Post by Milo Brightmane on Sept 2, 2019 15:38:23 GMT
An odd spectacle took place in one of the open fields below Daring Heights that week in early Elesias. The recognisable figure of Milo Brightmane, dwarf smith, would make his way out to the centre of the field armed with a large canvas bag from which he would pull a succession of bent and flattened metal rods. He would pick one up, and launch it through the air. He would carefully watch its flight and descent, would walk out to where it had landed, collect it, toss it next to the bag, and make some scratchy charcoal notes on scraps of parchment. Then he would start over with a new bent, flat, metal rod, and continue until the bag was empty, at which point he would pile the items back into the bag and head back home, from where the clashing sounds of metal on metal would continue late into the night.
The following day, the process would start over again. Perhaps the rods today were a little less rod-like, even flatter, more bent. Perhaps their flight had more of an arc that day, seeming to turn from where Milo had thrown them. Clearly they had been flattened to the point of sharpness, because by the end of the day the burly dwarf could be seen sucking at cuts and scratches on his fingers.
The third day, more flying metal objects, thinner again, a more elegant curve to the bend. And a thickly padded leather gauntlet on Milo's throwing hand. They flew on a noticeable arc now, and further than before. Milo was having to walk quite far to retrieve these ones, growing red and huffing for breath, and by the end of the day had even shed his chainmail.
The next day was hot, and the chainmail did not make it out of the smithy. Instead Milo wore a sleeveless leather jerkin which strained at a protruding belly, but showed arms made large and strong through the long years of his work. The bag of these throwing weapons was smaller by now, and the weapons themselves nearly identical, far from the first day in which they had been many different sizes and shapes. The first to be thrown flew out, nearly sixty feet from the thrower, before turning upwards into the sky almost the same distance, then turning back towards the short figure who watched it like a hawk. It spun in a deadly blur, plummeting towards the dwarf... before sailing above his head, clear by at least ten feet, and stabbing deeply into the ground. But the dwarf smiled. It was working. He didn't collect it this time, but continued with the second weapon. It too turned back and flew over his head, landed only two feet from the first. A third, fourth and fifth followed, none landing more than five foot from the first. A small cluster of blades growing from the ground like a crop of tiny metal corn.
The last day, Milo went to the field with only one weapon. It shimmered in the late morning sun as it was hefted in the thick leather glove. Milo wiped sweat from his brow before setting his sights on an unremarkable patch of ground some sixty feet away. He reached back, then loosed the blade forward. It glittered as it flew, like a steely swift. The moment it reached the air above the patch Milo had noted, it angled sharply upwards and seemed to pause for a second, surveying the landscape so far below, before turning back towards the waiting dwarf. Now it wasn't a swift, it was a steel falcon, bearing down on its prey silently save for a faint shuh-shuh-shuh-shuh as it spun. It tore towards Milo who faced it with steel in his eyes, and just as it was about to remove him from the world he reached out with the hardened leather mitt and stopped it dead with a light jolt as his arm took the remaining momentum. He gazed appreciatively at his creation, a functioning metal boomerang, with a small smile. He didn't celebrate, but his eyes held a sense of deep satisfaction. He dropped the flying blade into a sheath at his hip and began the walk back into town.
