They worked the forge in silence for hours. Arden surprised himself by finding Arcus’s company cathartic. The initial desire to run him through and throw him off a cliff subsided, replaced with the strange kinship two men who had done bad things for the right reasons shared in times of trouble. When the steel melted and pooled into the vestibules at the four compass points about the fire, the swordsman dropped down from the bellows and made his way to two chairs by a rack of tools even he couldn’t entirely name with confidence.

“Come. Sit. We’ve business to discuss.” He gestured to the chair opposite and sat in his own beat up wingback. The fabric was torn in several places, and melted patches showed they were very much an accessory to the industry of a blacksmith.

William leapt from his bellows and approached. He cleaned his hands and beading brow with a rag and tossed it onto a bench.

“More tall tales and warnings?” He sat, heavy set and weary.

“No. We’re done with the metaphors. You came to have a weapon forged, and we’re ready to begin. Tell me what you want, the materials…the intent.” Arden narrowed his gaze, ears pricked and schematics flashing before his eyes.

“Oh.” Arcus looked around at the weapons hanging from every spare surface. “It’s not the weapon that will prove challenging, but the enchantment I want to get.” He looked back at the auburn-haired swordsman and waited for a prompt.

“You mentioned something in the tender about toying with life and death?” Arden had assumed blood magic would be involved. “You know that I am a blood mage, but before we proceed you need to understand the cost of using that type of magic.” He cleared his throat and tucked his hair behind his ears.

“Is there any other sort of mage?” The demon smirked. “Go on.”

Arden began to explain the intricacies of his art. That to use blood magic did not require a sacrifice, at least long lasting. It required blood, often the users, but each use of the talents available to even a novice gnawed at a man’s soul. It caused an itch, the sort that soon became unscratchable.

“The boom stick, as you put it, can be done with relative ease. The other item you mentioned…I need more detail. I can forge such a weapon, but there are items we will need that I cannot get hold of here in Scara Brae. If you’re willing to become something far more feral and uncontrollable than you already are, and you can front the costs…no-one else will be able to craft something as masterful as I.” Modesty to one side, Arden laid down the limits of their transaction. At the back of his mind, he was growing more and more excited to get to use his talents, learnt long ago from a master in this very forge, and to make something of himself after the long stagnation peace amongst the troupe and the nations of Althanas brought him unrequited.