[Beastborne: Voracious] (Book 5) Chapter 37

Chapter 44

True to their word, it only took ten minutes to get everything set up. Hal managed to find something to eat in that time and waited patiently while the dwarves were setting up long complicated troughs of sand and precisely cut holes and lines in the oddly dark mixture.

Hal knew enough about metal to know that you couldn’t just throw some ore on a fire and hope they’ll melt.

After that, however, he was out of his depth.

There was something he remembered seeing as a kid, a big cauldron that poured out glowing metal like some sort of fat demonic lord losing its lunch as the sparks and spray of molten metal went off like fireworks across the floor.

He hadn’t actually been there. It was some TV show he could hardly remember. But it had looked cool and dangerous, so as a normal American child, it had captivated him and stuck in his brain these many years later.

A fiery young dwarf approached Hal. She wore a leather apron covered in scorch marks and incongruously held a magical staff topped with a fire sapphire.

Her name jumped out at him, out of the depths of his memory. He smiled and shook her hand. “Adra Burnsburrow, what’re you doing here?”

She jerked her thumb toward the older dwarf, barking orders. There was more than one, so she had to adjust her thumb until she got the right cantankerous old dwarf.

“Helpin’ me da o’course!”

That would be one Burkin Burnsburrow, dwarven inventor and mechanic, though whether they were Classes or not Hal didn’t remember. The man had been partially responsible for the defense against the Drakst.

If they’re pulling him out to help, they must really be desperate, Hal thought.

And then he reminded himself, we’re all desperate here. With this supply of iron, we’ll be able to make more and more on our own.

With a wave of her staff, a spark of flame erupted from Adra’s staff and ignited the nearby braziers that the others had gathered. The warmth washed over Hal pleasantly.

“If you don’t mind,” Hal said, motioning to the rough cauldron the dwarves were setting up, “I’d like to try something first. Kind of a test run, if you will.”

“Yer the Founder,” one of them said, backing away and giving him plenty of room.

Hal stepped forward in front of the rows of sand molds. He had a faint suspicion that you shouldn’t just melt ore and pour it into molds. There had to be some level of contamination, right?

The stone the ore was trapped in and around wouldn’t just evaporate, would it?

Hal didn’t know, but he did know that Dragonfire was one of the strongest dispelling magicks throughout the multiverse, or as he knew them, the Shardrunes.

Perhaps it worked on more than just magic.

Taking a deep breath and cycling his Goldflame, he conjured thoughts of hope and wonder, of better times soon to come. With this task done, he could make tools that would befit his people’s skill and act as a force multiplier for the speed at which the dwarves could work.

Better yet, new weapons and items could be made. Buildings that were held up from lack of materials could be constructed, and Brightsong would see a boom in construction without ever having to draft a thousand people to the settlement.

A bundle of ore was drawn forward, and the dwarves scurried to safety, watching him owlishly as Hal used Copper Kol’thil: Levitate on the ore. It was far more difficult than when he used it with Kol’thil Surge. He could feel the drain of aether from the magicite as he lifted each individual piece of ore in a lump.

You would think that the whole thing would be considered a single item and therefore be pretty easy. When you lifted a bunch of apples in your arms, you treated them like a single entity, usually until they started to roll and fall out of your arms.

This wasn’t like that.

He had to balance each ore against the other, pulling them together around a central axis he held in his mind’s eye. He had lifted what seemed like tons of carved stone to make that first building and some of the rough attempts after that.

Now he was struggling and straining just to do this simple thing. It must be the difference between the surge and not. He would need to improve his skill to get any better. That must have been a one-and-done buff, Hal thought ruefully.

That was okay with him. He’d train all the harder to get back there now that he could use it as a goal to achieve.

Using multiple Sigils simultaneously was more taxing than using them sequentially, but there was nothing for it. He used Heat Space, confining the heat to the sphere of orbs he had hovering in the air.

And just for added fun, and a greater strain on his concentration, Hal used Goldflame Dragonfire.

Gold spirals of light wrapped around his arm and shot out into the sphere of glowing ore. What had just started to resemble the coils in a toaster oven turned supernova.

There was a dull WHUMP and Hal lost control of his Dragonfire, but thankfully not his Sigils. They held, and he struggled to contain everything with the use of Levitate, immediately dropping Heat Space.

Hal was forced to one knee from the fierce pressure that radiated out of the ores suddenly. Several people were staring with open-mouthed expressions and the line of dwarves had come closer.

Normally, you’d get people going further away. Dwarves were the sort to run toward the fires. Besides, this was metallurgy. Dwarves were fascinated by what he was doing.

Can’t really blame them, Hal thought with a grin as he slowly rose. I’m fascinated by it myself.

The Dragonfire had been, it seemed, a bit too much. It had superheated the ore and purified it all right.

All that remained was a blob of molten iron like a tiny sun. The globule shifted uneasily like a gelatinous creature from beyond the stars as Hal found he could use Levitate in an interesting manner.

By invoking the strength of the Sigil just so, and orienting it here and there, Hal could create a single channel that repulsed the liquid metal. This effectively created an invisible duct that fed into the sand molds below.

The dwarves, to their credit, had a good system set up, and Hal didn’t need to do anything fancier than that. He let the molten liquid seep into the channel that then fed, via small cuts in the compressed sand, into the molds.

In a matter of moments, the whole thing was over. A dozen glowing-hot [Iron Ingots] awaited them as they cooled.

One of the dwarves came over and knelt down by the glowing bars. He inspected them, passing a hand over them as if he wanted to pick them up right then and there.

Hal understood the desire, even if it was an odd one. As they cooled rapidly in the cold Shiverglades air, they made an interesting set of pinging noises and looked a bit like a large piece of glowing gummy candy.

There was a collective muttering of dwarves as more came to inspect Hal’s handiwork while he turned away and motioned for another cart of ore to be delivered. His process needed work, a lot of it, and using both Heat Space and Levitate seemed overkill.

Not to mention extremely taxing.

This time, once things were set up and ignoring the muttering voices behind him, Hal used just the one Sigil and Dragonfire.

He was prepared for the pulse of explosive force as the impurities were vaporized by the magical Dragonfire. Hal’s knees still buckled, but he managed to catch himself before his knee touched the ground.

Once more, the molds were fed with molten iron and Hal turned away from them even as more sand molds were being set up. Hordes of dwarves were bustling about ever since they realized how fast Hal was able to smelt the iron ore.

Over the next several hours, Hal refined his process. Levitate could be used and split in such a way that it repelled the force and directed the concussive blast up through a small aperture he created.

The air above the roiling mass of molten iron whistled and filled with steam as it was exhausted, but Hal quickly swapped this out for a combination Sigil of Levitate and Cushion.

While using two Sigils was a greater drain of aether than just one, Cushion used a lot less aether than Levitate.

So much so that the next dozen or so attempts, Hal slowly swapped over to using Cushion and Dragonfire as the default pairing.

There was no need to levitate anything if he could create a Cushion at the right height and size to hold the ore. It did require a bit more work of the dwarves who ingeniously used soot blown over the near-invisible cushion of air in order to visualize where Hal had used Cushion.

Great big cubes were set up out of hardened air with the use of the cheap Sigil, and Hal modified them once more when the ore was delivered. All it took was expanding the cushion of air outwards and creating a venting channel.

The Dragonfire went straight through the [Cushion] as if it wasn’t even there, but the physical interaction of the Sigil kept the molten ore in place with a vent hole in top to purge the impurities driven out by the Goldflame.

It was an interesting interaction. He was worried that the Dragonfire might heat up the cushioned air or erase it altogether. But that wasn’t his intent, and perhaps that mattered?

He would need to talk to Orrittam about it. The dragon would have the answer. After all, he was the one who taught Hal everything he knew about Goldflame.

By the time Hal was finished, the dwarves were scrambling into the small cavern where they had found a small seam of iron ore. Picks rang out loudly from the tiny dark entrance. The entire area around Hal was almost swelteringly hot, the air shimmering with so many cooling ingots.

Dwarves were creating more casts while Hal waited for another cart of iron ore to be delivered.

When it was time for Hal to work on Ashera’s mythril ore, Hal was more than ready. He had a system in place that, while not perfect, was more than sufficient.

The ore was placed with great care by Hal himself into the cushioned air and when he stepped back to use Dragonfire, he was surprised to find that the mythril metal resisted his Goldflame.

It wasn’t that its melting temperature was very high. It was actively resisting the Dragonfire itself as if it was somehow shielded.

Hal cranked up the intensity, spinning his Monster Core for all it was worth, channeling the golden liquid flame that blasted from his outstretched hand like a rocket engine.

Slowly, and by degrees, the mythril gave up the ghost and melted into a shimmering globule of reflective green light that startled Hal so severely he nearly lost control of the whole process and sent it splashing to the ground below.

That looks just like the blood of that god Midarian killed. The very same one that would have turned me over to Rinbast if he hadn’t been slain….

The globule wavered a moment, and then was carefully sent into the waiting mold below. It wasn’t nearly enough for a dozen bars, but a good three [Mythril Ingots] were cast from the stuff.

By the end, Hal was beyond drained.

That one use of Dragonfire had taken more out of him than the many other attempts before. Somebody, Ashera most likely, had found him a seat and pushed him down into it.

Taking a moment to settle himself, Hal watched as a familiar dwarf with odd-colored eyes stepped up to him. “Ye got any left in the tank, lad?”