Chapter 111: Love Letter From Holdna

On the day of their wedding, Holdna gave Ouroboros a feathered cape that allowed him to fly. In return, Ouroboros twisted himself into The Tower, so she would have something limitless to observe, explore, and hunt with her equally limitless gaze.

• Jason Salazar, Basalt Tavern

C’mon, finish your food, we’re on a deadline. Literally.

• William Oh

They didn’t get mobbed the instant they stepped into town, which was good. In Will’s imagination, the instant they set foot inside the town, an old crone pointed a wizened finger at him and began shrieking, then every retired Climber in the place attacked him like a rabid animal.

Reality was rarely so outlandish.

Nobody gave him and Jason more than a glance. Due to the massive amount of caravans using the town as a waystation, no one bothered themselves over a stranger.

Loth, though, had never even entered the city, instead breaking off to lay traps around the village to slow their pursuers and secure them an escape route.

Being a kobold in the center of an all-Graneshian town would probably end badly anyway.

They only had maybe a day before the army caught up with them. Will made a mental list of what he needed.

Soudough, Check.

Huge Reserve of deceiver ash, check,

A way to concentrate it…check.

In the center of the underground smithy buried in the mountain was a large, circular depression of shiny black stone in the ground that Will had personally witnessed being filled with ashes and used to bake new relics made of Blessed steel.

Ash placed in it began glowing with miasmatic power, swirling in place as though some invisible giant were stirring it, with brighter ash moving towards the center and dimmer ash lingering on the outside.

The Crafters working with it simply used a large shovel to scrape the outer edges of dull nonmagical ash as a helper poured new ash from a collection of monsters in, to create whatever blend of miasmatic ash the smith in charge wanted.

Once it was done refining, they scooped up the vibrantly glowing ‘good stuff’ into a wooden box, labeled it with the smith’s name and project, then scraped the entire thing clean, washing it out for the next crew.

Simple really.

It made sense that they had stored the Deceiver ash in a place that could use it. It also made sense that the Deceiver’s miasmatic ash hadn’t been used at all: Deceivers were taboo in Graneshian culture. That likely extended to making anything out of them or using anything with their Abilities.

So over time, nobody had wanted to use the Deceiver ash, and the urns just kind of…accumulated, taking up their own storage tunnel of the underground smithery.

Now, the last thing on my list: Will glanced down at the shortsword on his belt. It felt ungrateful to abandon his new sword…but he wanted what he wanted.

The last thing on my list is a good tomahawk.

“Excuse me,” Will stopped a pedestrian. “Where can I find a good weaponsmith?”

In a matter of minutes, Will and Jason walked into the shopfront of a smithy, glancing around.

It smelled of a typical smithy. Smoke, oil, wood. Portraits of women were placed on all four walls, even one above the door. They had large, expressive eyes, and they were totally out of place in a smithy.

The portraits were placed slightly offset from each other, so that one of the portrait’s eyes were dead center, opposite each other. It wasn’t something Will would have noticed without high Acuity and a suspicious mind.

Hmm.

The environs themselves were a little more disorganized than the other shops in town that will had scouted with Phantom Eye. There was a fair bit of clutter here and there, the weapons presented in a haphazard manner, as if they had been placed wherever the smith found a place for them between sales, rather than being organized by type or quality.

It was a far cry from the other smitheries in the city.

Each and every weapon on display was plain an unadorned…and entirely flawless.

Every person in the city had recommended this shop as the place to get high quality weapons, with a price to match. The rumor was that the smith would eventually put himself out of business, because every weapon he sold would still be in the hands of his customer’s grandchildren.

That was a good enough endorsement for Will.

The man behind the counter was reading some sort of trade magazine, smoking a pipe as Will entered. He grunted at the sound of the bell, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge Will’s presence.

Will scanned the shop, his gaze landing on a tomahawk hanging beneath the painting of a young woman against the east wall.

Will reached up and grabbed the tomahawk, feeling as though he was being watched from every direction. The painting above him had the faintest smirk.

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Hmm.

Will hefted the axe and swung it a few times.

It cut smoothly through the air, moving effortlessly, like it was made for him.

“Try’n steal it, L’cut your balls off,” the merchant rumbled around his pipe, his words slurring together through over-repetition.

“I’d like to buy this one,” Will said, placing the tomahawk on the counter in front of him.

“Get outta here kid, I don’t sell to Aspirants.” The man muttered without looking up from his magazine. “Waste of a good weapon on dead meat.”

“I’ll have you know that you are addressing the William Oh!” Jason said, stepping up to the counter with a thunderous expression. “The tamer of dragons, conquerer of leviathans, wooer of armies, and-“

Jason cut off when he saw Will’s expression.

The smith glanced up, his gaze stopping at the tomahawk before travelling up to Will’s face.

THWAP!

The magazine flew out of the man’s hand as he sat up bolt-straight, staring into Will’s face.

“Like the tomahawk do you?” He asked, eyes narrowed with suspicion. “It’s not a popular choice around here.”

“I’ve got a soft spot for them,” Will replied before he paused for a moment, thinking.

“…You don’t happen to have one like this that you can also use as a pipe, do you?” Will asked. He would need that if the ashes from the Tomahawk of the Serpent were to add the contract ability back onto his new weapon. It wasn’t necessary, by any means, but it was nice.

“So you’re the one, huh?” the shopkeeper asked, rising to his full height.

“…What?”

“Few years ago I got a burning itch to move up north to Basalt.” The grizzled shopkeep said, ducking behind his display and rummaging through the cabinets behind him, punctuating his speech with curses as he began digging through the cabinet, hauling one thing after another out of the way, aiming for something buried deep in the back.

“Aha!”