Chương 105: 96. Efodia

"Good gear on a poor road is a confession. It tells the watching man you have been somewhere worth going to." — Codex of the Long Watch, Field Observation, 14th Century, Calabria The next morning found the party at Stavros's forge bright and early.

"Come, come," the smith said with a smile.

"New equipment, always exciting, yes?" He ushered them in, where the new equipment sat on a table. Arthur picked up the new hammer. It weighed more than the old one by a clear margin, and the mass sat further out along the head. The head was a long wedge, flat across the striking face and drawn to a back-spike he had not asked for and was glad to have. The blue-violet of the metal lingered across the surface in sweeping, artistic swirls.

"The shaft from your lorry," Stavros said, watching him find the balance.

"I keep the weight forward. You are big. You will not feel it. A smaller man, this hammer kills him on the backswing."

"It is good work," Arthur said, and meant it. The heavier hammer felt just right for his increased strength. Stavros took the compliment with a tilt of the head and turned to the bench, where the other two pieces lay. He lifted the two-handed axe and laid it across Donna's waiting arms. It was a brutal, double-bitted head mounted on a haft of pale wood, bound tightly with bright wire at the throat.

Donna ran a thumb down the curve of one edge, keeping her skin well clear of the biting surface, and a faint smile touched her lips.

"Hornbeam," Stavros said, of the haft.

"Got some from wood worker down the street. The head, I made from the springs. Hard at the edges, soft in the middle, like I told you. It will not roll on you."

"It's balanced," Donna said. She took a few steps back and gave the axe a twirl.

"Very well balanced."

"Forty years," Stavros said with a shrug. The third piece of work was actually sixteen individual parts. Sixteen iron plates lay in neat rows, each the size of a flat hand and curved slightly to follow the natural contour of a human torso. Arthur picked one up, turning it over in the morning light. The same dark grain and blue-violet line ran through the metal, though the back of each plate had been left rough while the face was ground perfectly smooth.

"For the coat Maria makes," Stavros said, looking at Arthur.

"One in each pocket. The rough side in. It will hold to the cloth and not slide." Through the arch and past the smith, a stack of fresh-cut gate iron leaned against the brick. Somebody was still buying iron by the gate. He filed it and let it go.

"The rest of our share," Donna said, her eyes drifting toward the back of the shop.

"You're still holding it?"

"In the back, dry, under canvas. Two hundred kilos, less what is here." Stavros wiped his hands.

"When you know what you want from it, you tell me. I do not melt another man's iron without his word."

"We will. Thank you, Stavros," Sarah said, stepping forward to offer the smith a warm, reassuring smile. Arthur wrapped the weapons and the plates in a sack and roped the bundle for carrying, while Sarah finished the courtesies with the smith. Stavros walked them out of the forge and shook each of their hands with enthusiasm before turning back to his fire.

* They did the binding out in the courtyard, under the shade of the lemon tree, because Sarah was worried that the weapons would only remind her mother of the upcoming journey. The three forged pieces lay together on a scrap of canvas. Steve sat with the core pouch open beside him, while Petros watched from his spot on the low wall with his own two cores still wrapped tightly in their oily rag. Steve laid the three werewolf cores in a narrow row on the canvas.

They were the size of small plums, possessing a visual depth that the group had only ever seen in guardian cores before this day. The largest of the three had come out of the alpha. It was significantly darker than the other two, and the internal layering within the crystal ran much deeper.

"Right," Steve said, looking up at Petros.

"The law is three distinct things. Vessel, core and intent. The smith gave us the vessel. The creature gave us the core. We must supply the third part ourselves. Anyone can bind a core to an object, but only your own intent can make that object uniquely yours." He paused, making sure he had Petros's full attention.

"You hold the core directly to the thing. You decide, as hard and as plainly as you can, what you want the thing to be. The core will melt into it and the system will do the rest."

"Decide with what?" Petros asked, frowning.

"My head?"

"With all of you," Donna said from the shadows, "but it comes down to wanting one single thing so hard that there is no room left inside you to want anything else."

"A vague intent gives you a vague result," Steve added.

"The core fills whatever space your intent leaves empty. So leave it none." Donna stepped forward and took up the two-handed axe. She set the largest core flat against the steel where the head met the hornbeam haft, and then her entire posture went perfectly still. After a long moment, the dark crystal began to dissolve into the metal. It dissolved like a sugar cube melting in hot coffee.

The spring steel underneath the core stirred and smoothed itself as if the metal had liquefied for a fraction of a second, and then the blade began to change. The haft took on a coating of metal as well. The blue-violet lines on the head darkened, running smoothly along both cutting edges.

ARTIFACT CREATION DETECTED BINDING LAW ENGAGED Vessel: Ravener Axe (Transmuted Spring Steel) Core: Lykanthrope Alpha (Sanctum-Grade) Intent: Precision Lethality RAVENER — REFINED Edge Retention: Enhanced Edge Geometry: Self-Truing Signature: Gap-Seeking Donna lifted the axe and turned it once, and her face broke into a rare smile. The edges had taken a black sheen, and where the light caught the bevels there was a grain to them, fine and directional, like the flat side of a feather.

"Edge Retention: Enhanced. Edge Geometry: Self-Truing. Signature: Gap-Seeking," Donna repeated for the group.

"It wants the gap," she said, drawing her hand back behind her head.

"I can feel it pull when I line up an attack. It is not much, but it is there."

"Gap-seeking," Steve said, thoroughly delighted.

"The alpha was the one that found Arthur's forearm past the shield rim. Ambush behaviour bled into the core, and now it is written right into the edge. It finds the way in." Arthur took the hammer next. He set the second core against the wedge of the head and cleared his mind, visualising his intent. He pictured the heavy triangular head smashing through skull and plate and bone, the raw force of his muscles being amplified by the rare system metal until the weapon became a force of nature.

ARTIFACT CREATION DETECTED BINDING LAW ENGAGED This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Vessel: Skullcleft Maul (Transmuted Drive Shaft) Core: Lykanthrope (Sanctum-Grade) Intent: Concentrated Force SKULLCLEFT — REFINED Impact Force: Enhanced Penetration: Enhanced Signature: Force Emphasis Arthur gave the hammer a half turn, looking at it quizzically.

Then he took a few steps away into the centre of the courtyard, gave the haft a full twirl, and brought it down through the air, stopping it a hair before it smashed into the stone floor.

"Skullcleft Maul," he said to the others, squatting down to examine the head.

"Impact Force: Enhanced. Penetration: Enhanced. Signature: Force Emphasis." He rested the weapon against the floor, letting it fall in the lightest of taps. A faint, hair-thin crack spiderwebbed through the flagstone beneath the iron.

"Mamá is going to kill you if you ruin her floor," Sarah said.

"A blow from an ordinary hammer is never spent cleanly," Arthur explained, rubbing his thumb along the smooth joint.

"Part of it drives into the target, and a good part of it comes straight back through the wrist and into your arm. This one gave almost none of it back. Every bit of the force from a swing goes forward and stays forward."

"Skullcleft Maul, now that's a proper name," Steve said.

"Yeah, was thinking about skulls," Arthur chuckled, pulling the weapon back.

"Definitely wouldn't want to drop this on my toe."

"Right then, let's get to the last bit," Steve said, rubbing his hands together.

"This should be interesting." Sarah laid out the heavy canvas jacket Maria had sewn, and they began slotting the transmuted iron plates into the custom pockets.

"It's heavy," Arthur said, lifting the filled garment by the shoulders.

"Not massively so, but it's got some weight to it. Feeling a bit for the medieval knights, to be honest."

"Yeah, a full suit of plate could easily be twenty-five kilos, and they had to cart all that weight about without any enhanced strength stats," Steve agreed. Arthur held the final core against the metal plate at the dead centre of his chest. He settled his mind on the single intent he had kept since leaving London. Protect whoever is behind me. Be the wall, the bulwark the enemy breaks against. Protect and persevere. The core dissolved into the first plate.

Then the liquid metal undulated, starting to migrate across the canvas structure. Wherever it met the other hidden iron plates, they added their mass to the shifting, moving current of Ether-streaked iron. The jacket transformed in front of them. Overlapping plates of dark, olive-tinted composite wrapped his torso in hard, angular lines. Thick pauldrons guarded his shoulders, and the reinforced collar rose high enough to shelter the throat.

When the metal finally went still, it gave Arthur the brutal, unyielding silhouette of a walking battering ram. It was not built for elegance or speed. It was built so the wearer could stand in front of something terrible and simply refuse to fall.

ARTIFACT CREATION DETECTED BINDING LAW ENGAGED Vessel: Scaleguard Coat (Transmuted Plate, Sixteen) Core: Lykanthrope (Sanctum-Grade) Intent: Protection BASTION — REFINED Damage Resistance: Enhanced Load Distribution: Adaptive Signature: Durability Emphasis"Bastion," Arthur said, "Damage Resistance: Enhanced. Load Distribution: Adaptive. Signature: Durability Emphasis."

Steve sat back on a garden chair and looked at the three new pieces of equipment, a small line appearing between his eyebrows as something occurred to him.

"Say, did anyone notice?" he asked, chewing on his lower lip.

"All three of these got proper names." Arthur looked down at the dark composite of his chest plate, then up at Steve.

"Earlier it was just a description," Steve continued, leaning forward.

"Like the crowbar or the Bullguard shield we got from the bull guardian core. Now all of them have unique names." Correct, Archie chimed in. All your earlier equipment was Primitive tier grade and would have comparable facsimiles across the planet. From Refined tier onwards, equipment starts showing unique characteristics based on user intent. The system provides a designation based on tier and function. Your Nadi Matrix converts that designation to something you can understand.

"Right, and since this time we used Ether-dense material, we did not get a truncated result either," Steve said, nodding to himself.

"Like what Donna got with her axe the last time." He looked up at the empty air.

"I never asked. How many tiers are there?" And I would not have answered before a access 4 unlock, Archie said. Five tiers for what can be forged on a planet such as yours.

"Are you saying there could be higher tiers on other planets?" Steve said, his eyes wide. This line of questioning is irrelevant, Archie replied. Firstly because I am not authorised to answer, and secondly because even if that were true, I doubt your species will rise that high.

"Just you wait, mate," Arthur said with a smile.

"We piddly humans might end up surprising you." I highly doubt that, Archie said in a flat tone.

"We don't carry any of this visibly," Donna said, changing the subject as she stood up from the wall.

"We carry these wrapped in sacking and we only take them out once we are safely out of the town limits. I don't want any unnecessary questions floating around the Council." Petros had stopped turning his bundle.

"So," he said slowly, "the barrel that holds ten times the water. If I bind it into a bad barrel, I get a bad barrel that holds a little more."

"And if you bind it into a very good barrel," Steve said, "you might get a barrel that holds even more."

"Then I will think about the barrel some more." He shoved the cores into his pocket and looked at the three artefacts on the canvas.

"Po po po. You make it look small, this thing. It is not small," he said, shaking his head. *"We need the reason for this little road trip agreed on," Donna said, while the gear was sorted into packs.

"Three days down an open coast, and we will pass people. The first one who asks where we are going, we all need to answer the same."

"We are going to look at the temple," Steve said.

"I am an archaeologist. Sounion is the most photographed ruin in Attica. It is the most natural thing in the world that I would want to see it."

"It is the most natural thing in the world for you," Donna said.

"Picture it from the other side. Four people walking seventy kilometres to look at old stones? In a time like this? Nobody believes that, and they tell the next patrol about the mad English who went to count columns in the apocalypse." Steve opened his mouth to argue, found she was right, and shut it. It was Sarah who came up with the story.

"My father's cousin had a place past Anavyssos, towards Lavrio. Grew olives and had a few goats. We have not heard from down there since the change." She said it plainly, but Arthur heard a small catch in her voice.

"We are going to see if anyone is still on the land. Family checking on family."

"And it might explain the gear." Donna nodded.

"People coming prepared for what they might find."

"What about the old gear?" Steve asked. Arthur thought for a second, then called over Petros, who was fixing a pipe. Arthur motioned at the discard pile, Donna's old axe, his hammer and the tactical vest.

"Do you think you can exchange these?" Arthur asked.

"They're core-bound and, I reckon, better than anything on the street."

"Ne, I can exchange these." Petros nodded.

"What you want?"

"Nothing, think what the family needs and get that," Arthur said, with a hand on Petros's shoulder.

"Think long term." Petros looked at the party.

"Thank you," he said simply. Sarah gave Arthur a small smile and went back to packing for the road. * Eleni had been at war with Sarah for three days, and the morning they left, she surrendered the only way she knew how, which was with the whole kitchen. She had been up before any of them. By the time the party had finished with the bindings, the table was a quartermaster's depot of food, and she was still adding to it. Two loaves of horiatiko psomi. A round of cheese the size of a discus.

A paper twist of koulourakia. A plastic jar of olives with the lid waxed down. Three bags of paximadia, the hard rusks that would not spoil on the road. A dozen bars of pasteli. She portioned it into the four packs herself, refusing every hand that offered to help, and she did not once look at Sarah while she did it.

"You eat the bread first," she said to the room.

"The first day, before it goes hard. The paximadi is for when the bread is gone. The cheese will keep two days, no more, in this heat, so do not be clever and save it."

"Mamá—""The olives and the pasteli is for the last."

"Mamá." Sarah caught her mother's hands over the pack. She did not pull away as Sarah turned her and rested her forehead against hers.

"We will be fine. I promise." Mother and daughter held each other for a long time; then Eleni finally broke away and resumed her packing, her cheeks still wet. Petros came in from the yard and spread out a map on the cleared end of the table. He had marked it in pencil, a heavy line running south.

"You go down the coast, not the inland road, the inland road I do not know any more." His finger walked the line.

"Out through Glyfada, Voula, here, Vouliagmeni where the road bends at the water. Then it opens. Varkiza, and after Varkiza it is empty, my friend, kilometres of nothing, then Lagonisi, Anavyssos, and the cape is here, at the bottom, where the land stops." He tapped the headland at the foot of the page.

"Seventy kilometres. Three days walking, if nothing makes you run."

"And the towns?" Donna asked.

"The towns, who knows." He turned his palms up.

"Before, money lived down that coast, the rich and their swimming pools. Now? Maybe people, maybe nothing, maybe people you do not want." He folded the map along its old creases and pushed it into Arthur's hand and said softly, "Bring her back." Yiayia had said nothing through any of it, from her chair by the window. As they shouldered the packs, she lifted one hand off the table, and Sarah crossed to her and bent down.

The old woman took her granddaughter's face in one hand, and she made a small sign on Sarah's forehead with her thumb and let her go. Then her eyes went to Arthur and stayed on him. The implication was clear. At the gate, Eleni and Maria gave them tight, worried hugs and made each of them promise that they would come back as soon as possible. The walk out of the city was calm. They were four people walking with sacks like dozens of others.

After about forty minutes of walking, they left the city behind and reached the open coast road with the sea on the right. They took out the equipment and strapped everything on. It was time to see what Greece had in store for them.