Orin Ironfoot's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Orin Ironfoot had no forge, no coin, and one goal that would not let him rest. Someone had stolen his family's ancestral hammer the night the dwarf king cast him from the underground kingdom. To hunt the thief, he needed supplies. To buy supplies, he needed coin. He had neither. He sat on a fallen log at the forest's edge and counted what remained: three copper bits, a waterskin, and the smithing hammer on his belt. The hammer was not the stolen one. It was his working tool, and he gripped it now like a weapon. A blacksmith with no forge was just a man with sore hands. He knew this. He also knew he could not sit and starve. So he searched. He walked the tree line until his boots ached. Near a rocky slope he found it: a rugged ore node broken from the ground, its dark stone split by bright copper seams. Jagged chunks glinted in the crust. Orin knelt and pressed his thumb against a vein. Real copper. Enough to melt, shape, and sell. But he had no forge to melt it, and no fire hot enough here. He needed a bellows, a hearth, a proper flame. He had none. Orin thought like the craftsman he was. He gathered dry wood and stacked stones into a ring. He dug a pit and lined it with clay from the slope. He worked until dark, then struck sparks into the tinder. The fire caught. He fed it, packed the coals close, and set the copper chunks in a hollow he had shaped. Sweat ran into his beard. His arms shook. He pumped air through a hollow branch until his lungs burned. The copper glowed. Then it softened. Then it ran. He poured the molten metal into a groove pressed in wet clay. When it cooled, he hammered. Blow after blow rang across the empty slope. By first light he held three rough copper ingots and a crude knife. Not fine work. But it was metal shaped by his own hands, and metal sold. He carried his goods to a trailside camp where travelers traded. A merchant weighed the ingots and turned the knife in her fingers. She named a price. Orin held her stare and named a higher one. She paid. He walked away with a full purse, dried meat, a flint striker, and a whetstone. He had his supplies. He could fund the hunt now. Then a hand closed on his shoulder from behind. He spun, hammer up. A wild elf stood behind him, fangs bared, clawed feet planted in the dirt. Red and black tattoos covered her body. A bow hung ready across her back. She did not flinch at his raised hammer. "That copper you burned," she said, "belonged to my people. You'll pay the debt, dwarf. Or you'll pay in blood." Orin had his supplies at last. He had also just made an enemy who could hunt him better than he hunted anyone.