The rest of the tour paled by comparison, and seemingly having predicted as much, Jorfr had made it quite short. It mostly consisted of running down the list of several monuments which they hadn’t already seen earlier, including a statue of Wide-wuth of the Unbroken Shield, which stood strangely far from the Hulson longhouse in the middle of a great square.

Overall, Zel only had one pressing question as to the great city, but Zef brought it up before she could: “This place feels strangely more modern than Willowdale.”

“Of course it does, there was a near-total reconstruction some three-hundred years back, when the Nameless Clan tried to oppose the Revenant King’s decision to demote them to Secondary with open force. The battle completely destroyed around a third of the city so large sections were completely rebuilt with some help from an anonymous Ankhezian architect and the rest was modernized.”

“...Nameless Clan? Was their name scoured from the history books for the transgression or somesuch?”

“What? No. Much more than that. The memory of their family name was sealed away such that the world itself forgot them. In fact, I have something to show you - it will only be a short detour.”

A short while later they reached a seemingly deserted part of the city, a small square at the end of a back alley, with a weird, vaguely-shaped figure of a humanoid riding a large animal. He pointed to another statue, tucked away in the corner. It was not only feature-stripped and abstract like the other one, its very presence had slipped their minds until he’d pointed it out. It depicted a humanoid with a round shield and either an axe or mace in hand, guessing by the general shapes.

“This is all that is left of them. The only thing we know for certain is that the punishment was put to a vote and carried out with assistance from the King himself. There still is a bloody stain in the permafrost at the ritual site from all the sacrifices required for the rite, or so the story goes.”

Zel almost commented on it. Almost. She stopped herself as the words were ready to leave her mouth.

A short while and a brief stay at a nearby inn later, Jorfr finally led them to the place where they were to meet with the blacksmith. While they sat around waiting, they went over details pertaining to the smith, albeit only basic ones because Jorfr seemed a bit hesitant to speak more of the man than was necessary. His name was Ingvald, he was also known as Ingvald the Forgehand, and he was apparently a friend of the G-Kaisers, sharing their ideology.

The forge was halfway across the city, as close to the Boiling Lake as the buildings went, seemingly outside any particular district. It was far enough from the city’s infrastructure as well as the Boiling Lake that Borea’s murderous cold was finally able to touch them, albeit briefly before Jorfr flexed in a weird way and suddenly started radiating incredible amounts of heat. The building was modest, not standing out by any virtue other than its visible age and the patina-encrusted pipes leading from it directly into the lake - or rather, from the lake and into the building, as Jorfr made clear.

There was a placard hanging by the door, but there was no name - only a hammer and tongs crossed overtop a Borean one-handed sword. The runes for “Wolfblade” were recognizable on the blade.

Jorfr delivered three truly forceful knocks upon the front door, bellowing: “INGVALD!”

While they waited for a response, he pointed out the pipes: “See those pipes - they go all the way down into the stone at the bottom of the lake. Ingvald is one of maybe three surviving people who managed to tap a Primary Spring before the current system was put in place. The King decided to honor their feats of ingenuity, but they cannot officially join a clan without sealing their access points for the duration of their membership. The likes of Ingvald do not care, I imagine.”

Zel still hadn’t gotten used to Jorfr’s eagerness to talk about his home, so sharply it contrasted with his usual demeanor of few words. The door opened. Where she’d expected a grumbling old man, Zelsys saw a musclebound and incredibly wide mass with brilliant green eyes whose only signs of age were the moderately-sized gut that his pitch-black metal-plated apron hung across and the leather-like quality of his skin. The long strings of runes all over his left arm had faded and distorted over time, while his right was charred black, its skin like the surface of solidified magma or the slag atop a plume of smelted iron. His hair was pitch-black and seemingly untouched by age. He was short, no more than a meter and two-thirds, but he made up for it in sheer mass. He had a meticulously kept mustache and goatee, and his hair was tied back into a short, high-up ponytail, though it was more of a tuft than anything else.

Squinting, he looked up at each of them in turn.

“Jorfr. I take it you two are Zelsys and Zefaris Newman, and you… I do not know you, but I do know the staff on your back and the blade affixed to its other end. Are you the protegé of one of these three, young one?”

Upon Victor nodding, Ingvald smiled. A dozen new creases appeared on his face. He gestured for them to enter: “Come, come. Don’t let the cold in.”

The interior he led them into was a forge, and one somewhat familiar to Zelsys at that. Many of the tools, both familiar and esoteric, reminded her of what she had seen in the G-Kaisers’ mobile forge. It was only missing the reactor and the ceiling-mounted automaton arm. In fact, she didn’t see any possible source of heat.

“...How do you smith without a way to heat the metal?” she thought aloud.

“Who said I had no way to heat the metal?” the old man grinned predictably. His right arm briefly came alive with a pale-blue glow akin to Sigmund’s tranquil flame.

“Now, I could keep using Borean, but I assume that…” he continued, only to shift to perfect Ikesian.

“...this will make it easier for all of us, no?”