Chapter 55: Forging.

The world became nothing but white. Heat rolled over me, and beneath the burnt metal there was something sharp, almost sweet. My hands came up to shield my eyes. I never finished the motion. Weight hit me from the side. The stone of the corridor was cold against my back. The weight on top of me was not.

Ash was braced over me. One arm lay across my chest, pinning me down. The other was planted on the stone beside my head. Her body covered mine completely -shoulders, torso, hips. I could feel the ridge of her collarbone through both our tunics. Her hair had fallen forward and the ends of it brushed my cheek. The light faded and the corridor settled. It took a few seconds for the ringing in my ears to thin into silence.

Ash’s face was very close. Close enough that I could see the grey at the edges of her blue eyes. Close enough that I could feel the breath against my mouth. The Ember Core hummed. Or perhaps that was something else entirely. Ash’s eyes found mine. “Are you okay?”

“Perfectly. This,” I said, and my voice came out lower than I intended, “is not one of those times where I require assistance.”

Ash held still for one more breath. Her eyes widened. She looked down at me, as if she herself was only just now seeing where we were and what she had done. Then she nodded, once, and rose more quickly than the motion demanded. The weight lifted. She extended her hand. I took it and rose. I did not need her help. She would need my help far more than I needed hers, would danger arise. I did not say any of this. The warmth lingered somewhere around my cheeks.

Behind us, Edda was pressed flat against the wall. Alisa was crouched with both hands over her face, which was the least dignified pose I had witnessed from the girl. I filed this away for future leverage.

From inside the room, we heard a woman’s voice, very sharp and very angry. “I told you the metal isn’t ready yet! You cannot force it!” We peered through the doorway. The Atelier was unlike any room in the Academy.

The walls held color, and entirely too much of it. There were carvings that wound along almost every surface in shapes I could only half recognize. Sculptures stood in alcoves along the far wall. Between them hung portraits, though portraits was perhaps generous. Some were paintings, depicting people I did not know. Others were sweeping landscapes I had never seen.

One caught the eye. It was a portrait of a great spiralling city built under a massive skeleton, each bone as long as a hill. The shape of that skeleton looked…very familiar.

In the room, there were four sections of stone benches stretched across the floor. On every table sat pale, fist-sized lumps of some material that glimmered in the light. Most of the benches had students, and all of the students were ducking. Several had their arms over their heads. One boy at the front bench had his face pressed flat against the table.

The Inker -for only she could have been the Inker- stood at the center of the room, where the arrangements of the benches had left a circular gap between them. Currently, she was standing close to one of the benches, looming over a child flinching. The Inker was tall. She would have been tall even as a man. She stood more than a full head above me. She was thin. Her height made her look more tree than woman. Her hair was a long and deep blue, falling past her shoulders.

Blue. A darker shade of blue than Edda’s, but still a colour no human would have. This woman was a demonblood.

“You cannot force a shape,” the Inker said. Her voice was soft, and somehow sharp all the same. A pale boy flinched before her, ducking behind the table. “This is the most basic of basics. If you try to force a shape again, I will have you thrown out of my class.”

The boy was nodding furiously. So furiously that it was unclear if he was agreeing, or if his neck had simply broken.

Ash leaned close to me, “Didn’t think we’d see an Inker like this. I thought they were all human.”

I nodded. I had seen my kind cower in the lower tiers of Koralis. I had seen children with nubs for horns who would not raise their eyes from the dirt. I had dug a grave for a demonblood girl no older than Sara, and the soldiers had cursed me for the asking.

The Inker turned and saw us for the first time. Her gaze moved over Ash briefly, as if she were no more remarkable than anyone else. Then it found me. It stopped on my horns. I almost thought I saw the woman sigh. This one stood a full head above a room of humans, and did not bow to a single one of them. She had loomed over a human boy, and it was the boy who had flinched. I found I did not mind the sight.

“Well,” the Inker said. “It seems today is a rather exciting day for us all.”

We sat together at one of the benches. My legs protested faintly as I lowered myself onto the seat. Odd. The ache was faint, nothing like the Ember Core, but it was there now. Was this what Ash had warned me about? I would not give her the satisfaction. Edda sat to Ash’s other side. Alisa sat on the opposite bench. She had looked at us as she’d sat down. She remained inscrutable.

The Inker appeared in front of us. She set two of the pale lumps on our table, one before each of us. “Now, what do you two know of forging? This is my first time seeing you, but people often have some idea before they walk in.”

Ash answered. “We know very little. Only that you shape metal into things with Essence.”

The Inker’s nose curled. She glanced sidelong at Edda as if this were her fault, and sighed. “That description is rather… pedestrian.” She tapped the pale lump in front of me. “There is a class of metals and ores that are reactive to Essence. Reactive to Essence beyond just the physical. This is Chalkiron, the most common of these metals.” She straightened to her full and considerable height. “Essence Forging is not the art of shaping metal into what one wishes. That is a common and unfortunate myth. When you forge with Essence, it is the metal that forges itself to what a person is.”

She looked between us. “The process is simple. You will channel Essence from your marks into a material. You will follow where the mark leads you, not where you wish it to go.” She glanced across at the boy she had been berating earlier. The boy looked at her and flinched.

“You will not try to force it. Even if you do succeed -and some people do succeed- the result is never as good as if they’d simply listened, instead of demanded. At Line you will only have access to Chalkiron, but there are dozens if not hundreds of materials, some so rare few have ever seen them. They all have their own little quirks, but the fundamental principle remains the same. You may practice. Try not to ruin too many of these pieces, please? And do not forget what I have told you both.”

She turned and walked away. It seemed that was all for this instruction, such that it was. She was already moving to another student, one whose pale ore was vibrating so quickly on her desk it almost fell off the edge before she caught it. “What did you d-“

I turned from them and stared at the Chalkiron. I touched it with my fingertips. It was warm, warmer than it should be. On my right, the Requiem hummed cold. On my left, the Cradle hummed warmth. The red and green Lines both pulsed, once. “How curious,” I murmured. Something stirred beneath the surface of this thing, a buzzing so faint I half believed I had invented it.

Ash picked up her own piece, turning it in her hands. “There wasn’t anything like this before.”

She was right. I had known every ore worth knowing in my age. I had razed mining outposts and salted Dwarven veins to keep lesser metals than this from enemy hands. I had never seen this Chalkiron before. Curiosity had always been my sharpest hunger. It woke now, and it was ravenous.

“I already know what I want,” I said.

Ash looked at me. “I have decided.” I sat straighter. “It shall be a blade, one that is a mix of black and white. Perhaps not as long as my former blade, but no less impressive.” I paused. “I have even chosen a name for it: Blackstar, the Sundered Dawn.”

Ash stared at me. “Did you miss the part where she said you cannot force a shape?”

“Did you miss the part where another Inker said I cannot have the core I have now?”

The lightness left Ash’s face. “Yes,” she said, more carefully. “You do. And… I can feel what that costs you.”

The Ember Core ground in answer as if to mock me. I contained the wince that came. “This will be different,” I said.

I held the chalkiron in both hands. I closed my eyes. I knew little of the [Blacksmithing] Classes in my time, but the principle had been simple. One knew what they were forging. One knew the exact materials it took. One knew the shape of their weapon before it ever settled into their hand. This task of forging and hoping one got something useful was ridiculous. Perhaps the people of this time believed this is how things ought to be. I did not.

I pictured Blackstar. In my mind, it was a wicked thing of black and white, running right down the middle of the steel itself. The pommel was a shifting black and white, each one breathing into the other. At the center of its hilt was a gemstone. A red gemstone, just like my eyes. Yes, that is a weapon fit for me. I channeled Bloom and Ruin through my palms as I clutched the Chalkiron.

Ten seconds passed. I opened my eyes. The chalkiron had not changed. I frowned, channeled harder and for longer, and opened my eyes again. The lump was gone, and in its place was a fine grey dust coating my palms and the table.

Beside me, Ash’s piece lay in a thousand tiny severed pieces, cut so fine they looked like metal sand. Ash stared at the pile. I stared at the dust coating my hands.

This book’s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“I… wondered if maybe I could do it too.”

I stared at her. The Hero, who told me not to force a shape, forced a shape. The look on her face was the look of a child I had seen in Hamel, one who had been caught by her mother just as she’d stolen sweets. It should not have made me want to smile. “We will try again,” I said.

Five lumps of chalkiron had passed through my hands, and not one of them had become a blade, or anything else. The second had become dust again. The third had crumbled in my fingers, rather than simply becoming dust. The fourth had slumped in my hands, sagging into a flat grey puddle. The fifth had hummed once, in a tone that was almost hopeful. It had then burst into a thousand tiny shards.

Perhaps the problem was the Requiem. I reached for the sixth lump, the one Inker Linde -someone had called her Linde- had reluctantly set in front of me. And because she was doubtless tired of bringing me more of this Chalkiron, she had set almost a dozen more lumps. Now, there was hardly room to move without knocking one over.

I did not channel Ruin at all this time, focusing only on Cradle. The Requiem was destruction. It made sense that one could not create with destruction. That was the problem. Perhaps I would not have Blackstar, but a gleaming white blade called the ‘Starblade’ would serve just as-

I opened my eyes. Where I had held the lump in my left, there was now only dust. The Cradle had just destroyed something.

These hands had unmade kingdoms. They had killed Gods. They could not coax a shape from a lump of ore. I had knelt in river-mud once, trying to make a vase, and Ash had told me to wet my hands. There was no water here that would help.

A Queen did not sigh. Did not slam her fist against a desk because she was annoyed. I wanted to anyway.

I looked to my side. Ash fared little better. There was a pile of cut stone in front of her, each cut so finely it was no thicker than my fingernail. The pile was almost large enough to obscure her from view, if someone were to look at her from the front. Ash reached for more Chalkiron. I did the same.

I scanned the room between attempts. The students at the bench next to ours shaped their chalkiron with much greater success. A boy produced something that looked like a hammer head. A girl coaxed a curved shape that might one day be a bow. The Inker moved from one student to the next.