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Post by William Tenacar on Jul 12, 2014 22:57:52 GMT -6
William took the sword, gingerly, as he looked at it. “What in the world have you done to her,” he demanded, though the question was obviously rhetorical as he continued before he could answer. “I understand the need to work on one at a time but, at least, let me see what I have to work with as far as that knife of yours goes. I won’t take it, yet, but just let me take a look at it. I’ll be able to give you a full estimate of time for the both of them and tell you which one will take the least amount of time, that way I can get that one out of the way, first. I don’t want to wake you in the middle of the night just to switch blades.”
With that, he walked over to a workbench and lay the sword down on it and beckoned the man over. “Come over here and lay them both down on this workbench, here. You can stay by them as we talk in time and I get the necessary things together for the repairs. I can already tell you this sword is going to take, at least, 10 hours of work to completely reforge it, as it needs. There are so many nicks and weak spots exposed in it that a reforging is the best option.” He moved around and got out a dye that he used to check against the sword. He nodded his satisfaction at the fit before looking up at him. “Lay the knife down so I can examine it more closely. With the Gods as my witness, I promise no harm can or will come to you while you are in my workshop.”
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Jul 13, 2014 16:19:30 GMT -6
“I was using it,” Gareth said, quick to strip his weapon of any personification now. It was an unnecessary attachment to a tool, he supposed. But that sword had been with him longer than any family or friend, and was less fickle about the company it kept than they often were. When Will asked to see his knife, Gareth reflexively grabbed it from the hilt on his left side with his left hand. It was a small, unassuming thing—a hilt made with cheap steel whose only defense against a stray sword strike was a thin, circular cross-guard that wrapped around the weapon and the swordsman’s own parrying ability. Only one edge had been forged to kill while the other was neglected to pacifism. Its modesty concealed the familiar effectiveness that Gareth had accumulated with the weapon.
But in all of its imperfections, Gareth’s hand felt comfortable on that worn grip. It was the gentle touch of a brother that kept him calm and sane. He could always see himself reflected in the blade: utility without pomp and circumstance. He had had the knife for as long as he could remember, and as a testament to his burns and his character, it had been his longest friend. His reluctance was fear and his widened eyes showed that quite well.
But he would have to take Will at his word, and his promise to be within arms’ length of them only seemed to remedy his concerns. Gareth unsheathed his knife from its waist-worn envelope and held it in front of him, blade down and sharpened edge facing outward toward Will. “Ok. I’ll take your word, William. Don’t betray it.” He lay his knife down on the table with his sword painfully. Whenever his sword had been lost in the thick of battle, he had this knife. Whenever he slept in the heart of Kath country, he had this knife. Whenever he had felt cold and alone in his temple of anger, he had this knife. His attachment was anything but paraphillic; it was the fraternal attachment he wished he could make with the people around him.
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Post by William Tenacar on Jul 13, 2014 21:06:23 GMT -6
William studied the knife and sword, using them to see into their owner’s mind. The knife was as a dear friend, a second shield. He nodded as he studied them. “The knife will only take a few minutes, as the best I can do is sharpen it a little,” he explained, looking up to meet the man’s eyes. “In fact, I’ll do that right now while you’re here.” He picked the knife up, treating it as if it were made of glass, and walked not but a step to a sharpening tool. He began to press a petal repeatedly with his foot which caused the grindstone to begin to spin. He quickly sharpened the blade in just such a way that would appear to be very interesting to the man as he watched.
Rather than simply running the length of the blade over the grindstone, he would take a section of the blade and press it flat, rotating toward the sharp part of the blade, taking very small amounts of metal before and moving along the length in the same manner. Once finished with one side, he flipped the knife over and sharpened the other side with the same strange motions. Once finished, he ran a damp cloth over the blade and examined it, before handing it back. “Test the sharpness and see how you like it.” The way he had sharpened it may have been strange but it, also, had a strange effect on the blade.
In fact the sharp edge seemed to copy the same edge style as that of a Katana. The blade would be able to easily slice through flesh by pushing it apart with an outward curve rather than an inward one. William knew that this outward curved edge would also lengthen the time that it remained sharpened. “The blade will stay sharpened and should be fairly sharp.” He smiled and looked at him. Then, he took the sword stripped the hilt and guard from it and took the blade to the smelter. “There’s a bedroom upstairs, the first door on the right.” He gestured to the stairs at one end. “You can stay the night there. I had someone from Aquavia come in and install a water heater and proper pluming. It’s all recycled, filtered, and pumped back up into a steal tank in the attic. Don’t worry about leaking, if it leaks it’ll come straight down here. The tank isn’t over the living areas.”
He smiled as he turned to the man. “You’re welcome to take a warm bath and relax, I’ll take care of everything down here.” He nodded his head to the man, a smile on his face.
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Jul 15, 2014 23:19:35 GMT -6
Gareth stood watching in anticipation. He almost held his breath as William sharpened his knife and was relieved when he felt the grip back in his hand. Gareth looked at the wall and decided that he probably should not ruin his welcome by putting holes in the wood. Instead, Gareth undid a piece of the bandage on his right hand with his mouth and then used the knife in his left to cut it. Damn. William did a good job sharpening it. Gareth shoved the spare piece of cloth into his pocket before shoving the knife into its sheathe. “It’s good and sharp.”
He nodded and walked over to his packs that he had lay down earlier. He slung them over one shoulder and began walking up the stairs, stopping halfway up and paused for a moment. His eyes looked down at the knots and varying gradients in the wooden stairs before he found the courage to look back up at William. He had a defiant look in his eyes that soon melted away into something more grateful. “Thank you,” he pushed out of his throat before continuing up the stairs more determinedly. He found the room—a modest thing with a twin bed, desk and chair, and a view to the outside street. He peeked through the window: it was dark, and the lights that had lit the street were beginning to dim like fireflies that were slowly burning out. He shook any kind of poetic notion from his head and began shedding his first layer of patchwork leather armor and his vest. He threw them down into an organized pile on the bed, straps face up so they could be readily placed back on pending any unforeseen circumstance. His knife—what he had made such a big scene for downstairs—he dealt with lastly, unfastening the knife and its blanket from his belt and threw it across his right shoulder.
Gareth peeked into the bathroom; it was as modest and pragmatic as the bedroom he had just exited. There was just enough space not to feel cramped between the toilet and the sink and the tub, and Gareth could not tell what any of them were made of. As far as he could tell, they were all the same material and it was some kind of whiter stone—not expensive but seemingly durable enough to last. Gareth now removed the sheathe from the belt and placed it on the armrest of the tub. He turned on the faucet and soon water flowed from it and steam from that. He undressed and slowly he began unwrapping his bandages. They stunk. A combination of collected dirt, dead skin, and body odor now had a chance to reach the outside world and the result was not enjoyable. Gareth didn’t mind the smell—he had accepted it as a consequence of his self-consciousness long ago and didn’t have the money to properly replace the bandages over and over again. His pale body was only colored pink at his scars and slightly browned at the eye slit of his bandages from sunlight and dirt.
Gareth slid into the water. It was hot—probably too hot for someone unused to the burn. But this was a pain that he found cathartic and cleansing and it just seemed to wash his sins off with his dirt and the day. He closed his eyes as he slipped off into sleep.
It was a dream all too familiar to him. He was exiting some kind of automated vehicle in a city he did not recognize at first, where the buildings kissed the pastel twilight and the people seemed—wholly different from anyone he had known in Hryst or Domhan Tir or what little travelers he had met from Aquavia or Zhadrah. Their facial structures seemed higher and more defined and their was a universal elegance to the way they carried themselves. The coloring was strange and exotic—everything seemed to have a darker hue than it should have had. What struck him most of all though, was his lack of bandages. Whenever he looked down at his hand, he noticed smooth skin. Smooth, burnless skin. He would walk forward through a glass automated door and see his face. There was no doubt it was his--but it was beautiful now. Burnless. Did Brynne finally answer his prayers? He couldn’t read the sign above the door anymore. Anymore? He could read it then, sometime before in the fictional history of the dream and he thought he should be able to read it now and his lack of ability frustrated him to no end. But it seemed so familarly archaic—like looking at Middle English. Each word in the building's title lingered somewhere deep in his throat, unwilling to escape.
When he finally crossed the building’s threshold, the cool marble that had surrounded him began crumbling and melting away. The stones became eroded. Pieces of the wall disappeared slowly, as if rotting. Harsh sunlight came in through the collapsed roof and he heard the welcoming shriek of a Forgotten somewhere around him. The cooler tint of the previous world had succumbed to a sepia filter. He realized he was in the Deadsands now. He looked back down at his hands—no longer naked but with a pair of gloves. He didn’t feel any bandages. What was this? He saw a silhouette in front of him and he saw his hand motion upwards to beckon them away and he began turning and one hand went to the hilt of an arquebas at his side and the other to the sword on his opposite hip—
A large claw emerged from his chest, bursting into life like some bacterial bloom. He felt bones break and his chest tear apart and he all he could taste was iron and wine. He then felt the burn—he had felt it before when he had killed Jackson. But this was somehow different. No, he knew what it was. There was no anger. There was no sadness. Only peace in his death, and hope that his final moments had saved the silhouette. He smiled and coughed out a red spray as the burn encompassed him and the Forgotten that had finished him. Blue fire…blue fire?
He snapped awake. His head jolted itself upward and he instinctively scanned the bathroom. Nothing threatened him, except his own paranoia. He removed the plug from the bathtub and stepped out of it before drying himself off with the towel that was provided on the rack. He looked down at the arm rest—his knife was still there. He exhaled deeply as he ran his hand through his stringy hair slowly before violently shaking it dry. He took another deep breath before calming his heartbeat down to a normal level. This was not good adrenaline—it felt like a bad high. He hated sleeping anymore.
He repeated his process in reverse now, wrapping his chest, face, and arms in bandages before dressing himself totally again. How long had he been sleeping in the tub? His back and neck hurt, and Gareth rolled his head around in a circle to work out the rust. Gareth strapped his knife back to his belt and his belt back around his waist. He walked down the stairs back to Will to see how his sword was coming. Anything to get his mind away from his dream. “How is it coming?” Gareth inquired before he was finished coming down.
OOC: Long post is long. |
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Post by William Tenacar on Jul 21, 2014 23:22:18 GMT -6
William started working on the sword the moment he had sent the man upstairs. He started by adding the steal of the sword to the smelter and melting it down along with the ores he used in his steals. He began heating the metal and watching it, waiting for the signs that it was ready. It had barely been an hour before the traveler whose sword he was re-forging came down to see about the progress. In reply, he pulled the metal of the blade out and showed its red-hot glow. “I’ve barely started, yet,” he said with a smile. “Forging like this takes time. But I believe you will be pleased with the results. If your reaction to how I sharpened your knife was any hinting at it.”
After that, he turned back to his work, grabbing his forging hammer and using it to straighten the blade. He looked at the metal and sighed. “This sword really was a thing of beauty... I only hope that I can make it so, again.” He continued working, hammering it straight before putting it, once again, in the fire. He smiled, a peaceful look coming over his face as he worked. Though the slightest changes in the room would draw the smithgineer’s attention, though only for a quick glance.
The process of straightening the sword took nearly two hours to complete. Once this was done, however, the next step came in: filling in the chips where steal was lost. This was the longest part of the process. William stuck a couple of ores into the smelter, working the bellows like a man on a mission. He kept the bellows going until had ores were melted down, into a liquid, then he poured one into a special cup which he set beside the fire to keep hit. The rest he emptied into an ingot mold to cool.
He grabbed the cup and walked over to the mold where he had the sword on and poured the metal in, letting it fill around the sword before closing the lid and sighing. At this point, he decided to look around, checking to see if the man was still there. The smelting of fresh steal had taken nearly 4 hours. He knew that it would take another two hours for the steal to cool before it was finished. Then, the last hour would be spent polishing and sharpening the sword.
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Jul 23, 2014 16:47:08 GMT -6
Barely started? He hadn’t been sleeping long, then. When he heard the news his eyes drooped and his neck deflated its tenseness through a sigh. He stared at the blade’s steel as it began melting as if it had just begun its pupating process. Despite his fatigue Gareth felt no need to return to sleep, having just left its labyrinthine dreamscape through a particularly violent method. Spontaneous combustion was nothing new to Gareth, but the blue flames had brought with them an exotic mystery that he struggled to keep in the back of his mind. Dwelling on these things brought him no peace or anything of merit besides a host of questions regarding his own psyche. But suppose there was something to it? Would he risk leaving some lifelong questions unanswered because he was afraid he was hallucinating? “I don’t need it beautiful. I need it usable,” he said in response to William’s poetic notions of beauty. What was it going to do, paralyze his opponents in awe?
He walked around William’s workshop. His hand gently guided him around the shelves as he searched for a pencil single-mindedly, ignoring Will’s occasional glances. Gareth was only barely housebroken anymore. He found a small work pencil and took out the paper he had wrote Will’s information on before and began writing the preterit characters onto the page in one of the corners. Now wholly out of the transient haze that separated his two realities Gareth could not put much confidence into his recreation and begrudgingly accepted his final product. Gareth stuffed the paper back into his pocket and put the pencil back onto the counter.
He sat down in the spare chair in the workshop and watched Will work. There was not much to do besides struggle to stay awake. He was still shaken from the abstract realism that had just plagued him and Gareth put his mind to the flame and coals. His bags weighed his eyes down but he forced them open. The past day weighed his body down, but he sat straight up. He spent the better part of thirty minutes squirming in his chair trying to make himself uncomfortable before he finally succumbed again. His limp body folded down into the chair as if his corpse had been propped there in a slouch. It was a hollow sleep. Empty dreams devoid of substance. He awoke feeling rested only in the strictest sense of the word. His mind had yet to catch up to his body. His first view was looking at Will as he worked filling in the broken pieces of the sword—exercising a single-minded mastery over the subject. He couldn’t sit here any longer though.
“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said as he rose from his chair, eschewing any jacket for the cooler night air as he walked out the door. The full moon stared down at him like some ever-observant overlord that had monopolized the business of illumination. Brass “hoots” periodically interspersed themselves between chorus of woodwind crickets as they all played to the percussive two-two rhythm of his boots crunching against the dirt path. He listened to this symphony until he had left the town proper and stood on the road he had come in on.
His right hand began sweating profusely for a moment as it saturated the wrappings around itself. Sparks started flickering around him as his eyes narrowed at the imaginary enemy that had challenged him. His right hand generated a fireball that Gareth threw forward. His hand reversed the follow-through after the fact, dragging the fireball back to him before it extinguished himself when it reached his hand again. Using fire like a yo-yo was one of Gareth’s earliest abilities, but he had never rectified the lack of control when he had generated fire anywhere but his hands. Gareth slid one foot forward like a kick that could never get off the ground and saw a flicker of light in front of his foot. He tried again. The flicker became like a wave of sparks crashing back onto the ground. He tried again as he pushed forward harder and dug into the dirt deeper and he had a small burst of flames extend in front of him that died as quickly as they were born. He practiced. Over and over again until his attention had dipped to an unsatisfactory level because it protested his mind’s lack of rest. Finally he stopped as he saw a nascent sunrise on the horizon and walked back to Will’s workplace. His hands dug into his pockets as they found company among the bandage scraps and his note paper.
He opened the door and came in as Will finished smelting the steel and waited for it to cool. “How far along are you?” he inquired as he found his chair again and fiddled with his position before getting up. He watched the steel flow mercurially into the mold before he turned around and walked away, drawing his knife and flipping it in the air as he caught the handle each time.
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Post by William Tenacar on Aug 4, 2014 14:34:59 GMT -6
William looked at the man as he walked in and smiled. “Just waiting on the steal to cool,” he explained. “Then I’ll polish, sharpen, and put the hilt and cross guard back on. These are the last couple of hours before everything is done. If you have any engraving you’d like for me to do, now is the time to say what you want. While I’m not attuned with magic, I can also have it help you with any of your abilities, if you want. There are some runes I know that can help most magic flow through steal quite nicely.”
He wasn’t sure about the feeling he had but, somehow, he could tell that this man had some kind of ability. Maybe it was the way the man dressed or something about his stature, he didn’t know. Either way he had a feeling the man could do something most other men couldn’t, though he didn’t know what. He listened to the man speak, in case he wanted the engravings then simply fell silent, waiting for the steal to cool. He knew he’d need to temper it a little to make sure it was fully ready but that wouldn’t take but a moment, though he would have to darken the area. He moved around, gathering a few buckets of water from the small well and pouring it into the special tub beside the furnace. By the time it was ready, the sword was cool enough to have hardened. He, then, moved around the room and dowsed every lamp and closed every door. Once the room was dark except for the furnace, he pulled the sword out and moved over to the furnace.
Placing the blade into the fire he used the bellows to heat the flames up and, in turn, the sword. His eyes never left the blade as he pumped air into the furnace, heating the blade to a very high temperature. Once he was sure it was ready, he pulled the blade out and stuck it into the water beside him, watching as it cooled. “Alright, that’s one part done! Now comes the polish, sharpening, and re-fitting.”
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Aug 22, 2014 12:08:29 GMT -6
“I make fire.” Gareth extended his hand and turned it palm up, and inside of his grip there was a small flame. But like all fires it was only a seed of the destruction that it could wrought. It had a potential to destroy with wild abandon if left unchecked and sometimes it scared Gareth and other times it fascinated him, but he knew in that fascination only lied a deeper, darker path that would consume him if he followed it. But it when fire was guided by an artificial master it was practical and important. Heat, light, sanitation, cauterizing—fire could provide these things.
As for inscriptions he could think of nothing. The idea of wearing one’s history out in the open disgusted Gareth as frivolous and impractical. It would accomplish nothing and he did not want any unwarranted sentimentality tainting him or his tools. He had nothing to remember, either. Gareth’s life had been a pattern of systemic abandonment and it was history that frustrated him. He would not wear it like a cross. He would overcome it and he burn it up behind him one day when he was strong enough. “No frivolous inscriptions, William.”
As William doused the flames Gareth absent-mindedly still had his small seed burning in the palm of his hand. It fought against the darkness like the last soldier in a defeated regiment. Fight fight fight fight. The enemy was too strong in war sometimes. This was one of those times. The last spark could rest easy knowing that it would flicker with its courage still intact. But then Gareth thought that was romantic and stupid. Death was not a reward. It was the final act of what he determined was going to be a very long and fruitful life. Gareth heard the hiss of steel and it woke him out of his personal delusions. He stared at William working through the comfort of darkness. His sword was in good hands, he felt. It was not a hiss of pain but the hiss of searing metal on skin as it repaired wounds. He sighed and fought off the sleep that he hadn’t gotten. He readjusted his posture to a less comfortable position to help. He fidgeted with his bandages and some of the tools on the shelf anxiously. Gareth could have stood to gain some patience.
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Post by William Tenacar on Aug 22, 2014 12:44:26 GMT -6
William nodded, seeing the flame appear in the palm of Gareth’s hand. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll put some Runes of Fire on the blade.” He began, first, by polishing the blade using several different kinds of stone. This took him around 45 minutes and, the finished product was glistening and a beautiful color, showing that it was masterfully crafted with very strong but adaptable steel. William, then, took it to his grindstone and sharpened it the same way he had sharpened the knife. He finished with assembling the cross-guard and handle, fitting it into place the way it had been with its original place, taking another 45 minutes to sharpen and reassemble the sword.
Once that was done, he began to engrave the runes that make up the word Fire along the center of the blade on both sides. This, in and of itself, took about fifteen minutes. Once done, he looked at Gareth and held the blade out. “Those runes spell out fire. That should allow you to use your flame along the blade without worry of damaging the integrity or strength of the blade itself. They should, also, allow you to use the flame a lot easier with the blade. You can test it, if you want, just do me a favor and aim it toward the furnace so that it doesn’t damage the rest of the shop.” He smiled and stepped back, knowing to give plenty of distance to the man. Controlling flame, he knew, was a very difficult thing to do. He was very glad that he was a master at working the flames of a furnace or else he wouldn’t know the dangers, as the numerous, faded burn scars on his hands and wrists told. He had a lot of experience with fire and not all of it good.
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Post by Gareth MacKay on Aug 26, 2014 23:13:54 GMT -6
Gareth sat and watched him work. He was excited knowing that everything was almost done, considering how long he had been waiting. Sitting around uselessly. It had been frustrating but he supposed it was necessary. His sword needed reforging badly, especially if he was going to be going back into the Deadsands soon. The minutia didn’t interest him. He took William’s words as gospel. If Gareth had any training in classical runes when he was younger it never took. He could read them as well as he could read the words in his dreams, but for these runes at least he had a translator.
When Gareth gripped his blade again he gripped it tightly. It fused to his hands as if welded by his own fire. He kept looking at the blade. A narcissist would have been trapped by the reflection but Gareth was enthralled by the way it seemed to cut through the air and the way that it felt in his hands and the way it seemed to flow from place to place. It again felt like an extension of his arm. Gareth did not hesitate. With William’s blessing he pointed his sword toward the furnace and pulled. Reeling in some great, unseen weight from its point across the waters. The fire from the furnace spooled out of the door momentarily and Gareth felt in control. He was almost visibly happy. He felt like he had domesticated the animal of his own misfortune for a moment before he realized how premature and stupid the thought of totally mastering the burn was. He pushed the sword back as if placing a large key into a larger lock. The fire crept back into its bed as if going to sleep and Gareth lowered his sword and looked down at it, and then back at William. He held the tip of the sword up because it would have been sacrilege to lay it on the ground and he looked at William with a grateful glare. “It works. Thanks, Will. Next time you need something delivered securely, send word to The Edge of Paradise. It’s a deadbeat bar near the Deadsands. I’ll come running,” he said, hinting at humor. The sheathe was upstairs with his things that he would need to collect before he left.
Maybe after some sleep.
Yeah, after some sleep would be nice. Gareth suppressed a yawn that tenaciously crept out of his nose. “If you don’t mind, I may sleep a some more.” The sun would be up soon but Gareth did not seem to mind getting a few more hours of sleep before heading back out to scavenge. It would be a long time before he would see a comfortable bed. The Deadsands were very unforgiving and were far from comfortable and while he was never a fan of needless luxury, he was in an uncharacteristically good mood.
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