Deus Necros

Ludwig had spent the second day merely watching both Andre and the Apprentices. His workload had increased by a lot from yesterday, not by accident, but by a kind of petty coordination that didn’t need words.

Scrap that should have stayed in piles somehow scattered across his freshly swept paths. Water buckets “slipped” and splashed where iron dust would cling and smear. Scale was flicked off hot metal with less care than before, as if they wanted it to rain down and force him to clean twice.

The forge kept its rhythm anyway, bellows breathing heat into coals, hammers clapping metal into shape, the occasional hiss of quench tubs, and Ludwig moved through it all like he had been assigned a role in the workshop’s machinery.

Ludwig understood the underlying meaning, they didn’t like him. Perhaps due to his ’noble’ heritage. Or the fact that Andre was giving him too much attention. He caught it in the glances that ended the moment he looked back, in the way voices lowered when he passed, in the way one apprentice smirked when Ludwig bent to gather filings like he was picking up humiliation.

Ludwig didn’t bother defending himself. Defending yourself to people like this never earned respect. It only proved you cared.

He most definitely didn’t care. More work meant the disciples made more mistakes. Meaning he could learn more. And avoid the glaring problems. If they wanted to punish him with labor, fine. Labor created proximity. Proximity created observation. Observation created understanding. And understanding was the only thing that mattered, because the system didn’t care whether Andre’s apprentices liked him. The system only cared whether he learned.

The third day begun.

Ludwig was once again first to awaken, with a broom in hand, after having cleaned up the whole workshop without a word of complaint or annoyance. The building was quieter before the forge truly woke, coals banked low, air cooler, soot settled.

Ludwig used that stillness to reset the space. He assorted the tools for both Andre and the help. He made sure everything was in sight and properly cleaned and oiled if need be. He didn’t arrange it like a servant trying to please.

He arranged it like a tactician preparing a battlefield, because in a forge, the battlefield was time. A hammer out of place cost seconds. A dull file cost minutes. A sticky hinge cost an accident.

Andre walked in first, he took a single glance at the shop, smiled for a fraction of a second then moved toward the main forge where he sat working on something.

That fraction of a smile mattered more than praise. Andre didn’t compliment. He acknowledged function. Ludwig saw the approval and filed it away without letting it warm him. Approval didn’t unlock metallurgy. Work did. Andre crossed to the forge and began moving steel and heat like they were extensions of his hands, not separate things.

Ludwig hoped for another small lesson, but Andre remained quiet and working.

The quiet wasn’t neglect. It was deliberate pressure, the kind that forced Ludwig to decide whether he was here for attention or for learning. Ludwig didn’t interrupt and merely watched, with his eyes using [Trace] he memorized everything the smith did.

From how he struck, where he struck, how much force used. When he heated and reheated. And when he allowed the metal to cool. Andre’s hammer blows were not strong, they were correct. He hit the same region twice for a reason, then rotated, then hit again, then returned the piece to the coals before the color died. He wasted nothing. Even his pauses were pauses with purpose.

Apprentices walked in one after the other, watching first. Then working second. They didn’t have the ’opportunity’ to make Ludwig do work since he already organized everything for them, so they just worked on their own projects while helplessly staring now and then at Ludwig being too close to their master.

Ludwig felt their eyes like heat on the back of his neck, but he didn’t give them a reaction to feed on. Instead he watched them as well. Not their faces, their hands. One held the tongs too far back and overcompensated. One quenched too eagerly and got that faint warp that ruined everything later. One waited too long and hammered steel that had already cooled into stubbornness, wasting effort and making the sound ring too sharp.

Ludwig merely waited and until the final apprentice arrived. Andre acted.

He did not announce the lesson this time. He simply tossed a narrow billet onto the central anvil.

“For you,” he said.

Ludwig stepped forward.

It was uneven. Poorly layered. Slightly twisted along one end. The flaws were obvious to Ludwig now, and that was the first real sign that the watching had been working. Yesterday he would have seen only a chunk of metal. Today he saw the future mistakes already embedded in it.

“A flawed billet,” Ludwig observed.

“A forgiving one,” Andre corrected. “If you ruin it, I lose little.”

Andre didn’t shame him. He set stakes. Forgiving meant it would tolerate mistakes without punishing him with immediate catastrophe. It also meant Andre wasn’t sentimental. He was investing in Ludwig’s learning, not in preserving a piece of steel.

He gestured to the forge.

“Heat it.”

Ludwig used the tongs and placed the billet into the coals. He watched carefully as the material began reacting. The glow climbed from dull red to brighter red, then to orange, then toward yellow that tempted the impatient. Ludwig forced himself not to label it like a child naming paint. Andre’s earlier correction stayed in his head. Steel did not care what you called a color. It cared about what the color meant.

A dull red, then a brighter one, then orange, then a brighter one, then finally Yellow.

He reached for it with his tongs only for Andre to stop him. “Not yet.”

“You said Yellow was near critical. It would break past this point.”

“I also said you were wrong about yellow.” Andre stepped closer, “Steel does not care what you call the color. It changes temperature not vocabulary.”

Andre pulled the billet free long enough to make the difference undeniable. Ludwig saw the actual tone Andre meant, a brighter, almost shimmering yellow that made Ludwig’s earlier “yellow” look like a lazy guess.

It was a bright almost shimmering tone of yellow.

“Just barely lost its magnetism.” Andre said as he placed a small stone against the hot metal. The stone stuck for a brief moment and then fell.

“This is a lodestone, test it next time.”

“Magnetism?”

“If you want to learn metallurgy, you need to understand magnetism first. When iron reaches critical temperature. Its structure shifts and readjusts, it stops being magnetic. But that doesn’t mean it is ready, it simply means it is close.”

He gave the billet back to Ludwig.

“Learn to test, not guess. Try again.”

This time Ludwig placed the billet back. Just as the metal turned yellow, he had the urge to pull it out but stopped himself. The urge was the enemy, the same enemy that killed people in combat. Impatience. He counted silently, held the tongs steady, then pulled it and used the lodestone immediately.

No pull.

He placed the billet on the anvil and took the hammer. He was tempted to use [Trace] to immediately mimic Andre’s own move. But just as he was about to, he stopped himself. The temptation felt like a shortcut, and shortcuts were how you built false confidence.

’It would be cheating… I need to learn. Properly.’ He swung down.

Ludwig knew well the potential of his muscles. His undead muscles were far stronger than a mere blacksmith, but power alone is never a good thing. If he used half his strength he’ll probably snap the hammer in two and turn the billet into flying shards of molten steel.

So, he used minimal force.

The first strike rung sharp. Too sharp.

“Too cold.” Andre said instantly.

“It was non-magnetic.”

“Doesn’t mean it was hot enough, it’s cooling while we speak.”

Ludwig felt the truth of that immediately. The second the billet left the forge, the air started stealing heat. The window was cruel. The metal didn’t wait for him to finish arguing.

“Won’t it go past critical if I heat it more?”

“You’re mistaking forging with quenching. You’ll worry about critical when you’re quenching. Heat it.”

Ludwig obliged and heated the billet again, he waited more this time, brighter, far brighter than before. Andre didn’t stop him. Ludwig didn’t let the heat become indulgence either. He watched the surface, pulled at the moment that felt right, then moved with speed that didn’t look frantic, just efficient. Anvil. Hammer. Strike.

A cleaner sound rung out. And the billet flattened.

A small success.

He didn’t celebrate. He repeated. Heat as soon as the color died. Strike while the metal still wanted to move. Rotate before uneven force baked in. He did it again and again, and the billet began to resemble something blade-shaped, crude but real.

“Break it.”

Ludwig blinked, “I’ve just shaped it…”

“Break it.”

Reluctantly, Ludwig placed the heated billet across the edge of the anvil and struck. It snapped in two, the fractured surface was visible, uneven and crystalline. The break wasn’t just destruction. It was inspection. The inside told the truth that the outside hid.

Andre held up one end and asked, “What do you see?”

“Roughness… grains like crystals.”

“Yes, Large grains, you overheated earlier.”

Ludwig’s jaws tightened, “By seconds…”

“Seconds are enough. Steel remembers abuse.” He tossed aside the broken piece.

The line settled in Ludwig’s mind like a rule that applied far beyond metal.

By midday, Ludwig had shaped something resembling a short blade.

This time he did his all to not overheat nor underheat, and struck always at what he felt like the optimal point in both time and force.

He used the lodestone instead of guessing. He moved faster between forge and anvil. He watched for that sharp ring that meant he’d waited too long. He corrected the spine as best he could with controlled hits instead of trying to bully the steel straight.

The blade he ended up with was uneven, the spine wavered slightly.

“Passable,” Andre said.

Ludwig looked at him surprised.

“What? You made something imperfect, that means you’re trying. Trying is good.”

He then handed him a vat of oil. “Now, Harden it.”

Just as Ludwig was about to place the cooling billet into the oil, he stopped himself. He remembered the warp from yesterday, the moment oil punished impatience, and he refused to repeat it. He put it back into the forge instead.

Andre let out a small smile, Ludwig caught it with the side of his eyes.

Once heated he picked up the billet again, tested for magnetism, he made sure it had passed the magnetic threshold and settled into hardening heat. Then he plunged it into the oil. The hiss rose low and thick, and the blade trembled in his grip as the oil boiled around it. Ludwig held steady, forcing his hands to be anchors rather than levers, because movement here created warping.

Once the bubbling stopped, Ludwig withdrew the blade.

It looked intact, it didn’t curve, crack, warp or shatter. It looked intact. Enough that it made hope appear on Ludwig’s face, a brief crack in his usual restraint.

“Test it,” Andre handed him a file. There was urgency in that task.

He placed the file and then dragged it across the edge. It skated, it didn’t bite. That meant that it hardened properly.

“I succeeded.”

Andre said nothing. Instead he took the blade and placed it onto the forge, far from the heart of the coals.

“Now,” he said, “Watch. See the color.”

Color did in fact slowly creep along the steel. Pale straw near the edge. Darker bronze toward the spine. Ludwig watched the line of temper like it was a fuse burning, and when Andre said “Move it,” he moved it at the right moment without asking why. The steel was being taught to survive, not just to be hard.

“Quench again,” Andre tasked and Ludwig followed.

This time the hiss was softer, gentler, the steel settling instead of fighting.

Once he was done, Andre took the blade, and struck it sharply against the anvil’s horn.

Apprentices flinched as they expected this blade to break into a thousand pieces.

It didn’t crack nor shatter.

He handed the blade back to Ludwig.

“It will not win wars.” Andre said, “But it will not shatter in winter.”