff, “you’ll be much more useful as a flame rather than an observer.”
“Fine then,” Katlynn said as she crossed her arms, an ultimatum coming to mind. “I don’t want to go back into the locket while we’re in Italy.”
“What? No!” I said, reacting instinctively. “I don’t know if Arges will want a ghost wandering his villa.”
“If you put me back in there, then I’m not going to help you,” Katlynn restated defiantly.
I rolled my lips over my teeth and sucked on them. As much as I didn’t want Katlynn running around the Italian countryside freely, I needed the Eternal Flame, especially on such a short deadline.
“Fine,” I relented with a grumble. “You don’t have to go back into the locket until we go back to campus.”
Katlynn released a triumphant cry into the air, complete with a jump and a fist pump. “This is going to be so great!”
“Yeah, yeah, now flame on sister girl,” I said as I ushered Katlynn to the fireplace.
“Flame on?” Katlynn asked skeptically with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s a modern reference,” I explained, “you wouldn’t understand.”
Before I knew it, Katlynn transformed into the Eternal Flame and zipped into the fireplace. I extinguished the other regular fire that had been blazing when I first entered the forge. Soon, the Eternal Flame reignited the coals and burst upward. It adopted the perfect greenish color I needed for the ideal temperature to melt metal.
“Let’s do this,” I said to both Katlynn and me, as I threw a chunk of steel into the fire.
We quickly fell into a rhythm. My muscles settled into their familiar pattern of pounding and shaping metal. The maul appeared to be nothing more than a square block of steel on the end of a wooden handle. However, there was much more to the weapon. The trickiest part of the whole weapon was the balance of the handle versus the steelhead. While the piece would be top heavy, it still needed to feel natural in the wielder’s hand. It had to have enough weight to smack into the other weapons but be light enough to pick up and maneuver with ease.
The final trick was the shape of the head. While a small square would have worked fine, I wanted to show off my technical skills and, as such, decided to craft the two ends into octagon shapes. It was a challenge to get each side even and straight, and while I could use the grinder for the main part of that, I wanted to make sure I did everything I could with my own two hands before I resorted to the machines.
After I quenched the metal head in oil, I moved on to the handle. While I considered woodworking a necessary evil when it came to making weapons, I took my time with this particular piece. It couldn’t be a simple straight handle. I needed to work some curve into it for maximum balance and maneuverability. I carved out two places for my hands, a two-handed grip near the end of the weapon, so I could hold it like a baseball bat, and another indent near the top so I could leverage it like an ax.
The wood wasn’t anything special, just a plain pine I found on Arges’s rack of materials. It was one of the few pieces big enough for what I needed. Right as we hit the thirty-minute mark, I began to assemble the weapon together. They slipped into place like a glove, and I left them to set, clamps pressed around the connecting parts so that they held together while everything dried.
Katlynn evolved out of the fireplace at this point and became her humanoid shape. She also returned to her regular blue color, which I found instantly calming rather than the sickly green needed for forging.
I leaned back and crossed my arms confidently. “Now, that’s a beautiful weapon.”
“It looks like a large hammer,” Katlynn said with a shrug.
I reached out and pushed her playfully. “It’s called a maul, you dolt.”
“I know what it is,” Katlynn protested as she rubbed her shoulder where I had pushed her. “I took blacksmithing too, you know.”
“Were you ever into blacksmithing?” I asked curiously. “You know, when you were alive?”
“Not really,” Katlynn admitted, her voice dropping an octave. The disappointment was clear, and I almost felt guilty for asking the question, but this was my half-sister. Not everyone had the chance to get to know their older and deceased family members. I wanted to know more about her, and maybe this was the chance to do so.
“Much to Dad’s dismay, of course,” Katlynn said with a half-hearted chuckle, but there was nothing amusing about her statement. “I just wanted to play with the fire I could create. I didn’t have an interest in making anything else.”
“Wait, you could conjure fire?” I said, jealousy pinging at me. “That’s cool. Even I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, but you can do plenty of other things,” Katlynn pointed out. “Conjuring fire was my only ability from Dad. Blacksmithing was something I could have learned sure, but I didn’t really have an affinity for creating. I much preferred destroying things.”
“I see,” I said softly, though that instinct was completely foreign to me.
“I’m looking forward to seeing you get your ass handed to you,” Katlynn said, changing the subject while her voice returned to its normal tone.
“Oh yeah,” I griped, “thanks for the vote of confidence.”
Before I knew it, six hours were up, and it was time for me to face off against the goddess Phaethusa. I journeyed up the stone steps from the cliffside forge, which going up was much easier than going down because the massive drop was behind me, and I didn’t have to look at it. The maul rested on my shoulder as I crossed the property, confidence increasing with every step.
I had made an excellent weapon, and I knew it. Given the limited knowledge I did have about how this fight was going to go, the only thing I could do was be confident in what I had made and do my best against this goddess. I didn’t really expect to win this fight. It was against a supernatural being, and I
wasn’t a big fighter, to begin with. But if my weapon could hold up, then I could be proud of that.
Katlynn followed behind me, gasping in awe at every little thing that we passed. She pointed out the marble statues, the intricate fountains, as well as the stone pathways. I nodded along, placating her enthusiasm, but I tried to stay focused as I walked.
I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do, but I continued to walk the grounds of Arges’s villa until I saw the cyclops and his assistant standing by some trees conversing with one another.
“Is that them?” Katlynn whispered over my shoulder.
“That’s them,” I confirmed with a stiff nod. I sucked in a sharp breath and picked up the pace.
I found them standing on the edge of a square plot of dirt. It was quite a contrast from the lush green grass everywhere else on the land. In the square was a white circle spray painted like the lines on a baseball diamond. I instantly recognized it as a sparring ring like the ones we used at the Academy. There was a brief reprieve from the worry as I thought I might actually go into a fight I knew something about.
Arges eyed me up and down when Katlynn and I approached. “Hello, Cameron. Who is your friend?”
“Uh,” I gulped, not quite sure how to introduce the ghost. “This is--”
“Katlynn Sideris, daughter of Hephaestus,” Katlynn said with a nod of respect to the cyclops. “I have been sent by our father to help my half-brother in his quest.”
“Quest?” Arges said at the same time that I said, “Sideris?”
“What?” Katlynn said sharply to me. “It was my mother’s name.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt this sibling banter,” Arges said, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice. “But what quest would you be helping Cameron with?”
“To help him build a new version of the helm of invisibility,” Katlynn said simply.
The cyclops looked to me with shock written all over his face. “Is this your true purpose for being here?”
“What?” Katlynn turned to me, the same shock on her own face. “You didn’t tell him?”
“I might have fudged my application a little bit,” I said, my voice suddenly hoarse.
“You wish to recreate the helm of invisibility?” Arges said doubtfully. “Does the Lord of the Dead know you are trying to do this? I don’t think he would take too kindly to having another one of his precious items out in the world. It would certainly decrease the original’s value.”
“He knows,” I said, not really wanting to elaborate, but the cyclops’s arched eyebrow told me he wasn’t going to let me get away with being so vague. So I continued after a weighted sigh. “He wants another one because he’s misplaced the first one, and he thought I would be the best one to make it.”
“You mean you want something from him,” Arges corrected. “Because Hades and I have a good rapport. If he truly needed another helm, he would have asked me directly. But you need something from him, so he asked you, as not to be in my debt.”
“Something like that,” I agreed.
Arges pinched the bridge of his nose. “Was any part of your application true?”
“Yes!” I jumped in quickly. “I really do need to learn as much as I can so I can make the Ultimate Weapon like the prophecy said, and I thought learning from the original blacksmiths would help me do that, especially since I lost my demigod mentor and my dad is MIA right now.”
The cyclops lowered his hand and looked at me with his piercing blue eye. Somehow, with only the one eyeball, the look was all that more intimidating. I did my best to stay strong under his gaze, but all I really wanted to do was crawl into a ball right then and there.
“Have you everything you need for this fight?” Arges asked, changing the subject.
“Uh… yes, yes, I do,” I said, my voice stalling. I swung the maul off my shoulder and held it with two hands, one closer to the head and the other further down the neck.
The cyclops blinked once at me. It was still unnerving to look at his one-eyed face. I hoped I would grow accustomed to it over time because I didn’t want my mentor to think I thought he was strange… even though he was.
“Well, then, the two of you can step into the ring, and we’ll begin,” Arges said with another booming clap of his hands.
17
For the first time, I looked at my opponent. Sure enough, she had her copper staff, and I smiled inwardly. I knew my maul would knock that out in seconds if I would get the right amount of strength behind my swing. However, it was then I noticed she also wore a thin helmet. It covered her whole head, coming down to almost her shoulders, framing her face with a widow's peak at her forehead and aligning with her jawbones.
Additionally, she wore more clothes than before. She had leather plates on her shins and forearms. Shoulder pads protruded out from her shoulders, and a breastplate was strapped securely to her body.
A flash of worry crossed my mind, but I didn’t get the chance to react to it because Arges began the instructions of the fight.
“This is a simple sparring match,” Arges informed the pair of us. “You will battle one another until the other is knocked out or calls Uncle.”
Shit, I thought. It was pretty intense to think I had to knock Phae out completely. Normally in our battles at the Academy, it was signs of first blood or forfeit, but this wasn’t the Academy anymore.
The only comfort I had was that I couldn’t kill the goddess. Being immortal, I could injure her, but at least if I managed to get a good whack at her head, she wouldn’t straight up die.
Then I realized that the same couldn’t be said for me.
“Begin!” Arges shouted, his gravelly voice bursting forth, shocking me into action.
Without waiting for a second, Phae attacked. She twirled her staff over her head and slammed it down on me, the soft space between my neck and shoulder. I howled and immediately fell to one knee, slumping down on my left side. The top of the maul fell into the ground as I lost my grip on it.
The goddess changed her grip and leveled out the staff at me to strike horizontally at my head. I ducked low and felt the whoosh of air as the staff traveled over my head at an alarming rate. Despite my aching shoulder, I gripped the maul with two hands at the bottom and swung the weapon in the same manner Phae had swung her staff. Except I kept my strike low to the ground, aiming for her shins.
Phae jumped up once in the air, like a little girl playing double dutch, and completely avoided my attack. The heavy end of the maul stuck in the dirt ground, and I pushed the handle up in the air at a ninety-degree angle. I used the handle as support for my weaker side as I jumped and kicked Phae in the stomach, finally landing a strike.
The goddess bent in two from my blow, but I couldn’t even manage to enjoy the moment because my foot throbbed. Her breastplate was harder than I expected and retaliated against my foot without even having to do anything.
Now I nursed a limp left arm and a sore right foot. With no regard for my injuries, Phae continued her relentless attack. She quickly regained her breath and raised the staff over her head for another vertical strike.
This time I lifted the maul with a violent grunt and blocked the copper staff with my wooden handle. The weight of the blow bent my elbows a bit, but I held true as I prevented the strike. The muscles in my shoulder screamed with pain, but I couldn’t give up so easily. I needed to land at least more than one blow.
However, I never got the opportunity to. In a flash, Phae changed her footing and swung the staff around the back so that the bottom end, without the symbol of Helios, slammed into my ribs. My lungs exploded as my ribs cracked. I folded in two, my weapon falling with a thud to my feet.
The end of the staff, then, came up and jabbed upward into my chin. My head snapped back, and I could feel my brain rattle around in my skull. I collided with the ground, with barely enough breath left in me.
A surge of pride built up, and anger flared in my brain. I realized that the cyclops had tricked me. I ne
ver had a chance in this fight, no matter what I had made in those allotted six hours, it was an impossible task. I didn’t appreciate being set up to fail. I wanted to be tested for my ability to make weapons, not my ability to wield them.
That wasn’t the reason I had come all the way to Italy. I wanted to become a better blacksmith, not a better fighter.
My eyes cracked open to see Phae barreling for me with the final blow. Fed up, without my weapon, I threw out my arm and aimed my hand straight for her head. I concentrated on the helmet she wore and envisioned crushing it in my bare hands.
Immediately, Phae dropped her staff with a scream. She fell to her knees and pressed her hands to the side of her head as the helmet she wore got smaller and smaller. I pressed it against her head, contorting the metal to an uncomfortable size. The bottom edges curled in around her neck, threatening to pierce it with their sharp edges.
She shrieked, and it pained me to hear her cries. I wanted this whole stupid battle to be over with, but I was at a point where I refused to lose.
“Call it,” I pushed through gritted teeth.
When Phae’s cries turned to whimpers, like a kicked puppy, I strengthened my voice and demanded it of her again. “Call it!”
“Uncle!” the goddess shouted.
I lowered my arm with a loud exhale, and the metal expanded once more like a balloon, returning to its former shape. Phae fell back on the ground, mimicking my position as the pair of us just laid in the dirt, winded and exhausted.
“Well,” came Arges’s voice from outside the circle, “that was unexpected.”
Twenty minutes later, we sat on the closed-in porch in Arges’s villa, nursing our wounds. Despite the grandeur of the grounds and the villa itself, the furniture inside resembled a cheap Florida rental home. There were wicker chairs and a matching couch with thin cushions patterned with grapes on the fabric. There was an oval table with a glass top that needed to be wiped down. I got the impression that Arges didn’t spend a lot of time out here, but it was the closest place to sit down after the disaster that was the spar with Phae. And for that, I was grateful.