The warehouse smelled of dust and old machine oil. Darwin shoved a crowbar under the lid of a crate with a loud crunch. The boards groaned, revealing the dull gleam of brass.
"Look at this," Darwin said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand and leaving a black smear. "Looks like the real deal. From the outside, it's pure steel and high-grade additive. Reinhart will be licking his chops."
Iron rolled closer, squinting. The components lay nestled in wood shavings, smooth and meticulous. If you didn't know that the insides were over-refined cast iron laced with microfractures, you could genuinely believe in their quality.
"Good," Iron grunted. "Close it up. Let them sit."
Walter, leaning against the doorframe, spat onto the threshold. "A lot of good that does. They've been sitting for a month, and they'll sit for another. The road is empty, and so are the woods. The hunters came back empty-handed again today."
"Nothing at all?" Iron turned his head toward the captain.
"Squirrels," Walter grimaced. "A plague of squirrels. Fat, arrogant bastards, practically jumping into your hands. But meat? Zero."
Iron frowned. "Elyria!" he called out.
The spirit drifted out languidly, leaving a trail of freshly cut grass scent in her wake. She looked thoroughly pleased with herself.
"What? The town has bloomed, have you seen?"
"I've seen. Better tell me where the monsters went, Elyria."
The spirit landed on a crate, tucking her transparent legs beneath her. "Ah, those things..." She waved a hand dismissively. "I chased them off. They're so hideous, Iron. Crooked teeth, foul stench, always gnawing on something. They were ruining the whole aesthetic. I told them to get lost. But I kept the squirrels. They're cute. They have those little tufted ears. Aren't they precious?"
The warehouse fell dead silent. Darwin slowly lowered his crowbar. Walter stood frozen, his mouth hanging open. From the corner, Noah stepped out noiselessly.
"So," Noah's voice was cold and flat, "we've been choking down bland porridge and hazelnuts for two weeks straight just because you didn't like the look of a boar's snout?"
"They didn't fit the landscape!" Elyria tossed her chin up. "I am cultivating harmony."
"Harmony?" Iron felt his eyelid twitch. "You butchered the food chain because you were 'scared'? We're humans, Elyria, don't forget that. We need meat, hides—hell, we even need monsters for materials, or frankly, just for food. Do you have any idea how brainless that was?"
The spirit's eyes went wide. "But... they really are ugly."
"Oh, forget it," Noah rolled his eyes and turned away. "She genuinely doesn't get it. A powerful entity with the brains of a child."
Iron took a deep breath, trying to keep from erupting into a shout. "Bring them back. All of them. Right now. I don't give a damn about aesthetics. Understood?"
The spirit pouted, her green glow dimming. "Ungrateful. I do all this for you, planting flowers... Fine. Just don't come crying to me later."
She spun on her heel and shot out the window like a bullet, leaving behind a handful of wilting petals.
Barely ten seconds passed before a distant, prolonged howl echoed from the depths of the forest. Right after, something heavy crashed through the thicket just behind the warehouse wall.
Walter grunted in satisfaction and tapped the pommel of his sword. "Well, finally. Darwin, drop the ironwork. Let's go reset the snares. We're having real dinner tonight."
Iron rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Idiocy. Higher powers are just natural disasters with the temperaments of spoiled children."
The forest smelled of decay again—damp leaves, boar sweat, and wild berries. It was a massive improvement over the cloying scent of flowers.
Walter froze, crouching low to the ground. His knee popped so loudly that Iron, sitting in his chair at the very edge of the clearing, winced.
"Quiet, old man," Noah hissed. He was hanging from a branch of an oak directly above Walter's head.
"Look who's—" Walter didn't finish.
A heavy, wet snorting drifted from the bushes ahead. Iron gripped his armrests tight. His role in this hunt was thoroughly humiliating: sitting on look-out duty.
"It's breaking through," Walter breathed.
A massive bulk burst from the thicket. A colossal boar, covered in coarse, rusted bristles. Its yellow tusks were crooked and sharp, saliva dripping from its jaws.
"Beautiful," Noah muttered.
He dropped straight down from the branch, his blade sinking flawlessly right under the beast's shoulder blade. The creature let out a piercing squeal that rang through the entire forest and lunged forward, flattening the undergrowth. Walter leaped up, completely forgetting his bad leg, and rammed a hunting spear deep into the passing flank.
Mud sprayed in every direction.
A minute later, everything went still. The boar lay motionless, its hoof giving one last twitch in the sludge.
"There we go," Walter wiped the sweat from his forehead with a bloody sleeve. "And that fool claimed it wasn't pretty. Look at that neck. There's a good forty kilos of pure meat here."
Iron rolled up to the edge of the mud, looking down at the dead beast. A familiar throb pulsed in his head.
Lumon, analysis.
[Notice]
Biomaterial detected. High-density protein consumption is strongly recommended.
"Walter," Iron called out. "Haul it back to camp. And when Elyria gets back, tell her this is the most beautiful thing I've seen all month."
Walter chuckled, grabbing the boar by its hind leg. "I'll tell her. Though I expect she won't speak to any of us for a week."
Fat dripped onto the coals, sizzling loudly and sending up a thick, heavy smoke.
They sat around the campfire in the courtyard. Noah carved off another piece, not even waiting for it to cook through properly. Walter ate slowly, savoring each bite.
Elyria hovered in the air about three meters away from the flames, demonstratively pinching her nose with a translucent hand.
"You're eating a corpse," she spat. "And you smell like one. It's vile."
Iron sat in his chair slightly apart from the rest, swirling a wooden mug of hot broth in his hands.
"Tomorrow we begin the clearing," he said, staring into the fire. "The center needs to be demolished. We need to clear space for proper houses."
"If we move those boulders by hand, we'll be at it until winter," Walter noted, gnawing clean a bone.
"We won't be doing it by hand. Darwin is going to assemble a couple of converters for me, and I'll rewrite the formulas. We'll simply vaporize the old stones down to the bare dirt with a magno-technical impulse. Then Elyria can weave her greenery over it, since 'aesthetics' are so vital to her."
The spirit snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. "Assuming I have any strength left for that. I told you... six months to restore my true form was the most optimistic estimate. That's the minimum. I don't even know what the maximum could be."
"Who clobbered you that hard anyway?" Darwin asked, licking his fingers. "Aren't you supposed to be some kind of all-powerful, immortal being?"
Elyria shrugged, her green luminescence dimming for a brief second.
"A creature," she muttered reluctantly, averting her eyes. "An absolute abomination. A mass of pure black, nothing but red eyes and a gaping maw. I disintegrated it into dust, of course, but it managed to drain almost my entire core in the process. So you'd better thank me for planting flowers, you ungrateful lots."
A heavy silence fell over the campfire, broken only by the snapping of wood.
"Happens," Walter remarked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "I used to think I'd spend my whole life rotting away as an ordinary swordsman in the barracks. Until the Count pulled me from the ranks and took me into his service." He nodded toward Wayland.
The Count sat on a sturdy chair, meticulously slicing meat off a bone with a small hunting knife. "And I made the right call," Wayland replied calmly.
Noah twirled an empty wooden skewer between his fingers. "From my childhood, I only really remember my grandpa and grandma. They took me in when I was a stray kid, gave me a roof. A friend taught me how to swing a blade... long before you and Elyria crashed into Dornheim. But well... they're no longer among the living."
Darwin chuckled, brushing crumbs from his beard. "I remember you back then. Running to my shop for your first blades. Scrawny little thing, eyes blazing, always trying to prove something to someone. And look at you now..." He looked at Noah intently. "You've grown cold. Serious."
Noah merely shrugged, letting the comment slide.
Slowly, all eyes turned toward Iron.
"What about you, Iron?" Walter asked, squinting slightly through the smoke.
Iron looked down at his ruined legs, hidden beneath the blanket. Then he raised his eyes to meet the faces illuminated by the orange flames.
"A chaotic childhood," he said in a flat, unreadable tone. "Too much free time and a terrible habit of running brutal experiments on myself. Nothing interesting."
Iron took a sip of the hot broth, feeling the warmth spread through his chest.
"Better if you don't know what I had to endure just to end up here, he thought. Otherwise, you'd only start pitying me."
The fire crackled softly. Night had completely claimed Dornheim, but no one was in a hurry to leave. They simply sat together, trading sporadic phrases beneath the displeased huffing of the spirit above.
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