by Kevin Murphy
The cane was beautiful and functional. When its wielder held it by the bottom tip and touched the amber to a cauldron of water, the water would immediately boil. The lapis side could freeze the water instantaneously, no matter the temperature. The mechanism was so effective that one touch could transform hot steam into a frosty cloud. Yorvel knew his craft well. Immediately after activation, the tool could be used as a simple cane once again with no danger of unwanted heat or cold transferring to its wielder.
Once Yorvel had begun to shape the cane, its superior craftsmanship was apparent to his tormenter and to the small crowd that had gathered to observe. Yorvel was far more skilled than should have been possible. A non-elf had no right to learn their ways. The tormentor sent for officials to arrive and then watched as Yorvel destroyed his future among the elves.
Though elven secrets were of the utmost importance, Yorvel’s grandfather was a master of his trade and would prove too costly to remove from his position. He was, however, disgraced by his flippancy for the law and forced to admit his own culpability. Yorvel was spared sentences of imprisonment or execution in respect for his grandfather’s position, but he had managed to harm his family—the one thing that really mattered to him. At that point, the youth was given an ultimatum: should he ever teach any non-elf the art, the people he cared for would be the ones to suffer.
He was never officially banished from Thelasidonna or elven lands, but he knew that staying would only bring further hardships for his family. He had already strained their relationship, and his birthright allowed him no opportunity to make other friends among the elves. He hoped that somewhere in the human lands he might be able to find peace.
The story was hard for Dakkon to listen to at points. Yorvel had been alone since birth—it had been decided for him based solely upon who his parents were. It made Dakkon think about how poorly he handled life in the real world. He had let his own connections drift away one by one through his own negligence. There hadn’t been any elven law at play for Corbin, only his own reticence to see his friends after a tiring day at work.
Dakkon and Cline repaid Yorvel for his story with tales of their travels. Their host made for the perfect sort of listener, who even held his breath as they recounted their closest calls. Yorvel had never known the call of adventure, but he often wondered what his adventuresome father’s life had been like.
It wasn’t long until the three had developed a sort of kinship.
“Really, Yorvel, you can come with us,” said Cline. “We’d love to have someone who can cook along, and it’s got to be better than isolation.”
Yorvel smiled. “That’s awfully kind, but no. You’ve helped me to remember my goals. Rather than wander, I think I’ll head deeper into Denmas to find a more accepting human settlement where I can practice my art in relative peace.”
“In that case,” Dakkon suggested, “maybe you could head to Klith. The town is a bit creepy and somewhat backwoods, but it sits above a vast visilium mine. They would be better off having you. I can’t know for certain that every one of them is above petty predisposition, but you’d definitely be able to make a profound improvement in their lives. I think anyone hostile would come around quickly.”
“I’ll admit that was my plan. Your tale of the place has me intrigued,” said Yorvel. “I think, in a few days’ time, I’ll gather what I can and head south.”
“When you do, tell them that we sent you,” said Cline. “We did a favor for the village elder before we left, but we wanted to get back on the road before we saw her again. Perhaps if they know you’re a friend, things might go more smoothly.”
Yorvel nodded.
“When you do, make sure you talk to Osword or Merelda,” said Dakkon. “We didn’t really dally in Klith, so we didn’t meet many locals.”
Yorvel nodded again.
“And don’t be too off-put by the creepy children,” Cline added. “As far as we can tell, that’s just how they raise them there.”
Yorvel cocked his eyebrow in confusion at that remark.
“Ah, never mind, you’ll see,” said Dakkon with a grin and a chuckle. “That’ll probably be the hardest thing to get used to.”
\\\
Mina, Roth, and Melee took their time returning from the nearby town of Chucherry, but when they did, they brought along a cart-load with them. There had been horses for sale in town to tempt the party, but they decided to forgo them one last time as Yorvel’s shopping list carried a few exotic reagents which dipped deeply into their pockets.
Yorvel’s ingredients and reagents weren’t all they’d bought, though. The three had new, inexpensive-but-warm traveling clothes for the party’s trip north. They brought fresh-baked bread, cheese, confectioner’s sweets, a spit, dinnerware, and an already-tapped—but still quite full—barrel of locally-brewed ale.
They had been thinking of Yorvel’s time alone and decided a change of pace was in order.
Yorvel had never really indulged in drinking before that night. He hadn’t had any reason to. For that evening, though, he cast aside reservations and drank with new friends. In Chronicle, there was no painful hangover, but the many other stages of drunkenness were well represented. For better or for worse, Yorvel experienced most of them. From happy, to loud, to rowdy, Yorvel drank as they feasted on fresh meat, bread, and cheese. Toward the end of their celebration, lost in indulgence and then-overflowing confidence, Yorvel even tried to steal a kiss from a lovely, rosy-cheeked Mina, earning him a solid punch to the nose from an equally drunken Cline.
By the following morning, their impromptu celebration had calmed and Yorvel took to the forge after apologizing to Mina and Cline, stating that he had been too forward and that he did not realize the pair was a couple. Mina simply laughed the awkward situation aside, but Cline’s flustered response only compounded when Mina shot him a sly wink.
Through a duplication of effort, much of the work on the four crystal cores could be done at once, however they required a considerable amount of time to mature within a small, oven-like box that Yorvel occasionally opened whenever he needed to check on their progress or rotate them. While the crystal cores were reaching their desired state, the mah`yarin worked with the swarm queen’s hardened crystal sickle.
Yorvel sat on an old wooden crate that shifted with each movement as he worked. He drenched the oversized crystalline blade in a troth containing a pink solution which he’d mixed by using supplies from Chucherry, then lifted it up and out to let it drip-dry. The mah`yarin placed the damp sickle on a clean linen cloth atop his worktable. The sickle was, in its original state, without a handle and far too large for a human to use.
As though tracing the grooves of invisible words along the sickle’s shaft with his finger, Yorvel whispered the secrets of his trade to the object. Soon after, the crystal began to droop like warm taffy. Quickly, Yorvel grabbed at a pouch of powder and sprinkled it liberally across the length of the shaft. His hands began to glow with a subtle orange hue, then, unexpectedly, he folded the length of what had been hardened crystal in half.
Yorvel then stretched the putty-like crystal into an approximation of its original form, only marginally shorter. He pressed the crystal flat with his bare hands, flipped it, and kneaded it further before sprinkling another line of dust then folding the blade once again.
Yorvel repeated the process of stretching out the crystal mass into a slightly smaller version of its original state only to fold it, flatten it, and knead it some more. After eight smaller iterations of the sickle’s first form plus a few other gradual alterations, he had converted the outer-edge into the blade side. The once-bladed inner-crescent had become thick and blunt. Yorvel took out what appeared to be a scalpel with a balled tip and used it to draw a groove within the object’s inner edge.
“Was it Melee who dealt the fatal blow to the fiend?” Yorvel asked.
“That’s a little unclear,” said Mina. “Melee hit it last and hardest, but it didn’t die until Cline shot the last
of its underlings.”
“Hmm. Interesting,” Yorvel responded. “Both of you, come here please.”
Cline and Melee walked up to the half-elf craftsman, unsure what they would need to do.
“Do either of you hold a grudge against the other?” Yorvel asked. Before either of them could reply, he held up his hand. “I don’t need any specifics—I can make it work either way, but the alignment would need to change.”
Melee shook her head.
Cline said, “No grudges.”
Yorvel nodded then returned to his task without dismissing the pair, who stood nearby and continued to watch him as he worked. Yorvel meticulously braided two new grooves above and below the original, taking far more time than he had for the first. The process was a slow one. He made sure to seal each groove to form closed tubes aside from their top-most and bottom-most points along the weapon’s blunt side. When he had finished them, the tubes ran from nearly the tip of the inner-crescent down to approximately where the handle would be.
Yorvel turned to Melee and held out an upturned hand. In a tone as casual as one might request the time, he asked, “May I draw your blood?”
Melee nodded once, unfazed by the odd request, and placed her hand in his.
Yorvel moved her palm above the left-most tube and cut into the groove of her palm so she could squeeze to control the flow of blood as it dripped. He elevated the end of the weapon slightly to facilitate the crimson liquid’s flow.
“Try not to get any blood in the other holes, but don’t worry about the linen,” Yorvel said.
At about half fill, Yorvel stopped supervising Melee and sealed the hole he had left in the bottom of her braided tube to prevent any blood from spilling out. Next, he elevated the other end further so Melee could finish filling it up.
“Enough, thank you,” Yorvel said as he delicately closed off the tube’s end, managing to leave no trace of air inside through spilling out some of the accumulated blood which was then wiped away with the linen cloth. “Cline?”
Cline walked up and presented his hand in the same confident manner that Melee had, and once he’d bled for a time, the other braided tube was filled.
“Who will wield the blade?” Yorvel asked as he walked over to stoke the oven and adjust the core crystals. With the bladed side no longer on the inner-edge the weapon could no longer be called a sickle. It looked like some sort of exotic, curved sword.
“Roth,” said Mina as she turned to Dakkon and Cline to see if they might protest. They didn’t. The warrior had lost his weapon and was the obvious choice. Melee had her prized, oversized sword; Dakkon had his dual daggers; Cline had his beloved bow; and Mina didn’t like to hit anything if she could help it. When Roth didn’t return from town with a new weapon, Dakkon assumed the others had already come to the same conclusion while in town.
“Very well,” said Yorvel. “Roth, may I draw your blood?”
Roth walked up the mah`yarin and presented his hand with resolve mirroring what his allies had shown.
“Will this be the hand you choose to wield it with?” Yorvel asked.
Roth shook his head, then offered his left hand. “This is the hand that will wield it. Does it change things?”
“Specificity is the key to creating something exceptional,” Yorvel replied. “I find that’s true in all aspects of life.”
Yorvel drew Roth’s blood to fill the center, non-spiraling tube. With less space to fill, the process was quicker even though the center tube extended beyond the other two. It ran close to the entire length of the weapon’s back-side instead of stopping where the handle would go.
Once filled and sealed, Yorvel double-checked his handiwork, then drew out the strip of rigid flesh that the swarm queen had dropped. Hands glowing a faint orange, he drew more unseen runes on the strip with the tip of his right forefinger.
Yorvel pulled the rigid strip into two pieces lengthwise with his bare fingers. Though it came apart as easily as pulling at thin, wet paper, the edges were not frayed or tattered. Yorvel sprinkled amber colored dust on one side of the wider strip and began wrapping it tightly against the sickle’s bottom to form a handle with a grip.
Satisfied with his wrapping job, Yorvel tied the remaining strip at the bottom of the handle in what looked to be a bit of decorative flair, then he set the weapon down and began to whisper as he drew runes across the sword’s length once again. As he did, a loud sizzling filled the air and Yorvel pulled back his finger, shaking it in pain as though he’d just accidentally touched the eye on a hot stove.
“You all right?” Roth asked, still standing next to him.
“Yeah, I was just a bit careless,” said Yorvel. “I rarely get to work on anything quite so complex as this.”
“Is it done?” Dakkon asked, as it looked like a finished product.
“Not quite,” said Yorvel, jabbing at the crystal with a finger to test its temperature. “It still needs to be sharpened, engraved, then set.”
When the sword was cool enough to hold, Yorvel picked it back up. “I’m going to do this part slowly so it’s right. I doubt it’ll be all that exciting to watch. Still, I’d like an assistant.” Then, he walked behind the house, bringing along his rickety wooden crate to sit on, and sat at his grindstone.
Shrugging, Roth volunteered to work the crank-handle that would keep the primitive-looking wheel spinning as Yorvel precisely formed its razor-sharp blade. After nearly an hour of nonstop grinding, the grating noises finally ceased, and Yorvel brought the blade once again to the linen cloth. Though the curved blade had once seemed like putty in his hands, it took the next three hours for him to etch runes into its side. Once the etching was completed to his standard, he wiped the whole thing down with fresh linen to remove any traces of lingering sediment. He then filled the small rune cavities with ash from the stove he occasionally checked on.
As night approached again, he inspected his work one final time. Yorvel closed his eyes and his hands regained their faint orange glow. He held the sword out and bestowed it with its name in a commanding tone. “Sey-varda!”
Nothing appeared to have happened, but after a smile from Yorvel, the craftsman let out a deep, accomplished sigh.
“Finished?” Cline said excitedly.
Though everyone had moved on to doing their own things, they’d all been keeping one eye on Yorvel’s progress. They’d been unaware of just how much effort went into the creation of a new weapon. Since the material had initially been a giant handle-less sickle, Dakkon had suspected that the process might be as simple as just slapping a decent grip on it, but now he knew better.
“Finished,” said Yorvel.
“Mind if I take a look?” Cline added.
“Go right ahead,” Yorvel said as he handed the sword over to Cline.
After a moment, Cline let out an appreciative whistle. “Do you make bows, too, Yorvel?”
“I wanna see,” said Dakkon, unable to hide his curiosity.
Cline handed the sword over to Dakkon as Yorvel explained that he couldn’t make bows.
Dakkon inspected the weapon in his hands.
|Name: Sey-varda
|Item Type: Sword – Slashing
|Durability: 525/525
|Damage: 15
|Attributes: Attuned to Roth
|Description: Created by a master of his art, Sey-varda is the combined product of nature, magic, and circumstance. Crafted from the body of a slain foe, its unusually thick back is infused with the blood of conquerors. When wielded in Roth’s left hand, Sey-varda will gain its Attunement Bonuses.
|Attunement Bonus: Unbreakable
|Attunement Bonus: +120 to Damage
|Attunement Bonus: Damage dealt to a foe capable of bleeding will heal Roth for 20% of damage inflected
|Attunement Bonus: Cannot be dropped on death
“Life steal?” Dakkon said dumbly as he read the third attunement bonus. Life steal’s inclusion in games had been a divisive decision throughout videogaming hi
story. If the percentage of damage converted to health was too small—often around three-to-five percent—then the stat was negligible. If it was too high—say 10 or more percent—then characters had a tendency to become unkillable, walking calamities. Roth had 20 percent. So long as he was dishing out significantly more damage than he was taking, the item should keep his hit points close to full. Of course, none of the games that had out-of-control life steal had been anywhere near as complex as Chronicle. The ability certainly wouldn’t be saving anyone from a rockslide or some sort of magical binding effect. Still, life steal was one of the S-tier attributes that every melee damage dealer should look to pick up. If specificity when making an item was really the key to acquiring strength like that, as Yorvel had suggested, Dakkon wondered just how powerful a weapon might be that was enchanted to only unlock its potential on the second Tuesday of the year. If the effects were potent enough, perhaps he might one day be bogged down by a whole slew of items that were only situationally useful.
“Huh,” said Roth once he’d had the opportunity to inspect his new weapon. “It’s kind of surreal seeing my name in an item description.”
“You’ll get used to it quickly,” said Yorvel with a chuckle. “Though, I must admit, I still remember the swell of pride I felt when I saw my own name on my first creation.”
“Why isn’t your name on Sey-varda?” Mina asked.
“Oh, I chose not to include it,” said Yorvel waving away the matter. “It’s likely more fuss than it’s worth.”
Dakkon hadn’t been aware that crafters could influence the description box of what they crafted. It made sense, he supposed, but the rings he’d gotten from the industrious-but-lonely jeweler in Correndin didn’t have a player name on them. Perhaps they were of too-low quality?
