The stone platform in the heart of the forge churned with heat. Above their heads, the copper furnace tunnels roared like hungry beasts, while the air was so thick with molten metal, burnt oak, and acrid sulfur that every breath burned in the lungs. The crystalline wall behind the platform emitted an icy, vivid blue light that contrasted sharply with the orange glow of the liquid metal.
Oslo slid the copper arm of his massive magnifying goggles down with a rough, metallic click. Three stacked, precision-cut lenses snapped into place in front of his right eye, causing his golden-yellow iris to swell to the size of a turtle shell. The giant leaned forward. His soot-stained, gnarled magma skin radiated such intense heat that the fine hairs on Nicola’s arms crackled and curled with a sizzle.
With a massive, black-calloused finger, Oslo tapped firmly on the center of the boy’s bare chest with a dull thud.
“Hmmm…” The Forgeling’s voice sounded like two keystone rocks grinding together during an earthquake. “What a rare mess we’ve gotten on the anvil here…”
He turned a tiny copper gear near his temple. The lenses focused with a high-pitched, humming sound.
“And this hole… this is what you call a heart, boy?”
Nicola remained standing straight on the illuminated plate, even though the tendons in his thighs trembled with the urge to step back. The blue light from the crystalline wall shone crystal clear through the opening in his chest. There, floating in the cavity where a human heart belonged, the Etherheart Anting pulsed in a restless, blue-white rhythm. Nicola rubbed his neck with his palms, looked the twelve-foot-tall giant straight in the eyes, and took a deep breath.
“Mm, yeah… uh, umm… yeah,” Nicola began, pointing with a forced, confident look at the cracked, bent edges of his old chestplate. “And I’m just looking for something that works decently with electricity, you know? Something that doesn’t hold back my current when I go all out and push those chains to the limit.”
Oslo froze mid-inspection. The massive hand about to measure Nicola’s shoulder width hung motionless in the air. Slowly, the giant straightened up to his full height. He leaned back and stared at Nicola through the colossal, swollen lens.
“Uhh… yeah, sure,” Oslo said in a dangerously soft, almost pitying tone. “But why in the name of the very first blacksmith… electricity?”
Nicola frowned deeply. He looked down briefly at the bright blue glow in his own chest, as if the answer were simply written on his skin, and then looked straight up again.
“Uhh… Hello? Etherheart? Power? What don’t you get about that?”
Oslo kept staring at him without moving. The silence in the workshop became so heavy that the shrill hissing of the steam pipes sounded like the huffing of a caged monster. Three full seconds ticked away in which no one moved a muscle.
Then the Forgeling blinked twice, very dryly. He grabbed the copper frame of his magnifying goggles and flipped the entire lens assembly to the side of his head with a sharp, dry clack.
“Mm… how nice that you kids still go to school nowadays,” Oslo spoke in a bone-dry, ice-cold tone dripping with pure sarcasm.
With a deep sigh of irritation, the giant turned on his heels. His iron-shod boots made the heavy floorboards thunder. He stepped toward his massive oak workbench, grabbed a stick of raw copper chalk, and began scratching across a blank sheet of parchment with wild, jerky strokes.
“Saw nothing useful in that previous junk of yours!” he shouted roughly over his shoulder, without stopping his drawing. “Otherwise you might as well just hold onto those broken chains! At least I feel a slight current from those…”
At the edge of the platform, Nicola looked at his own hands in disbelief. His heart rate spiked, his jaw clenched. What is this old bear babbling about? Does he think he knows my own power better than I do?
Oslo wiped the parchment off the table with a contemptuous gesture, turned around, and marched straight toward Nicola with large, imposing steps. The giant’s shadow completely swallowed the boy.
“Why do I get the feeling you have absolutely no clue about the power resting in your own chest?” Oslo growled, leaning deep forward. “Well… to start with… ether. Listen very carefully, Nicola. You don’t use your Etherheart to create electricity. You use ether as a universal medium to manipulate, condense, and amplify another form of energy to its absolute limit…”
Nicola stood stock-still. The Forgeling’s words echoed through his head, sharp and clear.
A medium… Not a battery. A conductor.
It was as if a thick fog in his mind cleared in an instant. All this time he had been fighting to squeeze sparks out of an Anting that was actually a canvas for everything he pumped through it. The Etherheart was the amplifier that could elevate his own physical energy to a godlike level.
Nicola looked at his fists. His knuckles turned white while a slight, crooked smirk formed across his face.
“Mmm… so ether is something entirely different,” he muttered softly. He looked up, straight into the deep, fiery eyes of the Forgeling. “You know what, Oslo… I trust you. Make it into whatever you think it should be.”
A broad, devious grin broke through the layer of soot on Oslo’s face. His golden fangs gleamed in the glowing orange light of the furnaces. A deep, rumbling sound rose from his chest, so powerful that the loose chisels on the tool racks began to rattle.
“Haha! Trust after all!” the giant roared with laughter.
He walked over to a heavy iron safe in the corner of his workstation and pulled out a dark, mesmerizing slab of unrefined metal. It seemed to absorb the light around it while faintly pulsing on its own.
“Then I will use a very rare metal for your gear,” Oslo declared, his voice dropping to a low, respectful timbre. “I found this special iron a very long time ago, when the heavens wept fire and iron upon the earth. I named it Thokcha.”
He ran a massive, calloused thumb over the jagged edge of the meteorite ore. “It has incredible properties. It is almost as if it is alive. It binds entirely with the user, and on top of that, it grows with you.”
Silarias gave him a questioning look, his brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean, it grows with you?”
Oslo met his gaze with a knowing smile. “Thokcha has its own ways. I am still discovering its properties myself, and every day we find something new.”
Behind Nicola, Silarias, Nyx, and the rest of the Goats nodded. The suspicion hanging in the air instantly transformed into pure anticipation.
Oslo bent over a fresh sheet of parchment and went completely wild. With the raw speed of a furious stormbird, his copper chalk scratched across the paper. The lines almost ignited beneath his rushed fingers. The design for Nicola took the shape of a sleek, laboratory-style armor made of dark Thokcha. The chestplate sealed with a seamless, vacuum-like finish precisely around the opening of his Etherheart, equipped with copper conduction rings that did not block the release of pure ether, but routed it in focused streams toward his limbs. Along the side panels and forearms of the armor, the fine, hardened links of his trusted chains were woven, integrated in such a way that they served as physical discharge points as soon as he blasted his shockwaves through them. It looked as if a mad professor and a royal blacksmith had drawn the exact same blueprint.
“There…” Oslo muttered, giggling with glee. “This is going to be a masterpiece…”
He let the design fall onto the stone table with a loud slap and turned around. His gaze slid over the next two figures standing on the crystalline plate waiting. His eyes glinted with a hungry craftsman’s madness.
“And what do we have… HERE?”
Silarias and Nyx stepped forward simultaneously. Silarias took a deep breath, his shoulders tense.
I cannot afford armor that cracks when the ship catches a storm, Silarias thought to himself, his hand instinctively sliding to the Soulbound Gem in the center of his forehead. When the Void Hydra breaks loose inside me… when the Bansaday rages through my blood, the gear needs to grow with me just like he said.
He looked Oslo straight in the eye. “If that Thokcha really grows, I need gear that can handle my Curse Mode. When the horns break through my forehead, when my muscles expand, and the Void Hydra takes over my form, the metal cannot shatter. And it needs to connect seamlessly with my gauntlets and the staff. The material has to guide the transformation, not block it.”
Beside him stood Nyx, shrouded in an aura of icy, royal composure. Her gaze was fixed on the blacksmith as she pointed to her waist and arms.
“And for me,” Nyx said with a voice as clear and cutting as an icicle, “something that conducts the cold of my Ice Anting without making the armor brittle and prone to breaking. Moon-bound ornamental attire, but combined with strong protection that doesn’t hinder the dark moon energies around my body, but directs them.”
Oslo sat down on a massive wooden block with a dull thud. He grabbed a fresh sheet of parchment, half-closed his eyes, and began to sketch. His mind could already picture it: pliable Thokcha scale-metal that unfurled and yielded when Silarias’ muscles swelled to monstrous proportions, combined with floating, silvery moon accents that caught Nyx’s freezing magic and rotated around her body like a shield.
KTAK. KTAK. KTAK. KTAK.
The sharp, exceedingly annoying sound of four impatient, rhythmic footsteps echoed loudly across the crystalline plate.
Oslo’s hand froze mid-stroke. He slowly looked up from his drawing.
Standing atop the raised testing station were Beat and Apollo. Beat stood with a bent back, his fingers dug deep into the leather of his vest. The vibrations of his Rajin Volt Anting trembled so intensely beneath his skin that the air around his forearms visibly began to wave and ripple. Next to him stood Apollo, his golden-blonde hair sleeked back, a look in his eyes that seemed strangely youthful and ancient at the same time. Golden-green solar ether flickered like tiny lightning strikes around his ankles.
Oslo looked from one to the other, pushed his goggles up a fraction, and burst into a booming laugh.
“Haha! Two fast men!” he roared. “Where are you two always running off to? Every speedster I get in my workshop is the same.”
Beat and Apollo exchanged a brief glance. Neither moved a muscle. They turned back to the giant blacksmith at the same time, with a look so sharp it could cut through stone.
“It needs to be able to handle us,” they said at the exact same time.
Beat took a hard step forward. The stone floor beneath his boot vibrated slightly from his suppressed oscillations. “My vibrations shatter traditional metal from the inside out. My speed with the Rajin Volt Anting tears apart anything that’s too rigid. I don’t want jewelry. I want armor that absorbs the impacts and snaps the energy right back.”
Apollo nodded slowly, a slight, arrogant smirk touching his lips. “And my solar speed tolerates no friction. I want Thokcha, paper-thin, streamlined, finished with gold. When I break the sound barrier, the air around me should melt, not my armor.”
Oslo’s eyes went as wide as saucers. A wild, proud grin split his face in two.
“HE HE!” he roared.
With a slap of his giant palms, he activated the mechanism beneath the platform. With a deep, mechanical jolt, the stone floor beneath the two speedsters sank several meters down. From the opened space, a wide track covered in the tough hide of a desert beast slid upward. It was a colossal, magically powered treadmill, driven by azure ether wheels that locked together with a crunch.
Oslo leaned his elbows on his knees and looked at the two mockingly. “So… how much time do you have??”
In the back of the room, Davinci burst out laughing. He leaned theatrically on his crystal-topped staff, while the purple fur collar around his neck bounced along with his shoulders.
“Mm… today… practically the whole day!” Davinci called out. “So go crazy, old friend!”
“Good!” Oslo roared. He waved his copper chalk toward Nicola, Silarias, and Nyx. “Come on, go stand next to those two! You guys need to test as well! We’ll do it in selections…”
His enormous yellow eyes suddenly shifted past them.
Kaelid had already stepped quietly onto the edge of the crystalline testing platform. Unlike the restless speedsters, he stood almost unnaturally still. His stone flute rested loosely between his fingers while the soles of his boots remained planted against the floor. A faint rhythm pulsed through the rock beneath him. It was so subtle that at first only Oslo seemed to notice it.
The Forgeling narrowed his eyes.
“Hm…”
Kaelid raised the flute toward his lips but stopped just before blowing into it. “My power travels through rhythm,” he said calmly. “Stone, earth, vibration. If the armor interrupts that connection, it becomes useless to me. I need to feel the ground even when I’m covered from head to toe.”
Oslo slowly lowered one massive palm onto the platform.
The instant his skin touched the stone, a tiny vibration climbed through his fingers.
His expression changed.
“Ohhh…” he muttered.
Kaelid gave him a faint, almost satisfied smile. “Exactly.”
Oslo immediately snatched up his copper chalk again. “Flexible joints. Conductive soles. Nothing too heavy around the legs… and absolutely no dead metal between you and the earth.”
Kaelid nodded once, spun the stone flute effortlessly between his fingers, and stepped farther onto the platform.
Before Oslo could continue, a shadow flashed through the thick columns of smoke in the forge.
Lila came sprinting between the rows of shelving units at insane speed. With her arms spread wide and her back stick-straight, she simulated an obvious, theatrical hawk dive. She cut sharply through Oslo’s blind spot, executed a pirouette in mid-air, and landed with a perfect, silent impact right beside Kaelid on the moving platform.
She smoothed down her clothes, blew a loose strand of hair out of her face, and looked at the ceiling with a straight face.
“Pff… oh. Looks like you missed me.”
On the other side of the room, Nyx looked with a baffled, suppressed laugh toward Jane, who stood next to Davinci and Lyn. Not a word was spoken, but the look the girls exchanged spoke volumes. Did you see that… haha, let’s go Lila. Jane had to press her lips together so hard her cheeks turned red to keep from bursting out laughing.
Oslo stood frozen in place. Sweat broke out in large beads on his forehead. His dark, soot-covered skin took on a bright red, glossy flush of pure embarrassment.
“I uh… Davinci…” the giant stammered, rubbing his neck with a massive hand. “Did I… did I really forget her?”
Davinci looked at Lila with a completely dead, emotionless stare. I saw it happen. He slowly turned his head to Oslo and spoke with a voice as flat as a coin: “No, no… you actually did forget her.”
Lila threw Davinci a quick look filled with deep, unspoken respect. Davinci merely rolled his eyes theatrically and looked back at his staff.
Sweating and stammering, Oslo took a few steps toward Lila, raising his hands apologetically. “My apologies… Princess Lila! I really had no idea…”
Lila shrugged dryly. “No problem and no big deal… Half the people here are princesses or something. I’m one, Nyx is one, Jane basically is one, only theirs are tribes instead of a kingdom… and this big girl here is one every day.”
With a quick, unexpected movement, Lila poked Miki hard in her side. Miki winced, let out a squeak, and pulled a mad face, but couldn’t suppress a broad grin.
Oslo bent deeper forward and studied Lila with narrowed eyes. “Mmm… I see it. I see your connection to plants is insanely strong… and I see no Anting, no mechanical tricks… Mm, yeah, you know… I once heard a very old fairytale about Forest Spirits who once lived in symbiosis with humanity and even reproduced with them…” He stopped and looked at her intently. “What’s your last name, girl?”
Lila answered modestly, though a slight hesitation echoed in her voice: “Uhh… Aureoflora… but I’m not supposed to use that name often.”
Oslo immediately shook his big head. “Oh no, no… can’t be. Might be that your ancestors knew them, but I highly doubt it.”
“Yeah, but that’s what we were taught, right?” Lila said, her gaze drifting down to the stone floor for a moment. “Don’t know by who anymore, but it was passed down to our people…”
Oslo rubbed his chin, his thoughts visibly spinning at full speed. “Mm… something with armor… plants… conduction of natural ether…” He began muttering a series of wild material combinations under his breath, before shaking his head and standing tall again. “Alright! For Selection 1, the sketches officially begin now!”
He turned around toward Selection 2, pushed his magnifying goggles all the way to the back of his head, and looked at Davinci with a deep, meaningful glare.
“Well… The Laughing Goats… are built different, aren’t they?”
Davinci looked at him and laughed. The azure etheric crystal at the top of his staff gave a short, bright pulse of light that illuminated the entire workshop.
“Mm… right on,” Davinci said with a proud, unbreakable smile. “I have full confidence in my students.”