Minoc’s forge was near dead when I stumbled in, shoulders aching like I’d been hauling stone all week instead of just this past hour. The air still held that familiar bite—sulfur and scorched iron, the ghost of a hundred hammer strikes ringing off stone walls. I dropped my pack near the anvil, and the clink of ingots made me grin. Nearly fifty in there, pulled from the earth and coaxed into shape under my hands. Well, most of them. One stubborn bar refused to bend right—came out twisted like a snake mid-strike—so I left it cooling in the corner, a silent insult.
But it wasn’t the metal that haunted me—it was the tongs. Old things, blackened at the jaws, worn thin from years of gripping hot steel. I was shaping a pickaxe head, the kind that bites deep into stone, when the left jaw snapped clean off. Just ping—like a harp string breaking—and suddenly I’m dancing back from the forge, clutching red-hot iron that’s about to warp if I don’t set it down now. I cursed loud enough to wake the sleeping drunks in the corner. Had to quench it half-formed, and the steam hissed like it was laughing at me. Sat on the bench after, staring at those broken tongs, sweat stinging my eyes, hands trembling not from the heat but from that sudden, helpless lurch—the kind you feel when your tools betray you.
Funny, ain’t it? After all the swings of the pick in the earth near the mining tunnel west of town, after the grind of hauling ore back in the dark, it’s a pair of tongs that nearly broke me. I tried mending them later, but my tinker skill’s still shaky—couldn’t even shape the basic tools right. Felt like the world was telling me I’m halfway to being a proper smith, but still just a miner with soot on his face.
Come morning, I’ll head to the tinker shop near the stables. Maybe beg a lesson, or at least buy a new pair that won’t fail me. Until then, I’ll sleep with the weight of those ingots in my pack—real, solid, earned. And the memory of that ping, sharp as a warning.
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