A Dragon's Curiosity

After the instructor had made his announcement, the majority of students continued to pester him for more details, swarming around him and chattering away instead of practising.

Hence, not many of them registered when Nisha and subsequently Unico used their weapons to break the requirement for going on the excursion right away.

And until the end of the warrior lesson, aside from the occasional glance, basically no one would believe it was the skinny youth with the purple hue of his skin or the frail girl brandishing the apparently too large greatsword for her frame. Not to mention their third group member, who failed to make an impression at all.

Swinging the training weapon for the last time, the dragon sighed and put it away on the rack. Although the greatsword fell right between a spear and short swords, generally speaking, the weapon was neither here nor there in the end. She would prefer to handle either of them instead of a greatsword.

“You have a crafting lesson next, right, Nisha? You can go ahead; I will stay behind with Lisa and practice some more, maybe there is still a chance to have her join us on the excursion at the end of the week. If our group were missing someone, it wouldn’t be a real trip anyway, don’t you agree?”

Although the girl in question blushed and knew her fighting strength remained vastly below the two prodigies, she did not refute his statement and looked the other way.

Nisha nodded her head and confirmed the young man’s line of thought, not refuting his assumption that she was going to join for the trip. It seemed interesting enough.

“It’s a promise then. Go ahead, don’t be late for your next class.”

Showing extraordinary patience by dealing with their third group member, Unico continued to give her pointers and explain the proper way to handle a regular sword, even demonstrating a few times.

Leaving these two on their own, Nisha waved them goodbye and headed for the craft area, eager to continue where she had left off last time and prove the dwarf in charge of the class wrong, and there was no way for her to give up on smithing now. He was going to regret treating her poorly when they had just met for the first time.

Without any previous grudges or grievances between them, who dared to look down on a dragon? Unless she made him eat his words, Nisha would not feel satisfied.

Departing from the training yard, the elf hurried along the main path leading towards the smithies where her next lesson would take place.

Similarly to the warrior grounds, she arrived early and had the chance to pick any of the empty forges, readying herself for the coming class.

Not too long after she started playing around with the fire formation set up inside the smithy, the door leading inside the master building opened, and a short figure emerged from within.

Recognising the dwarf, Nisha stopped fiddling around.

Standing in front of the red glow left by her experiments, the elf observed her classmates instead, most of them had already arrived.

Originally, Fithe felt quite pleased to see the eager students awaiting his instruction. He had had some pressing matters fall on his hands on the day before, which unfortunately left him with no choice but to leave the new class on their own right off the bat. To send novices into the forges without any guidance pained his dwarven soul deeply, yet his only choice had been to surrender to being helplessness and make up for it with the current guidance.

Sadly, his good mood vanished as soon as he spotted the elven figure of a female student placed in the front row.

“Since you all made it back here, I’m going to assume you are all ready to learn the art of smithing. And to tell you the truth, it is not going to be easy. Behind each finished product lays the blood and sweat of a smith pouring his strength into them.”

Staring at the elf contemptuously, the dwarf fired up his forge, a way bigger exemplar of the student’s versions, allowing all of the youths to spectate his work.

“Pay close attention, if you, I don’t know, bring in a foreign material to fake your way through the lesson due to your lack of strength, I won’t hesitate to call you out on it!”

Although the dwarf’s words addressed everyone, his eyes never left a certain elf. Even the most foolish student registered something unusual going on between them.

The person in question, Nisha, did not have much of an opinion regarding the open hostility shown by Fithe.

He indicated his disapproval clearly on the previous day, and now he only continued pressuring her, thinking of the dragon as an untalented and cheating elf. Fithe already failed to identify her race correctly, how could his petty squabbling affect her?

She only needed to thoroughly crush his line of thinking, defeat him in the art of smithing and burn his bones to dust. Nisha did not mind. The clenched fist and burning eyes blazing with screams of a future victim laden with untold agony only happened per chance.

The dwarf - unaware of the future he just created for himself - continued to lecture the crowd.

“As for any profession, the need for basics is the firstmost thing any master requires to learn. You can buy ingots, you can trade for them, but you can’t be unable to create some yourself. Every material, every oddity delivered to you and put as a request as the base material for any equipment can be melted down and recast as an ingot. I am not trying to deceive you. Any smith worth his salt will forge many times more metal bars than doing actual work. And any failed creation can effortlessly be molten back down into ingots as well, making it the perfect practice form. Your goal for the week is to get a feeling how to handle the forge on your own and produce a finished item. I will stay here and repeat the process for you to watch, answer questions and so on.

You can form teams to accomplish the task, but don’t forget I’m overseeing you as well. Cheating by paying off a teammate will get you nowhere.”

Firing up the forge and collecting iron to start on his example, Fithe glanced at the elf again, clearly showing who was supposed to take the brunt of his speech’s end again.

“What exactly went wrong with you and the master? Did you kill his family or something?”

Astonished by the incredible prickling and mean spirited points in Fithe’s demeanour, Conner voiced his concerns towards Nisha, who certainly did not care about such a mean spirited shorty.

“He’s a dwarf and takes me for an ordinary elf. That’s enough for us not to get along. Don’t tell me you never heard of the animosity between our races?”

Passing herself off as a standard elf, although not claiming to be one exactly, the dragon convinced herself to not dwell on the topic, lest she revealed valuable secrets in a fit of anger.

“I do have heard from the guests my dad brings over from time to time how the relation between the two races always had their tensions. But I’ve never heard about the reason nor why you dislike each other so much.”

Glancing over the dirty gazes the other groups gave the two as they occupied the forge the furthest from the teacher, the youth expanded on the discussion.

“Not surprising, it’s an ancient grudge. Most humans have no idea why we bother each other so much. I only learnt about it in the library as well, so take my words with a grain of salt.”

Reaching out for a suitable scrap iron piece, Nisha almost collected everything the pair needed to forge another bar of iron.

“Long ago, our races got along rather well, sharing our homes and culture with each other. The shorter dwarfs excelled in forging, engineering and construction, while elves herded animals, protected the living space we shared and prepared clothing and so on. Most of the reason for the arrangement was the pressure they felt by sharing a common enemy, humanity. Scared of the unknown and prosecuting alien races similarly to beasts, the united front was needed to secure our survival.

Ironically, humanity also brought about the downfall between the cooperation shared by elves and dwarfs.”

Listening carefully and disregarding the glowing metal, which heated up in the furnace, Conner leant closer, afraid to miss a single word. Without knowing where the trust came from, he did not doubt a single word in the narration.

“Eventually, humans approached both races and got along with them following a common disaster they overcame together. Praising their new friends as children of nature, we initially took pride in being recognised for being close to our origin, the land and the earth.

Sadly, the grudge started here. Elves claimed to be closer to nature than dwarves are since they respected the land and protected it. Dwarves, on the other hand, ripped metal from the ground and shaped the land to their will instead of coexisting with the already present trees and hills. Only elves should deserve to be called children of nature.”

Fiddling around with the forge, the dragon increased the temperature blazing within, confident that the iron could tolerate the higher limit.

Without the need to be urged on, she continued the recount the elf found in the library, a story she enjoyed reading like a fairy tale at that point.

“As these things go neither side accepted themselves to be in the wrong, nor could they find a compromise. The dwarves insisted they brought out the true spirit held within iron ore and moulded nature in a more optimal form instead of elves, who only managed to use what already was there. Breaking off all relationships between the two races, either side retreated in a region they felt safe. Dwarves set up their underground homes in the mountains and elves took over the forests near the plains, living in harmony with the monsters.

Afraid to upset the neighbours who fiercely fought them before, humanity eventually settled with calling elves the forest spirits or children of the woods while dwarves came to be called children of the earth.”

With the faintest hint of a smile on her face - whether it was due to the ingot forming inside the furnace or because of the tale was unknown - Nisha shrugged her shoulders.

“Of course these rumours probably aren’t the full story. Most likely a long series of incidents and tension between the two races led to a rift that could no longer be ignored and the story is the only thing left of that period. Nevertheless, for dwarves and elves, the grudge between them is no joke. Personally, I don’t find myself afflicted by the tension that much, probably because I have been raised without any other elf beside my grandfather, who always took kindly to humans and taught me compassion. Anyway, can you give me one of the hammers? The metal is almost ready to be smitten.”

Diverting his attention a tad after recounting the legend the elf had read inside the library among the many books containing some common and some unique knowledge, Nisha pulled out the molten metal from the hearth and prepared to form another ingot. The dwarf sneered from time to time in their direction, the furthest furnace compared to his own. If he did not intend to teach them anything, their progress should slow down compared to the other students in their class, maybe to the point where he could kick them out of the whole lecture.

Not fearing any challenges laid in her blood as a dragon, she did not fear his provocation or contempt. Why bother with him now?

“Sure, here you go.”

Handing over the tool, Conner likely did not take the enmity he felt earlier to heart either. Since it solely focused on the elf due to their racial tension, he had nothing to fear in that aspect. He did feel bad to push everything onto the girl, but Conner had no way to mediate between them either and only stopped worrying.

As far as Conner knew, Nisha had something on her mind to deal with the dwarf, so why bother interrupting her plans?

Throughout the lesson, the various students approached the teacher to ask questions and observe his smithing progress, recasting their ingots whenever they went wrong.

Putting the odd duo out of his mind, Fithe also thoughtfully pointed out their mistakes and offered hints to make them progress faster. To a dwarf, only casting bars of iron could hardly be called smithing!

When the time allotted for the crafting lessons was about to run out, Nisha and Conner finished their project as well, piling three bars in front of each of them. The dragon created four of them, but gave two to her group mate, since the quality of her ingots surpassed his by far.

Conner thankfully accepted and put away their gains, somewhat embarrassed when the elf took one of his almost failed works to her pile.

“See you tomorrow, Nisha. I’ll do better then; maybe I’ll ask my dad to give me some makeup lessons, so you don’t leave me completely behind.”

Waving to see him off, the dragon happily transferred her loot into her [Inner World] and skipped away towards the next lesson, the mage tower, without bothering to say goodbye to the instructor, who had too much pride in him to call her back and insist on proper decorum.