Solitude Blacksmith Novels & Stories

I questioned my own purpose each time Alruin and I had an argument, but at the end of the day, I knew that if by some miracle, I did win him over again, it would all be worth it. “The art of a blacksmith is of utmost importance, sonny. If the blade is too blunt, it doesn’t penetrate the armor and that risks a man’s life in battle. If his breastplate isn’t thick enough, it leaves his chest vulnerable for a fatal hit,” he carried on, “now, I was once in the army that fought against these beasts. I fought battles against men, got wounded, killed men, but it’s nothing like fighting a beast, you see.” Flashes of the beasts on Snowfang mountain flashed through my mind and I saw myself tumbling off

I pushed past the thick leather curtains of the primary foundry, the intense heat of the burning coal instantly warming my freezing skin as the smell of molten steel filled my lungs. Dozens of skilled blacksmiths were working diligently around the massive stone anvils, their muscular bodies covered in soot as they forged the defensive armor plates and the silver-tipped spears that our pack was famous for. I marched straight toward the center of the main workshop, my powerful aura immediately drawing the attention of the workers who quickly lowered their tools in deep respect.

He was known only as the Artisan, a man who spoke more in the language of spanners and oil than words, and his universe was a cathedral of ticking blackness. His workshop was a labyrinth of half-made things: brass limbs suspended from copper threads, glass eyes staring blankly from velvet trays, and the constant, muttering hiss of steam from a dozen soft engines. And in the center, on an obsidian pedestal, stood his creation, his secret shame, his passion.

And where the hell was the Alpha King while we busted our asses on the front line? Not even the Moon Goddess visited this pack. “What can I get you?” the guy behind the bar said. I slid a gold coin across the bar. “I need someone to make me a weapon. And information,” I said low. He glanced up beneath my hood, then slid a hand over the gold coin. “Can’t promise he’ll take the job, but the best smith lives in a cabin near the warriors’ citadel, to the south,” he said, wiping the counter with a rag dirtier than the wood.

Consumed by the agonizing loss of my mate and the intoxicating, phantom memory of our primal night together, the stone walls of the office felt like they were closing in, crushing my lungs. I needed an escape. I needed physical pain to drown out the deafening noise in my head. “And he actually had the fucking guts to speak to me,” I muttered to myself, my chest heaving. Deciding to completely isolate myself from the crumbling world outside, I resolved to bury my violent frustration in the intense, skin-melting heat of my private forge. I stormed out of the study and marched down to my personal quarters. I violently stripped off the heavy, suffocating ceremonial coat and the tailored shirt, c

Jack pushed the door open. The interior was a cramped, cluttered workshop that smelled of hot metal and dimensional grease. Tools hung from the ceiling on invisible hooks, self-adjusting to the gravitational orientation of whoever was using them. In the center of the workshop, hunched over a workbench that existed in at least three dimensions simultaneously, was the Hollowsmith. He was small, impossibly old, and made entirely of tarnished bronze clockwork. His eyes were mismatched glass lenses, one red, one green, and his fingers were needle-thin precision instruments that moved with the delicate grace of a spider weaving a web.

Yet, the right side of his jaw was clenched with such territorial madness that the veins along his temple looked ready to snap, his dark amber eyes completely swallowed by the ink-black film of his alpha instincts as he scanned the golden chamber. The space inside the mountain was vast, a circular amphitheater carved not by tools, but by raw, primal thermal force. In the center of the room sat a massive, three-tiered anvil of solid black lodestone, its surface etched with the deep, glowing gold runes of the first sovereign blacksmiths. Above it hung a colossal, mechanical hammer suspended by thick, ancient brass chains that ground against the ceiling with the sound of grinding tectonic plate

“Our local blacksmith is a very mysterious Slayer, full of surprises, but a good fellow. He isn’t from around here but everybody adores him just the same. Oh, and have I mentioned he’s blind?” “Blind?!” Temujin and Aki echoed. “Oh yes, that’s right. Completely, I’m afraid. I wouldn’t challenge him to a spar though on account of that, for he can put any able-bodied Slayer to shame. Also, he very much prefers a simple and private life.” “Oh, I’ve heard of this blacksmith,” Sasha jumped in. “He’s the one who makes most of the blue Slayer suits by cooking the tree-drops in a stove. Somehow he knows how to combine fire and wind techniques.”

The hammer will not help, nothing in this world will help, it will not save. – Hello, Zoran, – Radolyub smiled. “We haven’t seen each other for a long time, and the forge, I see, is flourishing. Do not sit without orders. But maybe we have time? There is one thing for you. The blacksmith took a breath, not taking his wary, full of melancholy gaze from the stranger. Somehow he felt doomed. The guy walked around the forge, looked around the walls, hung with ready-made weapons, smiled a little.

CHAPTER 159 ~3RD PERSON'S POV~ Have you heard about the blacksmith? A man whose hammering echoes again and again in the deepest, darkest part of Mystic Meadow. His eyes were red as blood, and his face was permanently etched with anger. He is surrounded by darkness, hatred, pain, and a desire for revenge. The only light he sees every day is the light of the sparks that fly off the metal after each strike of his hammer. These sparks are the only beautiful things he owns; these sparks keep him from going insane, and these sparks remind him that one day he'll come for those who hurt him.