I found an empty anvil station near the back of the main forge, far enough from the distraction of other hammers that I could hear being pounded from miles away. Before coming back I'd brought some items, laying everything out in front of me.
I was already rubbing my hands to the new material.
two bars of heartstone alloy, a coil of living metal that shimmered faintly even in the dim light of a furnace, a handful of steel fragments Blinky had said were "suitable for refinement." I ran my thumb along the alloy first. It was warm to the touch, almost like an oven that's cooled for a few minutes, veins of gold light running just under the surface of the otherwise normal metal. The living metal was still a mystery, even feeling it now it felt inconsistent. I'd only picked out two items for this very reason, the unknown. With my time constraint for my future plan I couldn't take to long memorizing the properties.
Alright, now that I've finally gathered the Raw material I had nothing but the problem in front of me to deal with, how and what should I create with these materials?
My fingers were already under my chin. The first idea with what little money to work with I had was a bola, it was a little to simple for my taste, just like the shield but overcomplicating tasks seemed to be my gold standard in my previous life, once I became more familiar with the attributes of all these new elements and earn a bit to set up a proper work station I could eventually delve into the more complex ideas I had in the back of my mind. The forge was already burning hot for me and that was left was tossing the material in. I threw some touch hide over my hands to substitute my missing gloves and plugged my stock metal in the furnace luckily for me the trolls had actual small hammers but supposedly only their best black smiths used them. With a bit of upsetting to the material I eventually came out with strands of living metal, braided, weighted on the ends, meant to whip around a troll's legs and constrict hard enough to drop something twice my size. Bular was fast, strong, and merciless, but he wasn't the smartest in mindfulness.
Holding the new weapon in hand it seemed to sag just like rope despite the clearly thick wires. It made sense, it almost was to fast for forging though I did wish it was harder like it was previously.
The moment I spoke the living metal held the very shape I wanted seconds ago, coiled tighter, and taut. It held for maybe three seconds but The moment my attention drifted to check the weighted ends, the whole thing slackened in my hands like a rope going limp, as if it had simply decided I wasn't worth listening to anymore.
Woah it was still cool if it only happened once.
But I tried again and a similar result occured. The metal didn't fight me, but this time it seemed to not care as much to hold firm, The only difference from my previous attempted though was my expectation and maybe the slight lack of awareness more focused on future applications than the present. It seemed like the material knows what you want from it but required absolute focus like a wish. I doubted anyone could hold such a focus in battle for an extended amount of time, not to mention with a few tests id figured out it only had the strength of regular steel, and alough it held its exact firmness and shape you left off with it when you let go for a bola it was almost useless, like throwing a solid beam or throwing a rope that wouldn't harden unless touched again.
I scrapped the bola in my head before I'd even set it down. It wasn't terrible but the applications of it wouldn't play out in a real fight.
So I began building something else instead, I started with a random pair of boots I'd never wear. I installed a metal strap and steal plate and inserted stitched thick fabric along the sole. I then attached the metal folded into a curve assuming it worked and I measured properly the metal could easily be inserted into the gap I left the toes. By the time I was done, they didn't look like much. They looked like boots with a slight exo skeleton and a curved piece of metal blocking you from stepping on the floor.
I tested them anyway, dropping ten feet onto stone from a workbench ledge, and felt almost nothing travel up through my shins. It worked, and I assumed it'd work as a speed boost as well.
But still it was pretty useless in the grand scheme but a nice play test of the living metal.
Boots weren't going to stop Bular. I already knew that even as I was building them, that was enough stalling on the thing that actually mattered.
I'm smaller and physically weaker than any troll warrior.
But I knew that since Toby picked up that amulet, no even before in both life and I was getting real tired of hearing it in my own voice. I threw the boots aside, and reached for a fresh sheet of parchment instead of another material. If my hands weren't going to get it right yet, I'd need to think this through on paper until they did.
More hours went by. And it was already 6:30 by time I'd checked my phone.
past the sketches, and crossing out a dozen half-formed ideas, my eyes landed on the memory of the Horngazel sitting in another room—the sunstone key Vendel trusted blinky to carry between worlds. I knew what it could do. Open a portal between Trollmarket and Arcadia, holding a connection between two places that power, It was the kind I wanted to replicate.
I wasn't trying to build my own Horngazel. I wasn't delusional. But if something that size could bend the world open on command, there had to be a principle in there I could ste— borrow from, something smaller, more violent, but built on the same idea. If I could pull even a fraction of that into a weapon, I wouldn't need muscle to win a fight against Bular. I'd need to be smarter than him, and I already believed I was.
The Horngazel was clearly made from heartstone so I began with that.
I placed it inside and began working the heartstone but it turned into its own fight. The tongs I was using melted on my second attempt to flip it—actually melted, the tips sagging like wax before I even got the alloy fully liquid—and I had to flag down one of the troll smiths to grip the crucible for me while I worked, his hands built for heat mine weren't. I burned through two more workbenches trying to hammer it before I gave up on stone entirely and managed with assistance to drag a slab of packed dirt over from a corner of the forge, figuring raw earth might take the heat better than anything carved or worked. Unfortunately It didn't fix the real problem. It just meant I stopped destroying furniture while I failed.
I carved a handle out of what stone I had left and poured the molten alloy in, expecting, no more hoping—it would hold the way the Horngazel held its own heat, contained, safe, exactly like Vendel's had for who knew how many centuries.
It didn't, ooof course.. The stone scorched black in seconds, cracked down the center with a sound like a gunshot, and the heat came straight through my hand before I could drop it. I swore, shook my hand out, and stared at the ruined handle smoking on the dirt lucky that the debri didn't spray in my eyes.
Completely lost I went to look At the real Horngazel, sitting heavy in my bag, I pulled it out, turned it over under the forge light, and saw it properly for the first time, thin lines etched into the stone around the base, faint, easy to miss unless you were looking. They were more Runes like on the furgalator.
I see so it wasn't the stone holding the alloy. It never had been. whatever was carved into it protected the stone and allowed for the heartstone to do it's job of making the portal.
turning the Horngazel over and over, I sat thinking watching the light catch each groove.
Attempting to solve a magic problem with a common answer, and the more I turned it over, the more obvious it became that no amount of clever hands was going to close that gap tonight. Maybe not for a while.
Blinky was two stations over giving me room, animated as ever, gesturing with all four hands at something one of the younger smiths had made.
I didn't know how to solve this issue and doubted blinkly did either. What I needed was some air
I walked past, offering a tired half-wave when he called out, "Master Jim! Making progress, I trust?"
"Getting there," I said,
"Good, good—rest if you need it! Genius rarely arrives on command," he called after me, already turning back to whatever he'd been abserving before. I appreciated it, but I still had to figure things out.
I pocketed the Horngazel and walked the corridor to the portal alone, opening it myself with a twist that was already natural in my hand, and stepped through into the cool night air of Arcadia.
My head was still half in the forge as I pulled my bike back up to the road, Turning the electronic on I searched the streets, cataloguing every hardware adjacent store within biking distance for anything that might of use I had to make the best use of what money I did have
BBZzzzzzz..Bzzzzz..
Toby?
"—JIM! I swear! it's happening, with the Draal thing settled I'm basically cleared, homecoming's gonna be insane, you have to come, I don't care if you have to fight off an army of trolls that night, you're coming—"
"Toby, I'm kinda—"
"Also, side note, I just watched the wildest traffic stop like two minutes ago, this guy tried to peel out and the cop just—" he made a sound effect I couldn't begin to describe, "—and I was standing there like, should I do something? Should Tobias James Domzalski step in? Shield, cape, the whole thing?"
I almost laughed. Would've, if my brain hadn't just snagged hard on the police.
Trolls had strength. Toby had the amulet. But nobody handed humanity magic or muscle to make up the difference when we were outmatched yet here it clear we are still on top—we just built something meaner than magic instead. Powder and a spark. The oldest trick in the book, I'd thought of it but I was so busy trying to bend heartstone and living metal into submission that I hadn't even considered just doing the human way, normally it wouldn't work on a troll but with what they have down there, all I needed was ideas that where already fully formed and considered powerful nowadays and make them stronger.
"Toby, you're brilliant," I said, already turning back toward where I'd left my bike.
"I—wait, what? What'd I say? Jim—Jim, Hello are you going—"
I hung up, I was already moving and had to stay focused on drafts, because if I stayed on the line I'd waste thirty seconds explaining instead of doing, and thirty seconds felt expensive all of a sudden. I swung onto the electric bike and pushed it faster than I probably should've through streets that were thankfully empty, straight for supermarket on the edge of town near a highway, it was already nine and soon they'd be closing, running list of the list of niter charcoal and sulfur in my head of exactly what I needed and how much.
I was back through the portal inside the hour, the bag heavier than it looked, hands moving faster than my thoughts could keep up with. The Furgolator's runes lit soft blue as I fed the corned powder circular slabs in it, watching the door close around it, until what came out the other side was a dense, stable little disc core no bigger than a penny.
I paired it with the lightest of Blinky's gathered materials, barely thicker than sheet metal, and built the whole thing around a hinged plate that ran from my knuckles to my forearm. Piston seated. Trigger mechanism routed along the inside of my wrist. When I finally tested it—flexed my two middle fingers I felt the mechanism catch and release with a hard, controlled hiss—the plate shot forward with a force that would've put a dent clean through the workbench if I hadn't braced it first.
It worked. All that was missing was the fuse. I already had other ideas running through my head I just had to figure out what would stick in real combat.
I stood for a second just watching the piston reset, listening to it cycle smooth and quiet, and let myself feel something close to pride.
The forge had gone quieter around me while I worked, most of the smiths turned in for the night, But I'd managed to build something that could hypothetically damage Bular, reuseable and without much cost since I bought in bulk. Still something In me didn't feel ready and I felt it all evening.
Could it be. Claire, and My mom.
I thought about what it'd look like to tell them and the trolls again, maybe even early. Really tell them not just a half-truth, trolls and Trollmarket and Bular and the fact that I'd spent my day and night build weapons. I thought about how Claire would probably lean in instead of pulling back, maybe, how she'd want to help the second she understood what was at stake, because that was just who she was. I thought about my mom finding out her son had been walking into a warrior's world every night and coming home like nothing happened.
They'd both at the very bare minimum want in or for me to quit. But that actually was the hard part—not that they'd be scared, but that they wouldn't be, just thinking about everything that happened to Claire and my mother filled a sort of terror in me more than anything Bular could do to me directly.
I turned the small gauntlet over in my hands, metal still warm from the forge, and made the decision.
I wasn't going to tell them.
I knew it wasn't exactly fair to them. But just thinking how so many people died against the titans..especially Tobes.
It also wouldn't be fair to take advantage of there kindness, the threat of death lurked and I already had been forced to allow Toby to be in danger.
I could live with the weight and challenge of defeating and saving people. I wasn't sure I could live with watching them carry it too.
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Next chapter, tommorrow or the next day