I’ll tell ye, the forge in Minoc’s mine was near cold when I got there, and I stood over it like a fool, chipping stone dust from my boots with a knife, wondering how a man with a hundred in mining still couldn’t scrape together enough luck to light a flame worth spit. The air down in those tunnels always smells like wet iron and old sweat, and that day it clung heavier than usual. I’d hauled nearly fifty ingots from the deep veins near the western shaft—arms trembling the whole way up—and all I wanted was to pour them into shape before the next lot came down. But the damned tongs snapped clean in half when I pulled the first red-hot bar from the coals. Just cracked, like dry kindling. Burned my thumb something fierce from the spray of sparks.
I stood there, sucking on the blister, staring at the broken ends of the tongs—cheap things, bought off a traveling tinker two months back, not fit for real work. Felt like the whole day had come down to that one brittle seam in the metal. I could’ve cursed, or kicked the anvil like some greenhorn, but instead I just laughed. A short, crooked thing, but a laugh all the same. There’s a kind of truth in failure like that—it strips the pride off you. I sat on the cooling hearthstone and watched the coals fade to grey, thinking how I’ve spent years chasing perfection in the craft, yet still can’t keep a pair of tongs from breaking when it matters.
Come morning, I’ll walk to the Miners Guild, if the path’s clear. Not to sell, not this time. I’ll trade two days’ haul for a proper set—forge-welded, balanced right. And maybe, if the smith there’s in a talkative mood, I’ll buy a drink and ask how he keeps his tools from turning on him. Till then, the cold anvil waits, and so do I—wiser by one broken tool, and lighter by one illusion.
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