Path of Dragons-Chapter 5Book 8: . Argon and Alloys

“It started out as a forge, and it ought stay a forge,” said Carissa, her hands on her hips as she glared at Carmen, who was studiously ignoring the dwarven woman. “There ain’t no debate ‘bout that. Callin’ it a temple or some such is just gonna get confusin’ to most people. Best keep it simple.”

In truth, Carmen agreed, but she didn’t want to admit it. Naming the Great Forge project had never been a task she’d found appealing, largely because her creative streak lay in blacksmithing methods and engraving, not in coming up with fancy names for buildings. Secretly, she hoped that the system would take care of the naming, just as it had with all of her other creations.

She looked up from her work with a sigh, saying, “You know I can barely hear you over the hammering, right?”

“You can hear me just fine.”

That was also the truth, though once again, Carmen refused to acknowledge that her friend was right. As much as she valued companionship: and she very much did: she mostly just wanted to be left alone, especially at that moment. With Miguel gone, she’d thrown herself into her work, and she wasn’t so self-delusional that she didn’t recognize it as a distraction from her worry. He’d yet to reach Argos and send a message back, but that wasn’t surprising. The other city was a long way off, after all.

Even so, a mother’s worry wasn’t always entirely rational. She knew Miguel could take care of himself. She’d watched him grow from a timid boy and into a talented fighter approaching: or by a lot of standards, reaching: manhood. Yet, that didn’t seem to matter when she imagined all the dangers he might face on the road.

Or in the future.

Because he hadn’t made any bones about how he intended to progress, throwing himself at towers and other dangerous situations in the hopes of gaining levels and system rewards. It wasn’t an uncommon attitude. Since the apocalypse, a whole class of people dedicated to that kind of thing had emerged. Adventurers, they called themselves, and there were even places where they’d organized into guilds.

It was easy to dismiss it as the madness of adrenaline junkies, but Carmen knew better than most that it was probably as rational a path as any other. After all, it wasn’t like the world was the safe place it had been before everything had changed. If a person wanted to survive, much less thrive, they needed levels. And for a lot of them, the only viable option was to become a combatant.

In that respect, Carmen was lucky. She had taken the Tradesman’s route, and for the most part, it had treated her well. It helped that she was, as far as she could tell, one of the most talented surviving Blacksmiths in the world. She could create things no one else in Ironshore: or probably anywhere else on Earth: could, and she’d reaped the rewards of that mastery.

In fact, in terms of levels, she’d managed to keep up with just about anyone else in Ironshore, though that was probably due to her manic work ethic and propensity to use her various projects as distractions from things she didn’t want to think about.

“Are you ignorin’ me again?” demanded Carissa.

Carmen sighed, then picked up the dagger on which she’d been working. Originally, she’d intended it as a gift for a woman she’d seen a few times in the past month, but in retrospect, that seemed a little forward. Relationships weren’t exactly her forte: even before the apocalypse: and it seemed that no number of levels were going to help her on that front.

“Do normal women like weapons as gifts?” Carmen asked, holding the dagger up to see if it was straight. It had picked up a slight warp during the quenching process, but she thought she could grind it out. If not, it would go back into the pile of products that simply didn’t meet her standards.

Of late, that stack of weapons and armor had grown out of control, and most of them had ended up getting recycled into more mundane tools.

“Depends on the woman,” Carissa answered. “That for that Baker you met a few weeks back?”

Carmen didn’t answer, but Carissa had become her best friend for a reason. So, her lack of a response was answer enough.

“Then that’s a no. What’s a Baker going to use a dagger for, huh?” Carissa asked.

Carmen shrugged. “Everyone needs a weapon for protection,” she reasoned.

“You’d have been better off buildin’ ‘er a better oven.”

“Ovens are boring. Weapons are far cooler.”

Carissa let out a long-suffering sigh. “You won’t get no argument from me on that front, but the fact of the matter is that most folks in this city won’t ever see a lick of combat. You’ve seen what Kurik’s been up to, ain’t ya? He’s got this place buttoned up tighter’n any fortress I ever seen. I pity the dark elf who tries to invade.”

“I don’t,” Carmen stated evenly. As far as she was concerned, the entire race of evil elves could rot. She knew that might not have been fair, given that just like every other race, they probably featured a wide range of personalities. But after seeing dozens of friends and acquaintances die in the last battle of Ironshore, she wasn’t really willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

“Yeah, me neither,” Carissa agreed. “But you didn’t answer my question. Did you settle on a name yet?”

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Carmen shook her head. “I’m kind of hoping the system does it for me.”

“Don’t work like that. The system don’t think up names all on its lonesome. It uses what’s in your head to come up with ‘em. So, if you’re thinkin’ ‘bout fairies and sunshine daisies while buildin’ your forge, then you’ll get the Fairy Shine Forge or some such. Best to put somethin’ at the front of your mind before you finish the thing out. Otherwise, you might get somethin’ embarrassin’.”

Carmen set the dagger down, then ran her hand through her sweaty hair. At some point, it had come loose, though a few stubborn locks had remained tied in the ponytail. The last thing she wanted was to think about the name of the forge, so she changed the subject to the one thing that would distract Carissa: the mine. Over the next hour, the dwarven woman went on and on about how productive it had become until, at last, she decided to head home for the night.

That left Carmen to work on another of her projects: her tools for the forge.

Making a hammer wasn’t a particularly complex task. At its most basic level, all it really needed to be was heavy enough to move hot metal. The components were simple as well: just a handle, a face, and a peen.

But as with most blacksmithing, how simple the project was had everything to do with the smith’s intentions. Even a sword could be broken down into its most basic components, but there was a world of difference between a lovingly forged katana and a sharpened hunk of metal.

So it was with the tools Carmen had planned for inclusion in her new forge.

The metal she’d chosen for the task was something special, too. For weeks, she’d searched the Branch Marketplace for something unique, and she’d come across it only a few days before. Called volcanic mithril, it was exceedingly expensive: taking almost every ethereum she’d managed to save, and that wasn’t even enough to make her tools.

But that was okay, because she didn’t intend for it to work alone. Instead, she’d also acquired quite a lot of titanium, a few ingots of cold iron, and a guide meant to explain how to work with the volcanic mithril.

She’d also found a few tanks full of argon, which would allow her to forge weld the titanium. It was a finnicky material at the best of times, but after a little testing, she’d figured out the best practices to do so. Without the argon: or some other inert gas, which she intended to pump into a cannister to enable the forge welding: what she had planned would be impossible.

In any case, she had spent the intervening weeks repeatedly flooding the metals with ethera. And at last, they had taken all they could, so all that was left before she got down to the business of making the hammer was to forge weld the whole thing into a single billet of metal.

To do so, she’d flattened each ingot into a series of sheets, then cut them into identical square pieces exactly five inches wide. After that, she layered them. First was the volcanic mithril, which had a subtle red sheen even when it wasn’t hot, then the cold iron, and finally, a slightly thicker sheet of titanium. Over and over, she repeated that pattern until she had created a stack eight inches tall.

Finally, she set the whole stack into a cannister she’d already prepared. It was made from mild steel, and she intended to peel it away when the much more valuable metals inside had forged together. To facilitate the injection of argon, she had drilled three holes. One larger hole in the center of the cannister and two smaller holes: each about a respective inch from the top and bottom of the cannister: before attaching a five-foot, hollow pipe to the largest hole. To that, she attached a hose connected to her tank of argon.

Finally, she used Bond to fuse the cannister together. She could have done the same to her metals, but there was more to a Blacksmith’s fire than heat. The result would have been acceptable, and she was sure that lesser smiths might have taken that shortcut. But she refused to cut corners.

So, once the assembly was complete, she shoved it into her carefully prepared fire. It burned coal that had been infused with so much ethera that the flames had turned from red to blue, and she hoped that some of that energy would be transferred into the billet she intended to create.

As the metal heated up, she pumped a slow but steady stream of argon into the cannister. She was no metallurgist, but from what she understood, titanium was an incredibly reactive metal, so the inclusion of argon: an inert gas: prevented oxidation.

In any case, she’d tested it a few times, so she knew it worked.

Carmen watched as the would-be billet heated up, feeling the dense swirl of ethera inside. Slowly, the forge did its job, and she hastily removed the billet. Once it was free of the flames, she set it on her anvil and summoned her spell-wrought hammer to pound the disparate sheets of hot metal into a singular whole.

In a modern forge from before the apocalypse, this step would have been accomplished by a hydraulic: or perhaps mechanical: press, but she didn’t have access to that kind of machinery. And besides, with her high Strength, she didn’t need such a crutch.

She hammered the billet, repeatedly harnessing her impressive power to force the metals together. It wasn’t a quick process, and she was required to repeat it a half-dozen times before she finally felt confident in the result. Then, once it had a chance to cool: which took far longer than she thought it should: Carmen spent the next few hours using a hammer and chisel to gradually peel the mild steel away.

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Fortunately, that process went off without a hitch, leaving her with a hunk of fused metals that far exceeded her expectations, both in terms of the quality of the forge weld and the results of her use of Tradesman’s Appraisal:

Vulcanium Alloy

Overall Grade: Complex (High)

Enchantment Grade: N/A

Carmen threw her hands up in celebration, letting out an excited, “Fuck yes!”

It was the first time she’d ever created a Complex-Grade raw material, and she couldn’t have been happier with the result. However, that happiness soon turned to apprehension as she looked at the rest of the titanium, volcanic mithril, and cold iron she had bought.

She still had a long way to go. After all, she had an entire smithy’s worth of tools to forge, and she needed the material to do it. Now that she knew what was possible, she would accept no less than an entire set of hammers, tongs, and maybe even an anvil created from the vulcanium alloy.

So, without further ado, she decided to get back to work.

But after building a couple dozen cannisters and loading them with the metals that would become the alloy, she took a step back. She’d been at it for more than twenty-four hours straight: and that was just since Carissa had left. Though she was supernaturally gifted with stamina, both from her abilities as well as attributes, Carmen still needed rest.

And she needed to be at her best if she wanted ideal results.

So, it was with some regret that she turned away from her forge and started the long trip back to the island.