Rise of the Living Forge

“We’re staying here?” Reya asked, her eyes nearly doubling in size as she looked from Arwin to Lillia. “Seriously? That’s awesome! What happened back there? I thought you guys hated each other!”

“Wait, really?” Arwin blinked in surprise.

“I mean, yeah. Anyone would have seen the way you looked at each other.”

“Why did you keep trying to have me come along with you if you thought that?” Arwin demanded. “I thought you were oblivious!”

“So you did hate each other!”

“There was a misunderstanding,” Arwin said with a grimace. A misunderstanding might have been the biggest understatement of the century, but it wasn’t the right time to give Reya their full backstory. She had enough on her plate to deal with already.

Reya arched an eyebrow and peered over their shoulders. “Interesting. Now I really want to know what you did back there.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Arwin said. “What matters is that Lillia is going to be joining our guild, and we’ll be moving into her inn – at least for our night lodgings.”

“The ones you barely use because you’re always working?”

“I definitely want to move in,” Reya said hurriedly. “Especially if that means we get three meals a day instead of just one. I’d be dining like a king.”

“Good,” Arwin said. He jerked his chin toward the door. “Come help me gather up the beds and bring them over here, then. After that, I’ve got some work to do.”

“Can I help?” Reya asked as the trio headed out of the dark room and emerged into the sunlight outside.

“It’ll be smithing, so probably not. If you need something to do, maybe try to help Lillia do some reorganization. Figure out what it is we’ll need for the tavern to function better. It’s part of the guild now, so we’ll need to do some reworking to make sure it lives up to our name.”

“What name?” Reya asked. “We aren’t even an official guild.”

“The first step of becoming is believing and acting as if you are.”

“That sounds more like bullshitting,” Reya said. Arwin glared at her and she snickered, raising her hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Understood, Guild Leader Sir.”

“Do not start calling me that. My name is Arwin.”

Reya just snickered harder, and a small grin passed over Lillia’s face.

“You know,” Lillia drawled, a mischievous grin playing across her lips. “In many monster cultures, the leaders of groups are called Mothers.”

“I’m not so sure Mommy Arwin has the right ring to it, but it could grow on me,” Reya said, rubbing her chin.

I think I would genuinely rather die.

Arwin suppressed a sigh and shook his head, wisely choosing to abandon the topic. The more he insisted that Reya do something, the less he suspected she would actually do it.

At least she’s being herself. That’s a far cry from the desperate woman that showed me the smithy just a few weeks ago.

***

It took a little under an hour to move both beds over to Lillia’s building. Getting them up the stairs was the hardest part, but between the three of them, they eventually managed it without destroying anything too important.

As soon as they’d finished, Arwin bid Lillia and Reya farewell before returning to his smithy. He took Reya’s damaged armor with him and set about repairing it as soon as he got back.

The repairs weren’t too difficult, as all he had to do was remove the damaged scales and add in a new layer of fresh ones. Fortunately, the item hadn’t been damaged badly enough to impact its magic, so It only took about an hour before he’d finished and moved on.

There was a variety of gear he still wanted to make, foremost amongst everything being a hammer for himself. Arwin was tempted to start immediately, but he resisted the urge. He wanted to use the Achievement he’d gotten from scaring the Wyrm off on his hammer, but wasting it on a weapon made from poor materials would be pointless.

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I need to get my hands on something really nice. That probably means hunting a real nasty monster, so I should hold off on that. I’ll start with making some cutlery for Lillia. Then I’ll look into going hunting again once Anna and Rodrick come join us. We’re going to have to discuss the potential upcoming disaster with the Wyrms and what we’re going to do about it. If we fight them, I get the feeling they’d be perfect for this.

For now, I might also spend some time shopping to fix up the smithy a little more. I still need a bloody door.

With his plans in mind, Arwin got to work.

Time slipped away. Making utensils was far from a challenging task, and Arwin soon made a drawer’s worth of forks, knives, and spoons. None of them were magical – he had no idea what infusing a spoon with magic would do and he had no desire to find out. Someone would probably just steal it.

The utensils were a bit rough, but they’d serve their purpose. A quick glance out the cracks in the walls told Arwin that it was still early in the evening, so he took a trip into town.

It didn’t take much time for him to find a carpenter that had a door for sale. Arwin had never considered it, but apparently most doorways were the same size and shape. That made it considerably easier for him to purchase a door as well as some hinges and nails to secure it for just five gold.

Arwin took it back to the smithy and hammered the nails into tight preexisting cracks in the stone. Once he’d finished, Arwin took a step back and studied his handiwork.

The door wasn’t anything special, but it was a door. He had the key in his pocket, an item he wasted no time in applying to the lock, just to open and close the door a few times. It struck him that he probably looked insane opening and closing a door for no reason, but Arwin didn’t care.

It was a step closer to his goals. Soon he’d have a proper smithy, and his guild was starting to come together. Sure, there might have been a potential horde of Wyrms just a few hours from town that could draw the attention of the Adventurer’s Guild and bring everything crashing down on their heads, but that was a problem for later.

For the time being, Arwin just wanted to test out the new location of his bed. He headed inside and grabbed the utensils he’d made for Lillia, then stepped back into the street and locked the door behind him. Nodding to himself, Arwin set off down the dilapidated street and toward his new lodgings for the foreseeable future.

He made his way into the back and up a set of rickety stairs, taking each one carefully. Lillia had assured them that the stairs were safe when they were bringing the beds up, but that didn’t make him any less suspicious of them.

Never thought I’d be sleeping in the Demon – no. In Lillia’s house. Certainly a bit odd, no matter what I say.

Reya had moved her bed into the room that Lillia had been using, so Arwin had a room entirely to himself. There weren’t any doors on the upper floor, but it was still more privacy than he’d had in the smithy.

The bed took up nearly a quarter of the room, but he had a dirt-smudged window that someone had done their best to wipe down from the inside. It gave him a dim view of the city streets outside, but there weren’t too many cracks in the walls and only a little wind managed to slip through.

Not half bad.

Arwin covered a yawn and slipped into bed, setting the utensils on the floor at the foot of the bed. It sounded like Lillia and Reya had already gone to bed, and he didn’t want to wake them.

I’ll give her the utensils tomorrow.

It felt a little odd falling asleep without the proximity of the forge, but it was only a few minutes before he drifted off and darkness swallowed his vision.

The next morning came before it was welcome and Arwin blinked awake as dull sunlight filtered through the window. Not much of it actually managed to make it through, but there was just enough to pull him from his rest.

Arwin yawned and rolled out of bed, grimacing as he sniffed at his arms.

I need to ask Lillia if her tavern has a bath yet. If it doesn’t, I’m going to invest in one.

He scooped the utensils he’d made the previous day off the floor and headed out. He could hear loud snores coming from the room across the hall to him, and he poked his head into it to see that Reya was still fast asleep, her head buried under a pillow to avoid the sunlight.

Repressing a laugh, Arwin headed downstairs. The sound of clinking metal led him into the kitchen, where Lillia was busy trying to mix a bowl of batter with a metal rod. She glanced up as he entered, then nodded slightly in greeting, her attention returning to her work before doing a double take.

“Are those forks?”

“Knives and spoons as well.” Arwin held the bundle out and she took it carefully from him, her eyes lighting up with delight.

“This is fantastic. Thank you. Now I’ll actually have something people can eat with normally. All I have to do is actually get a few more customers,” Lillia said with a grin. She pulled the rod out of her bowl and claimed a spoon, sticking it into the batter and giving it a spin. “That’s so much better. How much are these worth?”

“Probably about five silver,” Arwin said after a moment. “They were pretty easy to make and aren’t all that fancy. Maybe six?”

“Six seems correct. That’s three days of stay for both you and Reya.”

“Good. Is there anything else urgent?”

“There’s nothing that I need right now, but I always need more cookware.”

“I’ll look into that in a few days, then,” Arwin promised. “I’m going to look into starting to make some gear. We should be meeting the other members of my guild soon, and they’re going to want some equipment. I’ll be in the forge if you need me.”

“Sounds good,” Lillia said. “Good luck.”

“You too,” Arwin said, raising a hand in farewell. “Feel free to ask Reya for whatever help she can offer. She’s bored out of her mind.”

With that, he strode out of the tavern. He could already feel the call of the scales waiting for him in the smithy. There was a lot he needed to work on, and every item he crafted made the next one turn out just a bit nicer.

I can’t wait to make my hammer – but one thing at a time. For now, I need to work on some equipment. The stuff that turns out poorly can go into a pile to be sold. It’s about time I started getting ready to make some real money.