47th Frost, 123
The season felt like it was passing quickly, but it always did. The summer and the winter were always very busy times for the smith's work, even mundane ones. Preparing for the planting and the harvest, preparing for excursions some spring and repairing things for the adventurers that returned at the end of fall. For Torin, it was similar, except that his work Searing was mainly for the Starfall folk, and his work in the Frost was half for them and half for himself, or, rather, for his friends.
Glade and Ash had plenty of work but they weren't as hectic and full as their more severe siblings. The work served to keep Torin's mind off of the worry that when the time came for Glade to arrive, they it, yet again, would not. It was the last chance, really, for the world to stand a chance of ever returning to what had been normal. Memories of reading something, somewhere, that had explained that there had been long periods of prolonged icy weather in the distant past swam up to prickle at his fear, but he did not go looking for those histories and he did not speak of them. Everyone in his circle, and most of the people he encountered in the city, seemed to be holding on to a pinch-faced sort of optimism. The kind that said things would get better because they had to. The 'or' that punctuated this idea was never spoken but everyone knew what the rest of the thought was, 'or everything dies'." Maybe not everything, not with magic being employed and surely there were some gods who would protect their chosen people through the long Frost, but most things, people, animals and plants alike, would die.
Though House Leukos still sent him work aplenty, commissions from others, noble houses and wealthy merchants mainly, were beginning to dry up. People were looking to the future and, seeing uncertainty, deciding that their money was better kept than spent, even with the New Year and its usual celebrations on the horizon.
So it was with thankfulness that Torin's days filled up and over-filled, spilling from one to the next, providing him with a never-ending distraction with projects of his own devising. It helped that this distraction, or distractions as there were several, were both fascinating and difficult.
The Featherlight bags were the easiest, as the most complicated part of their magic was well-known and much tested by time and many hands. The things he was adding, (a greater capacity, the ability to sustain from spoiling, and the strength not to take damage) were either also well known in other item schematics, or else ones that he had added to so many things already he could do it while thinking about other things. Aurin was there for much of the making, lending his Traversion and Negation to the project; though his time was dear he popped in any day that Torin let him know that his magic was needed. Renault was able to fill in with some of the Traversion and lent his Elementalism as well. Even Sivan's alchemy came into play, having long become used to Torin requesting specific concoctions without always explaining what he was going to use them for. The pair discussed their work together often but Sivan's understanding of Runeforging was as little as Torin's own of Alchemy and they were comfortable allowing the other to handle the things in which they did not excel.
The two bags were also the soonest finished, coming to completion just after what the calendars said was the middle of the season. They were lovely things in terms of their creation and ability, but less physically pretty than they were functional. The smith was proud of them no less for their practicality, if anything, it pleased him more that the look of them matched their reason. How well a thing fit together in its purpose, physicality and action, the better it fit inside his head, inside his heart, even.
The bags were set aside where they would be secured and ready when it was time to give them, for he did not know how he wished to wrap them. Putting them inside other bags did not seem correct, and wrapping them in paper felt like a disservice. Perhaps he would just put them, unadorned with the other gifts, all gathered around his hearth, awaiting the ones who would use them, or maybe with just a ribbon tied for festive decoration. He would think on it.
Not long after, only a little more than a week, Aurin's knives were pulled from the aetherforge for the last time. They were beautiful, not because he had put any aether into magically enhancing their appearance, but because they were elegant in their simplicity, so sharp and polished that they gleamed and always would. Nothing would ever dull them, though they would never harm the hand, nor any other part, of the one who owned them. Torin did not own them, even though he had made them, and he never would. They were Aurin's, they had his blood in them, metal and magic both, aesthetically tangled up with his personhood. If he were to die (a possibility the smith glossed over in his musings), Torin would not be surprised if they disappeared altogether, following him into whatever afterlife he was taken to.
The knives he wrapped very carefully in the leather sheathes he had made for them with his own hands as he'd sat, watching them soak in the aether he fed them in his kiln. These also would not be cut by the blades, while any other sheath, or leather, for that matter, would be. The blades were diamond hard and would cut nearly anything, or at least scratch harder materials. He knew they could go through any non-magical metal and he rather wanted to test them on things like solid stone, solid wood, to see how far they would penetrate. It wouldn't be like cutting butter, such work would require the strength of the bearer, but he imagined, given time, one could chip themselves out of a closed cave with the pair. This was a comforting thought for him for reasons he did not choose to examine. Those parts of his past could stay behind doors in the back of his mind along with all his present anxieties.
The finishing of the knives left only the two pairs of raiment gloves for him to work on, which still felt like a lot. Working on them at all took a significant amount of mental and aetheric energy, and it seemed like they took more and more the closer they came to becoming. They did not, however, take up all of his time. This led to him deciding that his apprentice, who had been proving himself and stepping up into a position of beginning to be able to offer genuine assistance after a year of training, should have his own set of tools.
While Torin's blacksmith master had made him smithing tools and had provided him with leather to make his own protective gear before sending him away (he still treasured both), his runesmith teacher had not felt the same way about the magical equipment required to perform his art. Torin had always taken after his first master far more than he had his second. Bastion did not have an aptitude for working in the mundane forge, but he was exceptionally bright about the aether one, so it would be tools for its use that he would need.
Having made a set of the tools himself, with Lady Kala's help, when he'd opened his own double forge, he knew the process already. That this set would be better for having done it before (twice now as he'd made an additional set for his second runeforge in the valley) amused him. The tools of the apprentice would be better made than those of his master.
As Bastion was at the forge, working with him nearly every day, he did not attempt to hide the making of the gift, only did not tell the boy that they were to be for him. It was good to teach him to make them himself, good that he should have a fully innate understanding of them from start to finish and good that he should have a hand in their creation. They would know him from their inception and he them. Scrivening was something he had only just begun to cover, though he used it in a good deal of his work he had wanted the boy to have a firm grounding in runeforging before introducing a second World Magic.
So flew the days, teaching, working, stretching out his knowledge of his craft ever deeper.
The season felt like it was passing quickly, but it always did. The summer and the winter were always very busy times for the smith's work, even mundane ones. Preparing for the planting and the harvest, preparing for excursions some spring and repairing things for the adventurers that returned at the end of fall. For Torin, it was similar, except that his work Searing was mainly for the Starfall folk, and his work in the Frost was half for them and half for himself, or, rather, for his friends.
Glade and Ash had plenty of work but they weren't as hectic and full as their more severe siblings. The work served to keep Torin's mind off of the worry that when the time came for Glade to arrive, they it, yet again, would not. It was the last chance, really, for the world to stand a chance of ever returning to what had been normal. Memories of reading something, somewhere, that had explained that there had been long periods of prolonged icy weather in the distant past swam up to prickle at his fear, but he did not go looking for those histories and he did not speak of them. Everyone in his circle, and most of the people he encountered in the city, seemed to be holding on to a pinch-faced sort of optimism. The kind that said things would get better because they had to. The 'or' that punctuated this idea was never spoken but everyone knew what the rest of the thought was, 'or everything dies'." Maybe not everything, not with magic being employed and surely there were some gods who would protect their chosen people through the long Frost, but most things, people, animals and plants alike, would die.
Though House Leukos still sent him work aplenty, commissions from others, noble houses and wealthy merchants mainly, were beginning to dry up. People were looking to the future and, seeing uncertainty, deciding that their money was better kept than spent, even with the New Year and its usual celebrations on the horizon.
So it was with thankfulness that Torin's days filled up and over-filled, spilling from one to the next, providing him with a never-ending distraction with projects of his own devising. It helped that this distraction, or distractions as there were several, were both fascinating and difficult.
The Featherlight bags were the easiest, as the most complicated part of their magic was well-known and much tested by time and many hands. The things he was adding, (a greater capacity, the ability to sustain from spoiling, and the strength not to take damage) were either also well known in other item schematics, or else ones that he had added to so many things already he could do it while thinking about other things. Aurin was there for much of the making, lending his Traversion and Negation to the project; though his time was dear he popped in any day that Torin let him know that his magic was needed. Renault was able to fill in with some of the Traversion and lent his Elementalism as well. Even Sivan's alchemy came into play, having long become used to Torin requesting specific concoctions without always explaining what he was going to use them for. The pair discussed their work together often but Sivan's understanding of Runeforging was as little as Torin's own of Alchemy and they were comfortable allowing the other to handle the things in which they did not excel.
The two bags were also the soonest finished, coming to completion just after what the calendars said was the middle of the season. They were lovely things in terms of their creation and ability, but less physically pretty than they were functional. The smith was proud of them no less for their practicality, if anything, it pleased him more that the look of them matched their reason. How well a thing fit together in its purpose, physicality and action, the better it fit inside his head, inside his heart, even.
The bags were set aside where they would be secured and ready when it was time to give them, for he did not know how he wished to wrap them. Putting them inside other bags did not seem correct, and wrapping them in paper felt like a disservice. Perhaps he would just put them, unadorned with the other gifts, all gathered around his hearth, awaiting the ones who would use them, or maybe with just a ribbon tied for festive decoration. He would think on it.
Not long after, only a little more than a week, Aurin's knives were pulled from the aetherforge for the last time. They were beautiful, not because he had put any aether into magically enhancing their appearance, but because they were elegant in their simplicity, so sharp and polished that they gleamed and always would. Nothing would ever dull them, though they would never harm the hand, nor any other part, of the one who owned them. Torin did not own them, even though he had made them, and he never would. They were Aurin's, they had his blood in them, metal and magic both, aesthetically tangled up with his personhood. If he were to die (a possibility the smith glossed over in his musings), Torin would not be surprised if they disappeared altogether, following him into whatever afterlife he was taken to.
The knives he wrapped very carefully in the leather sheathes he had made for them with his own hands as he'd sat, watching them soak in the aether he fed them in his kiln. These also would not be cut by the blades, while any other sheath, or leather, for that matter, would be. The blades were diamond hard and would cut nearly anything, or at least scratch harder materials. He knew they could go through any non-magical metal and he rather wanted to test them on things like solid stone, solid wood, to see how far they would penetrate. It wouldn't be like cutting butter, such work would require the strength of the bearer, but he imagined, given time, one could chip themselves out of a closed cave with the pair. This was a comforting thought for him for reasons he did not choose to examine. Those parts of his past could stay behind doors in the back of his mind along with all his present anxieties.
The finishing of the knives left only the two pairs of raiment gloves for him to work on, which still felt like a lot. Working on them at all took a significant amount of mental and aetheric energy, and it seemed like they took more and more the closer they came to becoming. They did not, however, take up all of his time. This led to him deciding that his apprentice, who had been proving himself and stepping up into a position of beginning to be able to offer genuine assistance after a year of training, should have his own set of tools.
While Torin's blacksmith master had made him smithing tools and had provided him with leather to make his own protective gear before sending him away (he still treasured both), his runesmith teacher had not felt the same way about the magical equipment required to perform his art. Torin had always taken after his first master far more than he had his second. Bastion did not have an aptitude for working in the mundane forge, but he was exceptionally bright about the aether one, so it would be tools for its use that he would need.
Having made a set of the tools himself, with Lady Kala's help, when he'd opened his own double forge, he knew the process already. That this set would be better for having done it before (twice now as he'd made an additional set for his second runeforge in the valley) amused him. The tools of the apprentice would be better made than those of his master.
As Bastion was at the forge, working with him nearly every day, he did not attempt to hide the making of the gift, only did not tell the boy that they were to be for him. It was good to teach him to make them himself, good that he should have a fully innate understanding of them from start to finish and good that he should have a hand in their creation. They would know him from their inception and he them. Scrivening was something he had only just begun to cover, though he used it in a good deal of his work he had wanted the boy to have a firm grounding in runeforging before introducing a second World Magic.
So flew the days, teaching, working, stretching out his knowledge of his craft ever deeper.
