01: Call to Adventure

Chapter 1: Call to Adventure

Hammer.

With a thought, Syrus’ skill activated, and the blows came down on his hundredth sword one after the other, a rhythmic beat for death and deeds to come. It was a song of his trials.

Hold, he ordered, and the sword ceased moving each time the hammer fell as the skill was reapplied for the third time that hour. Calloused from a year of hard labor as an Apprentice, his hands remained steady. Syrus ignored the heat of the forge and the beads of sweat trailing down his face. At that moment, there was only the hammer and the sword.

The final strike came, and even before it fell, he knew.

Its note was a song of his tragedy.

“Acceptable,” Syrus’ master, Lemnos, said. It took the bearded blacksmith only a glance to appraise his finished work.

“You mean ordinary,” Syrus said bitterly, wiping the sweat from his creased brows.

“There’s no shame in that. It’s a good sword.”

Good isn’t good enough, Syrus thought. Even without checking, he knew. This had not resulted in a breakthrough for his rank. He was Apprentice still. “I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong,” he confessed. Many of the boys and girls under Lemnos had risen beyond their first rank, and half of them weren’t half as skilled as him.

“You’re still comparing yourself to the others,” Lemnos said. “Everyone walks their own path and their own pace. There’s no happiness to be had judging yourself by another’s measure.”

“Even if I ignore the others, the fact remains that I’ve been here a whole year now and have nothing to show for it,” Syrus said, setting down his hammer. “I have yet to achieve breakthrough. My swords remain asleep. I don’t even have a new skill.”

“The swords you make are sharper and sturdier. The stroke of your hammer is cleaner. Your skills can be used more frequently,” Lemnos countered, quenching the sword into a barrel of water before handing it back to Syrus. “They are not milestones, but to say your year has been wasted is shortsighted.”

Syrus sanded out the edges of the sword. It had not been the result he hoped for, but it wouldn’t do to leave the work half-done. “Maybe the others are right. Maybe the gods did not mean for me to be a smith.”

“Nonsense,” Lemnos said. “You have the class, don’t you?”

“Do I really?” Syrus asked. After all, his class was Smyth, not Smith.

“I can only advise you to keep working at it,” Lemnos said, turning around. He paused at the threshold, adding, “The gods always reward good work.”

“Yes, Master Lemnos,” Syrus answered dutifully. He reheated the sword slowly, using his skill instead of the forge to ensure a more even result and to control the temperature better. Master Lemnos was capable of temperatures hotter than what a forge could provide, but Syrus was far from that. It didn’t matter for this step of the process though, since the blade was to be reheated at a lower temperature to relax the brittleness and stress induced by the quenching process earlier.

When that was finished, he added a beautiful rosewood handle to the sword and covered it with a tough leather. Finally, he took out a whetstone and began sharpening the edge.

As he worked, a boy with a pig’s nose slipped into the room.

“I’m not in the mood, Darius,” Syrus said.

The boy smiled his worm of a smile. “This is just pathetic,” Darius said. “Now even I feel sorry for you. You realize there are people who joined after us that have surpassed you now, right?”

“If that’s all you came here to tell me, you can go,” Syrus said. His mockery wasn’t anything new.

“It’s my duty to educate you,” Darius said. “If I don’t, who will? It’s not as if that quaint little village of yours had a school.”

Syrus rolled his eyes at him. Those words may have had some bite to them when he’d first arrived, but he’d worked hard in the last year to address that. “For someone who thinks so highly of his education, your insults could use work. It’s always the same with you.” Syrus squinted at him. “Considering the size of your head, you’d think there’d be more than air between your ears.”

“You’re calling me stupid? How ironic,” Darius said, his grin turning nasty. “Your mother misspelled the name she gave you, Cyrus. Though maybe it’s on theme, all things considered. Even the gods fudged your class when you chose to be a smith.”

Syrus held up the sword in his hand against the sunlight, eyeing its edge. “You’re giving me an awful lot of lip while I’m holding a sword. Are you sure that’s a smart thing to do?”

“You wouldn’t dare do anything to me,” Darius said, though he took a step backwards. “I’m higher ranked than you!”

“You don’t know that for sure, do you?” Syrus said with a smile that was all teeth. “Did you forget our master’s teachings already? Everyone walks their own path and their own pace.” Even within the same class, not everyone had comparable ranks. “Besides, ranks alone don’t decide the winner of a fight, and I’m in a foul mood right now.”

“I make better swords than you!”

“Certainly,” Syrus said and Darius sighed in relief, “but you don’t have the first clue how to use one.” He was a city boy after all, and had lived his whole life safe behind its high walls. Syrus’ eyes hardened and he pointed the sword at Darius. “Do you dare to kill? Do you dare to die?”

Darius fled, and that was answer enough.

—Smithos—

That night, Syrus tossed and turned in his bed, but sleep was well beyond him.

“If you keep moving up there, I won’t get any sleep either, and I will stab you over it,” grumbled Cass from beneath his bunk.

“No you won’t,” Syrus said.

“I’ll be sorely tempted to,” Cass shot back. She sighed, then asked in a softer tone, “What’s keeping you up?”

“Thinking about life, and where I go from here,” Syrus said. “I didn’t make a breakthrough today.”

“I told you not to put too much hope in your hundredth. It’s different for everyone,” Cass said.

“If not my hundredth then when though?” Syrus asked. “I’m… I’m worried that this is the end of my road. That this is all I’ll ever amount to.”

“Awfully bleak talk for someone not even eight and ten,” Cass said. “We’ve only been away from the village for a year. Why are you in such a rush?”

Syrus turned to his side, and peered down at her from the edge of his bed. “Everyone around me is moving ahead, and it feels like no matter how hard I try, I’m running in place. Can you blame me for worrying?”

“I can blame you for keeping me awake,” Cass said, narrowing her brilliant blue eyes at him. Even in the dark, he could see them clearly. “What do you plan to do then? You can’t mean to return to the village after we worked so hard to get into the city.”

“I couldn’t make a living there anyway. I don’t know the first thing about farming,” Syrus said. There was hardly a need for two blacksmiths too considering how few people lived there.

“Good.” Cass yawned. “The smiths of this city are always so busy with repairs and commissions. If you leave, I’ll have no one to bring my weapons to.”

“I’m touched that you care,” Syrus said dryly. “Cass, what’s life like as an adventurer?”

She suddenly sat up. “What? You’re not thinking of switching classes are you? The gods will make you start over—”

“Nothing so drastic,” Syrus interrupted before she could work herself into a frenzy. “I’ve always talked about seeing the world beyond these walls after ranking up a few times. Clearly the latter isn’t happening, but I can still do the former.”

“What for?”

“Breakthroughs are meant to mean something,” Syrus said. “I’ve pushed myself as much as I can here, but Master Lemnos won’t let me work with anything beyond bronze and steel while I’m at my current rank.”

“You want to gather your own materials to craft with,” Cass said in realization.

Syrus nodded.

“It’ll be dangerous,” she warned. “You’ll need a party. Monsters won’t hesitate to rip you to shreds.”

Syrus smiled at her. “I have you, don’t I?”

Cass sighed. “You have me,” she agreed.