Chapter 84: Fog of Grief
Mori was a festering wound at the foot of the hills, drawing in all the dregs of the region: deserters, magic crystal smugglers, and those who simply had nowhere else to go.
I reached the outskirts at sunset. There were no walls here—just a palisade of blackened stakes, with rags... or hides... drying on some of them. The air was heavy with the smell of damp earth, cheap ale, and burnt sulfur.
My right side was on fire. The makeshift harness for the prosthesis had worked itself loose three days ago. Every step echoed with a dull thud of metal against my ribs, chafing my skin raw.
I pulled my hood lower to hide my face and stepped into the mud of the main street.
People scurried back and forth here. Sideways glances from beneath furrowed brows, hands hidden in wide sleeves. Nobody paid me any mind until they noticed the strange silhouette beneath my cloak.
I found the smithy by sound.
The blacksmith didn't even turn around when I stepped under the awning. He was pounding a hammer against a piece of glowing steel, showering sparks.
"I need the forge and a vice," I said. "For an hour. I'll pay in silver."
The blacksmith lowered his hammer and slowly turned around.
"Silver? From a drifter?" He spat into the sawdust. "Show me first."
I pulled one of the coins I'd taken from the bandits out of my pocket. The blacksmith narrowed his eyes and held out his hand.
At that moment, the shadows at the entrance deepened.
"Hey, Grom, you got company?" The voice was shrill, unpleasant.
Three men walked into the smithy. They wore a mismatched assortment of armor stripped from corpses, but the one leading the gang had a cloudy crystal dangling from a leather cord around his neck.
"This one-armed guy wants to rent the forge," the blacksmith grunted, taking a step back. He clearly didn't want any part of this.
The gang leader, a scrawny guy with rotten teeth, stepped closer. He reeked of booze.
"One-armed?" he smirked. "And what are you paying with? Maybe whatever's under that cloak? Iron doesn't come cheap these days."
I sighed. A fight was the last thing I needed right now.
"I just want to fix my gear," I said quietly, keeping my eyes down. "Get lost."
"Look at this arrogant bastard," the leader nodded to his boys. "Strip those rags. Let's see what you're hiding under there."
One of the thugs, a stocky brute with a club, stepped toward me and yanked the edge of my cloak.
[SKILL ACTIVATION: WILL TO LIVE]
The brute swung his club. The strike vector was primitive—straight down. I took a step forward and slightly to the left, thrusting my elbow, locked at a ninety-degree angle, out to meet the club. The blow slammed against the rigid structure braced against my torso. The club deflected, and the brute's arm, carried by its own momentum, left his flank completely exposed.
A strike!
Crack!
The thug immediately doubled over, gasping for air.
"You little piece of shit!" the leader shrieked.
He grabbed the amulet around his neck. The crystal flared with a crimson light.
I watched the clot of energy take shape. A wave of heat washed over me. There was no time to dodge—the space was too cramped, and the distance too short.
So I moved straight into him, thrusting the flat side of the prosthesis's forearm forward to shield my face and throat. The angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. I shifted my torso slightly, creating a plane for a ricochet.
Boom!
The magic slammed into the metal. The impact rattled me, the smell of singed leather hitting my nostrils, but the spell failed to pierce the titanium. Fire sprayed outward, singeing the leader's own eyebrows.
While he was squinting from the flash, I closed the distance. My left hand clamped down on his wrist, and my right simply came down on his shoulder. I leaned in with my full weight. The leader's collarbone couldn't withstand the pressure of the metal. He screamed and collapsed to his knees.
The third bandit, seeing what had happened to his buddies, backed up and bolted out of the smithy.
"Hand over everything you've got, or I'll kill you," I said quietly, and the leader, shaking violently, instantly handed over all he had: exactly two silver pieces.
Once the skill deactivated, I reeled. Black spots swam before my eyes. A spasm gripped my stomach, bile rising in my throat. A faint, sickening tremor overtook my hands.
I braced my good hand against the anvil to keep from falling.
"You..." the blacksmith rasped. He stared at me in horror.
"Tools," I managed, swallowing the thick saliva. "And fire. Quick."
The next hour passed in a blur. I took off the prosthesis, severing the connection to the nerves that had grown into the metal—that was the most agonizing part, feeling like a helpless hunk of meat—and clamped it into the vice. I reforged the mounts, replacing the makeshift bolts with crude but durable rivets. Working with one hand and my teeth while the smith pumped the bellows, not daring to ask a single question.
When I finished and strapped the arm back on, it fit like a glove.
I tossed a silver coin onto the workbench.
"Tell me," I asked, pulling on my glove. "The road to Dornheim. Is it clear?"
The blacksmith let out a nervous chuckle.
"To Dornheim? Kid, did you just drop from the moon? There's the Rift out there. Ever since that war four years ago, the whole region's been swallowed by the 'Mist of Sorrow.'"
The Rift. The Mist. Zeno hadn't mentioned any of it. Whatever.
I walked out of the smithy into the night chill of Mori. The bandits would likely return with reinforcements, but by then, I'd be long gone.