Chapter 193: The Drunk Smith
"Is this Andre’s workshop?" Kael asked as he stood in front of what looked like an old rundown smithy.
From the outside, it almost resembled a proper forge, low stone walls, a soot-stained chimney, a warped wooden sign hanging by one nail like it had given up on life. But the closer he got, the more it stopped feeling like a workplace and started feeling like a grave.
The forge was out cold, and there were cobwebs and strange-looking filth on the ground. It wasn’t just neglect. It was abandonment. Ash had caked into the cracks of the floor like old blood. The anvil sat at an angle, one leg half-sunk into rotten boards. The bellows looked chewed-up, the leather collapsed inward like a deflated lung. And the weapons... gods. A few were so rusted they looked like they’d crumble if he breathed on them. Others were clean enough to be "polished," but broken in ways that didn’t happen by accident, edges chipped, metal warped like it had been twisted with bare hands.
Kael didn’t feel the signs of life at first, but his mini-map confirmed a green dot was indeed inside.
That green dot was the only reason he didn’t turn around immediately. The bartender hadn’t sounded like the type to send him on a wild goose chase for laughs, unless the "laughs" were watching Kael get stabbed in an alley for wearing newbie boots.
Kael waited for a second, thinking that the person inside might be asleep.
He listened. No hammer. No scrape of metal. No steady rhythm of work. Just the faint tick of something dripping somewhere, slow enough to be annoying. Even the wind sounded wrong around this place, like it tried to pass through and got discouraged.
"pends on who’s askin..." The words were gruff, slurred even, they echoed from deeper inside the forge.
Kael blinked once. Slurred didn’t always mean drunk. Sometimes it meant pain. Sometimes it meant someone who hadn’t bothered speaking to anyone for so long their tongue forgot how to be polite.
"The bartender sent me here..."
He kept his tone neutral. Not pleading. Not arrogant. Just... factual. Like he was reporting a delivery.
"Bloody Cramer... why’s that fool keep sendin’ folk my way? Piss off, lad. Ain’t got nothin’ for ye...nor for anyone. I’m retired, I am."The octaves kept getting louder, anger within those words, or more like annoyance instead.
Kael’s first instinct was to leave. He’d gotten his answer. He’d already spent enough time in towers to know when a door was a door and when it was a trap pretending to be a door.
Still, "retired" didn’t match "green dot inside." If this guy were truly done, he’d be dead or gone. And Kael had learned that anyone still breathing in a place like this was either stubborn, dangerous, or both.
Kael took a brave step forward and walked in.
The air inside hit him like stale cloth. Old smoke. Old sweat. Old metal. The kind of smell that sinks into your skin and never really leaves. There was a small oil lantern barely lighting up the place, and he could see the man speaking to him on a bed.
The lantern’s flame was weak and yellow, sputtering like it was tired too. It didn’t reach the corners. It didn’t even reach the ceiling. It just painted a small circle of visibility around the bed, and around the pile of bottles like they were worshipped.
"Didn’t I tell ye t’ bugger off?! What’s wrong with ye climbers, think ye got the right t’ barge into a man’s home?!"
The voice came sharper now, the kind of sharp that meant the person had enough energy left to bite.
"I apologize," Kael said as he raised a hand. "I’ll be on my way," he resigned after he saw the state of the man.
It wasn’t just the smell. It was the posture. The way the man sat was like gravity was winning. The way his surroundings screamed, I stopped caring a long time ago.
A drunkard, a heavy one.
Short, not human, almost. Dwarf? Like those that appeared once from recordings of the inside of the Tower of Trials.
Yet, the only furniture the man had was a bed, and it looked like it had more bottles around it than space. Some were filled with suspiciously yellow liquid that didn’t look like alcohol. Didn’t smell like it either.
Kael’s gaze flicked over them despite himself. Not curiosity, he could already tell what they were seeing: a lack of a washroom nearby.
’This was a waste of time.’
He turned toward the door, already thinking of the next best option: find boots first, then information, then figure out how to stop being "fresh meat" in a community floor full of sharks.
"Hold there... where’d ye get that, eh?" the dwarf said as his eyes lit up.
Kael paused mid-step.
Not because the tone was friendlier, it wasn’t. But because it was different. It had teeth in it. Interest. The kind of interest that made people forget to be lazy.
Kael was still intending to leave, but seeing the change in the man’s expression, he paused.
"This?" he showed his arm. More like his gauntlets.
He didn’t lift them like a trophy. He just angled them into the lantern’s light so the runes and sockets caught the glow.
"Aye, that there, what in the hell is it?" the dwarf asked as he pushed away one of his legs.
Kael’s eyes dropped before he could stop them.
’A cripple...’ Kael thought as he noticed that one of the dwarf’s legs was replaced with a wooden stump.
The stump wasn’t new. It was worn. Polished by years of contact. Whoever did it had lived with it long enough to stop babying it. There was dried grime in the grooves where wood met whatever held it in place.
He stood up and limped forward until he got close to Kael.
The man was barely up to Kael’s chest; his hair was a mix of silver and red. A scrunched-up face. Like he has been disappointed his entire life, and it was no longer an expression but his resting face’s expression.
Even drunk, he moved with an old craftsman’s certainty, each step placed carefully, weight shifted like habit. Not graceful. Just practiced. Like he’d spent a lifetime refusing to fall.
He further furrowed his brows until the thick hair of them met in the middle.
"By Vulkan’s beard... who forged this monstrosity?" he asked as he gripped Kael’s arm and turned it to see more.
His grip was stronger than Kael expected. Not Kael-strong, but not weak either. And it wasn’t random grabbing; his fingers traced seams, pressed on joints, and tested how the metal responded like he was reading a book by touch.
"Ah, that would be me..." Kael said.
The dwarf locked eyes with Kael, "Ye mockin’ me, boy?" he asked.
Kael didn’t flinch, but his patience tightened. He’d dealt with enough "old men with authority" in his life to know when respect was earned and when it was demanded as a shortcut.
"Why would I? I, in fact, did make this." He said.