Normally it was recommended that you work the forge in the middle hours of the day. It was optimal that the room be shaded, but not too dim, shaded from the daylight so you can see the glowing colors of the metal. With magic though, August could work from dusk to dawn without worry.
It had taken her a bit to convince them, but Lyra, Vayla, and Asra eventually let her be alone to think and went back to work or the temple respectively. For Vayla, she worked till late at night to make her necklace so all three could leave at once in the morning, and took a nap to have enough energy for what happened next. While she’d worked on it, her mind went back to her encounter with that noble, Sophie, at the market. She’d been careless for far too long, procrastinated the inevitable end and almost doomed all of her daughters to the stigma of being birthed from a Demon Blade. They already had many enemies, and if her true identity was uncovered it would be handing ammunition to every single one of them.
So to prevent that, she set up a deceptively simple plan.
The alchemical coal burned a smokeless, ethereal blue-white in the circular fire pot. This was equipment specifically designed to produce living blades, only available to the richest smiths in the land. Each use burned a sizable hole in her pocket, and she still remembered the old days when she obsessively measured every expenditure of mother’s leftover supply since she couldn’t buy any herself.
Ah, I’m getting nostalgic so close to the end.
After a moment of silence, she picked up the blade she’d been working at for two years, heavier and longer than anything she’d made before. Made with the finest blood iron, it was still full of impurities no matter how much she hammered at it. This was because a Living Blade required more than just heat to be shaped; she needed to split off the essence of herself into the metal, to shape it in the image of her single minded intent, and make it slack with the heat of her burning will. Then, and only then will the alloy allow her to shape it into a true blade of soul steel.
Taking a deep breath, August held a section of the sword against the flame as she reached down into her chest, using her unending hunger to reach deeper than any physical sense and brush up against the blazing alloy of her soul. Before, there had still been a large portion of it fashioned after her old self. Now, there was barely a fraction left, which she had been racing to try and force into the blade for far too long. It was simply impossible to separate it from herself, and she couldn’t understand it for the longest time, but now she could.
I can’t just forget who I was. I can’t go back, like I’d tried so hard to do, but in a sense I’ve never really changed either.
With that revaluation, the pinprick of her old brightened, expanding and melting with the demonic corruption surrounding it. They churned together, spinning faster and faster. Quickly, she took the blade off the fire and raised her fist, melting the hand and much of the forearm into white metal that immediately set ablaze with the heat of her determination. With a loud cry she made the first strike against the red hot blood iron.
August couldn’t help but laugh at the large flake of Hammerscale knocked off the blade in one hit; the same one she’d been going at for months with no success. She eagerly fell into muscle memory of striking, heating the next section, then striking again. The work all flowed together as her soul continued spinning, burning brighter and hotter with each passing second such that she wondered if it was giving off physical heat or her mind was playing tricks with the forge’s fire. The air was smoldering, and rivulets of sweat dripped down her back as she drank water to replace it.
Slowly, gradually, the vague image she’d had in her mind’s eye for the entire project unfolded. When she realized what she was seeing, she gasped out loud and froze mid-strike. She should’ve expected it, and a part of her had always known this would be the result, but it still stirred up tidal waves of emotion in the pit of her stomach.
It’s me…!
A tall, stocky woman with a thick mane of hair redder than Asra’s auburn, with a touch of orange in the light. It was the same image of the girl she’d made all those years ago, only grown up.
Even back then, I knew deep inside this would be my last one, huh?
Swallowing a sudden lump in her throat, August got back to work, the rhythm imprinting itself on the very soul she kept pouring in until her very breathing fell in sync with the strikes. The pull from the metal hurt in a way impossible to describe, as forcing her existence to fold inside out. There was no tearing off piece by piece like usual, only a continuous flow that seemed neverending as her soul grew in heat, speed, and mass. It pulsed with every strike then waned with time, and a primal instinct was telling her to never let it slip
After several hours of viscerally exhausting work, August finally noticed something different; her soul was shrinking -no- compressing in on itself. It didn’t seem to be increasing in speed anymore, but it wasn’t slowing down either, just compressing into something so bright it would’ve been hard to see with her eyes. The progress pushed her forward to ignore the weakening muscles, the increasing frequency of dizzy spells, and the scars tearing back open in her soul. Everything fell away until the full force of her attention tunneled into a single point.
As she moved on to the sword forge for tempering and hardening, she didn’t even realize she was almost done until she felt a sharp tug on her soul. Her eyes widened, mouth agape as the tongs slipped from her shaking, exhausted hands. For the first time in a while she took a good look at her soul, a memory resurfacing unbidden about an offhand comment Mel made when they were naming the constellations.
“Do you know what those stars in the sky are actually made of? They’re burning balls of gas billions of planets away, so large and massive they make the planet look like a grain of sand in the desert. All of that weight and heat creates the heavier elements that make planets like ours possible over billions of years. Every time I think about it, I get reminded of how small I actually am.”
At the time, August had laughed, saying if they really were just cosmically scaled forges, the nobles would be fighting over themselves to buy the rights to them millions of years from now. Looking at her soul now, a hyperdense rotating sphere with a core of hellfire, there wasn’t a single doubt in her mind that stars worked the way Mel said they did.
It feels so beautiful…
August was ready. She knew it in his heart of hearts, but now that she was so close, a small part of her was panicking. No one knew what happened when a demon sword forged a demon sword out of themselves. Hell, nobody had even realized that the Demon Sword kept the smiths’ consciousness and memories when they were born. And just like the first time all those years ago, she had no idea if August was about to die or not.
Even if she didn’t die, she’d have to leave. Her daughters would be heartbroken. Vayla, Lyra, and Asra could all blame themselves needlessly even with the note on her pillow. Her daughters might split up, or drift apart without her to serve as an anchor.
But I’d rather have that than sentence them to death when I’m inevitably discovered one day.
August breathed out and closed her eyes. All she could hope for is that if she did die, the Living Blade she forged would read the note on the table and carry on her wishes, or that whoever discovers her body do it for her.
That’s right. There’s no other choice.
Half terrified, and half giddy with anticipation, August let go. Everything went dark, and he died.
gNatonthewall· Jan 16, 2024
