Frost 35 120
Frost was full on now, cold reaching into every opening at windowsill and doorway, every untucked sleeve and collar. Walking from his small barracks like room to the communal dining room, then to the forge area that had been assigned to him required Torin to wear almost all the clothing he owned not to start shivering. Once in the forge, the fire fed, stoked, woken to roar and smolder, he would begin peeling the layers away.
When at last he stood, in just his leather apron, gloves, and trousers, hair pulled back by another slim piece of leather, the cold was forgotten. Warmth suffused his limbs, cast ruddy tones over his face, and cast his intent eyes down onto the metal that lay across his anvil. The metal of the hammer warmed in the orange glow, in the heat of his hand, till he felt like it lived too.
It did, in his head, the hammer, the anvil, the flames, rising together to make new life. Giving birth, creation to something that would never have been without them. Torin was the tool they used to create. They created a song together, point and counter, rhythm and melody. He raised the hammer, and as it fell, as the crackling mixed with the ring, he began to hum. The music wasn't his decision, it came through him depending on the tools and their intention.
So he imagined anyway. These were musings he did not share. His old master had made allusion to the ideas a few times when they'd worked magic through soot and sear together. But here in the city, his new master was a businessman. He knew his craft and taught it well enough, but, oddly, there was no magic in his magic.
Viscerite had a song of it's own, different properties made different strains, vibrating through the air to whisper or scream their purpose, gentle or dread.
The apprentice moved the hot piece from the anvil to the stone surface of his workbench. Aura glass hung from the ceiling on an adjustable harness so whoever was using the bench could look down through it at the piece as they worked. Torin glanced through, made a minor adjustment, looked again. The work was precise and easy to lose himself in. Losing himself was something he felt at home doing, as though all he had ever been was a conduit for the will of others. Other people, other work, magic itself, they used him, but he was not discontent with this. It felt good. Like he was made for a purpose himself and was living up to that purpose. As though gods, old and wise, had pulled the material that made him from a forge and shaped him for this.
Over hours he brought the metal back to the forge to heat, back to the anvil to shape, back to the bench to test, adjust, care for. It was a child to him; he had these weeks in the making to raise and build what it would grow to be. The tools he used grew smaller as he progressed, till the hammer had to be held between his fingers and the etching required a magnifying glass as well as the aura glass.
The piece he was making, or the twin pieces being created as one, were of his own devising, his first solo project that wasn't something he'd been taught, but something he'd imagined. It had come from his endless dreams of his home, from the forging of a new friendship, from the longings of his own heart. The idea was simple, but the creation was as delicate as the forming of living tissue. His large, calloused hands wove as a harpist, one note at a time, one gossamer strand of power, one carefully held intention layered upon another till they came together in a resonance that held itself whole even when he withdrew his hold. When that came to pass, it felt like watching a first breath drawn.
He did not succeed on his first attempt at creating the self sustaining loop of magic that made a working object. Nor the second. He was very careful not to lose the magic; catching it and weaving it back as slowly as stars forming. It felt so, to him anyway. Find points where he could lay the word aside to sleep and eat were hard. Not only because of the delicacy of the work, but also because it felt like pulling something out of himself to turn away even briefly.
The days came and went barely noticed, he could not have said what he'd eaten or if he'd spoken to anyone. He was the forge giving heat, the tongs giving direction, the hammer applying pressure. He could not remember being a man when he was these things, beyond filling his base needs, not until it was done. His master had come by, at least once, more than once, to check on the work and ask him questions. He had tried to answer them, but doubted he'd made any sense. The music in his head drowned out other forms of communication, making any words he tried to get out jumble, fitting together badly.
When, at last, the piece, two that were one whole, came together it felt like his breath was being pulled from him, his essence. For a moment that stretched on into forever it felt like the magic was trying to pull him into itself. Severing the cord that connected his mind to the power laid in perfect, hard fought for, lines was painful, and difficult. They had grown together for what felt like months. Torin had fostered the infant magic, had protected and directed it until it could, now, exist without him. Letting go was one of the only things his first master had taught him harshly. The idea that he must release the power when it was ready had been hammered into the boy before he'd ever been allowed to work with viscerite in any form.
Now as he withdrew, so slowly, making sure that the structure remained stable as he did so, he began to cry, silent and hard. The tears fell from him to land in little swashes over the sigil carved stone. He had learned to lean forward and let them fall, they could not be allowed to blur his vision as trying to hold them would have done. When the final strand had pulled away from him and laid in place; when he was sure it was done, he set his tools down, leaned against the workbench and wept.
It took him so hard that he sat, right there on the floor, hunching against the wood and stone as wracking sobs took his entire body. He made almost no sound, but rocked and shook, shuddering his way back to being himself again. He was Torin. It was alright to be a man again, for a while. He would be whole again, part of the magic, making a whole again. This wasn't the end, not the last time. He just needed a break, then, he could come back.
It was a process he talked himself through every time. The less time and energy he spent on a project the milder the backlash, but there was always some. As he settled into himself he would remember other wants, normal needs. Being a person would become important again. He would let go of the promises he'd made himself to return to the forge as soon as he was physically able. For a time he would do other work, plain smithing, shape leather, draw viscerite, until he felt solid in himself.
Then, and only then, would be return and let the music have him.
On the workbench above his bowed head there now sat a set of identical pendants with chains forged as part of them. On the back of each was a tiny round space where the two had once been a single piece then cut apart. The links of the chains were etched and runeforged to make each a whole piece with no break. They were long enough to fit over the head of a grown man, if tightly.
If worn so the parts that had once held them together were touching skin, a tiny portal would open between the two through which only sound could pass back and forth. The openings would only remain for a few minutes and they could only be activated once in the day and once at night.
To open the portal the wearer had to speak an activation word. The person wearing the twin piece would feel the activation and speak the word to allow the opening. If a wearer felt the activation and did not speak the answering word the portal would not open. The boy did not know how far the two wearers could be apart before the magic wouldn't reach, it would be something he'd have to test.
