The Forge

Spoiler

Target Pokemon: Salandit
Character Count: Hard (20-30k)
Target Character Count: 23,972

The clanging sounds of metal being beaten into shape echoed through air thick with smoke and incense. Under them were whispers, the words of enchantment vibrating around the room and bouncing off of the roughly-hewn stone walls, weaving into chains of spells that were then imbued into the still red-hot weapons and armor.

This was the forge at the heart of the Citadel, the most prestigious magical repository in the world. All fields of study, from combat magic to rune casting to taming to alchemy, were welcome here, although not all were equal. Only a select few students, chosen from each group, were selected each year for the highest of the high, the Arcana, after passing a difficult task.

Mira ground her teeth together as she smashed her hammer down with unnecessary force, working out her anger and frustration on the soft orange metal simmering on the anvil. She hit it too hard; the blade bent, and she swore under her breath. Part of her wanted to keep hammering it into a puddle of melted steel, but instead she stepped back, wiping the sweat from her forehead and sucking deep breaths of cool air into overheated lungs. Her cheeks felt hot from proximity to the fire, and her eyes were watering from the smoke and ash drifting through the air. Soot stained her hair down to the roots and burn scars littered her forearms.

She felt like she hadn’t been clean ever since she came here.

She leaned back against the wall and slid down to sit, ignoring the discomfort as the bumps and ridges of the stone scraped at her back. She worked a hand into the pocket of her ugly fireproof uniform and fished out the purple stone, rubbing her thumb habitually over its glassy smooth and semi-transparent surface.

‘It’s a lucky stone, Mimi,’ her grandmother had said with a smile, weak and tired but genuine. ‘It will help you go where you want to go and do what you want to do. See the world, and tell me all about it when you come back, alright, love?’

She swallowed down the unexpected knot that had risen in her throat at her grandmother’s whispery voice. Once strong and melodic, it had faded into a pale shadow of itself in the final days of her sickness, and now it seemed that that was the only way Mira could remember it, try as she might to recall the moments in her youth when they sang songs together.

She rubbed the stone again, but didn’t feel the burst of determination she usually did, just the dull resignation that had become more and more common as the months dragged on. Two years without reaching the ranks of the Arcana. Two years confined in the dim and din of the forge, making sword after sword without ever getting to wield one. Two years choking on smoke and the thick scent of incense.

With a heavy sigh, she picked herself up and walked back to the fire, the stone warm and comforting against her palm. The blade would need to be reforged after her earlier blunder. She moved for a fresh load of coal to fuel the flames, and-

-someone bumped into her from behind. She stumbled forward, off-balance and dangerously close to the fire, fists opening instinctively to catch herself before she could tumble head-first into a pit full of magical fire hot enough to melt steel.

The stone went flying, cartwheeling through the hazy air in a lazy downward arc, and Mira could only watch helplessly as it vanished into the flames. “No,” she choked out, one hand reaching forward. She moved as though to dig through the coals, but someone hauled her back. She didn’t even know who it was, and she didn’t care. Her one memento from her grandmother, the only person who’d ever supported her magical ambitions, was gone, probably already melted into violet sludge.

She couldn’t do this anymore.

***​

Deep inside the smoldering, white-hot embers of the fire sat a stone, purple so dark it was almost black. As it lay, soaking up the heat that was its birthright for the first time, its core began to glow a soft red, and the stone began to shake. Slowly and sluggishly at first, as it warmed, then more frantically.

Soon, a crack appeared, then another, then another, until the first shard of eggshell fell away, revealing a thin, lilac eye.

***​

Mira couldn’t sleep that night. She’d been dismissed from the forge for the day after her fall, the teacher telling her to get some rest, but she couldn’t. She just stared up at the low, plain stone of her cell’s ceiling and pictured the look on her mother’s face when she wandered home, dirty and defeated, her dreams burned to ashes.

It would be smug, proud. ‘I told you so,’ her eyes would scream, even as she gasped over the state of her. Mira knew her mother, and she had never wanted her to leave the farm. She needed strong hands, after all, not silly girls prancing off to the Citadel on a whim.

She hadn’t spoken to her mother since the screaming match the day she left. She’d picked up the paper and quill a few times in the hopes of scratching out a letter with the few words she knew (and who ever heard of an illiterate Arcana anyways, honestly, Mira, you should have just stayed where you belonged), but could never even decide how to start.

When she didn't see her mother’s smirking face pressing a shovel back into her hands, she saw her classmates cackling with laughter at her humiliation the last time she had attempted the trial. To become an Arcana, one had to defeat a highly trained knight in single combat. You could use any method, from throwing fireballs to summoning a beast to fight for you to plain old sword fighting.

The last time she’d attempted the trial, she’d gone for the latter, attempting to create a sword that would never break. She’d worked for days, doing all of the work herself, even the enchantments, but when time came for the trial, something went wrong. The fire was too hot or too cool, the spells were too loosely bound, the steel had too many impurities or had been heated and cooled too many times.

Either way, it shattered like glass when she crossed blades with the knight, feathery wisps of broken spells floating away from it before melting into the air. She was left standing alone, holding the lovingly handcrafted hilt that still had a few sharp shards of steel embedded in the end.

She shook her head to clear the memory, squeezing her eyes shut tight. It didn't work, the heat of embarrassment still flushing her cheeks.

Maybe she should just go home. Run away from the horrible, painful work and the snickers behind her back as she walked through the halls. If she wrote a letter, her mother could be here by the week’s end with the horses to take her home.

She just needed to survive six more days and then… then she'd go back to the utterly consistent mundanity of the farm and work until she died. It was never the future she'd wanted for herself, but at the moment it seemed like it might be the best she was going to get.

She pulled a pillow over her face to mute her quiet, resigned sobs, and didn't sleep at all.

***​

When she walked into the still-empty forge early the next morning, the knot in her chest had been replaced by a curious light emptiness. It was the loss of caring, the knowledge that she wouldn’t have to do this for very much longer so it didn’t matter, anyways. It was nice to let go of the stress and pressure that had been dogging her heels ever since she first stepped through the grand silver arch that marked the entrance to the Citadel, even though the only reason it was now gone was because she’d lost hope.

She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, which was good, because at the moment she wasn’t sure she was even capable of feeling anything at all besides that same numb lightness. She crossed over to her usual workstation near the fire in a daze, staring for a moment at the bent and half-made sword she’d abandoned at the anvil the day before until her brain clicked into gear and she remembered that she had better work on it.

She’d have to re-melt the steel, she realized dully, lifting it in a gloved hand and moving over to the fire. She leaned on the bellows rhythmically to rekindle the flames that had died down during the night until red, blue, and orange flames were stretching up from the fire pit, hungrily gasping for oxygen.

She was just about to step away from the bellows when a loud crack, almost like a gunshot, echoed around the still-empty room, followed shortly after by scuffling sounds coming from the fire. Mira took a few quick steps back, unsure what the source of the noise was but knowing that it couldn’t be good.

In a magic school, one learned very quickly to duck and cover when they heard strange noises, so that was exactly what she did, ducking behind the anvil and clutching her blunt and half-finished sword blade as though she might need it to defend herself, holding it so tightly it bit through her glove and and pricked the hand beneath. Behind her she heard the coals continue to shift until the noise stopped abruptly, followed by a sound best described as skittering. It circled around the side of the anvil and Mira closed her eyes, flinching backwards.

The sound came to a stop directly in front of her, and she squeezed her eyes shut tighter, bracing for imminent bloody death, protected only by the childish logic that perhaps, if she couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see her, either.

When a few moments have passed and she had not, so far she could tell, died, she hesitantly pricked one eye one, then the other.

It was a lizard. Or, it was shaped like a lizard at least, but that was about the only thing it had in common with the little green ones she used to chase around the farm. It was strangely colored, dark grey with black head and feet, and a glowing red stripe running down its tail and scattering into a fiery orange blossom in the middle of its back. It looked at her curiously with squinting eyes that were a very familiar shade of purple. As she watched, the softly glowing stripe started to shine more brightly before a line of fire briefly stood up on the little lizard’s back.

She slowly set down the knife still cutting a red line into her hand, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible. The lizard cocked its head to the side, tracking the movement with those painfully familiar lavender eyes, but other than that did nothing. Mira chewed on her lip nervously for a moment before deciding to stretch out a hand, carefully bridging the foot and a half gap between them.

It was shockingly warm, like there was a furnace constantly burning in its chest. Which, Mira thought dimly, remembering the flames that had lept up for half a second, may not actually be that far from the truth. This was a school of magic, after all. The laws of nature were easily bent or even outright broken in a place such as this. The skin was smooth and slightly slimy. More of a salamander than a lizard, she realized, and part of a half-forgotten old piece of lore floated into her mind unbidden. Something about salamanders and fire…

A long, purple tongue slipped out of the salamander’s mouth, caressing her hand. She almost yanked it away, a shudder running down her spine, but didn’t. The friendly approach seemed to be working, and she didn’t want to soil it now. Magical creatures came in many shapes and sizes, but they were always, always dangerous. And she might not be exactly sure what this thing was, but it was definitely magical.

Luckily, it also seemed to like her, taking a step forward and rubbing its head against her hand. She carefully petted it, avoiding the orange design still glowing on its back. She liked her fingers

The fragile peace between them shattered with the noise of chattering voice and stomping feet approaching the door, and Mira was abruptly reminded of the existence of her classmates. The salamander startled, head turning nearly one hundred and eighty degrees to stare at the door before scurrying almost faster than the eye could follow across the stone floor, up Mira’s side, and into her hood, where it promptly curled up and radiated a pleasant heat.

Before she could react, her first classmates entered the room, one of them casting her a curious look, and she quickly picked herself up and did her best to pretend that she had not just been hiding behind an anvil from a magic fire lizard.

Struggling to ignore the constant, strangely comforting heat behind her head, she picked up the forgotten mangled sword blade from the ground and set it atop the advil. She was about to move towards the fire again, preparing mentally for the tedious task of getting it up to just the right temperature, when a white hot plume of flame came over her shoulder, making her ear uncomfortably hot and burning a good deal of hair. She made a muffled shriek and moved to rip the little monster from her hood when her glance fell onto the blade, now glowing a soft red and emanating heat, the perfect temperature for being reshaped.

She blinked, then glanced over her shoulder to meet the laughing lavender eyes of the little lizard tucked in her hood. The edges of its unevenly fanged mouth seemed to part in a grin.

She grinned too, for the first time in a while, and grabbed her hammer from the workbench where it lay. She had work to do.

***​

The day’s work went twice as fast as usual with the salamander’s assistance, so she was able to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the forge unnoticed by early afternoon. She ducked out of the door and stretched a hand over one shoulder to pat the lizard on the head, and received a decidedly slimy nuzzle in return.

Mira worked her way out through the winding labyrinth of corridors and tunnels that made up the inside of the mountain that the Citadel was built into, moving with purpose towards the library. She was glad that she already knew where it was, because it was well known how easy it was to get lost here, how easy it would be to just keep going deeper and deeper into the stone warren and never find your way out. The thought made her steps a little faster, eager to leave the tunnels for the warm and comforting embrace of the library.

The library was, by far, her favorite part of the Citadel. It was huge, and it was easy to disappear between the stacks and shelves of books, away from pitying glances and mocking snickers. She rarely read anything in the library, but this time was different. She padded into the taming section, scanning the shelves for books that looked promising. If information on her mysterious new pet was anywhere, it with be in with the beast taming books.

It took about half an hour and a good deal of exploring, but eventually she found a book that looked like it might be more helpful than the rest. It was old, practically falling apart at the binding, more than a few pages missing. Emblazoned down the spine in gold leaf was a title she couldn’t fully read, but she could make out ‘fiery beasts,’ which was good enough for her.

Most of the book was nonsensical to her, and many of the words she did know were spelled or used strangely, anyways. After a solid hour of frustration and a steadily more painful concentration headache, she gave up and hurled it against a wall with an extremely creative streak of cursing before slumping back down onto the uncomfortable wooden stool, letting her head fall onto her crossed arms with a groan. The lizard nesting in her hood made a worried trilling noise, and she absently reached back to pet it.

After a moment, she walked back over to the wall, picked the book back up, and started again. This time, she focused on the illustrations, not even attempting to understand the text, and after a while her determination paid off with a small picture that could be the salamander, and beside it another, much taller and standing on two legs with a design across its chest.

Underneath both was a small sketch of a familiar purple stone.

Mira might not know many words, but she was a farm girl, after all. She recognized the word ‘egg.’

The book fell from her hands and thudded to the table, and she continued staring at it for a moment before she giggled, a little hysterically, because she'd been carrying this thing around in her pocket for two years. Once she'd calmed somewhat, she reached back over her head into her hood after checking around to make sure no one was watching.

She set it in front of her on the table, where it sat, staring up at her with those purple eyes and occasionally sneezing out little wisps of flame. She put a hand out and rubbed along its back with a thumb, just as she'd used to do when it was imprisoned inside its stone prison. It responded by nuzzling her cold hand, instantly warming it.

“I guess you're supposed to help me achieve my dreams,” Mira said after a moment, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all, her grandmother’s words echoing in her ears.

The salamander met her eyes, then scampered up her arm and settled proudly on her shoulder. Its tongue lightly tickled her ear, and she giggled, the sound seeming almost too loud as it echoed among the arched ceilings of the library.

“Okay then,” she said, the gears in her mind already turning. “Let's get to work.”

***​

Although most of her fellow students had since left the forge, finishing their work and wandering off to find food or spend time with friends, it had yet to close down fully for the night, which suited her purposes perfectly. She padded into the empty room and ducked into a corner where the walls were angled strangely, casting the spot into deep shadow and hiding it from prying eyes.

She settled down there and waited. Soon enough, the head blacksmith came in to lock it up for the night, and her alongside it. She forced herself to wait until his footsteps had fully receded, despite the loud protesting of her cramping legs, before she came out of her hiding spot.

Then, it was time to work. She grabbed the bars of good steel she’d been hiding away, assembled her tools and prepared her anvil, and then nodded to the salamander.

The cavernous room lit up with white-purple fire.

***​

The world was hard and painful, moving faster than she would have liked because they were running on limited time. She couldn't count the number of times her hands were stung by the heat, blisters forming on her knuckles and forearms, and that only increased when she briefly had to remove her gloves for the detail work of laying runes onto the blade.

She fell into a rhythm: heat, shape, cool, repeat. Heat, shape, cool. She added in layers of protective runes and battle spells, until despite her amateur spellwork she was certain that even the worst warrior couldn't fail holding this sword.

Despite not having slept for almost forty hours by this point, running on fumes and desperate hope, she was wide awake, exhilarated and energetic.

Slowly, the sword began to take shape. Flared at the hilt, then curving in for the first third and out again shortly after the halfway point before all coming together at the tip. It was shorter than an ordinary broadsword, due to limited time and resources, but no less deadly.

The hilt was last, the final touch on her accomplishment. Unlike many swords, with their intricate metalwork and jewels set into their pommels, it was plain, just a simple grey cross, the grip wrapped in fresh strips of leather.

Heat, shape, cool, repeat, until she finally plunged the blade into the bucket of water for the final time and sat back, wiping one hand across her brow and using the other to sleepily rub the head of the little salamander, which looked as exhausted as she felt after producing superheated flame almost constantly for the past few hours. She was grinning.

She felt more alive than she had in years.

***​

She stood behind the curtains, watching nervously as feat after feat was performed flawlessly out on the stage, witches bending the elements to their will and tamers calling mystical creatures from other worlds. With each successful spell and potion, though, there was someone who failed, whose summoned phoenix flew away instead of fighting or whose fireball spell only produced a shower of sparks. Each time one of them was escorted politely off the stage, her heart lurched in sympathy.

That wouldn't be her, though. Not this time.

None of them defeated the knight.

All too soon, it was her time, her name being called out and she was suddenly very aware of all the eyes on the stage. She swallowed hard, glanced nervously over at the salamander, laying comfortingly across her shoulders. It's heat was like a balm against her frayed and sleepless nerves, and it met her eyes in what almost seemed like reassurance.

She swallowed her worries and walked out onto the stage with as much confidence as she could muster, hefting the sword in her hand. A ripple of murmurs crossed the crowd when they noticed the salamander still curled on her shoulder, but she managed to ignore them.

Her opponent came out, a man wearing padded armor and holding a full broadsword. Glancing at her own significantly smaller sword, Mira gulped, but held firm, her fingers tightening on the grip.

After a moment of sizing each other up, the knight lunged, his sword coming straight down towards her head. She threw her own weapon up in front of her just in time, catching his attack on her blade and stopping it dead, her arms straining with the effort of holding him back. He was taller, stronger, and more experienced, with more force behind his weapon and a longer reach. All she had was a handmade sword.

It would have to be enough.

Something like surprise was in the knight’s eyes for a second when she parried, quickly replaced with determination, as he began to attack in full, forcing her to back up and switch to a completely defensive style just to fend him off. Her heart was pounding in her throat, and every attempted jab and slice cut a little closer to her.

When the battle had gone for five minutes, the knight had yet to show any signs of fatigue or weakness, while Mira’s arms felt like lead, her strokes were only getting clumsier, and he had her backed into a corner.

Suddenly three things happened all at once: the salamander hissed, a sound like water being thrown on sizzling coals; the smell of burning hair filled her nose, and her ear was suddenly very hot; and finally, her sword came alive with violet fire.

The knight, thus far impervious to everything she threw at him, stumbled back a step in surprise, just off balance enough to give her the opening she needed to force her way out of the corner and onto the offensive. The blade left trails of purple flame in its wake as it danced, forcing the knight to stay away from it or risk being burned. As her strikes became more precise and confident, his became more erratic and frightened. There was panic in the knight’s face, the panic of being confronted with something he did not expect or understand.

He threw up his sword in a last ditch attempt, holding it defensively in front of him, preparing a powerful swing.

She didn't try to dodge this one. She sliced sideways, cutting horizontally fast enough that you could only see a blur of blue and lavender, and cleaved his sword in half like it was butter.

Two thirds of the blade clattered emptily to the ground, the knight staring blankly at the now useless hilt in his hand. Mira rested the tip of her sword in the hollow of his throat, the flames guttering out.

“Do you yield?” she asked, voice soft and more than a little unsteady from the rush of shock and adrenaline and the high of victory.

“I yield,” he answered formally, casting his eyes downward. She stepped back, let him get to his feet, then turned to face the silent, wide-eyed crowd.

Someone clapped.

In the back of the room, someone clapped and cheered, and the wave quickly spread into the room was full of echoing applause.

A warm, satisfied feeling blossomed in Mira’s chest, and she looked with searching eyes past the crowd to the back of the room where the principal stood, nodding slowly, a smile on her face. She glanced over at the salamander on her shoulder and grinned.

After all, every witch needs a good familiar.

 

Claimed~ C=

 

Introduction:

AHHH I loved this introduction! The combination of the immersive description in tandem with the narrator explaining the magic behind Citadel drove this story forward for me! In just a few short paragraphs, you really delivered the tone and setting of this story. Plus, you're writing in a newly created world - that itself is truly awesome! I was sold on the solid worldbuilding of this story. Now, let's delve into more about Mira!

Story:

As a general question, have you ever thought about experimenting with first-person perspective? There are quite a few moments where the narrator focalizes on Mira and hones in on her individual thoughts, such as her feelings towards her mother or returning home. The concise ending lines of each section do this also in a way that taps into Mira's individual feelings. This can be a little curious for an omniscient narrator, as we never know what the other minor characters are feeling, in particular the grandmother that gifted her the egg or the knight that she fights at the end. Mira moves the whole story forward, so I think a first-person perspective could have definitely worked well here as we delve further into Mira's ultimate goals beyond becoming a witch.

The story that you presented to us here, in a word: charming! I especially love the double meaning behind "forge" in this. Of course, we have all the blacksmithing goodness that's happening, but there's also the forging of the friendship between the mon in question and Mira herself. There were no surprises here to make the reader second guess what was happening, but of course what we had here, the consistent character building of Mira, was more than enough to keep the reader fascinated with her world! All in all, this is a solid story that excites us with its tone and world! Great job!

Description:

You definitely brought the strong description game here 100%! Both physical and metaphysical descriptions were so good! I especially loved this line: "The world was hard and painful, moving faster than she would have liked because they were running on limited time." Also, KUDOS for writing excellent and immersive sensational description too! We get a gritty grasp on just how dirty she feels toiling away at her swords and just how exhausted she feels by the end of it all. If I could focus on anything at your level, I would suggest this: give us not only feeling but also form. For your characters, providing insight into how they walk, how they move, their mannerisms, etc are helpful in bringing home a more well-rounded image of that character. I got that a bit for the Salandit, but would have liked to see that for Mira or the ending knight, too. For example, we have:

This is a strong image, but I think what could make this stronger is a more expansive image of the subtle and unique form of the knight. The little details on the essence of each character is what will elevate your description to even the next level! Awesome job on what you presented here!

Grammar & Stylistic Mechanics:

Not really an error more so, but a stylistic thing - run-on sentences. Now, I really love breaking all the rules of grammar and turning sentences and phrases into a physical art by bending what's allowed. Tampering with sentence length, mixing up subject and verb order, all sorts of stuff I enjoy - and I read in this a similar sense of breaking all those grammar rules to make a more dramatic entrance with your text. However, at some points, I think longer sentences worked against the fast-pace fury you might have been trying to drive home. For example:

It's not that there's so much stuff going on in those sentences - more so, the order of events delays the drama until the force hits the reader and they might say, "what, what happened here again??" You've got the strong verbs, and you know what all you want to say - now let's working on making it active! As an exercise, try stripping away all of your adjectives in the sentence. See what's bare bones and then work with what should come first, second, and last in the sentence to make it stronger and more active. If we do this, there could be a lot of exciting variance in sentence structures and individual orders to make these sentences a lot more surprising! Additionally, I noticed that you tended to end each section with a short sentences, while a good majority of other sentences ended up being longer. Having a more even dispersion of different sentence types and lengths may also make reading more unexpected! For example, the above could become:

Length:

more than enough, pacing was where it needed to be~

Outcome:

SALANDIT CAPTURED~! Keep doing what you're doing, write more stories, experiment with sentence types and perspectives, and ENJOY your new mon! happy holidays!