Fit for a Queen - Part III
Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2024 10:26 pm
61st Searing, 124
The season had passed in a whirl of smoke and aether. Torin loved his life in Kalzasi, his forge and friends, and though he worried about his responsibilities he was beginning to realize something. The spark of it had come to him when he'd found the valley, his valley on paper, but in reality, it was wild and open and belonged to no one. He had loved it the moment he'd seen it, enough to risk his fool's neck climbing down into it without proper equipment and no one to know where he was. Huntress would have gotten help if he'd fallen and not been able to get out, and Aurin could find him anywhere, but it had still been stupid. But he hadn't been hurt, and being down in that wild, perfect place had woken something in him that had been dormant since he'd left the woods and farms of the village he'd grown up in. Parts of it had gone to sleep far sooner, before he could really remember, but all of it had stirred on that Frost day. Since he'd been spending more time in the Valley, building, cultivating, but more just being, he'd realized that it was something he needed. To be allowed to just be.
He had never felt like what he was, first a child, and then an adult, always out of step with what his mind was frozen in and what he did. He had been thawing for a while, years really, as he began to feel safe; in his home, in his work, in himself and with the people who had accepted him into their life even in his broken state. But something about being in that wild place had broken through the thin layer of frost around his heart that had kept the parts of him separated from each other. His drive to live up to the hopes of his first teacher had driven him to push himself to his limits as he'd struck out on his own and he had accomplished more in his few years as a Runesmith than most did in their whole lives. It wasn't a drive to become more than had awoken in him as he'd stood staring over the mountains, it was a realistic view of what he was.
He was a person and quite a young one. On that day he had been barely twenty years old. In the year and a half since then he had taken on even more responsibility but it hadn't felt like the mad rush onward, the desperate need to prove himself to someone who could never tell him he was good enough, that he could slow down. His teacher wouldn't have wanted that. From his place of safety, he had been able to begin carefully unpacking the parts of his mind where he kept the memories of the man who had raised him from the wool he had wrapped them in when they had been too sharp to touch. It still hurt, but it was good too. Good to remember the man who had existed and let go of the ideal that had chained him, however unintentionally, since the day they had parted.
As this last Glade had dawned, and with it had come a falling away of the eternal Frost, so too had a version of Torin come awake that looked and acted far more like a 21 year old, and sometimes significantly younger. He had skipped being a child, and though he couldn't let go of his responsibilities, stepping away from them to come to Sol'Valen, knowing that they would be cared for by people he trusted, had been another kind of release. Being able to step back into the role of apprentice without all the traumatic associations felt like being allowed to start over. Not entirely, but enough that he felt... free.
Free wasn't something he'd ever thought he would be; free to find out who he was when he wasn't hiding behind the shadows of the men who had formed him. But now, all of a sudden it felt like, even though he knew it had been coming on gradually for years, he was. It was like... like the anvil had been lifted off his chest. Like breathing was easy. Like moving was easy. Like being was just something that he could do, simple as waking.
It felt like laughing, and sometimes he cried about it, but that was okay. Because crying didn't feel like drowning anymore, it felt like a cloud releasing what it had held so it could drift, free.
That was how he felt, walking into Tavárinoikos on the day he had set aside time with the elder apprentice who had promised to teach him how to work with Manasilver, light as a cloud. It was a funny way to think of a blacksmith, and he grinned at himself for it as he pulled his hair back into a tight bun and tied on his thick leather apron. But it didn't feel wrong, especially for the mercurial and flighty metal he would be working with. The elf greeted him and began to quiz him on the three books he had been given to understand what they would be doing before they tried. His answers were deemed sufficient, as he had been all but obsessed with the interesting new material, and they began the work.
It wasn't like heat forging, but it also wasn't at all like cold forging. It was a little like working with liquid Viscerite, but a lot more like trying to fold soup. They worked with a small amount that was not going to be used in the actual project, which seemed insane for the one moment he let himself think about it. They were using Manasilver in a throw-away project to learn. But that was how he had learned all metals, making the simplest things, many of which weren't even good enough to be used and had to be melted back down.
Except Manasilver was already liquid, and that was the problem. Getting it to hold a shape meant connecting to it with aether, in his case, a tiny bit of Fire through his rune of Elementalism, and then, once the connection was made, getting into a mental place where you could control it. Which sounded, not easy, but straightforward. It was anything but. The whole first day Torin watched the other Runesmith work at it, making simple cubes or spheres just to show him. Even with his Semblance, it was like watching someone untangle a knot while, at the same time, weaving the thread into a tapestry. It was beautiful and treacherously difficult. The second day he had begun trying to do it himself. At first, he had tried to untangle the complex magic by itself, saving the weaving of it into something new for later, but it didn't work. Sometimes the bright metal would begin to form the simple shape that he wanted but it always fell back into a blob before solidifying. The other apprentice was patient, talking him through the exercise again, and again. Torin knew how to weave aether, he was beyond a master at it, but this wasn't the same as Runeforging. It was, in fact, Blacksmithing, and it took him almost all the way through the third day to realize that. There was a moment when what he was seeing with his eyes and what he was seeing through his Semblance lined up in a way that was tauntingly familiar. It took a long drawn-out second before he recognized it; it was the structure of silver. Or, it almost was, there were differences but it was similar. He had studied drawings of the way that the tiny pieces of metal lined up together like a crystal for years as a child in the forge. If he just wove the Manasilver into the exact shape of silver...
It took a few tries, but in one instant the moving liquid changed into a solid little ball and fell to the anvil with a loud clink that startled Torin, deep in his mental process, so badly he jumped. The elf had laughed at him, more than Torin thought this warranted, but he'd been so delighted he hadn't minded. He had laughed himself, a little, but been too intent on getting back into the mind-space to work the metal to even wait for his teacher to stop.
More complex forms took more complex understandings of the structure, and it had been two days later that he had realized that he could use other metal structures than silver. He had been up half that night with books that showed the structures of steel so that, come morning, he'd been able to form the liquid metal into something stronger than delicate silver. When he moved on to the Ash Steel that he used in most of his Runeforging it came even easier, like returning to an old friend.
It was more than two weeks before he could begin to make the delicate and complex shapes he had drawn out in his schematic, which he practiced dozens of times. He would have cursed himself for their complexity, but they were necessary for the proper flow of the aether that would allow for the flashier aspects of the device once completed. On the day he was able to finish the metal structure completely, without mistakes, for the first time, his elven teacher had taken him out with the two other elven apprentices who had been interested enough in Torin's project to offer their advice and aid and gotten him drunk on something clear that somehow tasted like water and felt like rain made of soft bells in his head.
The next afternoon, when he'd woken up, he'd panicked before Sivan, who was home from his own labors for his lunch, had informed him that the other three apprentices had explained what they had done to him and he would not be the one in trouble for it.
The season had passed in a whirl of smoke and aether. Torin loved his life in Kalzasi, his forge and friends, and though he worried about his responsibilities he was beginning to realize something. The spark of it had come to him when he'd found the valley, his valley on paper, but in reality, it was wild and open and belonged to no one. He had loved it the moment he'd seen it, enough to risk his fool's neck climbing down into it without proper equipment and no one to know where he was. Huntress would have gotten help if he'd fallen and not been able to get out, and Aurin could find him anywhere, but it had still been stupid. But he hadn't been hurt, and being down in that wild, perfect place had woken something in him that had been dormant since he'd left the woods and farms of the village he'd grown up in. Parts of it had gone to sleep far sooner, before he could really remember, but all of it had stirred on that Frost day. Since he'd been spending more time in the Valley, building, cultivating, but more just being, he'd realized that it was something he needed. To be allowed to just be.
He had never felt like what he was, first a child, and then an adult, always out of step with what his mind was frozen in and what he did. He had been thawing for a while, years really, as he began to feel safe; in his home, in his work, in himself and with the people who had accepted him into their life even in his broken state. But something about being in that wild place had broken through the thin layer of frost around his heart that had kept the parts of him separated from each other. His drive to live up to the hopes of his first teacher had driven him to push himself to his limits as he'd struck out on his own and he had accomplished more in his few years as a Runesmith than most did in their whole lives. It wasn't a drive to become more than had awoken in him as he'd stood staring over the mountains, it was a realistic view of what he was.
He was a person and quite a young one. On that day he had been barely twenty years old. In the year and a half since then he had taken on even more responsibility but it hadn't felt like the mad rush onward, the desperate need to prove himself to someone who could never tell him he was good enough, that he could slow down. His teacher wouldn't have wanted that. From his place of safety, he had been able to begin carefully unpacking the parts of his mind where he kept the memories of the man who had raised him from the wool he had wrapped them in when they had been too sharp to touch. It still hurt, but it was good too. Good to remember the man who had existed and let go of the ideal that had chained him, however unintentionally, since the day they had parted.
As this last Glade had dawned, and with it had come a falling away of the eternal Frost, so too had a version of Torin come awake that looked and acted far more like a 21 year old, and sometimes significantly younger. He had skipped being a child, and though he couldn't let go of his responsibilities, stepping away from them to come to Sol'Valen, knowing that they would be cared for by people he trusted, had been another kind of release. Being able to step back into the role of apprentice without all the traumatic associations felt like being allowed to start over. Not entirely, but enough that he felt... free.
Free wasn't something he'd ever thought he would be; free to find out who he was when he wasn't hiding behind the shadows of the men who had formed him. But now, all of a sudden it felt like, even though he knew it had been coming on gradually for years, he was. It was like... like the anvil had been lifted off his chest. Like breathing was easy. Like moving was easy. Like being was just something that he could do, simple as waking.
It felt like laughing, and sometimes he cried about it, but that was okay. Because crying didn't feel like drowning anymore, it felt like a cloud releasing what it had held so it could drift, free.
That was how he felt, walking into Tavárinoikos on the day he had set aside time with the elder apprentice who had promised to teach him how to work with Manasilver, light as a cloud. It was a funny way to think of a blacksmith, and he grinned at himself for it as he pulled his hair back into a tight bun and tied on his thick leather apron. But it didn't feel wrong, especially for the mercurial and flighty metal he would be working with. The elf greeted him and began to quiz him on the three books he had been given to understand what they would be doing before they tried. His answers were deemed sufficient, as he had been all but obsessed with the interesting new material, and they began the work.
It wasn't like heat forging, but it also wasn't at all like cold forging. It was a little like working with liquid Viscerite, but a lot more like trying to fold soup. They worked with a small amount that was not going to be used in the actual project, which seemed insane for the one moment he let himself think about it. They were using Manasilver in a throw-away project to learn. But that was how he had learned all metals, making the simplest things, many of which weren't even good enough to be used and had to be melted back down.
Except Manasilver was already liquid, and that was the problem. Getting it to hold a shape meant connecting to it with aether, in his case, a tiny bit of Fire through his rune of Elementalism, and then, once the connection was made, getting into a mental place where you could control it. Which sounded, not easy, but straightforward. It was anything but. The whole first day Torin watched the other Runesmith work at it, making simple cubes or spheres just to show him. Even with his Semblance, it was like watching someone untangle a knot while, at the same time, weaving the thread into a tapestry. It was beautiful and treacherously difficult. The second day he had begun trying to do it himself. At first, he had tried to untangle the complex magic by itself, saving the weaving of it into something new for later, but it didn't work. Sometimes the bright metal would begin to form the simple shape that he wanted but it always fell back into a blob before solidifying. The other apprentice was patient, talking him through the exercise again, and again. Torin knew how to weave aether, he was beyond a master at it, but this wasn't the same as Runeforging. It was, in fact, Blacksmithing, and it took him almost all the way through the third day to realize that. There was a moment when what he was seeing with his eyes and what he was seeing through his Semblance lined up in a way that was tauntingly familiar. It took a long drawn-out second before he recognized it; it was the structure of silver. Or, it almost was, there were differences but it was similar. He had studied drawings of the way that the tiny pieces of metal lined up together like a crystal for years as a child in the forge. If he just wove the Manasilver into the exact shape of silver...
It took a few tries, but in one instant the moving liquid changed into a solid little ball and fell to the anvil with a loud clink that startled Torin, deep in his mental process, so badly he jumped. The elf had laughed at him, more than Torin thought this warranted, but he'd been so delighted he hadn't minded. He had laughed himself, a little, but been too intent on getting back into the mind-space to work the metal to even wait for his teacher to stop.
More complex forms took more complex understandings of the structure, and it had been two days later that he had realized that he could use other metal structures than silver. He had been up half that night with books that showed the structures of steel so that, come morning, he'd been able to form the liquid metal into something stronger than delicate silver. When he moved on to the Ash Steel that he used in most of his Runeforging it came even easier, like returning to an old friend.
It was more than two weeks before he could begin to make the delicate and complex shapes he had drawn out in his schematic, which he practiced dozens of times. He would have cursed himself for their complexity, but they were necessary for the proper flow of the aether that would allow for the flashier aspects of the device once completed. On the day he was able to finish the metal structure completely, without mistakes, for the first time, his elven teacher had taken him out with the two other elven apprentices who had been interested enough in Torin's project to offer their advice and aid and gotten him drunk on something clear that somehow tasted like water and felt like rain made of soft bells in his head.
The next afternoon, when he'd woken up, he'd panicked before Sivan, who was home from his own labors for his lunch, had informed him that the other three apprentices had explained what they had done to him and he would not be the one in trouble for it.