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To Fight Unabated 2 – 1 Strike, 1000 Times
🕑 Added 2024-12-10 15:37:17 +0000 UTC
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Romulus followed the sound of the descending hammer, strutting by redhead and goblin as he went. Scarlett, a powerful technomancer in hiding, before John came along and they made their arrangements. Delicia he only recognized after a few short moments. A highly talented alchemist, which Romulus always had found to be a neglected craft.
Luna had informed him about both and he had interacted with them during the Divided Gates meeting. Talks with them had been brief. Romulus would like to change that sometime. He had much to learn about their individual areas of expertise. Today, however, he aimed to go somewhere else.
The workshop the crafters of the Gamer had put together during the Raiding hours was impressive in its symbolic value. A round building, surrounded by artificially flowing rivers, its insides segmented and yet connected. All of it charged the air within the concrete walls with meaning. Meaning and will were the direction that mana flowed.
Romulus lowered his head as he entered the forge – literally. It was built for a smaller person, so he wove a spell that adjusted his shape to a less towering stature. The appearance of the giant was one he had grown comfortable in over the many years, but it was not his true one. At this point, Romulus did not know what he would have looked like without the control over his own flesh.
Romulus raised his voice over the constant banging of metalworking, “I greet you!”
The blonde woman stopped in her work only after placing the metal she was working on back in the silver-glowing coals. “Howdy!” Hailey adjusted her trucker hat, then unzipped the front of her coverall. The blue fabric was marked all over with oil and slight burns. Now that she was not subjected to either for a moment, the American woman prioritized cooling down. In the process, she put her huge breasts on display, covered only by a leather bra that barely deserved the moniker.
The Apex was above staring at even a marvellous specimen of the female form. In all his years of life, appreciation for such curves had never dimmed. However, he was not one to covet another man’s woman. Acknowledgement that she was a very aesthetic entity was confined to the objective thought that the Gamer had good taste.
“Can I help ya?” the enigma engineer asked.
“I request permission to use your largest anvil,” Romulus answered and gestured at the one he had in mind. The one Hailey had worked on had comfortably fit between her legs. A proper workplace for the relatively small piece of metal she was working on (about the size of her index finger). Romulus intended to make something larger.
“Ain’t no probl’m for me,” she drawled and slurred her words simultaneously. Romulus was always amazed at the width of vocalizations the human tongue was capable of. “Gotta say, havin’ the Apex of the Abyss in my lil’ workshop is an honour.”
“The honour is mine, enigma engineer,” Romulus answered, then scanned the wider workshop. The tools were of mediocre quality. Many of them were made by Illusion Barrier manipulation, which limited their quality in several ways. Only the core set of tools appeared to be genuine. The anvil was one of them, in a sense. It appeared the Gamer’s elementals had worked together to manifest it from enriched stone.
That would suffice for Romulus’ intentions.
Reaching into his dimensional pocket, the Apex pulled out the three bars of Skinsteel that had dropped from the boss monster. The material, so the Gamer and his own tests verified, bound to any organic base and then complimented it masterfully. A particular property that the Apex had found in other metals. This one was of a higher quality than those others and such was perfect for one of the many projects he had been contemplating.
After the ingots, Romulus pulled out what work had already been done. A handle carved from a bone of Galikula, Mother of All Orcas, connected seamlessly with a guard and spine made from the tooth of the same monster. Killing that beast had taken him days. Creatures of such size rarely spawned anymore. The world was too densely populated for Natural Barriers to be left to gather power for so long.
The bone carving he had finished many, many years ago. To add an edge to this weapon worthy of the monster that it had come from had been a longstanding task. Romulus had made many swords on the basis. None had lived up to expectations. He hoped this one would be different.
A hammer was the last item he withdrew from his inventory. It glowed with elemental might. Just its presence spread the scent of saltwater and seagrass. Many such hammers were in Romulus’ possession, an arsenal grown over the many years. A long life led to a large assembly of tools.
In terms of a forging process, it was fundamentally simple. The Skinsteel simply had to be made to join with the bone. In physical terms, all he had to do was cold forge the ingots and shape them the way he wanted them to be. Simple, as most things were in their theory. Application was where such procedures often failed.
Romulus began to forge.
In this, he felt confident. His hammer struck the metal repeatedly. Each time the shape of the ingot moved closer towards what he envisioned. Three bars he had and he chose to get them into the rough shape he desired before he joined it with the rest of his project.
“Wow!” Hailey made her observation known after some time. Having felt her gaze, he did not look up and continued to swing the hammer with great deliberation. “’Ere I thought your brother was the craft’r? If that ain’t too personal?”
“Remus’ craft was one of details,” the Apex answered, still keeping his eyes on his work. “He had a gift for manipulating magic and to see the connection in the smaller things. That made him the better researcher, always, and the better craftsman in totality. However…” one more clank marked the temporary end of the forging process, “…I did always have a talent for the greater things. Architecture and forging, for example.”
“Your Imperial Palace is one heck of a place,” Hailey agreed enthusiastically.
Her tone and manner of speaking coaxed an amused grunt out of the ancient soul.
“Lil’ bit on the show-off side tho,” she added afterwards.
“I do not believe in false humility. I am the Apex of the Abyss and my home should reflect that.” Romulus observed the bone and Skinsteel melding together. All it took was some pressure and the two materials fused. The process took some time and he needed to repeat it three times. “It is my opinion that underplaying one’s competence is in itself a discourtesy to the world. The man that refuses to lead because they believe themselves unworthy of such honour does almost as much damage with their inaction as the overconfident man does by taking on more responsibilities than he has competence for.”
“Sounds somethin’ like: ‘The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothin’,’” Hailey commented.
“Perhaps.” Romulus watched the last of the pieces attach themselves to the spine carved from an orca tooth. The weapon was beginning to take shape. Three ingots had been beaten into the shape of three segments along the impressive length of the weapon. It was meant to come out as a one-handed, single-edged sword. That was, one-handed for use by the Godslayer.
What remained was to properly conjoin the segments and to sharpen it all. The enchantments would manifest naturally in the smithing process. Romulus could have formed it as he desired, but he preferred to let the materials themselves blossom into what they could be.
“You’re r’ly good at this,” Hailey complimented once more. “Any tips for a struggling gal?”
“Keep striking the metal.” The answer was sincere. He elaborated on it because he knew it was not satisfying on its own, “Talent cannot be translated in words. Keep striking the metal. What your mind fails to grasp, your hands will. The sensation of soft and hard metal will be remembered by your shoulders, by the muscles in your back. Keep striking the metal. Do it thousands of times, until you have improved.”
“Yeah, that’s about what I thought,” Hailey agreed.
The country gal returned to her work, hammering away at whatever training piece she was making. For his part, Romulus finished the sword after another half hour, then spent another ten minutes getting the edge just right. Then and only then did he let the magical matrix crystallize into its final state.
The sides of the steel-grey sword flared. A runic network manifested, stretching and curling the non-committal outlines Romulus had made for them. Ocean blue signs maintained the glow of magic. The yellow-ish white of the bone and tooth at the handle, spine and guard also tinted towards blue. Every subtle motion of the weapon created sounds like gentle ocean waves.
“I thank you for letting me use your workshop,” Romulus said, then got ready to leave.
“Can I ask ya a question or three?” Hailey stopped him, her tone sombre.
“Certainly,” Romulus agreed.
“Ya wanna kill the Lady, right?”
It took Romulus half a moment to realize that the enigma engineer used the word ‘Lady’ in the religious context of the Order of the Golden Rose. His gaze moved into the distance. Ancient thoughts mingled with long peace. “I do not want to kill Gaia,” he said. “I desire the throne she sits on shattered. If that kills her… then that is what I must do.”
“That’s part I don’t really get,” Hailey confessed. “You’re rebelling against god… why? Do you dislike the way things are that much?”
“I want everyone to be free,” Romulus answered.
Hailey took off her hat to scratch the dark roots of her hair. “I don’t know what that means,” she told him flat-out. “And don’t get me wrong, sir, it ain’t like I don’t love freedom. Lovin’ my freedoms is as deep in my blood as hatin’ Texas is. It’s just… ya ain’t standin’ up to some tyranny here. What the Lady is doin’, as I understand, is prevent the world from plungin’ into total anarchy.”
“Anarchy never lasts,” was Romulus’ response.
“I get that, but what comes out of it ain’t necessarily prettier than the anarchy itself.”
“I would prevent it from being ugly.”
“So ya wanna replace the Lady as the arbiter of the world?”
The question gave Romulus pause. Not because he had never heard it before, Sol and Luna tested his thoughts on the matter often, but because he had never worked out an answer that convinced others properly. For himself, what followed was enough. “It is the position of arbiter that I refuse to accept. What I want is a world in which anyone can struggle to reach their full potential. I detest this tyranny that confines us with power to our own corner, when we could reach out to the mundane people and help them.”
“…Ya really are a good guy, ain’t ya?” Hailey asked with a mild smile.
“Yet you disagree,” Romulus noted in her tone.
“Hand on heart, I believe that I’m freer under the supreme rule of the Lady than under the rule of mankind that ya wanna bring about.” Hailey put her trucker hat back on. “But I get that ya think differently. It sounds nice, a world in which everyone can do whatev’r they wanna do with their powers… but some just got more of it than others. If John hadn’t come about when he did, I’d have ended up strapped to some mana factory. If I gotta rely on anyone to order the world, I’d rather rely on the supreme deity with a track record than you.”
“As is your right,” Romulus stated. “I commend your courage to talk like this to me directly.”
“A gal gets a sense for who is a danger to her and who is a good fatherly kinda man.” Hailey smirked and adjusted her hat one more time. “Thanks for the lil’ philosophy talk. Ain’t my usual area of interest, but I was just too curious about this one.”
Bowing his head in understanding, Romulus stepped away. Just before he left the workshop, he stopped again. “Would you permit me a question of my own?”
“Whatev’r ya need, sir?”
“Do you believe I’m selfish for what I do?”
“Totally,” Hailey answered and picked up her hammer again, “but I think that’s good. Could never trust people that claimed they did what they did for everyone else.”
Romulus chuckled and left the workshop.
Comments
Cassandra Thompkins
I hope John and Romulus become friends before Remus rises, so they hopefully work together instead of fight
Nessa Bright
This is such an interesting parallel to his convo with John about kingship. A lovely little narrative echo.
Marko
I agree very much, Romulus is just fascinating
Austin P.
I adore Romulus so much as a character, which is a huge compliment to your writing, Fun. I've been reading and keeping up with this story since the original Thana arc and your writing has improved by lengths and bounds. Thank you for your story and tyftc
