Into The Steel

Once upon a time, blacksmiths were the most important craftsmen in a city.

Whether it was nails, horseshoes, weapons, or utensils, your only choice was the local blacksmith.

Nowadays, blacksmiths are largely a thing of the past – a cliche at the local Ren-Fair – along with glass blowers, cured turkey legs, and over priced mead. Most people born in the last hundred years will pass their entire lives without ever thinking of a blacksmith, let alone using their services.

The modern blacksmith may not be the well-rounded utility player of days gone by, but we do fulfill the desires of certain niche markets. Primarily, we make chinsy crap that’s fast and easy, with low quality steel. But some of us make true art, for the sorts of people willing to pay a lot of money for that sort of thing.

In my case, I specialize in weaponry. Want to give your 12 year old son a pair of chained, death balls that open up into rotating blades, I can make that for you. Care to give your husband an exacting, razor sharp replica of that beautiful spear he fell in love with in his favorite Wushu film, I got you covered. If you can imagine a weapon crazier than real life Freddie Kruger claws, or more dangerous than Xenas chakram, then I can smith it.

I’m not saying blacksmithing is a super lucrative business – I am never gonna get rich off it. It pays acceptably well, but it’s the privacy I really prize.

I have my own workshop. No one else works there as I refuse to take any apprentices, and refuse to enlist any help. I make that a big part of my marketing strategy – if you order something from me, you know it will be made by me.

In reality, I have some, secrets.

My father was taken because of his secret. The government came at night and took him away. This was when I was 3, maybe 4 years old. I don’t remember it, but my mother does, and she told me what happened next.

We were taken to a local OHP lab, held there for about a month, separated of course, and tested.

I only remember one of the tests. At the time I thought it was a game. A technician would place a cookie on a transparent shelf, outside of my reach, and leave it there. Then they would turn a small green light above the cookie on and off. When the light was on, I was supposed to do everything I could to get the cookie. If I got the cookie, I was told, I would get four more cookies.

Thinking on it now, I’m pretty sure it was a test of latent psionic ability. Or maybe not. After all this is the OHP we’re talking about, the most inscrutable agency in the history of government. (That’s the Office of Human Preservation by the way, if you live on another planet or something.)

Needless to say, I passed the tests, and so did my mother, and we were sent home: her a widow; I fatherless.

I’m lucky they didn’t do follow up tests. I think that’s pretty common today, now that late onset has been clinically proven. My case must have slipped under the radar, because I’ve never seen hide nor hair of OHP again. Had they checked in with me around 10 years old, I’d have been screwed. Strength and imperviousness are particularly difficult to obfuscate, especially the latter. The first time they tried to take my blood, and the needle snapped in half, they would have known the truth.

I’m not sure what they’d have done with me at that point, being nearly invulnerable. If I know the OHP, they’d figure out some way to dispatch me – maybe a drowning, like an unwanted kitten. They would do anything in order to cleanse the human gene pool of the aberration of my DNA.

Luckily, they’ve never had the chance. I keep quiet, put my head down, make my maces and throwing knives, pay my taxes. I own conventional blacksmithing tools – I even use them once in awhile to simulate wear and tear. All necessary to maintain the illusion of who I am supposed to be.

In truth, my fist is my hammer, my fingers are my tongs. I can warp hot steel with my bare hands, as though it were wet clay, pulling and prodding, stretching and pounding, until my will is directly infused into my creation. Reaching into a blazing forge to pull out a white hot square of steel feels like running my hand under warm water.

Picture me, at the forge, in the dark, lit only by the white yellow glow of the fire, and the orange red sunrise of the steel ingot. See me raising my fist over my head, and bringing it down with a metallic clang onto the hunk of formless metal, sending a shower of sparks in every direction, bouncing harmlessly off of my unprotected face.

The lie that defines me in the outside world is tossed aside in my shop. Only at the forge am I my true self. There, I take out all of my anger, my rage, my hate – towards OHP, towards cruel fate, towards the ignorance and fear that cost me a father – and I release it, blow by blow, into the steel.

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