A Dragon's Curiosity

Apparently, not many students knew about dwarves. While humans loved to buy and sell dwarven equipment, the general knowledge did not include much besides them being short and having beards.

In fact, their facial hair held great importance to all members of Fithe’s race. A young dwarf would reach his adult height in about two decades. Therefore their beards represented a far better indicator to determine an individual's age. Furthermore, a son of the earth - how they like to call themselves - would rather die than have his beard forcibly shaved. Curses involving their most important area were considered taboo.

And yet, Fithe ignored the taunts from the elven girl. While the relationship between their races deteriorated with each passing year, he found himself a senior with at least four centuries more experience as compared to a fledgeling girl like her. In his best estimates, she would not last for more than a moon in the smithing branch anyway. Letting her run wild and burn herself in the forging area would grant him satisfaction too.

Grinning from the last thought, Fithe started arranging the material orders on his desk. The smithy required an astronomical amount of metals, coal and supporting materials each week.

Most students were not aware. However, teachers needed to order materials using merit points as well. Adding up the necessary amounts, Fithe organised the account books.

Meanwhile, Nisha silently fumed next to an empty forge. Fundamentally she was a prideful creature. Whatever she set as her target, the dragon was sure she could achieve it. As a proof for that, she overcame her blindness, changing bodies and even led her siblings to survival when they were lizards at most in the Wilderness.

Now getting told she was unfit to be a smith and unable to last a moon was a challenge more than anything else. Who was the dwarf to tell her what she could or could not do?

If it weren't for the gleaming yellow fire in the forge, the other students most likely would be able to see steam rising from her head.

Forcibly suppressing her anger by redirecting it into a strong desire to prove the teacher wrong, the elf started to observe the smithy itself seriously.

The forge itself was nothing special, a simple setup designed to melt metal and pour it either into a mould or hammer it on the anvil to her left.

Pliers, mallets, tongs, as well as various other kinds of tools,  hung sorted into their meant places on the wall, giving a skilled smith everything he needed to start his work. Around the ground, several different failed creations made of iron laid around, as the previous group of students either forgot to clean up their mess or simply didn’t care when they left.

The barely suppressed rage threatened to erupt again. While the elf wasn’t even an apprentice in regards to the art of smithing, Nisha already knew no artisan would be able to work in such an environment. The dragon felt the itch in her hands to beat metal until it bent, yet she needed to finish cleaning up first. Otherwise, she’d stumble as soon as she took a step in any direction.

“Do you need help with that?”

Suddenly snapping her head upright, an unusual event happened. Standing in the same unit as her, a slightly plump teenager politely bowed as soon as she caught sight of him. His red hair resembled flames, and although he looked somewhat heavier than the other applicants in this lecture, the elf didn’t underestimate him at all. Despite his figure, he already reached the late first aura rank, while most of the others - herself not included - barely stepped into the first rank at this point to enter the academy. And this wasn’t all.

“Aren’t you afraid the teacher will look down on you if you work together with me? I cursed at him after all.”

With plenty of time to study human relations during her court sessions Nisha already knew her behaviour earlier wasn’t the most well-suited course of action if she wanted to make friends here. After offending the person in charge, it would be rather strange if her peers didn't ignore her. This young man still approached her, raising her wariness to the maximum.

“Oh, I’m not bothered by that. Rather, what was it? ‘So old and such a big beard, and yet you wasted all those years. You ought to shave it all of lest people confuse you with an elder.’, right? My dad would beat me black and blue if he heard me say that. Pretty impressive.”

To Nisha’s surprise, the red-headed youth could pronounce the original version of the curse she translated, completely in the dwarven tongue, although with a slightly different pronunciation as the one she studied from the book in the library.

“It’s impressive that you know that one in dwarvish. And why’d your father beat you for learning another language? I’m Nisha, by the way.”

Offering her hand for a shake, Nisha forgot about her belly full of fire. Now she was only intrigued by her new acquaintance.

“It’s not about learning something. Dad would be afraid I would let that one slip when he has guests over to talk about a trade. My name is Conner Wolcott, and my father runs a rather large trading house dealing almost exclusively with the East, especially dwarven goods. I also learned one or two phrases from the guests he brings over, that’s why I understood what I said. But the curses, the main offender there is my older brother, he taught me most of them.”

Snickering towards the end of his introduction, Conner started picking up the iron scraps and failed works lying around the unit the two now had all to themselves.

Nisha wondered when she had ever agreed to form a team with him, but she also saw no reasons why she shouldn’t.

“That’s cool nonetheless. It doesn’t explain why you don’t fear to invoke the anger of the teacher by helping me out here, but it’s cool.”

With their strength at the high end of the first and second aura rank respectively the cleanup did not take long, and Conner didn’t answer either while they worked. When Nisha threw the last of the scraps into a box to the side, he sighed.

“I thought it was cool when you stood up for yourself. For myself, I didn’t even really want to start smithing. It’s the wish of my family I get proficient with metal working. Eventually, I will have to start helping out in the family business, and then I need to know my way around.

My older brother was the same, and he is doing well for himself now. Dad expects me to do the same and here I am. When the teacher singled you out, I already guessed it was because you’re an elf, but you didn’t give up and even lashed out at him. I couldn’t do that. So I thought you’re fascinating and came over. Is that wrong?”

Pausing in her actions and letting the hot air from the still burning furnace drift between them, Nisha didn’t know what to say. While they weren’t considered friends yet, Conner already laid his feelings bare. How much of his words were true or not, she couldn’t say, but the elf got a strong feeling they were; otherwise, there would not have been as much raw emotion in his voice.

At the same time noise from the other forges drifted over to them, cheers and laughter as the new students cleaned together and inspected the items displayed on the walls. Since the young man beside her already made the first step and came to her to form a group despite putting himself in danger of drawing the teacher’s ire, the dragon wanted to pay him back in some kind.

“Did you already make a choice what you want to do instead of smithing?”

Without enough information, Nisha was unable to make a decision and could only ask him more about his situation.

“It’s not like I had a particular choice in mind. Ever since my family decided I was going to attend the [Royal Academy], they already determined I would attend smithing classes. There was no other choice.”

Most of the melancholy in Conner’s voice was missing this time; rather he spoke about the affair as if it happened to someone else. Nisha herself had been in plenty circumstances that left her no choice. Therefore she understood him.

“Have you ever considered if you might like being a smith? I’m not saying you have to be one, but maybe you actively resisted even the slightest notion of being one since you have been forced to be one. It’s just an idea. However, you could enjoy working with metal.

As for me, I’ve been a hunter pretty much as long as I remember, gathering meat and edible plants for my family. At first, I only hunted for survival and out of a need to eat, yet now I can enjoy a good hunt, in particular against a strong opponent.”

Recalling the memories of the four little dragons shortly after they hatched, Nisha led the other three as Little Flame from opponent to opponent, taking the front position in a charge and developing strategies for them to fight as a team. Each hunt was a small path between life and death, and they would all die either when they didn’t kill any prey or when they challenged an opponent too strong for the four little lizards to handle.

Conner prepared to say something after giving her words a quick thought, but the elf still had things to say.

“Also, do you have to become a master smith? I don’t know about your family, but as far as I am aware, we will all attend the academy for four turns at least anyway. If you spend one or two of them to become acquainted with blacksmithing, it surely isn’t too late to pursue a different career afterwards. At least that’s my interpretation of the words you said earlier, you need only to become familiar with smithing, not master it, right?”

Nisha herself didn’t want to limit her future to only blacksmithing either. As a dragon, she already knew she had a long lifespan ahead of her unless she challenged a being far above her. Even if she spent a century on blacksmithing, there was still plenty of time to pursue tailoring or alchemy as well, an advantage of being a beast.

Conner, on the other hand, felt a burst of enlightenment. Wasn’t it just the academy? Even if he spent all four turns studying metalworking, which prohibited him from picking up another subject as well? Or simply explore it afterwards? All his resistance so far only saw the obstacle in front of him, not the vast future after he made it through this plight. And as the elf said, who had determined he would hate being a smith. Did he not have an advantage over his peers already due to growing up in a house that mainly traded with dwarven goods? He really shouldn’t rebel against the whole profession due to a childish opposition.

Drawing his slightly full cheeks into a broad smile, Conner picked up different scraps from the basket with the odds and ends they found while cleaning.

“You are certainly right, that’s a very keen insight you have there.

As thanks, let me show you around the forge a bit, I have some knowledge how to operate one, and we have a similar model back at home for our guests to demonstrate some of their techniques.”

Firstly grabbing a pair of tongs from the wall, he deposited a rectangular block of metal inside the blazing furnace where a basket made of stone was situated, already waiting for the metal.

Nisha also noticed he formed a small layer of earthen aura between his hands and the tongs to fight off the heat, a subconscious gesture the dragon decided to copy, even when she was not afraid of the heat burning her. She ought to try to appear normal at least, right?

“There are two ways to go from here. Normally, we have to melt down the raw iron at first and use the basket, later on, to cast the liquid iron into a mould, tempering into an iron ingot and burn away most of the impurities in the process.

As for the furnace itself, there is a formation carved inside to provide the heat. Usually, we should be able to adjust the temperature for different materials to work with, but I can’t see the controller in this formation.”

At the same time as he explained the first proceeding, Conner also watched the long piece of iron he held inside the furnace heat up and glow in a deep orange light. Only when the piece he was working on was thoroughly heated up did he pull it out again and quickly moved it over to the anvil.

“This should have been a failed ingot where the senior before us working here failed to remove most of the impurities. Afterwards, the uneven liquid iron mix flowed in a mould prepared by the student before us, however, either due to carelessness or an outside influence, I can’t tell which it was, the ingot turned out to be a failure as well.”

Gripping the tongs strongly with his left hand, Conner selected one of the forging hammers he could lift with the strength of the later first aura rank and started pounding away on the anvil.

The dragon eagerly watched the whole progress, on her own she might have only learned about the tools and cleaned up a little, a live demonstration indeed outstripped that vastly.

Similar forging sounds came from other segments of the outdoor grounds, several other of the new students likely also had some rudimentary knowledge about metalworking. As Nisha and Conner started later than the others and talked first, no one came to observe their work.

“When you strike the iron while it’s hot, there’s also a chance to reduce the impurities in the metal further while giving the ingot the form you want it to have. Personally, I can’t do it yet, but one of the guests my father invited, a dwarf, had been able to refine regular iron of the first rank quality into [Pure Iron], a second rank material. That was one impressive performance when he folded the metal over and over again.

Do you want to give it a try as well?”

Offering her the tongs and the hammer while sweat ran down his face, Nisha’s eyes glittered with excitement as she accepted them. This time would be her first attempt to give smithing a try, and she wanted to do it well.