Rise of the Living Forge - Chapters 481-482 (Patreon)

Arwin didn’t go anywhere that night. Lillia was still cooking dinner, after all. That wasn’t something that could just be skipped — and it w

Arwin didn’t go anywhere that night. Lillia was still cooking dinner, after all. That wasn’t something that could just be skipped — and it wasn’t the only thing he was looking forward to that night.

But the night passed as they always did. The next morning dawned.

And when it did, Eleven was waiting for Arwin in the common room of the Devil’s Den.

“You’re ready?” eleven asked.

“Depends. Can anyone else come?”

“No,” Eleven said. “I can only bring one person at a time.”

I suppose I don’t know who else I’d bring, even if I could. I’m not taking one of my people into what might be a trap. Koyu couldn’t come if he wanted to. He’s bound to the street. The only other one I’d know would be able to handle themselves is Lillia, but I already mentioned this to her last night.

She’d come… but she’s busy preparing for the day. There’s no reason to drag her along. If it’s an ambush, we’re screwed either way. If it isn’t… I just waste her time.

“Then I’m ready,” Arwin said.

“We’ll be watching the time,” Rodrick said from a table beside them. He leaned back in his chair, rocking it onto its hind legs. “You’re a better scout than I am, Eleven. I won’t deny that. But I can still find you. Bring Arwin back. Alive. Or we’re going to have a problem.”

Eleven watched Rodrick silently for a moment. Then she inclined her head. “I understand your apprehensions, but they are not needed. We do not need tricks. One does not seek Arwin’s death. We’re on the same side.”

Rodrick just shrugged in response. “Actions speak far louder than words do, Eleven. There’s nothing else we have to say. What we do will handle the rest of the talking for us.”

Eleven just nodded. Her hair twisted around her shoulders like it had taken on life of its own. It coiled up around her, separating into thick, matted masses that almost resembled tentacles. They splayed out around her like the fingers of an eldritch crown.

Scars of lazy gray magic twisted down the length of her hair before slithering across her arms to gather at her fingertips. Concentration creased Eleven’s features as she pressed her palms together. Then, with gritted teeth, she pulled them apart.

 Magic arced between them in hissing crackles. A disk of gray spun to life between her hands. It expanded as they continued to part. Her hair snapped in an invisible wind as the portal expanded to the size of a man, hissing and popping as it tried to slip free of her grasp.

“Go in,” Eleven said, her voice terse. “Quickly. I can’t hold this for long.”

Arwin nodded. Then he stepped into the portal.

***

The world rearranged itself nearly instantly. Arwin’s foot landed on the ground exactly how it would have if he’d taken a normal step. It took his mind an instant to realize that he wasn’t standing in the Devil’s Den anymore.

Around him was a plain stone sparring room. Hay covered the ground, matted in piles near the edges of the walls where plain wooden weapons of all sorts hung from metal hooks. There was everything from axes to daggers to a massive warhammer.

And standing in the center of the room was a man who could be described only as beautiful. His face looked like it belonged upon some painting rather than in the real world. It was so close to androgynous that he could have potentially passed for a woman should he have let the golden hair pulled into a bun behind his head fall along his shoulders. His eyes were like two reflections of the moon, as silver as a clear lake in the still night.

Glistening white armor wrapped his body. It didn’t have a single stain or mar upon its surface — and the moment Arwin laid eyes on it, his stomach flip-flopped.

He didn’t recognize the man in the armor for an instant. But the armor itself… it was eerily similar to what Blake had once worn. It wasn’t the same, of course. There could be more than one set of white armor.

Whoever had made the armor on the man before him had been a far better smith than the one who had outfitted Blake. The magic within this armor was so palpable that Arwin could literally feel it on his tongue. It tasted like cherries.

If Blake had been given armor like this… he would have survived that day. But if he’d had armor like this, then everyone would have. That would have been far too great a waste of magical power for the Adventurer’s Guild to invest into pawns meant to die, wouldn’t it?

The portal behind Arwin snapped shut. Eleven’s foot fell beide his own, breaking him from his thoughts as she stepped out beside him, midway through a massive yawn.

“Brought him,” Eleven said drowsily. “I’m going to bed.”

“Don’t get too comfortable. You’ve still got work for the day, Eleven,” the man across from them said. His voice suited him perfectly. He spoke like a man who was used to getting exactly what he wanted — and the slight curl of amusement in the corners of his lips instantly made Arwin’s eyes narrow.

There was a fine line between confidence and arrogance. It was hard to tell which side of it this man stood upon.

“I don’t need to tell you where to stuff that work. You can figure it out,” Eleven said, yawning again. She turned and shuffled off through a door at the back of the room, slamming it closed behind her.  

The man across from Arwin blew out a heavy sigh and shook his head. “I’m sorry about her. Eleven has a rough time of things. Her class is not kind to her.”

“Few things in life are kind,” Arwin replied in measured words. He watched the other man carefully, but his posture was perfectly controlled. There was nothing to glean from his face or stance. “You’re Two?”

“And you are Arwin. Leader of the Menagerie, Ifrit, and the Former Hero of Lian,” Two said. He strode toward Arwin, extending a hand in greeting.

Arwin took it. The man’s hand was like a steel bar. There wasn’t a single ounce of give within his grip — but it wasn’t overbearing either.

“I get a bunch of names, but you only get one,” Arwin observed. “Are you anything more than Two?”

“Not anymore,” Two replied. The two of them released each other and stepped back. “I gave that up a long time ago. My name doesn’t matter nearly as much as my purpose does.”

“And your purpose is?”

“To keep this planet from tearing itself apart,” Two replied. He turned to the wooden weapons lining the wall and nodded in their direction. “Which one do you prefer?”

Arwin took the warhammer from where it hung. Despite the fact that it was made from wood, the weapon was surprisingly well balanced. It felt solid in his hands, but he couldn’t sense any magic within it.

Two claimed a two-handed sword from one of the nearby hooks. He held it up before him, giving it a lazy spin.

“You went with the hammer. I’ve heard you smith with something similar. Not the most wieldy of tools.”

“Didn’t know what I was doing when I got started,” Arwin replied with a shrug. “And normal rules hardly apply when magic gets involved. To be honest, I don’t have time to play games. Why don’t we get to the point of why I’m here today?”

“Have work to do?” Two asked with a knowing smile.

“No,” Arwin replied. “I have a girlfriend to get back to. I don’t care how long you spend on your morning routine. She’s still prettier, and we don’t get nearly enough time as things are already. I have little patience for anything that tries to waste my time.”

Two let out a bark of laughter. Then he raised his sword. “Fair enough. Then shall we condense things? I want to take your measure, Arwin. And you want some answers. So why don’t we handle both at once?”

Arwin looked at the hammer in his hands. “You realize that a wooden hammer coming down on your head is going to do just as much damage as if it were metal? It’s hardly some mere sparring sword.”

“I’ve volunteered to wake Eleven up ever since she Sunsetted her class,” Two said dryly. “I can promise you that no wooden hammer is going to hurt more than what she does to any sensitive bits I foolishly let near her vicinity when she’s sleeping.”

Arwin shrugged. He raised his wooden hammer. Gehenna materialized around his body with a thought. If Two was surprised, he didn’t let it show on his face. The other man just darted forward, his sword flicking out.

A wide sweep of Arwin’s hammer forced Two back before his blow could even connect. Arwin wasn’t really sure what the point of sparring with wooden weapons was when both of them were wearing armor that could probably survive a minor explosion — but he supposed it was the spirit of things.

“What is Sunsetting a class?” Arwin asked as he dodged back to avoid Two’s counterattack. “We fulfilled our part of the bargain and figured out what the Guild was doing. Now it’s your turn.”

 “Desires change. When you first get a class, you are not the same person that you turn into. Sunsetting is a ritual in which you take all the power gathered within your class and reforge it into something that suits who you are now,” Two replied. He stepped forward, driving his sword for Arwin’s chest.

Arwin twisted out of the way and the blow whistled past him. The blow only just barely missed. Two wasn’t using any abilities, but he was terrifyingly fast. Arwin hopped back, narrowly avoiding the other man’s follow-up strike.

He followed up with a wide swing that forced Two to leap back before he could attack a third time.

“And what does that actually do?” Arwin asked.

“Your abilities consolidate. The ones you don’t need feed into the ones you do. You become stronger. More focused. And, most importantly, you align yourself with the Mesh. With its purpose. I know that sounds culty—”

Arwin lunged at Two again, forcing the other man to leap back.

“It does,” Arwin said.

Two leapt forward, flicking his blade at Arwin’s neck and forcing him to throw himself back. Arwin banished Gehenna as he fell, hitting the ground in a roll and re-summoning the armor as he rose again.

“But it isn’t,” Two said, advancing toward Arwin with a flurry of blows that kept him backing up. Arwin could have easily taken any one of them on Gehenna and ignored the blow completely. He didn’t. For some reason, that felt like it would be the same as losing the fight.

“Care to say why?”

“Because the Mesh is on our side. It wants to help this world. That’s why it exists. That’s why you exist as you are today. Necrohammer is the one that triggered your Sunsetting early, but it was the Mesh that gave you that class. It has a purpose. It acts with reason. To preserve this world.”

“The Mesh is dying, and so is the world,” Arwin said, swinging his hammer at Two.

Two ducked the blow, then returned the attack with his wooden blade. Arwin shifted out of the way of the blow.

“I know,” Two said. “And the Guild thinks they can stop that themselves. They think they are gods that can control the fate of this world. They are not. You’re not the first one the Mesh has spoken to, Arwin. You’re just the first one who survived. There was another within the Guild who tried to do more.”

“What?” Something in the tone of Two’s voice gave Arwin pause.

“Before you, there was another who spoke to the Mesh. A man who gave us information about the Guild’s activities. He was to join Setting Sun, but he wanted to stay on the front lines of the war. That cost him his life. I believe you knew him. There was a time when he was in your party,” Two said, letting his sword lower. “His name was Blake.”

Chapter 482

Arwin froze. He couldn’t do anything else as Two’s words rang through his head. They sounded distant even to his memory. As much as he couldn’t believe what the other man was telling him, it made too much sense.

Blake had been with Setting Sun. He’d known that the war was staged long before Arwin had, but he didn’t have the power to do anything about it on his own. Blake had been working to try and save as many people as possible since… well, Arwin couldn’t remember a time when Blake hadn’t been looking out for everyone around him. He’d probably been doing everything he could in every single fight they’d been part of to mitigate the damage.

“How long?” Arwin asked, the words stiff in his throat.

“Years. Close to five.”

Five years. Blake spent 5 years fighting a war he knew was fake. He spent it with the Adventurer’s Guild, knowing full well what they were doing and having to just bear that so he could save the few people he could.

Five years that he didn’t tell a soul other than those in Setting Sun what he was doing.

That part hurt most of all. The pain didn’t come because Blake had kept a secret. Even a fool would have realized the Guild would have killed anyone who’d figured out the truth, much less a random adventurer in the Hero’s party.

It wasn’t the fact that Blake had never told Arwin the truth that hurt.

It was that he’d been right to do so.

If he told me… what would I have done? I’d probably have gone to the Guild, assuming he’d been brainwashed by the Horde. Until I met Lillia, I don’t think I would have believed him. Definitely not fast enough. If he had told me, by the time I investigated things enough to realize I’d been lied to, I almost certainly would have doomed him in the process.

Blake was the one that held us together. He was one of my closest friends. There was never a time he couldn’t be relied on to have my back. To have everyone’s backs. But did I ever once do the same for him? He never had anyone to rely on at all.

“Damn it,” Arwin said, his throat clenching so tight that it felt like it would seal entirely.

“You didn’t know,” Two said. “You were a child when they summoned you. You can’t blame yourself for anything the Guild did. We all knew what the heroes were. Blake was no exception. You can’t expect a child to realize that the Adventurer’s Guild was manipulating them from the moment they arrived on this world. Blake never once held it against you. He would have been thrilled to learn that you escaped their clutches.”

“He should have escaped as well,” Arwin said. His teeth clenched. And then something else struck him. His eyes snapped to catch Two’s. “Did you not outfit him at all? Why was he left so unprotected?”

“You know the answer to that,” Two said. “Our hands were tied. If we got too close to Blake while he insisted on remaining on the front lines, our assistance would have been what doomed him. His lack of truly impressive combat ability was exactly what protected him… until it didn’t.”

“He didn’t just die in some freak accident,” Arwin said. “The Guild killed him. They found out.”

“They found out,” Two said. The man’s handsome features were cold in anger. “We couldn’t interfere.”

“Couldn’t?” Arwin asked. “Or wouldn’t?”

“Couldn’t,” Two said firmly. “If we’d known the Adventurer’s Guild were going to kill Blake, we would have interfered. He was a valuable member of our guild, even if he hadn’t fully joined yet. We don’t leave our own behind.”

A part of him had always known Blake wouldn’t have just gone down during a small fight. It had been obvious he’d been removed. He just hadn’t wanted to accept that. But the past couldn’t be changed. All he could do was ensure the Guild didn’t have a chance to do what they’d done to him or Blake in the future… and the Adventurer’s Guild still wasn’t the only ones he had to deal with.

“You don’t leave your own behind, but you do occasionally recruit psychopaths,” Arwin said, his jaw working. “I’m not fully convinced you’re the saints you say you are.”

Two winced. He looked down at the wooden weapon in his hands, then blew out a sigh. “Twelve. I’d imagined we would have to talk about that at some point.”

“You think?” Arwin asked, anger crackling within the hearth that was his words. “Having psychopathic guild members who train people that indirectly cause the death of innocents sounds like something that the Adventurer’s Guild would do, doesn’t it?”

“Twelve… he was a mistake,” Two said. His eyes flicked as if he wanted to avert his gaze, but he didn’t let himself go through with it. The two of them were silent for a long second.

“A mistake?” Arwin repeated. “That’s what you’re going to call it? A mistake? Your mistake killed a child.”

Two winced. He bit his tongue, finally looking away from Arwin as he let out a pained breath. “Yes. I know. And if there’s someone you should blame for that, it’s me. I’m the one that allowed Twelve into Setting Sun. I recruited him myself.”

“Why?” Arwin asked, his voice taut with anger and old memories. “For a guild that claims you want to help people, why would you side with someone like that? He bore your name. His apprentice killed mine in your name.”

“Because convenience blinded me,” Two said. “We needed an information network. A way to more effectively spy on the Adventurer’s Guild. And Twelve gave it to us. He could send his clones throughout the guild and gather knowledge that we couldn’t. They all had impressive stealth and movement abilities… and I thought the drawbacks of working with such a man would be outweighed by the benefits we wrought. Arrogance led me to believe Twelve had been paid off enough to cease his prior activities. I was wrong. Any death and damage caused by Twelve falls squarely at my feet.”

Arwin’s jaw worked. The wooden haft of his hammer creaked in his grasp, then shattered beneath his palms. Two didn’t respond. The two of them just stood there.

 “You might not have been the ones who killed a good kid, but you funded the one that enabled it,” Arwin said. “There’s a very real chance that his blood is on your hands.”

“I know.”

“Was it worth it?” Arwin asked.

It was another moment before Two responded.

“Yes,” Two said. “It was.”

Arwin stared at Two, anger burning through his entire body. The fragments of the wood splinters in his fist cut into his skin. He didn’t even notice. The memories scorching his mind were far to intense to let mere pain interfere with them.

He nearly punched Two on the spot, throwing every pound of force that [Scourge] let him muster into his fist. His fist trembled at his side. But punching Two wouldn’t have done anything. It wouldn’t have stopped Setting Sun from working with Twelve, and it wouldn’t have brought Zeke back.

Punching Two would be nothing more than a futile attempt to buy himself some degree of closure to a death that never should have happened. The only thing it would accomplish was giving him the slightest way to vent his frustrations.

It wasn’t constructive or beneficial in the slightest.

Arwin’s fist crashed into Two’s cheek.

The other man’s head snapped to the side. He staggered back, blood splattering from his lips. Two slammed into the wall. Wooden weapons rained down around him to crash to the ground like heavy rain.

Two made no move to defend himself. He spat onto the ground, then wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and slowly pushed himself back upright. And there he stood. Perhaps he was waiting for another blow, but the strike never came.

“I’m sorry,” Two said.

“If you’d told me that Zeke’s death was completely pointless, then you really would have been sorry,” Arwin said. He flexed his hand, then let it lower as a slow breath slipped from his lips. “I can’t change what happened. You can’t either. No amount of arguing or beating the shit out of you will change that. Zeke is dead. What did you get from it?”

“Information on the Guild’s movements. We’ve saved hundreds of people that were meant to be sacrificed, and most of them will never even know,” Two replied quietly. “And, ironically enough, the information that allowed us to maneuver this long was largely based on what Twelve retrieved.”

Arwin nodded slowly. “And what will you do now? What’s your goal?”

“We have more than one,” Two replied. “The next step isn’t always clear. But today is an exception. There were only two reasons why I wanted to meet you in person, and the first one has already been dealt with — unless I am mistaken.”

“Just get on with it,” Arwin said with a shake of his head. “I have no interest in wasting time punching you. Something tells me you barely even felt that first one. What’s the other reason?”

“That must be shown rather than spoken of,” Two replied, turning toward the exit of the room. “If you’ll come with me, I plan to find out we can Sunset your class a second time.”