The [Soul Flame] in the hearth beside Arwin danced merrily as it waited hungrily for more metal to heat. He was pretty sure that metal was just about the last material that a long bow should have been made out of.
Even if he was using Brightsteel, it was still magnitudes less flexible than wood, and he’d seriously underestimated one little problem. Arwin needed a piece of metal that actually wanted to be a bow.
Finding something that wanted to be a sword wasn’t hard. Armor, weapons, all of the normal things that metal was meant to be – that was easy. But a bow… not so much. It was like trying to find a child whose ideal future career was a pickler.
They probably existed somewhere, but chances were they’d need a little bit of motivation to get to that point. And that was exactly what Arwin did. He found the piece of Brightsteel that seemed most indifferent about its eventual form and spent about an hour going on about how fascinating bows were.
It was – quite literally – akin to talking to a brick wall. He had no clue if the metal could actually hear him. His reflection, warped in the face of the Brightsteel, spoke back to him as if mocking his words. Arwin pressed on. If something was stupid and worked, then it wasn’t stupid.
“Don’t tell the other pieces of metal,” Arwin informed his chosen piece, “but close-range fighting is actually a little boring. The real excitement is in blasting someone’s head off from a hundred meters away. Doesn’t that sound fascinating?”
The metal didn’t respond.
“Imagine how flexible you could be. Nice and bendy. That’s much better than being stuck as a stiff old sword. Who wants to be stiff? Nobody, that’s who. You could be raining thunder down on our enemies from two – no, three hundred meters away. Imagine that. What can a sword do in comparison?”
A whole lot of stuff, but that’s not the point. I am not going to start arguing with myself.
It swirled and intermixed like a viscous soup of agony. The crystal wanted more than anything to escape it, but all it could do was make it more intense. It couldn’t even remember the last time it had felt relief.
And, in the rippling green, Arwin saw himself. He saw his future, should he fail to succeed on the Challenge that the Mesh gave him. There would come a time where he couldn’t forge enough equipment to sustain himself.
If he couldn’t change his fate, he would become like the crystal, seeking out magic like a rabid dog and devouring it – just to find that the hunger had grown deeper still in the time it had taken him to swallow.
Visions of his future appeared hidden within the verdant ocean. Rabid and mindless, his teeth turned to jagged spikes and his hair overgrown. Eyes, sightless and starved, darted about like bees trapped within a cage.
The back of Arwin’s spine prickled at the intensity of the crystal’s anger. At its hunger – and at its fear. He set his jaw as the vision bore down on his mind and tried to crush his will.
“No,” Arwin said. He slammed the visions away with the force of his own will. “That’s not what’s going to happen to me. I will conquer the Challenge.”
The crystal shimmered around him. It was laughing. Arwin’s annoyance grew. [Stonesinger] let him communicate with magical materials. It hadn’t said anything about fighting back against them – but he wasn’t about to let that stop him.
He threw the vision back, but he didn’t let the crystal free. He envisioned a different future and imposed it onto the glistening stones.
A future where he stood atop a cliff, clad in glistening armor that most could only dream of seeing. The roaring might of Verdant Blaze in one hand and a massive bow in the other. The Hungering Maw coiled within him, a snake that had been tamed and laid in wait for his beck and call.
Behind him was his guild, all clad in armor that he had made. Some of them had faces – Lillia, Rodrick, Reya, Anna. The others were faceless. They were the ones he hadn’t found yet, but they would come. He would not lose himself. There was too much at stake.
Arwin slammed his reality into the crystal like a hammer blow. It was the only reality he would accept, and a magical rock wasn’t about to make him change that. The Heart of the Devouring Prism shuddered in his grip.
It tried to push back. Perhaps it did – Arwin wasn’t actually sure. This was not a contest of power but a contest of will. And, no matter how strong the crystal had once been, Arwin would not be outdone.
“Yield,” Arwin snarled. “You will do as I say. I will forge you just like I will forge my future. Your only options are to bend or to break.”
The crystal struggled against him. It pushed fear and doubt. It knew that Arwin would fail. It –
“I will not fail!” Arwin roared. “Yield!”
The crystal’s vision shattered. It crumbled around him like planes of breaking glass and swirled into a green hurricane. A sea of black stretched out around Arwin as the crystal gathered. Across from him floated the Heart of the Devouring Prism.
Color bloomed from the darkness. Silver and deep blue metal gathered into the form of a bow; the Heart of the Devouring Prism carved into the bow’s grip. The vision faded. Arwin’s eyes opened.
He still sat on the ground in his rickety temporary smithy. The crystal rested in his hands, just as it had when he’d closed his eyes – and yet, even though all appeared identical to how it had been just a short while ago, it was everything but.