Beam POV: Day 80

  Current Wealth: 279 gold 31 silver 16 copper

  We found out quite soon after the attack that it wasn’t just the outside of Velaharo Manor our enemies had struck. Ardin’s shop had been hit, too.

  Fortunately the blacksmith was alive, not being present during the time of the vandalism, but when he made his way to the mansion and told us, I could see the guy was shaken. A stab of guilt hit me as I saw his trembling features and heard him go over the state of his place, a livelihood smashed to bits all in one go.

  “I don’t know what I can do.” He croaked. “I’m…I was that shop, that was my life, my work. Without it I…”

  I cut in while he was still mid-panic, desperate to make things right.

  “You can work here.” I told him, drawing an astonished look from the man. “Velaharo Manor has a smithy of their own, not quite as big as yours but we can expand it as we go, and it’s a hell of a lot safer behind the walls of a noble’s courtyard. Work from here.”

  Ardin looked relieved, but only a bit.

  “What will the rent be?” He asked, tentatively. I waved a hand.

  “No, forget about that, you don’t pay any rent. It’s all on the house, just keep doing your thing, alright?”

  There was some admiring, borderline venerating look in his eyes as he heard that that I turned away from, never quite enjoying such things as much as either of my friends. Once that conversation was done, though, things began moving on. We had a lot to do.

  Solitaire and Shango had become obsessed with the tournament, and I couldn’t exactly blame them. I’d heard the reasoning, and agreed wholeheartedly that we needed more power, and soon. Even if it came at the cost of tipping our hand on how quickly we could grow stronger through levelling up.

  Their disagreement came from a different matter, that of our attackers.

  “Dead Edge.” Solitaire repeated, soon after waking. “And Lord Byro. Those are the cunts after us?”

  Shango nodded, cautiously.

  “They are.” He confirmed. “And you can’t go running around for revenge just yet.”

  Solitaire paused, eying him as if he’d just drooled on himself. “They tried to kill me.”

  “They did.” Shango agreed. “And they will try again, even harder, if you run over picking a fight with them.”

  “I don’t want to pick a fight with them.” Solitaire sighed. “I want to find out who their leaders are, find out where they live, crawl in through their windows and do them while they’re asleep. Nice and easy.”

  “Which the rest of them will, of course, interpret as a completely reasonable and non-aggressive deed, that certainly won’t escalate things and will definitely not bring any heightened level of retaliatory violence our way.” Shango sighed, looking suddenly exhausted. Solitaire hardly looked better. I could still remember my own magical treatment, the sensation of being hollowed out it left me with. Clearly that mental fatigue was lasting a while longer for him than me, perhaps my years of exhaustive training had left me used to such things. Perhaps Solitaire was just a bitch.

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  “The tournament then.” Solitaire sighed, at last, clearly reluctant to make his concession, but making it anyway. Shango seemed relieved as he nodded.

  “The tournament. It starts in a few days, which gives us plenty of time to prepare, if we work hard enough at least.”

  We did work hard enough, or at least I had to hope we did, seeing it was Ardin and myself who did almost everything. The two of us hadn’t taken long to get set up in the Velaharo’s smithy, and barely longer to adjust to the downgrade in work station from the smith’s own shop. If nothing else it was a good excuse to practise some new techniques, and give Corvan a hard time as he was forced to help us out with his magic.

  It wasn’t that we blamed him for being absent during the attack, more that we felt it was unfair he alone hadn’t lost anything in it. Ardin’s shop had been destroyed, Solitaire had gotten the crap kicked out of him, Argar and Helena fought for their lives and Shango was stuck sharing a bed with the angriest woman currently alive.

  Anyway, Corvan proved as helpful this time as he’d been before, and we made quick progress in mixing the metals and elements. Before long we had a few sheets readied, thick plates of our experimental steel cooled and worked, ready for use. Solitaire had them propped up alongside normal steel, and called on Argar for help in testing them.

  “You want me to hit it.” He echoed, trying, and failing, not to seem pleased. Helena watched it all from one corner, trying, and failing, not to seem curious.

  “As hard as you can.” I told Argar. “The plate on the left, first, then the one on the right. And use that.” I nodded to the huge work hammer we’d leaned against the far wall, its iron head bigger than even Argar’s gargantuan fists. The thing weighed sixteen pounds, apparently, which made it heavy enough that most Redaclans were too small and weak to even wield it.

  I had a feeling that Argar wouldn’t find himself so limited, though.

  “Must be my birthday.” He grinned, striding across the room and snatching the tool up into one giant hand with a single motion. It barely seemed to weigh anything, in his hands, and Argar showed no real strain in raising it up to rest across one shoulder.

  “Better stand back.” The giant grunted. We did.

  His first swing was like a hybrid mix between a landslide and an anti tank weapon, his mountainous muscles driving the metal head so violently against its target that I saw sparks explode out upon impact and drift down to the ground below. The point of contact wore a clear mark of his strength.

  “Not bad!” I grinned, studying it. The steel was blemished with a big, broad dent. Easily a few inches at its widest, and buckled inwards deep enough that I thought it might well have driven ribs organ-deep, had it been equipped over a human torso as armour. Argar hefted the hammer in satisfaction, shrugging.

  “Would’ve done less if it’d been on a person, moving back on impact.” He said, as if that made smashing steel almost in half any less impressive.

  “Not bad.” Ardin noted, looking far from pleased. It was, after all, his own steel we’d just watched a crater get planted in, and like so many good craftsmen he had more than a touch of his own ego wrapped into the fruits of his labours. “Now what can you do to the new metal?”

  Argar grinned again, and the hammer was moving in an instant.

  There were no sparks, the second time. And that was the first thing I noticed. The second was how the sound didn’t contain any screech or grind of metal, only a sharp rattle. Argar cursed, taking a step back, reeling with the hammer as it bounced from his target. I studied the point of impact with a grin quickly spreading across my features.

  It had dented, just like the first sheet of metal, and it had dented noticeably. But there wasn’t anything that could be called a crater. The metal had deformed perhaps one or two inches across, and was shallow enough at its deepest that I suspected my fingertip was thicker.

  “Stronger.” Ardin noted, gifting the room with a rare smile as he said it. “Much, much stronger.”

  I just kept staring at the spot where the impact had occurred, grinning. It hadn’t been an anti-armour weapon, of course, and I had no doubt that Argar would’ve done a hell of a lot more if he’d hit the stuff with a proper polearm, anything with a nice big spike to concentrate all the force behind really, but even so the difference in effect was proof of…Something.

  “We need to make more then.” I breathed, looking around the room. I got nothing but nods.

  “We need to make more.” Ardin concurred.