“What do temples use for the other magics?” Iryana asked, unable to control her curiosity. She was finally seeing the magic of Istri and she had so many questions. Her mind swirled, connecting the pieces she had learned together.
The Keeper furrowed his brow and rubbed his jaw. “It has been a long time since the temples have been able to make dies for each other. We made metal-carved dies for the water temples. Air temples use dies made of a cement that they poured water into from water-forged jugs. For fire-forging, their dies are clay, dried by air-forged bellows. And earth…
“Fire strengthens earth.” He frowned and tapped his chin. “Ah, their dies are cast metal, worked in a fire forge.”
“If the magic comes from the blood of the Giant gods, why are they so connected?”
“It is one of the great mysteries. Some of the order have complex theories, but I believe that all things in the world are balanced like this. It is the natural order of things. Only because this magic is so great can we so clearly see how they connect.”
A shiver ran through her.
The Keeper retrieved one of the smaller boxes from the shelf. “Are you ready to begin? We will start with the dagger; smaller forgings are quicker.”
Iryana nodded, and the Keeper opened the box. Each half held a dagger carving. She had seen similar things at the blacksmith shop. He latched each metal plate of the large press, carefully lining them up and fiddling with some of the metal rods that seemed to limit the movements of the press.
“Push your magic between the dies, then try adding magic from the well.”
Iryana did as she was told, pushing a concentrated shield of her raw, silver magic against the die. Then she fed the metal magic into it. The moment she did, her control of her magic faltered, and it seemed to weaken. The Keeper pulled the lever, lowering the top die until her magic refused to bend any more. It had made hardly any progress at all.
Iryana frowned.
“Forging is a slow, repetitive process, especially for die striking,” the Keeper explained. “The more well magic you join with your raw magic, the more your magic will break down. When the magic weakens, lower the press as far as you can. Then pulse more raw magic in order to solidify it. A dagger like this will only take a few hours, but larger forgings take much longer.”
Iryana hadn’t thought the process would be so intensive; had she known, she would have spent more time with the blacksmith. But she nodded and repeated the process again.
“The slower you can forge, the better. This allows for a higher concentration of metal magic.”
Iryana nodded again, trying to find a good balance between the amount of well magic to weave in without losing the progress she had made with the last press.
She had always had a lot of control over her shields, and luckily, those same techniques seemed to make the forging easier. The Keeper settled onto a stool at the side of the room while she worked, calling out bits of direction from time to time.
It wasn’t long before Iryana felt herself drenched in sweat, though she didn’t mind it. The work was almost soothing, but her mind kept thinking back to the bow forgings and how something that flexible was made.
When her magic finally resembled a dagger, Iryana smiled.
Three days later, Iryana was exhausted. Her muscles and her back burned furiously, but when she formed her spear and dagger in her hands for the first time, she felt full of energy. Her forgings were dark and iridescent, a sign of a good forging according to the Keeper, and the edges of the blades razor sharp. They’d barely taken half of the magic she’d intertwined with Noshtiz’s.
She was proud of them.
The sharpness of the blades had taken a few hours before a grindstone, requiring her to be far more careful melding the magics than with the die striking.
When she tried to form the remaining unforged metal-magic, it only brought forth a strange formless blob. The raw magic she had left could still form a small local shield, but the forged magic needed to be given shape to be useful. It was already time for her last forging.
“Keeper,” she asked, finding him in the storage room. “How are flexible forgings made, like a bow?”
The Keeper nodded and got down a few of the long, thin dies from the shelves. He opened the first to reveal the shape of an unstrung short bow.
“The flexibility has to do with the forging process, but the nature of metal magic comes into play as well. It is easier to make more rigid metal-forgings and easier to make flexible water-forgings. I’ve assisted with a few bow forgings, but I only recommend experienced archers attempt it because you must be very familiar with the give that you need, or the bow could be useless.”
Excitement hurried Iryana’s movements as she started checking each of the dies until she found the form of a beautiful recurve bow, finer than anything she could have made by hand. It was not as small as the air-forged ones some of her family had; metal magic wouldn’t allow the arrows to cut through the air quite as easily, but it was still smaller than the wooden bows she normally used. It was perhaps the size of a horse bow.
Her fingers traced it carefully. The bow would have a sculpted grip with the perfect shelf for an arrow to rest on.
She wanted to forge it desperately.
An idea struck her, and she turned to the Keeper. “The bow forgings I’ve seen still require stringing them with normal bowstrings. When we make bowstrings, we take long pieces of sinew or fibers and twist them together. Could we not do that with a forging?”
The Keeper considered this for a few moments before turning to her with a peculiar look on his face. “This is something the fire temples did. Well, still do, I suppose. The strings of their instruments must be like a bowstring. It’s never been done at this metal well at least, as far as I know, but I can help you try.”
