Ant Lord: Chapter 18

The three of us had holed up in a fairly large, rural house outside of New Carlisle that Ember and I had been using as a safe house between the times I was escorting humans. But shortly after we dropped off Cory, Tim and Jordan the firmament expanded again. It was now basically impossible to transport humans out, especially from anywhere within the state of Ohio. The distances needed to be traveled were greater than the size of some countries.

So, rather than continuing to undergo the arduous task of completing escort missions, Terry, Ember and I agreed that we would spend a few months training ourselves up to fight the new enemies that were appearing all over the place.

For Terry this meant finding bugs to fight, consume and absorb powers from. It was quite surprising when it turned out that he had no problems with eating the giant insects.

"I've had...deep fried crickets...before and...they tasted...fine." he said nonchalantly, before yanking a lost Scouter that he had managed to impale off of his horn and taking a large bite out of its head.

For Ember, training meant going over every little bit of information she could remember and cataloging it for me. As it turned out, it had troubled her greatly when she hadn't been able to tell me what the beacon was before I fought it.

"It was soooooo obvious!" She shouted, banging her head against the wall.

"It's alright Ember, nobody is perfect." I said calmly, picking her up and carrying her away from the wall.

But my assurances weren't enough to settle her thoughts, so now she was going over all of her knowledge down to the minute details. On top of that she was also pouring over any books that we'd managed to find that were still in readable condition. Her brains ability to retain information astounded me, as she was learning everything from tall tales of the wild west to the proper seasoning method for cajun fried chicken.

As for me…

"I got what you asked for." Terry said, dropping the massive corpse of a Demolisher at my feet.

"Thank you, this should be more than enough…" I said, casually ripping a chunk of its guts out to eat.

"No problem, but if you don't mind my asking, what do you need all of this for? Even you would need a while to eat all of this."

"It's not for eating...well, not all of it anyway. You'll see in a few days, and I think you'll quite like what I have for you then."

Terry nodded and let the issue drop there.

When I had first set out on my journey it had been with a pair of swords. But the steel was weak and they both broke within a month of being used. As it was, I was in the market for a new weapon and the insects tough carapace was the only material strong enough to cut with. The only problem was- I had no knowledge of blacksmithing

So over the past few months I had done some book learning myself in between escorts, everything I could find about smithing techniques for iron, steel and even older techniques for molding bones into weapons and armor. I had already set up an old fashioned forge built from scratch out of stone and clay. Now I just needed to play around with the materials until I found a way to mold and temper them.

I decided to start with steel. The first step was to pump air into the forge at a monstrous speed to get the fire temperature up to the proper melting point. It took a few tries but eventually I was able to design an air pump that I could use with my secondary arms. For the raw materials I used an old truck’s leaf spring that I’d recovered from the remains of Terry’s truck (he had insisted on collecting the pieces so he could bury them), and a section of railroad tracks that I’d peeled off the ground for an anvil.

After that I fired, shaped, reheated, tempered and filed the metal until it could pass for a double edged blade, roughly the same size and shape as my old scimitar. I had to admit, I was proud of myself after that. Unfortunately, even after setting it in a makeshift pommel and crossguard, the thing still broke when I swung it at my own arm.

But, that was to be expected. The whole point of the exercise was to gain an understanding of the process. As it turned out, Demolisher chitin was remarkably pliable after being fired in the forge for a little while. Much more so than metal, making it far easier to pound into shape.

“The tricky part is filing the stuff…I keep cutting deeper into the chitin than I mean to…” I thought, after throwing away the fourth consecutive knife that I had ruined.

But there was nothing I could do to smooth out the process except become more familiar with the material. Time after time after time I tried, and time after time after time I had to throw away the imperfect and damaged weapons I produced until finally, on the fifth day after starting my little arts and crafts project, I managed to produce a knife that didn’t appear to have any flaws.

I spent a few minutes marveling at my creation until at last I could no longer stand the suspension and stabbed the blade into my hand. Unlike the greatsword, which had dented into a useless scrap of metal after one swing, the dagger pierced right through with no resistance, surprising me. After forging, the material must have become stronger than before as the dagger was still the same chitin as my body was made of…

“Wait a minute…” I thought, a sudden realization dawning on me. “If the Demolisher and I have chitin with the same level of hardness then…and I still have plenty of its innards left to eat for regeneration…yes, something about that feels more right to me…”

I nodded to myself, mind made up. With my right hand I reached and grabbed the spot where my left arm met my left shoulder and, with zero hesitation, ripped the entire limb from my body.

“Not like this is the first time this has happened.” I thought, smiling through the pain with a twisted smile.

The dagger would make a wonderful utility item, but for my true weapon I decided that I wanted to use a Lords chitin. After taking a break to heal myself and refill my energy I set about the task of slowly, carefully, and painstakingly molding my own arm into my ideal weapon. I let Ember and Terry know not to disturb me until I left my forge as I needed the utmost concentration to keep from screwing up and having to yank another arm off.

But eventually my efforts paid off as, after 48 hours of consecutive work, I stood there holding my brand new blade. Rather than something like the greatsword or scimitar that I had used previously, this time I settled on a Bastard Sword. My pinkie and thumb had been elongated into forming the crossguard, with my index, middle and ring fingers all fused together and stretched into a pommel. At the base of the pommel I had made a little hollow and set in it the glowing tip of one of my antennas which, as it turned out, remained glowing if I detached it while the light producing chemical was activated.

As for the blade, the rest of my arm had been shaped, sharpened and smoothed into a somewhat standard double edged blade, about four feet long. Though at the base of the blade I also included another hollow where I fitted a second glowing antenna tip.To finish it all off, the chitin had darkened in the fire, making the entire sword was black from tip to hilt, giving the thing a sinister look. Like it was the weapon of a demon.

I absolutely loved it.

“Now, one down…three more to go.” I thought, putting the sword in its chitin scabbard and setting it against the wall.

The sword was beautiful, but I fought with two blades. And I still needed to make something for Terry and Ember. By now I had become much more familiar with the materials that I was using and the amount of time it took me to make Ember, Terry and my weapons was equivalent to the amount of time it took me to make the first sword.

My second weapon was made using my own arms again, this time both of my secondary ones, as materials. Though the weapon itself wasn’t a sword, I had fused together both of the bladed ends of my secondary arms to make one long, curved, single edged blade which I then affixed horizontally to the end of a rod made by elongating the two arms and then attaching them to one another. By designing the weapon this way I had made it collapsible, allowing for easy transport and storage. But that wasn’t its most important feature.

The fixtures attaching the three pieces together were also detachable, allowing me to change the parts out in the future if I so desired and change the weapon from one type to another.

Though currently, when fully extended, this weapon was undoubtedly…

“A Scythe?” Terry said, eyeing the weapon. He seemed a little unsettled, though he didn’t voice any of his concerns.

“They are marvelous weapons Master. I may not know much about swords, but even I can see the terrifying aura they emit.” Ember said, pleasure radiating from her mind in waves.

“I also made some things for the two of you.” I said, in an attempt to alleviate Terry’s worries.

Terry said nothing, but I could tell he was apprehensive about it.

“Oh Master, I am not worthy…” Ember said, though I could tell she was excited at the prospect of receiving a gift from me.

I led the two of them to the garage that I had set up my forge in and, with little preamble, presented them with the gifts I had made.

“For you, this.” I said to Terry, pulling a massive chitin warhammer off of the wall and handing it to him. Unlike a regular warhammer, which looked like a much larger version of the sort of claw hammer that one saw all over the place, I had decided to make the head much larger than average.

Effectively the thing almost looked like an anvil on a stick, with one side being completely flat and the other tapering off into a very wide point. Ordinarily something like this would be incredibly impractical and unwieldy, but Terry’s physical strength was on another level even compared to mine and I thought he would get more utility out of the massive surface area the hammer afforded him.

At the very least, he would get more out of it than he would a sword.

I was slightly worried that he would be put off by this weapon too, but to my relief he said, after examining it for a minute “It’s beautiful…thank you my friend.”

“Yes, I agree. Though it doesn’t quite have the same air around it as those other two weapons do.”

“No, but then I didn’t use my own body parts to make the hammer.” I thought to myself.

“And for you, Ember…” I said, pulling a little helmet off the wall. A weapon would be wasted on Ember, as she didn’t have any hands, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t provide her with some protection. I made it with my own hands, literally speaking, clasped, fused and shaped so that they would fit over her head. The thumbs were pointed upwards as well, giving the appearance of little horns.

Like my sword and scythe, the helmet gave off an eerie aura.

“Oh Master, it’s magnificent…I…I…Thank you so much!” she shouted, tears running down her furry face.

I sat with her in my lap, petting her head as she continued to cry and thank me. While I did that, Terry said “And you made all of this from just the Demolishers body?”

I could tell why he said that. It was less obvious with the blades, but the hand-helmet made it much more obvious that most of the materials used here weren’t just from a giant bug.

“At first, yes. But then I decided that I wanted to use…higher quality materials. My arms went into making the blades, and my hands-the helmet. But your hammer is all Demolisher. I don’t have enough raw material on my body to make a slab of chitin that huge.” I said.

Ember looked up and said “Y-You mean this helmet…!”

“That’s right.” I said apprehensively

Her wailing then became even louder, and her thanks even more profuse. I knew she would react like this. It was the whole reason I had tried to keep quiet about it.

I shot Terry a dirty look, to which he mumbled out “sorry…” before turning away embarrassed.

I would wind up comforting Ember for the rest of that evening, but before that Terry had just one last thing to tell me.

“Forminus…” he said “Don’t forget, you were human once too. I don’t know what it was that went and made you into the madman as you are, but it's in those weapons too. Just…just be careful with them, ok?”

I couldn’t understand what he was talking about, but i knew that this was his way of expressing concern for me so I simply nodded at him.

He was a good man, but I feared that would make him a vulnerable Lord.