The trio continued on their tour. Directly to the left of the House of Healing lay another, smaller building. The walls on the outside had been blackened around the windows, and several concentric holes had been torn in the roof. The windows had metal shutters.

“That’s where Uncle Squid lives,” Mina said. “He likes to make things go boom!”

“I can see that,” Lace said.

Kiren touched a patch of scorched grass around the building. “Looks like he’s got a penchant for lighting things up.”

“I suppose we’d better make this quick, then. I don’t want one of us to have a limb blown off.”

Lace knocked on the door. Loud shuffling and clanging rang out from inside.

After a few seconds, the door burst open. A man stood before them, short and stocky, with a round pot-belly badly covered by a battle-scarred leather apron. He had grey, balding hair and a blocky jaw. He regarded the three of them with a big smile, one of his front teeth badly chipped.

“Oh ho. Who’s this, now? Another shipment of boom-powder?”

“Uh, n-no,” Lace said. “We’re new apprentices, Master, taking a tour around the Lodge. We were wondering if we could—”

“Well, why didn’t you say so! Come in, come in—I have something most exciting to show you!” He put a sooty hand around Lace’s shoulders and pulled her inside, motioning for the rest to follow.

The inside of the workshop was cramped and cluttered, stacked to the ceiling with all kinds of metal contraptions, some beautifully intricate and delicate, others seemingly cobbled together from mismatched pieces of scrap metal. A forge spat pale, wispy smoke up into a vent, making the workshop almost unbearably hot and spreading a heavy, acrid smell that reminded Lace just a little too much of the basement in Winewater Village.

A young man worked the bellows at the forge, pumping his skinny arms for all he was worth. He looked up and wiped the sweat from his brow. Gantho, the bomb-maker. His own apron was so long on him it nearly brushed the ground.

“Hi there,” he said. “Touring the grounds, right? Lucky you. I’m stuck here with Master Squiddy. Says we’ve got important work.”

“And we do!” Squiddy said, rushing over to the forge. “Keep at the bellows, my boy! Quickly now!”

Gantho worked at the bellows until he was red in the face while Squiddy got a long pair of tongs and dug around in the glowing coals of the forge. A long piece of metal lay inside, red-hot.

He pulled it out after another minute with the tongs. He swept some metal scraps off an anvil with his foot and placed the metal piece down on it. Gantho tossed him a hammer and the Hero whacked the raw metal into a vague, pointed shape, a little longer than an arm. He put it back inside the forge, hammered it, repeated the process a few times until it took the shape of a long, tapered sword blade. Once he was satisfied, he dunked it in a water barrel, clouds of steam rising from the boiling surface.

Once it had cooled down a bit he pulled the blade back out. The work was precise and smooth, unadorned by any frills. After some polishing and sharpening, he brought out a long handle made from hollowed-out horn. He hammered the grip onto the tang of the sword, then simply held both the blade and grip firmly for around a minute. Once he was satisfied, he swung the sword a few times and clicked his tongue.

“Gantho, bring me the second blade,” Squiddy said, snapping his fingers insistently while staring at his creation with a maker’s discerning eye.

“Are you sure, Master Squiddy?” Gantho asked. “It looks fine as it is…”

“Of course I’m sure! That’s the whole point of this exercise!”

Gantho rolled his eyes. He went over to a workbench and rooted through the clutter, producing a second, identical sword blade. He brought it over to Squiddy, who affixed it on the other end of the grip the same way as the first.

Squiddy held up the two-sided sword with a proud grin that went ear-to-ear. He held it up to Lace and Kiren and gave it a few whirls, nearly cutting himself in the leg in the process. He swore under his breath, but his grin didn’t slip a bit.

“I call it… the double-blader,” Squiddy said. “Isn’t it marvelous? Half the effort, twice the cutting power.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works,” Kiren said.

Squiddy shot him a dark glare.

“I tried to tell him,” Gantho said, going over to clean up the mess his master had made. “He wouldn’t listen.”

“Oh, you’re all just a bunch of unseasoned kids,” Squiddy blustered. “No eye for genius. This is a weapon fit for a Ludenhaas, I tell you!” He shuffled off to the back of the workshop, muttering to himself while measuring out alterations for his new creation.

“He’s a little bit… eccentric,” Lace said to Gantho once the Hero was out of earshot.

“That’s the least of it,” Gantho said with a sigh. “Still, he’s certainly got his upsides. He’s responsible for equipping a large chunk of the Heroes at the Lodge, outfits and weapons and all. A bit of a jack of all trades, that way. Here, look.”

He went over and looked through the chaos on one of the workbenches. He organized some of the mess in piles and pulled out a slingshot, with a thick strap and a springy wooden frame.

“Squiddy made this to augment my Power,” he said. “Do you want to see?”

“N—” Kiren started.

“Yeah!” Lace interrupted.

Gantho hurried out the door. Lace followed, dragging Kiren behind her, as they walked out onto the practice field. Gantho picked a pebble off the ground. He held it up, and a shimmering marking appeared on its surface, like a series of letters jumbled together into one complex symbol. He placed it into the pouch.

“You might want to get ready for this,” he said with a grin. “It’ll be a hell of a boom.”

“I told you!” Mina said. “Boom!”

Gantho pulled back the slingshot and aimed at a practice dummy some twenty meters off.

He released.

The pebble flew in a shallow arc, thudded harmlessly against the dummy’s head, and…

BOOM!

A fiery explosion engulfed the dummy, throwing ruined limbs and straw-stuffed viscera. Lace covered Mina as pebbles and gravel rained down on them.

Gantho laughed, maybe a little too enthusiastically.

“Amazing, right?” he asked, turning to them.

“Yeah, Gantho,” Lace said.

Like master, like apprentice.

“Seems like a waste of a good Power to me,” Kiren said. “Imagine what that would do to a Villain. You’ll be spending your career cooped up by that forge, though.”

“Yeah,” Gantho said, looking down at his slingshot. “It’s a little sad. But, if the Lodge is ever attacked, Creator forbid, I’m your guy.”

Lace’s mind wandered onto her own training. How she couldn’t master the aero-shot. It would take a lot of training to get to Dad’s level, of course, but during that time she still had to be able to defend herself.

She remembered Excelerate’s words. She wasn’t strong enough the way she was now. She wasn’t like Kiren. She needed more power.

“Squiddy made you that to augment your Power,” Lace said. “Do you think… he could make something similar for me?”

Gantho shrugged. “Depends on what you have in mind.” He pulled out a scrap of paper and a charcoal pencil from the apron’s large pocket. “Give me the details of what you want. I’ll relay it to him when he’s not too preoccupied with his… double-blader.”

“Um… well, I don’t exactly know,” Lace said. “Are you familiar with my Power?”

Gantho scratched his forehead with the back of his pencil, leaving a black streak. “Uh, something with telekinesis? No, wind! I remember how Bits thrashed you.”

“Yeah,” Lace said. “I have this problem. By its nature, my Power’s not very deadly in a fight. I can control crowds, trip them up, but I need something more… focused.”

“Hmm,” Gantho said, writing furiously on his paper. “Sounds like you need some sort of weapon. Something to channel your Power into a more condensed state. Maybe a glove with specialized segments, or…” He trailed off, muttering to himself while scratching down notes.

“I’m getting bored,” Kiren said. “Meet us at Records when you finish with this. It’s in the basement of the Guild Hall, apparently.”

Kiren and Mina left while Lace explained her request in further detail to Gantho. Once she was done she gave a brief demonstration of her Power, and he noted everything down.

“Okay, great,” he said once she was done. He stowed the paper and pencil away. “I can work with this, for sure. Just give me a few days, or, uh, weeks, to get it ready. Master Squiddy can be hard to wrangle, sometimes. It’s like letting lightning loose in a room and hoping it does what you ask. Besides, we have a big order to fill. Titaness needs her armor fixed.”

“No easy task, I imagine,” Lace said with a smile.

“You’re telling me,” Gantho said with an exasperated sigh. He started walking back towards the Workshop. “The breastplate alone, well…” He coughed. “She’s a big lady. In all departments.”

He stopped at the door and gave her a wave.

“You have a good day,” Lace said.

“I don’t know about ‘good’,” Gantho said. “I’ll settle for ‘productive’.”

She left the young apprentice to his own devices, quite literally, and returned to the Guild Hall. She looked around for a bit and eventually found a staircase in the back of the main hall leading down.

She entered a large stone chamber. It had a high ceiling, at least for a basement, well-lit with candles and nearly smokeless wall sconces. The room was plain apart from a few chairs. Kiren was propped up against a wall, arms crossed.

“Took you long enough,” he said. “This old bat isn’t letting us through.”

He pointed with his thumb across the room. A woman sat behind a desk, head in a thick tome. That huge mane of frizzy hair could only belong to one person.

Wordsmith.

“As I told your friend,” Wordsmith said as Lace approached, “I’m sorry, but only Heroes are allowed into Records. The Lodge’s most sensitive information is kept here. Details on old Villains and persons of interest, ancient tomes that safeguard knowledge for the future, prophecies passed down by Sage and the wise men that came before. Not to mention some of the Heroes’ Guild’s most priceless relics.”

A massive door made of solid metal was set into the wall behind Wordsmith. There was no handle, only an intricate mechanism of interlocking parts at its center which matched a large brass key hanging around Wordsmith’s neck.

She glanced nervously at Lace, Kiren, and Mina in turn. “I would appreciate it if you could all disperse. I’m a little… overanxious. Especially with what transpired last night.”

“What happened?” Lace asked.

Wordsmith blinked rapidly. “Uh, uh, nothing! Nothing happened.” She put her head in her hands and let out a low groan. “Oh, I’ve already said too much. Could I trust you three with a secret? I really need to get this out in the air.”

Kiren chuckled in the back. Lace shot him a glare.

“Of course you can!” she said. “You can tell us anything.”

“I… lost my key yesterday. I’m not supposed to take it off, even when sleeping. If the Guild Leader found out about this misstep, I don’t even want to know what fresh torture would befall me.”

“How did you lose it?” Mina asked. “It’s attached to you, silly.”

“I don’t know! I shouldn’t have had anything to drink. When I sobered up, the key was gone. I found it outside in some bushes. I suppose I must have dropped it. Luckily, no one else found it, and none of the valuables are missing.”

“Well, your secret is safe with us,” Lace said.

“Thank you, children,” Wordsmith said. She clutched her chest and let out a sigh. “I feel so much lighter with that off my chest.”

They saw themselves out, returning up to the main hall.

“Sounds like there’s some sweet treasure in there,” Kiren said. “A shame I didn’t find the key myself.”

Lace conked her fist down on Kiren’s head. He grunted and rubbed his scalp, glowering at her.

“What in Svarta was that for?” he asked.

“You’re an idiot, that’s why.”

“I was joking!”

“It wasn’t funny.” Lace crossed her arms.

Mina giggled at both of them, hands over her mouth.

“Well, have we seen everything or what?” Kiren asked.

“There’s only one place left, I think,” Mina said. “The place where the bad people go. I only went there once, with Uncle Exce… Excal…”

“Excelerate?” Lace suggested.

“Yeah! Excalucate! He took me there and it was really scary. The bad people are all behind bars, but some of them look like they could burst right through!”

“Must be where they keep the Villains before sending them off to Wailing Hill,” Kiren said. “Sounds like a chipper enough place to end off on.”