The Unmaker

Smith Jaleel agreed to let Dahlia use the forge for her personal project, but only past midnight—she’d make too much noise and disturb the neighbouring children trying to sleep otherwise—so while she waited for the moon to hang, she sat cross-legged on a stool before the gently crackling furnace, tapping her feet impatiently as she studied the twenty or so fully carved giant locust parts laid out on the ground in front of her.

After they’d returned to the Oasis Town this afternoon with the twenty locust carcasses dragging behind the camels, Alice had immediately grabbed forty townsfolk to head back out to the undertown ruin, saying she wanted to get started on setting a trap for Madamaron immediately. There was no telling when the Mutant would appear in the ruin next, after all, so Dahlia was left on her own once again. She probably wouldn’t see Alice for at least the next week or two, but that was quite alright with her; she’d hauled her giant carcasses to the back of the forge and spent the rest of the night carving them into raw, dry chitin plates. There were enough parts in front of her that she could probably make twenty or so prosthetic legs with components to spare.

[Do not be wasteful, still,] Eria warned. [Typically, when you treat insect parts in high heat, you can only deform them once before they harden—this hardening process is irreversible. Once they cool down, you will not be able to reshape and reuse the components.]

Yeah. I know. I… I got it.

Eria gave her a suspicious look atop her shoulder. [You do know how to work a forge, correct?]

Quickly, she reviewed all the tools at her disposal in the forge: the anvils to the left, the solid blocks of iron, their surfaces scarred and pitted from countless hammer strikes. Smith Jaleel was always very rough with them. The furnace glowed behind her, its mouth open like a fiery maw, molten orange heat searing the back of her cloak gently. Tongs of various sizes hung on the walls, and she knew they were used to grip and manipulate hot metal.

Apart from the most basic tools, however, she found she didn’t really recognise some of the stranger-looking ones. On the workbenches were an assortment of peens—straight ones, cross ones, ball ones—and a bunch of chisels of different lengths and sizes, edges sharp and glinting in the dim light. She didn’t know which ones did what. There were also stacks of giant iron blocks just sitting around with variously-sized holes on the faces. Those were probably… swage blocks? She felt she’d seen Smith Jaleel use the variously-sized holes to hold up hot bars of metal for further shaping, but she wasn’t really sure.

It couldn’t be that difficult, right?

[... Midnight arrives,] Eria said. [You can begin now.]

Working a forge by herself was very difficult.

She began by telling Eria to display a mirage of the little girl’s prosthetic onto a workbench so she could see the dimensions again, and then she picked up a random giant locust chitin plate with her tongs. It wasn’t like she knew nothing about working a forge—even before arriving on the surface, she’d seen metalsmiths work in Alshifa occasionally—but sticking her raw component into the furnace and then stepping on the bellows was about the extent of her knowledge.

Smith Jaleel never showed it on his face, but it was tiring. She didn’t know how long she had to hold the heavy chitin in the fire for, but either she wasn’t stepping on the bellows hard enough or the flames were just naturally weak; it took ten minutes for the chitin to start glowing bright orange, and by the time she yanked it out her arms were already shaking, and she accidentally dropped the whole thing onto the ground. Grave mistake, she thought. It shattered into a hundred scorching chunks, burning her legs, almost setting the forge on fire. Then she spent the next fifteen minutes putting out all the small fires before sweeping the chunks into a bucket of water, completely out of breath.

Eager to try again, though, she stuffed another chitin plate into the fire after ten minutes of rest, yanking it out the moment it started glowing and then slamming it down onto the closest anvil. She used to shave off excess chitin with her bare hands, but this time she used a blacksmith’s hammer and chisel, carefully measuring the dimensions of the plate before bringing her chisel down—shattering the whole thing once again as it blew up right in her face.

… The chitin’s not evenly heated when I stick it into the furnace, so when I hit it with uneven force, the hotter parts will shatter while the cooler parts won’t, she thought, licking blood off her lips as she brushed the shrapnel away with a broom, shaking sweat off her brows. Next time, I have to stick it deeper into the fire and rotate it throughout. Then it’ll be evenly heated.

Third try. She rotated the heating chitin with her tongs for ten minutes, then slapped it down onto the anvil. Her first attempt at chiselling and shaving off excess chitin didn’t result in it exploding, so a triumphant smile rose onto her face for the briefest of seconds—then it exploded again, and she was beyond grateful her extra arms were already bracing her face this time.

Well.

Just because I know what to do doesn’t mean I actually have the dexterity and arm strength to heat such a large piece of chitin evenly.

[But why not just shave off the excess chitin before you heat the plate?]

… Oh.

Common sense was Eria’s specialty, so she started shaving off the excess from each plate before sticking them into the fire. Unsurprisingly, the fourth glowing plate didn’t gain any excess mass or weight even after heating, so this time she slapped it down on an anvil, feeling good about herself. She’d seen Smith Jaleel do this plenty of times. She grabbed the superheated plate with tongs in one hand and slammed it with a hammer in the other, lifting the plate and turning it ever so slightly as she hammered to give it that ‘curve’ needed for the hull of the prosthetic.

This was malleable, glowing hot chitin. Unlike her first attempt at making a prosthetic by sticking a dozen mostly inflexible plates around a metal pipe, she only needed one cylindrical plate for the lower leg, one ball-shaped plate for the ankle joint, and one flat plate for the foot. Just three plates in total. Since the lower leg was going to be the biggest component of the prosthetic by far, she opted to finish it first, and it was going incredibly well—glowing hot and malleable as the plate was, she managed to hammer it into a full cylinder after twenty minutes. It only resembled something like a human’s lower leg, but appearances weren't her top concern at the moment. As long as it cooled and hardened properly, it could be worked with.

While she waited for it to cool on the first anvil, she stuck two more plates into the fire and slammed them both onto different anvils; they’d be the ankle joint and the foot respectively. For the foot, she barely needed to do any shaping—she’d already shaved off the excess before putting it in the fire—but for the ankle joint, she realised the only way she’d get a perfect ball of chitin was by melting the entire thing down and then pouring it into a ball-shaped mould. There was a crucible next to the workbench she could use for the mould, but…

What if she just made the entire prosthetic out of one single plate?

Instead of making the three parts of the prosthetic separately and then joining them together with nails and chains and metal pins, what if she just heated an entire giant lump of insect chitin and then shaped it into the prosthetic?

Carving out the shape of the prosthetic before heating was impossible—the lump of chitin would be too thick and tough for her to make any detailed carvings, and the whole point of using the forge was to heat the chitin and make it tougher after processing—so she’d just need a bit of artistry and dexterity to shape the malleable glowing chitin into a complete prosthetic right out of the furnace. Then she wouldn’t have to make it in separate components and risk something going wrong in between. The less steps, the better.

… Can it be done?

[It will be very difficult,] Eria replied honestly. [There is a reason why most Great Makers make prosthetics in individual components before joining them together with gear arrays. To shape an entire lump of raw insect chitin into a complete prosthetic within the time it takes to cool and harden right out of the fire is… almost impossible. No matter how good you are with a hammer—or how many hammers you have—you cannot possibly shape the complete prosthetic before it hardens.]

But if I shape it with my hands?

Eria scoffed. [Right out of the fire, the temperature of the chitin can reach up to nine hundred degrees. Even if it only takes thirty minutes for it to cool to room temperature, you will have to finish shaping the entire prosthetic before then while enduring the heat with your bare hands. Do you want to attempt something like that?]

…

She let out a heavy exhale as she went back to her original plan: making separate components and then connecting them together afterwards. Forging the ankle ball joint with the crucible would take too much time—she didn’t know if the fire was hot enough to melt insect chitin down into liquid, anyways—so she settled with a bronze ball joint she’d bought from a street vendor for the time being, waiting until the foot and lower leg components cooled down on their respective anvils. Then she grabbed all three components, tossed them onto the nearest empty workbench, and laid out a bunch of nails and vials of adhesive sap; the same ones she’d used for her first failed prosthetic.

Since she’d already made a prosthetic before, joining the three components together was no trouble at all. It only took her five minutes to cobble the prosthetic into existence, and when she finally took a step back, wiping rivers of sweat off her cheeks, Eria gave her its status screen.

[Desert Locust Tibia Prosthetic Leg (Quality = E)(Spd +0/2)(Tou +0/3)(Strain +497)]

[... It is a decent prosthetic leg that will provide its user some amount of attribute levels,] Eria said plainly. [However, it is as I said. Without a certain Lesser Great Mutant’s parts that only the Great Makers have access to, whatever prosthetic you make will not be able to ‘adapt’ to the user’s constant change in physiology. The prosthetic will not grow alongside the user. It will have to be remade over and over, year by year, and it cannot be a proper replacement for the user’s original legs. It does not have the nerve connections to do so.]

…

[But this is a good first step for a prosthetic. If you can lower the amount of strain it will bring to the user–]

I know.

She wasn’t sleepy yet. Sweat and grime clung to her face and made her feel hotter than even standing under the midday sun. Through the hours of the quiet night, she made three more prosthetic legs, each better than the last—her first prosthetic would strain the user too much, so she cut down on the chitin and made the whole thing lighter as a result. Her second prosthetic was too jagged and blocky, so she smoothed the edges out by putting more strength into her hammers. Her third prosthetic’s foot couldn’t bend, so she custom-made the fourth’s foot by folding a thinner chitin plate over itself, creating a small hollow space inside the foot so it’d be more flexible… and, as a result, her prosthetic became more and more refined.

Four hours past midnight, Eria pulled up the status screen for her fourth prosthetic, and it was…

[Desert Locust Tibia Prosthetic Leg (Quality = D)(Spd +0/3)(Tou +0/6)(Strain +285)]

[... Terrific job,] Eria said cheerily, jumping off her shoulder and onto her newest prosthetic, skittering up and around the leg to take a closer look. [With the cost of strain nearly cut in half, even a child should be able to meld with it without any issues. Now, please return to your room and go to sleep. You can go to the chief’s household tomorrow. I doubt the chief would refuse a Swarmsteel leg of this quality, so she would at least attempt to let you meld it onto her daughter–]

Dahlia smashed the leg to pieces with a fist, and the shrapnel went flying everywhere, bouncing off the walls, clattering across the sandstone floor. Eria was nearly smashed alongside it, and she did feel a bit guilty about giving her Archive a fright… but she felt horrible in her chest, anger flaring up inside her, and it had nothing to do with the ‘quality’ of her Swarmsteel.

She’d forgotten her dad’s teachings.

“… Not once did I touch the chitin with my bare hands,” she whispered, stumbling back onto the stool before the furnace; the forge was an utter mess with all her insect parts just strewn about. “Cold. Distant. It was all chisel and hammer and tongs and… nothing from me. No wonder I don’t like it. That’s a generic Swarmsteel just about anyone can wear, and I didn’t make it with anyone in mind.”

Her dad had always taught her to make Swarmsteel for one person, and only that one person. So what if the newest version of her prosthetic was rated higher quality by Eria? So what if a child could meld with it without convulsing and hyperventilating? None of that meant anything if the little girl herself couldn’t meld with it, and she knew for a fact that it wasn’t good enough—it needed to be a Swarmsteel that could pair with the little girl’s goggles made from blood, sweat, and tears.

So she sat on her stool, face buried in her hands, breathing hard and heavy… until she felt a drop of blood trickle down her claws and onto the ground with a sharp little splat.

Her antennae perked.

She glanced down where her blood had landed onto a broken shard from her prosthetic.

And though it’d once been a garishly yellow shard, the chitin ripped straight from the legs of a giant desert locust, her golden blood bloomed across the surface like an inkblot spreading on a scroll.

There were no winds blowing into the forge. No breath of hers made her blood move. Still, with every blink, she watched as her blood diffused through the imperceivable pores of the chitin and dyed the whole shard gold.

… Eria.

[What is it?]

You mentioned, when we first met, that you were surprised I melded so quickly and efficiently with the cave cricket bracers.

[Yes. Now I know it is because you are an assassin bug that excels in wearing the carcasses of your prey. You being able to meld with Swarmsteel quickly is–]

I know what the prosthetic is missing to make it uniquely ‘mine’.

She shot off her stool, picked up the shard by her feet as she did, and stared intently at it.

It wasn’t just dyed gold on the surface.

Her blood had permeated through every pore of the shard and made the whole thing light as a feather.

[... Interesting,] Eria mused. [The total biomass of ‘desert locust chitin’ remains unchanged in the shard, but somehow, with your blood–]

The Swarmsteel is missing ‘me’, she thought, dragging a claw across her palm to draw a trickle of golden blood. Are you sure, after all, that there’s only one Lesser Great Mutant in the world whose parts can make a Swarmsteel adaptable?