Feathers rustle behind him as sparse rays of moonlight shine in through the cracked windows at the top of the forge. Hineni hammers away, the sparks shining out with the same intensity and focus as the gleam that is present in his eyes as he focuses at his work. Undistracted by the noises, by the sensations all around himself, he has to remind himself to blink more than once as he is so engrossed in his craft that he often finds himself forgetting to wet his eyes, forgetting to breathe.

Short-swords are great and all, but he needs a few hours to make one of those. Same with a long-sword, or an axe, or god forbid a mace. He hates making maces. You’d think sticking a big lump of metal to a stick would be an easy task, but it’s such a huge pain in the ass that he never takes those jobs, even if they pay well.

But a dagger? A knife? With some of his ready-made bits and pieces, he can have a new one done in two hours, give or take. In one and a half hours, if he remembers to breathe and doesn’t have to constantly take breaks because of how dizzy he’s getting. The daggers are more material-saving to make as well, as the blade and handle are made out of the same single piece of metal, rather than being two pieces combined together like his swords are.

This is his third one already. He’s been at it with this feverish intensity ever since he got back down to the forge.

Feathers rustle behind him as the hammer strikes out against the metal once more, landing the final strike on the dagger. Obscura accompanies him in the forge, having eventually greeted him after his return in her not exactly human, but humanish form and now she prances around behind him, waltzing through the forge in some kind of odd dance, as if his hammering was some kind of music for her to sway to.

He thought it was cute at first, then he said it was dangerous to do here, inside of the forge. But the owl seems to just kind of want to do whatever she wants anyways, so he’s just been ignoring her and focusing on his task. It sounds like healthy form of cohabitation to him.

“Keewik~” hoots Obscura, making an unusual noise that he very much chooses to ignore. Apparently, she is moving in with him. Is that weird? In a way, yes. In another way, no, but also, yes.

It’s complicated.

- [Iron Dagger]{Gift of the owl-god} -

- Quality -

Normal

- Composition - [Iron Body]{Dagger}(Normal) [Leather Wrap](Normal) [Black Cloth Wrap](Normal) [Black Cord](Normal) - Quality Effects -

“Chosen of the owl-god”

Adds additional attributes to the attached weapon - Title Effect - “Gift of the owl-god” +3 OBSCURANTISM +3 WIND DMG +3 LUK 1 PHYSICAL DMG A custom-made, iron dagger ‘Made by weaponsmith Hineni - Chosen of the Owl God’ Weight: 0.93kg Durability: 30/30 Value: 123 Obols

Hineni rubs his forehead on his sleeve, setting the finished dagger down onto the table with the other two that are already there. The leather wrap, covering the lower part of his face, rubs against his wet skin.

It looks like the additional values are always the same as well as the base stats of the weapon. Obscura really likes the number three, for some reason. It’s a whole thing, apparently. He flexes his hand, feeling the sore, scarred skin bending. The guild receptionist had done good work on tending to it. Feathers ruffle behind him. Hineni sighs, turning around to look at the panting owl creature.

“Aren’t you getting warm?” he asks. It’s brutally hot in here.

Obscura stands there on one leg, her arms outstretched, the long frayed sleeves of her hooded robe draping down like outstretched wings. Her mouth is open. “Yes,” says Obscura. “But Hineni is warm, so Obscura will be warm too.”

He stares at her, perplexed for a moment. He realizes that she doesn’t have a single drop of sweat on her body. Do birds sweat? Or at least do odd seventy-five-percent human, twenty-five-percent bird-owl-god-things? Apparently not. Instead, she’s standing there and panting.

“Why are you doing that?” he asks, pointing at her. It’s been a good three hours now, at least, and she hasn’t stopped her odd ritual once.

Obscura’s posture tightens. “WHO~!” hoots Obscura in a deeply offended, complaining tone. There is a flurry of feathers and Hineni instinctively raises his arm. By the time he looks back, she’s gone.

“Uh…” Hineni looks around the forge. He shrugs, not seeing her anymore. “I’m gonna go sell these to the guild,” he calls out to the darkness, not keen on this proposition. It’s going to be a nightmare getting in and out of there unmolested again. He’s surprised that people haven’t started lining up outside of his door already. Maybe his place of residence is still a secret somehow?

There isn’t an order out for any iron-daggers that he knows of, but the guild is always interested in odd magical items to resell to other adventurers at an upped price. As for Obscura, he isn’t sure what her issue is this time, so he decides it best to pretend like everything is fine.

Could he just skip the middle-man and sell them himself to the adventurers? Sure. Technically speaking. But that would require a lot more face-to-face interaction than he’s comfortable with.

He extinguishes the forge and heads out with the daggers, throwing off the sweaty, leather shawl and the sweaty apron and the sweaty gloves to the ground where they can lay in a big, damp, sweaty heap, ideally until they’ve dried out all by themselves. He’s going to need them again tomorrow.

Getting dressed, he makes his way outside, jiggling the door to check that it’s closed and then he heads to the guild.

Arriving there, Hineni takes a moment to breathe in deeply and to adjust his scarf before heading inside. Immediately, he lowers the brim of his hat, stepping in through the door and into the noisy party-atmosphere of the adventurer’s guild. His hands grip the straps of his bag very tightly and he begins to feel his heart beating already. Without raising his eyes, as fast as he can, he hustles over to the counter. So far, everyone is too busy with the festivities to have noticed him.

“I made these,” says Hineni in a quiet voice to the tired receptionist, who looks up his way as he lays the daggers down onto the counter. “Does the guild want these?”

Seeing that it’s him, the very tired elf smiles. “Welcome back!” she manages to say, some enthusiasm managing to sneak out past her clearly visible exhaustion. The deeply purple bags under her eyes are so heavy and noticeable, that Hineni is almost sure they’re painted on. She looks past him, over to the party going on behind him. A group of adventurers are throwing mugs around and blasting them with spells, seeing who can hit them the lowest to the ground before they land.

She nods her head to the side and gets up. Hineni watches as she vanishes to the right behind the wall and then a second later, gestures for him from a cracked open door next to the reception. Not needing to be asked twice, he hurries inside.

“I figured you’d prefer this,” she says, closing the door behind him. “It looks like we’re in the clear,” she says, pressing her ear to the door and listening for a moment. Hineni stands there, waiting for her. The receptionist’s body falls half-slack, her cheek squishing against the door-frame as she begins to slide downward towards the floor. She’s fallen asleep again, right then and there.

Something explodes outside in the seating area and she jostles awake, scrambling to her feet and looking at him in deep confusion for a moment, as if she had forgotten why he was here. Hineni lowers his hat, hiding his eyes from her. “Ah!” she says, rubbing her face and walking past him to the backside of the counter. Hineni looks after her as she picks up one of the daggers and looks it over. “These are really good for iron-daggers,” she says, swinging one around and watching the wind enchantment trail behind it. The wind blows back against her, tousling her hair. “What an odd enchantment. I have no idea what this weird stat is,” she ponders.

“Do you want them?” asks Hineni again.

“Huh? Oh, uh…” she looks at it. “We don’t have any orders right now for daggers, but I can ask my boss,” she says. “Hey, Beni!” she calls. Hineni flinches, looking around for a place to hide before the excitable man sees him again and makes a new scene.

“Yeah?” asks the man from last time, Beni, apparently, looking around the corner. The dagger flies through the air, sticking in the door-frame next to his suddenly very pale face.

“Do we want these?” she asks.

Hineni, unsuccessfully hiding by pressing his back against the wall next to the counter, wants to ask if throwing the dagger, that they still hadn’t paid for, like some kind of throwing knife, was a wise move, let alone proper workplace conduct, but maybe it’s best to just leave it be? Good throw though, she’s clearly a professional.

His eyes light up. “Ah! YOU’RE -!” A second dagger flies just below the first one and Beni ducks, covering his head for a second before looking back up at the elf who is shushing him. Hineni feels a great deal of gratitude towards her right now, despite her mistreatment of his very much unpaid for daggers. Scowling, the man straightens himself back upright and grabs a dagger, pulling it free from the door-frame and looking at it.

“Oh! These are just like that sword,” he says excitedly, eyeing the weapon up and down and then the other two. “We can move these for sure,” says Beni, stabbing the dagger into the air. Workplace safety is really of little concern here, by the looks of things. Then again, maybe he isn’t the one who should be judgmental about that? “We’ll take them,” he affirms.

Hineni sighs in relief. The receptionist turns around to him and gives him a very tired thumbs-up.

“Are you going to be bringing us things like this regularly?” asks the man. Hineni thinks for a second, lowering his head to hide his face as he approaches.

“Do you want them?” asks Hineni, feeling his muscles tense up more and more with every step of the boots that come his way.

“We’ve never had wares from a prosi moving around here,” says the man. “You know what kind of neighborhood this is,” he insinuates. Hineni nods. This is the upper-lower-class area. Everyone isn’t doing terribly, but there is room to do better in a lot of ways. That means that strong, magical items like this are far and few between. “All of the good stuff goes through the guild in the tower quarter,” sighs Beni.

Hineni sees where this is going. The man is saying that they want the items, but that they can’t afford to buy too many of them and that the people here can’t afford to buy them, even if they could. He’s going to tell him to sell them to the other ‘higher class’ guilds instead of coming here.

“Will you sell them to us at a discount?” asks Beni.

Hineni blinks. “Huh?”

“We can’t afford them regularly at full-price,” explains the manager, as expected. “And the people here can’t afford them,” he says, as expected. “Cut the price by fifty percent and we’ll take anything you make daily, no questions asked. Payment on delivery.”

“That’s a lot less,” says Hineni, thinking. Fifty percent? Is it a scam? Sort of, yeah. He could just go to one of the better guilds and get the full amount for his items there…

Then again, in those guilds he would only earn his commission after the item has actually been sold off of a shelf. The other guilds have better craftsmen than himself. There are smiths there working under gods creating things that are far out of his league. The guilds there would certainly take his items, if only because they don’t reject anything from any gods whatsoever, in order to avoid divine retribution. But that doesn’t mean that people would actually buy his dinky iron-daggers from the shelves if they were sitting next to some exotic blade, made by the smith of the literal god of war.

He’d be a small fish swimming in a very, very big pond.

Hineni’s eyes dart from left to right across the old cobblestones of the floor as he considers his options. He’d take a big hit on his total sales-amount, but here he’d be the only player in the market. Plus Obscura seems more interested in quantity than quality, judging by her insistence on him making bad weapons even when his arm was still hurt.

Hineni nods, lifting his eyes. “I want three hundred for these three daggers,” he says, pointing to the daggers that the tired-receptionist had pulled out of the wall. “Starting tomorrow, fifty percent,” he nods, agreeing, surprised at his own sudden confidence to make such a deal, even if it is the right move.

Beni nods excitedly in return, holding out his hand. Hineni stares at it for a second, before nervously grasping it, realizing that he still didn’t make any gloves.

“Can I order some food to go?” asks Hineni. The receptionist comes from the side with a small satchel of coins that she hands him. “Thanks.” The receptionist and Beni exchange a confused look, but then turn back to him and nod.

“What would you like?” asks the tired receptionist.

Hineni lifts his head, looking at her. “Do you have anything that an owl would eat?”