The air was brisk as the sun crested the horizon. The stars had fled with the coming of dawn. Auron moved along the road at a slow pace. His old town was deserted. As he expected. But as he began to see things familiar to him he was gripped by emotion. His transformation did not remove his memories. It nor did it stem the flow of grief or fury.

He stopped in front of the burned remains of a foundation. There had been so many good people here. The town was successful and flourishing. A center of trade in the North. Fur trappers, carpenters, masons, shipwrights, stables, farms, brewers, silversmiths. There was so much potential for more. Greg had started a school. Greg was slain on a horseman’s lance.

All of the men were slain, women were only spared if they were beautiful. Though Auron was not so sure that was a better fate. These monsters even killed children. Auron could think of no crime worse than that.

What right did kings have to rule if this was what they brought upon the land? That fateful day was the turning point for Auron. He might have been taken captive and offered the path of slavery because of his health and skill, but is was not for his own life that he accepted the offer.

Auron placed the memories aside and steered his horses South. There was work to do.

Days stretched into weeks and months. A year and a half passed before everything was ready. Auron had found a town in need of better blacksmithing and used the remainder of his wealth, not much at all really but still just enough, to begin his trade very rapidly. The former blacksmith was a good man and Auron had no intention of robbing him of all his work. He became friends with the man and took him on. He also took on three young men as apprentices and rapidly had a very strong going concern. The work they mostly fulfilled was quite simple. He was perfectly able to forge and shape armor, weapons, and complex objects of a higher aesthetic calling, but he had to build toward that. By the time he was ready to move forward with his larger plans, he would have James fully trained and all of the facilities built so that they would be able to forge anything this kingdom could dream up. Including the hammer Auron was intending to forge.

Eventually they made enough to hire masons for a special addition. Auron instructed the men that this was going to be used for melting down ore and they would be able to remove the need to purchase metals already formed into bars and shapes they used for various items at such a high price. Auron had designed it himself. He hoped it was done well enough to serve its rue purpose.

“You will need heat beyond anything you have ever worked with to melt the metal out of this ore, Auron.” The Dragon had not been very descriptive nor did he give anything of comparable magnitude. It was detailed and clear in the extreme when it wanted to be. It had shown him the great stone that had fallen from the sky. The idea made Auron’s head spin. His understanding of how the world worked and what the sky was had been shaken to pieces in that time. It was taking some time to come to grips with this new reality.

The magnificent beast had crushed a great majority of the stone away from the metal inside, but when the Dragon’s hands met with the strains of metal he could see it was an effort to bend it all down to pieces that Auron could pack out with him.

“Could you not simply melt it down here?” Auron asked. It seemed such an obvious solution to him.

The Dragon looked at him with its molten eyes, “Auron, this is your task. Not all knowledge can be simply spoken and relayed through symbols. Doing so can also sometimes ruin the possibility of true understanding being gained. Some knowledge must first be observed and understood and only afterwards the symbol for it given. It was a tragic lesson learned, and a hardbound rule I must follow.” The though rumbled like rolling boulders in Auron’s mind. “You will come to understand what I mean in time.”

The first gift the Dragon referred to was the re-forging of Auron. Or more correctly, his body. As he had so abruptly learned, he was not his body with some sort of unknowable energy or far off concept of a soul that wanders off somewhere after death.

The dragon had somehow forced him from his body then smote it with flame. He did not permit Auron to leave. Instead of eating his body as Auron thought he might, as he watched himself burn in shock and wonder, the dragon did a strange thing. It cut itself and covered his blackened form in a pool of its own blood. The blood soaked into what had been Auron’s own and rebuilt and healed him. The next thing Auron knew he was back in his body and screaming bloody murder at the pain of the healing.

Auron did not know what lesson he was supposed to have or what knowledge he would gain in trying to forge a new hammer with his second gift. The dragon gifting him this rare metal was its answer to Auron’s comment that he needed to forge a new hammer; as his last was destroyed in the dragon’s flame. It was a passing thought at the time, but as he went forward, as he began to realized just what it would take to achieve what he had set out to do, the import of this occasion became more clear to him.

But just as he had everything in place, something told him it was not time. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. He knelt and sifted his fingers through the earth under him. How could he know that it wasn't time? Maybe it didn’t matter. Somehow his perception told him he should wait for something. Was this a new ability of his body? Could he smell something in the air? Something added up and the conclusion was that it was not time.

He spent a week using the new smelting forge and waiting. He and the men simply went about their usual business and used the smelter to process ore for the various jobs they had to fulfill. The men made comments about how efficient the setup was for melting down ore. It was two rooms built of stone and a relatively simple mechanical setup for having a donkey pump the bellows by turning a shaft as it walked in a circle. The same mechanism was used in grinding wheat. Auron modified it to pump the bellows. The first floor was a low room with a very large fire pit. The ceiling was low over the pit and was concave with a one foot circular opening in the top. All of the heat from the fire pit would rise and be pushed out of the narrow hole. It formed a very concentrated, very hot stream of air. The crucible was hung over that stream. It took a bit of perfecting to get the exact right amount of fuel, heat and air to have the most efficient burn. Using it like they did for a week enabled Auron to work out what the various ratios were. For the usual amount of ore they would process they were using about one tenth of the heat the forge could produce.

On the seventh day he noticed the wind changed direction suddenly. He was outside cutting wood with an axe. He breathed deep again. The air was hot and dry. He knelt once more and felt the earth again. This was what he was waiting for. Something had shifted, or moved into place. He would ask the dragon about his later. Tonight he was going to forge the hammer.

The men had gone home at dusk. Auron prepared the forge and filled the pit to the brim. He set out the mold for the hammer and then got the fire going and ran up the steps to the second story of his forge. He let loose the first trip that connected gears and the first bellows began to pump. He gave it time and started letting the other trips go. Each began another bellows pumping through a series of cleverly designed mechanisms. He lunged down the steps and shoveled on more fuel. He ran up again. The rim of the stone opening was beginning to turn red with the heat. But there was still tons of smoke coming from the fire. He adjusted the openings for the bellows to allow greater air flow.

He was back to his forge in a moment, but already the smoke was clearing. Pure heat and light were being blasted up through the small opening. The whole ring of stone at the top was red. And he could feel the heat coming up through the floor. He never would have been able to do this before. His body would not have tolerated the heat. But he certain could now. He could still perceive the heat, but it was not the same, not painful or overwhelming.

He peered over the edge of the ceramic basin. He was dismayed, the stone was red but the still clung to the metal and the metal was red but not at all at melting point. He ran down the steps, the heat was incredible! He ran to pile on more fuel wondering how he could somehow get more air pushed through the pit.

This had to happen now. He felt like his chance was going to slip away. Aside from the fact of this instinct that told him he must pour this mould now, he did not have months and years to get this right! He had already spent so much time getting to where he was now. How many lives had been lost while he was away seeking ways to slay a dragon? No doubt more than any historian would ever really count.

He shoveled the last of what he had in the forge furiously into the massive furnace even though it wouldn’t be enough. As he did so the metal of the shovel went red and the stock and the sleeves of his shirt began to burn! He jumped back a moment and then realized that it didn’t hurt. He looked into the heat of all that fuel burning in that huge pit.

Auron felt a strange calm come over him. There was no other fuel. There was no other way to increase the airflow. The furnace alone would not melt it. He had to learn something. Something that could not be taught through language or symbols. Something he must gain first hand.

He could feel the heat, the air rushing up through the hole just under the crucible. He took slow steps forward and reached his hand cautiously closer to the fire. His clothes were catching fire before he was even to the edge of the pit. There was no pain, his body did not burn. The energy of the fire moved through him and he was quite comfortable. It a way it felt good. Like a hot bath after a long day of work. It was relaxing and enlivening at once. His hand extended over the direct heat and flame of the pit and seemed to become slightly transparent! He could feel it all moving through his body! Yes, he was quite sure. It was moving through his body. He pulled his hand back and as he did so his hand became opaque again. He looked up at the base of his crucible fixed in place above the opening in the ceiling. He needed more heat. All of this heat was dispersing all over the room. His stone structure was drinking in a great deal of heat. He needed it to melt this strange metal and he needed it now! He stepped over the rim of the fire pit and felt the incredible rush! Heat and wind moved through him. Like being in full gallop on a horse but the wind was not rushing past his body, it was rushing through his body! He had never dreamed such an incredible sensation existed! Glorious to feel all this power! It made him laugh with elation.

He knew he needed to direct it. He put his arm out to the side and thought for it to move through his arm. No that didn’t work. What was he doing? How in the hell was he going to do this?!

He he stepped under the crucible. He closed his eyes. He became the fire. He did not know how, he just did. Some things are not done by reasoning. His body was a small sliver amid his being. He could see though his eyes were closed. He was huge and filled the whole room and seeped into the stones and the ground. He pulled in and then pushed the heat skyward through the crucible. He reached out for more. More was needed. He felt the ground moving deep under the earth and the heat and power that resided far below. He called upon it and it came. He was connected to it and it rose through him so that the hole heat of the forge became white hot. All of the stones of the forge began to glow from heat. In a final effort he pulled it all toward the center of the forge, raised his hands up to hold the crucible and unleashed!

White heat and light screamed forth and engulfed the crucible. The air above caught fire. It wanted to go everywhere, the heat, such was its nature. But Auron kept it in a tight stream. Just enough to engulf the crucible. The roof was open on the second floor, but the various devices holding the crucible in place melted and Auron was holding it with his hands. He let it rest in the hole. It was done. The fire burning low and Auron was back. He looked with his eyes once more.

He stepped naked from the forge pit and walked up the cool steps he had robbed of the heat they contained. He swept out the slag and lifted the glowing crucible and poured the pure white liquid metal into his mold. As he did this he brought one thought to mind, one intention, one purpose. To free people so they would be able to live without fear of oppression or enslavement. His tool had always been a hammer. He forged metal items of use with his first, attempted to battle a dragon with his second, and would build the new world with the third.

“And so a weapon is born,” He spoke softly to himself as the last drops filled the mold.