With this, Death Touch only has four chapters left! This has been a long ride for me, but I'm going to finish strong! After several years on and off the shelf and months of queue-jumping, late updates (*cough*), and preemptive agonizing over the edits I'm going to make for the final draft, I intend to finish the story THIS MONTH. Regular content will continue for the next week or so, but then comes Death Touch Week, in which I'll be updating this story for four updates in a row! If you've been following the journey of Seth, Sara, Clint and Mia all this time, or even if you just started now and happened to like this chapter, make sure to congratulate me for coming closer than I ever have to completing my first novel on Twitter (and bask in the dark profile pic, which depicts one of our champions)!
Clint
“He’s resting at the Peakview Clinic. He’s pulled a few things from his fight, but nothing Sara can’t put right when she and Mia catch up.”
Sam delivered this message of Seth’s condition to Clint on a muggy afternoon the day after spellwarrior’s rescue from the blood mage hideout. The Intalan champion would have loved to be there when he was checked into this clinic, but something had caught his eye as soon as he had arrived in Foldo. Since then, he had turned his focus to their quest now that they were so close to the end.
A blacksmith had been working his outdoor forge with materials that looked similar to what Seth and Sam had acquired in Ridge. It was then that he remembered the pressing issue that awaited the champions. According to the legend, they were responsible for forging the Storm of Mercy and, now that they had collected three of the four artifacts needed to completed it, it was high time someone figured out how. With Sara and Mia walking through Flora Field and Seth physically indisposed, who better than him? The former of the three had once told him that his gift was learning quickly, which his newfound grasp on the ancient tongue proved.
Fortunately, Clint didn’t need to look far for the ideal tutor. The sign above the door to the workshop indicated that the business was called “Steelworth Weaponry.” That could only mean that the man working in front of it was Martin Steelworth. Clint had discussed the legend of the original legendary halberd with Sara at the festival and had learned that the champions who defeated Maula the first time was aided by a metalworker named Patrick Steelworth. It was here in Foldo that Clint had hoped to find someone carrying his legacy and Martin fit that description perfectly.
The blacksmith had just poured a generous flow of molten steel into a mold that looked like the beginnings of a new axe head. Then, with a sigh, he looked up to Clint with a gruff stare. He was an old man whose burly physique was marred with countless burn scars that contrasted with the dark tan in his skin. More importantly at the moment, he seemed annoyed to have been interrupted even though Clint hadn’t yet said anything.
“See anything you like, young man?” he growled as diplomatically as a man working with hot metal could possibly be.
“Just your name, old man,” Clint replied with a biting emphasis on the last two words. Normally, only Seth would risk antagonizing him this way, but Clint could tell that Martin was not a man who liked to see weakness.
Martin narrowed his eyes at the champion and said, “Not many people are interested in my name. Who are you?”
Clint gave him a strong smirk in response. “Oh, just a modern counterpart to the people who needed the help of your famous ancestor.”
Martin wiped the sweat from his forehead and frowned. “If you want me to believe that, you’d better know what I need to see.”
Clint reached into his backpack and pulled out the dark black chain that Seth had been found with. “This is just one of the pieces. The blade is with a friend of mine in town. The spear is with some other friends and by the time they get here, they’ll have the other chain.”
Martin picked up the chain and examined it closely. “It’s not easy to create a forgery of this artifact, so I’m going to assume it’s genuine. So, what experience do you have forging weapons?”
Clint sighed and responded. “None. I’m a hunter.
The blacksmith rolled his eyes and pushed open the door to his shop. “Come on, then. I can tell this is going to take some time.”
So, Clint began his apprenticeship under the blacksmith. Martin wasn’t optimistic about his chances of learning the techniques he would need even within a month. But they couldn’t afford any shortcuts. Sara was certain that the Storm of Mercy could only be properly forged by the hands of someone anointed by the gods and the slightest mistake could unpredictably affect the finished weapon’s power. With this in mind, Martin let Clint do everything himself and kept most of his instructions strictly verbal. With this approach in mind, Clint picked up the basics quickly enough and, by the next afternoon, he only found himself struggling to refine his technique.
It was during his second failed test run that Sam had showed up to update him on Seth’s condition. The visit was a welcome excuse to take a break for the exhausted champion. Perhaps sensing the urgency that followed his purpose, Martin had been working him hard. He had reacted with extreme impatience with even the most reasonable requests to stop. But where thirst and the need to go to the bathroom was met with a reluctant dismissal, Martin couldn’t argue that Clint didn’t need to know what was happening to his comrades.
“How about the staff?” Clint asked with a frown as he studied the misshapen shaft he had just finished. “None of them touched him, did they?”
Sam shook her head. “It took some convincing, but they’re letting Maya take care of him. Thank the gods nothing serious happened to him.”
Clint nodded and dropped the failed attempt at a halberd on the counter. “That’s good. I’m sure he’ll be on his feet long before I get this worked out.”
Sam eyed the bent shaft with a smile. “You’re getting the hang of it faster than anyone else. Most people back in Ridge take twice as long just to get the metal to cool. Whatever techniques the man here uses must be exactly what you need.”
Clint shrugged, smiling weakly as he glanced at the forge that would be melting the ingots for his next attempt. “I know that. Believe it or not, I still have a firm grip on my patience so far.”
Sam chuckled. “Well, that won’t last for long if you lose focus. I should let you get back to it.”
Clint nodded gratefully. “Thanks for dropping in. Make sure Seth knows where to find me when he’s up and walking again!”
By the end of his fifth day, Clint had finally managed to put together a perfect shaft and was about to start learning the technique for the blade. Before he could begin this lesson, however, Martin had something else to talk about.
“Clint, m’boy, you’ve really impressed me with how fast you’ve been improving,” the usually-curmudgeonly blacksmith said with a wide grin. “I have something I want to give you.”
Martin then held out his hand and revealed a brass ring set with what appeared to be a chunk of amber. Clint took the ring tentatively and put it on his left hand almost immediately.
“Thanks,” the champion mumbled apprehensively. “What’s this for?”
Martin frowned and picked up the steel pole Clint had just finished. He seemed to be thinking about something. Clint was about to rouse him from his contemplation when he responded, “I had a dream in which you wore this ring. You were standing atop a crumbling black tower with a heavy wind whipping everything around, looking like the king of the world.”
Crane must want me to have it, Clint thought to himself, remembering the god’s affinity for wind. “Well thank you, Martin. I don’t know what to do with this yet, but I won’t let your gift go to waste. We’re going to win.”
The blacksmith merely grunted in approval and set him to work on the blade until nightfall. It was when he left for the night that he finally encountered Seth once more on his way back to the inn at which he’d been staying.
“Hey!” the spellwarrior said with a grin. “How come you haven’t visited, asshole?”
Clint rolled his eyes dramatically and smirked in response. “While you were loafing around, I’ve been working out how to make the weapon we need once we have everything together.”
“Speaking of which, where are the other two champions with the rest of the artifacts?”
Clint raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I dunno. They should have had plenty of time to catch up by now. Maybe they got held up by that other champion of Maula.”
“There’s two of those monsters?”
Clint nodded. “They had the safest path, though. It’s not like anyone could get hurt in Flora Field, right?”
“Tell that to my ex,” Seth said with a roll of his eyes.
It took Clint a great effort not to chuckle at the obvious mention of the fey spellwarrior, Millie Flora. I’m sure he’d love to forget her even now. “Well, we need to figure out for sure what happened to them. Do you think you can find them?”
Seth nodded and patted the summoning horn he kept tucked beneath his collar, smirking incredulously. “Who do you think you’re talking to? Between Millie and Inkfang, that should be no problem.”
“Do you think Inkfang remembers Millie’s scent?” Clint asked teasingly.
“Shut the fuck up,” Seth said irritably.
So, Seth left Foldo with Sam and Maya in tow. Clint hadn’t talked to any of them much in his time there, but now that they were gone, he felt somewhat lonely. As his only company, Martin was sufficient, but his instruction had only become more strict since they had begun learning to make the Storm of Mercy’s blade, which was far more complex than the shaft. It took all day for him to even finish his first attempt from the day before. When he passed it to Martin for inspection, however, the blacksmith merely tossed it aside carelessly.
“It’s uneven! The point on the back is too short! Start again!”
Clint sighed and pulled a fresh ingot from the shelf to start his second attempt. He was starting to think it wasn’t necessary to start fresh every time he messed up, but that Martin was forcing him to do so only to give him more practice. This was a sensible approach to teaching, but Clint resented the extra work more and more as it took a toll on his muscles.
He worked on this one late into the night, fearing the expense of any more time than necessary. It wasn’t healthy for him to push himself so hard, but he didn’t care. So much was riding on the completion of their quest. Maulans were out there killing people and his best friend was burdened with a deadly curse that made it impossible to tussle his hair as he liked to do. If he truly had a gift for learning rapidly, he considered it his responsibility to use that gift to bring a swift end to the death that Maula brought to the world.
It was nearly sunrise when Clint started to put the finishing touches on his second blade. His vision was blurred with fatigue to the point where he couldn’t tell how it was coming along. He stopped hammering and sighed. Martin can tell me what I messed up later. His eyes went unfocused and fluttered a few times before falling shut. That was the last thing he remembered before passing out on the floor of Martin’s workshop.
“Oy! Get up!”
Martin had walked in two hours later and began kicking him awake. Clint sat up sluggishly and looked around blearily. His muscles screamed with fatigue and his head throbbed as well. He looked up to his new mentor, who was holding what appeared to be an axe head in his left hand. He sighed and hung his head. At this moment, he didn’t care what Martin was going to say about his new blade. He didn’t have the strength to make another. Maybe when Seth came back with the others and Sara had a chance to heal him…
“You did a good job with this one,” Martin said gruffly as he held the blade for him to take. “There are some rough patches, but if you’re consistent I know you’ll get it right next time.”
Clint took the axe head with disbelief. Looking more closely, this one looked much more like the drawing he had seen in one of Richard’s history books. He couldn’t even see a single flaw, but he was tired and far less experienced than Martin, so he had no intention of arguing the point. He continued to study the blade intently until the blacksmith began to grow impatient.
“Oh, get off my floor! I have to open the shop! You can go rest until you’re ready to make the real thing.”
Music to my ears!
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