Chapter 108: Elisser
Boris raises his hand. One of his guards materializes from the shadow behind the forge and leans close.
Boris speaks low enough that I have to read his lips more than hear the words. "Bring Master Elisser’s best weapons."
The guard freezes. His eyes fix on Boris for one full second—checking. Making sure he heard right.
"Go. Go." Boris waves him off.
The guard moves.
I analyze the reaction. That pause wasn’t standard military protocol. Ordering Elisser’s stock touched something above Boris’s usual authority. Something political. Something with a price tag.
Good. That means there’s room to negotiate.
"Wait," I call after the guard.
He stops. Boris turns to me.
"What now?"
"Boris." I lean forward. Rest my elbows on the table. Mirror his posture from earlier—deliberate, calculated. "I just handed you enough leviathanic crystal to keep this entire operation running for months. Maybe longer. Fresh supply. New source."
I pause. Let the silence tell more than words.
"With those beads, you can continue your research. Maybe even figure out how to reverse the erosion. And I told you I’d go back to the tower so I can get more."
Boris’s face closes. He leans back, brings both hands up, fingers interlaced, palms covering his mouth and chin. Only his eyes are visible above the knuckles. Dark. Calculating.
He knows what’s coming. He’s been in enough negotiations to smell a price hike before the number leaves the mouth.
"What do you want, Sands?"
First time he’s used my last name since we met.
"Don’t bring me weapons. Bring me the blacksmith."
The words land. Boris doesn’t move. His eyes narrow behind his fingers.
"Not possible."
"Why not?"
Boris exhales through his nose. His shoulders drop an inch. His hands come apart and land flat on the table. Out of energy. Out of angles.
"That person is harder to manage than anything in this desert." He rubs the bridge of his nose. "The deal we struck to get them working for us has two conditions. First, we capture one beast per week, alive, and Elisser executes it. No assistance. That keeps their system active and erosion at bay."
"And the second?"
"Nobody bothers Elisser. Ever. Elisser forges what they want, when they want. No commissions. No requests. No conversations. That’s the price of having an Order Class S master smith, even with a body Rank C."
Class Rank-S at Rank C.
My gap is even bigger. My class is SSS, my body is E. The Order determines the ceiling of what you can do. The Rank determines what you can do right now. A Rank-S smith working with Rank-C materials and a Rank-C body can still produce work that a Rank-A smith with worse fundamentals couldn’t dream of.
I need this blacksmith.
"Then we don’t have a deal, Boris. I’m sorry." I put my hands on the table and begin to stand.
Pure bluff. The beads are already on his side of the table. I can’t take them back without turning this into something uglier than a negotiation.
But Boris doesn’t know that. Or maybe he does and can’t risk it.
His hand catches mine before I’m fully upright. "Wait. Please." The word costs him. "I can... try."
He needs more beads. Greedy.
"Don’t try. Bring him to me." I sit back down. "I know what I’m doing."
Boris raises an eyebrow. The distrust is visible—written in the lines around his eyes, in the slight tilt of his head.
"Trust me on this one," I say.
If thirty years in Thirstfall taught me anything, it’s that everything has a price in the deep. You just need to know if you can afford it.
And I know exactly what this old man’s price is.
Boris turns to the guard, who’s been standing at the edge of the room waiting for a final order.
"Get Elisser."
The guard nods and turns. I add one sentence before he clears the doorway.
"Tell him an SSS Appraisal is here."
The guard stops. Looks back at me. Looks at Boris.
Boris is staring at me with eyes so wide the firelight reflects in both of them like twin coins.
Behind me, Rhayne lets out a breath I didn’t realize she’d been holding. A small, quiet smile—the first since she heard what’s waiting for her if nothing changes.
"You..." Boris starts. Stops. Starts again. "An Appraisal... SSS?"
"Some secrets sleep at the bottom of the deep." I take a sip of the cactus wine he poured earlier—bitter, harsh, the alcohol sitting in the throat like a warning. "And that’s where they stay."
Boris processes. I can see the calculations running behind his eyes—what an SSS Appraisal means, what it’s worth, what it changes about the equation between us.
He doesn’t push.
Smart...
We wait.
Boris poured the wine from a ceramic jug—homemade, fermented from desert cactus pulp and a starchy tuber that only grows in Thirstfall’s deeper biomes. It tastes like whiskey’s angry cousin. The kind of drink that exists purely to make the day hurt less.
I take one sip. Only one. I need my head clear for what’s coming.
Five minutes pass. The workshop is quiet except for the faint hum of the blue light filtering through the doorway and the distant murmur of the market beyond.
Then a voice from the back corridor. Hoarse. Female. Loud enough to rattle the tools hanging on the wall.
"You’re all crooks! Scammers! Every last one of you!" The words get louder with every step, accompanied by the sharp clack-clack-clack of a cane striking stone. "We had a deal! A DEAL! And you dare—you dare—send some boot-licking errand boy to drag me out of my workshop like I’m some—"
She rounds the corner.
Elisser is not what I expected.
She’s small. Looks 50 years old. Five-foot-nothing in boots that add two inches. Wiry frame wrapped in a leather apron stained with decades of forge-work—oil, soot, metal dust, and substances I can’t identify ground into the fabric so deep they’ve become part of the material. Her hair is jet black with white streaks, cropped short and uneven, like she cuts it herself with whatever’s sharp and nearby. Her face is a topographic map of hard years—deep lines, sharp cheekbones, a jaw set at an angle that says I will bite you if you waste my time.
Her hands are the real story. Scarred, calloused, burned, and rebuilt. Decades of forge-work written in the tissue—and the metal wrote back. Each finger moves with independent precision, running calculations even at rest.
Her eyes—pale grey, almost colorless—sweep the room. Hit Boris. Dismiss him. Hit Rhayne. Linger for one second. Hit me.
Stop.
She looks at me the way a jeweler looks at an uncut stone. Not friendly. Not hostile. Assessing.
The tirade dies mid-sentence.
"Well," she says. Her voice drops from a shout to something dangerously quiet. "That’s interesting."
I smile.
Difficult women are my specialty.