Cold Determination

The heat from the forge was a sharp comparison from the icy wind that blew outside. The constant tine of hammer on anvil rang through the workshop as she and her fellow apprentice smiths gave life to the iron.

One by one the dwarves around her quenched their blades in the barrels nearby but she toiled onwards. There was something she would do differently, a theory that she knew would work. But in order to do so she needed the forge to be hotter. Jumping at the gallows she pulled down with all her strength on the large chain to force air into the forge she was working on. The other Apprentices stopped sharpening their blades and watched as she worked hers hotter than many of them dared to, hotter than their instructors had told them to.

Darting back to her iron she pulled it out and hammered the last few bits of her blade to get a sharp, thin edge naturally from way she folded the steel. Then she made for the window. Climbing over some boxes she had set up earlier the other apprentices all but stopped working on their blades as the small gnome hurtled over the boxes and out the window that drew cold, fresh mountain air into the smithy. Dragging her white-hot blade behind her she threw herself onto the ground, picked herself off the frozen earth after a heartbeat and dove blade first into the snow.

The ‘tink’ of shocked steel could be heard loud and clear but she pushed on. Packing the loose snow tighter on top of the blade that had already started to melt the metal she had shoved in there. After the snow stopped melting and the laughter from the room died down to nothing she pulled out her blade, praying that her theory had worked. The shattered blade she held in her tongs revealed the truth. It had not.

This was not the first time she had tried to quench a blade with snow. The theory was the sudden shock of cold would force the metal to shrink and harden far harder than any oil or water could. But the dwarvern master smiths could not see eye to eye with the little gnome who had some skill at forging blades. The hiding she received that night for wasting good steel and going against the norm would not be the last either.

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The years of toiling away in the forges had eventually seen her graduate to become a smith in her own right. But her fascination with snow and ice-tempered steel saw her get requests for tools rather than blades and her reputation kept her from getting the best jobs.

She continued her experiments though and she made some progress. The closest she had gotten to was a blade that was sharper and harder than steel that could cut through rocks itself. The dwarven masters had been impressed for a moment until the blade had hit a solid object side on and it was revealed to be as brittle as glass. The fragments had exploded and looked like falling ice – which she had thought beautiful. The elders and other smiths no so much.

To avoid the ridicule of the others she had slowly constructed her own forge outside of the main city. Here she worked in secret and amongst the nature that she cherished – her gnome traits driving her to be amongst the wilds. It was only after a chance encounter with a wolf that she made a discovery.

The wolf had approached her forge sensing the heat and smelling a pie that had been cooked. It had startled the gnome smith so much that she had thrown the still white-hot blade at the wolf who darted out the door with pie-in mouth. The blade however had flew into a pile of snow that was piled up next to the door.

The sudden hiss as the blade melted through snow told her all she needed to know. The blade needed to be hotter when it hit the ice. So she constructed a gnomish contraption to dump ice directly from the roof of her smith into a trough that was next to the forge itself. Directing cold ice directly onto the blade itself.

However despite bringing the cold, frozen snow closer to her forge she still couldn’t get the blade hot enough. Not until she purchased a ruby that was mined in the elemental plane of fire, one that was even too hot to hold without her smithing gloves on. With this she could mould it into the blade and get it to be hotter, remain hotter and then quench much faster through harnessing the fire plane itself.

As the near molten blade came from the forge, the fire-ruby burning bright red with elemental magic she shoved the blade into the trough and then pulled a lever. The roof opened and the trough was filled with snow and ice. The snow continued to pile down just as fast as the blade melted through it, but the steam that was produced forced the gnome to move away lest she get burnt from the gas.

After the steam had stopped and the last few ‘plops’ of snow fell from the chute in the roof she looked at the blade. Her savings and years dedicated to her theory all waiting on this moment.

Before her a perfect blade lay. The blade itself was as keen as a vorpal blade, harder than mithril and perfect. However the ruby was now the colour of ice and a permanent chill came from the blade.

“I best think of a name for such a file blade” she said as she tested it on a thick section of cured hide – which is sliced through like parchment…