Several weeks had passed.
For Amanda, ti had ceased to be a linear stream. It had beco a complex, multilayered chessboard where the boards overlapped one another: the Guild’s board, the board of city gossip, the board of her own ticulously concealed production. She knew every piece, anticipated every move—even those that had not yet been made. And she was the only player who could see all the boards at once.
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1. The Tool
Five days later, in the pre-dawn gloom of an abandoned scrapyard behind the forges, Tendzi was waiting for her. The air carried the sweetish scent of ozone and burnt oil—his workshop’s calling card. Without a word, he handed her an object wrapped in oil-stained canvas.
When she unfolded it, she saw… a stone. A rough, uneven river rock that looked utterly ordinary. But when her fingers found the almost imperceptible catch and pressed— click —the stone split open like a nut’s shell, revealing a chanism of breathtaking complexity and elegance. Nestled inside on cushioned pads lay a device powered by a capsule of compressed magmatic air (mined, she later learned, on the very lip of a volcano, skirting the edge of legality). A compact motor, an ultra-fine vibrating drill head coated in diamond dust.
She tested it imdiately on a chunk of granite. There was almost no sound—just a soft, feline hiss , like red-hot iron plunged into water. The drill head seed alive as it ate into the stone, leaving behind a perfectly round, hair-thin hole.
(Brilliant…) The thought was cold and precise. True genius lay not in ostentation, but in this murderous simplicity and efficiency.
She paid the second half—not in gold, but in rare alchemical reagents. Tendzi hid them away with a sly grin. Their alliance was sealed in mutually profitable illegality.
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2. Logistics
Every few days Amanda vanished from the city. Her absences were impeccably legitimized: “gathering rare mountain herbs for new experints,” “ditating in the crystal caverns for inspiration.” Even Lorenz, with his hawkish gaze, rely nodded approvingly: “Diligence is the foundation of mastery.”
On the return journey her pack was always full. On top lay neat bundles of edelweiss and samples of mountain quartz. But at the very bottom, beneath a false panel lined with lead (to muffle any stray magical glow), rested several kilograms of mithril ore. No more, no less—just the amount one silent drill could quietly extract in a single night without leaving obvious traces in the cavern.
Her steps along the mountain paths were light and swift. She left behind no litter, broke no branches. Her secret was quieter than mountain wind and less noticeable than moss creeping over stone.
(Let everything appear… perfectly ordinary) —that was her cardinal rule. Routine was the best camouflage.
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3. Slting and Refining
This was the most dangerous stage. Renting a Guild furnace? Suicide. Even in the remotest workshop there would be a prying eye.
Instead she recalled the “consultation” she had given a month earlier to a pack of half-trained alchemists—a recipe for a catalyst made from moonstone powder and lting-shadow ether. A catalyst that drastically lowered the lting point of refractory tals. At the ti it had been just another “brilliant” tip to bolster her reputation. Now it beca the key to her private hell.
On the very edge of Guild territory, where magical wards ended and the slums began, stood a half-ruined laboratory. An eccentric mage had once built it while trying to synthesize an artificial sun. The experint had ended quietly—no explosion—but the place was steeped in strange, repellent energy. People avoided it now.
Here, amid silence broken only by the squeak of rats and the groan of loose shutters, Amanda taught herself tallurgy. Through trial, error, and blistered skin. She ruined dozens of crucibles before she learned how to distribute the heat. Her hands, inside thick fireproof gloves, still blistered. But night after night, from the cloudy, glowing ore in her crucible, pure lunar light began to erge. Small, perfect ingots of mithril, each no heavier than an ounce. They were cold to the touch, yet sothing alive and mighty pulsed in their depths.
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(Little. But this is the foundation) —she thought, sliding another ingot into its lead case. Drop by drop, she was assembling her own private army.
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4. Finding the Master
She hunted with the patience of a spider weaving its web. She never asked directly. She listened. In the tavern “The Rusty Nail,” where retired rcenaries and impoverished craftsn gathered. In the public reading room, where old masters grumbled about modern “half-forge incompetents.” She wasn’t looking for talent—she was looking for grievance. A bitterness that had crystallized into hatred of the entire system.
And she found it.
Torglin. A dwarf whose na had once thundered through mountain halls and was now stood for disgrace. He had not been expelled for drunkenness or theft. He had been expelled for **heresy**. For daring to suggest that the sacred alloys of the ancestors could be improved. For mixing mithril dust with vulgar steel in an attempt to create sothing new. The experint had, predictably, ended badly (the crucible exploded, leaving a star-shaped burn scar on his cheek), but the principle had been violated. He had trespassed against dogma.
Now he lived in a shack that slled of cheap wine, sour sweat, and hopelessness. He repaired primus stoves and sharpened knives, and at night, neighbors whispered, he drew furious diagrams on grimy paper before tearing them to shreds.
(Perfect) —Amanda thought, watching him from the shadows. (His talent is poisoned but not dead. His pride is crippled but unbroken. He doesn’t need an employer. He needs… a mission.)
She approached him not as a patron but as student. She said she had heard of his “unorthodox thods of working tal” and wished to learn the true science of the forge—not the Guild’s version. She paid for “lessons” in clinking coin. She was a terrible pupil—her slender fingers refused to rember grip strength, her hamr strokes were clumsy. But her attention was absolute. She absorbed every word, every glance, every curse he hurled at the world.
And one night, when he was cursing the “thick-skulled elders who buried the future in graves of tradition” with particular venom, she made her move.
Silently, she placed on the grease-stained workbench—not coins.
A small, cold, dazzlingly white ingot.
“I’ve heard you once worked with difficult alloys, Master Torglin,” her voice was quieter than a whisper yet sharp as a blade striking anvil. “Tell … what could be made from *this*?”
Torglin froze. His entire world shrank to that piece of tal. The drunken haze evaporated from his eyes, replaced by a keen, almost painful gleam. His scarred, calloused hand trembled as it reached out. He took the ingot, held it to the dim light from the window. And shuddered.
“This… this cannot be…” His voice was hoarse from years of silence and rotgut. “Where… where did you get this, girl?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Amanda t his stare without flinching. Her ruby eyes held his furious gaze unflinchingly. “What matters is that there is enough of this tal. And I don’t need a hired hand. I need a partner. Soone who can do what has never been done before.”
She wasn’t offering wages. She was offering redemption. A chance to prove his heresy had been prophecy, not madness. That they had exiled him not for failure but for seeing too far.
For long minutes the shack was silent except for the dwarf’s labored breathing. He looked from the ingot—shining in his palm like a stolen piece of the moon—to the strange, seemingly fragile girl with ancient-blood eyes. Storm raged in his gaze: disbelief, fear, undoused pride… and what she had co for— the insatiable, all-consuming curiosity of a genius facing an unsolved riddle.
“…What,” he finally rasped, surrendering his entire forr life in that single breath, “do you want to create?”
The corners of Amanda’s mouth twitched. It was not a smile of relief. It was a bared teeth. The snarl of a predator whose bait had been taken.
“Everything you are capable of, Master Torglin,” her voice dropped into low, resonant tones. “But let us begin small. A dagger. One that is lighter than a feather, sharper than a dying thought, and… utterly invisible in shadow.”
She paused, letting the words sink to the heart.
“And then… then we will speak of another tal. One considered cursed. And of an alloy this world has never seen. An alloy that will make steel an obsolete concept.”
Torglin’s eyes ignited. Not with re interest. With **fire**. The sa fire that had once burned down his workshop and his reputation. Now it burned for her.
(She’s not bluffing… his mind raced. This girl… she knows the path straight into hell itself. And she’s inviting along.)
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The death of Duke Randel still lood on the horizon like a storm cloud. The clock’s hands ticked inexorably onward. But now Amanda had sothing greater than a plan.
She had a quiet, secret workshop of wonders . And its first fruit would not be rely a dagger.
It would be a key. A key that would unlock not a door, but the absolute, desperate, eternally grateful loyalty of the most powerful—and most dangerous—ally she could ever hope for.
In the filthy shack, in a shaft of grimy light, the glow of mithril in the dwarf’s hand and the cold fire in the girl’s eyes intertwined, casting upon the walls two distorted, gigantic shadows.
Shadows that had already begun to carve the outline of a completely new future.
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