Weaponsmith - Chapter 53 (Patreon)

Hineni stands out in the big-now-small forest, staring up at the barren, snow-laden branches of the many trees around himself.

Just a generation ago, this forest was much, much, much larger.

But with the expansions happening throughout the city, modernizations, new fortifications, new enterprises and industries, wood has been going fast, at least around this area.

The deep-forest, off to the south, is where the elves have made their cities. Old, hard, strong wood still remains present everywhere, for as far as the eye can see.

Wood is a powerful natural resource.

Expansion is fueled by wood, the fires of society are fueled by wood, the cities of man, orc, elf and even dwarves are held together by wood.

If a war is really to come, as he believes it will, then the wood of the deep-forest will be the first thing that is taken from the midway battlefields, after the first skirmishes are fought and the bodies cleared away.

He doesn’t care much for wood himself. But the wood of a deep-forest tree is much stronger than the soft wood present in these, relatively young, forests in this area.

The man keeps walking, looking around himself.

The life of an adventurer is one thing. The life of a servant to a god is another thing and the life of a soldier is another thing entirely. If a war effort, on the scale that the god of death had promised, is really coming, then a draft is unavoidable.

Hineni stops, crossing his arms.

Of course, a weaponsmith is a valuable asset to the city. There are several other, many belonging to much more powerful and less obscure gods. But there aren’t enough that they can just be sent away without worry. He himself is safe then, from any such happening.

Plus, the adventurers’ guild is a necessity for the economy of the city, war or not. Without it there to process items from the dungeon, assuming they actually start doing that soon, the entire adventurer-economy will crumble in their neighborhood.

Hineni sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he continues walking through the snowy forest.

Back at home, Sockel is getting everything set up for them to start looking for some new employees. They need to check out any potential candidate’s backgrounds, of course. But the thieves’ guild is willing to help with that. They wouldn’t want a frog to slip through the cracks.

Hineni walks, heading to the frozen-over pond.

He should be at work right now, all things considered. But everyone needs a little time off, right? It’s been go-go-go this entire time, for weeks now. Even he needs a break.

Besides, some fresh air will help him get the frog-lies out of his head.

The man stands at the edge of the pond, staring down at a familiar spot that was once covered in the blood of a frog that had tried to tell him something.

_____________________________________________________________

Music fills the room.

The restaurant is full of people and Hineni stops at the door, standing inside of it.

Seeing him, a stranger runs through the very full seating area of his home.

“Hello, welcome!” greets the dark-elf. “We’re currently out of tables, so please wait a moment, if you’d like to eat.”

Hineni blinks, looking at her.

He turns his head, walking past her without a word towards the front-counter, which Sockel is buried behind, a line of people standing in front of it.

“Ah! Wait! Excuse me!” calls the server after him. He ignores her.

“Sockel,” says Hineni, stepping behind the counter. “What is this?”

“Try-outs,” says Sockel, not looking up from the paperwork she’s scribbling on. A bill, apparently. Hineni squints his eyes, reading it, and then looks up at the man, holding a new sword, blessed by the owl god.

“I hope you like it,” says Hineni to the man, buying his weapon. “If anything is wrong, come back and I’ll fix it for free.”

“Thank you,” replies the man, taking the note from Sockel as she hands it up to him. He leaves the line, taking his receipt and sword with him as he goes. The line moves forward.

Sockel turns her head towards him now, looking at him. “Things were getting sleepy. We need to get things moving, so I took matters into my own hands,” says the elf. “We got some people running around, trying out for the new positions.”

Hineni blinks. This is rather sudden. New people? For ALL of the positions? That’s a lot of new people who he has to pay. Will he have to feed and house them too? They won’t have any rooms left to rent then.

“Alright! Let’s keep it moving! Chop-chop!” barks a familiar voice from across the room. Hineni turns his head, letting Sockel get back to work. Obscura is on the far side of the restaurant, sitting up on the rafter, above the doorway that leads to the forge-corridor and Rhine stands beneath her, his arms crossed and his stance wide as he motions for the next person to approach with their offering or question for the owl-god.

A woman approaches, lowering her head and placing some money into an offering bowl.

“What brings the bread-lady to wise Obscura’s nest?” asks the owl-god. Hineni walks over from the side, pushing through the crowd. ‘Bread-lady’?

Oh. He recognizes her from their grocery runs. She and her husband run the local bakery.

“Our bakery is all that we have,” starts the woman. “But business has been slow lately. Too slow,” she explains, looking around. “I don’t know how we’ll make it through the winter. Please, owl-god, what is your advice?”

Obscura tilts her head, staring at the baking woman and then over to Hineni for a moment. He shrugs.

“She will make three, yes?” says Obscura. “Three deliveries of bread to Obscura’s nest,” says the owl-god. “With every new sun, new bread.” She lifts a taloned finger. “With every new moon, new bread,” says Obscura. “- And between the two, new bread.”

Hineni blinks. What?

“Obscura has need of it to feed the many hungry chicks, chirping at her feet,” she says, gesturing around the restaurant. “And the bread-lady has need of Obscura. They will agree to three and it will be good,” she says, looking at Hineni.

He can tell that she just made up something on the spot to please the baker, but given that the look on her face, turned his way, is one of pleading curiosity, he’s sure that she’s counting on him to back up her spiel.

“Come by tomorrow,” says Hineni. “We’ll arrange the deliveries and payment,” he says. Apparently this is a thing now. Well, he supposes that if the restaurant is really going to be running, that it doesn’t hurt if they have some fresh bread to go around.

“Thank you!” says the woman excitedly, lowering her head. Obscura puffs up her feathers, clearly pleased at being revered.

“Okay, next!” calls Rhine, waving the next person forward. The woman shuffles off to the side and a new person comes up the line.

Hineni sighs, going to the kitchen to see what’s going on here, before he gets stuck with another bill.

“Excuse me!” says an annoyed voice. “Sir! You can’t go in there!” a hand grabs his shoulder.

Hineni turns around, looking at the server, the dark-elf from before. She jumps, yelping and letting go of him. Perhaps his expression is a little… frighting. He has forgotten, after being around his people for so long, how some in the world might find him frightening to look at.

“I own this place,” explains Hineni. “This is my house. You’re standing on my floor, under my roof.” He lifts a hand, pointing at the owl-god. “That’s my wife.”

“Who~!” hoots an excited creature, looking over his way from across the noisy room.

“- What’s your opinion on frogs?” asks Hineni.

The waitress holds the empty platter up against herself. “F- frogs…?”

“…Frogs…” hisses Hineni, narrowing his eyes. The woman nervously takes a step back, gulping.

“Uh… I’m sorry! I didn’t know,” she explains, lowering her head. “I thought you were just some creep.”

“I am,” replies Hineni. “Answer the question.”

She blinks. “W- what?”

Hineni taps against his open palm with his finger. “Answer. Now. Frogs.”

“I uh… I- !” The poor woman seems to be at the end of her nerves, her face tightening up in a way that he had seen Rhine’s do a few times before. “I -!” She doesn’t seem to be able to get whatever she has to say out of her system coherently.

This must be a lot of stress for her. Maybe he’s being too uptight and rude? He’s a little tightly strung, is all. Hineni lifts a hand, stopping her. “Sorry,” he apologizes. “You’re doing a good job, please continue,” he says, turning to the kitchen. It smells pretty good, honestly and judging by the noise coming from inside of it and from the amount of people out here, whoever is inside must be under a monstrous amount of work.

“- I think that they’re gross!” exclaims a voice from behind him.

Hineni turns around, looking over his shoulder at the dark-elf, who is standing there nervously, the platter shaking in her hands.

“You got the job,” says Hineni. “We’ll talk about your hours after we close today,” he says, heading into the kitchen. There, a man is cooking up a storm. He’s a giant orc, big even by their standards.

“A tri-pronged hobknocker and a squirt of green,” he calls over his shoulder to seemingly nobody, holding a slip of paper in his hand with what Hineni assumes is the next order. Though, he has no idea what any of those words mean, let alone together.

Pots and pans clatter from across the room. Hineni doesn’t see anybody there, at first, until he steps around the corner and notices a dwarf there, a cook as well, apparently, given their matching attire.

“Kitchen’s hot, boss,” says a voice from next to him. “Watch out.”

Hineni looks at the orc, nodding to him. “You’re a trained cook?”

“Trained, tested and certified,” explains the orc. “Pleasure.” A professionally trained cook? This man must come at a high-price. A deal for bread is one thing, but a man from a high-grade culinary institute will need wages that already by themselves can’t be recuperated with the meager prices they’re charging for food in this neighborhood.

“Certified? The only certification you got is the one you drew with your wax-sticks!” laughs a voice from across the room.

The orc clears his throat, glaring at the dwarf on the other end, who is busy making what looks like a rack of three small ribs. Hineni looks back at what the orc is cooking. It appears to be a green, herbal sauce of some sort.

Hineni thinks for a moment, observing the man’s posture as he works. He seems incredibly stiff and rigid, cooking with a more mechanical precision, than with much artistry.

“Military?” asks Hineni, his talon-dagger rubbing against his leg.

The orc sighs, stirring his sauce. “Because of my size, I had to go,” he says. “But they never said what I had to do, just that I had to be there.”

“So you became a cook?” he asks.

“Hey!” calls a voice from across the room. “That’s my story!” laughs the dwarf, hacking off something with a cleaver.

Old military cooks, huh? Well, it’s fine for this neighborhood. The military isn’t known for good food, it’s known for efficiency at a low cost. This could be a good fit, in all honesty. It seems to be good enough for the people outside, who all seem to be having a great time.

“You’re doing well. I’ll leave you both to it,” says Hineni, walking through the kitchen to the back hallway, leading to the side door of the library.

He sighs, closing the door behind himself and then leans against it for a moment, taking in the refreshing, life dampening quiet of the library.

It’s not that he isn’t thrilled about this all. It’s just that he’s still not really adapted to this life of extroversion. Retreating to the library like this, it feels good.

The man stays there for a while, listening to the noise coming through his home.

The old bones of the house shake and it isn’t really a sad sensation, truth be told. He feels like the house is happy to finally have something happening inside of itself again, if such a thought isn’t too esoteric. But some old, selfish, deep part of him does miss the quietness and, in an inexplicable way, the old loneliness of it.

But that is just a fleeting feeling, which is best left untouched. It’s just a fragment of his old life-routine, still stuck in the workings of himself.

“If you need a book, please leave what you’re looking for at the reception,” says a soft voice, a woman’s. Hineni looks around the room, but he doesn’t see her.

This is becoming a familiar problem, of course.

“I’m Hineni,” he says. “This is my home.”

“Oh…” says the quiet voice. “My apologies.”

The man stands there in silence. Nobody moves, nobody approaches. Is she on the other side of the shelves?

He walks around the shelving, to the middle row of the library where he had thought the voice was coming from. He hears the soft steps of someone else moving.

Nobody is here.

He scratches his head.

“Is there anything that I can help you with anyway?” she quietly asks. Hineni turns towards the shelf to his side. She sounds like she’s on the other side of it.

He takes a step back to the front of the shelves and then leans around, peaking around to that side.

She’s gone.

“…Are you running away from me?” asks Hineni.

“No. That would be rude,” replies the woman, somewhat surprised at his question, given her tone. Even if it never goes past a somewhat muted, suppressed state.

Hineni puzzles for a while and then heads over to the spiral staircase, climbing up it. From the top of the inner balcony, he looks down over the library. Are they just running past each other the entire time?

“It’s a very pleasant library,” says the voice from down below. “I rather like it.”

Hineni squints, narrowing his eyes. The shelves run perpendicular from here, so there is nowhere else where she could be, except right at the thin spot, where they come to an end.

- Is she just standing there, hiding?

How strange.

The man puzzles.

“What’s your opinion on frogs?” he asks.

“Frogs?” replies the voice. “The books on frogs are to your right. Follow the balcony ten shelves to the right, then five to the left,” she says. “Two shelves down from there are where the frog books are.”

That wasn’t exactly what he asked. This one is still uncertain, then.

“Keep up the good work,” says Hineni, walking to the upstairs door, staring down the entire time. From the left side of the room, he has to be able to see her, if she’s standing where he assumes she is hiding.

With a quick motion, he leans over the railing and looks on the far end of the shelf, watching just in time as a boot pulls itself around to the other end of the bookshelf, as if she knew he was coming.

What an odd person.

Maybe it’s a good fit after all?

Hineni shrugs and leaves, doing his best not to look at the empty spot on the shelf, next to the door.