From the journal of Skjald Sibreknekut, Late Summer 114
I've worked the forges of Lanternwebs for just over six years now, from the day that we first set up wood-fired forges to smelt picks to dig into the sand.
I've forged the weapons that our soldiers have brought into combat for just over five years now, from the day that Olin was inspired by his arrival to Lanternwebs and, in a single act of creation, surpassed my years of training to become the master armorsmith of Lanternwebs.
Then, people called him a legend. The best armorer that the Braided Lenses had ever seen. I was in the unique position to admire his work with some training in the craft of armorsmithing, and I must admit that even the armor that he turned out for our soldier to wear afterward surpassed anything that I had seen a master in the Mountainhomes create. The boot itself, though, surpassed everything else ten times over. A perfect, indestructible casing, forever protecting The Tooninator's right foot.
For those five years, I've worked hard to master the craft of weaponsmithing. Lanternwebs has an abundance of ore, and whenever I was not crafting swords and axes for our soldiers I would practice in copper, shaping blades and reforging them, striving towards the perfection that Olin had reached. I watched as others were seized by mysterious forces, following in Olin's path to unsurpassed skill in their crafts. Tosid, Sarvesh, Reg, Lorbam, the list went on, not even counting the ones who simply created with no memory of the method afterwards. Their works grace every room of Lanternwebs.
But with practice, my skill grew. People began comparing my swords to Olin's armor, to Tosid's mechanisms, to Sarvesh's cabinets. The same title, "legendary", was applied to me as well. I had become, they said, as skilled with practice as they had become overnight. But I still lacked the one crucial piece, the crowning work that would survive through the ages when my bones will have long returned to the mountains.
But no longer. I can feel it in my hands as they forge each sword and axe. I can see it in the corners of my vision as I sleep. I can hear it when I am alone in the forges, whispering to me over the soft sounds of the shimmering air, between the hammerstrokes that will transform a bar of steel into a weapon that could rightly be called a work of art. I shall have my crowning work, or I shall die in its forging. Perhaps both. I leave this journal in case I should die, that my intentions will be known. And know, should you be reading this after my death: There are no words to describe the beauty, the deadly perfection, of the weapon that I now go to form from the ether into reality. If the price for attempting that beauty is death, I pay that price gladly.
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Topic: Lanternwebs (The End!) (Read 80552 times)