Chapter 2: Dragon Rings
I realize now that it may seem impossible, the work we do and the time frame we do it in. I don't blame you for having doubts, it seems like we work endlessly without fatigue and exhaustion but I assure you we take our fair share of rest. The secret is in our forging tools or maybe more so in our accessories. Knowing we had grand ambitions meant knowing we would have to overcome our limitations as mere men. Overcoming your limitations is no easy thing. It is a topic that has caused the brightest, cleverest minds in every era to falter and fail.
There have been a few exceptions in which progress is thrust forward and a new line in the sand drawn, but the rarity is on par with finding a purple magic stone. The solution? We cheat. What was the biggest adversary for metal workers, blacksmiths, and forgers? Heat. So what if we could beat heat and its effects on us? To that, JT schedemed up a solution. I never said it was a simple one, but it was nonetheless a solution. We would create magical items that allowed us to overcome the pesky limitations of mankind.
JT designed magical rings for us. We only needed to seek out the materials and the right type of magic stone to complete the design. The problem was, nothing like that existed in this world. There are no shortage of magical items that can help reduce the effects of fire and heat, but all require that the user's own mana be channeled into them. They are restricted by their time and effectiveness where we wanted to overcome both of these limitations. JT spent weeks mulling over every inch of every book, scroll, and tome he could find about monsters, magical creatures, and all manner of magical artifacts. He pulled information from our private collection as well as the collections of everyone within a day's worth of travel. No library or university's stone went unturned.
My task was to find suitable materials; I mined, collected, and purchased various metals. I was able to acquire, in that time: Palladium ingots, Zirconium ingots, Iron ore, a small amount of Gold ore, and some magic stones of red and blue color. Not the best magical stones but easy to get my hands on and use. This would help us in the forging process. Upon JT's return we concluded we needed dragon stones though, and saliva. I hate that stuff. Getting our hands on an orange dragon stone was not cheap, it was doable. The traveling merchant that happened to be in town had one for sale and for an exorbitant amount. Knowingly being extorted leaves an awful taste in your mouth, our master's coffers and our own were now depleted. All we could do was hang all of our hopes and dreams on this one, mad gamble.
Preparations complete, we lit the forge and JT explained to me the idea behind melting down the stone rather than encasing it in the metal. This was risky. If the stone were to become damaged or broken all of its power would be lost. This is why forging a magical item was difficult and usually consisted of encasing the magic stone, the source of your mana manipulation and power, in the center of your item. Preventing the magical stone from being damaged or broken when used was vital! The item losing all its ability and becoming nearly useless would be a nightmare for a craftsman. Especially for two young blacksmiths who gambled nearly everything for a chance at success.
"Let's get to work then," is all I could say as I realized the risks of what we were doing. JT only nodded in response.
We donned our blacksmithing gear; tying heavy leather aprons, and laying out our tools on the bench, and set out to work our craft with steady hands and calm minds. Our master had drilled into us the understanding that a turbulent or distracted mind would cause fractures and imperfections in our work.
"Truly perfect craftsmanship comes only with focus, determination, clear intent, and a calm mind."
That was his mantra, his personal credo. He beat into our hearts and minds like a hammer to molten iron, shaping us upon the anvil of experience into tools fit for a master craftsman.
JT heated the dragon stone in iron tongs just above an iron crucible while I worked the billows bringing the fire to a turbulent roar. Unsure of how hot it needed to be, we kept applying heat, diligently watching. Sweat dripped from our brow, too nervous to blink and yet strained to keep our eyes focused. Just before it would begin cracking and shatter, JT lowered it into the now hot crucible as I poured in the vile dragon saliva. Instead of shattering, the stone became malleable and red hot like molten glass. Crystalline glass JT called it as we poured the now malleable material into the ring mold.
It rapidly cooled and solidified as we failed to get it set in time. Saying it was a crushing blow would be an understatement. It proved impossible to reheat but that only confirmed the idea JT had previously speculated. It began to shimmer a bright blue in the furnace. We had created heat shielding that would not surrender to the flames no matter the amount of heat we applied. Picking it up, I was surprised to find it cool to the touch, but when it slipped from my hands only a foot from the counter it shattered. It ended up as a brittle glass like substance compared to the hardened stone it had been before.
"Extremely brittle," JT muttered in deep thought as he left me to clean the mess. Ambition is a funny thing, left unchecked it will lead you to surprising convictions. Now we needed another dragon stone. And more saliva… The first had cost us nearly everything we had. No longer having any coin to spare, we decided to go retrieve our own materials. A bold choice for most, but growing up around weapons and forging many ourselves they were very familiar to us. We had been trained in how to use them all with proficiency by our late master, "you should know how to use the things you create, it will deepen your understanding and strengthen your resolve while bringing shape and form to them."
We took the last two magical swords our master completed, both longswords made of cobalt and steel. These bore his crest and packed the full weight and prestige of his skill and petagree. No expense was spared and each contained yellow king tier magical stones. Confidence in tow we set forth to the mountain range closest to the Drab Village where we knew to be evil dragons. We had never ventured so far and had our fair share of mishaps with provisions along the journey arriving finally at our destination completely depleted of funds and food. We had little time to scout out the area and find a dragon suited for our needs. There was a need to find food and we did not want to camp in the open amongst dragon country. We quickly came about the lair of an old and famous dragon, his flames were violet in color and burned hotter than any other fire in existence. We didn't know it then but we were lucky to come out alive. We had little to no experience hunting dragons only a small scroll JT was able to "acquire" from a library close to the mountains. It detailed weaknesses and strategies on how to deal with these magical creatures but all required foreknowledge of the type of dragon and greater numbers than we had. With no options of doing either of those 2 things we persevere onward knowing this could be a fool's errand and the last one we ever took.
We snuck in anticipating his rage…what we found was a sleeping dragon, massive in size and oddly at peace. As we got within range of his mighty tail, he called out to us with a mighty sigh of annoyance that froze us in place for a moment, but he didnt move. His arrogance and strength made him lazy to react. I regained my senses as JT rushed forward, not wasting the moment we had been given. His sword was thrust deeply into the chest of the dragon as it had propped itself up, the blade dissolved in a moment's notice freezing the dragon in place. His power was too great for the sword to handle but the effect stuck no less, consuming ice. The dragon's entire underside was coated in ice from his shoulders down to his tail, leaving only its neck and back still exposed and began to shout irate bursts of fire!
We managed to avoid being hit by them because of its limited mobility but we feared it would not last long and the ice seemed to begin melting. JT drew its attention as I quickly climbed to a nearby ledge and dropped in on the back of its neck near the base of its shoulders and plunged my sword deep in between his shoulder blades. This time, the sword did not shatter and he was quickly intombed by ice, victory was ours. Our only problem was how to retrieve the magic stone and rest of its materials from the thick ice. The tricky part of consuming ice is that as long as the sword still remained intact anything living that touched the ice would begin to be consumed by ice as well.
As we contemplated how to retrieve our spoils and pull the sword from its back there was a tremur and the ice began to crack…The eyes of the dragon we noticed were very much still alive and filled with rage as it locked eyes with JT. He quickly threw a magic stone from across the room and shouted 2 words "Stone Spear!"
As I thrust my hands downward, a memory-like vision filled my mind of JT's concentrating the mana into a thin sharp line twice the size of a normal spear nonetheless shaped exactly like the ones we have forged in the past. Through this I manipulated the mana in the same way and as I made contact with the ground JT shouted "Longer!" so I doubled the length of the spear in my mind. Right below the dragon it launched upward and through its heart just as the ice shattered, the dragon fell dead.
"Dario are you alright!?" JT called from behind the massive body of the dragon.
"Still breathing, I'm assuming you are too!" my reply. "This does solve our issue of retrieving the sword and the ice though" I laughed and my echo was accompanied by JT's sigh of acknowledgement and unamusement at my ability to find humor in serious moments.
Foresight had enabled us to bring daggers along with us so I was able to carve out the dragon's magic stone while JT used his special vials to collect the dragon's saliva. I was glad to be the one carving up the carcase for once because dragon saliva is some nasty stuff. Green incredibly corrosive and repugnant slime are not what I consider a good time. Blood washes away and doesn't usually carry a nauseating smell, in fact it's almost a welcomed smell. It reminds me of hot iron being struck with a hammer, the sparks flying off of the anvil and raining down to the floor. To our surprise in the stomach of this formidable dragon we found the remains of a greater beast with its magic stone still intact as well. Even more surprising it was on the same level as the dragon we had just killed. Luck must have been with us as the dragon we had killed was resting from a terrible fight with the dragon he had just eaten.
Speaking of meals, with our materials collected we tried our hand at cooking dragon meat and making jerky for our trip back home. Cooks we are most certainly not, and the food was bland and tasteless. We had never thought to bring spices of any kind with us, thus the need to make jerky out of some of the meat so we would have it to eat on our way back home. Without salt we were able to make it edible by drying it over the smoking ashes of a fire, it was tough and chewy but contained the protein we needed to make the trek back home. We took a few other pieces of the dragon with us like bones, horns, teeth, wing leather, and the fire sack. Knowing these could be sold or used for material later, JT also grabbed the remaining hilt of the magical sword I had used. It had not shattered like his own, the handle surprisingly snapped off when the dragon broke free of its icy coffin, leaving only an inch or 2 left of the blade. In my opinion not much use anymore but hey JT wanted it, who was I to stop him from taking it.
After we arrived back home nothing could stop me from slumping into a hot bath to wash away the grime. JT had other plans though, I had to practically drag him away from the workbench to clean up as I took a look at his freshly drawn designs. As beautifully as I write JT can draw. Meticulous designs and details and diagrams showing exactly what needs to be done to bring his inventions to life. The large chunk of Wolfram was also sitting in the middle of the workshop on its wooden cart. Long has is sat in the back of the workshed covered in a canvas cloth unused because of its unique qualities that made it impossible to melt down, at least I thought so. JT came out as I sat crouched near the Wolfram examining the metal ore.
"Dario, we're going to use that to make a storage locker," He said "But first we need to finish making the rings."
"Sure, not exactly sure about this material choice but I have never been right betting against you in the past and that isn't likely to change today so let's get to work shall we," I replied.
He was already wearing his leather apron and forging tools with mine in his right hand, and the dragon's stones and saliva in his left. We quickly began the delicate process of heating the dragon's stones to just before cracking. This time we added the dragon's saliva and quickly poured it into the molds while mixing in forge salt. This attempt we left no time between the mixing of materials and the pouring into the molds. JT had me infuse 2 drops of my blood into each of the ring molds before we began. The results were perfect! The forge salt, Anti-Borax or something like that JT calles it, helped bind the materials together stronger than the last time and my blood, being filled with more mana than the average person acted as a catalyst to power it. For added measure though, we encased the almost glass like appearance of the rings into some Palladium we had on hand.
I went to work carving our initials in an elegant fashion to show our mark, and JT finished applying our crest and with it a dragon's head. I then inlaid it with some gold filigree to add brilliance and polished them until they gleamed our reflections. It was time to test them out. This was more nerve wracking than I thought it would be. We heated the forge to a blistering heat as we stoked the fire to the maximum heat we could stand. Feeling weak and faint as well as perspiring buckets we slipped on the rings and thrust our left hands forward into the fire. We would succeed or fail together accepting the same consequences.
To my utmost shock nothing…if anything I felt cooler than I had previously. Our skin shone a faint blue glow in the hot room and the closer we were to the fire the brighter it got. With these new rings we had created a way to be impervious to fire and heat.
"Now begins our destiny." JT's words, merely spoken, drowned everything to a hush as the weight of what we had accomplished would soon be engulfed in insignificance by what would come next.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone