A fresh layer of coal is shovelled onto the fire, the flames eagerly licking at it's new fuel source. I'm sitting at the edge of the building, leaning back on a chair against the wall. It's a bad habit of mine, sometimes the chair collapses and I end up on the floor and having to pay for a broken chair.

Thankfully, today isnt one of those days.

It's late at night and the only light is coming from the forge itself. Between the fire and me is an anvil as well as a young woman working on it.
Since breaking Seren out of prison, she's taken it in her stride to do as much good as she can in this world. Most of her memories from before being taken prisoner are still locked away, unnaccesable in her mind. Only her name and a few others have arisen. Every so often at night she'll wake up sweating profusely and incredibly scared. But from what she doesn't know, or at least certainly doesn't remember.

Thankfully, tonight isn't one of those nights either.

Seren picks up a hammer beside the anvil and starts hitting the metal on it, shaping it into the form that she needs. She experimentally tests the strength of the piece. Before I can see from my side of the room what is about to happen, I can see the look on her face as the metal piece cracks and seperates. Sadly, this now makes the steel useless and she'll need more ingots in order to make anything. It's the second time that it's happened tonight and I'm concerned that Seren is about to get upset and give up.

I sit forward in my chair, letting all four feet rest on the ground. There's a stack of ingots down beside me so I kick one across the floor to her and then fold my arms. Seren looks over to me as the ingot stops half a meter from her foot. The expression on my face is one of daring - one of those "I know you can do it so don't give up yet" looks. Seren picks up the ingot, flips it in her hand and starts working the fire again, smelting the ingot into the shape she needs. I return to leaning back on my chair and I close my eyes, the sound of the hammer working away into the night. Unexpectedly, I fall asleep.

---

There's the constant beat of the hammer going in the back of my mind. Not an annoying beat, mind you. One of those nice soothing ones. But then something changes. The sound contorts, changes it's feeling and suddenly it's not a hammer beating anymore. It's me getting poked in the shoulder at the same regular intervals.

I wake with a start and immediately fall out of my chair, breaking it.
"Dammit" I say quietly. Tending to the bruise on my arm. Looking up, I see that Seren appears to have taken a step back before I fell out of the chair. I can imagine the local blacksmith isn't going to be happy about that.
"What time is it?" I asked Seren.
"Early morning" She said. "Suns just peaking over the horizon now"
"Did I fall asleep or something?" I ask with a start, jumping up. Seren smiles nervously and shrugs her shoulders.
"Is it done?" I ask, tilting my head slightly and looking at her in the eyes. Seren chews her lips and points to the other side of the forge. There's a set of armor over there that certainly wasnt there last night. The nervousness on Seren's face increases. I can see that she's been up for the whole night, working away very hard on it. Ever since we escaped from the prison, I've taught her the fundamentals of blacksmithing and how to work with metal. Last night Seren wanted to make something by herself and I was fairly convinced that she was more than capable.

"Did you get any sleep at all?" I ask. Seren shakes her head and looks down. I can tell she's still scared of the nightmares. I walk over to the set of armor that Seren has made and briefly look it over. It appears fairly impressive, but when it comes to blacksmithing, there is an extremely strong difference between armor that looks good and armor that can actually withstand the bite of a blade or the crushing blow of a mace. Out of the peripherals of my eyes, I can see Seren's nervousness climaxing and I walk back over to her.

Putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder, I look her in the eyes as I say my next statement.
"Go back to the inn, get something to eat and then get some rest. I'll have a look at what you've made."
Seren nods slowly, smiles at me and then leaves. I can tell she already knows that I am impressed. If I wasnt, I wouldnt have told her to leave. I'd have gone over every single crack and error on the piece and had her fix it. You can't learn blacksmithing if you can get away with major imperfections.

The armor itself though, appears flawless. The entire piece has been cleaned with dwarven oil to help clear out the nasty imperfections and fix them. Looking carefully at the chestplate, I can see traces of leftover grain solvent which Seren has almost perfectly integrated with the metal itself. There's always a few loose grains left over from the process so I wipe them away with a clean rag that is hanging near a barrel of water. The leggings also appear to be infused with grain solvent, but I can't find any trace of it on any other piece.
"Just what have you made..." I ask myself quietly.
Seren's armor is truly a masterpiece. I'm so stunned with the quality of this work as I had no idea she had this much skill so quickly after a few weeks, but she's picked up the trade with ease.

If I had to point out one slight flaw in the design, it's that the leather holding the pieces of the chestplate together could have been made stronger. It looks like it may need to be replaced in the future. But I can't really put that down to fault in Seren as I haven't yet covered leatherworking with her yet.

I can hear footsteps behind me. Turning around, it's the blacksmith. He looks over at the armor now behind me and raises an eyebrow, looking mildly impressed.
"How much for the ingots?" I ask, pulling out my small bag of coins.
"One hundred and fifty" He says, extending his hand to take them.
"And the broken chair?" I ask, pointing to it across the room. He hadn't noticed it yet. He raises his eyebrow again and looks surprised.
"One hundred and ninety" He chuckled. "You and your friend got a bit violent?"
"No, I fell off" I laugh. The gold in the bag comes to a total of two hundred and I'm not overly fussed about the extra ten that I am losing out on. His need would be greater than mine.

The blacksmith happily takes the coins and goes over to inspect all his tools. I can safely leave the armor here for now as he won't let anyone else take it. Leaving the forge, I head back to the inn to tell Seren the good news.