Chapter Text
The weight of the hammer weighed on his arm.
Hot sweat mixed with powdery soot to form an irritating paste that managed to creep everywhere and made each blink sting painfully, even under the visor of his goggles. Wiping his eyes was even more ill-advised as his gloved hands and bare arms were caked in the stuff, courtesy of the roaring flames constantly stoked hot enough to melt iron.
It was one of the very first things hammered into his memory - the fires in the forge must never fade.
Each rhythmic shudder and ring of steel on steel sent reverberations through his weary, numbed arm and jarred his teeth. Each methodic strike slowly shaped the seething, malleable mass before him, blow by blow, from a searing hot ingot of metal into the shape of something new.
Tongs replaced the hammer, noise turning to sizzling and popping, boiling gushes of steam as the hot metal was quenched in a great vat of oil. It bubbled and roiled angrily as its temperature rose, spitting boiling globs of grease onto his stained apron and the floor. The boy winced as a searing drop touched his arm, one that he was quick to flick away. It would be another to add to the fading burn marks that adorned his skin like so many tattoos.
He set the tongs down and reached for a jar of ointment. Perhaps, if he was lucky, his father would pay for the services of a cleric this week.
Amidst the din, the tinkling of a bell rang.
“OI, NIKOL! CUSTOMERS OUT FRONT!” The deep, hoarse voice made its roar known even above the ringing din of hammers.
“Y-yes, Master!” The boy shouted back. Ash-covered apron tossed aside, goggles removed and a rudimentary, fruitless effort to make himself look ever so slightly more presentable, he hurried towards the one source of natural light in the room - the doorway to the store-side of the forge.
The sun hit him in the face like a blinding flashlight. As he blinked the spots out of his eyes and resisted the urge to rub them with his hands, faint outlines of people came into view.
A group of four. Dust from the road clung to their clothes and coated the surface of their bags, but it didn’t stop the light from gleaming off the assortment of weaponry and armor they wore. Similar people like these weren’t uncommon visitors to the store, but just the way they carried themselves conversely made the boy fidget nervously. “W-welcome to the M-Molten Core, how can I h-help you?”
The largest one stepped forward, removing his helmet to reveal the face of a middle-aged man with a blonde flop of hair, shield on his back and sword belted to his waist. “Hello, boy,” they greeted him evenly. “Where’s Forgemaster Mott?”
“H-he’s in the back, working o-on a new helmet.” Nikol managed. The man loomed over the counter and him alike, the shadow he cast stretching across the entire floor. “C-can I help you, s-sir?”
“Well, I’m looking to get this fixed.” A hand reached into his bag and retrieved a suit of chainmail. Its surface was charred, rings of steel blackened from some flame, buckled or conspicuously missing entirely. “And while that’s going, I need something to replace it.”
Nikol felt the weight of the armor as it passed from the man’s hands to his; the heft and quality of its construction, where parts would have to be mended or replaced entirely, the task of forging and linking circles of metal into chains playing in his mind.
“Y-yes, of course, that’s no problem at all,” he replied. Setting the armor and the thought of mending it aside, he gestured to the shelves and mannequins set haphazardly around the room, each donned with its own set of metal armor, no two alike. “As f-for your replacement, please f-feel free to look around. Every piece of our work is crafted in-house, and w-we can guarantee its q-quality.”
Nikol couldn’t help but feel like the woman in the back, wearing a holy symbol around her neck, was studying him intently, and it made him tremble. He couldn’t bring himself to meet her intense eyes for more than a second or two, and it seemed like an eternity before he could breathe a sigh of relief as she nudged the lady in green next to her and turned to look at something actually for sale.
“Oh, I’m sure anything in here’s gonna be better than that previous set of mail,” the man replied easily. “Darn thing couldn’t even protect my ribs from a simple spear thrust.”
A sharp bark of laughter from the smaller, more slender man inspecting a pair of knives in the corner. “Sure it wasn’t just your pair of left feet, giving up the ghost at the right moment?”
Dismissing his jab with a wave of his gauntleted hand like he was swatting an arrow, the larger man lifted a set of half plate off its mannequin with ease and set it down on the counter. “Nice piece of steel you got here. Forgemaster’s work?”
“Um, t-that one was made by m-me…” The days of work and sweat and effort were still as fresh as a newly forged ingot in Nikol’s memory. He could see clearly each strike of his hammer where it had pounded out the gentle curvature of the breastplate, the wavy overlapping patterns left by the oil quench as the finished armor rose from its bath, plates of tempered steel fitting seamlessly over one another like puzzle pieces. It had been one of his hardest works to forge, and one of his proudest moments when his master displayed it in the store.
The blonde man guffawed, though he looked more incredulous than amused. “A scrawny little thing like you? Those twigs you call arms barely look like they can lift a hammer!”
“No, look closer. His arms - they’re scarred. Burn marks. Across both his arms.”
Unlike the tall armored man, Nikol didn’t have to crane his head up to look at the elf in green that had silently approached while they were talking. Long braided brown hair and serene amber eyes blinked at him with a gentleness that put him at ease despite her sudden appearance, like a small doe emerging from behind a tree in the wilderness.
“I can’t wear steel armor or use metal tools,” she said softly, “my creed prohibits it. But even so, I can feel the care you’ve put into your work - the dedication to your craft. I think what you’re doing is wonderful.” She gave him a small smile.
Her words and gestures made Nikol oddly mollified and flustered. As he stuttered red-faced over his thanks, the blonde man cleared his throat. “So, how much for the half plate?”
“T-that’ll be 750 gold pieces, s-sir.”
Nikol regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. The man frowned, and Nikol swore his hand twitched towards his sword belt. He leaned forward. “That seems a bit steep to me. Any chance of toning that down a bit?”
“I-I…”
“ HOY! IS THIS HOW YE TREAT AN OLD FRIEND? FLEECING ‘EM OUTTA MONEY AT THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY?”
The loud ringing and banging of hammers had left his master partially deaf, and his deep, tone-deaf voice echoed loudly through the room as the stout, greying-hair dwarf marched through the doorway to the forge, head to toe in soot and steel shavings and Moradin knew what else was stuck in his beard. In his hand he gripped a comically large hammer, which he pointed haft first at the man.
“GLADIUS, YE LOUSY SKANK,” he boomed. “YE KNOW EVERYTHING IN ‘ERE’S WORTH TWICE AS MANY GOLD PIECES AS THE SHODDY WORK ELSEWHERE. IF YE DON’T LIKE IT, DOOR’S THAT WAY.”
Nikol couldn’t have been more glad of his master’s timing. Despite their absurd height differences, the dwarf didn’t seem the least concerned about the man - Gladius - at all. “Come now, Mott,” Gladius groused good-naturedly, the smile returned to his face, “had to at least give it a try, no? No offense meant to the quality of your works, of course. Nor to your apprentice’s,” he added after a short pause. “...though I wasn’t aware you had an apprentice.”
“Nikol?” The dwarf looked up at him. There was the smallest gleam of affection in his eyes. “‘E’s my son.”
“Your son?” That incredulous tone was back.
“Ye got a sword to forge, boy.” Without looking, Mott pointed at the forge with his hammer. “Go finish up while I chew the ear of old acquaintances, ye hear?”
“Yes, master.” Nikol knew when his father wanted him out of earshot, and hurried back into the other room, reaching for his tools once more. The conversation started up again in the other room, but he paid it as little heed as that droplet of oil on his arm.
They were adventurers, destined to find glory or die trying. He was just a humble smith’s apprentice.
Their paths should never intersect again.