Chapter 376: Shortcut
Kael did not rush the second attempt, and that patience became the most important difference between it and the first. Before, he had looked at the finished coat, considered what Brokk’s Hammer could do, and tried to jump directly from ingot to result. Now he understood exactly why that approach had failed.
He began by heating the Malachor Jade properly. It was not merely softened enough to accept a new shape. Kael followed the methods recorded in Andre’s ancestral book, spending hours heating, hammering, rotating, reheating, and drawing the material into long rods while paying attention to the direction of every strike.
Only after the internal structure had been worked into the proper alignment did he begin drawing the rods thinner. Even then, he moved slowly and kept his ambition under control.
He was not attempting to create an entire coat or match the masterpiece of a smith whose name had survived for generations. His goal was one small section of mesh, barely large enough to cover his palm.
Even that took far longer than expected.
The wires Kael produced came nowhere close to the dimensions demanded by the original design. Some of the masterpiece’s strands were described as comparable to spider silk, while his remained several times thicker and visibly metallic. They were still flexible enough to bend and fine enough to weave, and for the moment, that would have to be enough.
Accepting what he could not yet accomplish was probably part of learning. The previous mesh had failed because Kael created every strand without understanding anything beneath its visible shape. This time, each wire came from properly worked Malachor Jade. The grain traveled in the intended direction, the internal structure had been aligned through repeated cycles of heat and pressure, and the strands had been prepared as parts of the same system before he began joining them.
Then came the part he still hated.
Weaving demanded the kind of patience that made hammering feel merciful. One wire passed over another, the next went beneath, and each crossing had to be pulled, adjusted, and checked before Kael could continue. The motions were simple enough to understand, but repeating them without allowing the tension to drift required hours of concentration.
Andre occasionally walked past the table and watched without interfering. He offered no corrections, never pointed toward strands Kael had tightened incorrectly, and refused to comment whenever Kael dismantled another flawed section.
That silence irritated Kael more than criticism would have. Andre knew exactly what he was doing wrong, yet the dwarf seemed determined to make him discover every mistake himself.
Kael continued anyway. Food became something he remembered only when his hands began trembling, while sleep became several hours stolen between one test and the next. He worked until his fingers stopped cooperating, ate whatever Andre placed near him, collapsed somewhere inside the workshop, and resumed as soon as he woke.
After several days of work that seemed to produce almost nothing, the test section was finally complete. It was only large enough to cover his palm, ugly beside the diagram in the ancestral book, and both thicker and heavier than the original design. None of that changed the fact that its structure appeared sound.
Kael placed the mesh on the table and sensed Andre standing behind him before the dwarf spoke. He glanced over his shoulder and found Andre studying the result with his arms folded.
"You’ve been standing there long enough to grow roots," Kael said. "Are you planning to tell me whether I’ve made another expensive mistake?"
"I’m planning to let the material answer that," Andre replied. "Test it properly before ya start congratulating yourself."
Kael turned back to the table and placed the an undocketed rune against the mesh. He began with Fire, allowing a faint orange glow to spread from his rune into the metallic weave.
Every strand responded at once.
No section tightened independently, none of the wires fought against one another, and there were no strange contractions moving through the structure. The entire piece became firmer and more resistant, behaving exactly as Malachor Jade should when heated.
Kael allowed the Fire to fade before channeling Frost through the other rune. Cold entered the mesh, darkening the metallic strands slightly as their conductivity increased.
He sent a thin stream of internal energy into the weave and watched it travel cleanly across the entire structure. There were no sudden concentration points, loose sections, vibrations, or snapping wires. Kael maintained the flow for several seconds before withdrawing his hand, and the mesh remained perfectly intact.
A long breath escaped him as he leaned away from the table. "It finally works. After all those broken strands, I was starting to think your ancestor had written the design specifically to torment me."
"He probably would’ve enjoyed knowing it still caused suffering," Andre said with a grunt. "But don’t celebrate too early. Now ya need to make the wire ten times thinner, produce ten thousand times more of it, and weave enough to cover yer torso, shoulders, arms, back, sides, and legs."
Kael’s satisfaction weakened as he looked down at the palm-sized section. "When you describe it that way, this accomplishment suddenly feels much smaller."
"That’s craftsmanship," Andre said as he turned away. "Every success introduces ya to a much larger amount of work."
Kael studied the mesh for another moment before smiling. "Fortunately, I don’t think I need to repeat all of that work by hand."
Andre stopped so abruptly that his boots scraped against the floor. He slowly looked back as Kael removed another Malachor Jade ingot from his inventory and placed it beside the completed test mesh.
"What exactly do ya mean by that?" Andre asked, although his expression suggested he already knew he would dislike the answer.
Kael summoned Brokk’s Hammer and rested it against one shoulder. "I mean that I only needed to solve the problem once."
"No," Andre said, walking toward him. "Whatever shortcut just appeared inside yer head, forget it before ya waste another ingot."
Kael smiled and brought the legendary hammer down.
CLANG!
The Malachor Jade shifted beneath the strike, flattening slightly across the anvil. Andre moved closer, his irritation sharpening when Kael raised the hammer again.
"Did ya learn nothing from the last several days?" the dwarf demanded. "The Hammer cannot replace the knowledge required to prepare the material."
"You told me Brokk’s Hammer would perfectly create my stupidity, and you were right," Kael replied before striking again. "The problem was that I didn’t understand what I was asking it to create."
CLANG!
The ingot stretched across the anvil, though the change was neither random nor purely external. Thin lengths began separating from the larger mass.
Andre’s eyes narrowed when he recognized the emerging wire. "You are still trying to skip the drawing process."
"I’m repeating a process I already completed," Kael corrected. "The first time, all I could tell the Hammer was that I wanted thin wire. Thinness and shape were the limits of my understanding, so that was all it gave me."
Each strike lengthened the emerging strands. Kael concentrated on far more than their appearance. He remembered the heat required to prepare the Malachor, the direction of the grain, the exact way he had worked the rod, and the angle of every ordinary hammer strike. He recalled the proper tension within each strand, how Fire had hardened the completed structure, and how Frost allowed internal energy to travel through it.
He forced all of that understanding into the request. Kael was not asking the ingot to become generic mesh or blindly replicate something he had seen in a book. He was demanding that the material repeat a structure he had already forged, tested, broken, corrected, and finally understood.
Brokk’s Hammer descended again.
CLANG!
More wire emerged from the ingot, already crossed and aligned. Andre fell completely silent as Kael continued striking and the palm-sized test pattern began growing across the table.
The original piece did not stretch. New mesh formed beside it, matching its structure one section at a time.
Kael stopped only when enough mesh existed to cover most of a person’s back. Sweat ran from his forehead as he lowered Brokk’s Hammer and studied the result.
Andre stared at the expanded section before releasing a slow breath. "Ya spent several days learning the proper process, then used that thing to avoid doing almost all of it again. I’m beginning to suspect ya learned the wrong lesson."
"You should probably wait until after the test before deciding that," Kael said.
"Wait for what? The Hammer created the shape, but that does not mean it reproduced everything inside the material."
Kael placed his palm against the new section and activated Frost. Cold rushed through the entire mesh, causing Andre’s eyes to widen.
Every strand responded. Every crossing and every newly formed portion created through Brokk’s Hammer behaved exactly like the small piece Kael had forged by hand. Nothing snapped, contracted unevenly, or pulled against the rest of the structure.
Kael sent internal energy into the mesh. The current spread evenly across the entire piece without producing a single point of instability.
Andre stepped closer and touched one edge before moving his hand toward the center. "How did ya reproduce the internal structure? Brokk’s Hammer shouldn’t know the preparation behind the finished weave."
"It didn’t know," Kael said. "I did."
He pointed toward the original palm-sized section. "I spent days heating it, working the grain, drawing the wires, weaving them, and failing enough times to understand what caused each failure. Now I know what every strand needs to be before it becomes part of the mesh."
Kael tapped Brokk’s Hammer against the edge of the table. "Before, I asked the Hammer to create something I didn’t understand. This time, I gave it an answer I had already worked out."
Andre’s attention shifted between the legendary tool and the expanded mesh. Kael could almost see the dwarf retracing the process inside his head.
"The Hammer isn’t guessing anymore," Kael continued as he tapped the original mesh. "This section contains the correct structure, heat treatment, grain direction, tension, and conductivity. I understand how Fire moves through it, how Frost changes it, and how the crossings distribute energy."
He lifted Brokk’s Hammer slightly. "That means I don’t need to remake the same lesson ten thousand times. I only need to tell the material to repeat what I already know."
Andre’s expression became an entertaining mixture of offense, irritation, reluctant admiration, and something Kael suspected might have been pride. The dwarf muttered several words beneath his breath.
Kael leaned closer. "You’ll have to speak louder if you want me to appreciate the compliment."
"I said it’s cheating," Andre replied.
Kael laughed. "Using Brokk’s Hammer to reproduce something I already made correctly is cheating?"
"Aye. That is not how smithing is supposed to work."
Kael held up the legendary hammer between them. "I own a tool specifically designed to tell materials what form they should remember. If you had this Hammer, knew the mesh worked, and needed enough wire for an entire coat, would you honestly spend three months drawing and weaving every strand by hand?"
Andre opened his mouth, then closed it. The silence lasted long enough to answer the question.
"That’s what I thought," Kael said.