Rise of the Living Forge

Chapter 107: The Heart of the Crystal

The [Soul Flame] in the hearth beside Arwin danced merrily as it waited hungrily for more metal to heat. He was pretty sure that metal was just about the last material that a long bow should have been made out of.

Even if he was using Brightsteel, it was still magnitudes less flexible than wood, and he’d seriously underestimated one little problem. Arwin needed a piece of metal that actually wanted to be a bow.

Finding something that wanted to be a sword wasn’t hard. Armor, weapons, all of the normal things that metal was meant to be – that was easy. But a bow… not so much. It was like trying to find a child whose ideal future career was a pickler.

They probably existed somewhere, but chances were they’d need a little bit of motivation to get to that point. And that was exactly what Arwin did. He found the piece of Brightsteel that seemed most indifferent about its eventual form and spent about an hour going on about how fascinating bows were.

It was – quite literally – akin to talking to a brick wall. He had no clue if the metal could actually hear him. His reflection, warped in the face of the Brightsteel, spoke back to him as if mocking his words. Arwin pressed on. If something was stupid and worked, then it wasn’t stupid.

“Don’t tell the other pieces of metal,” Arwin informed his chosen piece, “but close-range fighting is actually a little boring. The real excitement is in blasting someone’s head off from a hundred meters away. Doesn’t that sound fascinating?”

The metal didn’t respond.

“Imagine how flexible you could be. Nice and bendy. That’s much better than being stuck as a stiff old sword. Who wants to be stiff? Nobody, that’s who. You could be raining thunder down on our enemies from two – no, three hundred meters away. Imagine that. What can a sword do in comparison?”

A whole lot of stuff, but that’s not the point. I am not going to start arguing with myself.

The metal rippled in the firelight. Arwin ran his hands over its smooth surface. A small smile pulled across his lips. Something had changed. The metal wasn’t as resistant as it had been before. Where there had been opposition there was simply nothing beyond a faint, dim sense of curiosity.

[Stonesinger] wouldn’t quite let Arwin speak to Brightsteel since it wasn’t a magical material. Fortunately, he was pretty sure he didn’t need it. He’d gotten his unspoken invitation. The metal was willing to play.

“Let’s see what we can do with you, shall we?” Arwin asked, bringing the Brightsteel over to the hearth and placing it within the flames. He picked up the piece of Maristeel he’d cleaned the previous day while he waited.

Its beautiful blue surface shimmered to his touch. Arwin was fairly certain it wasn’t magical. [Stonesinger] didn’t connect with it any more than it did with the Brightsteel. But, at the same time, the Maristeel was clearly more.

He’d fully expected it to be harder to convince this metal to do what he wanted than it had been to convince the Brightsteel, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. The instant Arwin’s attention brushed over it, he felt a sense of anticipation and approval coming from the metal.

It knew all the effort he’d gone through to clean and prepare it. Even though it seemed to have no desire to be a bow in particular, it hungered to be something. Arwin had taken it from scrap and returned it to glory. Now it was ready to return the favor.

I think I like this metal more than I like most people.

“Thank you. I’ll honor your gift,” Arwin promised the Maristeel. He placed it into the hearth and crossed his arms as he waited for everything to heat. His attention drifted to the Heart of the Devouring Prism while he waited.

It was dead – but there was no doubt that it was magical. Arwin had yet to try to communicate with it. He wasn’t so sure that he wanted to. The murals in the skeleton’s grave had painted a very vivid picture. It wasn’t a folly he longed to repeat.

“It’s not like I’ll be able to bring out your full potential if I don’t at least try to speak with you,” Arwin said to the crystal. “I guess that means I have no choice. I’m not settling for mediocrity. I need power. You want power. I think we can work together – but only as long as you let me lead.”

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The crystal rippled in his hands. Arwin’s eyes narrowed. The ripple hadn’t come from the dancing flames. It had come from within the crystal.

Dead my ass.

“If you want to speak, then speak,” Arwin said. “Just know that I’ll toss you aside if you try to betray me or hurt my allies. I want to work with you, but I don’t need to work with you. I won’t put them at risk.”

He sat down beside the hearth and focused his senses on the crystal. His eyes drifted closed as he waited to hear its response. If it didn’t give him one, the weapon would be impossible to make. He wasn’t going to take the risk.

I’ll have to smash the crystal apart and see what I can take from it. There’s no way I’m sticking the whole thing into a weapon until I know exactly what it wants.

A tendril of energy brushed across Arwin’s mind. It deepened and pulled at his mind. The temptation to resist was strong. He forced himself to relax. The only way he’d get anywhere would be if he spoke to the crystal.

Arwin opened his mind, and a vision flooded into it.

A sea of glittering green washed out before him. It was full of a deep, all-consuming hunger. A desperate hunger, one that could never be sated by any meal. It permeated every part of the crystal and sank deep into the earth.

There was no way to stem the hunger. The more the crystal ate, the more it hungered. An endless cycle that had no end or beginning.

Pain.

Hunger.

Pain.

Hunger.

Pain.

It swirled and intermixed like a viscous soup of agony. The crystal wanted more than anything to escape it, but all it could do was make it more intense. It couldn’t even remember the last time it had felt relief.

And, in the rippling green, Arwin saw himself. He saw his future, should he fail to succeed on the Challenge that the Mesh gave him. There would come a time where he couldn’t forge enough equipment to sustain himself.

If he couldn’t change his fate, he would become like the crystal, seeking out magic like a rabid dog and devouring it – just to find that the hunger had grown deeper still in the time it had taken him to swallow.

Visions of his future appeared hidden within the verdant ocean. Rabid and mindless, his teeth turned to jagged spikes and his hair overgrown. Eyes, sightless and starved, darted about like bees trapped within a cage.

The back of Arwin’s spine prickled at the intensity of the crystal’s anger. At its hunger – and at its fear. He set his jaw as the vision bore down on his mind and tried to crush his will.

“No,” Arwin said. He slammed the visions away with the force of his own will. “That’s not what’s going to happen to me. I will conquer the Challenge.”

The crystal shimmered around him. It was laughing. Arwin’s annoyance grew. [Stonesinger] let him communicate with magical materials. It hadn’t said anything about fighting back against them – but he wasn’t about to let that stop him. He threw the vision back, but he didn’t let the crystal free. He envisioned a different future and imposed it onto the glistening stones.

A future where he stood atop a cliff, clad in glistening armor that most could only dream of seeing. The roaring might of Verdant Blaze in one hand and a massive bow in the other. The Hungering Maw coiled within him, a snake that had been tamed and laid in wait for his beck and call.

Behind him was his guild, all clad in armor that he had made. Some of them had faces – Lillia, Rodrick, Reya, Anna. The others were faceless. They were the ones he hadn’t found yet, but they would come. He would not lose himself. There was too much at stake.

Arwin slammed his reality into the crystal like a hammer blow. It was the only reality he would accept, and a magical rock wasn’t about to make him change that. The Heart of the Devouring Prism shuddered in his grip.

It tried to push back. Perhaps it did – Arwin wasn’t actually sure. This was not a contest of power but a contest of will. And, no matter how strong the crystal had once been, Arwin would not be outdone.

“Yield,” Arwin snarled. “You will do as I say. I will forge you just like I will forge my future. Your only options are to bend or to break.”

The crystal struggled against him. It pushed fear and doubt. It knew that Arwin would fail. It –

“I will not fail!” Arwin roared. “Yield!”

The crystal’s vision shattered. It crumbled around him like planes of breaking glass and swirled into a green hurricane. A sea of black stretched out around Arwin as the crystal gathered. Across from him floated the Heart of the Devouring Prism.

Color bloomed from the darkness. Silver and deep blue metal gathered into the form of a bow; the Heart of the Devouring Prism carved into the bow’s grip. The vision faded. Arwin’s eyes opened.

He still sat on the ground in his rickety temporary smithy. The crystal rested in his hands, just as it had when he’d closed his eyes – and yet, even though all appeared identical to how it had been just a short while ago, it was everything but.

The Heart of the Devouring Prism had given to his demands. It would be the heart of his bow. A smile split Arwin’s lips and he rose to his feet. The metal in his hearth was glowing a warm orange, ready to be forged.

There was nothing left in his way. Every part of his bow awaited to be forged. All that remained was to put it together.

“I won’t let you down,” Arwin promised the Heart as he took the Brightsteel from the hearth and set it onto the anvil. “Even if you never found a cure for our condition, I will. I’ll find it for both of us, and you’ll be at my side. Turn that hunger into drive. Channel it into determination to succeed. Determination to take down everything in our path. And, with your help, I will claim everything that you could not.”

Let your hunger add to mine, for no matter how much you starved, it is nothing in comparison to my desires. My own hunger eclipses any primal instinct that you could ever contain. I hunger for more than just food and power and survival.

I hunger to live.