ORIGIN

The final thing the Sentinel needed--aside from finding someone who could cast rainbow magic--for his deal wih Hunter was silver-colored metal spikes. Or at least, the metal itself. The Tailor, apparently, could make spikes from that.

But he knew that the Blacksmith lived in this cave--knew where the workshop was and, more importantly, knew it was quite close to home. He'd stopped on the way back through Cepheus to hand off the amethyst, the gray and black berries, and the two Kooru hides to Mimosa. The Tailor would, he assumed, deal with the leather--while he himself sought out metal.

It took him some time to pick his way up to the Blacksmith's volcano. He shortened the journey--cautiously--by pushing magic into his shoulders, pushing out ethereal blue wings that wisped him up the path. But he kept low, given his failure and subsequent crash in Pegasus, opting to skirt low along the sand and keep to the ground rather than fly high across the bay and risk a fall and injury or drowning.

Once he found himself at the sweltering Workshop's tunnel entrance, he landed, peering about inside. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness--and then he called out, questioningly. "Blacksmith," he stated, as if this would simply summon him.

The Sentinel turned, weaving his way through anvil, stone and rack to the origin of the voice. Ahh--there. The Blacksmith, just as he remembered him.

"Blacksmith..." he began--and then paused at the realization that he'd grown since last he'd been here. He'd been--what, a cycle old? A puppy, at the time. "I came once before," he began. "For armor." It had been most basic: simply something to cover him, and that had been before the Wishing Stone had given him something more. What he'd gotten, back then, had been suited for a child and little else.

"I seek now..." and his beginning was dramatic, "metal spikes. Silver. For... a jacket." Another pause, unblinking, as if this solemnly delivered request held life and death hinging upon its answer. "Does it... have this."

"It," apparently, being the Blacksmith himself.

He inclined his head. "It will search," he agreed simply, gruffly. Then he turned, moving among the old metal of the Workshop--and casting a gaze over the forges beyond.

The Blacksmith, he noted in a distant manner, sort of followed him--as if hoping for more conversation. But his attention, for now, was on the old tubs of rusted armor, the barrels of nails that had turned half to dust, the racks of weapons and shelves of tools and mannequins featuring timeworn armor.

He kept his gaze sharp for anything that looked like pointed metal studs... something, perhaps, with one blunt end--for the leather--and one pointed, for effect.

When he found nothing straightaway, he dipped lower--feeling the sweltering heat really begin to take its toll on his armored body. It felt, here, like the metal itself--on his chest--was scorching him. He wondered, for a beat, how blacksmiths worked down here--how the metal could be tested, and survive, when it was always so terribly hot.

He was forced, after some time, to remove his chestplate. He carried it over one arm, but found his jaws agape; he was soon panting like a dog, glowing jaws open.

The air down here shimmered with heat. But it was, at least, survivable.

He made his way from one forge to the next--peering at the shelves carved in the stone that had once held, and sometimes still did hold, the tools of the blacksmith's trade. These were often interspersed with gaps that opened straight to veins of flowing lava, used no doubt as heat for the forges.

He dipped his hand into a barrel of old metal rods, but these were dark and dusky in color--straight and blunt--and he moved on. There was a table covered in old axe-heads, as though someone had been mass-producing h hatchets. And one that held all the old trappings of a chain-link manufactory, for chain armor.

At some point, he became aware that the Blacksmith no longer followed him--he was alone, down here, in the vast expanse of volcanic forge, surrounded by the low and growling gurgle of lava and the hissing of steam. For a beat his mind filled in the gaps, with the touch of Chaos that allowed such visions: great hulking monsters hammering away at anvils, snarling and snapping at one another when their forges were encroached upon. It was his imagination--not reality--but he paused, nonetheless, to watch.

He was down there for nearly an hour by the time he found something suitable: a single open drawer on a wall rack filled with dull metal. It was gray--had, perhaps, once been silvered steel--and most of it was rusted away. But there were a few dozen little points, with blunt backs.

The Sentinel sifted claws through these, examining them. They looked rather like they'd been used for some other purpose--perhaps with a hammer to knock points into other designs. But there were enough of them here that he thought Mimosa could work with them, at least.

He had no other container, and so he lifted the entire drawer in his arms and--carefully balancing chestpiece, spikes and halberd--turned to make his way back out.

The way back--without the slow necessity of searching--was far faster. All he did was summon up those drifting wisps of wings, lift a bit off the ground, and float swiftly back up through the Underforge to the Blacksmith's Workshop.

There, he set back down, and laid the drawer on an anvil. "I will take this. It is unneeded?" he queried. If there was some price to be paid, he would, of course, pay it. But he took the time, first, to settle his chestpiece back on, exhaling with relief in the slightly cooler air up here.

He paused, for a moment, turning to stare at The Blacksmith. -Tea? his mind echoed, in some confusion.

"...Tea. ...It will come back. For--tea."

If that was the cost of the steel, then so be it.

He turned, then, and made his way off--to return to Cepheus for the final piece.