Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

19th of Cylus, Arc 721

Prae's therapist had recommended that he do something with his hands, create something tangible instead of destroying. 



He wasn't sure that this was what Hong had had in mind. But Prae couldn't just ignore the war happening around him, as much as he might like to. 



And fates, wasn't that just his luck, that he would walk right out of one war into another? There was a part of him that hated it, that wanted the world to simply calm down for a while and let him rest. But there was a larger, deeper part of him that was relieved to have something, anything to do. Contradictory as it was, it felt like being at war made him feel more at ease; fighting was something he was accustomed to, and he knew how to act and feel and behave.


Hmm.


Perhaps that was something to bring up in therapy. 



Still, however he felt about it, the war was here, and people needed help. When the fighting came, if it came, Prae would be right there on the front lines, but until then, there were more mundane tasks to be done. 



Shifting his grip on the hammer in his hand, Prae brought it down again and again on the short length of metal between his tongs, rotating it with every strike. As he did, the sharpened point of the nail began to take shape, narrowing and lengthening with every clang of metal against metal. 



Swords, shields and daggers were all very well and good, but things like nails and pots were what really kept an army afloat. Not that Scalvoris had much of an army, at least by Prae's standards, but still. These small, seemingly unimportant things were what needed doing, and there was something soothing to Prae about it all; the rhythm of his hammer falls vibrating through his hands and ears, the knowledge that he was making something that might later become part of a ship or a house or a wagon, the sense of anonymity he got from working in the crowded forge.



Prae was one of nearly a dozen volunteer blacksmiths, and for once, barely stood out, save for his height. He'd chosen to suppress his mutations to keep from attracting attention, his suspicion spark soothing the others until he looked almost normal again, save for the tail wrapped around his waist. 



"Behind." Someone called from the side, and Prae stepped closer to his anvil to let a human pass through. It was a little troublesome, working with so many people in close proximity, but given his size, Prae found that most humans detoured around him, unless they needed to get to a forge in a hurry. Stepping back after the man left, Prae resumed his hammering, only to find that his metal had cooled too much. Luckily, Prae had snagged an anvil near one of the coal forges, so all he needed to do was set down his hammer plunge the nail into the flames, and wait. 



Gauging the temperature of metal by sight was a lot harder than doing it by attunement, but Prae's attunement spark was far too busy Soothing his other sparks to help him here, so Prae was learning to do it the normal way. Too much heat and the metal might burn, too little and it wouldn't move. The latter was preferable and less permanent though, so Prae erred on the side of caution, pulling out the metal to test with his hammer as it grew hotter and hotter. It meant taking longer than he otherwise might have, but it was better to be safe than sorry. 


Prae had just finished another nail when someone approached from the corner of his vision. Starting, Prae nearly dropped the tongs in his hand to reach for his glaive, but stopped himself just in time. Still, he could feel his heart pounding in his chest, convinced that an enemy was sneaking up on him despite how ludicrous the idea was. Cursing his jumpiness, Prae turned slowly and deliberately, and found one of the more experienced smiths giving him an odd look. 



"All right there, Ithecal?" The woman asked. Prae nodded, and she gestured to a larger forge at the back of the shop. "We could use some of the stronger smiths to start making anchor chain. You ever made chain before?" Prae shook his head, and the woman shrugged. "Right, come on then. I'll give you a quick rundown."


It turned out to be surprisingly simple—Prae and two big, burly humans stood around and watched as the woman ran them through it. First, she took a rod of metal, and bent it into a U shape; then, she flattened the very ends until they were about half the thickness of the rest of the metal. Hammering the sides until the two flattened ends were laid over one another, she then heated the entire piece until it glowed, then hammered at the overlapping ends until they were welded together. The result was a link of metal in the vague shape of a tear drop, with a point where the ends were joined and a curve on the other side.


"There's a couple of steps after this, but we'll deal with those later." The woman said gruffly, wiping sweat from her brow. "For now—" she gestured to a box full of metal rods "—get all of those welded closed."


The process was simple, but Prae soon discovered why she'd picked out the biggest, strongest smiths to make these. The iron bars were thick, and even glowing red hot, took a great deal of strength to bend. Still, Prae found himself relishing the challenge; first, he used the tongs to keep the bar steady, half of it hanging off the end of the anvil. Hammering on the part without anything underneath, the bar slowly bent right along the middle, where it touched the anvil's edge. 



Once Prae had the metal at a right angle, he shifted tactics. There was a hole on one end of the anvil specifically for this purpose—sliding one end of the bent metal bar into the hold, Prae used his tongs to hold it still, and started to hammer at the other end, bending the bar even further until it was very roughly in the shape of a U. It was fairly rough—Prae hadn't quite estimated correctly how much of the bar would make up the bend, so it was really more of a J shape than anything else. But that was easily fixable. Flipping it upside down so both ends were facing down, Prae started to hammer down on the curve at a slight angle, shifting the metal even further until the two ends of the bar were more or less level. 



By this time, the metal was down to a dull red, and Prae set it back into the forge to heat up again. Once it was hot enough to move, Prae placed just the ends of the metal on the anvil, and started to flatten them down. This took a little more time than expected—evidently bending a long piece of metal was easier than squishing it—but eventually, Prae got the ends to the requisite thickness. Easy, if tedious.



Overlaying them properly on top of each other was another matter entirely. Bending metal with a hammer was imprecise enough, never mind when you could only manipulate it with tongs. It took a great deal of fussing for Prae to get them to even overlap properly, never mind aligning them. After some time spent fruitlessly trying to get the metal into place, Prae looked up and around, trying to see if the others were having any better luck.


The other two smiths who'd been conscripted with him seemed more familiar with the process than Prae was—one had already finished his first link and had moved on to the next. But the other one was just finishing up the stage Prae was at, making just a few final corrections. To his surprise, Prae saw she had stood the link on its side, and was using the flat of the anvil as a sort of guide. 



Giving it a try, Prae found it made aligning the ends much easier, but made keeping a hold of the metal itself a little more difficult. Prae cursed under his breath as he dropped the metal, picking it up with his tongs and trying again. His second try was much more successful, and soon he had the two ends on top of one another, more or less. 



Throwing it back into the fire, Prae waited this time for the metal to start glowing white before taking it out. This part required very little finesse on his part—he simply needed to get the metal hot enough, and then hammer the ends together. This part was the most strenuous, the combination of extreme heat from the metal and the exertion of trying to smash two thick pieces of metal into each other making him pant. If he were human, he thought, he would surely be sweating as much as the other two smiths, each nearly dripping with liquid. 



Still, it was over mercifully quickly, as the two ends quickly fused to a point. Stretching, Prae took up the half finished link in his tongs, and set it down besides the one the more experienced smith had made. Then, he turned back to his anvil, and the bucket of metal rods still unbent. One down, fates only knew how many to go.