Chương 66: Chapter 3

The guards at the Soulfire Forge waved Shaya through the ensorcelled mithrite gates, recognizing her as a regular employee, though their eyes lingered on her longer than usual. It wasn't the first time Shaya caught that on her walk through the military quarter, more than a few of the soldiers she passed by casting her glances when they thought she wasn't looking.

The paranoia still rooted in Shaya from her time as a street rat, thug, and thief on the rotting streets of The Blight meant their attempts to be surreptitious failed. Not only that, but her keen ears picked out the same words whispered again and again as she passed groups of soldiers: Titan Slayer.

"What are you doing here?" Auric's deep baritone carried over the hammering and clanging in the forge, the bronze giant of a man cocking his head down at Shaya as she strode up to him.

"Reporting…for my shift?" Shaya replied, looking around, confused. The cacophony of noise was definitely coming from other workers, so the forge was open for business.

"It's only been two days since your deployment." He frowned at her, his ruby-red eyes looking at her with concern.

"There's a reason I went light on people at Foundations today—you need to be recovering from that ordeal." And here I thought it just felt better because Azreon wasn't there…

"I feel fine," Shaya insisted.

"Bari healed the hairline fractures. I'm not sure why she left the bruises behind"—though Shaya could definitely hazard a guess she didn't want to say aloud—"but I can work. I have to work, boss."

"Healing magic accelerates healing," he said, crossing his bear-like arms and barring her way like a wall.

"That's coming out of your body, which still needs rest to recuperate effectively."

"Auric, I understand," Shaya said, growing desperate, "but I need the shifts. I wanted to ask you if I could pick up full shifts on the weekends too."

"Ah." The bronze giant nodded.

"Yes, your punishment."

"You heard about that?" Shaya's attention was drawn to her feet as they shuffled against the hard rock and sand with nervous energy.

"Of course," Auric said, "each of the professors was given the debrief on each student's performance, with particular highlights. I just wish we were given the heads-up on the planned operation…" Shaya caught an underlying agitation, perhaps even anger, in the big man's voice as he trailed off.

"So, is there anything I can do around here to earn my keep then?" Shaya asked, looking up at him with the eyes of a whimpering puppy.

"Fine." He rolled his eyes.

"But if I see you so much as lift a hammer tonight, you're fired, got it?"

"Yessir." She gulped.

"On an unrelated note, do you know how long it might be until I learn to forge weapons?" He gave her a circumspect glance as he led her to one of the outer sheds in the lot, where apprentices worked on bone and wood with saws and files.

"You're a fast learner," he replied to her question as they arrived, "I could teach you to make a passable knife in a few days. But," he said, turning to her, "full weapons take longer; months or more. And that's assuming the master prioritizes teaching them, which I won't. Before I teach you to forge weapons, I want you to be able to forge yourself a proper set of smithing tools and understand what to do with each of them."

"So, what am I doing today?" she asked, turning to the other apprentices working on handles.

"Learn how to make a handle?"

"No," Auric chuckled, handing her a wax tablet and stylus to carve into it, "you're going to take an inventory of our handle materials. If you finish with that, go find Vatag and tell him you'll do an inventory of our ingots; that'll earn you some points with him, since he suspects the smelter is cheating us."

"Yessir!" Shaya nodded, happy to do something to keep working and keep getting paid. Auric gave an approving nod, leaving her to it. The next few hours of Shaya's life passed in a less-than-exciting whirlwind of counting objects and tallying the numbers on her wax tablet. Taking her time, she did a thorough job to ensure her numbers weren't off and was only distracted by the apprentices making handles next to her a few… ish times.

Once done taking stock of the handle materials, she found Vatag, who was more than eager to set her to counting ingots. The Forge only maintained a small warehouse on site, given that the smelter was also in the military compound, but Shaya's eyes bulged nonetheless at the hundred mithrite ingots kept there for Auric's special orders.

The warehouse stocked closer to a thousand iron ingots, given that the Forge primarily served to equip the Empire's military and most troops weren't mages, and about half that amount in bronze ingots to maintain the Academy's training weapons and keep the military's mage corps equipped. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

She found Vatag and Auric together as she went to deliver her report, Auric hammering away at what looked to be a piece from mithrite platemail while Vatag shouted at him over the din. They both stopped what they were doing as she approached, and Shaya realized that Auric was hammering out a dent in a helmet's visor—Azreon's visor. Did I really manage to dent mithrite with my fist? Shaya wondered, looking down at her brick-like knuckles and the tears on them that were still healing from that very blow.

They had scabbed over at least, so they didn't bleed on the bronze ingot she carried, but Shaya couldn't help but imagine how much thicker—and less dexterous—her hand would be if even more scar tissue formed over it.

"Well?" Vatag asked, the bear-like man crossing his arms.

"Are those cheats at the smelter short-changing us ingots?"

"They're not short-changing us ingots," Shaya said, watching Vatag deflate a little, "but they are short-changing us material." Vatag blinked.

"How do you figure?"

"I noticed that some of the crates rattled as I was opening them for the inventory," Shaya continued, walking up to the anvil where Auric was working.

"At first I thought it was natural, but crates with older date stamps didn't rattle." She placed two bronze ingots on the anvil in front of Auric, levelling them with each other on one edge.

"Give them a measure." The two men looked down at the ingots, leaning in and squinting hard at them.

"They look the same to me," Vatag said, turning to Auric as his partner pulled out a wooden ruler to measure them.

"The difference in length is almost imperceptible," Shaya said.

"Try picking them up though."

"A few hairs' breadth, at most." Auric nodded, then picked up both ingots, testing their weights.

"The weight difference is slightly more noticeable." He handed them to Vatag, who shook his head.

"They're still the same to me, but you have been complaining about your work being slightly off for a few months now. I guess you weren't just making excuses."

"Thanks." Auric frowned down at the other man as he took the ingots back.

"Good work, Shaya, this level of attention to detail is… promising for you if you want a career in smithing." Vatag's eyes gleamed.

"I'm going to destroy them for this. We'll be getting metal at a discount forever if I have my way!" Auric chuckled.

"I'll leave you to it, Vatag. In the meantime, I have to train this young mage." Vatag dismissed them with a wave, taking the wax tablet Shaya had tucked into her apron pocket and going over it. She could hear the gold coins clinking in his imagination as he walked away. Auric cleaned up his workstation and set the visor he was working on down beside the rest of Azreon's fullplate. There were several more dents in it from the necromancer's attacks, and even a few nicks to the mithrite from their bone claws.

On the armour stand next to it was Galo's bronze platemail, bearing significantly more damage from his reckless fighting style. Shaya ran a thumb over the deep grooves left in the bronze plates by where the iron spears had glanced off it, a grim reminder of the material difference between the two metals.

"So, how did the deployment go?" Auric asked, drawing her attention away from the suits of armour.

"Thank you for the training," she said, turning to face her mentor.

"I don't think we could have succeeded without it."

"Oh?" he asked.

"Do you mean the sharpened barrier spell?"

"It took a lot out of me"—she gestured towards her bloodshot eyes that still sported shards of Amber in their irises—"but it got the job done."

"Aye, that it did," Auric said.

"I think you're getting a good handle on metamagic glyphs, have you considered where you want to take our lessons next? Any specific area you would like to focus on?" She thought about it a moment.

"I feel like what I'm really lacking right now is a reliable offence, and I'd like to add some to my arsenal so I'm more balanced as a mage. I'm learning Ruby magic, but I'm still way more comfortable with Amber."

"Amber magic is primarily defensive and supportive in nature." Auric stroked his rust red beard as he spoke.

"With plenty of utility thrown in. You've already shown that creative applications can weaponize almost anything, for better or for worse, but you might be better looking elsewhere if you want an efficient source of raw, destructive power."

"I wouldn't want anything…uncontrolled," Shaya replied, thinking about her rage.

"I just want to be able to adapt to any situation. Transmutation magic would really help with that, and it's something my mother was good at. Practicing with hard-light constructs could also help apply pressure to my enemies at range." Auric nodded, picking up one of the bronze ingots she had brought over.

"Transmutation magic is my speciality," he said, channelling Amber magic into the ingot to draw out the metal into the blank template of a knife in seconds, "so that I can certainly help you with. Amber magic has power over earth and metals—excluding iron—so you'll want to talk to Bari if you want to learn to transmute wood, bone, or hide."

"Bone?" Shaya's nose scrunched up, remembering the necromancer.

"I thought that was Amethyst's domain."

"Certain abilities can overlap between even opposing colours on the spectrum," he replied.

"It's rare, but it occurs." She nodded, making a note in her book about that.

"What about constructs? I already know the spirit weapon rune and I saw Azreon make pretty good use of it."

"I would recommend against focusing on constructs for now," he replied.

"Your spirit's abilities are improving, but construct spells are still very taxing—and very complex. While I'm happy you qualified for Second Circle, to be honest, I feel your spirit's channels, circuits, and capacity are still lacking." Shaya flinched at her mentor's honesty. He gave her a reassuring smile before continuing.

"So, I'd suggest focusing on efficiency still. It may make you seem weaker at the moment, but in the long run it'll let you better leverage your growing power. It also emphasizes your strength in spellcraft, which is already what I'd expect from a Third Circle mage and will only serve you more and more as you move into higher tiers. Too many mages, especially here, ignore the value of perfectly executed spells and just push through on raw power alone, which burns them out quickly in deployments—and in life.

If anything, I want you to focus on mastering some of your existing spells. That way, you'll be able to reflexively cast a few of your spells without invocations, which is integral for direct combat against other mages."