Rise of the Living Forge

Once Arwin and Lillia got back to the inn, Lillia made straight for the baths while Arwin waited near the entrance of the tavern to avoid tracking filth everywhere. Once Lillia finished and stepped out, her wet hair hanging around her shoulders in strands, he hurried to take her place.

The water in the tub had already been replaced and Arwin was pleasantly surprised to find that it was already warm.. He stripped out of his ruined clothes and sank into the bath, letting out a relieved sigh as the water soothed his exhausted muscles.

Somehow, it felt even better than a normal bath. The water almost seemed to massage him. Arwin wasn’t sure if that was an aspect of Lillia’s class or if he was just exhausted. At the moment, he didn’t care.

He let himself enjoy the water for a minute longer before getting to work scrubbing himself furiously. He’d been covered in dirt for far too long. Even if he hadn’t cared, Lillia would probably execute him if he tracked it into her room.

As tempting as it was to remain in the bath for another hour, Lillia was waiting for him. Arwin finished washing his hair and snagged a towel and a spare set of clothes that hung from a rack, where he’d taken to leaving them.

It was a lot easier to swap into a new set of clothes when he didn’t have to either make the trip wrapped in a towel or track dirt into her room in order to retrieve them. Arwin dried himself off and pulled his change of clothes on.

He then squinted at the pile of oil and soot-stained rags that had once been on his body. There were some things that could be saved. There were some that couldn’t. The pile before him was the latter.

He nudged the pile into the corner, making a note to toss it out the following morning.

I should try to get a leather apron or something so I don’t destroy a perfectly good set of clothing every single time I do something really intensive in the smithy.

Arwin ambled out of the bathroom and through the kitchen as he made his way over to Lillia’s room, using his memory for the final portion of the trip when the darkness surrounding it took the last of the light away.

He carefully tested the bed to make sure he wasn’t about to sit down on top of Lillia before lowering himself into it with a weary sigh.

“What a week,” Arwin muttered as his head sank into the pillow. Lillia laid back beside him and rested her head against his chest.

“Not exactly how I expected it to go,” Lillia agreed, a small note of amusement in her voice. “But I don’t think we can complain too much. I hope Melissa succeeds.”

“Me too,” Arwin said. He could still feel the faint connection running from him to the armor. At the very least, that meant she was still alive. “Going up against a whole group of assassins on her own is going to be rough, but we can’t afford to interfere beyond what we already have.”

“I think we did everything we could. She’d have already been dead if that drunkard didn’t bring her to us and if Anna hadn’t healed her. She would have been dead afterward if you hadn’t made her the armor. She’s got a fighting chance. That’s more than most.”

“Don’t pretend like you weren’t part of it,” Arwin said. A thought struck him and the corner of his lip curled up as he bit back a laugh. “And can you really call one of your clients a drunkard when you’re the one selling him alcohol? That feels like it’s got to be bad for customer relations.”

Lillia lifted her head slightly and drummed her fingers on his chest, their faint points poking just enough into his skin to make themselves known without being uncomfortable. “It’s his fault that he won’t give us an actual name to use, and it’s not going to be a problem so long the information remains between us — which I’m certain it will.”

He snorted. “You won’t get any trouble from me. I was just making an observation.”

“I’m sure you were,” Lillia said. Arwin could hear the amusement in her tone. She laid her head back against his chest and fell silent.

Arwin closed his eyes and let his body relax as he tried to drift off too sleep. Given how long they’d both been working, it should have been easy. Yet, somehow, rest evaded him.

Minutes ticked by. He lost count of how many. The darkness made it impossible to tell what time it was or how long he’d been lying there. Arwin couldn’t say he wasn’t comfortable — he wouldn’t have chosen anywhere else to be.

He just couldn’t sleep.

“Arwin?” Lillia whispered. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah. I can’t seem to fall asleep tonight, but I’m too tired to actually get up and do anything. You too?”

“Yeah.” Lillia’s tail wrapped around one of Arwin’s legs and she shifted her position, looping her arms around his neck as she let out a huff that tickled his neck. “It’s so annoying. I’ve had it happen before, but not recently. There’s just so much I want to do that my brain won’t let me sleep.”

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“Maybe you need to distract the distraction.”

“Great suggestion. How?”

“Let me know if you figure it out,” Arwin suppressed a grin as Lillia let out an irritated grumble.

They fell silent for a few seconds. Then Lillia’s weight shifted once more as she lifted her head off his chest. Her hair brushed across him.

“We don’t speak too much about… before all of this,” Lillia said.

“No,” Arwin agreed, his smile falling away. “I don’t have many good memories from before this. Before I met you and Reya, before the Menagerie — it was hell. Just endless death and slaughter. Even when I thought it was for a just cause, it was never something I wanted to think about.”

“Not at all?” Lillia asked.

Arwin hesitated. Then he shook his head as best as the pillow would let him. “I wouldn’t say that. There were some good things. Some men and women that made it worthwhile. I don’t know if I would have made it this far without them. I damn near gave up after some of the bloodiest fights. Blake stopped me more than once.”

“You’ve mentioned him before,” Lillia said, the question clear in her voice.

Old memories brushed across Arwin’s mind. He winced. Memories that he hadn’t let himself dwell on in years. Memories that should have carried more pain than he felt himself able to bear — but, to his surprise, the pain didn’t come.

There was the bitterness of loss and a deep, throbbing ache that Arwin suspected wouldn’t leave as long as he lived, but not the open wound that he’d expected to find.

“Sorry,” Lillia said. “I shouldn’t have brought that up. I know how—”

“No, it’s fine. I’ve been avoiding it for long enough.” Arwin let out a slow sigh and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling above him. “Blake was my best friend. He was the most optimistic person I ever met. I can barely ever remember a time when he wasn’t smiling.”

“He sounds like he was a good man.”

“He was. He never wanted to kill. Blake hated everything about adventuring. He absolutely loved complaining about it, but you could never tell if he was serious. I remember him swearing up and down that he’d abandon us the moment the Guild took their eyes off him so he could run off and become a tanner in the countryside. He never did. He’d have been so damn jealous if he saw me now. You know, he never should have died. He wasn’t meant to be in my party in the first place.”

“Nobody should have died. The whole damn war never should have happened.”

“Blake would have agreed with you before we even knew the truth,” Arwin said, letting out a heavy breath. “But it wasn’t just that. A few weeks before Blake died, I found out he wasn’t even in the guild.”

A second of surprised silence delayed Lillia’s words. “What do you mean?”

“He was just a random warrior. Never registered with the guild, but he kept joining party after party and working his way up through word of mouth alone. He was so determined to help everyone he could that nobody ever really thought about it. Everyone else in my camp — even the best of them — were there for more than just justice. They were there for money. For honor. Blake was just there to help.” A small laugh slipped from Arwin’s mouth before he could stop it. “He was an absolute idiot. Never thought anything through and he exaggerated every single thing he did. If he saved five men, he’d say it was ten. When we pointed it out, he just claimed he’d make up the difference the next time around.

“He just did whatever he wanted to and made the rest of us feel like heartless bastards in the process. I think he was responsible for more than a few adventurers taking a real hard look at themselves, myself included. It was hard not to. It didn’t matter who you were — if you were a prick, Blake called you on it.”

Lillia remained silent, clearly content to just listen. At this point, the words were flowing from Arwin’s mouth with enough momentum that he wasn’t sure he could have stopped if he wanted to.

“He was like that all the way up until the end,” Arwin said. His chest constricted and the corners of his eyes prickled. “We were covering a retreat. Our healer had been injured earlier and had already pulled back. A mage blew up a huge tower to our side in attempt to cut off the pursuing monsters, but some of our own men got caught in its collapse.”

“The city to the north of the kingdom. Stonebrook,” Lillia murmured. “I remember that battle.”

“Your forces nearly killed us, so I can imagine why. It was Blake’s fault,” Arwin said with a sad smile. “Instead of running, he ran right back to the tower to try and pull the people that got caught in it free. Some monsters had already made it through, so I held them off while he tried to rescue people. I told him he was being an idiot, you know. Said we were just going to get ourselves killed and there wasn’t anyone left to save. I was wrong.”

“He succeeded.” It wasn’t a question. There was more reverence in Lillia’s tone than Arwin had expected, as if she’d known Blake herself.

“Bastard pulled it off. Dragged four people out of the flames. Took his sweet time doing it, too. By the time I managed to defeat the monsters on my back and turned to see what was going on, he was already dead.” Arwin’s throat felt tight, but it felt good to tell someone else about Blake. Almost as if, by speaking of him again, a small part of the man still lived on. “A support beam fell and crushed his back. His stupid fancy armor was spending all its energy trying to mend itself and it crumpled like paper. He died in my arms. And you know what Blake did with the last moments he had? He smirked up at me and said that he’d saved ten people. He only saved four. The liar.”

Arwin let out a soft laugh. The sides of his face felt wet, but the sadness felt bittersweet.

“Fancy armor…,” Lillia muttered, her tone strange. From everything Arwin had retold in his story, that really didn’t feel like the bit to latch onto. Lillia grabbed Arwin’s shoulder. “Was it white?”

Arwin blinked. “I — yes. It was, but only when he activated it’s self-repair properties after a battle. Did I mention that?”

“No.” Lillia’s grip on him tightened as disbelieving words tumbled from her mouth in a stunned whisper. “The reason I remember the battle of Stonebrook wasn’t because we almost killed you. It was because six demons were caught in a collapsed tower, and a masked warrior clad in white amor dragged them to safety. The same warrior that had been rumored to have rescued hundreds of demons in other battles, binding their wounds and dragging the injured to safety. The warrior that died in that battle, dragged away by the Hero before anyone could ever see his face. We all thought he was a demon that you killed. I don’t think Blake ever lied to you, Arwin. He was just counting the lives of everyone he saved.”