Feral: Chapter 10

I managed to get an hour or so of extra sleep. It wasn’t very good. My dreams now made far too much sense now. But it was rest, and I felt a bit better after waking up. Arthur and I had breakfast. Like Jennifer said, he had slept well. In fact, he seemed more at peace than usual. The body in my workshop was gone. Only the scorch marks on the inside of my gauntlet’s barrel and the dozens of throwing knives resting on my workshop table told the story. I almost threw out the knives before looking between the triangular weapons and my gauntlet. Getting a bit of an idea, I put the knives away for later.

An hour after I woke, I was back to work. The sound of a hammer on metal, the feel of a file carving out material, they all served to comfort me with the familiarity of old motions. I worked the chestpiece to shape using a rounded stake, hammering into shape. I made sure to use a piece of chalk as well. By dragging the chalk over the chestplate, I’d be able to see with spots were raised, and which ones were low, and flatten the piece further.  

I used a scraper and file to work out the engravings on the metal. The chromoly steel was so tough, that my muscles burned as I worked, even without runes further increasing their durability, but I still managed to do the job as efficiently as possible.

As I worked, I made sure to mark out the runes as well. While I was still sore from the curse of paralysis, I could still use magic and move relatively normally. Once I felt ready, I began the process of melting the gold dust Richard had bought, adding in the hair I’d gotten from Katya. First, I placed the gold dust in a bowl on top of the hot forge, letting it slowly melt. As it melted, I slowly took drops of molten gold on the tip of a thin piece of hard stone that had been soaked in oil. Then I slowly let the drops flow into the engravings I’d made in the armor. With the raidō rune, I’d could add gold and other objects to the armor, and be assured that it would join the make-up of the armor. This gold would not be as strong as the steel around it, but it would be far tougher than normal gold, which tended to be very soft, and would be able to withstand the heat treatment I’d be doing later.

Once I was done with that, I began work for the backplate while the engraving cooled and the raidō symbol consolidated against the chromoly. Arthur had done a good job getting the backplate prepared, but I double-checked the whole thing. On realizing I’d been off on my calculations, I cut off a bit from the section where the armor would be going over the shoulders. Done with that, I used an old paint paintbrush to begin making the ornate markings along the back. They would move in towards the chestplate, joining into the center design.

In order to do the design, I’d decided to use the resist method. In this case, using some simple nail polish Jennifer had given me a long time ago, I painted the design along the steel. The nail polish would ‘resist’ the alchemical acid I would follow up with, leaving the surface underneath almost untouched by comparison. I diluted the nail polish in acetone every once in a while, and made sure my hands were steady as I worked.  

This was one process I’d be using of course. I’d need Hasha’s alchemical process to create certain things, to further work the chromoly steel the way I wanted and so on, but I was otherwise well on my way. Heat-treating, tempering, polishing, engraving, and making more steel, adding in the bronze pieces, working the smaller pieces. It was going to be hard.

But I could already tell this armor would be even better than my last.

------

“Hey Char,” Katya stepped into the workshop. Mountain followed her, somehow easily fitting his massive body through our door, with Richard behind. The tiny blonde powerhouse smiled at the sight of her armor slowly releasing heat into one of my cooling plates. “You’re almost done?”

I took a bite of the cheese that was part of my lunch. “No. But we’ve begun the process. The smaller pieces will take time, and we might need to cheat a bit to get the whole thing done soon.”

“You have five extra days,” Richard said simply. When I blinked and looked at him he shrugged. “Apparently the path to the den Katya will be clearing out was blocked by a sudden mudslide. Until it’s cleaned out, she can’t go. So I’m giving you five extra days.”

I felt a sense of relief. With the extra time, I’d be able to put even more work into the armor. Chromoly steel, as strong as it was, took far more time than I’d expected to finish each ingot of the material. With the extra time, I could finish each piece without worrying as much about how long it was taking. Time was my greatest enemy. The one thing that could stop me from doing the really amazing things I wanted was time, and more of it was only better for me.

“Hmf,” Katya, unlike me, seemed very disappointed. “I really wanted to go. Now I have to wait even longer. It’s so boring, just waiting for a good fight.”

Mountain pressed his massive head under her hand. She gave him a grateful smile, rubbing him behind the ears. Mountain grinned at her, and she seemed to take comfort in that.

“Don’t worry,” I said once I’d swallowed the food in my mouth. “This just means I can put more work into the armor. Once I’d done, you’ll be the most well-armored person on the continent.”

“Quite the claim,” Richard said.

A voice came from the main room. “Well, Char has never made a promise he couldn’t keep.”

We looked over to see Jennifer enter the room. She wore an elegant green dress and high red heels, here hair tied into an elaborate set of curls on top of her head. She looked more like a queen than the madam of a brothel.

Richard’s eyes bulged at the sight of her stepping into the workshop. “J-Jen-Jennifer!?”

“Just Jennifer my dear priest,” she said with a smile.

Katya let out a small ‘ah’ of surprise, and stepped forward. “Hello!” she bowed. “I’m Katya Narveaz! The Prophesied Child!”

“Lovely to meet you dearie,” Jennifer smiled at Katya, then looked at Richard, who was slowly paling. “Richard. It’s been a while. How has work been?”

I looked over at Richard. Katya looked at him. Mountain looked at him. Arthur walked in, saw us staring questioningly at Richard, then looked at him as well.

Richard, feeling our eyes upon him, coughed into a fist and looked away.

“For shame, priest,” I said dryly. He glared at me, only for Katya to speak next.

“How do you know Lady Jennifer, Richard?” she asked curiously.

With his charges big eyes upon him, Richard seemed unable to get his head straight. “I uh,” he coughed again, “she has aided me in certain issues I’ve had in the past.”

“Oh,” Katya seemed to accept that.

“Jennifer is one of the people that raised me,” I said quietly. “Like a mom.”

An olive branch. My way of saying that whatever she was, whatever she’d done, I still cared for her, and wouldn’t act like the ass I had.

Jennifer stared at me in shock. Then she smiled once more. A real smile, not the confident, self-assured one she seemed to prefer. “Yes, I suppose so,” she chuckled, returning to her original demeanor. “So, I here that Char is making you something.”

“Oh, yes!” Katya clenched a fist happily. “It’s going to be amazing!”

“Hopefully,” I grunted. “This extra time should help though. I’ll need it for the carbon fibers I’ll be making.”

“Carbon?” Jennifer, Katya, and Richard asked in unison.

I nodded. “Carbon. It’s one of the most stable states of matter in existence. Diamonds are made of it,” I leaned towards my regents and picked up one of the diamonds, showing it to the three of them. “Carbon also a very strong substance. If I can rework it on the molecular level, create crystal lattice sheets of about a molecule thick for each sheet…” I trailed off when I noticed Richard and Jennifer looked lost. Katya on the other hand was nodding, apparently understanding what I was talking about. “In basic terms, I’m planning to make an extremely strong set of shirts for Katya. I’ll need to protect her from electricity, as the carbon sheets are superconductive, but that is a small price to pay. Even if something manages to pierce her actual armor, the carbon undershirts would protect her.”

Katya seemed ecstatic at the idea. Jennifer simply sighed.

“He gets so enthusiastic about these things,” she looked over at Katya. “Now as for you my dear, I think I’d like to get to know the young hero of our nation,” she looked over at Mountain. “That is, if you’re okay with it?”

The massive dog nodded seriously, then grinned.

“Oy,” Richard quirked an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you be asking me that?”

“I only speak to the man in charge dearie,” ignoring the way Richard sputtered once more, Jennifer placed an arm around Katya’s shoulders and began to guide her out of the room. “Now sweetie, I’d like to speak about…”

As she left the room with an aptly listening Katya, Arthur walked over to Richard. “Leave ‘em be,” Arthur said to the knight. “You know how womenfolk are. Probably talking about dresses or good looking men.”

As Richard seemed to quake in fear at the very thought of Katya speaking about such things, I looked over to where Jennifer and Katya now stood down the hallway. As I watched, Jennifer made a stabbing motion. Katya grinned brightly and followed the motion. After a few more violent motions like that, with Jennifer apparently guiding her through each motion, I found myself smiling.

Of course of all the things Jennifer and Katya had in common…

Shaking my head, I scarfed down the rest of my food and went back to work. Lifting my alchemy set, I began mixing the next potion I’d need. Arthur went back to creating more ingots of metal for me moments later.

When Katya entered the room with Jennifer later, I looked up at her. Then I stared a bit harder.

Her cheeks were fuller. Her lips and eyes somehow more prominent. She seemed to glow. For a moment I didn’t understand why seemed so different. Then I realized what had happened.

“I like your new makeup,” I said.

Katya smiled. “Thanks! Jennifer taught me how put it on better!”

“It’s nice to have a new student,” Jennifer smiled gently. “Of course, working on properly corrupting the poor dear will take time, but…”

As Richard’s eyes bulged, the knight apparently unable to process this newest of threats to his charge, I continued my work, Mountain watching me hammer with calm eyes.

Five extra days. And I’d be using every moment I had.

With all the comforting sounds around me, as Richard tried to speak with Katya on his feelings on her burgeoning friendship with Jennifer, with the smell of the forge burning and steel bending beneath my fingers, I could almost forget that I was a murderer.

------

The next day, I found myself in heaven.

“More books than I’ve ever seen…” I looked around the massive shelves around me, amazed by the sheer number of books resting on those wooden bookshelves.

“Yes, well,” Richard coughed, trying to hide his amusement at my awe. “You said you needed some reference material. So, I thought this would do the trick,” he waved around us.

The Chapel Library was as large as one of the castles. In fact, from the outside I’d assumed it was a castle. But the truth was far more incredible.

Books. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of books. Several floors of them. The gray stone under my feet made an odd ‘clomp-clomp’ sound as I went from shelf to shelf, grabbing the titles that I saw and adding to the pile in my arms.

“Do you know how hard it is to find some of these?” I said almost reverently. “These are priceless!”

“Then stop damn well piling them in your hands,” Richard grumbled. Chargrined, I placed them on a smooth wooden table. “The Chapel has one of the largest libraries in the whole of Turab, second only to the Dedicat University’s. But use of the books is restricted. Only certain personal are allowed in, and only in certain sections.”

“Why would you restrict any of this?” I flipped open a book on alchemical solutions, finding a more advanced version of the potions I used to combine metals into different alloys.

“Because of the invention of the damn printing press,” he pointed at a set of doors. “This place is full of things we don’t want getting into the general populace, much of it behind that door. And it was easy to prevent that when people had to handwrite every single page over thousands of hours. But now? A group of men can create hundreds of pages in the course of an afternoon. If anyone came here, and stole one of the more dangerous books of knowledge? They could distribute them to the populace before we’d even know what happened. Better to protect the knowledge from the start, than to deal with the aftermath.”

I was momentarily torn. Everything inside me screamed that hoarding these books was wrong. That keeping information from the people was just holding back civilization as a whole. But at the same time, Hasha had long since taught me the dangers of using knowledge unwisely. Simple runes could become the catalyst of far worse things after all. Alchemical potions to heal could easily become poisons if used incorrectly.

I decided not to comment, and simply copied as much information as I could in the three hours allotted to us. Alchemy, rune-making, metallurgy, and spirit summoning, anything that could help make Katya’s armor. Towards the end of the third hour I was almost done, only to realize something.

I couldn’t find the rune of connection. The one from the garden, the one that did something to the strength and joining of the runes.  

Flipping through different texts, being gentler in the case of the more fragile books, I dug through the library as best as I could. Richard, noting my sped up pace, frowned.

“What are you looking for?”

“A rune of connection, the one keeping the garden in front of the main castle healthy. I think I can use it as a cheat, to fuse all the runes in Katya’s armor without needing to depend on more time-taking methods.”

“Rune of…” Richard shrugged. “Well that would probably be in the restricted section. Now come on. Times up.”

“Damn it,” I sighed sadly, but began putting away the books.

Still, the visit had ended with good results. With the notes I’d taken, and the insights of priests and wizards hundreds of years my senior, I should be able to make Katya’s armor that much faster.

I chuckled at the thought of those ancient men and women, and how they might have reacted to knowing that a half-orc was going to take their research and create something with it. I actually had the thought often, but it still made me smile.

When we got back, I’d begin incorporating these new techniques into Katya’s armor. One step at a time.