The forge burned with a hungry light. Ratter – the unfortunately named knock-kneed boy who acted as Dansel’s assistant – worked the bellows, a sheen of sweat covering his scrawny shoulders as he heaved back and forth. Dansel for her part paced like a lion outside its den, eyeing the forge with an intensity that could probably melt most metals by itself. I noticed her hammer twist in her hand idly, as if without conscious thought for the gesture.

  The three materials I had provided were arrayed on a large table nearby, mostly untouched except for the foreleg, which had been splintered and shaved down by about a foot. The ‘bone’ splinters had been further chiselled into fine slithers that were arrayed in a small bowl on the same table.

  Most of a wolf pelt lay next to the materials, cut into thin strips. Dansel’s express order had ensured that one of the pelts I’d delivered the afternoon prior had already been fleshed, salted, soaked, tanned and otherwise prepared, no doubt the process sped significantly with the judicious aid of certain skills by the tanners.

  The stage was set, the plan discussed, and all that remained now was to begin the forging. I watched with eager anticipation, and then at a look from Dansel, I took over from Ratter at the bellows. He would never have been able to bring the forge up to temperature by himself, but the process was good training, and the novelty of what we were forging today would no doubt lend some significance to his actions, and therefore experience from the system along with it.

  I began to rapidly inflate and deflate the great bladder, forcing more and more air into the forge and coaxing the fires within to rise ever higher. The roof of the forge was in place, hence the need for the bellows in the first place, but it was necessary to trap as much of the fire’s heat as possible.

  The fuel we burned was intransigent, after all – a pungent mix of Cave-Bear scat and Deep Moss that only burned in extraordinarily high temperatures but could sustain a fire to ungodly levels of heat with precious few by-products.

  As much as I’d grumbled about the job with the pelts, I now knew that Dansel could have sent me all over the mountainside collecting ingredients for months and I still wouldn’t be ready. We had coin though, and that had streamlined the whole process.

  The heat was necessary not to melt any mundane metal, since we were using none as far as I could tell. The amber root I would use as a spear shaft would grow around the Heart of Winter and bind the head to the shaft without need of a metal casing. The problem was that I wasn’t trying to just fit together different materials like pieces of a puzzle.

  I wanted synergy. To merge together disparate ingredients and create something greater than the sum of its parts. For that, Dansel had explained, we would require immense heat. Not to mention that forging was the main way she applied her trade, and her experience in this area would help guide me in forming a weapon myself.

  I could try and do it differently, but since I had no better experience and there was no better teacher to hand, this seemed the best option. As time passed and the heat of the forge started to dry the air in my lungs, I began to feel the strain. Dansel just paced back and forth like a caged animal though, eyeing the flames as they growled and leapt in vicious bursts of speed, as if seeking to escape the confines of the forge that bound them.

  Eventually, as my back and arms were beginning to tire and I wondered how much longer I could hold on for, she tossed in the blocks of Deep Moss and Cave-Bear Scat – square blocks of dense material no larger than her fist. At least a dozen pieces went into the fire, and she then waved a hand at me, grunting at me to give the bellows a rest.

  We waited then, standing side by side, like a bird and its babe watching a forest burn before them. The flames began to die down slowly, the orange and yellows of woodfire giving way to a dull brown. Flecks of silver began to emerge at odd intervals, like fish darting up a river, their scales reflecting the light in shimmering patterns.

  Only once the silver slivers were in evidence at the heart of every tongue of brown flame did Dansel of the Forge begin to work. I was shadowing her for this, handing materials to her, and gripping my own diminutive hammer in hand as I watched a master at work.

  She first fed the Heart of Winter into the forge, and I watched as the flames around it seemed to shrivel in on themselves before roaring back to life once more. Like wolves investigating some new thing in their environment; hesitant at first, prancing away to keep distance, before slowly, ever so slowly, creeping forwards to lick at it.

  The shard of ice showed no signs of melting though. That was not our purpose, and Dansel had assured me that she had worked with similar natural treasures in the past. We simply needed to let the flames impart their desire for change into the treasure., so that when the time came for us to work it, the Heart of Winter would be amenable to our whims.

  In the meantime, we worked on the haft. The amber root shrunk in response to the mana I pulsed down its link, and Dansel showed me how to chisel away at its centre. Long grooves I carved into the wand, from tip to tail, until the smooth amber wand was smooth no longer. It took nearly a bell, the durability of the wood making for painstaking work.

  I was fully absorbed in the task though, using a chisel made of some powerful alloy I’d never before seen, and using a soft-faced hammer to drive the alloy into the wood, shaving off tiny shavings each time. Dansel regularly inspected the work, and would stop me every now and then, readjusting my grip or pointing out a groove a hair too shallow that required more attention.

  The whole time I fed a steady trickle of mana into the artifact. Not enough to change its shape and size, but simply a steady supply of my influence. It was hard to focus at first, but I found that after I had got the hang of the chisel-work, it was actually easy to imbue my intent into the root. Like it understood my goal and decided to trust me.

  Each strike of the hammer on chisel was done with a purpose, and that purpose was part of a grander whole. I kept that grand design in my mind’s eye as I worked, each moment building towards something even as my mana flowed into the material, a comforting presence in the face of its strange transformation.

  We quenched the wood in a balm of sap from an alder tree and carmine collected from beetle wings. The red lacquer was rubbed into the wood, sheathing every inch of it and smoothing away any minute ridges from my inexpert chisel-work. The slivers of the fore-leg were then added into each groove, Dansel having to further chip away at some to make them fit, but less than expected. She had prepared the material herself that morning and was meticulous with her preparation.

  The bone carapace of the Corrinian Rhai would scaffold the wood, providing strength and reinforcement in the face of a mighty blow. When the root expanded, Dansel assured me, the slivers of hardened shell would be engulfed by the root, re-organised to run along the spear and reinforce the central spine of it with their impressive durability.

  I didn’t need to ask how it worked. This was a magical world, and I was creating a magical weapon with magical materials. The very nature of these objects was to alter natural law. The foreleg was stronger and tougher, the amber root was more durable and mutable, and the Heart of Winter was more enduring and inviolable.

  I would use the inherent character of those three to create a weapon that also subverted the natural laws of the world. Intent was enough, when properly directed. The forge and all the rest were simply a way to channel Dansel’s experience and guidance to me as I tried to bend reality to my will.

  The carmine and sap lacquer also had a binding affect, and I noted with satisfaction how the slivers of bone didn’t move at all as I wrapped the strips of wolf-leather around the middle of the wand to form a handle, and dabbed a small amount of a prepared glue onto the end.

  The wand looked beautiful now; a two-foot-long length of smooth, red-tinted wood, lit from within by a gentle amber glow. Thin struts of white bone bracketed the wood, running vertically from tip to tail. The handle was a pale grey made of overlapping leather strips, and felt firm in my grip, moulding to the shape of my hand almost instantly.

  I looked up as Dansel clapped me on the shoulder, and I could see the flames of the forge dancing in her eyes. They seemed to echo with a spark from something deeper within her, as if her soul burned along with them too.

  By then, the Heart of Winter was ready to be transformed, and we set about the process of preparing ourselves. I held the wand, shunted mana into it, and allowed it to grow to its full size before retracting once more. I marvelled at the speed and smoothness of the transformation as the white lines marking its surface disappeared as it grew, and reappeared as it shrunk.

  I was startled when Danzel plunged a bare hand into the forge, wrapped it around the Heart of Winter, and withdrew it. The brown and silver flames seemed to have no effect on her, but I knew that to be a product of her skills and the power of her frame, rather than anything inherently magical about the flames themselves.

  The crystalline shard, once nearly a foot long and shaped like a teardrop, was now compressing easily in her hand, as if it was made from jelly rather than a distillation of winter itself. She placed it on the table, and I approached, staff in hand. I kept up that steady stream of mana – more than before, not quite enough to drain my core, but enough to set the wood to trembling, shivering in its desire to expand.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I glanced up at Dansel one last time, and her grave nod was surprisingly reassuring. I took a breath, before I gripped the Heart of Winter in hand, feeling its strange warmth spreading slowly into the bones of my fingers. Eyes closed, heart pounding at the exhilarating feeling of creation, I cupped the natural treasure close to my chest.

  I rested it against my heart, as Dansel had instructed, and let it feel the strength of my conviction beating within. Each heartbeat a hammer blow, I reshaped the ovular crystal into the shape I held within my mind’s eye. A bladed leaf; long and slender and ever so slightly tapered. Vaguely asymmetrical, as nature so often was, the spear blade took shape. The surface wasn’t smooth but instead composed of a hundred tiny dents, an eolith of pure ice.

  There was something right about the texture of it; the crystal resembling knapped flint - carved by the laborious process of glaciation over millennia. Fitting that the physical expression of winter should take on a shape that only existed because of ice’s inevitable advance.

  It was a tough thing, to use my heart to guide the process while my hands carried out its orders. Unlike the amber root, I had no spiritual connection to this natural treasure, and so had to make the changes I desired physically, hence the need for the intense heat from the forge. I kneaded it like dough, shaping it into the form my heart knew to be perfect, and only once it was done did I realise how much of a toll it had taken.

  Frost wreathed my arms up to the elbow, the hairs standing up white against the blue chill of the skin beneath. Sweat had dripped from my forehead and frozen in droplets along the backs of my hands. When I looked up at Dansel, I saw the quiet glow of the afternoon sun over her shoulder. I had been working for a bell or more, focused on nothing but the icy blade in my hands.

  But what a blade it was. I carried it over to the table upon which rested my spear haft, and gently pressed the blade into the top of the wood. In its lengthened form, the amber root seemed to reach out even before I had poured mana down the link. When I did, and the artifact understood my intention, it wrapped gnarled roots around the reshaped Heart of Winter and brought it into itself greedily.

  The ligneous embrace of the red-lacquered spear haft was absolute, no give in the setting whatsoever. The speed of the transformation was shocking, but the mana drain was commensurate; my core half empty by the time the many roots had wrapped the spear point up completely.

  I held it out before me, spear now complete, physically at least. The artifact hovering at the edges of my soul-space was still the same pulsing light as when I’d found it in The Lost Grove many days ago. I needed a final touch of will, of intent, to complete the creation.

  I felt a heavy hand clap me on the shoulder, and Dansel hummed in appreciation at the weapon before us. She walked to the forge and withdrew an iron poker, its bottom half cherry red from the heat of the forge. When she returned with it in hand, I realised it was a brand – a looping swirl of characters, presumably in the barbarian tongue, though it didn’t look like writing to my eyes.

  I perhaps could have deciphered it with my god-given title, if I was interested in doing so, but I was too distracted holding the idea of the weapon in my head to spend mental energy deciphering a brand. Besides, Dansel had been integral to the process, and I wouldn’t begrudge her a little professional pride at the end.

  I nodded as she approached, holding out the weapon, and she took care to line the brand up, positioning it just above the central grip. A faint hissing later and a single strand of smoke was curling to the sky as the characters were imprinted on the weapon. An irrational urge took me then, but I knew enough to trust such instincts by now.

  I held out my arm, and Dansel looked at me quizzically. I gestured a little frantically at the poker and I saw confusion give way to understanding as her heavy brows lifted in surprise. There was an assessing light in her gaze, and it held my own for a few moments before she nodded, turning around to grab a strip of wolf-leather from the table.

  She handed it over and I bit down on it, squeezing my eyes shut in preparation. I felt her take my hand, spear still clutched in its grip and rotate it until my palm was facing the earth.

  “Ready yourself” she rumbled, and I had no time to reconsider before I felt a searing pain across the back of my hand as the brand was burned into my flesh. My jaw clenched and I screamed in pain, thankfully muffled by the leather bit. I was tempted to activate Heart of the Hills, but knew to do so would lessen the significance of the gesture.

  I had branded this weapon, and now it branded me in turn. A bond forged through fire. My legs shook as I tried to sag to the floor, but Dansel’s strong hands held me in place until the brand was removed. I opened my eyes and saw a string of boiling blood hang from my hand to the iron brand, snapping and falling to the floor with a hiss and she withdrew it.

  I felt like throwing up, but my legs were at least a little steadier beneath me by that point. I drew in a shuddering breath and focused again. Diving into my soul-space, I found that tenuous link between me and the amber root, and I pulsed mana down it once more. The shining silver-blue light of the artifact was denser now, and its shape had changed. No longer just a vague ball of gently pulsing light, its spiritual image now resembled a sapling, roots digging into the void of my soul-space and bough reaching towards the sky above.

  There was no sun up there as in the real world, but the light of my pathbound skill enshrouded my soul, and it was this that the sapling seemed to reach towards. I could only hope that it was a good omen. Mana flowed freely and easily down the link, no blockages marring the path, and I opened my eyes once more to enter reality.

  My stomach growled at the faint smell of charred meat, its sickly-sweet stench reminding me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and the thought instantly ruined any appetite I had. The wound throbbed in time with my heartbeat, lances of dull pain radiating out along the back of my arm towards my chest.

  Dansel loomed in my vision once more, gripping me by both shoulders and levelling an intense stare my way. “Finish it, boy. Bind the weapon.”

  I gulped, took another few steadying breaths, and then dove back into that inner world. 7 twinkling constellations, with a shroud of starlight above all. A well of power and potential endlessly refilling in its centre, and a pulsing sapling of pure blue brilliance at its edge.

  I marshalled my will and dragged the starlight sapling closer, letting the cool light of my many skills and core kiss the leaves that danced in a non-existent breeze. I realised the artifact link was pulsing then, timed with the throbbing pain of my hand – our essences were now linked, first by fire, then by blood.

  I was already linked to the amber root before this whole process started, and the last few bells of effort had brought me even closer to it. The sacrificial branding had further secured our link, but the crucial step was binding myself not to a portion of the weapon, but to the entire thing.

  I wanted it to have an identity as a whole, rather than a collection of distinct parts, and so I focused on the sapling. It was half-real and half not – less defined and pure than my skills and core, which I had channelled real power and constant intent through for months by this point.

  I focused on the concept of growth, of adaptability. Transformation for the spear haft, surety of purpose for the spear head, durability and strength for the weapon as a whole. Concepts swirled around my mind, and I did my best to corral them into a thematic core that could be imprinted upon the magical weapon.

  I struggled though, opposing concepts clashing and refusing to merge. The weapon I had in mind was at once enduring and immutable – unable to be altered by the vagaries of the world, and steady in my hand – but also a tool that could lend variability to my fighting – constantly in flux and rapidly changing to the formation that I needed.

  I slipped out of my soul-space and looked to Dansel in frustration. “I can’t…it won’t form. I can’t establish the binding link because there’s no weapon to bind to yet.”

  In a voice like scree rolling down a slope, deep and rumbling within a mighty chest, Dansel of the forge spoke; “A weapon needs a name.”

  I felt my breath catch.

  How could one form an identity without a name? They held power, not in any real sense but on a metaphysical level. A name was a recognition of purpose, of a place within the world. What was unnamed was both not understood and in a very real sense not real. I had felt it myself, back when I had fumbled my way from outpost 13 through the Wandering States. I had grabbed on desperately to Runt, and then settled with Lamb.

  It wasn’t a good name, but it was a name, nonetheless. A sense of purpose and identity to cling to amidst a stormy sea. And now this weapon felt similarly. It wasn’t conscious or sapient, but I sympathised with its plight, nevertheless.

  A name…

  What was its purpose? To kill my enemies. To protect me from their blades and teeth and fell intentions. To help me complete whatever nebulous goal I had at any one moment. What was its purpose though?

  I didn’t want it to be the first thing I turned to; every disagreement solved by violence. But it would always be the last. When my purpose was so potent that I couldn’t ignore it, that the threat of violence and death and killing wasn’t enough to deter me, it is to this weapon I would turn. When my will was iron and my mind made up, this spear would be the tool that I wielded against whatever the world placed between my goal and myself.

  I decided on a name, and closed my eyes. “I name you, Resolution.”

  As I spoke into the void of my soul, the sapling at the edge seemed to shimmer, the rhythmic pulsing stilling at last. It settled in place, roots digging deeper into blackness and branches reaching higher towards the light. The connection was strengthened, and I felt an immediate understanding bloom within my mind.

  Opening my eyes, I saw Dansel watching me. She gave a long, slow nod of approval, and stepped back to give me space. I focused on the weapon in my hand, no longer a loose collection of materials temporarily bound together – this was now a single weapon, honed to a fine edge of intent.

  Resolution greedily sucked in mana from our link, and the artifact shrunk to its portable form, the blood-coloured wand of smooth wood and white bone now crowned by a beautiful crystal of pale blue ice. I flexed my will once more, shunting mana down the link and the weapon grew into a thick hafted spear, deep red, lit by an inner glow of amber along the patterned shaft. The crystal on its head seemed to rotate, a hand length blade emerging from the top to jut forwards like a spear crafted from the very heart of a glacier.

  It felt right in my hand, the balance exquisite, and I knew intimately that the blade was as sharp as I could imagine. It was a lethal-looking thing, no doubt that it was made for war, not ceremony. But there was a grace in its simplicity. It seemed to me then, as the sun was chased across the sky by night in his heavenly chariot, that something beautiful had been brought into the world, and whether I died tomorrow or in a thousand years, something of me would live on with this weapon.

  I felt tears sting my eyes then, and Dansel approached once more, having removed the ceiling of the forge by herself while I marvelled at the weapon. A feat of strength in its own right, that. Almost as if summoned by the thought, I heard a gentle ringing in my mind.

  Feat achieved. ‘Creation’s Bounty – Resolution’.

  all of them, but you might get a few and that's worth the effort! Radical optimism is the name of the game this year i think