User blog:ChaosWyvern-i/Dragon's Return III

Disclaimer: I do not own Brave Frontier or Dragon's Dogma, those rights belong to Alim/Gumi and Capcom respectively.

It was a day like any other in the town. The inn was filled to the brim with summoners and other travelers, livestock was being escorted to the ranch on the top of the hill, the smithy was bright orange due to the influx of requests for repairs or new weapons and local hunters, trappers and pest exterminators were just returning from an early morning survey of the forest. The town hall was as busy as always, the downside of handling all of the town's affairs without assistance for fear that someone else would ruin the system in place. Aside from the greater number of people in the training hall, it was an ordinary day.

Andel was one of the town's exterminators. Raised as the adoptive son of the town master, he'd figured that he needed to do more than stand around and look pretty*, so he decided to take up cooking... He didn't like to talk about how badly that turned out**. Repressing those memories, he moved onto tailoring and learned he had a fair grasp of it, but not nearly enough to do more than repair damaged fabric and appraise fabric quality. Not entirely satisfied, he moved onto smithing and found his passion almost immediately and quickly became engrossed by the various forging methods. He became an exterminator on the side when the already small group had a sudden drop in members and needed all of the help they could get. That was his life now, apprentice smith by day and exterminator of monsters and pests by night. He rather enjoyed this lifestyle, it allowed creative freedom, a way to keep in shape and helped the town run just a teeny bit better*. Of course, not everything was perfect.

One of Andel's pet peeves was the town master, Laura, specifically her overworking herself. Like any child did, he cared for his mother figure and tried to make her life easier by helping her manage the town, but his intention was met with stubbornness that made diamonds look soft. He couldn't understand why such a person would put so much burden on themselves, but then again he did the same to a lesser extent without knowing it. His other pet peeve was Zera, Laura's actual daughter, who did nothing to contribute to the town and rubbed him the wrong way.

It wouldn't be wrong to say that Andel and Zera had always, always been at odds. Ever since he had been taken in by Laura and her late husband, Andel and Zera had been fighting in one way or another, whether it be spilling cold water on the other by "accident" or pouring salt in each other's cup or even brawling in their younger days. They'd since grown past that, more subtly insulting or demeaning each other while pretending to get along**. Not even Laura could understand why they didn't get along, even with their opposing elemental alignments (which only really affected natural disposition) and complementary talents, but often cited it as something to do with their age. One thing that was clear, however, was that no one in their right mind bothered either of them, let alone both of them, unless they wanted to have a very bad time.

Sighing, Andel continued his work. He hadn't slept much in the past week, juggling constant requests by summoners to fix practically ruined weapons and armor with pest control requests from nightfall until daybreak and running between the frontier town and mining town nearer to the capital for supplies. While he wasn't nearly as busy as the town master, he got considerably less sleep and it was starting to show in his temperament. He brushed an emerald lock out of his face as he brought his hammer down on the heated metal, shaping it just a bit more. Each swing brought more form to the weapon, little by little creating something that could potentially be used against him or his loved ones if placed in the wrong hands. He didn’t like to think about that, he’d had enough of stories where the blacksmith was slain after crafting a peerless work of art, their masterpiece, because their client wanted to be the only one with such a tool.

He picked up the blade with a set of tongs and gently set it in water, the hiss of steam and hot air from the contact soothing his frazzled nerves. To most, Andel was an oddity in the respect that, despite his earth affinity, he was at home in place as hot as a forge, so much so that unless he actually burned himself, being near fire and heated metal didn’t really bother him. He used this to his advantage in the forge, taking the same number of risks that an ordinary smith would as opposed to being limited in his work by his innate aversion to fire. He began to lightly doze off as the water cooled the metal, failing to notice that his grip on the tongs was lessening from the water residue seeping into the spaces between the tool and the thick black gloves he was wearing to protect his hands. The sudden snap of the tongs and splash of water snapped Andel from his torpor and it took all of his will power to not plunge his hand into the steaming water to grab the hotter blade and fish it out at the cost of his hand and glove for however long it took to heal this time*.

“That’s six hours down the drain,” he sighed. He was less than amused at his mistake and would chide himself throughout the night he would no longer be able to sleep through. He really needed to take on an apprentice to lighten his load, but training someone from scratch would take more time than he had and he didn't believe his skill was to the point of being teachable. "Ah, the dilemma of a man without time..."

Andel waited for the metal to lose what remained of its glow before putting his hand into the water. He winced from the heat of it, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it would have been before and he was able to gently remove the blade from the water. Thankfully the blade hadn't cooled too rapidly in the deeper water, so the metal hadn't gotten brittle or overly hard or else he might have needed to melt the blade down entirely or scrap it and start from scratch.

"Losing grip on reality, Andy?" The sly sultry voice made Andel sigh again, now from frustration.

"If you're attempting to be ironic and funny, you're failing," he replied, not looking up at his tormentor. He didn't need to see the clear violet eyes, curly blonde hair with a lavender streak that fell in gentle tresses and soft lips curled into an impish grin to know it was Zera**. "What do you want?"

"Just checking in with you, missing out on so much rest must be hard on you." She was smiling at his suffering, lovely.

"I'd rather suffer and toil than do nothing and get fat off of mother's hard work." Andel wasn't in a talkative mood, especially since he was sleep deprived and had to deal with Zera's poking and prodding.

"That's freedom for you, the ability to do things at your leisure, rather than slowly kill yourself with meaningless labor and affliction." So all of his hard work and effort meant nothing? That was half true, his contribution to the town was nothing compared to Laura's.

"Are you certain that you aren't confusing freedom for laziness and a lack of meaning in life? Living off the merits of others because you lack any is less than cowardly." And now the temper he was biting back was flaring. "Leave me be, I'm busy, something you won't understand."

And like that, Zera left, or at least Andel assumed she did. He ignored her to keep on track with his work, Tilith forbid he lose even more time dealing with her. Rather than continuing on the same blade, he placed it on a rack labelled for reforging and moved onto another. He repeated this process for the next six blades, hours flying by as metal was melted down, placed in a thin rectangular mold to cool, shaped by hammer, cooled in water, then finally sharpened. Before Andel knew it, night had arrived and it was time to put up his hammer and gloves to don his gauntlets and twinblades. Blacksmith by day, exterminator by night, there was never a dull moment for Andel.


 * He didn't like the idea of doing nothing in a town where only children, people passing through and the few unable to do anything had no work.


 * In his defense, the food looked edible and tasted fine to him. How was he supposed to know that by so much as touching the food lightly with a tool would cause it to become unpalatable to everything aside from plants?


 * It was hard to make a well tuned system any better, it took more effort than most would imagine to make even the slightest improvement.


 * Like when they smiled at each other or were forced to hold hands. To the untrained eye, they were like childhood sweethearts, but in actuality it was like putting a Pegasus and Cait Sith in the same area: a disaster in progress.


 * When he'd first started as an apprentice, he made that mistake upon being allowed to handle the metal. He had a nasty scar across his palm as a memory of that incident.


 * Her voice alone told him everything, her posture, her tone, how much she'd seen and even how her right hand was on her hip while her left was haughtily fanning her face. They'd been through this many times since Andel's master had left him as head blacksmith to take up the call of an imperial smith.

'''A/N: Well this was a long chapter. I cut it off where I did to give my phone a break, lest it start acting weird again. Eighteen years have passed since the events of the last chapter and things have changed quite a bit. For starters, the village became a town and Laura has taken over for her father. Then there is the increase in number of Summoners passing through the area and the more established connection between the town and the Imperial Capital. Most importantly is the appearance of the actual main character of the story and a look into his daily life. Next chapter will showcase his night life and kickstart the plot to an extent. I do apologize if this chapter does come across as boring or disorganized, it took some time to write and do my research on smithing.'''