Time to hammer in some reality...

“Ahhh…”

The pleasure of having a real smith’s hammer in his hand was almost surreal. Briggs hefted it, noting the giant-hide now wrapping it was almost perfect for his hand size, and looked at Sama expectantly.

He’d already sorted through the metal scrap she had collected, and the ingots stacked up in the bottom of the Cabinet. A number of them were Energized to Lightning, probably from being hit by it repeatedly, but there was no need to waste them on a proto-Hammer.

She ran her fingers around the edges of Forge, and Runes lit up, pumping with pyromancy and getting molten-hot in just seconds, while somehow the Disk itself didn’t change at all. A current of lightning arced between four locations on the Floating Forge, passing through the metal, and heating it up with magical speed.

He knew the principle of a Floating Forge. That effect was a Topped Heat Metal, worth 8 points of damage that bypassed Hardness. The fires rippling over the surface of Forge were a very down-sized, Energized Wall of Fire, capable of doing around 26 points of damage, which would be halved against a metal, but still leave it at effectively 21 points when combined with the Heat Metal, and be enough to smelt adamant.

Since it was just working on steel, it heated up with great speed, and Sama snatched it up with her bare hands, brought it over to the Anvil of Silent Thunder, and held it down. She nodded at Briggs, who lifted a second Shaping Hammer with her, and they began to pound.

Her Hammer crashed down like a piston, and the bar of steel visibly deformed. His Hammer followed, not quite so powerful (yet!), and as he hit the metal, he heard a ringing in his head, a mélange of notes that told him how pure the metal was, what shape it was in, and how the force of his blow was spreading through it. He could identify crystalline patterns, the mix of elements, the temperature and cooling speed, where it was weak and where it was strong. One hundred percent of his blow was contained in the bar, and not a single sound spread into their surroundings.

He pulled his Hammer back, there was no rebound, so it was all physical strength on pure display here, and her Hammer was already coming back down as he did so.

Sama was in control of the metal, the Anvil actually holding it down. She was twisting and turning it to direct their Hammer strikes, each blow ringing through the metal, deforming and driving it into a new shape.

They first had to Wootz it, making an ingot of layered metal, which involved hammering the metal out, folding it in half, hammering it out again, folding it again, repeating the process a total of eight times. Normally, this was a drawn-out process, as the metal had to be reheated each time it was folded, but the Floating Forge heated it up incredibly fast, fusing things together with the current running through it, and their breaks to rest were less than five minutes long.

They started making the heads of Endure.

He knew he wanted it to have more than one configuration, as a Hammer was also the core of the Axe, the Mace, and the Pick. Having different designs wasn’t hard to do, but since they were pounding Value into it, there was no reason not to forge it into those forms after the metal reached the desired pattern.

It was a lot of work, raw muscle power coming down on the steel. They were making a twenty-pound head, far heavier than any non-enhanced human could wield, and they pounded it down densely and into the forms he had laid out to her in the extremely precise Smithing Language derived from Gnomoi and Dwarven.

The first form was their practice form, a Maul for utility hammering and splitting wood. They beat it into shape with a pounding array of blows, the Shaping Tools giving them perfect control over the force of it, the Silent Thunder awareness of the shape and lay of the metal.

He hissed when she lifted it up for him to examine. It was blocky and simple, a tool to be used, not a weapon… but the incredible symmetry and perfection of it was plain to see, a thing of QL 35, not something ever seen back home on Terra, and only among the most powerful magical items here. He had never laid eyes on something like that… until he picked up her Tools.

“Good!” he told her, hefting the hot metal in his hands. She wasn’t the only one with a fire-resistant Vajra.

They didn’t quench it. They put it back in the fire, to actually melt back down and recast into an ingot, and then they repeated the process.

A Mattock was next. A Pick followed. Then came the basic bearded Battle-axe, with a hammer backing it and a spiked cap. A Throwing Axe followed, then a Halberd configuration, then a double-crescent Greataxe.

The Mace configuration had six flanges, totally suitable for bashing. Its Morningstar compatriot had wicked spikes all over it, ready for impact.

He had four Hammer configurations: one for throwing, one for smithing, one double-headed with a narrow impact area, one single-headed with a wider bell-form and beaked on the opposite side.

Every time but the last, the double-headed Hammer form, they melted the metal back down, refolded it, and formed a new Weapon.

Every single one was at QL 35.

----------

Somewhere along the lines we picked up an audience.

We had started late at night, and given the magical silence of our work, and careful distance from anyone sleeping, there wasn’t much of an issue.

Then Rangers and dwarves, and even Brigg’s tribesmen, waking up early saw us smithing away, and wandered over to watch.

They watched two under-sized, and although they didn’t know how old I was, kids pounding steel like it was taffy or something, and then we’d lift up a weapon finer than anything they were using.

Then we’d melt it all down to start all over again.

They gave us careful room because I turned slowly around to glare at anyone who got too close, and then I ignored them.

We just kept at it.

Both of us had Diamond Vajras, which meant no needing to break for food or the bathroom. Briggs was inhumanly strong, at least at 27, probably 28 now, and his motions were effortless. I had a Con in the 30’s, and could literally hammer all day, and a Girdle of Giant Power that made swinging a ten-pound Shaping Hammer simplicity.

We’d lift up the maces, then the axes, and finally the various hammers, and the whole crowd would sigh to look at them, the living perfection of the forged steel taken as high as it could go… and then we weren’t done, feeding it right back into the fire.

“Question for ya, Briggs,” I said, as we watched the second hammer design melting down again.

“Shoot.”

“Rockborn know kukri designs? Noticed they are using katars and cesti, kind of suboptimal there.”

He rubbed his brick of a jaw thoughtfully. “Never seen one on them.” His violet eyes gleamed. “Going to show one to one of them?”

“Won’t take long to pound one out if not Investing Quality. Also, we have to make you a suit of armor.”

He blinked. “Well, I’m not quite eleven…” He’d outgrow it within six months.

“Magic Armor resizes. If necessary, we can just use Compression bands on the back to store the extra mass. You’re a Warsmith. You’re losing Naming Karma on your Armor. You weren’t going for a Shield, were you?”

“Not for primary usage, no. Special situations.”

“Then getting its Defiant/Ward built up is a time-and-encounters thing.”

He smiled broadly, with big white teeth. “I don’t think anyone here has ever seen an Ancient in metal armor. My people aren’t too keen on it. Them using steel Weapons is a big leap, and only because the dwarves are around. If it can’t be used to hunt with or replaced easily, they don’t care for it.” He didn’t sound disappointed or regretful. Ancients were what they were.

“Yeah, well, I think a Heaven’s Mountain Master needs his Armor to max out his DR. At some point we’re going to need you to get into a suit of adamant skinplate harness, you know.”

He gave me a hairy eyeball. “You can’t make adamant skinplate…”

“You can if you make an orichalcum suit, and it eats an adamant suit.”

He tilted his big head, the expression of thinking really adorable on his craggy-browed face. “Damn. Well, that’s one way to expend a whole bunch of adamant, but yeah, it would be possible. Orichalcum skinplate… Chaos-aligned mercury and Law-aligned aluminum, right? Alloyed to Agathakalogical titanium…”

“In very, very precise proportions, with some other minor alloys mixed in.” The Metal of Memory was powerful stuff, and the best alloy for highest-grade skinplate. Mithral just didn’t cut it if you wanted the best.

Making it required Blacksmithing, Whitesmithing, Alchemy, and Chemistry checks at the QL you wanted the final product. There were special heatings, acids, timed contributions of lesser Energized elements, mandated stirring procedures, impurities that needed to be added in, then taken out, flash-freezing, superconducted lightning, and ultrasonic crushing needed.

Needless to say, even the Rockborn couldn’t make orichalcum in normal circumstances. It generally required a highly magical society with extraordinary accomplishments in the sciences. While Rockborn loved science, they generally only played around with the mechanical side of it, making the best Gearsmiths out there.

“Eighty pounds for a full suit for me grown?”

I eyed him and his build. Broader shoulders, thicker in every aspect meant more metal, and he was going to be big, probably at least seven-foot. “Yeah.”

“You got enough metal?”

“Yeah. I smelted down ogre-sized pieces of armor. Got a half-ton of ingots. Have to refine the alloy, but it’s all good enough.”

“Going to be a long day, then.”

“But when you come out the other side, you are going to be a total ass-kicker.”

“How do we make them harmonic to Tats?” he asked, flexing his big hands as they turned black.

“Gotta Chakra-bind the suit for your Tats to work.”

“10k non-Slot enhancement.” He sighed softly. “This is going to be a long day.”

“First step on the road to uberness, right?”

“Proper Gear.” We bumped fists, and both of us blinked at the same time. “What was that?” he asked, looking at my hand.

I reached out again, and we pressed knuckles together. It wasn’t our Vajras, which mutually pushed out of the way so we could touch. I found myself smiling. “It tickles!”

He furrowed his big brow. “No, it doesn’t. It feels hard and smooth… kinda empty… like pushing on a rigid balloon, or something.”

I lifted an eyebrow, and stepped back. “Extend your Source.”

He flicked it out to arm’s length with a flicker of will… whereupon it ran right into my Null.

“Oh!” He stared right through me, even as I closed my eyes and sensed his Source burning up next to my Null. I totally out-classed him at this point, so he couldn’t budge my Null at all, but the sensation was quite unique.

“Heheheheh,” I chortled, despite myself. “It’s like standing in front of a heating vent, brushing past my Null. You?”

“Like a cool, quiet wall in front of me.” He stepped forwards slowly, reached out a hand and pressed into open air. “Damn. Restricting me right to my Vajra.”

I withdrew my Null hastily, trying desperately not to giggle. “Sorry, that tickled just way too much.”

“Tickled?” His mouth worked, not knowing whether to laugh or to be depressed. “That’s not something I ever read in the Forsaken notes…”

“Me either!” But I was thinking things, and I could tell he was, too. “You?”

“It was containing my Source, close to my skin. It felt intense, strong, instead of dispersing or pushing stuff inside. Kinda cool, really. Like, uh, I dunno, a cool, firm pillow…”

“Discovering new stuff all the time, Commander Briggs!”

“But can we monetize it?” he replied back, deadpan.

“More test marketing required.”

“Who’s in charge of the target market?”

“Ugh, I am in no mood to go finding tons of other Forsaken beyond a certain Ancient tribe. We’ll have to backburner it.”

“Pity.” He hefted the Shaping Hammer he was using. “Time?”

I reached out and tapped Forge, dancing my fingers along the edge of it so my Tremblesense could read the metal from multiple angles for a better cross-picture. “Thirty seconds.”

He hummed happily, flexing unconsciously, and I knew he was picturing getting in a suit of armor for the first time.

He was a Crystal Dragon Heavy Melee, armor was their thing. He was going to be such a damn beast when he was all grown up, and a wrought iron terror even now.

I smiled and reached for the ingot. Back to work!