@Yamatsu
I've got the first chapter for my story "done," technically, but I would like a fresh set of eyes to take a look at it.
Chapter 1
The sound of hammers shaping metal filled the cavern below the steppe. Clang! Clang! SNAP!
“Dammit.”
The bloom of steel had cracked in the middle of hammering it flat, leaving two separate pieces. One was on the welded handle, and the other fell to the floor. Yama had really hoped on keeping it one whole piece, but crucible steel was fickle. Sometimes, it would form easily. Other times like this, it would break. It wasn’t as bad as some previous attempts, though. Two pieces were the absolute minimum, fortunately.
The blacksmith reached down and grabbed the steel with his talons, and pushed the two pieces together. He could have blown fire to forge weld them back together, but that could risk further compromise. Instead, he focused, reaching out with his mind to the almost infinitely small crystals in the steel. It had taken him a few months to get this trick to work, but he slowly laced the crystals together and rearranged their structure. When he was finished, the two pieces of steel had fused into one whole bar.
Yama stuck the bar back into the forge to get it up to temperature and waited. He pulled up a stool and sat down to wait. His large, scaly tail draped over the other side, and his wings drooped into a comfortable position. His mother always told him that he had a slouching problem, but he credited that with the stool being just slightly too tall for him to get a good look into the forge while the metal was heating. After a few minutes, the bar was glowing yellow. Yama removed the bar from the forge and walked over to the power hammer.
The power hammer was a very rare acquisition. Not many smiths could afford one of the newer models, but this one he got was a steal! Fifteen-hundred gold for a pneumatic hammer capable of easily working hot steel, and it came with a set of premade dies for shaping even further. Yama pulled a lever next to the steel monstrosity, and a water wheel lowered into the river below. There weren’t any other caverns with rivers flowing through them in the steppe, which made this the perfect place to have an underground forge. The water wheel turned a belt, which caused the mechanics to kick in. Yama placed the bar onto the flat dies and began to push the foot lever down. Thus, began the process of slowly working the steel into a thinner blade.
The smith was trying to make an ulfberht sword, an ancient design from human settlers in the far north. It was a one-handed, double-edged blade used by raiders, and Yama had always thought these kinds of blades were interesting. It was mostly due to the material they were made of. Crucible steel took a bunch of iron pieces, put them in an insulated pot called the crucible, melted them down in a charcoal forge, and created an extremely strong steel. This made for an excellent blade, and when sharpened properly it could cut through most anything that wasn’t stone or metal.
The draconic man took the blade form back to the forge. He heated it until the edges were orange, and placed it on the anvil. He grabbed his smith’s hammer and began hitting the edges at an angle. This started to bevel the edges, which would prevent him from needing to grind them in later on. Edge beveling was usually the most tiring part of forging, the constant arm motion causing his shoulder and elbow to become sore. He switched arms for the other edge and decided that a break was in order.
For about a half an hour, he rested, grabbed a drink of water, and a snack from the pantry. The Forge itself also functioned as the smith’s home, pull-out couch with a fancy mattress included. Unfortunately, it was starting to get late. Sleep tugged at Yama’s eyelids, and so rather than continue his work, he changed, brushed his fangs, and flopped down face-first onto the bed. The Half-Dragon went to sleep, his snores rattling the tools in his workspace.
• • •
When the sun rose, it was at just the perfect angle to shine right on his bed. Yama made it this way so that he could get up in the morning and not have to worry about sleeping in too late, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t annoying. He slowly got out of bed, grumbling all the while. The drowsy dragon child trudged toward the dresser and pulled out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. All of his clothes had to be specially modified for his tail and wings, and every morning he put his pants on one leg at a time, threaded his tail through a hole in the back, and then pulled them up. His shirts needed him to put his head through, fit the tops of his wings through openings in the back, pull down the holes, pop the rest of his wings through, and then put his arms in the sleeves. It was a long process, but decades of putting on shirts have made it second-nature. He never thought about it, and when he did he could never imagine simply getting dressed without the extra anatomy.
While he was eating breakfast, some fruit and salted meat he bought a couple of days prior, a letter from his parents was delivered. Letters sent by his parents never came in the “usual” way. There was no mailbox, and certainly not a post office out in the steppe. At least, there wasn’t on that wasn’t on the complete OPPOSITE side of the desert. The letter came inside a sealed capsule, keeping the parchment safe when traveling underground. Yama undid the latch and took out a folded piece of paper, and there was a wax seal bearing a square on it.
Yamatsu’s family had a special code when it came to sending letters. Circles for weekly letters when they would all check in with each other, triangles for other inquiries, and squares for serious emergencies. His eyes widened, and he tore the seal off. In his mother’s penmanship:
Come to the mountain. We need to talk.
-Guinevere
Shit. His mom always referred to herself as Guinevere, an old habit from writing copious amounts of letters back in her hunting days, but something as vague as this could mean anything! Did she hear about the bar fight a few months ago? Yama didn’t even start it! It was that drunk asshole that called him a salamander! He deserved to get his block knocked off! Was it the new weapon he built? He never tested it on anyone, so it couldn’t be that. Was it politics? Oh, God. He hoped it wasn’t politics.
The Half-Dragon ran to the mouth of the cave, flared his membranous wings, and took off into the midmorning sky. The light played off of his brown scales, the amber and red undertones shining like gems in clay. Yamatsu’s nearly twenty-foot wingspan carried him swiftly along the wind, each wingbeat like a flapping sail. He had set up shop further south than the mountain in which he grew up, but it was simply a half-hour’s flight from his workshop to the Pike Mountains. The mountain range slowly came into view, and he saw smoke rising from the one in the middle. His parents were home, and the torches were already lit. Yama began his ascent, and he knew he was in the right range when his ears began to pop. He clamped a hand over his wide snout, blew, and relieved the pressure behind his eardrums.
The mouth of the cave at the very top of Death Mountain, the one in the center, was lit with torches. Yama landed and called out.
“Mom? MOM? I’m here! What’s wrong?!”
“Get over here!” a woman’s voice called out.
He tore off running, his talons scraping the stone floors of his childhood home. Down the main hallway, past the kitchen, and through the living room was his parents’ room. The Half-Dragon entered and saw both his mother and his father.
Guinevere was a tall woman, standing over seven feet tall and with enough muscle to break a man in half. Her fiery red hair was swept back in a loose ponytail, exposing her emerald-green eyes. Her face looked darker in the low light, but it was also a bit redder thanks to his father.
Gawain was an Earth Dragon, over twenty feet tall with the same brown, red, and amber scales as his son. Something was wrong, however. In the center of his chest, there was a glowing red spot. Every time it pulsed, his breathing became labored and he winced in pain.
“What’s wrong?” Yama asked.
“Take a guess!” his father rumbled. He couldn’t speak Common, but he understood it plenty.
“He’s got an irritated flame sac. I need you to get some medicine from the Caravan,” his mother said, pulling a slip of paper from her left pocket. The apothecary on the Caravan couldn’t be beaten when it came to prices and variety, but that was a much longer flight depending on where it was at this time of year.
“Is that all you needed me for?” Yama asked, putting the slip in his own pocket.
“No, but I figured I would have you get the medicine while you were at it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me in the letter?”
Gawain grunted in pain again, and the glowing spot seemed to change color, becoming slightly more orange.
“The symptoms began a few minutes before you got here. Get going!” she said.
Yama turned around and flew out of the cave. He had to get to the apothecary in the Caravan, but the problem was that it traveled throughout the Shiara Desert. There was a set route that it took, but things would occasionally change depending on the shifting sands. The steppe passed underneath him, and low scrubs soon gave way to yellow sand. He passed the city of Bahron, the largest city in the great desert, and decided to land just outside the walls. Using another technique that his father taught him, Yama planted his foot and used the Seismic Sense. Vibrations from the surrounding earth would travel through objects and bounce back to his feet and move up his body. Unfortunately, it was difficult to sense much of anything through sand, and he realized that there was some interference happening because of the sand flows.
There was a sort of river of sand that went around Bahron, slowly wearing away at the foundation. It wasn’t in any danger now, but a decade or two down the line could see the entire city being buried in the dunes. Yama flew over the sand flows and tried again. It was very faint, but there were enough vibrations that could be felt due west that it was worth a shot. He launched himself into the open sky, feeling the heat shimmer around him.
After more flying, finally, he made some headway. The Caravan was slowly rising over the horizon. The Caravan wasn’t any regular caravan. Instead of a long train of people traveling through the desert, it was a massive ship that sailed through the drifts of sand. It was five stories tall, decked with massive sails, and was the center of all commerce in the Shiara Desert aside from the city of Bahron. The faded paint told stories of countless trips around the desert, fighting to save humanity and the economy from wyvern encroachment. Cannons bristled from every deck on both sides, ballistae angrily pointed towards the heavens, and the mighty Dragonator stood at the ready below the figurehead. Dragonators were remnants of an ancient race that used to live in the desert, pneumatic spears the size of tree trunks with vicious barbs and edges that could pierce a castle wall. They were currently used as a defense from wyverns, dragons, and other ships, though some sailors have made a career out of scuttling ships with only a Dragonator.
Yama landed on the top deck of the ship and hurried inside. He passed farms and other workers surprised at his landing. He had no time to chat, he needed to get the medicine and get home as fast as he could. Down the stairs, turn right, and pass a few stalls of various wares and fruits, there was the apothecary. The proprietor was a slight man with a hunched back, but his skills were second to none when it came to mixing medicines. He was currently preoccupied with a mortar and pestle, mashing some herbs and fungi together into a dubious-looking paste.
“I need this medicine,” Yama said, placing the slip of paper onto the wood table.
Without a word, the man took the paper, read what was on it, then got a bottle tucked away in a shelf behind him.
“What’ll you be needin’ this for?” the apothecary asked, his narrow eyes seeming to peer directly into the Half-Dragon’s soul.
“My dad, he’s got an inflamed… uh… flame sac.”
“He’s the dragon, right?”
“Yes.” Obviously! Who else would it be, the Emperor of Prominence?!
The apothecary grabbed a pencil and wrote on the slip of paper.
“Take three pills twice daily with water until the swellin’ seems to stop.” He slid the bottle and paper towards Yama’s waiting talons, then held out his hand.
“That’ll be three silver.”
Yama began to pat at his pockets, first on his legs and then on his butt. He left his coin pouch at home.
“I also take zenny.”
“That’s also in my coin pouch. Give me a second.”
Yama reached his right hand out and focused. He knew where the pouch was, underneath the socks he never wore in his dresser. It was enchanted so that it would never be lost thanks to a family friend, so all he had to do was concentrate. A minute later, there was a cry from one of the nearby cannons. Some poor hunter was nearly clocked on the head by a flying pouch of money, but it landed safely in his hand. He poured out four silver and handed them to the apothecary. He had propped his head up with one arm and was tapping patiently with his free hand.
“Thank you so much!” Yama said as he grabbed the pill bottle and slip.
“Any time.” The apothecary replied, making special note of the lovely tip he was given.
Yama hauled tail out to the top deck and took off once more. The other workers were used to his arrival despite the fact that he was the only Half-Dragon in the world. He usually wasn’t in this much of a hurry, but they didn’t pay him much mind anyway. When you’re on a traveling sandship, you meet a lot of interesting characters.
An hour later, Yama touched down at Death Mountain. Rather than run, he decided to shift the stone underneath his feet towards his destination. Throwing his arms back, the floor flowed like liquid as he made his way back to his parents’ room.
“I’m here!” he called out. “I’ve got the medicine!”
“Quickly, give it to me!” Guinevere replied. She was massaging ice into the glowing spot in her husband’s chest, which was now a bright orange. Gawain couldn’t help whimpering in pain, he felt as though his chest was going to explode.
Yama tossed her the brown bottle and she caught it with one hand.
“Three pills with water!” Yama instructed as his mother poured three (quite large) yellow pills into her hand.
“Open wide, honey.” Gawain did so and swallowed all three with a splash of water from the ice bucket. They seemed to have an immediate effect, as the orange glow began to fade into a duller red.
Gawain stood up, his once twitching legs holding fast to support his massive bulk.
“Stand back,” he rumbled. Fire was already seeping from between his fangs, but that was nothing compared to the great gout of flame the dragon produced. It blasted through the door and torched the stone wall, nearly heating it to critical temperature. Guinevere wasn’t affected by the flames, and both she and her son stood back to avoid their clothes catching fire. By the time he was finished, it seems like the whole cavern was blackened with soot and smoke.
“Better?” Yama asked. The glow had almost entirely faded from his father’s chest, and he flashed them both a smile.
“Much better.”
