Fellowship is Madness

by Imperator Chiashi Zane

Tales of the Cutie, Part 2

“Well…I don’t know if you want to hear how I got my Cutie Mark,” Hammer Soot looked, skeptically, at the six young ponies before her. Four fillies with pleading eyes, and two colts. One of those a Griffon. He was probably the only one she had no problem telling the whole story to. And why she hid it so intently beneath layers of leather. Nonetheless, she began the story.

The Griffon Empire was really not a place for any filly to walk about unsupervised. Even a Thestral, but she trotted around the airship field like she wasn’t scared. The Griffons respected power, and courage, so that was what she would give them. The powerful Griffon who greeted her noticed such, with her shoulders held high enough that he could see the muscles tensing with every step.

“Hammer Soot?”

She froze in place, and her ears swiveled to locate the source of the voice, before drooping back into a natural position as she recognized the old Griffon’s scarred beak, “Master Gilded Feather,” she bowed, wings sheltering her muzzle respectfully. She peered over her wings at him, waiting for the signal to rise.

His eyes shifted, and he nodded, wings flaring for a moment, “Rise, hatchling. Welcome to the Empire, to your future.”
“What does you going to the Griffon Empire have to do with your Cutie Mark. Cuuper says they don’t even get them over there,” Scootaloo looked confused, and somewhat bored.

Hammer just sighed, and raised her wing, showing a pattern of dye permanently embedded into the underside, “Not exactly like we do, no.”

Steel clanged against steel as the small filly swung a shaping hammer in her teeth, colliding it with the metal pinned by her leather-clad hoof.

“Very good, Apprentice. Now remember to check the color of the steel between blows, otherwise you might damage the piece.”

She stopped and looked at the steel, “Ith fadith.”

“Back into the fire with it then,” the Griffon nodded to the open furnace, roaring in the background. She gripped the end of the bar with a leather bite-glove and guided it into the flames, careful to keep her eyes closed, and using her wings to judge the distance from the fire.
As she backed away, she opened her eyes, “I leave it in there for five minutes, then take it back out?”

“Correct, Apprentice. Now that you have begun to shape the steel, can you see where it wants to be?”

Her eyes flitted back and forth along the wall of weapons and tools on the wall, “Uh…No master. I didn’t know steel could want anything. Just that you told me to make a sword.”

“Do you know why I told you to make a sword out of that specific bar?”

“No,” she looked at the bar in the furnace, “Why did you?”

He laughed, “That bar wanted to be a sword, when I picked it up. So it is to become a sword.”

“Is that why you put down so many bars before you chose that one?”

“Yes. There is a spear in there, and your True Steel as well.”

“What is True Steel, miss Hammer?” Sweetie Belle interrupted the tale with her expected query, but before Hammer Soot could respond, Cuuper took over.

“True Steel is like your Cutie Mark. It’s what the pattern permanently stained into our feathers means, and is represented to outsiders in the form of a weapon. It is why every Griffon, male and female, must undergo a one year smithing apprenticeship. When we draw our Steel out of the pile, it is much the same as a pony finding their Cutie Mark. We just…Know.”

Hammer nodded, “Yes, exactly.”

“Now, I believe you have progressed far enough in your training. It is time. Give me a Warhammer. Take as much time as you need.”
She trotted around the forge, sniffing the air, looking for the specific metal she would use, and not finding it, “Master, did you remove all the hammers?”

“Close your eyes, hatchling. Open your mind. Feel the metal without touching it. You know the shop like the back of your hoof. It should be easy for you.”

She growled under her breath, “I’m not a Griffon. This isn’t easy for me,” but she did as she was told. The instant her eyes closed, she saw what he meant. The ceramic template. The sandbox mold. The raw iron ingot, chisels, bars of raw steel. Quickly, she gathered the pieces into the middle of the floor and began.

Scootaloo yawned dramatically, “Boooring! Everypony else at least had an exciting story to tell us.”

Rumble elbowed her in the ribs, “Be nice. She’s getting close to the end, see?”

The first step was to prepare the ingots. She slid them into the fire with tongs, and turned to the bars, tying the three long shafts of metal together with thin wire. This went into the fire as she pulled the ingots out and started hammering and folding them together, folding carbon dust in and tailoring the steel very specifically, how it wanted to be. The heavy block went into a crucible, melting into a pool of smooth steel as she hammered the three metal bars into a single hexagonal staff two thirds of her wingspan long.

The Griffon watched patiently as she shaped the sand in the mold, then took the crucible out and poured it carefully into the mold. The steel hissed as it fell in, and she slid the entire box into the fire to keep it from solidifying while she shaped the end of the staff into a broad frill. The staff returned to the fire, still glowing, and the box slid out, onto the floor. With a hiss, she shoved the end of the staff into the liquid steel, and set to work on the far end, heating it with a wing-held torch before hammering it down and shaping the steel into a sphere, a stopper and pommel in one. Before the steel had the chance to finish cooling, she pressed an iron stamp in, forever shaping the runes of strength and resilience into the metal.

With a grunt, she drew the hammer from the mold and lowered it into the oil-bath with her hooves. The oil caught fire, flames licking at her muzzle as she tempered the hammer before pulling it out. The hammer was nearly complete. It needed only one thing. Five strips of leather, and six hours of wrapping and braiding and oiling gave her a thick, solid haft she could grip in her teeth, or a Griffon could hold in his talons or wing.

“Very good. Now, do you understand what the metal told you, why those specific pieces called to you?”

“No master. I just know they did. They demanded that I use them for this hammer. That mold, that leather.”

The Griffon’s talon stopped less than a hoof’s length from the haft, “Demanded? Not requested?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“I cannot touch that weapon. Take it out back, and set it down, very carefully, on the grass. I will be out in a moment.”

“Really? A weapon he couldn’t touch? Is this really your story, or are you just making stu…” Scootaloo was muffled by Cuuper squeezing her mouth shut in his talons, and hissing at her.

“That means it was her True Steel. An Apprentice may touch a Master’s steel, only because their training enables that bond. A Master may NEVER touch an Apprentices steel. It could kill them.”

Hammer nodded, “He brought out the well-bucket rope and waited for me to set the hammer down. That was when it all went wrong. Or right.”

The metal touched the grass, and Hammer Soot was thrown back against the side of the smithy hard enough that she heard bones crack. Everything went blurry, then black as she lost consciousness.

Upon waking, she quickly tried to look around, but her head wasn’t moving. And her hooves weren’t responding either. She stretched one wing out and felt the side of a hospital bed, “Master? Hello?”

Several quiet moments passed while she tried to feel out the bed with both wings, then tried to raise them up to check why her head wasn’t moving, only for a familiar pair of talons to catch the tips of her wings and stop them from moving. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but thanks to long hours of barely being audible over the roar of the furnace, she could read his beak well enough. “What do you mean, I should be dead?”

“What happened with the hammer?”

She scowled at his response. There was no way it could have hospitalized her. Even if it had thrown her back into the wall, Thestrals were tough enough to take being hit by anything the sun could throw at them, “Why can’t I feel my arms? Or move my head.”

Again, the answers made her unhappy, and confused. She raised her arms into view, struggling to lift them high enough to see the bloody gauze encasing where her elbows had been the day before. “The blast blew out my eardrums?”

The answer was affirmative, and her eye too. A shard of, well, the shard hadn’t been found, but the mess of an eyeball that had been left appeared to have been slashed open with a knife, but only dirt had been found in her wounds. “I can fix this. Get me crutches, and give me a forge. I’ll make my own hooves if I have to!”

The Griffon smiled, and she frowned at him, “Why in Tartarus would you have already made a pair for me, how long have I been out?”
A day and a half. Not long enough to forge a pair of useable hooves. Let alone the talons he was holding in front of her. They had to have taken a month, “And my ears?”

He held up a pair of crystalline devices, and mouthed something that looked suspiciously like ‘one week’, ignoring her angry scowl, “Why do I have to wait a week to hear again!”

Cuuper stared at her, “So now we know you blew yourself up. What about your Cutie Mark? Your True Steel?”

“I’m almost done, colt. Calm yourself.”

Hammer was happy to get the cast removed from her broken pelvis, and even happier when she looked at her haunches and saw, indelibly, for the rest of her life, a flame-licked hammer Cutie Mark. And moments later, stained into the surface of her wings, a pattern of Griffon runes. Master Gilded Feather only smiled at seeing that.

“Is this a prank? Please tell me the ink comes out! I can’t go home with Griffon runes tattooed onto my wings. My parents’ll kill me!”
The Griffon shook his head, “I’m sorry. That’s not ink. And it’s not a prank. You must have Griffon in your ancestry.”

“So what? The Steel chose me then? Blew off my arms, and picked me to carry it?”

“Yes. Now go get your weapon out of my yard before somegriffon trips over it.”

“Why didn’t you move it then?”

“Because he couldn’t touch it. Technically neither can I. I had to re-wrap the haft with Equestrian leather to keep it from blasting my talons off every time I move it.”