This forge wasn't merely hot. It was a kiln that crushed the lungs.
Every drawn breath felt like swallowing hot sand. The scent of sulfur, charcoal, and stale sweat clung to the stone walls, forming a permanent black patina.
CLANG.
Fergaer tossed the crystal I had brought onto the workbench. It rolled, striking a cluster of iron tools with a hollow, pathetic clatter.
"Dead," Fergaer grumbled. His voice was hoarse, sounding like two stones grinding together. He didn't look at me; his eyes were fixed entirely on the furnace. "Empty crystal. Trash."
I didn't argue. Facts were facts.
I emptied the burlap sack containing the black ore—the heavy metal I had excavated deep from within the volcanic fissures.
A cloud of black dust billowed out.
Fergaer picked up a chunk. His calloused thumb rubbed its coarse surface. He clicked his tongue.
"Melting point is too high. Hard. Brittle. A standard forge won't make it speak. A weapon needs a soul, boy. Crystals give them life."
"I don't need a soul," I replied flatly, wiping the stinging sweat from my eyes. "I need physics."
Fergaer turned. His gaze was sharp, piercing through the ambient smoke. "You want to forge a corpse?"
I picked up a piece of charcoal and squatted on the stone floor.
Wordlessly, I began to draw. Not a sketch of a weapon. An airflow diagram.
Intake lines. Constriction. Expansion.
"The Venturi effect," I muttered, more to myself than to him. "We constrict the air intake here. Pressure drops, velocity increases. Pure oxygen feeds directly into the heart of the embers. We can push the temperature to 1,600 degrees."
I pointed to the pile of animal bones I had pulverized into fine powder.
"And this. Carbon. To bind it."
Fergaer looked down at the drawing. His brow furrowed deeply. He didn't ask what is this; he was a master smith. He recognized the logic behind the lines even if he had never seen the mathematical formula for it.
Silence.
Only the harsh crackle of the fire filled the space.
"That insults my ancestors," he finally said. "But the fire is yours."
He turned and walked away. His footsteps were heavy, leaving me alone with this small hell.
Theory Without Muscle
Three days.
Or perhaps four. Time melted into an endless cycle of extreme heat and shivering cold.
My skin blistered. My palms, despite the thick calluses built from the axe, were bleeding once again. The furnace's heat evaporated my body fluids far faster than I could drink water.
I was alone.
I melted the black ore. I mixed it with the bone powder. A 1.5% carbon ratio.
In theory: High Carbon Steel.
In practice: A disaster.
CLANG!
The hammer struck the incandescent metal.
The intense vibration traveled up my arm, jolted my shoulder, and sent sharp pain signals straight into my neck.
I struck again.
Too slow.
The metal had already cooled below the critical austenite threshold. Its color shifted from a bright, furious orange to a dull red in a matter of seconds.
I struck again.
CRACK.
The half-formed blade snapped directly on the anvil.
Not sheared. Snapped. Like a dry biscuit.
I dropped the hammer. My breathing was ragged, sounding unnervingly harsh in the quiet room.
I picked up the broken piece of metal. Its searing heat bled right through my leather glove.
The fractured surface was coarse. Granular.
"Grain structure is too large..." I whispered. My voice was hoarse. "Cooling was too slow... the carbon didn't bond..."
My brain knew exactly what went wrong.
I knew the iron-carbon phase diagram. I knew the Time-Temperature-Transformation curves by heart.
But my hands were traitors.
My eyes saw the exact optimal color of the fire, my brain commanded, Strike now!, but my muscles reacted with a 0.5-second delay due to sheer physical exhaustion.
In metallurgy, half a second is the difference between a masterwork blade and absolute scrap.
I tried again.
Failed.
Again.
Warped.
Again.
Brittle.
The stone floor around me was littered with metallic refuse. A monument to my intellectual failure.
I stared at my own hands. Trembling. Weak.
Human.
How terribly limited this vessel of flesh was.
"You strike it as if you're punishing it."
The voice emerged from the shadows of the doorway.
Fergaer walked in. He didn't look at me. He looked at the wreckage on the floor with pained eyes. To a dwarf, failed metal was a tragedy.
"You have the recipe," Fergaer spat to the side. He stepped closer, the sheer gravity of his presence dominating the room. "But you have no ears. You don't hear when the iron screams."
He snatched the hammer from my hand. Roughly.
He didn't offer to help. He commandeered it.
"You control the fire's breath. You mix the spices. Let my hands do the talking."