by Shawn Wyatt
We all turned to stare at her. “What?”
“The tank on the front of the hearth. It’s where you place metal that needs to cool.”
“How do you know that?”
“What? You assume that because I’m a girl I don’t know my way around a blacksmith’s forge?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I assume you don’t know your way around a blacksmith’s forge because they haven't been used in a few hundred years."
Bastion picked up the flint and took Evey’s dagger. He struck the two together, but no spark emerged. He tried again and again with no results, until Evey sighed and took the two from him. “Downward strokes. You don’t smash them together like a caveman. Hit the flint with a downward stroke”—she slashed the dagger toward the flint, and a fat spark jumped from the point of contact—“like this.”
He struck the dagger against the flint once more. The resulting spark fell against a black piece of coal, sizzled, and faded away. Bastion wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I’m already sweating and I haven’t managed to light a fire. This doesn’t exactly bode well for me.” He looked to Evey. “Any suggestion here?”
"You can't light the coal directly with a little spark. Find some kindling."
"Good idea," Bastion said. He fished parchment out of his bag. A few seconds later and he had a small pile of material—paper, bits of cloth, and dead grass I had found nearby.
Wish eyed the setup. "That's not bad for someone who couldn't get flint and steel to work."
He shrugged. “Like I told you. I worked as a fire spotter one summer. I know a lot about fires, but not so much about a forge.”
After several strikes of the flint and steel, a small flame flared to life. He leaned in and blew on the pile of tinder and kindling until it flared into a proper fire.
“There. Give it a few minutes, and the coal will catch. When it does, someone needs to man the bellows.”
I looked to the large wooden contraption. In theory, I knew its purpose from previous games I had played. The problem lay in translating what I had seen in a video game to the proper motion to stoke the fire, rather than put it out.
We stood in silence and watched the fire spread through the forge. No hungry tongues of flame leapt to devour the metal. Only a red-orange glow burned on the bottom layer of coal, small but hot. The first pinpricks of sweat broke out of my face as I stared at the fire.
“Okay, someone pump the bellows,” Bastion said.
I gripped the handles and pressed them together. The leather provided a solid grip. The first pump blew nothing but dust. The bellows sputtered grit, but on the upstroke the contraption gasped and breathed in air like a man too-long underwater.
The next pump sent a burst of flame roaring through the forge.
“Keep it up!” Bastion shouted. A grin broke across his face. “This is working.”
“Do you know how to do this?” I asked. The creak of the bellows and the crackle of the fire made it hard to hear.
“I read some of the manual the trainer gave me when I first picked up the profession,” Bastion shouted back. “The pirates took that, too. But I think I remember the basics.”
He picked up a long piece of iron and placed it in the forge. I worked the bellows until the fire blazed and danced inside the chamber and the iron glowed red. Bastion pulled it out with tongs, set it on the nearby anvil, and struck.
The sound echoed through the empty city streets.
***
The monster fell at her feet. The wound in its chest leaked a steady stream of numbers that bled silver blood. The girl should have felt disturbed. She should have been unnerved.
But even the most strange sight became commonplace when she saw it sixteen times in one day.
Light flared behind her, and the girl spun on a heel, weapon at the ready. The light emanated from a round portal in the distance. The portal would attract monsters, like the previous portals had. She rushed toward it anyway.
The portal shrank as she ran. The opening would be far too small for her frame when she reached it. But even a glimpse through the portal, a brief view of the other world, would be worth any gauntlet of monsters.
She could have been on Mars. Rocks and hard shrubs, stunted from the lack of light, threatened to trip her if she stepped wrong. The girl danced around these shrubs, her long legs practiced at navigating through the strange landscape.
The handle of her weapon had thirty-two marks in it. One mark for each time the weak sun had risen on the horizon and cast its sickly light over the landscape. Some parts of this world, like the one she traveled now, never felt the touch of sunlight.
She reached the now dinner-plate-sized portal. The air around it throbbed with heat, and through the opening a man stood with a hammer in his hand. He hefted it into the sky and brought it down hard on a piece of metal. Sweat dotted his brow as he struck the metal again and again, but the sound of the strike did not ring through the darkness.
The portals never made any sound.
It snapped shut with a thunderclap, and the temperature around her dropped. The girl sighed, turned toward the monsters that crept toward her, drawn by the light and heat, and lifted her weapon.
Chapter Six: Nails
Bastion dropped the hammer and cursed, the obscenity echoing through the near-empty smithy.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Cold metal doesn't bend," he growled, rubbing his wrist. "Kind of recoiled up and down my arm.” He leaned forward and examined the iron. His strike had left a dent, but the metal had begun to lose its glow. “I think it needs to heat more."
Once back in the flame, the iron began to incandesce again. Bastion rested it in the hot coals until it shone a vivid white and placed it on the anvil.
He took a breath, raised his hammer, and slammed it into the iron.
I winced. The strike echoed off the walls, as sharp and piercing as the nail he hoped to create. The metal showed the first signs of a point.
Bastion struck it again and again until he had pounded the small piece of iron to a flat shape.
With his tongs, he rolled it on its side and struck again. He rolled the iron and hit each side in sequence until it started my ears rang and the iron shone a dull red. Satisfied, Bastion placed the now-narrow piece of metal into the flames again.
“I need some way to cut it,” he said. “It's too long for a nail."
“What about this?” Wish pointed at a hole in the anvil and slid a chisel into it. “Put the metal iron against it and hit it with the hammer. It should work.”
“I’m going to be pissed if this breaks at this point,” Bastion said. Sweat poured down his face while the rest of us stood far from the coals. The sea breeze did little to combat the heat this far into the city. Bastion placed the flattened iron against the chisel and struck.
Evey had stayed quiet throughout the process. She stood in the corner with her eyes closed, a small furrow between her brow.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
The Beast Tamer opened her eyes. Both bore a subtle red tint. “Activating Bestial Rage, my level 20 skill.”
“Does that work without Boris nearby?”
“As far as I’m aware, there’s no range limit. Somewhere Boris is giving someone a hard time.” She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. “Maybe the screams will lead us to him.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? What if they decide to kill him for attacking them?”
“They won’t,” she said. “He’s worth too much, especially on this realm. Have you seen any other land animals?”
The clang of metal echoed throughout the smithy again and again, until Bastion leapt back with a shout. “Yes! Finally!”
“I hope you’re right,” I said to Evey, and then turned to Bastion. “Did you do it?”
With a grin, he held up the nail. “It’s finished. Take a look.”
<<<>>>
Basic Nail
A crafting ingredient.
>
<<<>>>
“Hard to believe something so small took so much effort to create,” I said. “Think you can make more?”
“I’ll have to. But just making this one nail caused my Armorcrafting ability to level up. My crafting level is low enough that even a few of these will boost me another five levels.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “You can just make more difficult items to level up after that,” I said.
Bastion gave me a long-suffering look. “Get out of the way so I can make more nails.”
“Don’t hurt yourself,” I said.
Bastion laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Think you can keep the heat up? I can work faster if I'm not worried about the coals getting cold."
I nodded. All I needed to do was pump the bellows every so often. Bastion had already turned his attention back to his work. He slipped the nail he had made into his shirt pocket and placed another piece of iron into the fire. Bastion set his mouth in a line while he waited for the iron to heat.
I'd never admit it to him, but he looked like a natural-born smith. Wish and Quinn stood guard near the entrance to the smithy, their eyes on the road. There was nothing to but wait until Bastion finished the nails.
Evey remained in the corner with her eyes closed. She stood far from the flames, but beads of sweat rolled down her face.
Evey hadn't been herself since Boris had been captured. He had been her constant companion in this world since this entire nightmare began. He was a stronger source of support than I had realized.
The loss of our weapons had disheartened everyone, but I needed my party in top shape. I would help her get Boris back, even if it meant prying loose whatever cage the pirates had him in with my own two hands.
A small smile flickered across her face and she opened her eyes. Evey raised an eyebrow when she caught me staring. “What?” she asked.
“What happened? I saw that smile.”
“I gained a few experience points,” she said. A wicked grin flashed in her eyes. “If I had to guess, Bestial Rage worked. Boris took out one of the pirates somewhere.” To herself, in a lowered voice, she added, “Good boy.”
“Keep at it,” I said. If using the ability kept her distracted her from his absence, then she needed to keep it up.
I checked the temperature of the forge, pumped the bellows, and searched for a breeze. The clang of hammer on iron echoed again and again until the sound became a steady backdrop.
Bastion found a rhythm. While he hammered out one nail, another piece of iron went in the fire. Within a few hours, he produced nail after nail without pausing.
The hours passed like this, until the sun fell out of sight and the shadows grew long over the streets. Finally, Bastion set down his hammer and leaned back with a groan. A substantial pile of nails rested on a piece of cloth beside him, his face and hands black with soot. “Man, am I beat,” he said.
“Beat like the iron?” Wish asked.
Bastion leveled a glare at her. “Get out.”
The girl laughed.
I picked up the most recent nail and turned it over in my fingers. It looked much more like a nail than the first one, and its point felt it might do more than just annoy a block of wood. “You’ve made a lot of progress,” I said. “How many levels did you gain?”
His eyes glazed over for a moment as he checked his stats. “Five. The nails are easy to make, but they’ve stopped giving much experience. Tomorrow, I start with armor pieces. They won’t be much more than basic chest and leg pieces, but it’s better than nothing.”
“You won’t be any good to us if you’re exhausted. Come on, let’s get something to eat and call it a night. We’ll come back early tomorrow.”
Evey still sat cross-legged on the ground with her eyes closed. I placed a hand on her shoulder. Her eyes fluttered open, a bright-red glow behind them that lit the darkness. “Hands off,” she snarled.
I pulled my hand back and held them up in surrender. “It’s me. Ren. Calm down.” I crouched so I could look straight in her eyes. Evey gave me a vacant stare for several seconds before she shook her head. The glow faded from her eyes. “Sorry,” she said. She blinked a few times. “Bestial Rage seems to work both ways. Some of Boris’ anger fed back into me.”
I held out a hand and helped her to her feet. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “We’re done for the day. Let’s head back and start fresh tomorrow morning.
Evey nodded. “Good idea.”
As we walked back to the tavern, I thought about the Bestial Rage skill. Each time she used it, she linked her mind with Boris’. A human mind to a virtual, animalistic mind. Under normal circumstances, that would be impossible, but in this world?
But even if it were possible, the long-term effects of sustaining that link couldn’t be good. We had to get Boris back, and soon.
The next morning, Bastion examined the workbench in the smithy. He needed it operational to make the armor. A fine layer of dust covered the wooden surface, and he eyeballed the cobwebs in the corner with a grimace. “I’ve hated spiders ever since those stupid riddles on Toris,” he said.
“Me too.” I had never liked spiders, but solving riddles at the mercy of a high-level boss with thinly-veiled intentions of eating us had taken arachnophobia to a new level. “So you think you can make chest pieces and leg armor today?”
He nodded. “They won’t be pretty, but I’m pretty sure I can at least make us some basic protection. Bring me that leather over there.” Bastion pointed to a pile of stacked pieces of leather. I grabbed it and hauled it from its place in the corner of the smithy. A thin layer of soot coated the leather's surface.
“Looks like it’s been here a while.”
“I saw it yesterday during one of my breaks. It’s the right size for armor, so I’m going to try to use it. The old smith must have had a project in mind before he left.”
Bastion picked up the top piece of leather, examined it, and tossed it aside. He rummaged through the pile for several minutes until he found two sections of equal size and placed them on the bench. Another minute of work saw the sides lined up and marked for nails.
“Wait. I need a mannequin to mount this on.” Bastion looked around the shop, and grabbed two burlap sacks filled with sand. He stacked them atop one another until they resembled a hunched-back snowman. Two of the bags became arms. One became a head, and the final bag became a torso. "This will work.”
Bastion pressed the leather pieces down on top of his makeshift mannequin and lined up a nail. With a few swift strikes, he drove the iron nail through the material and bent the edge around so the nail wouldn’t fall out. “Not bad,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.
I backed out of the workshop and left him to his work. He had a habit of becoming engrossed in a task and the last thing I wanted to do was interrupt. I was just thankful the sound of nails through leather wasn’t half as loud as the clanging I had heard all day long the day before. I didn't think my ears could take much more of that.
Evey sat cross-legged on the ground in an almost meditative pose, but worry creased her brow. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Boris,” she said. “I can check his stats. His HP is lower than it was yesterday.”
“Like he’s in a fight?”
“No, more like he isn’t being taken care of.” She winced. “Or that he’s been flogged.”
“Evey.” I put my hand on her shoulder, and her eyes fluttered open with the same red tint that had been there before. “You need to break the connection.”
“No,” she said.
“I’m not asking you. Think for a second. What kind of effect will that sort of bond have long-term on you? You’re connected to Boris’ mind. Even after just one day of maintaining the Bestial Rage link with him, your temper was frayed.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I know you’re worried about him. I am too. But Bastion is in there finishing the armor, and once he’s done, we will set out for the Pirate King’s ship. A
nd we will get Boris back. I promise. But I need you in fighting shape.”
Evey stared at me, and I could see the fury warring with her common sense. She sighed. “You’re right,” she said. “But the link at least lets him know we were coming. That we haven't abandoned him.”
“I’m pretty sure he knew that, anyway,” I said. “Boris knows we wouldn’t leave him. And he isn’t going to give up. He would take down that entire ship if it meant getting more honey.”
For the first time since Boris had been taken, Evey laughed. “You’re right. He would be the most OP companion in the game if you kept him from his honey.”
"Right. So sever the connection and give your mind a break. I'll get Quinn, and we'll figure out how to get your bear back."
The Swashbuckler blanched at the proposal of an assault. "I didn't think you were serious," he said.
"Then why go to the trouble of making this armor?" I asked.
"I don't know." Quinn shrugged. "Maybe start over, keep your heads down? And firmly attached?"
"Not a chance," Evey said. "Now fill us in. What do you know?"
Quinn sighed. “She's called Privateer’s Fall. A huge ship. But that means we can approach it under cover of darkness and board without being seen. The problems start when we get onboard. We’ll be out numbered by ten to one."
“I can handle that,” Evey said. “Several of my abilities are stealth based."
“And I can send my Spirit Wolves to help,” Wish said.
"And that will be enough to fight off that many people?"
"We climb up the bow and create a chokepoint," I said. "Only so many pirates can get to us at once. If we control the battlefield, we control the battle."
Quinn sighed. “That will at least give us a place to fight from, but we still need to confront the Pirate King and get our stuff back before reinforcements show up.”
“It won’t be easy, but we’ll take what weapons we can and fight. It’s not even close to the hardest challenge we’ve faced,” I said.
Quinn nodded. “Aye, if you say so. Can’t say I’m thrilled at the prospect. If we survive this, you’re buying the beer.”