Sebastian found the rest of their outing rather boring for the most part, he didn’t pay much attention to Sarah’s training after a few casts. Instead he found himself answering questions about his bow from the guards. The guard captain wanted to get everyone’s bows enchanted, and Sebastian was trying to think of a way to refuse without seeming too rude or selfish when Owdel walked over to join them. He seemed to have set a task for Sarah, as she was still casting fireball after fireball.

The captain moved closer to Owdel, “Sir mage, a moment if I may?” He glanced at Sebastian, then back at Owdel, clearly implying that what he had to say might not be something Owdel wanted him to hear.

Owdel just shook his head, “That one,” stabbing a thumb over his shoulder at Sarah, “answers directly to me as my apprentice. That one,” he pointed at Sebastian, “is an independent Guild mage. While I am his senior in the Guild and master of the tower here, I am not his master. No official master means that it is his choice to participate in what I assume is an intelligence report from the hunters? An official concern brought to the Guild is public amongst Guild members in the area, unless their master determines otherwise.” He turned a glare on Sebastian, “Note that I said amongst Guild members, not ‘can be made public by Guild members.’ Lack of discretion regarding official requests or concerns brought to the Guild can result in rather harsh punishment.”

Sebastian nodded his assent, realistically there were only around three or so people he ran the risk of leaking something to, and one of them was Sarah, who was likely to hear about whatever was going on soon enough. He also knew that the town guard occasionally talked to Owdel about things, so he figured this was probably routine.

The captain cleared his throat, clearly still a little uncomfortable having Sebastian there, “Well sir, it’s not good news. All those years ago, you suggested that we keep our eyes open to the north, where Derek vanished.” Sebastian started, then focused more of his attention on the captain than he had ever given to another person and squashed his rising emotions. “If you recall, we found…” He seemed to search for a word to use. “Horrible things done to creatures.”

Owdel nodded, “Yes, and they went in a mostly straight line from the coast, to as deep as the scouts were able to get into the mountains. I take it something has changed then?”

The captain cleared his throat again, “Erhm, well, yes. Per your suggestion, we periodically send scouts to what they took to calling the Torment line, and the last report says it moved.”

It was Owdel’s turn to put an uncomfortable level of attention on the poor captain, “Moved how, exactly?”

“South, the entire line has begun slowly moving south.” The captain said with decisive finality.

Owdel was frowning, “And none of the scouts have ever spotted what is doing it?”

“The only ones that might have seen something are likely the ones that didn’t return.”

Sebastian shuddered, then cut into the conversation, “How far north, no, more importantly, how long before whatever it is gets here?”

The captain nodded his approval of the question, “Three or four days travel to the north, more to the east or west. At the rate we estimate it’s moving, probably just after mid-winter. That’s assuming a lot though, the mountains sweep closer to the shore as you head south, with us right at the narrowest point. We can’t know it won’t speed up as its range narrows. Hell, we don’t know what it is or why it’s all of a sudden headed our way after all these years. For all I know it could be on us tomorrow.”

Owdel shook his head, “Send more scouts, in pairs. I hope I’m not sending good men to their deaths, but we need to know what this is if it’s coming here. I have a very bad feeling about this. Sebastian, I know you are smart enough to guess that this is the very same threat your father discovered right before he vanished. I need you to try and keep a level head.” He glanced at the guards, then looked back to Sebastian. “Due to this potential grave threat to the town’s existence,” he began formally, “I, as Master of the local tower, hereby issue you, the town’s sole enchanter, a formal Guild mandate to create and distribute to the guard any enchanted items you deem necessary to the town’s defense. This mandate will remain in effect until the crisis is passed, or the town falls.”

Sebastian froze. Did Owdel, hater of all things enchantment, just issue me a carte blanche official order to enchant whatever I feel like enchanting, and give it to whoever I care to as long as they use it to fight for the town? What the fuck is going on?! He suddenly felt like he was going to break. After everything that had happened today, pain, fear, possibly a bit of romance, and now after ten years, today is the day the specter of his father’s death rears its ugly head? Then he gets ordered to do precisely the thing that Owdel claimed was anathema to the entire mages guild?

He took a deep breath, desperately trying to focus his thoughts. Then, “What?! You specifically said not to do that when I decided to be an enchanter!” Okay, maybe I was less calm than I thought.

Owdel didn’t respond right away, instead he started rummaging around in his robes, and looking askance at the captain. The captain seemed to realize what he was looking for, and pulled out a short stack of parchment. Owdel took it and handed it to Sebastian, glancing at the captain he said, “I’m guessing these are the new ones?” at the captains nod he continued, “These are sketches of things found along the eloquently named Torment line.”

He didn’t need to say anything else, the sketches were appalling. Whatever it was doing this, seemed to enjoy staking things out, then flaying them alive, before eating parts of their organs and leaving them. One of the artists had helpfully noted down the observations he had made at a fresh site that suggested the order of events, stuff like blood spray, bite marks, and tears in the flesh around the stakes. He only made it through a few before he deposited his lunch in the grass, “Is, is that what happened to my dad?” he asked, shaking with horror and fury at the mental images that provoked.

The captain solemnly replied, “We don’t know.”

Sarah had run herself dry of mana by this point and came over to them. She saw Sebastian, pale as a ghost and standing over a pile of vomit, “What’s wrong?” she asked, concern in her voice.

Sebastian looked at her, then at Owdel who shook his head, “Not now girl. We need to go back to town, the good captain here has some things he must attend to immediately. I will fill you in later.”

They walked back to town in silence, Sarah clearly knew that something had happened, and was annoyed at being kept in the dark about it. Sebastian felt like a storm cloud had settled over him, his mind was racing in an effort to process everything, but it kept coming back to that detailed sketch and its accompanying list of observations. Only his mind kept switching out the wolf with his father.

By the time they made it back to the tower, Sebastian had fallen into a cold rage, the image of that poor tortured wolf kept flickering through his mind, and it was bad enough when he was little, and he found out his father had vanished with the town eventually deciding he must have fallen prey to something. To hear that he may not have been eaten at all, a clean death in the eyes of the hunters, but instead staked to the earth and skinned alive, then left that way was simply unacceptable.

Sebastian was pacing in the library, while Owdel filled Sarah in. When he got to the point of explaining why the scouts called it the Torment line, Sebastian ground his teeth. Sarah glanced at him, it was terrible, but she couldn’t figure out why it affected him so badly. Owdel saw her glance though, and quietly told her, “His father was the first to report it, he went back to determine what was creating it, and never came back. He was six years old.”

Her face went pale, and she looked at Sebastian with a strange mix of sympathy and horror. That was the final straw for him, he didn’t want sympathy or pity, he wanted to know what was going on. He wanted to know if that had happened to his father, and he wanted desperately to hit something. “I’m going out.” He growled, “I’ll be back later.” He turned and stormed out.

He didn’t think about where he was going, but wasn’t surprised to find himself at the smithy. Sam was closing up for the day, but when he saw Sebastian’s face he stopped and smiled at him. “Come on in son, you look like you need a lesson in blacksmithing.” He led Sebastian to the forge and handed him a hammer, leather apron, and some thick leather gloves. He stuck a bar of iron into the mouth of the forge, then started working the bellows to get the temperature back up. “When I say, use those tongs to pull the iron, then start hammering.”

Sebastian started to ask what he should make, but Sam interrupted him, “Don’t think about it, make whatever your heart and hands want you to make. This isn’t to make something you want to sell, or something someone ordered, this is to clear your mind and soothe your soul in the only way I know.”

Sebastian mustered a grin at that, “Hitting things really hard with a hammer?”

Sam grinned back, “So young, and already comprehending the greatest secrets of the universe! Now stop talking, and start working! Pull it!”

Sebastian obeyed, pulling the glowing stick of iron out of the forge and smashing the hammer down on it without thinking. It felt good. He started swinging faster and faster, tears clouding his sight as he let himself go. He wasn’t paying the slightest attention to the iron anymore, lost in the deafening ring of the hammer and the vibrations that shook their way through him with every strike, nearly making his hand go numb. When he finally slowed, and then stopped, he swayed with exhaustion, tears streaking the soot on his face. He looked at the anvil, fully expecting to see a misshapen pancake of iron stuck there.

It wasn’t a pancake at all. Sebastian looked up at Sam in confusion, then got more confused at the expression of awe on the man’s face. He looked back down and the impossibly perfect sphere of iron sitting on the anvil. How did I make that by randomly smashing it with a hammer? He moved to set the hammer down, when he noticed the faint patterns that now adorned it. What the fuck?! That’s even more impossible than that ball! He reached inside himself and sure enough, he was very nearly out of mana.

He inspected the hammer, trying to figure out what the hell it was supposed to do. He figured it out when he tapped the anvil with it and it shot some sparks and left a glowing red spot. Evidently, he had been so far gone while swinging the hammer at the iron that when it cooled and was no longer workable, his magic reacted to his desires, and enchanted the hammer to heat whatever it struck. What he couldn’t figure out was how it had happened without him noticing. The pain should have shocked him out of that trance. If it hadn’t caused pain, he should have at least noticed the mana usage. He shook his head, and swung the hammer again, this time focusing more closely on the magic in it, trying to determine exactly how it heated things.

After figuring out that it used a small burst of mana to vibrate whatever it had struck fast enough to generate heat, he handed the hammer to Sam, who took it almost reverently. “Well your therapy worked, I feel a lot better now. I also seem to have accidentally magicked your hammer. Sorry. Err, I don’t recommend hitting anything flammable with it from now on.” He gestured at the too perfect ball of iron, “Do you have any idea how I did that?”

Sam looked at the sphere while Sebastian freed himself from the heavy leather apron and gloves, “Not really, no. I rather expected you to make random dents in a bar of iron before it got too cold to work, then to continue hitting the bar until you felt better. Strangest thing I ever saw, you were swinging wildly, no focus or control at all, but your other hand was spinning and angling that bar faster and more accurately than any master I ever witnessed. When the iron went cold, I was actually tempted to stop you and put it back in the forge, just to see what it was going to be, but then your hand and my hammer started to glow, and every strike heated the iron back up, keeping it right at the proper temperature.”

Sebastian glanced at the hammer, “Yea, I really can’t stress that you need to avoid hitting anything important with that enough. Basically like smashing things with a forge now. It will run out of mana every now and then too, my best guess is it will provide heat for a week out of every month without manual charging.” Sebastian took pity on him after seeing his confusion, “Don’t worry, if it stops working I’ll fill it back up with mana for you, if I’m not around, just let it sit for a while and it will slowly gather mana on its own. Now it’s getting late, and I still need to figure out why the hell I made a metal ball.”

He reached out to grab it, but Sam grabbed his arm, “Tongs. Thing is probably still hot, quench it before you grab it with your hand just to be safe.” Sebastian nodded and grabbed it with the tongs, then dunked it into the tub Sam had pointed at.

When the water in it started boiling on contact with the sphere, he looked at Sam, “Good call, that would have been a horrible way to end your wonderful therapy session.”

Sam grinned at him, then asked, “Are you sure it’s okay for me to have this?” gesturing with the hammer.

Sebastian nodded, “Your forge, your therapy session, your hammer. I was in a dark place, and you helped me. That’s worth letting you keep something I enchanted on accident. Just… please stop petting it. It’s slightly disturbing.”

Sam froze, then dropped his hand with a laugh, “Well if helping you get through things results in getting magic items that make my job easier, by all means, come back whenever you have a problem. But for now, I think your ball is cooled enough now, and the both of us should be getting home soon, eh?”

Sure enough, the water had stopped boiling. He pulled the sphere out with the tongs and tentatively touched it with a finger. Warm, but not burning hot. “Alright Sam, I’ll see you around, thanks for everything.” He scooped up the ball, then froze as his palm suddenly felt like he had stuck it into the forge. He tried to let it go in panic, but it stuck to his hand. The pain rocketed up his arm, and he lost consciousness as it got to his elbow, crashing to the ground in the middle of the smithy.