86: Petrified

Watching Paisley set up to cast the ritual was fascinating. She had the wooden forge set down on an open patch of floor in the workshop, and she'd drawn a pentagram under it. Now, she was placing little piles of ritual ingredients at seemingly random intervals around the circle of the pentagram. Of those ingredients, the four chunks of refractory brick were the most important by far.

“I feel very uneasy about this little ritual you’re performing in the middle of the workshop,” Jace joked, although there was a slight element of seriousness to his tone.

Paisley laughed and looked up from her task. “Don’t worry, I just added the star in the circle for aesthetics.”

I snorted, then quickly switched to a small giggle because holy hell I just sounded like a dude. Then, because the giggle sounded very forced, I winced.

“Of course you did,” I said, trying to cover for my weird little vocal spasm.

Paisley grinned up at me. “I wasn't always so goth ingame, remember?”

“Oh, I remember the pink hair, don't worry,” I said, glad she'd either ignored or failed to notice me acting strange. Damn that mirror in her room — now I was hyper aware of how I was acting.

“Okay, that should do it for the physical prep,” she said, hopping to her feet. “Stand back, and I'll start.”

Jace took a long, cat-like step backwards. Vesuvia, who was still here and watching with interest, held her ground where she was leaning against a table.

Taking a deep breath, Paisley began to speak in a strange, otherworldly language, and suddenly my cute, goofy friend didn't look so cute and goofy. In fact, her bearing, expression, and demeanour was positively eldritch.

Her circle — pentagram star included — began to swirl with white smoke. It was contained within the lines, giving them a three dimensional aspect. Slowly, the various ingredients placed on the lines began to disintegrate into ash, then join the smoke, until only the chunks of brick remained.

Rather than turn to smoke like the rest, they melted into liquid and began to dance in swirling lines towards the wooden forge, until in a sudden flash of movement they splashed onto it. The liquid brick immediately seeped into the wood, and from there, it began to take over.

It didn't look like refractory brick, though — not exactly. It appeared that the ritual had interpreted the brick as its various component ingredients, but without the sand-like grain texture. Instead, each fibre of wood became a strand of one of those materials instead. Silvery strands of silica were tiny, but distinct from their clay siblings, and carbon made those other colours pop with its dark appearance.

“Wow,” I said, as Paisley finished her chant. The smoke from the circle dissipated into the air, suddenly unbound from its rigid prison.

She looked up and beamed a smile at me. “Wow, that was a cool ritual! Look at that thing.”

I agreed with her wholeheartedly. The newly petrified forge looked incredible, with all those different strands woven together in place of the wood.

Walking over, I placed a hand on it, and was surprised to find it cool to the touch. I guess I figured that the process must have left some residual heat, but apparently not.

Paisley bounced up beside me and touched it too, then turned to me and said, “Let's test it! I want to see if it works.”

“Sure,” I said, then, because I sounded less than enthusiastic, I repeated, “Sure!”

We moved the forge over beside the other one, and I began to shovel fuel into the— I guess calling it the spirit forge would be appropriate. Wait, shit… did it need a door? I guess we’d see if it worked without.

Now, I needed materials. I had sap left over from when I created the spikes for the tree, so I threw the rest of it in with the fuel. Back then, I think I doused the stump in it, but this was as good as I could do now that the forge was made of stone.

“Okay, I still have a bunch of iron and sap from a while back,” I said, taking out the ore, along with my crucible. Thankfully, the game’s ore wasn’t even close to the real thing, and I could just melt it down without any of that smeltery-bloomery stuff.

With all the materials ready, the last thing to do was to call out my trusty little assistant. Wispy popped out of my pocket with a tiny whoop of excitement, and when they saw that I’d already made a perfect bath, I didn’t even have to direct them.

My little wisp companion dove into the forge and happily set it ablaze — a blaze which glowed an eerie green. Okay, no lighter needed this time.

“I’m completely winging this, you know,” I said to my audience as I used some tongs to carefully set the crucible into the furnace. “I’ve scuffed like half the steps, or improvised them because things are too different from what was written in the journal.”

“Hey, that’s how crafting works in this game,” Jace shrugged. “I even have a theory that they just let us mess around with stuff and if what we do is cool enough, they let us have it.”

I laughed — it certainly felt like that sometimes.

“Actually though!” Paisley said enthusiastically. “This one time, I didn’t have any gnomish metal powder, so I improvised using—”

It took a while for the iron ore to go through its fiery transformation. Finally, though, I was able to carefully pull the crucible out of the sickly green fire. Jace had placed three ingot moulds on the large main anvil we had, and with everyone standing well back, I proceeded to pour the molten iron carefully into the waiting vessels.

“Now we wait until they cool down,” I said, putting the tongs and crucible away. “Then, we’ll see if I managed to make Spiritforged Iron.”

Abruptly, I felt my hands grasped by someone else's. Paisley was beside me, and confused, I watched while she manipulated my fingers— oh, to cross them.

“Fingers crossed,” she joked, eyes sparkling with a heart-stopping smile.

My eyes dropped to her lips then back up again, and for a brief moment, it looked like she might actually kiss me. She stepped back quickly and looked away, laughing awkwardly.

Vesuvia cleared her throat, speaking up for the first time in a while. “Well, I’m going to go see about some food. You want anything, Jace?”

“Yeah, why not,” he rumbled. Looking at me, he added, “Good luck with the Spirit Forging.”

Vesuvia nodded agreement, and flashed Paisley and me a smile before they both left the workshop.

When they were gone, Paisley murmured, “Oops.”

Looking at her with amusement, I said, “That was so cute, but at the same time… oh my god, Paisley.”

“Impulse control is not my strong suit,” she grinned — a blush having already flamed across her cheeks.

“Understatement.”

It took a while for the metal to cool down enough for the game to consider the ingots done, but when they were, I got a pop up.

Spirit Forging Pattern Unlocked!

Craft this item again using the Pattern to increase your proficiency score with this Pattern.

Spiritforged Iron Ingot

An ingot of iron made using a secret, esoteric ritual that has imbued it with strange potential.

“It worked!” I said, and breathed a sigh of relief. I was so worried that it'd all been wasted effort.

“What are you going to make with it?” Asked Paisley, peering at it intently. “Wow, the enchantability of this metal is crazy high.”

“A spear— or, well, a Japanese one. It's called a— shit, I think the straight blade is a yari?” I said, fumbling for the correct terms. “It's got a longer blade than a European spear. I'm probably going to go for a shorter blade length than normal, though.”

“Oh, interesting!” She replied, looking actually, genuinely interested.

I considered getting started now, but I was actually kinda hungry. Maybe I could get back to it after some food.

“Let's get lunch before I start on anything,” I said.

Paisley grimaced. “But then we have to go and choose if we talk to Ethan or Noah, because they’re still pissy at each other over the Tysian thing.”

“Do we need to stage an intervention?” I asked, then shrugged. “For now, let’s go get food and— I don’t know, eat on the porch?”

“We might have to,” Paisley said anxiously. “To both — eating on the porch and the intervention.”

The both of us began to walk towards the door, leaving the ingots to cool a little longer.

“We should get help from Elena, too,” I said, wondering how we were going to do this.