“Don’t meddle with what you don’t understand,” my grandmother would occasionally tell me, holding me firm by my chin to look in my eyes to make sure I listened, and listened good, “or else you’ll find that it might meddle with you instead; It won’t be the kind you’d like, either.”
She wasn’t the type to make such a warning lightly. She was the almost stereotypical laissez-faire, spoiling-her-grandchildren-rotten kind of grandmother. There was always a nugget of wisdom whenever you talked with her, but it was the true kind of wisdom that acknowledged that said wisdom might be false. This one warning, however, was one that was always clear, with no room for interpretation one way or the other. After she would tell me this, her face would shrivel up into a brooding, far-away look, clutching her arm as if she was remembering a great pain.
Yet her pain was merely an old scar, too old for me to feel anything. I, as the son of the local smith, had better things to focus my energies on than learning from the past. That isn’t to say I couldn’t have appreciated the wisdom of the eldest among us, but I thought that they would be an ever present advisor for the youth.
So, my studies took precedence. My father was not disappointed in me. Time passed, I grew older and more skilled. The long times in the forge would similarly temper me. However, where my father was an all purpose smith that forged hoes and sickles, I myself became particularly fascinated in the instruments of war. Swords, breastplates, and arrows alike all flowed like water from my forge. This had the effect of catching the eye of the lords of the land, for better or for worse, particularly as my skill increased. They would not approach me for some time however, believing me untested.
My test came one day when a particularly bellicose-looking lord had personally commissioned me for a broadsword. His last sword had broken, and his armor was painted in the blood of its smith. He had heard of my prowess, and had come to me for a replacement sword. The lord was prideful, however, and desired me to craft the finest blade in the world.
“I wish I could forge such a blade, m’lord, but I am a mere journeyman smith. Surely there are better smiths in the wide world. I believe I am the finest in your employ, however. Let it be a contest among the smiths in your realm.” I told the lord. I don’t think I believed what I said, but it was finer odds than the entire world with its unknown-to-me forging techniques.
The lord was indulgent of my request, but only so reluctantly.
“You shall have your contest in ten days, smith, but my sanction is not cheap. Should you fail, I shall kill you with my new blade for wasting my time.” The bloody lord growled. He then left me without further preamble, climbing atop his similarly choleric horse, and trampled away.
If I hadn’t believed what I had told the lord before, I was in a downright panic as the days past. I had crafted several of my finest blades, but some niggling feeling inside of me told me it wouldn’t be enough, that of course there would be a finer smith than I. Panic eventually gave way to desperation, and I worked day and night crafting blades, looking for the slightest imperfections and destroying the blade should I find even one.
This pattern continued for five days and nights, with no respite. I could work no more. My body was ravaged. My mind was shattered. My forge was dead. At the break of day on the sixth day, I fell into a deep sleep. It was only upon the dawn seventh day that I would awaken, no less panicked after I collected myself. Lost, I had visited my grandmother for what I believed to be one last time. I don’t remember what I spoke to her about in my terrified haze, but when I left, it was with an old tome that I had taken when she hadn’t been paying attention. I don’t know why I took it. I only cracked it open once I got to my home, my forge.
Once I opened it, I immediately knew what it was. It was a grimoire. Magicks, spells, curses, those were the contents of the book. I didn’t read much of it at the time, but there was one thing that caught my eye. It was an ancient magick, to instill raw power within a crafted item during the process of forging it. After I read the smallest hint of what it was, I could read nothing else but the spell.
I would spend the rest of the night and following day studying the spell and then studying key sections of the rest of the tome with the intent of adapting said spell to my use. It wasn’t incredibly hard; the spell itself was already custom tailored for creating weapons of war, I merely needed to build atleast some foundation to work the spell with. The next, last day before the contest would be spent doing the actual forging and ensorcelling of the blade.
There were no outstanding magickal features to this primogenitor blade. Similarly, there were no gaudy adornments: this sword was built for pure function, not form. Yet, the blade was indeed enchanted despite its plainess; it simply functioned better than any mundane blade. Its edge was sharper than any blade of its specifications, and it could not be broken by non-magickal means.
The day of the contest, I travelled to the bloody lord’s court. I and the competing smiths gathered in a large clearing on the outskirts of the lord’s castle town. In the center of the clearing was a large anvil, and to the side of it was a large slab of wood, sitting innocuously on the ground. One of the lord’s entourage ordered us to line up in front of the anvil, where we would then present our blade.
I was to be the last smith to present. The lord started by bringing a dirty man in threadbare rags forward, laid his head against the wooden block, and stated he was a criminal that was due to be executed. The first blade’s sharpness would be tested on him, and next would be a blade durability test. The first smith that came forward was an old man who was clearly far beyond his prime. The lord took the presented blade, walked over to the prisoner, and swung at his neck. His blade easily cut through the criminal’s throat and beheaded him. He then took the bloodied blade to the anvil, and took a hammer from the side of the anvil. He laid the blade flat against the anvil and stated he intended to strike the blade thrice, and if it could survive, it would pass. He struck once, on the section of the blade hanging over the anvil, and the sword did not buckle. He struck it a second time, where the anvil met the forged steel, and the blade remained firm. He struck the third time on the base of the sword, where the battered sword snapped.
The lord took a satisfied breath through his nose, and cracked a bloodthirsty smile.
“Well, the good smith’s metal was worthy of a soldier of mine at least. It was certainly sharp enough. But my standards for durability were not met. You have clearly not forged my blade, and now I am in something of a conundrum. I only had the one prisoner to be executed.” The lord rumbled to the crowd.
He snapped his fingers, and his entourage seized the old man and dragged him to the still gory wooden block. The lord then boomed, “The next smith! Present to me your master-work!”
The next smith’s blade was something to behold. It was very finely ornamented, with gems encrusted in the hilt and even worked into the sword itself. This time, the bloody lord started out with the durability test, where the blade withstood all of the blows. When it came time for the test of sharpness, however, the blade embedded itself into the old man’s neck, and though he was clearly dead from that single blow, it was not at all a beheading. So, this smith too went to the block.
One problem or another lead to each following smith coming to the block and dying at the hands of the next prospective smith’s creation. Finally, though, it came to me. My plain sword was clearly disdained in the lord’s eyes, as it appeared to be fit for a conscripted farmer, not an august lord such as himself. However, he was similarly duty-bound as a lord to fairly test the blade. The sword cleaved straight through the previous smith’s -who had failed both durability and sharpness- neck, as if it weren’t there. Not even the blood from the beheading remained on the blade, a fact to which even the lord’s countenance showed surprise and impression to. The durability test was similarly breezed through. Not even a hint of damage was shown after the final strike had shards of the shattered hammer raining down upon the lord and his entourage.
Finally, the lord huffed, as he would not have his bloody due reaped in full today. However, he would finally have the blade he believed he so rightly deserved as a result. He proclaimed me a master smith in that same moment, for no mere journeyman could have crafted such a fine blade.
I left in a hurry, in fear of the lord who had just killed so many for failure. I had what I came for, and I never wanted to be in such a situation again.
I would never again come close to the lord’s court, where he could so easily have me killed again. Instead, any lord who wished one of my creations would need to come to me. This would have the unfortunate effect of having no work in the immediate future, perhaps due to the lords of the land needing time to swallow their pride. So, without any work to complete, I spent the time honing my magickal craft. Initially I would make blades identical to the blade I gave the bloody lord, but soon more adornments and markings began to cover the blades as my skill in the art improved. As well, some of the blades I forged were more overtly magickal than others, one being a blade with a shaft covered in glowing runes, another being a sword completely engulfed in flames.
Soon, though, the customers in the lords came, and spread the word. Soon I was rolling in customers, all wanting a masterpiece of mine. Any aversion towards the magickal was quickly forgotten in the demonstrations of the potent powers that each blade carried. I was rather quickly entombed in gold that I had no idea what to do with. As soon as I realized that, I decided to simply leave.
I became a hermit living in the woods, magickally bringing with and hiding my forge. I would spend my days crafting tools of warfare, honing my skill in the art of magick, and occasionally bestowing one of my works upon a traveler passing by.
One day, though, I forged a set of armor that was imbued with the spirit of warfare in a very real sense. I don’t rightly recall why I made it. Perhaps I wanted a companion of sorts. Perhaps a noble bodyguard. That is not what I received. I don’t believe I truly understood warfare at the time. In my mind, it was a noble undertaking that tested a man’s mettle. I did not take into account the fury, the atrocities, and savagery that war would bring. And so, upon the armor cooling, it left me. I would not learn to where and what it would do until several days later, when word of a powerful knight butchering entire towns at a time would reach me.
I understood instantly what that ‘knight’ was. How could I not? In the stories I had heard, it had demonstrated abilities that I had instilled into the armor. The news of what I had done drove me to near-madness with guilt and desperation to fix my mistake.
So, in my delirium, I destroyed all of the master-works still in my possession. Then, I set to work on one last tool of war. It was a set of armor, purely focusing on rejuvenating myself and supporting my life. Then, I forged my greatest work. A throne, made out of a slab of pure iron. It would never cool, molten metal literally ablaze with magick, all focused to wage war upon War.
The spirit of War was a strong one, especially in these times. War had fed, and fed deep upon the carnage that the spread of my tools had facilitated. The potency of my weapons could slaughter hundreds in the hands of a proper warrior, and such power has a tendency of being used when it is so beyond the pale of any other weapon. The Burning Throne would not and could not defeat such a being, especially at its height, but it could contain it.
As I sat upon the throne, the dread armor halted mid-rampage, and simply fell apart. The spirit of War entered my own being. The spirit itself would be contained until I, the incumbent of the Burning Throne, either left the throne of my own will, or died. Of course, the armor I had forged would keep myself sustained for a very, very long time, and I had no intention of leaving the throne while War was still this powerful.
The terrible spirit’s rage had not left me unaffected, however. A burning brand seared itself onto my arm, and turned the metal of the branded arm red hot in the shape of the brand. When it appeared, I clutched my arm and screamed in pain, but not rage. I had no rage for the evil spirit left. I merely despaired that I released it upon the world.
And thus I would begin a long vigil, waiting for peace to finally reign over the realm and for War to end once and for all. Until then, the dread spirit of War would be caged, where it could not possess the supreme armor I had crafted for it.