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The air was hot and dry. There didn’t seem to be a single drop of humidity in the air, and Arwin could almost taste the heat on his mouth. Even a scorching desert day wouldn’t have had anything on the smithy. At least the desert would have had a chance for wind.

Wallace headed over to the wall of tools and hung his hammer from it before turning back to them and thrusting a finger in Lillia’s direction.

“You stay out of the way. I can’t have you interfering or you’re liable to get toasted on accident. Lava is not a forgiving medium to work with. If you get too close, you might get turned crispy.”

“I’ll keep my distance,” Lillia promised as she walked over to the wall and crossed her arms, leaning against it. “Just pretend like I’m not here. I might as well not be so long as you don’t do anything threatening.”

Despite her threat, Arwin wasn’t sure how much Lillia would be capable of here. There was nearly no shadow to work with because of how brightly the room was lit and she was away from her tavern. She didn’t have access to the majority of her powers.

We’ll just have to make sure this never gets into a fight in the first place. I’m here to learn smithing, not to try and kill Wallace.

“So where do we get started?” Arwin asked, rubbing his hands together. “And do keep in mind that we’ve got deadlines. We can’t be missing dinner.”

Wallace walked over to the white anvil and rested a hand on it as he arched a bushy eyebrow at Arwin.

“Let’s assume you’ve actually got potential and aren’t a threat to everyone around you. How is missing dinner what ‘yer worried about?”

“You said it was your duty to teach me, and I’m not going to learn everything in a day,” Arwin said with an easy shrug. “That means you’ll come back — and that means I don’t have to miss dinner. I told you, Lillia’s cooking is better than her brewing.”

And I need to eat magical items to survive. I don’t really want to broadcast that to you, but I’ll have no choice if I have to stand around here forever.

Wallace stared at Arwin for a second, his expression inscrutable beneath his beard. Then he let out a grunt and shook his head. “You sure you don’t have any dwarf blood in you?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“We’ll see.” Wallace slapped the top of the anvil. “Come over here. If you want to have anything done by the time it gets to dinner, we don’t have time to spare. We’ll be getting started immediately.”

Arwin walked over to stand beside Wallace. Heat singed the hairs on his arms as he drew closer to the lava. He blinked as he felt his eyes drying out, immediately wishing that he’d brought something to drink with him. This wasn’t his own [Soul Flame], so he wasn’t resistant to its intense temperature.

“Do you just form the lava into things? I’d have thought you need a mold or something for that,” Arwin said as he looked around the relatively empty forge around them. Aside from the tools and the lines running through the ground, carrying thin rivers of lava throughout the room, there weren’t any specialized tools that he could see.

Wallace pierced him with a flat stare. “Did you want to teach?”

Arwin cleared his throat. “No. I’m listening.”

“A dwarven smith needs one tool.” Wallace turned his back on the anvil and approached the bubbling pool of lava. He knelt, a thin layer of [Soul Flame] racing to cover his hands, and scooped a handful of molten rock up. The dwarf turned back to Arwin. “Lava. Everything else is optional.”

“You’ve got a lot of tools if you only need one.”

“There’s a difference between need and want

,” Wallace replied gruffly. He made his way back over to the anvil, working the pool of magma between his hands like taffy. “And I was not always a master smith. Molten forging is not a simple process. Starting at the extreme is unlikely to go well. There are many aspects that must be considered. You must contain the lava. You must focus your intent. You must purge every impurity from the materials you work with while keeping their structure preserved within your heart. You must keep the lava hot and, in some cases, flowing.”

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The dwarf walked around the anvil as he spoke, then looked down to the spiderwebbing lines of lava running through the room before glancing up at Arwin in a clear invitation of a question.

“Tell me,” Wallace said, tapping his foot beside one of the magma lines. “What do you believe this is for? Why have such a complex pattern when we could just dip our hands into the pool behind me?”

Arwin thought for a few seconds. Wallace didn’t seem like the type of teacher that wanted him to just toss questions out at random. He studied the pattern of the small rivers on the floor intently. Not all of them were the same size. The farther they got from the lake, the thinner they got and the less they connected to each other.

“Temperature control, maybe?”

“Correct. As long as you’re standing by the anvil, the lava running through the paths closest to you is at the ideal temperature. A true dwarven smith can manage perfect smithing with nothing but a pool of lava, but novices need help keeping the heat controlled.”

Wallace shifted the lava to one of his palms. He flicked his other, and a small ingot of metal appeared from thin air in a shimmer of purple energy. Arwin’s eyes widened slightly. Wallace had some form of extradimensional space.

Had a lot of those when I was a Hero. Not exactly impossibly rare, but I haven’t seen a normal one in a while. He’s definitely got a good amount of magical gear. I wonder if he made that himself. I’d love to know how to make an extradimensional… well, anything.

“So you use the lava to melt the metal and remove the impurities from it?” Arwin asked.

“That is the first — and easiest — of the steps,” Wallace said. The lava in his hand bubbled, then started to curl up into a bowl. More lava flowed up from the river, twisting like streamers of smoke as it flooded into the growing hemisphere of molten rock in his hands. Wallace then set the bar of metal on it. The metal hissed as the bubbling orange-red lava swirled up to swallow it whole. He looked back to Arwin, then tapped his foot on the ground.

“So what’s the hard part?” Arwin asked. It seemed that Wallace enjoyed stopping to make him ask questions, but only the right ones.

“Hard parts,” Wallace corrected with a small smirk. “The first is infusing your lava. It must become part of you. An extension of your hands. We do not merely use the lava for its heat. It is molten rock with no identity of its own. That allows a dwarf to fill the lava with their own desire and intent. It is our interface with the metal.”

Arwin nodded slowly. “So intent isn’t just for the metal, but the lava as well.”

“Yes. You fill the lava with your intent, and through that, you can hear the song of your materials. Their form may be lost in the lava, or it may not. It does not matter. No matter what happens, you must know its song.” Wallace summoned another piece of metal from the air, this one a dull yellow hue. He added it to the ball of lava swirling in his fingers without taking his eyes off Arwin. “And every material you add sings its own song. To successfully connect them, you must harmonize their songs with your intent. You must find the connection. Should you manage to do this, the preparation will be complete.”

“Preparation?” Arwin asked, nearly choking on his own words. “That’s just the preparation?”

Wallace smiled. “Great effort must be made to make great equipment, and no smith is greater than a dwarf. The next step is to free your harmonized material from the lava once it has cooled.”

“Smack it with a hammer?” Arwin guessed, well aware that the answer was probably going to be a bit more complex than that.

Wallace’s smile fell away. “You can do better than that.”

“The song,” Lillia said from her spot at the corner of the room. “He’s got to hit it to the tune of the song… or something?”

“Your lass has dwarf in her, I just know it,” Wallace muttered. The twisting ball of magma above his hand rapidly cooled, some of the light leaving it as it turned to a mass of gray rock. “She’s correct. You must speak to the metal in every step of the process. You must sing to it. And, once it is free, only then you can forge.”

It seems I’ve been getting dwarven magic for a long time. My Title, Stonesinger… it lets me communicate with materials, but it’s got singing in the name. Have I been failing to use it to its full abilities?

“I understand,” Arwin said, wonder and excitement intermixing in his stomach. “Though I suspect it may be a little easier to conceptualize than to actually do.”

“So it is,” Wallace said with a wry smile. He set his cooled ball of stone on the anvil and pressed his hands together. He pulled them apart to reveal a miniscule blue ingot pinched between his fingers. It was of such a faint shade that it was barely even distinguishable from gray. Arwin nearly bust out laughing. The ingot was so small that it was barely larger than a finger. Wallace held it in his palm reverently. “Do you know what this is, boy?”

“Absolutely no idea,” Arwin answered honestly.

“This is Mithril,” Wallace breathed. “One of the most valuable metals in the world, and yet its properties are worthless in the hands of any but the most capable smiths. Mithril is a reflection. It reveals the true soul of the smith that crafts with it. Every single part of it.”

“I think I see where this is going,” Arwin said.

Wallace nodded. “I do not expect you to master dwarven crafting today. It takes a lifetime to truly master it — but the basics, you should be capable of. I will temporarily take you on as a student. I will teach you until you can craft an item with Mithril and your true character is laid bare. Then we will determine the path of the future. How does that ring?”

“I hold no ill intentions to anyone that doesn’t seek to hurt me or my friends,” Arwin said. He had absolutely no idea what the Mithril would — or could — reveal about him, but he wasn’t about to leave without learning dwarven smithing. He had nothing to hide about his current desires. Arwin extended his hand. “I accept.”

“Then I, Wallace Gentletongue, formally extend the offer of apprenticeship to you. My knowledge is yours, and your hammer is mine,” Wallace said, taking Arwin’s hand in a grip like bands of iron and giving it a powerful shake. “May it be so until you have been judged.”