One Shield to Rule Them All, Pt. 1 (cross-post)

[Sylus Kurgen]

This has got to be the weirdest delivery in the history of Smithy supply runs Manny O’Brian thought to himself as he unloads the shipping crate from his wagon. At first it looked normal when loading up at the warehouse. Some iron ingots, flux, usual things. Then came the bones. A macabre collection to be sure. Fae fingers, a number of dragon fangs, human teeth, a demon skull, some weird wing joint marked ‘angel’. What the hell is this guy making? Then there were the bags of blood, one for each kind of bone. “And why the hell am I delivering it to Twilight Isle?” Manny asked himself while pulling his hovering hand cart through the portal.

The jarring transition left him queasy and looking for a place to spew his lunch. A potted plant just inside the portal worked nicely. Wiping his mouth, Manny looked around for this Sylus dude. He rechecked his delivery notes not seeing anyone and scrolled down to the bottom. “Of course...Tower of Fire…ugh..” This would be a long walk.

While the scenery for the trip was enjoyable, Manny couldn’t help but feel like he was being followed. Occasionally glancing around himself, the feeling grew worse the closer to the volcano he became. Off in the distance the thing looked like it’d been wrenched right out of a Tolkien novel. Mount Doom itself. Especially with the giant face made of stone and fire. “Isildur! Cast it into the fire!” he quotes, holding a hand out before himself as though he were Elrond beseeching the King of Gondor to hurl the One ring into the fires of its own creation.

“What are you smoking?”

Manny lurched out of his moment and stared at the man sitting on a rock just outside the mouth of the entrance to the volcano tunnel. Broad shouldered and burly, the man sat coiled like a serpent. Every muscle casually tensed as if always expecting a strike to come from somewhere. The guy’s voice, a gravel laced baritone came across as the sort of thing you’d hear before being killed in a back alley. The man looked like he’d done that before too. “Uhm, are you...Sylus Kurgen?”

“Yes.” came the answer and a dismissive gesture to hand over the signature device.

“If you could just sig…” Well this was going to be easy! He forked over the clipboard rather than the digital stuff. He’d learned once already portals mess with tech. Learned the hard way! “So, I’ve got to ask. What are you making with this stuff?”

Sylus hands back the papers and takes the handcart from Manny as he walks into the mouth of the Tower of Fire volcano. “One Shield to rule them all….”

“Who the hell uses shields any more?” Manny’s only answer was silence as he heads back to his truck.



********************

There wasn’t much that could bring Kruger through the portal. The needs of a friend, duty. Often those were the same thing spurring his will into action to take him to a place he knew was going to hurt him. Sylus had found another, one that while having the appearance of duty and friendship was far more personal to Kruger. The pain that stabbed through his gut lingered on even after the violent reaction that inevitably hit him as he stepped upon the grounds. It would pass, it always did, though it was taking longer this time than it ever had. Kruger lingered just inside the gate of the Tower of Fire, a set of plans clutched in his hand. This was his reason for being here above any other. Another answer may lay within the schematics.

He watched as Sylus dealt with Manny, fist clenched against another stabbing sensation that ripped across his abdomen. Knowledge always had a price. He took a breath steeling his resolve and stepped from the gat to take up a position on the other side of the crate from Sylus.The man’s height forced Kruger to bend his arm and lift his shoulder to keep the crate level. There was no telling how things had been jammed into the box until it was finally opened. Kruger remained silent as they moved deeper into the tower, an unusual state for him prompted by the fact that he wasn’t alone. Sylus, he was friendly with the man, but in this they were usually rivals. Kruger respected the man, shared many of the opinions about the working of metal into weapon and armor. There were points where they veered apart, this was a good thing so far as he was concerned. It was these differences that allowed there to be space for both of them to thrive. There were a lot of ways to reach the same goal. Those differences wouldn’t matter here. Their course was being dictated by the person who’d created the plans in his hand. He didn’t know where Sylus had stumbled upon them. The man’s position afforded him access to places that Kruger couldn’t get to as easily. Was the respect from Sylus mutual? The only evidence he had was the fact that he was here.

Numbers filled his mind as they grew closer to the space the Keeper had set aside for them. They forced their way in, shoving aside any other thoughts about where they were and those wonders that stood around them. It wouldn’t be long before the intruding figures would force him to finally speak. Numbers he’d seen only once on the rolled page echoed along with the footsteps of both men. Mixtures and temperatures, heating times and particle density, even the volumes of the blood needed to quench the steel came from him in a soft litany. Kruger was sure that both men knew that an injection mold would be faster and easier. Of course they also understood that would as likely negate the benefit of working the metal created by hand. This shield needed to be created by hand and hammer in the proper environment. That was the key, the thing that brought him more than anything else to witness something amazing and actively take part in its birth. To answer that burning question that was always in his mind…why?





“Not sure if it’s because of the magical energies involved, but this shield while simple in base format is pretty complex in design.” Sylus commented as he and Kruger look over the schematics.
The forge within the Tower of Fire breaths around them as the crate is opened. Five steel ingots needed to be melted down and resmelted with the bones. “Though, Bonesteel is an odd choice for a shield. Were this a weapon, it’d make sense to make it effective across a wide range of opponents.”

His mind continues to come back to the collection of bones, what defensive properties would those imbue into the raw materials? Dragon bones could be breath resistance, or a hardness to absorb impact. The Fae bones? Hard to tell, could disrupt glamour or even withstand acidic blood..or merely an alternative to cold iron. A bonesteel weapon made of fae bones theoretically worked like cold iron on most accounts. Not something he had actual experience with.

“The plans don’t specify any order to make the ingots, but one set of bones per ingot might make the overall effects more stable. What are your own thoughts, Kruger? Just melt down the steel, add the bone dust and call it a day?” Sylus had allready dug out an apron, shed his vest and began setting out the equipment from the box around the Tower of Fire’s forge.

"That, or combine the bones, mix them and do it all at once. Hard to say which option is better. I'd be afraid of making one point stronger against a single type of creature and weaker to the rest if it was one to an ingot. Unless we melted them all at the same time, then poured them into a single vat, letting them mix naturally." Those were the thoughts off the top of Kruger’s head. He donned his own apron and readied to work. "I have the same questions about the bath in blood. one at a time, some combination? There was nothing overly specific. Like maybe multiple ingredients wasn't considered."

"That feels like the way to go, melt them all at once and make the ingots from there. Almost looks like the plans are unfinished." One of the few times Sylus spoke of emotions. The feel of how to make this project, what his artisan instincts tell him to do. "To the quenching, might be good to do it the same way, some sort of vortex bath.

Kruger simply nodded. It made sense to him too, like so many things had been created, pieces coming together, to make the whole. There was little left to say, the work was calling to him, probably calling to Sylus as well. "That seems like the best way. Nothing left now but to get started. We've got a lot of hours to pull. No need to spend too many second guessing."

What came next was second nature to both men. The song of steel and the rhythm their hammers.

( a large thank you to Kruger for working on this with me, and Jesse for letting us use her Tower as a setting ))

[Kruger]

The Celestial Tower, Kruger had never been there. He’d never seen the eternal flame that resided within the place either though he had heard of it. In the hours between the newly formed ingots being formed and cooling he could have gone home. That would have meant travel through the portal, not once but twice more. He didn’t want to have to deal with that again. It was better to just find someplace here, and collapse for a while. Sleep hadn’t come easy, not for lack of trying, his mind raced ahead to the job at hand. It also seemed to find it’s way around other stray thoughts. How much the tower’s floors walls and ceilings seemed to practically hum with magic? That the very air itself was alive with it. How many years had that flame burned to so inundate everything with it’s natural emissions? He’d lost track of time, Sylus, and Lilith. She’d been accommodating when he’d explained his need to stay rather than leave. She’d even mentioned perhaps trying to work on a solution to his ailment. That had been hours ago, before the return of Sylus, before the work had begun again.

Twin hammers rang through the forge that had been hastily assembled for this specific purpose. Four hands worked together towards a single purpose. It had been a long time since he’d worked with another smith, at least in this fashion. He’d had a partner once, and working with Sylus, talking to him over the bell tones and actually getting replies that weren’t always what he agreed with but similar enough that the differences were minor, reminded him of that time. This piece, this shield afforded him a rare opportunity. Early on it seemed odd that the design actually called for a pair of smiths, and Masters level at least. Yes the measurements and variable tolerances were almost nil. That was not the reason.

After the first quenching in the vortex bath, things began to go strange. He had theories about it, sharing those with Sylus. “Could be the blood acts as some kind of catalyst for the bones within. Maybe that’s why the need to do this here, the Bone Steel may be doing just as everything else here has. It’s absorbing the power, only the rate may be accelerated.” In his head he could see it happening clearly, the final ingredient added excited metal at atomic or even sub atomic levels. Their bonds becoming positively charged with the power freely radiating through the Celestial tower. It had to be here, here was the only place on the island that encompassed all the other elements.

Kruger knew he could be wrong, he’d been before and likely would again. It was his hypothesis, or at least the one he liked the best. True or not the effect was becoming more obvious, and would have been much more difficult to deal with alone. They had to work simultaneously. Those points at which one or the other had needed to remove both hands from the object often resulted in anything from a minor hesitation to an outright end to the landing of hammer blows. As the form became closer to design, those precise curvatures would trap light, and the shape of the shield would alter. Not a big deal if it were completed. Part of its design was to change shape to match the what the user favored. Lining up a hammer blow on a part that was no longer there was another matter. It would revert once they both had a hand on it again, perhaps unable to decide which person to change for.

The situation forced them to work across from each other. One was a mirror to the other, if a decidedly distorted mirror. Kruger perhaps looking like the funhouse version of the tall Sylus. The obvious flaw in the shield was raising a few concerns with Kruger. One’s that he would have voiced even if he were there by himself. “Do you suppose that the final feature is the key? The symbol on the front might make it pair with one user until it is offered to another by The Overlord?” To his eyes, those eight outward pointing arrows was the symbol of chaos, but then maybe that was the point.