Michael Chatfield
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Four Horsemen: Chapter 29
🕑 Added 2023-11-22 12:00:05 +0000 UTCChapter 29:
Valter dropped his smithy’s orb onto the ground, it grew as he stepped into it, knowing where everything was like a second limb.
Or anointed armor.
The hearth was still warm as he took out the spell scroll. A simple thing, red and blue glyphs covered the surface of the scroll within its glass casing. The Exterior showing condensation.
Valter cracked the spell casing against the hearth.
Runes flew out like a storm of butterflies from their cocoons. They stretched and wrapped around the inside and exterior of the heart, laying upon it and burning into the stone.
The glyphs turned red as the exterior of the hearth became cool.
The runes flared as one and settled, dimming till they were little more than black etchings in the surface of the hearth. Valter reached into it, passing through the opening it was like crossing an invisible doorway.
His mana rumbled in his veins as he drew his hand back to pull out the Arcane Heating Stone. He placed it within the hearth. Then took out the second part of the stone, a smaller runed stone, near identical to the first.
He kneeled, taking out chisel and hammer, carving out a notch into the stone floor of the smithy before placing the runed stone down.
He ran his hand over, feeling it flush with the floor, the runes along the side hidden.
“Lets be seeing what you can do now.”
He put his foot on the embedded stone and stood. He drove mana through his foot, watching the hearth.
The runes around the stone inside glowed and the air shimmered. He reached his hand in, feeling the heat climb.
The burnt out runes on the hearth started to glow, like embers given fresh breath.
They grew in brightness as the heat climbed.
Take some stone throw it in, heat them up like coals then can bury the metal within.
He took out stone and threw it into the hearth.
He reached his hand in, a grin spreading across his face. “Getting nice and hot now.”
He turned to his workbench, putting his other foot on the embedded stone, to maintain a steady flow of mana. The stone would increase the temperature while the runes from the scroll would contain the heat generated.
Valter took out the Mithril ingots. Unlike steel, these ones had striations that shone more than steel would.
He took out a pouch of the shadow creature’s dust. It’d make the armor dark and allow them to blend into shadows passively. Followed by several small chunks of stone, he put it into a special vice, added a pole to the end of it, moving his feet to put them under two of the workbenches melded with the floor and heaved with his strength. Stone cracked and powdered, he reset the stone and repeated the process.
Adding mana to the arcane stone as he worked.
The crushed stone went through a selected grate under the vice, filling a box. He shook it, keeping it level as he cracked all of the stone.
“Just like with the steel.” He took the ingots, drawing out his cutting blade, its blazed with heat as he cut into the ingot, sawing it back and forth where it had cut steel with ease.
His grin only grew.
He held up the chunk he’d cut off and admired the Mithril striations running through.
“You’ll make a fine blade.” He took out a crucible, adding in a layer of the black stone and then the mithril, then another layer of the stone and put it into the hearth. Shifting the stones around to make it site properly. His brows rose as his hand went through. “Picking up some heat now.”
He studied the runes on the hearth. They’d be a good indicator for the temperature inside going forward.
Valter took out his apron and his hot and cold hammers, placing them on his belt. He set out his tools, a bucket of quenching liquid and kept up a slow feed of mana through his foot.
He took out the crucible, checking the metal within. He dipped a metal rod in the shadow’s dust and then into the crucible, mixing the metal within.
Hasn’t melted enough to combine.
Back into the hearth it went as he drew out the book on Mithril to re-read it again. The information was thankfully condensed to the necessities one would need to know coming from working with Steel. The last half section of the book going into specific information on Mithril.
He took out the crucible several times to check it till he was satisfied.
“Now the work begins.” He drew out the crucible, letting the metal cool, testing it with his tongs to make sure it was malleable but not to the point where it would wilt like it was rope.
“That’s workable.” The metal went on the anvil and the crucible returned to the side of the hearth. He drew his hammer and move the metal with the tongs in his left.
He tapped the anvil to set himself and brought it down on the metal. First he flattened the section that would be the blade nice and thin, leaving the handle section thicker, but flat on two sides. Then he shaped, then he gave it a rough edge.
“Back to the heat.” In it went till it was glowing hot again. He placed it down on a metal covered section of a workbench to cool.
The metal darkened quickly, drawing in the coming night’s shadows. He drew out sharpening stones and added oil to them.
Once cooled Valter worked the blade over the sharpeners, going from a rough edge to one that he could shave with. His back and shoulders ached by the time he was done.
Should see if there ain’t something to make that faster.
He ran the knife over the back of his hand, cutting the hairs there, before he clamped it into a vice. Checking the area was clear, most houses were dark now, his eyes, the same glow as his hearth darted around.
No patches of cold or heat that shouldn’t be there. A lifetime of secrets had trained him well. One slip was sure for him to become nothing more than an automaton like his brother anointed.
Valter drew his metal book and placed it on the worksurface.
He flipped through inscriptions, several pages on adding a heat imbued cutting edge. Different permutations and trials.
He drew a pencil, copying the inscription on the last page, onto the blade. He returned the book to his storage, taking out his runed steel chisel.
“Takes a heck of a lot of mana this work.” He took out a mana potion, swirling it and throwing it back. Grimacing at the taste of herbs mixed with salt and mud and something citrus that made his throat curl.
It spread throughout his body, empowering his core, and stimulating his mana channels to draw in more mana.
“That’ll do nicely.”
He stored it away, then checked the clamp before he applied chisel with hammer. Done on one side he worked on the other till the sides matched.
Valter undid the vice and drew the knife free. It was as black as midnight, even where he’d chiseled the runes. He moved it in his hands. Good balance, nice.
Mithril was stronger than steel but it was also more conductive to mana. Valter let out a thread of mana.
The metal made natural pathways for the mana to flow through! He wouldn’t have to worry about the striations nearly as much as he did with steel.
Making that spear is going to be much easier now.
He grabbed the knife with tongs and moved it into the hearth.
He heated it up near as hot as it would go and hold shape, then quenched it.
“Where did I put that?” Valter searched through his storage, taking out a pot of ‘boot polish’. “There you are.”
The lid had a brush attached to it that he applied the thick tar-like substance to the runes of the blade. It hardened with a flare of mana through it.
Valter sealed the ‘boot polish’ and stood, his back cracking as he stretched. With a flick he undid the vice and took out the blade.
It shimmered like a fin through the waves, mana lit the runes in the handle, hidden when he closed his hand around it fully. An orange and then blue light ran down the length of the blade. The heat didn’t come out of the sides, just contained to the very edge of the blade.
“Very good.”
He took out the shaved ingot the blade was made from, putting it on the side of the table and pressing the blade down. It went through like butter. The mithril chunk ringing against the ground.
A grin spread across his face, hard and slow, his eyes looked into the hearth.
His knuckles grew white from the pressure around his new blade.
A laugh, ugly and terrible grew in his chest, spreading through his stomach and out of his throat. In his mind he pictured Xander.
“You dare to defy me, you anointed in my heavenly armor!” He sputtered blood, confused by its very sight.
Valter felt his soul being torn apart, the section sworn to Xander had crumbled, the others falling away.
“A prison you made for the faithful, for your champions. A chain and leash to your will. Your sword to reap destruction and death upon others that do not bow to your banner. You are nothing but a coward that hides behind others too afraid to step on the battlefield for fear of losing your power. A glorified executioner. Killing those that surrender to increase your power. Leeching off of your faithful turned slaves.”
Xander screamed, his eyes swirling. “What have you done?”
Valter tore free his dagger from Xander’s core. The blade melting and shattering, falling to the ground.
“A god’s soul can reform I am told. But what if their soul is shattered? What if it is sealed?”
The pain burned through him, promising oblivion. He would never see his wife, his daughter ever again. But how many others would be saved?
“You can’t do this! I am a god!” Xander yelled, his body was becoming emancipated as pain twisted his features.
“And I am Valter!” He stood with his last strength, drinking in the fury, the anger, and then the fear as Valter raised his foot over Xander’s head. “The anointed that freed the Veldian Empire, that killed the so-called God who brought nothing but death with his rule. Fitting it should come for you too.”
“I will destroy you Valter! I will burn the souls of your family for all the essence and mana they have, I will leave them in agony!”
“Just die.” Valter slammed his foot down on Xander’s screaming face, popping it like overripe fruit as cracks radiated out of the stone.
Valter felt Xander’s soul being torn into hundreds of pieces, spread across the empire, through the seas, the rivers, to the small pieces of soul binding that he’d dropped on battlefields, sent across nations. Just a small taste of what he had suffered all this time.
The doors broke down as anointed stepped inside.
They slowed their steps, looking from Xander’s body to Valter.
“We’re-we’re free?”
One reached up with a trembling hand and grabbed his helm and pulled it off. It dropped to the ground with a hollow sound.
Others tore at their armor as Valter gathered the last of his power into his fist and drove it into Xander’s thrown. The gaudy creation of gold and gems shattered and collapsed over the hall.
“Fuck the God-Emperor.”
Someone was determined to bring back that creature. He would destroy him totally. No more breaking his soul. He would crush his very being.
Valter cut thin sheets of the ingot, layer them with the Hardening Stone and Shadow Dust inside crucibles and placed them into the hearth. He was going to need weapons and armor.
