Devourer Of Destiny - Chapter 147
The day of the forging competition arrived without fanfare or incident. Ebon Dirge has spent the day prior in preparation, seeking inspiration and expertise from the basic texts on the subject that were in his memory. That nothing intervening had occurred wasn’t surprising.
Dirge’s enemies in the school had him right where they wanted him, after all.
The venue for the competition was a demonstration auditorium in the Forging Institute, with ample seating for any would-be watchers and a pair of smithies arranged opposite one another on the stage. When Dirge arrived, a good quarter of an hour before the competition was set to commence, the seats were about a third full, but with the greater part of the audience on the side of the gallery where they could watch and cheer on their local hero.
Dirge inwardly laughed at the message already sent. This was Master Harford’s home court. It was in his institute, using the equipment he was familiar with, and surrounded by people — both spectator and adjudicator — that knew and respected him. Just look at the audience, all crowding to watch a true virtuoso at his labors, a sure victory lap run around a pretentious upstart with no roots in the institute and little hope of competing with one of the subschool’s darlings.
Dirge’s side of the auditorium was rather sparse, populated with those who were here for the show, for those who didn’t want to crowd in on the other side, and of course with the one person that had to be on that side today: Eloise. There were a few other students of the Forging Institute with her, but he doubted they were here to cheer him on; the best vantage point to see a supposed on-the-mend genius fall once again was up close.
Theo was on the side of the seating that was most crowded, of course. Since he had mostly been in seclusion since his rehabilitation, nobody yet knew who the mysterious teacher was that had dragged him back up from the brink of despair. With his impending expulsion from the school averted, his network of friends and connections had flocked back to him and he had invited several along to witness the spectacle.
Just as he had been told to do.
Dirge made it up to the stage without fuss, virtually unnoticed by the crowd. The panel of adjudicators, a set of five individuals, were all standing around chattering with one another and with Master Harford, who was already at his station and performing his checks on the equipment as he warmed things up. The florid-faced man in his smith’s apron paid no heed to the new arrival, much as nobody else did.
The provided equipment was as Dirge expected: a trio of three progressively larger furnaces that could be maintained at different temperatures for the handling of the different materials, a pair of crucibles attached to the largest for liquid processing, a couple of anvils for the shaping of the hot metal. Laid out on a worktable was the collection of materials provided for the forging: metals, crystals, wood, and leather. A quick glance over at Harford’s side showed he had the same collection on his end.
Of course there were some small, minute disparities in the quality of the provided materials, but who would ever match such things entirely, right? Dirge resisted the urge to laugh out loud; it was a good thing that he already expected anything but a level playing field in this competition. Harford and his allies in the Institute were welcome to their petty games; they’d soon enough experience what an uneven contest really was.
Dirge compared the material list to what he had expected and found it more than adequate. It all was a bit excessive for what he had planned, really, but that gave him more chance to refine things.
After a few more moments, the chatter of the others on stage cut off at some unseen signal, and four of the adjudicators made their way to their seats at the panel, where they noticed that the other participant had already arrived. The festivities were about to begin.
Harford turned his focus on his last-minute preparations of the furnaces, while the one judge still standing — a middle-aged gentleman with a close-cropped graying beard — gave Dirge a curt nod of acknowledgment before he stepped to the podium at the front and center of the stage. After clearing his throat using a simple flow of essence to carry the sound across the auditorium, the audience also went silent.
“Fellow members of the Celestial Ascendance Academy, I welcome you all to bear witness to a time-honored tradition of the school,” the man announced, using that same technique to carry his voice throughout. “Here, for the sake of a student,” he gestured to Eloise, who squirmed a little, “two teachers have decided to face one another in a duel of expertise. Mistress Harmony Sable, a new addition to our faculty, has challenged Master Matthew Harford, a respected and storied master of the Forging Institute, to a contest of craftsmanship.”
Dirge was amused with the introduction; as far as the school was concerned, the deck really was stacked against him, but the preface could have been far more insulting had the man decided to go that way with it. He was curious about the identity of the judges, but he reined in that curiosity as he detected that the speaker himself was an expert at the stage of Nascent Birth. Clearly, the fellow was higher up in the echelons of the Celestial Ascendance Academy and was powerful enough that he might have even felt the probe had it been made.
That was a bit surprising to see, but Dirge decided he’d have plenty of time to investigate after this presentation was done. Piercing the veil of secrecy around the school’s management was important, and this was a vital lead in that chase.
“The teachers have been provided with the same exact sets of materials and equipment,” the silver-bearded man continued, “all for one purpose: to, right now and in front of all of you, forge a sword. The judging of this contest — conducted by myself and the rest of this panel selected from among the Tiers by the Academy — shall be on the basis of the weapon’s quality and nothing else. Technique, cost, and speed of manufacture are not the criteria of this adjudication, although they are certainly part of what you, the audience, can appreciate. In the end, as always matters here at Celestial Ascendance, what we are looking at is the final result.”
There was a briefly excited murmuring in the audience; most of those present were inhabitants of the Fifth Tier, students and teachers, and so it was an honor in their minds to have such exalted beings from the heights they aspired to descend to judge this contest.
“Master Harford, Mistress Sable,” the man turned around and addressed the teachers, “is there anything else you require before we begin?”
Harford shook his head as the man glanced at him. “No, sir. Nothing at all.”
The man then glanced at Dirge. “I am ready,” he answered with a small smile.
The man nodded. “Then you may be–”
“Hold on a second,” one member of the panel, an older, plump woman interjected.
“Yes?” The gray-bearded man turned and faced the source of the interruption.
“Mistress Sable, are you sure you are taking seriously? You have no apron, you haven’t warmed up the equipment, and you’re dressed for, well, a party, not a forging,” the plump woman noted.
Dirge suppressed a chuckle at that. The woman was absolutely correct, of course; while he had chosen from his more modest attire, a number in black, it was hardly what one expected to see at the smithy. He did take particular note of this woman, though; he felt a familiar querulousness from her and was recalling the female voice that had been on the attack during his meeting with the Review Board. If he wasn’t mistaken, this was that same woman.
The gray-bearded man turned to Dirge, shrugging helplessly. Dirge only smiled. “I am taking this very seriously, of course. The techniques I employ are safe enough to perform in the nude, madam,” he replied, to some chuckles from the audience. There was no doubt a contingent that would be happy to see that performance.
“I think that answers that,” the gray-bearded man noted with a smirk and a discernible twinkle in his eye as he turned from Dirge to the complaining woman. “Does anybody else have any concerns, or can we begin before it gets too late?”
Silence greeted the man’s question. Even the plump woman held her mouth closed, although pursed in disapproval; apparently, the gray-bearded man was someone even she wasn’t willing to tangle with, now that he sounded provoked.
“Superb. Mistress, Master, you may commence,” the man announced with a smile, leaving the podium and heading to his empty chair — in the middle of the five panelists, Dirge noted — to watch with the rest.
Dirge turned and looked at the materials on the worktable. For what he had in mind, the wood and leather would be irrelevant, so he swept those aside and focused on the metals and crystals.
Whoever had picked out the materials list for this forging session seemed to be leaving some leeway into what kind of sword could be forged here. The crystal materials possessed some low-grade infusion with all five primary elements — wood, fire, earth, metal, water — instead of focusing on any single one. There were more materials for the more esoteric affinities like darkness, but this wasn’t surprising since a single one of those could cost tens of what it’d take for the same grade of material in the common elements.
With a thought, Dirge telekinetically lifted five of the crystals of the same approximate size and set them to whirling in the air while he provided a current of lightning-attributed essence to them. Letting those spin, he then lifted some of the ingots of metal from the table. They were decently purified and well-varied for materials of this grade, but there was definitely more to be done with them than a mere casting for what he had in mind. He flash-heated a pair of ingots and directed them into the whirling crystal circle to process, while he melted down some of the other ingots and was mixing them in alloys.
A couple of minutes later, Dirge had a couple of hovering orbs of molten metal emitting plumes of smoke, which he deftly directed to the ventilation shafts meant for the tradition furnaces. Burning off the dross was a nice enough concept, but the rubbish had to go somewhere when you did that, and he didn’t intend for it to be his lungs or that of his audience.
The crystals and the pair of ingots, processed, now were in two parts: a small sphere of the mixed crystalline substrate hovered inside a larger thick ring of the stuff that was a bit less than a hand wide. Dirge nodded to himself as he examined the structure; that was what he was aiming for.
Separating ring from sphere, with a thought he sliced through the ring, splitting it into a dozen thinner rings, which he spread so that they were interlocking for a length. The sphere heated up and threads of the molten crystal were extruded, binding the structure of rings and laying out an intricate diagram that threaded through them. Dirge checked and double-checked the construction carefully.
Then he shot one of the molten spheres of metal over its length, flattening it. Carefully he molded the liquid into the shape of a thin blade, ensuring that the substance covered the crystalline lattice entirely and filled in the gaps. The most challenging part was that last bit, as tiny pockets of air threatened the integrity of the structure, and so Dirge painstakingly drew all of those out while continuing to mold the blade shape.
Once Dirge was satisfied, he quenched the heat with a thought, mindful of the integrity of its interior. Before him now was a blade that was not quite paper-thin, but approaching it.
Exactly what he wanted.
The process of creation at this point had only taken ten minutes, and now that he was nearing the end of creation Dirge couldn’t help but put some of his attention on what was going on around him.
Master Harford was juggling several things all at once among his apparatus, with some crystals heating in the crucibles while the ingots were split among his furnaces. He checked things and prodded at them with a visible flourish, indulging himself in the showmanship of a practiced craftsman who could afford such frivolities.
Besides Eloise and a handful of others, nobody had was apparently paying a whit of attention to what Dirge was doing. The plump woman was smiling as she enjoyed Harford’s performance, and the other three judges were in various states of absorption with it as well, but the gray-bearded man was looking back and forth, his face not betraying his thoughts one way or another.
Dirge inwardly shrugged. It looked like they’d be there a while based on the pace Harford was going, so he might as well finish up and enjoy the show himself. Turning back to the blade and the remaining glob of molten metal, he fixed the glob on the butt end of the blade and molded it, removing most of the material in the process. When he was finished with it and had cooled it, it was a guardless hilt, a handle with a small groove at its base.
Coarsening the surface of the handle with some texture — it wouldn’t do to have the thing be slippery, but he wasn’t about to wrap it in leather either — Dirge nodded with satisfaction before directing a small stream of lighting at the groove end for a minute or so.
With that, he was finished with his work. Now he could sit back and see what the house favorite was doing, with almost nobody the wiser to the fact that the competition was already over.