2008
09.11
Master of the Clerical Forge of Corean
(c)Morgan Pinkson
Clauis Elbeer is a confused and troubled man, a high cleric of Corean, who is full of doubt.Clauis was four years old when he first felt the transformation of iron and carbon, under the blow of a hammer, becoming steel. The moment, the ring of the new born metal, stunned him, and filled his mind and blood with a terrible, yet awing vibration; the birth cry of steel has ever since, been an alluring sound in his ears.
His father, then a master craftsman in his own right, saw his son at the door way of the smithy, frozen with awe, and knew instantly the cause. His father continued working the glowing amber rod with precision blows, and then hit the blow to bring the steel into its second transformation, watching his son as he did so. The effect was more than physical in the boy, young Clauis shivered with a paralyzing attention.
The father’s apprentice also noticed the awe stricken boy, and without coxing, set to the bellows, and made sure all was ready for the rod of newly born steel, that would soon be a dagger for a merchant visiting Mithril, to bring it to the next transformation.
The next transformation set the boy in to shudders, and gave the father and his apprentice the glee only marvel in the eyes of the non-adept can bring to the knowing, but they were sure that the sound of the fourth transformation would be too subtle for the child to hear.
They were wrong, and the physical awe of the boy was something on the level of terror now, and Clauis’ father, fearing for the boy, stopped his hammer and swooped the lad into the house, away from his work, and the sound of steel.
It was not terror, Clauis thinks back now, it was absolute joy, a feeling of life coming into being.
He could not tell his father that then, he had not the words, and fearing for the boy’s sanity around the forge, Clauis’ father enrolled the boy into the Mithril school the next day, and kept the lad from the forge and the smithy for four years, thinking that at eight years old, at least the boy would have language enough to understand what was happening, and would not succumb to the terror his father perceived in the boy’s eyes.
For the most part, this tactical retreat succeeded, the way his father hoped it would, although not in the method his design envisioned. Clauis often wonders however, what might have changed in his current understanding of steel and fire, if his father had pressed on to the sixth transformation of steel, or perhaps, into the arcane seventh.
[...] In Mithril we will meet Clauis Elbeer, the master of the Clerical Forge of Corean. [...]
Looks good on the page. Could you please add (c)Morgan Pinkson below the image?