As it turned out, leaving a planet that was chasing you got a bit harder. It was solidly in its ball form now so it couldn’t really smash Durff into anything or crush him from all sides, but it did push him around a lot. Though he supposed regular planets did that too.
Durff got in a lot of thinking about weight and hamrs and stuff. Maybe they were special insights, or maybe they were simple things he should have realized a long ti ago. Either way, he spent a while wandering around the planet to get back to the half hamr he’d dropped a while ago.
He had co to try to learn more about things, and he was pretty sure he got it now. He picked up his busted hamr. He was going to have to get a new one, but it just had to be a bit tougher. While he wanted it to be heavier, he realized he could accomplish that a different way.
He looked down at the planet, taking a stance and then using the final swing the hamr had in it. He connected, and felt the weight of that connection. The planet flew away from him and he moved away from it at the sa ti. It would probably take it a while to gain montum towards him, and he expected to be out of the system before that.
Durff didn’t think he was very good at flying, but he was pretty sure he’d gotten better. It was easy, actually. All he had to do was fall towards wherever he wanted to go. Much less complicated than all the stuff people usually said. He still wasn’t very good at subspace and stuff, so going between systems on his own wouldn’t be great. But there was a ship waiting for him… hopefully. It was supposed to find him, right?
Ah, there it was. Good, he didn’t have to figure out all that complicated stuff on his own. The ship was falling with him, and they ended up going the sa speed before he got into it. This was way better than that one ti he had gone to train in an empty system and needed to wait a year for a ship to pass through and pick him up. He’d been lucky, too, since a year was pretty short.
-----
Durff t up with the smith Chikere had recomnded, Sadiq. He was pleased to see the man made so decent weapons and not just swords and stuff. So good hamrs and clubs and properly heavy stuff.
Chikere was already there, waiting. She apparently wanted to try that idea with the swords and stuff. Durff didn’t have good tal anyway, as even the scraps of his previous hamr were gone now.
“So, what do you want?” asked the smith. Grandmaster smith, apparently. That ant he was really good.
“A hamr,” Durff said.
“What sort of hamr? I can make a maul, warhamr, various sorts of polearms… anything you have a design for or can describe, really.”
“I want a heavy one,” Durff said. “Sothing I can hold in two hands. Long is good, as long as the handle won’t break when I swing it.”
Chikere dumped several armfuls of swords on the floor. “Here’s so infused tal for you to work with,” she supplied.
Sadiq looked at the pile warily. “Swords into hamrs? You’re going to lose most of the essence.”
Durff shrugged.
“It’s just for the material,” Chikere explained. “Besides, it’s still better this way. And he hasn’t found any roving gangs of hamrers,” she gestured to Durff.
“Just so rocks. Were they hamrs? Should I have taken all that?” Durff tilted his head.
“Unless they were particularly high in tal content…” Sadiq shrugged. He picked up the nurous weapons with ease, seemingly unconcerned about cutting himself even though he wasn’t using energy to protect his fingers. “I’ll reshape a few of these into a decent weapon. You can watch, if you want, but don’t interrupt unless I ask sothing.”
“I think you’ll need all of them,” Durff said.
Sadiq raised an eyebrow. “I get that you can probably wield a greatly oversized weapon, but it’s not actually better.”
Durff shook his head. “It doesn’t need to be that big. Just heavy.”
“Dense?” Sadiq asked. Durff nodded. Dense was a good word. The smith’s eyes traced over him. “If I thought you were doing this just to show off your strength… well, I’d actually just let you die when you couldn’t wield it to be honest. But you seem like you know what you’re doing.”
“I think so,” Durff agreed.
Durff thought that smithing involved sticking tal in a big fire until it lted. But Sadiq just tossed the stuff into a big cylinder where it began to float, then slowly spin. It lted without any fire at all. He wanted to ask, but he wasn’t supposed to interrupt.
Sadiq took so sort of stone poker with a hook, stirring up the molten tal as it floated. He still wasn’t using energy, which was weird. Slowly, it began to vaguely resemble a long hamr. Sadiq did sothing that pulled out so strands of tal, dropping them into a trough of water behind the whole contraption. Bad tal, maybe?
“You don’t mind it being one solid piece, yeah? How’s this looking?”
Durff realized he was allowed to respond. Supposed to. “The handle seems pretty skinny. Won’t it break.”
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“It’s tough tal. I could make it thicker, but it would unbalance the weapon.”
“That’s okay,” Durff said. “I have pretty good balance.”
Sadiq looked over Durff. That was the only thing he’d used energy for so far. “Hmm, I think I get how this might work for you. You’re more of an instinctual sort.” Sadiq paused for a few monts. “Well, I suppose I’m making this for you and not anyone else. Better a weapon that works for its wielder than one that’s made for general purposes.”
He went back to ignoring Durff. A bit more poking around at the glowing lump, and then he yanked it out with his bare hand. That was when he started using energy, and he also started smacking it against a large anvil. Sadiq had a relatively short, stout hamr. Durff could tell it was well made, but it clearly wasn’t a weapon.
Each stroke of Sadiq’s weapon reshaped the lump. Sotis flecks of tal would fall off, though those were always caught and tossed back into the weird floaty furnace or whatever it was. Durff noticed that sotis, the tal just went away. No, maybe it was squished together with the rest. Denser. He worked quickly, seemingly finishing the head of the weapon before it cooled. Then he flipped just the long handle inside, just the part that was inside the weird contraption heating up and glowing.
Sadiq infused so of the scraps into the lted vaguely handle shape, but he also removed a few more strands of tal. He spun that around a lot as he hamred it on his anvil, a rapid rhythmic thumping as his hamr seed to jiggle up and down. Durff thought it was fascinating, but his hamring technique wouldn’t do much good in a fight. Not that Duff thought the guy wouldn’t be dangerous, it was just that technique probably wasn’t.
The smith stopped hamring and spun it around, then blew on it to cool it off. Obviously that wasn’t normally enough, but his lungs were like a hurricane. “Hmm, a good start,” he said, holding it up for Durff. “What do you think?”
Durff tilted his head. “It’s not done? It looks pretty done.”
Sadiq chuckled. “It still needs polishing. And you should probably still feel the balance.”
“Does polishing make it better?” Durff asked as he held out his hands, the hamr dropping into them. It was heavy. “This is good. I like it.” He spun it around slowly. “Are you sure it’s not done?”
“If the balance is to your tastes,” Sadiq shrugged. “Polishing it would still make it more even. Slight imperfections like that could throw off techniques.”
“I’m not a smith,” Durff said. “So if you think it’s better. But I like it like this.”
“Tell you what,” Sadiq said. “You use it like that for a while. Let know if you detect any issues.”
“Okay. Thank you,” Durff bowed. The hamr tried to pull him over, but he didn’t let it. He was pretty heavy himself anyway. “What do I owe you for this?”
“Oh, if I charge commissions for stuff like this you couldn’t afford it,” Sadiq waved his hand. “But I’d be interested in so recordings of you using that.”
“I can show you right now,” Durff said.
“Nah, I an really using it. In a proper fight, too.”
Durff frowned. “I don’t know if recording equipnt would survive.”
“Not the normal stuff. But there’s so good stuff Uzun could set up. If you’re willing, I’ll talk to him and see if he can arrange for that.”
“Okay,” Durff said. “But I’m not good with… technology and stuff.”
“It’s fine,” Sadiq said. “Soone else will deal with that. You just need to give permission.
Durff nodded. “Thanks.”
He wanted to go hit sothing with his hamr. But… there weren’t really any enemies around. While it seed like the Scarlet Alliance could be attacked at any ti, most of the ti they actually weren’t at war. Which was kind of weird, if he was being honest.
-----
Upon reviewing the possible invasion paths, given the arrangent of various systems about half of them went through the Shining Cooperative. That was only considering stuff that might reach the Lower Realms Alliance, of course. The Adamant Federation and Free Planet Guardians would likely both face so sort of retaliation, and they were close to the border of the realms, but further east than anything the Lower Reams Alliance had.
There was only a relatively thin line starting from Akrys near the border where the Lower Realms Alliance actually had systems. Then there was a cluster of them around the core, and a long arm stretching eastward. It wasn’t quite the path Anton had taken towards Uzun, but that happened to be the majority of independent systems that had ended up joining them.
So places were unlikely to be attacked. The system that Tenoun’a and Shreen occupied was most likely marked down as successfully exterminated. Without any known resources or other reason to return, they’d probably be left alone. However, they were actually flourishing over the last few centuries and it was possible information about them would have gotten out. They would be ready for an attack, if there was one.
Ekict was a point of concern as they had killed many mbers of the Twin Soul Sect. Not that there was anything unreasonable about that, but the point was that they had died normally without any damage to their souls. That ant information should be available from them. Of course, everywhere else that had Twin Soul Sect mbers might have let a few through, except perhaps Ceretos given Everheart’s traps.
Not that the Trigold Cluster would be particularly more lenient to places that had annihilated the Twin Soul Sect without any information getting out- they would just have a harder ti making specific preparations for the invasions. Obviously they would be upset about those planets going dark.
Assuming that the Lower Realms Alliance had kept a perfect lockdown on information was foolish, but they did the best they reasonably could. The incident with the lower realms Trigold forces would have revealed more than they wanted, but it would have been worse to leave them attacking the Shining Cooperative and In’istra, among other places.
The Exalted Quadrant was also building up forces along the border for the upcoming shift in the Tides of the World. They were especially concentrated in an area that should be going to the Nurological Compact’s systems, which was unsurprising. That was where they’d taken the most obvious hit. They might have plans to infiltrate other planets, of course.
Nidec was likely also a target given the prevalence of the Hardened Crown Sect and others, which had been convinced to switch sides. Or killed, as necessary. They couldn’t just leave foreign agents in their alliance.
The remaining ti continued to shrink, though with over a century remaining the situation could change drastically before the ti ca.
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