The Federyn ambassador was plenty grateful to get our deliveries and the mail we’d brought along with us, especially given the speed with which it had been delivered, faster than anything short of direct airship or Teleporting.

We didn’t inquire as to where to acquire anything here, as he was basically a trade competitor and would be placed in the awkward position of having to mislead us and stifle a rival as a matter of formal duty. We quietly collected our payment for services rendered and departed, heading to the Hammer School of Master Briggs.

His personal estate was in the highest-class section of town, a place where true fortunes were spent for the right to buy estates, reserved for the wealthy and powerful combined. The Imperial Palace rose over all the estates with superior grandeur none were allowed to eclipse, but they were all places of classical beauty and well-maintained, showcasing the power and status of those within.

Briggs’ estate was larger in size than most, but slightly out of the way, less likely to be noticed, and with rather quicker access to the Colosseum than most of them.

I noticed the Sound Bubble about it, restraining the sounds from within. Also there were rather more random folk, especially young women, loitering around the plaza in front of it, doubtless hoping to catch sight of the some of the gladiators working out within.

There was a public entry to what was obviously a forge and smithy, but the ten-foot ogre standing by the door was very successfully keeping anyone from trying to use the door to sneak in and spectate the warriors within.

Everyone was very interested when we glided up, as such flagrant displays of magic weren’t all that common hereabouts… even if there were flying creatures, including dragons, overhead all the time about the city, and I could see a dirigible heading east towards the ocean and two airships on patrol around the city even now.

The ogre looked at us with remarkably intelligent eyes for one of his breed. His skin was a healthy brown-gray, his hair a bristling green that was combed and cut attentively, and he had no paunch, his muscles developed and impressive. He was as impressive as an ogre I’d ever seen on this world, and the very large morningstar resting by his side wasn’t a toy, either.

“Hmmph,” he snorted as I glided to a halt before him, clearly unimpressed. “Wizards. What you want, elf-girl?” he demanded shortly.

“Selling Colorajo silversteel, Master Groundpound.”

His eyes opened in interest and pleasure at being recognized by someone he didn’t know. “Oh, elf silversteel, dat’s good stuff.” He scratched his brick of a jaw thoughtfully. “Not here to buy?” he wondered aloud.

“Certainly not for myself, and I doubt Master Briggs works on anything other than commission at this point, Master Groundpound.”

“Dat be true, but the students usually have stuff out for display they’d sell for the right price.” He glanced at all the fighters with me shrewdly. “You wizards won’t find much of interest in here,” he said dismissively.

Nico promptly hopped up and waved a book at the ogre. “Groundpound the Smash Ogre?” he asked with the clear enthusiasm of a fan. He opened up the book, which the ogre clearly recognized, to the page with a rather well-done picture of the ogre in full spiked armor, roaring and his foot upon some mechanical construct he’d clearly beaten into a shambled mess.

“Oh, a FAN!” Wreathed in a savage smile, the ogre took up the proffered pen, looked at it in interest, and with rather good penmanship, scrawled out ‘GROUNDPOUND SMASH!’ across the picture happily. “You gonna want Master Briggs’ sig too, I bet! G’wan in,” he said magnanimously, waving the excited Nico in and cutting off whatever else he was going to say. “I’ll watch yer rides.”

The Mick led the way in, his pack slung over his back as he hopped off his Disk and it floated back to the stack of the others. Everyone else basically followed, including our guide, who was ignored by Groundpound entirely, something not suspicious at all, nopers.

---

Inside the fairly large and open layout of the building was a decently-sized area for numbers of customers to stand and watch the work of the smiths beyond. There was no window out front for crowds to gather at, but the other three sides were wide open to help vent the heat of the place, and there were well-muscled men and women out on the other sides casually lounging around and watching the smiths at work within.

The noise wasn’t nearly as loud as it should have been, especially given the force the hammers were coming down at. A dozen smiths, three of them dwarves, were hard at work on various aspects of different weapons and suits of armor, with scattered anvils, one large main forge and two smaller ones situated about the place at key points, fitting dummies, scribing tables, and various molds and presses here and there where they could be used in the complex process of making Masterwork materials following the One Tool rule that would allow them to be Enchanted as Runecraft easily.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I identified the Floating Forge instantly, the Disk that was the heart of it concealed by the stand beneath it which metals could drop through and flow out from if it was smelting something. Four Anvils of Silent Thunder, and at least five complete sets of Shaping Smithing Tools.

The place was laid out with a master’s touch, each station and rack of tools and avenues of movement taken into account.

The men were scarred and muscular, and not in the ways smiths normally were. Their scars and physical development indicated that most of the men had been or were still fighters, and they were doing more than just hammering steel for a living.

No Assays

working here. The air was full of White Magic.

My fellow students realized it after a moment, instinctively trying to catch at the magic here and taste it, and finding it both ethereal and pure. Their eyes grew wide and somewhat panicked as they realized they couldn’t bend the magic here at all.

They couldn’t Cast at all, which meant they were incredibly vulnerable!

I noticed Master Treadtoe staring down at my feet, which were still a couple inches off the ground. I affected not to notice his expression of amazement at the fact that here inside a Stillflight Field that I still was not touching the ground.

One massive fellow dominated the whole room. Your eyes went right to him almost helplessly, and you had to concentrate to pay attention to anything else there.

He was over seven feet tall, and muscled so hard and rippling he looked like a hairy coppery metal statue moving, huge and thick and stripped to the waist. The women took one look at him and all got their same look in their eyes, imagining those arms about them, the pale violet eyes they could see even from here looking into theirs, the brow like a hammer.

He brought the actual weighty Hammer in his hand down, and everybody jumped in shock, expecting the crack of it to explode in their ears.

There was only the gentlest of chimes as he worked on the red-hot bar with his bare hand holding it down, up and down with a rolling motion of his shoulder that seemed to deliver the Hammer down with ever more force and speed.

Steel deformed like clay under the impacts, barely able to protest at the treatment as it was rapidly formed into something else… looked like a pauldron was taking shape with breathtaking speed and surety, the arc of it splendid and true and smooth without even being polished.

He finished in only a few minutes, taking one step and depositing it into the Forge’s rack, reaching his hand right into the inferno without fear to lay it down there.

Cleaning his massive hands on a rag there, he finally glanced over at us, grunted as he looked everyone over, and then headed our way, a mountain in motion that just exuded power and danger, like an avalanche leashed tight, coming at us.

He came up to us, and a Source Field gently broke over us.

All the Casters except one instinctively stepped back, staring up at him in instinctive fear and awe, while the warriors just looked dumbstruck.

His pale violet eyes shifted over to me, interested that I hadn’t stepped back, and correctly identifying who was in charge. “I’m Briggs. Your business?” he asked shortly in a magnificent moving bass that resonated right along the bones. Laurentine almost fell down upon hearing it.

“Lady Edge. Selling silversteel.” I nudged the Mick, who recovered himself, slung off his pack, and pulled out the Item Scrolls from within.

“I personally only handle the best, but my students work on the lesser bars.” He snapped his fingers, the force of it breaking across the skin. All the other smiths looked up, acknowledged the sign, and quickly began to finish up what they were working on.

“Also, Nico here is a fan.” I reached back, grabbed his sleeve, and dragged the gaping Bastionelli forward as he gaped, his book and pen clutched in his hand, unable to say anything.

“Somebody still remembers me being in the arena? It’s been years,” Briggs said magnanimously.

“Ten years unbeaten on the sands!” Nico managed to squeal in something managing to be righteously angry. “Who would dare to forget Commander Briggs the Fellhammer, the Bulwark of Hiawatha?!” he squeaked out.

A deep chuckle greeted that statement, the nearest of the smiths smiling knowingly. Large hands reached out to pluck pen and book from Nico’s hands with deceptive precision, lifting them up as a thumb moved and opened the book to the exact page showing Briggs in full plate armor, a really mean-looking Greathammer held in both hands, towering over half-a-dozen Siricilans in legionnaire armor, all of them looking absolutely terrified at what was about to come down at them.

He looked at the pen in obvious interest, but didn’t hesitate to use it, writing ‘Briggs Commands You!’ in a style reminiscent of another world entire… and a language entirely so, which Nico likely wouldn’t even recognize was another language.

Human!

I flipped up Dread and poked it up over my head, knocking it against the beam well above my five-foot and change without looking. “And yours, too,” I added.

Everyone blinked and looked up, confused. There was nothing-

A shadow that wasn’t there drew out of nothing with casual, deadly grace. Owshiva jumped and fell right back on her butt in shock as a long and limber figure somehow folded upout of a shadow too small to conceal her, and swung down from the beam using one arm.

She was under full control the whole way, effortless and weightless to herself, coming down on the counter on Briggs’ right side and seating herself calmly there, facing me.

She was blonde-haired and heaven’s-blue-eyed, although only one eye was visible behind the hair falling across her face, her fair skin only lightly tanned despite probably a lifetime under the sun. She was broad-shouldered and yet somehow slender at the same time, no bulk to the muscle that rippled like liquid iron beneath her skin, giving the impression of being even harder than the man behind her.

Her nails were as black as mine, and looked even more like claws.

Nothing To See There was still firmly in effect. She looked like a tall, shapely and slender supermodel with no chest, built out of poured death in dark and form-fitting leathers. Her face was different than the one I had memories of, looking like a sister or daughter of the original, which was only appropriate.

Magically, there was nothing there at all.

Her eyes didn’t leave me as she reached back with her left hand, plucked the book out of Briggs’ hand, then her waist-length hair grabbed the pen out of his fingers with just a whip-fast flicker of motion, delivering it to her other hand in a literal eye-blink.