Path of Dragons

“I need a wok,” Elijah said.

“What?” asked Carmen, looking up from her anvil. She’d spent the past hour trying to hammer a piece of armor into shape, and despite her best efforts, the sheet of metal was not cooperating. Part of the problem was that it was mundane steel, and as such, it could only be pushed so far, but the bigger issue was that her attention kept wandering to much more interesting projects.

Like the forge she was going to build, which was such a huge project that anytime she thought about it, she felt more than a little overwhelmed. Or the armor she wanted to forge for when Miguel finally gained his archetype. She also wanted to do something special for Elijah, though she’d yet to think of anything he might need.

Either way, by comparison, her normal work that would end up being sold to people in Norcastle or equipping the Ironshore’s fighters was downright boring. Still, she endeavored to give each piece the entirety of her focus. That was one of the things she’d learned during her exile. Every project deserved her best efforts. It didn’t matter if she was working with mundane steel or some magical alloy – none of her creations would be shortchanged.

Easier said than done, but she was determined to do her best.

“A wok. Like, this big around,” Elijah said, holding his hands around two feet apart. “Maybe smaller. I don’t know. The point is that I need a wok.”

“And why do you need a wok?”

“I feel like we’re saying ‘wok’ a lot,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But it’s for my coffee.”

“You can’t make coffee in a wok.”

“No – the wok is for the roasting. I shoplifted a French press in a Wal-Mart I visited a couple of months ago. I also got, like, an entire buggy full of underwear. And toothpaste. My breath is minty fresh now,” Elijah explained. He clapped his hand over his mouth and exhaled, sniffing the result a second later. “Well, sort of. Did you know that toothpaste has an expiration date? It doesn’t, like, become poisonous or anything, but it loses quite a lot of its minty goodness. I should probably make my own. You wouldn’t know how to make toothpaste, would you?”

“Baking soda, salt, essential oils, and water.”

“Wait, really? That seems easy.”

Carmen shrugged. “That’s the basic recipe. You could add other things like turmeric or –”

“Never mind. I’m sure somebody else has figured it out,” Elijah said. “Plus, you’re getting off topic. The wok. I want it to be made from as high-quality material as you can find. I can pay whatever.”

“I’m not going to charge you, and you know it,” Carmen said, shaking her head at his slightly manic demeanor. She’d heard enough stories from Alyssa to know that meant that he had latched onto something he thought was important. Maybe multiple things. But that didn’t matter for the time being, because his request had sparked her imagination. A wok wasn’t particularly difficult to make, and it didn’t require a lot of material. That opened up a lot of possibilities, but one in particular was more exciting than all the rest. “I think I have an idea. When do you need this wok?”

“Uh…as soon as possible? I still need to pick the cherries and begin the process of separating the pulp from the bean,” he said. “I’m going to use the wet method, which involves…”

Carmen only half listened to Elijah’s explanation of the practice. She was already vaguely familiar with it, and much less excited about the process than he clearly was. Regardless, it would take at least a week, and probably a bit more than that, before the beans were ready to be roasted. So, Carmen had plenty of time for her own part, which was to forge a wok.

“So, can you do it?” he asked.

“Way ahead of you,” she answered. Then, she tapped her temple, saying, “Already planning it. It’ll be ready in a couple of days.”

“Really? What are you going to use as the base? And –”

“You’ll see. But I do need some wood from the grove. I’m sure Nerthus could find something,” she said. “Now go. You’re in the way.”

“Wow. Rude,” Elijah muttered in a dramatic stage whisper that he certainly meant for her to hear. Carmen ignored it because she was already wholly focused on the new project.

The first step was to gather materials, and for that, she needed to visit Carissa. So, she left the now-temporary smithy behind and headed toward the offices on the outskirts of town. It was the middle of the day, so the mine was a hive of activity, and rightly so. Not only had they tapped into a large vein of blood tin, but they’d also found a few other decent-quality sources of ore. However, Carmen was only really interested in one.

So, with that in mind, she found her way to Carissa’s office. The door was open, but Carmen still knocked, eliciting a grunted, “Come in.”

Carmen did just that, stepping inside to see the dwarven foreman hunched over her desk and studying a map of the mine. It was far more elaborate than the one in Silverado, and it was already almost a mile deep in some places. But Carissa had plans for expansion.

“How’s it going?” Carmen asked. She and the dwarven woman had become quite friendly over the past few months, largely because they shared a love of all things metal.

“Follow the ore,” Carissa said, looking up. “That’s what my pa used ta tell me. Always follow the ore. Meant to remind me ta keep my mind focused on what’s important, but in this case, it’s literal. Got to follow that ore, no matter where it goes. And it’s goin’ deep, too. Gettin’ thicker as we go. I think we’re on the verge of findin’ somethin’ big.”

“Watch out for critters,” Carmen said.

“What in the hells are critters?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Carmen explained what she meant, describing the monsters she and the other people from Silverado had fought in its mine. “We called them critters because they looked like movie monsters. Movies are –”

“I know what movies are. Got me a player a few weeks ago from one of them Norcastle lads. It’s interestin’, that’s for sure. Not too certain what the purple lizard monster is meant to represent, but I find it very unsettlin’.”

“Purple lizard…oh. That,” Carmen said, realizing that Carissa had been watching programs intended for children. It was all she could do not to chuckle. “Anyway. I want some of that sun copper you found last week.”

“There ain’t much of it.”

“I know. I don’t need much. I intend to mix it with that blood tin. Before the World Tree, copper and tin made bronze. I’m hoping for something like that.”

“Interesting. I think I can spare a few pounds, provided you can make a coupla more of them pickaxes you made for me last week. They’re better’n anything we have,” Carissa said.

“Deal. I’ll get on that as soon as I’m done with the project for Elijah,” Carmen said with a grin.

“For…Elijah…you know what, no charge. Just –”

“It’s fine, Carissa. He’s not as scary as you think he is,” she pointed out.

“Tell that to the fifty people he killed. Or the orcs he slaughtered.”

Carmen had heard the story already, and from both sides. Elijah had revealed his sins as some sort of self-imposed penance – or maybe he just wanted Carmen to know what she was dealing with. Meanwhile, Carissa hadn’t spoken of it until she’d gotten drunk a few nights after Carmen had gotten to Ironshore.

“Fair enough,” she said. Sometimes, it was hard to reconcile the Elijah she knew with the sort of man who could so easily kill people. But everyone had changed after the world’s transformation, and he was no exception.

After that, she collected the ore and headed back to the forge. Technically, the ore wasn’t called sun copper. It was solar malachite. However, it was colloquially referred to as the former. Carmen didn’t care one way or the other, so she quickly got down to the business at hand.

The first part was to crush the ore into a powder – the finer the better – which she accomplished by running it through a crusher she’d gotten from the mining operation. They had plenty of people who specialized in smelting, so they had all the proper equipment. That meant that Carmen did as well.

Once the ore had been crushed into powder, she poured it into a giant crucible along with a load of infused charcoal she’d already prepared. Then, it was a simple process of heating the crucible. Normally, copper melted at around a thousand degrees, but apparently, sun copper was a different story altogether, and it took quite a bit more before it melted. Once it did, Carmen dumped the crucible into a nearby pan before separating the copper from the charcoal.

Then, it went back into the crucible to be rendered into a liquid. That took infused coal as well as Carmen’s ability, Melt, and even then, it was only barely enough. Still, she managed it, then poured the contents of the crucible into a series of molds.

If she was working with normal copper, without the addition of ethera, she would’ve skipped that step, jumping right to the final mold. However, she had plans for the ingots.

Once they’d cooled, she did the same with a much smaller amount of blood tin. The ratio was meant to be around ninety percent copper and ten percent tin, a formula to which she intended to adhere as closely as possible.

Finally, she had her ingots ready. It was at that point that Elijah returned with a large branch that he said came from his grove, but aside from waving him to put it aside, she couldn’t afford to pay him any attention. Instead, she was entirely focused on using her various abilities to reduce impurities and infuse the resulting ingots with as much as ethera as they could handle.

It was a long and tedious process, but one that Carmen refused to shortchange. She knew precisely how important it was to the final product, so she swallowed her frustrations and committed to the work. Eventually, she’d finished.

That was when she threw all the copper ingots into the crucible and melted it. Once it had liquified, she added the tin, and when it had all mixed together, she poured it into a different, much larger mold. As it cooled, she took a short break, during which she went to a nearby restaurant where she ate a meal that she barely paid attention to. Instead, her mind was entirely on the project.

Perhaps Elijah wasn’t the only one to get a little manic when he was working on something he cared about.

In any case, Carmen finished her meal, then returned to the smithy. Once there, she inspected the cooled bar, and once she found nothing amiss, used Refine Material as well as Decontaminate, reducing the bar as she removed impurities. It wasn’t strictly necessary – surely, a wok made of that material would suffice to roast a few coffee beans – but Carmen had always believed that if something was worth doing, it was worth doing to the best of her abilities. And in this case, that meant refining the metal until it was absolutely pure.

Of course, that meant that she had a lot less to work with, which in turn necessitated the creation of another few bars. At each juncture, she used Ethereal Infusion to ensure that it was absolutely saturated with energy.

And after two days, she had achieved a product as close to perfection as her skills and the materials allowed. That was supported by the notification she received:

Faythium Ingot Overall Grade: Complex (Low)

“Yes!” she shouted, only then realizing that she was absolutely alone in the smithy. She glanced at the nearby window, seeing that it was the dead of night. Perhaps she’d grown a little too focused on the project.

At least she hadn’t neglected Miguel, though. He was traipsing through the wilderness with Colt and Kurik, so he wouldn’t even know that she was pushing herself so hard.

For a moment, she considered returning to the grove – or at least to the bed she kept in her office near the forge – but she ultimately decided against it. After her success, there was almost no chance that she could sleep anyway. Not until the project was finished, at least.

So, Carmen looked down at the ingot. It looked like bronze, but there was a blue shimmer to it that marked it as magical. Plus, she could feel the energy coursing through it. That was as befitted a Complex-Grade material.

She reluctantly set it aside, knowing that the metal behaved similarly to bronze. That meant it wasn’t meant to be forged. Instead, it was more suited to casting. So, Carmen found a piece of wood meant for the creation of molds, then got to work carving the basic shape of a wok. The idea was to create a wooden facsimile of the intended product, then place that piece into a receptacle filled with packed sand. Once the wooden piece was removed, then the resulting cavity would be in the appropriate shape. After that, molten metal would be poured into the cast, and when it cooled, a rough piece would be created.

Or that was what was supposed to happen.

In reality, the process was finnicky, and Carmen found it even more tedious than it really was. Getting the sand packed just right was the worst part, and it made her long for the moments when she could simply pound metal into shape. Yet, she persisted, adjusting along the way until she got the result she wanted.

It took nearly ten tries before that happened, and by that point, she was absolutely exhausted.

Even so, she couldn’t help but smile as she held the rough version of the wok aloft. It was a little more than two feet across, with steeply sloped sides and a rounded bottom. She hadn’t affixed a handle yet – that was what the grove wood was for – and the piece needed a lot of refinement. But the hours’ worth of tedious work had pushed her past the mania associated with success and into exhaustion.

So, she set the wok aside and retreated to her office, where she collapsed onto the cot she kept for just that purpose. When she fell asleep, she dreamed of uncooperative sand and blended metals.

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