2018-11-27: A Song of Steel

From Dream Chasers
Jump to navigation Jump to search
  • Cutscene: A Song of Steel
  • Cast: Tethelle Cirdian
  • Where: Mountains of Elru
  • Date: 11-27-2018
  • Summary: Tethelle performs one of the secret rites of her temple.


Tethelle slowly, carefully lowered the immense weight she had borne on her back to the ground, letting out a sigh of relief when she finally set it down on the cleared stone. Despite this, she didn't let any of it clink, crash, or clatter as she set it down, treating everything with the reverence it deserved.

She knew that most of the other Drifters who had come to Elru were ready. They were preparing to approach - attack, really - the Photosphere; to get in and bring an end to this. But there was one thing Tethelle had to do before she would consider herself prepared, and that's why she'd lugged a hundredweight and more halfway up a mountain to an outcropping just outside a cave.

Alone, because there was nobody on Elru who could be allowed to see what she was doing. It was a secret art of her priestly order, never shown to outsiders, rarely even mentioned. Tethelle doubted even any of the other Baskar she'd met since she left knew that it could be done.

The bulk of the weight was an old anvil, and in Tethelle's judgement it weighed a hundred fifty pounds if it weighed an ounce. It wasn't terribly rusty but it was worn and well-used, and its exterior blackened by fire. She'd gotten it from a ruined village in Elru, from the ruins of a smithy that had collapsed around it after the Metal Demons had burned it, either on purpose or by chance. It wasn't really made for swords, and probably wouldn't survive the use she would put to it, but that was fine; there was something right about its last use being part of this ritual.

But before she could use it, she had to clean it - not just clean but polish it, and finish it with a sacred oil she'd carried across three continents. Scouring the scorches and the rusty exterior, anointing it with the sacred oil, and performing a dozen small prayers and rituals took most of a day, and she was glad that she'd told her friends that she would be gone for three and not to worry until after that.

Then there were the tools. Those Tethelle had bought in Adlehyde - hammers, custom-made to her specifications - and they hadn't been cheap. The hammers she was familiar with weren't the sizes nor quite the shapes that modern Filgaian metalworking used, being much older in design, but for this nothing else would do. She wasn't an expert smith and couldn't afford to improvise. At least the tongs and the fullers weren't as expensive. She had to prepare these too, with a different prayer and blessing for each one.

By the time she'd finished preparing the anvil, it was dark, and so Tethelle slept before beginning the next day. Not well, though; anxiety kept her awake longer than she would have liked. Would she be able to perform the ritual at all, without assistance? Did she have the necessary skills, faith and dedication, or would she only fail, destroying what she hoped to create? Eventually, though, she did drop off, only to wake early the next morning.

The day dawned bright and cold as mountain mornings often are. Tethelle took it as a good sign that the day was clear, and after her morning ritual - half martial exercise, half ritual dance (which she never missed unless she was too wounded to stand up and lift a sword) - and a quick breakfast, there was no putting it off further. She didn't need coal or oil for what she was doing, but she did need one more thing:

Her Medium.

Tethelle placed the Medium where the fire would be in any other forge, right in the center of a natural depression in the stone. It sat there, cool and unchanging, except perhaps for a faint glimmer around the tracery of Equites' symbol. Then she arranged the steel on the anvil, pushing the pieces until they sat in exactly the right spot.

They were more than just raw steel: two halves of a broken sword. Her master's sword, given to her as proof of her acceptance as a priest-apprentice. She'd never returned them or forged her own blessed sword because she had, technically, never graduated to full priestess. When (or if) she made it back home, she could return it; recieving a Medium by Equites' own hand certainly counted as completing an apprenticeship, she thought with amusement, even if the temple probably wouldn't like it.

But until then it was a weapon, the weapon she should be using, and Siegfried had broken it. Tethelle had not believed in her own skills enough to do anything about it before now, because as any smith could tell you, a broken sword could not be patched together - it would never be as strong as the original along the seam. It would just break again.

And at that it was more than just a weapon. It represented something, to her. Her dedication to her quest, her devotion to Equites. It had hurt when it was broken, and she wasn't going to just leave it as is. She was as skilled as she was going to get before she confronted Mother. She had trained herself where her old lessons had left off. It was time.

Pieces placed, she went into the back of the cave to change. She wouldn't work in gloves and a heavy coat like she'd climbed the mountain in. For this she had brought her robes, slightly creased from being folded for so long. They weren't the same as Ignan Baskar robes, though they had some of the same patterns. Hers were sleeveless and lighter, because she'd lived somewhere so warm she'd never seen snow until she had travelled as an adult (and that was going to be miserable today, on this winter mountain; she was already cold), with an engraved iron band around her right bicep. She needed a new one; all the work since she'd left home had made it tighter.

She would do this with her bare hands on the blade whenever possible and the tongs when it wasn't, trusting to the Guardian to keep her safe and unburned. Carrying the blade in pieces to the forge, Tethelle drew upon the power of Equites, holding it inside her as she touched one fragment and then the other to the Medium.

In a forge full of hot coals, the blade would shortly glow red, and then yellow. In the almost empty forge she was actually working in, nothing at all should happen. But instead the fragments began to glow gold, and then an almost gold-green with unnatural heat.

A broken sword can never be the same as it was before. Tethelle knew that. But by the power of the Sword Guardian imbued in it, any blade can be made something new, and stronger.

Tethelle brought the two halves of the blade to the anvil. As soon as she set them down, the green-gold glow began to spread to the anvil, which was as it should be. Seeing the glow spread sent relief through Tethelle - she'd been more nervous about this than she'd let on, but now she felt only determination to get it right. She would not have a second chance.

Tethelle raised her hammer, said one last prayer, and began to work, the sound of ringing steel echoing through the solitary mountain cave.