Petra Stoneheart's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Petra Stoneheart had the ore, the plans, and the will. What she lacked was fire. The great beast had killed three hunters near the orchards last winter, and Petra meant to kill it back. She needed a blade mightier than any hunter's spear. But her ore sat on the workbench in useless gray lumps. Her small hearth could not melt it. She had tried for a week. The coals glowed orange and died. The metal never softened. Without heat, there was no weapon. Without a weapon, the beast kept the hunting grounds, and the town kept burying its dead. She loaded the ore onto a cart and went looking for a hotter fire. The trail led her to a sunbaked stucco building ringed with dark palms. Lamps burned at its door. The place felt warm from across the sand. Someone had built a forge here, far from town. She pushed the heavy wooden door open and rolled her cart inside. A man stood over a roaring pit. Dan GhostApple. Petra knew the name. He used to drum in a band that fell apart, member by member, until he was the only one left who still cared. Now he swung a hammer instead of sticks. He did not look up. "That ore's good," he said. "Your hearth's garbage." "I know," Petra said. "That's why I'm here." Dan wiped his hands. "The fire's hot enough. I banked it from the old vents under this place. But I don't share a forge for free." "Name it." "I need a room full of people who want something as bad as I do." He looked at her ore, then at her face. "You want that bad. That's enough. Work beside me. We both get our heat." They melted the ore together. The pit roared white. The gray lumps turned to glowing liquid metal. Dan worked the bellows. Petra poured. She shaped the blade she had drawn for months. Sparks flew. The metal rang true under her hammer. By dawn she had it, a long blade, dark and keen, fit to slay a beast. But as the blade cooled, it hardened wrong. Petra tested the edge against an iron bar. The blade chipped. She struck again. A crack ran down the spine. The weapon was strong, but brittle. One hard blow against the beast's hide would shatter it. Dan studied the crack. "Your fire was right. Your metal's wrong. Raw ore like that won't hold an edge against anything with armor." He set down his hammer. "You need a temper. Something harder than stone to quench it. Not water." Petra held the cracked blade. The forge was no longer her problem. She had her fire. Now she had a blade that would break on the first strike, and a beast that would not wait while she found a way to make metal that could not snap.