Chapter 36 – Hooke and Tangle

Havoc fought a war, Lillia was occasionally called over to hold something. When the bloodfang had started screaming, Lillia thought the worst of it was over.

She was wrong, at least for Havoc. That much was clear now.

“Havoc. I name you my champion.”

Havoc took a breath before getting back to work. Burns along his arms settled back into skin as Lillia’s skill healed what the fire had done. The first steps of the forging process had taken effort, but as it had gone further the crafting process had begun to fight back against Havoc.

Flares of heat. Blasts of steam. Screams of twisting metal. Havoc pushed through it all and only asked Lillia for help when she felt like she should have stepped in long before.

Lillia didn’t need more convincing that Havoc was tough, but to his credit, he screamed less than Lillia did through the process.

Havoc put his hand deep into the forge and held it there for a moment. His muscles tensed as he molded something within. His back was drenched with sweat that ran down carved muscle.

He grunted. Tore his hand from the flame. A black ball of shifting ichor splashed down into the shallows and hit the stone with a resounding thud.

Lillia flinched toward it. Havoc held up a hand.

“Let me finish my work.”

The arm he’d shoved into the forge was, once again, trying to pull itself together with Lillia’s blessing, but there wasn’t enough magic left. The orange skin stayed burned and raw as grabbed the orb off the floor. Steam poured off it as he pulled it from the water.

“Havoc, are you—”

“No, but let me finish this.”

He dropped the orb onto the anvil and it landed with a dead thud. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths as he let his injured arm hang limb beside him.

“Lillia,” Havoc said.

“It’s on cooldown—”

“Just hand me one of the hammers I gave you. Won’t you?”

Lillia held her hand out to Havoc and the hammer popped into existence in her palm. Each time she pulled an item from her inventory it seemed to emerge with less fanfare than the last.

She took it by the head and offered the handle to Havoc. The importance of that coming from a princess was lost on him.

Havoc raised the hammer high. It was smaller than the one that the dungeon had offered him, but it was his. His fingers fit in grooves they had worn in the handle over time. The leather wrap was scuffed to match his habits and patterns.

Both the thunderous boom of the blacksmithing skills and Havoc’s strength echoed out through the room. A ripple chased after the sound on the surface of the water.

CLANG.

The sphere stretched out, covering move of the anvil.

CLANG.

It morphed, one side staying straight on the other curved.

CLANG.

A brilliant flash. Lillia shielded her eyes. Havoc stared into it.

The room itself seemed to sizzle.

The air around them held its breath.

The Hearth simmered.

The mote of light on the anvil morphed again. It stretched out and wove itself into several forms, like it had spun and wheel and was waiting for it to land.

Havoc struck down with the hammer one last time and the light stabilized into a void, and then sparks, confetti and fanfare shot into the air.

Lillia stumbled backward, but managed to catch herself before falling into the pool.

[Item Created – Yay!]

Lillia shook the spots of of her eyes and looked at the weapon on the anvil. There was a sword on it now. Or at least, it was closest to a sword.

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She knew what a longsword looked like, after all, it was what the knight’s used at the tournaments. She knew what a foil looked like, older men wore them when they began to complain that proper steel looked ‘bulky’ on them.

This didn’t look like any of the blades Lillia know. It looked dangerous, less like something make to parry and deflect and more like something made to cut. The entire blade followed along the curve of the bloodfang and claw before jutting in sharply at the end in an almost hooklike spike of metal.

Havoc rested his good hand on the hilt of the blade. Steam erupted from his grip, all of the heat was coming from his fingers.

Lillia flinched at the hiss, and then at the state of Havoc’s other arm. She reached out. Havoc pulled slightly away. She lowered her hand.

“There,” Havoc said through gritted teeth. “A sword.”

Lillia had a lot of points on the tip of her tongue about the state of the sword. Namely that it would have turned all of the wrong heads in court. Barbaric was the word. She swallowed all of them.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine.”

Lillia looked at Havoc’s mostly limp arm. She didn’t want to think about what any of those burns would be like within a day. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

“All right,” Lillia said. Then, ignoring his commentary, she held out a hand. “I name you my champion again.”

The soothing rosegold shimmered over Havoc’s arm. He tried to shake it off, but winced as he did.

“Said I was fine.”

“Then that won’t make a difference, will it?”

Lillia reached for blade, it took Havoc a moment, but he relented. He let his hand fall off and then used it to support his other side.