“You will forge until your hands bleed and your muscles break and still, you will keep on forging.”
“I don’t want a hammer this way!” Asha screams at me, her voice tearing at me. “I will hate you for this, Erik!”
Her fury is deafening.
“Stop!” she cries, suddenly breaking down, thrashing at Graviter’s paw as she sobs. “Please, stop.”
I don’t. I can’t.
For the next hour, I work until my arms ache, heating the gold and beating at it, and still I keep going, digging deep into the well of light within me.
Finally, the hammer’s head takes shape, a double-sided block, evenly balanced, and I attach it firmly to the end of the spear.
I shape it for strength and resilience, speed and control. And when its shape is finished, I take the chisel and carve into it the same runes that were inked into my father’s hands. Marks of bravery, loyalty, strength, perseverance, and finally, one he didn’t wear: hope.
My hands are starting to shake and my light begins to fade by the time the final rune is finished.
Asha has slumped in Graviter’s hold, but as my light sputters, her head rises again, dark tear tracks visible down her cheeks.
“Let me go, Graviter,” she says, her voice hoarse from screaming.
“Not yet, Bright Heart,” he says to her, lowering his head to hers while the Celestial Star drifts softly back and forth beside them both.
Asha has barely paid any attention to it and even now, her focus is entirely on me.
The chisel falls from my fingertips and my arms drop to my sides.
My light is nearly gone.
With a groan of exhaustion, I make myself pick up Asha’s hammer, sliding it off the anvil. The weight is nearly too much for me to carry now that my muscles are giving way.
I count the heartbeats I have left. Maybe thirty at most.
As I stumble out from behind the forge, Graviter finally opens his paw.
Free of his hold, Asha launches herself across the space between us, throwing herself forward and sliding through the snow to catch me as I drop to my knees.
The hammer’s head hits the ice beside me, but somehow, I manage to keep hold of the handle, trying to drag it closer to her side so that she will take it from me.
Her strong eyes are filled with pain as she cradles me. “Erik, what have you done?”
“Your hammer,” I rasp, pulling it to her side, its head gouging a turret in the ice.
She doesn’t take her eyes off me. Barely looks at it. “I don’t want it,” she says softly. “Don’t you understand? I wantyou.”
Twenty heartbeats left.
“Take it,” I whisper, my eyes burning with tears I refuse to shed. “You have to take it.”
She wraps her arms around me, her human strength straining under my weight as she pulls me to her chest. Her lips press to my forehead, and for a moment, I think she’s going to shun the hammer altogether.
Then my hand brushes her arm and the hammer’s handle makes contact with her skin.
That’s all it takes for the clearing to burst into light. The brightest, most breathtaking glow as the conduit I created connects with her power.
Her eyes light up like gold in the sunlight and her hair glows as brightly as the moon.
Her power ripples out from her, banishing the darkness. Her light is so bright that Graviter Rex closes his eyes and the Celestial Star’s form is no longer distinguishable from the air around it.
