Elephant Pond 10:

The Murk Blade

Morgan and his parents were hunkered down, knee deep in the beginnings of the Deep forge. Their foreheads were slick with sweat that shined in the torchlight, their fists white-knuckled as they shoveled in silence. The only sounds in the tense atmosphere were their heavy panting and the grating noise of their shovels scraping up sand, interrupted ever so often by the waves crashing onto the beach some distance away from them.

The shock and anxiety of the situation had made the first few hours of digging the most fruitful. With Tory held captive beside Bora, this was their only choice.

The men Dagon had employed or possibly forced to help them, obeyed orders from Typhon and Maya without issue. They were capable enough to help them make the pit to the right specifications, albeit at a slower pace than the sea smiths. The years Morgan and his parents had spent hammering away in the forges of Khantani had built up their strength and stamina to a level that enabled them to shovel for hours with little to no breaks, while the hired men lagged behind and tired faster.

But by midnight, the pit was only half as deep as it needed to be, and just short of being wide enough. Morgan and his parents were inside the pit, and two of the hired men had begun flattening its sides into walls, as the remaining men cleared sand from the top.

Dagon and his fellow captains had abandoned their watchful posts beside them and the three of them retired beneath fruit trees at the edge of the forest. They opted to recline onto their trunks while they watched them work with Tory, as frightened as she had been hours before, in their custody.

“Get some sleep Morgan, we’ll have to finish the rest.” his mother said between gasps of air.

“I’m fine, and we haven’t even started carving the runes yet.”

“You need to be rested so you can make that weapon as quickly and efficiently as possible,” his father interjected, “otherwise we won’t make the deadline. Your mother and I will finish digging and take care of the runes, but we need you to get some sleep.”

Morgan hated the idea of not actively working to get Tory back safely, but they were right. He pulled himself out of the pit walked to the edge of the forest and found a seat below a tree, opposing where the pirates rested. He tried his best to sleep until the sensation of the pirates’ their eyes on him became over bearing. So he got up and walked further down to the beach and sat below a tree, a few paces from the shore; a mistake in its own right.

The rolling waves that glistened silver in the moonlight reminded him that all of this was wrong. The ocean he had grown up with was calm and shimmered with dozens of colors, while this one was dark and dull, plain and foreign. The sight of it beckoned grief: at how far he was from home, the weight of Tory’s life on in his hands and the overall hopelessness of their circumstance. The sensation of pressure of bubbled up from his gut and overflowed into the rest of his body, a tightness that protested from within his heart and limbs, forcing Morgan to clutch at his chest.

Yet, he had no time to break. He didn’t even have enough time to rest. So he squeezed his eyes shut and pictured the denizens of the barrier reef, floating lazily over his head, and begged for their calm. Eventually he forced the feeling back down with deep, slow breaths and found rest in the memory.

“Wake up, its time.” a voice said and nudged his shoulder.

Morgan pried his eyelids open and then raised a hand to cover them as sunlight shined into his face. His arms and legs were sore, while his lower back ached dully, undoubtedly from all of the shoveling. The golden sun was still perched on the horizon. The sun was just beginning to rise.

Typhon gave him a small smile and offered his son a hand and Morgan took it, grunting as he got to his feet. When he looked up the beach, Dagon and Bora were wide awake and attentive in the same spot they’d claimed for sleep. Although it looked like they’d watched his parents work through the night instead. Ransom, on the other hand, hadn’t missed a minute of shut-eye and seemed particularly annoyed that Bora had nudged him awake now.

“Were you really able to finish it?” Morgan asked as he dusted the sand off of his pants.

“I wouldn’t brag about the quality of the work we did, but with the seven of us, we managed to get it done. Everything’s ready, the rest is on you. The essence box I made and the chisel we used for the Deep Forge’s runes are with your mother. She should be done with them soon.” Typhon said.

Behind Typhon, Morgan spotted where his mother stood and prepared the tools at a makeshift wooden tool bench.

Morgan walked up and peered into the square pit. The preparations for the Deep Forge were done, shoddily so, but finished nonetheless. The pit had been shaped into an almost perfect cube with runes carved into each side, as well as the corners of the walls and the spaces where the walls met the floor. It was the size of an average room, big enough to hold around 15 people comfortably.

At the centre, an anvil had been lowered into the pit and encircled by runes followed by another wider ring. On the wall behind the anvil was the foundry he would use to smelt materials down, it appeared only as a semicircular opening, reminiscent of a traditional oven, with runes around the opening to regulate and contain its heat.

The three pirates approached Morgan as he examined the pit, with Tory left in the company of other pirates, still asleep.

“Finally getting started?” inquired Bora.

Morgan nodded solemnly. “Which one of you will the weapon be for?”

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“Yes, each weapon has to be custom made for the wielder; else there can be compatibility issues.”

Bora and Ransom glanced at each other and exchanged devious grins but before they could speak up, Dagon did: “It will be mine.”

Morgan looked at the other men. He expected sarcastic comments and snide remarks to express the contrary but they said nothing. They had seemed unmistakably eager to claim the weapon for themselves a second before, but just stood by silently now. There was a clear ‘pecking order’ even within their partnership, one that they didn’t seem to be able to question.

“Alright, I’ll return to you when I’m ready. Otherwise the blade itself won’t be done for most of the day though.”

They nodded but didn’t move from the edge of the pit.

Maya hailed her son over and when he came, he stopped dead in his tracks. The piece of their boat inscribed with the ‘seek’ rune was on the bench in front of her and a new rune, unfamiliar to him, had been carved alongside the original. But before he could question her, she shook her head slightly.

“Everything is ready for you, son. Don’t worry about anything else, just do what you’ve been told to,” she smiled reassuringly. So he simply accepted the metal tongs and hammer along with various other, ordinary tools that he carried to the pit and deposited inside. On his second trip he was given the chisel that looked like a stout, giant bronze nail with runes around its circumference and thick enough that he had to wrap his entire hand around it, followed by a hollow glass cube with a face that could be slid aside to access its contents. It was small enough to fit in the palm of his hand with runes carved into the sides of the cube revealed that revealed it was the essence box, the tool Naturalists used to harvest the remains of mystical creatures.

Morgan gathered them in his hands and dropped down into the sand pit as softly as he could, careful once again not to disrupt the tender floor too much.

He deposited the tools on the floor off to the side, except for the hammer and chisel and then walked to the centre of the pit. Morgan stood on the larger ring of runes, arm's length from the anvil, and mentally prepared himself.

His parents had done what had seemed impossible; getting the Deep Forge up in half a day’s time. The only thing that Morgan needed to do to complete it was to establish it as his own.

Morgan placed the hammer on its side on the anvil. The sharp end of the chisel glowed orange as it heated up and he put it to the head of the hammer, then carved the first runes he’d ever learned: the bond rune and next to it Avitide’s personal rune. Then he held the hammer upside down; handle up, head down and spoke:

“In the name of the architect, I declare this forge a cradle of metallurgy: housing for the wildest elements, solace for savage menageries and communion for the spirits of the lost!”

Pale blue light rippled off of the hammer and it lifted from Morgan’s hands to float over the anvil.

Morgan held his hands open and continued: “And in the name of Avitide, I declare this a place of knowledge, of invention and unmaking, of assumption and denial!” The hammer dropped straight down and struck the anvil and pale blue light rippled off from the collision in glimmering beams.

When the light faded, the runes carved into the forge’s walls flickered to life and glowed white. Sea water spouted from some invisible source on the ground, flooding the pit as the Deep Forge expanded. The walls widened and moved further apart from each other, producing a grating sound as the sand walls were smoothened and solidified. Despite that, Morgan knew that the pit took up the same amount of space on the beach, hence why Dagon and his partners hadn’t been moved while the walls around Morgan shifted. It was through the work of spacial runes that made the Deep Forge occupy no more space in the physical world than it did prior to its activation, and the means that enabled Khantani to fit all of their Deep forges in the Heat Basin in their village.

Morgan glanced up at the pirates as they spectated the process. Flagrant disbelief was in their eyes and possibly envy of him and what he had simply been born into. On the opposing side, his parents watched as well, just as visibly nervous as the pirates were amazed, until the water level rose above his head and then completely filled the Deep forge.

However, there was no need to activate his depth skin, he was able to breathe perfectly fine. It was the same as the water of the Barrier reef around Khantani; he breathed and moved just as he would on land.

Morgan stepped onto the control rune at the centre of the wider ring of runes and the water swayed slightly as the forge came under his command. The control rune was fairly similar to the helm rune on their boat, as it granted him control over almost everything in the space via the runes that controlled them, from the one spot. From the furnace, to the containment runes around the anvil, and even the water and the way it interacted with him or anything else in the forge.

Then lines of runes, like lines of text on a page appeared on the three walls in front of him. They were Morgan's scripts: every single rune he knew, assorted by class on each wall.

Seeing them reminded him of his father’s second lie. Morgan wasn’t just a Naturalist, and neither was his father solely an Elementalist. Every sea smith had two classes or ‘fields of study’. Morgan himself was a Higher Order Naturalist and Lower Order Animist, which meant that the weapons he made using his skills as a Naturalist would be a grade higher than those he produced as an Animist.

On his left was his Nature script, containing all the specialized runes he’d learnt as a Naturalist. In front of him was the Common script, which contained all of the nondescript runes available to all sea smiths, like the reinforcing rune and light rune. And finally, on his right was the Animist’s Spirit script. That wall had a meager three lines of runes. It was drastically shorter than his Nature and Common scripts, regardless of the fact that Morgan had learned all he could, at least without breaking the taboo.

Even with limited time, he couldn’t help but crack a broad, childish grin. The pure elation and wholeness he felt from being in his forge again, from being connected to the control rune and Avitide was just too much for him not to. But now that everything was ready, his first order of business was to harvest the murk Fish.

He heated up a few of the bars of pure iron that the pirates had provided him, in the foundry and when it was melted, he drained the molten metal directly into the essence box. Each of the bars had been at least three times the size of the box, but it didn’t fill even half of the cube.

Morgan slid the box closed and activated his depth skin. He raised his buoyancy to its maximum and he was expelled out of the Deep forge to stand on the water’s surface. Walking on water was a skill that ordinarily required a complete mastery of depth skin to do, but with the Deep forge’s unique water it became casual and the fastest way to get in and out of the forge.

Morgan didn’t waste time addressing the pirates’ gaping; instead he promptly jogged over to where the murk fish lay covered. The hired men helped him pull back the blue tarp that covered the massive fish and reveal it’s long, shiny silver body and lengthy serrated, sword shaped bill. The rancid smell of rot, that had concentrated and festered overnight wafted up to them in the breeze. Morgan clenched his nose and forced himself to breathe through his mouth, as disgusting as it still was.

He held out the essence box and slid one of its faces aside to reveal the molten iron that was still red hot.

“Bond,” he commanded.

The living iron poured out from the cube onto the fish of its own will, and it scurried up its corpse, fusing with the fish’s flesh as it cooled. Within five minutes or so, the entire fish was silver and metallic, inside and out. Morgan placed the box on the ground and the liquid iron returned the same way it left, this time the murk fish with it as he closed it.

Morgan returned to the edge of the pit where the pirates stood and motioned Dagon forward. When he did Morgan held the essence box up to him and he placed it in his hands.

“Bond,” Morgan commanded it once again, and the runes on the essence box glowed momentarily.

“So only I will be able to use the sword you make out of this…stuff?” the older pirate asked.

“No, the bond isn’t a ‘lock’. It just ensures that you will be able to use it and get the best out of it, otherwise it would be possible for it to now work for you at all.”

He simply nodded, uninterested in the intricacies of the process so Morgan returned to the Deep Forge and immediately got to work making the sword. He put a long rectangular iron bar into the foundry, and waited while it smelted down. He would have preferred a variety of superior ores over it, even simple steel, but he was also content to diminish the strength of his captor’s weapon by any means that wouldn’t risk their lives.

When it was done he fed the molten iron into a black brick-cast and then poured most of the iron bonded murk fish’s essence into another and mixed them together in a long rectangular cast. Then he returned to the control rune and activated its dousing feature. The water around the molten metal in the cast instantly fizzed and bubbled as the water around it suddenly came in contact with it. When it cooled, the now silver-grey, murk fish-iron alloy had solidified into a rectangular bar.

Morgan dipped it into foundry for a few minutes, just until his end was heated to a searing white glow, removed it with a pair of metal tongs and carried it to the anvil.

He activated the heat runes around the anvil, heating it enough to maintain the sword’s white hot malleable state and he beat the rounded rectangular edge into a sword’s fine point. Then he flattened the centre to make the main body of the blade and very top of the bar to make a hilt.

When he was satisfied with the shape he took his chisel, that glowed to match the blade’s heat and Morgan carved the minor runes from the Common script that were essential to a sword like reinforcement and sharpness among others. The entire process had taken more than a few hours but he was still making good time, so he moved onto adding the creature’s powers to the blade.

“Manifest: ink sac,” Morgan commanded the essence, and the fish’s full-sized ink sac, molten-white to match the heated blade, ballooned out right above the hilt, like an air bubble. Morgan hammered it for some time to flatten the blade once again, but now ink spilled out with each hammer strike. The transparent containment around the anvil subdued the ink clouds and stopped from filling the forge. Eventually, he managed to regain the blade’s sleek shape and then quenched the blade in the Deep Forge’s water via the control rune.

Morgan held up the sword and inspected it. The iron had cooled to light grey or more accurately dark silver, with a round ink spot where Morgan had compressed the ink sac into. It was good but not enough.

After heating the blade again he poured the last of the molten murk fish iron from the essence box onto the anvil. Then he outlined the blade’s edge with it and manifested the fish’s razor sharp serrated bill, full sized in its silver iron-bonded form. He invoked the heat runes on the anvil once again, heating it up just enough to keep the essence in a malleable state and he began to beat it into shape with his hammer.

He hammered it for some time, compressing and molding until it sat perfectly around the edge of the blade, serrated edge outward. This was something he could only do this easily with metal as flexible as the essence, plus this way Morgan wouldn’t have to spend hours sharpening the blade, it was time he was happy to shave off of the process given the circumstance.

The pirates’ expectations of the weapon were high, especially as they were risking their lives to get it. If he gave them the sword as it was now, Morgan doubted they’d be impressed and he was sure they would be punished for it. He’d have to surpass their expectations, as grim as the idea was. His best bet was to give them something more, add something non-lethal but still exceptional. Naturalists specialized not just in turning the remains of mystical creatures into weapons but enhancing their most lethal qualities even further through their runes. But that was the last thing Morgan wanted.

So instead of looking through the Nature script he searched the Common script in front of him instead, until he found what he thought might work.

He gave the blade another quick pass through the foundry before he returned it to the anvil, so that it was white hot and manipulable again.

There he put his chisel to the blade and inscribed the runes: darkness and space. And then hammered them a few times so they were no longer visible, a stylistic choice, he often made.

When he was satisfied he activated the dousing system for the last time and the water around the blade quenched it, air bubbles rippling off in torrents. Now in its cooled state the ink spot on the dark silver metal had stretched into a black line that gradually thinned as it got to the tip, contrasting even more with the serrated silver edge. Morgan himself wasn’t sure what the combination would produce but there was only one way to find out.

He disabled the containment runes around the anvil, held the blade up and willed it alive, as if flexing a muscle. A black cloud of ink exploded from the blade, covering his hands and then the rest of him in an instant, and everything went black. But it wasn’t the muddy black of the ink but more like true, all-consuming darkness was plastered to his eyes. Morgan instinctively took a step back and was surprised and horrified that not only was his sense of direction gone, but he didn’t hear it. In actuality, he heard nothing, not even his own heartbeat. He spoke and then shouted and neither made a sound. Morgan chuckled silently as he realized that the blade no longer just produced simple ink clouds, but pockets of darkness that stole the sight, within seemingly infinite space that sound couldn’t travel in.

Fortunately his left foot was still on the control rune, and he was able to vent the entire forge, replacing it with new clean water. Now that he was once again able to see his own nose on his face, he brandished the blade again.

It was a truly unique piece of work. Brunwin would have patted him on the back, smiled down at him and made a snide comment like: “I’m so proud of you, it makes me proud of myself,” and then tell him the next time he would make something even greater.

But there was no more time for sentimentality; he had to deliver the blade to save his sister.

He raised his buoyancy till his entire body slowly rose out of the water and he stood on the Deep Forge’s surface, serrated dark silver blade in hand.

Bora and Ransom stood on either side of Dagon; their faces alight with envious smirks as they watched Morgan approach them with the blade.

“Bit of a show off,” Ransom commented.

“It’s done.” Morgan said ignoring the comment and handed it over, hilt first to Dagon. “Still needs some cleaning and a proper hilt, but you’ll find it more than adequate.”

Dagon held it up, inspecting the craftsmanship and edges.

“What does it do?” Bora asked.

“It does what a murk fish does, with some minor tweaks. You should try it out,” Morgan invited.

Dagon walked up to one of the trees they’d slept under and swung the blade, cleaving through a trunk twice as wide as he was, with almost no effort.

Ransom and Bora whooped and laughed. They seemed impressed. But when Dagon returned his expression showed that he wasn’t so easily amazed. “Is that it?” he inquired.

“No, try the ink.” Morgan suggested.

Dagon aimed at one of the hired men and massive ink clouds shot towards him from its tip. The man instinctively shielded himself but the black cloud simply conjugated around him. And when a few minutes passed without him leaving it, Dagon asked nonchalantly: “Did I kill him?”

Slightly unnerved by his demeanor while asking the question, Morgan answered: “No, he’s just lost in there. He can’t see or hear, so his sense of direction and distance are basically gone. It’ll take him a while to get out.”

“It’s almost unbelievable that you went into a pit of water for a couple hours and brought back this,” Ransom laughed.

“And the name?” Dagon inquired.

“I decided on the Murk Blade,” he answered.

“You named the sword made from murk fish, the Murk Blade? That’s not very original boy.” Bora said.

“Even, I could do better than that, like...ink blade.” Ransom said.

“Murk Blade it is.” Dagon said still feeling out its weight.