"Arrogance breeds sloppiness," Sol continued coldly. "He’ll make a mistake eventually. He has to contact his Zharun handlers. He has to coordinate the next strike. And when he makes that move, we won’t just accuse him in front of the council. We’ll catch him in the act. And then we’ll bury him in the mud where he belongs."
"Fine," Kira muttered, kicking a stray splinter of wood off the edge of the watchtower. "But if I catch that old bastard slipping, I’m taking his head."
"Get in line," Sol replied dryly.
He pushed himself off the wooden railing, stretching his broad shoulders. His joints popped loudly, the heavy, dense sound echoing like cracking stones. The raw, coiled power of his newly evolved Layer 2 foundation was humming insistently under his skin, begging to be tested, begging to be unleashed.
"Alright, enough tribal politics for one afternoon," Sol said, changing the subject with deliberate, heavy force. He looked down at his clothes... the simple, dark leather pants and the sleeveless black tunic that he had found in his room.
"I appreciate the loaner clothes, but if I’m going to be walking around the Great Orrath, I need actual gear. My Badger armor was shredded to pieces by that beetle. I feel completely naked right now."
Kira looked him up and down. Her feline eyes lingered for a fraction of a second on the thick, heavily muscled contours of his chest and the jagged, angry pink lightning scar carved across his stomach.
She quickly cleared her throat, looking away, the tips of her ears turning slightly red.
"Right," Kira said, her tone snapping back to military business. "The forge. The master craftsn have been working non-stop since the siege ended. They are currently breaking down the carcasses of the Sovereigns you and my mother killed. With your new status in the tribe, you have priority access to any of the materials."
"Lead the way," Sol nodded.
They descended the splintered wooden stairs of the watchtower and rged back into the chaotic, muddy thoroughfare of the settlent. Zeyra trailed just a half-step behind them, her dark eyes constantly scanning the crowds, naturally falling into the role of a hyper-vigilant bodyguard.
As they approached the forge district, the ambient temperature in the air skyrocketed.
The Veynar didn’t use crude, open-air campfires for their heavy smithing. The Great Orrath didn’t have iron mines or veins of steel. Their entire technological tree was built on bio-engineering, essence manipulation, and the brutal harvesting of apex predators. It may be a bit stretch to call it technology, because in reality it was just lting and fusing the ingredients.
The forge was a massive, semi-enclosed courtyard built entirely out of heat-resistant polished stones and petrified timber. Dozens of massive, roaring furnaces lined the walls. But they weren’t burning normal wood or coal.
Sol watched in grim fascination as heavily scarred, muscular smiths used long, thick tongs carved from the jawbones of so terrestrial beast to feed glowing beast cores directly into the furnaces.
The spiritual essence trapped inside the cores burned with a blinding, aggressive heat. This essence-fire was capable of lting down dense monster bone and hyper-hardened chitin into a viscous, workable slag that normal fire couldn’t even warm.
The noise was absolute, deafening chaos. Hamrs the size of a person... made from the dense thigh bones of Layer 3 behemoths and capped with heavy rock... were operated by big and muscular craftsman. They constantly slamd them down onto massive stone anvils, shaping red-hot, glowing slabs of beast plating.
The air was heavy with sulfur, ozone, and the sharp tang of lting chitin.
But Kira didn’t lead him toward the massive, chaotic central anvils where the brute-force smiths were churning out standard Warrior gear.
Instead, she bypassed the main courtyard entirely, guiding him toward the back of the district, toward a secluded workshop tucked into a natural hollow of a massive, ancient petrified root.
It was the exact sa quiet, intensely private space where Sol had first received the Dreadwing Blade.
"I assu we’re seeing Teshar?" Sol asked, a slight grimace touching his lips.
"He’s the only one skilled enough to work with Sovereign-class materials," Kira nodded, pushing aside the heavy, cured hide flap that served as a door.
Sol braced himself. The last ti he had been here, Teshar had literally cuddled the silver-gray Badger armor, calling it his "absolute, silver perfection." The eccentric, obsessive craftsman treated his creations like his own children.
Sol was fully expecting the wiry, intense man to throw an absolute screaming fit when he found out Sol had let a giant bug grind his masterpiece into blood-soaked ribbons.
They stepped into the dim interior of the workshop. The walls were still lined with the pristine skulls and perfectly polished carapaces of beasts Sol didn’t even recognize.
Standing over a workbench, carefully using a bone chisel to carve microscopic shapes into a piece of scale, was Teshar.
He was still the sa lean, wiry, and carried himself with a dexterous, almost surgical precision. And like before, he didn’t look up as they entered. He just kept chiseling.
"So, you have finally dared to co here." Teshar rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves skittering over stone.
"Ahem! We need a new commission, Teshar," Kira said, ignoring the reprimand. "Sol’s armor was destroyed during the siege."
The chisel stopped instantly.
The silence in the workshop suddenly felt incredibly heavy.
Teshar slowly set the tool down on the workbench. He didn’t turn around right away. His thin shoulders tensed. Sol shifted his weight, preparing for a barrage of insults about how he didn’t respect high-tier craftsmanship.
Teshar slowly turned around. His eyes, usually sharp and analytical, were wide. He wiped his hands on his grease-stained apron and practically glided across the floor until he was standing inches away from Sol.
"Destroyed?" Teshar whispered, his eyes darting down to Sol’s bare, scarred arms and the simple linen tunic. "You an... the silver hide? The tectonic masterpiece?"
"A Layer 3 Rockhorn Beetle pinned ," Sol explained defensively, crossing his arms. "It drove a serrated leg-spike straight into my ribs. The armor took the brunt of the kinetic impact, but the fibers snapped under the pressure. It’s ruined. I left the scraps in the mud."
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