RP:The Heart of the Matter

Part of Thy Kingdom Come Arc

Smithing Supplies

As you find yourself in the large room you see various minerals and blacksmithing tools. Anvils are spread out and workshops are set up. After a moment of glancing around you clearly find that this is the main area where the frost giant guards create, and craft their equipment and weapons. To your south is a path back to the east hall.

Leone is at one of the human-sized workbenches in the Fort's smithy, a large, cavernous room, with various sizes and scales of work stations that are all overseen by Master Gikal. There is snow packed into the furnace, rather than fire lit, and bone-chilling cold seeps from the hearth. The blacksmith is bundled up, furs laid over her leathers, and two layers of gloves making her hands less than dexterous. The mechanical parts of the heart are laid out, plotted like puzzle pieces upon the schematic designed by engineer Alvina. Almost all of them are present, with just a few cogs and bits that make up the outer casing and attachments missing. They are, presumably, in the forge. Each part is labeled, and small imperfections upon the surface of each and every part revealed to be precise and very intricate runes and sigils, upon closer inspection.

Alvina enters the room dressed in her fur lined cloak and soft, slightly less warm, fingerless gloves. The one on her left hand is merely for show and symmetry, with metal fingers poking out from the dark blue fabric. "Lady Leone?" She said, stepping up to the bench cautiously for fear of causing errors in her smithing. It could be delicate work, she knew, so she held her tongue until the proper moment presented itself. "I suppose it's nearly time..." Dread laced the bards word; not for the revival of the Stewardess but for fear her engineer talents would not live up to the expectation and something would go horribly wrong.

Leone looks up from the workbench, a stool beside her gestured to with the expanding of an arm in indication. The arm is settled back into place at her side, the fingers nudging one of the interlocking parts upon the table. She smiles softly, half of her rose-taupe lips curling up into a subtly wry grin. "Alvina," she greets the bard in return, her head dipped in a casual nod, "Oh yes. The time is nigh. You can ah, begin to put the interior parts together, I'll be able to help you with a hand here and there, to keep things steady until my last two pieces of blue iron are ready to emerge from the furnace," the farrier explains, her gloved hands tapping the table in front of her. "I've laid everything out, so that hopefully we make as few errors as possible," the farrier jests, a faltering smile working against her face.

Alvina is now close enough to study the pieces in detail. Each fragile looking section is laid out before them, the runes are a mystery but the pieces are clearly her work. She reaches up to take the inner workings of the left ventricle and smiles, hopefully. "They look absolutely perfect...Leone..." The bard stops to smile fully at the priestess, "They're perfect...exactly like I imagined..." With that, the bard removes both her gloves, despite the bitter cold of the room, and begins to thread the inner workings of what will become Hildegarde's heart together. She needed no blue prints, because she'd mills and screamed and sketched her life away for the past month making sure they were perfect. Much like Linn's library of blue prints, the schematics for this project were etched into her mind's eye down to the slightest detail.

Leone smiles broadly at Alvina, a chuckle erupting from her lips before being stifled by a hand. "Well, you know," the plover's dichotomic notes of velvet and gravel bleed out past her gloves, "Nothing but the best for our Hildegarde." The cleric then turns, her shoulders leading the way, until her hips follow and short strides are taken to the snow-caked hearth. A pair of tongs sitting beside anvil is grabbed up along the way, and the smith (awkwardly) laces her fingers through the loops to open and close them, the mithril clattering and clanging against itself. Using the ends of the tongs to unseal the packed furnace, the farrier makes a hole before retrieving the last two encasing parts. They are thrust onto the anvil, where they wobble and glow a brilliant azure blue. The devastating chill in the room dips even lower, making the petite plover's exhalations visible, and causing her to taste ice crystals upon her tongue. The tongs are again put to rest at the foot of the anvil, and instead a chisel and small hammer are seized. The raven-haired woman begins to tap lightly at the delicate pieces, turning them over with the nudge of the chisel when need be.

Alvina halts her own construction to watch Leone for a moment. The bard had been very diligently working on her end of the construction but she hadn't really thought about the rest of the work involved. Her heart sank, to think of Leone, this wonderful guardian of Hildegarde's, who was saving them all in truth. Alvina didn't know where she'd be without the Stewardess...or Orikahn, or Linn...all of whom the raven-haired woman has helped time after time. It must have taken her a long time to shape and work this metal so perfectly; days upon days in this frigid cold (which was saying something, even in Frostmaw). She picks up the next few pieces and fits them together, aligning their delicate grooves and addressing her partner in crime without holding her gaze. "Thank you...for everything. You've done a lot of good for a lot of people, that I know and I'm sure that I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet. Not that it's my personal debt but...I'm not sure I'd ever be able to pay you for the lives you've saved..." Her lips are frozen in a tight smile as she fights against the constant shiver.

Leone glances away from her inscribing of the runes upon the least piece of the heart, vivid, jadite sights trained on Alvina. The nearly luminous, lime green orbs move over the engineer's face, and she shakes her head gently to her companion. "I made a vow, I pledged myself to Aramoth many years ago - though my people do not call him by the same name - and to Frostmaw. It is no self-sacrifice that I tend to both body and spirit of those I am sworn to; it is my duty," the farrier replies, though not in order to dismiss the gratitude displayed by Alvina. "That being said, my job often goes unrecognized, so I thank you for say that, in return. I appreciate your recognition," the metallurgist finishes. The chisel and hammer are placed to the side just before both final segments of Hildegarde's new blue iron heart are carried over to the workbench, and placed in their appropriate quadrants upon her copy of the blueprints. "How are you coming along? Is there anything I can help with?" The pair of questions are sincere and serious.

Alvina looks at Leone, giving her a mirrors smile with all the warmth she can muster in this cold place. "That just leads me to believe you are the only one that could pull this off." Her faux confidence holds up, despite the serious tone in the woman's next round of questions. Alvina sets her emerald optics over the remaining pieces atop her detailed blue prints and thinks for a long moment. "If you could, let me place these few bits together on my own..." She stares down at the right ventricle in her hands, "And then we can clasp the other two portions together inside the casing." The rich blues in the metal's texture soften the bard's tendency for emotions but the freezing cold is the absolute worst place to cry, so she does not. Cerinii had taught her to control her emotions during projects, and so that was the only time she was able. "I've been going over this again and again, I've been afraid." She admits, locking the final pieces of the current ventricle in place. "I know it's crazy, but this is something really precious...I feel like if we had a thousand years, I'd never be fully confident." She sniffs, rubbing her now free metallic palm against her cheek. The metal of her hand is strangely cold here. "Don't tell Hilde I said that," a forced laugh parts her lips, "then she'll start to worry about that, on top of all the other things she'll have to worry about when she gets back..."

Leone clears her throat, and nods to Alvina, giving the bard leeway to piece together the inner workings withing being hovered over. Instead, the smith returns to the furnace, and sets about extinguishing the cold forging fuel...which involves heat. Hot coals are poured out of a bucket and into the hearth, causing a gout of white steam and a bevvy of hissing to rise out of the forge and straight toward the ceiling. The cold begins to lessen, the sharp, almost painful stinging of the climate easing into a far more comfortable, though not anywhere near warm, temperature. The coals cool, blackening the snow and water that still clings to the furnace until tiny rivers of soot roll over the hearth and onto the floor. "Do not be afraid," the farrier attempts to encourage the engineer, "The plans are perfect, everything is to scale, and the model functioned well. I've also put a few wards and blessings on the metal, forged into it, and etched across each layer, to guard against things like wear and tear. Each piece has several redundancies, just in case, too." The plover bides her time further, giving Alvina the leeway to work at her own pace, and not feel crowded nor pressured.

Alvina works as she listens to the priestess go about putting out the icy flames with heat, and then to her kind and practical reassurances. The bard knew she was right, but still. Her own heart ached for fear that something would go wrong. It always did. She paid close attention to the Atrium's, snapping the finished products into the matching ventricle, before lifting the second to last part of the design; the Aorta. "Could you hold this bit here?" the bard held out the semi-composed heart sideways so she could latch the Aorta on properly. Once they manage to skillful piece the heart's internal components together, Alvina tilts her head in a slight nod towards the last two pieces of the puzzle. "I believe this should about do it..." she said, before holding her breath in anticipation of the last piece being set into place.

Leone steps forward when bidden, both hands stretching out to gingerly, daintily, but steadily hold the partially built heart. The coolness of the metal seeps through her gloves, and a faint smile traces the curve of the metallurgist's plump lips. "You know," she begins in a whisper to Alvina, though no cause is given for this, "We chose Blue Iron because the Steward is a frost dragon. She and the heart will help keep one another alive. It will weather her cold-loving nature, and in turn it will help to keep her cold in warmer climates." The heart is passed back to the bard before the farrier reaches for the encasing portions, the pieces that will keep the inner workings protected and enclosed. The lip on them is a work of genius, a dual track of slighly upturned metal that nest into one another, insuring that both liquid and pressure will remain constant inside the new organ. She first dry-fits the pieces together. Then, assured that they will nest as promise, around the already assembled innards of the heart. The bantam blacksmith exhales long and low, her breath curling up along her face to push errant strands of sterling and onyx out of her eyes for but a few seconds. "Done," she rasps, a sniff following the declaration.

Alvina 's eyes flick back and forth between the priestess and the heart in her grasp, listening to the whisper as if it was gospel, a ghost of a smile on her lips as she listened, thinking of the stewardess as she'd been at the ball. 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' she'd said and everyone had chuckled. "It's truly beautiful." Leone's runes lined the metal working, and Alvina tried to make out the symbols but she didn't know a thing about them. They were carved with a delicate hand; just another indication that this was of great importance to Leone...there was a palpable love in the woman's eyes that did not come from service to the gods alone. When the heart is complete, Alvina holds it for a moment in her hands, feeling the weight of the reality along with it's physical presence. "Finger's crossed," she said with a beaming smile before gingerly handing it back to Leone.

Leone has a box prepared, which she summons from a shelf under the worktable to the top (using her hands, there is no magic here). The box appears ordinary enough, the exterior left dusty and knotted, unpolished and unadorned. The inside, however, is lined with velvet and lacquered to a fine finish. Very much like some people she knows. Accepting the heart once again from Alvina, the High Priestess first leans forward, pressing her lips to the seam where the two outer plates of the heart come together. The etchings along the metal flare cerulean, then slowly shift into white, almost like a picturesque autumn sky. Gradually, the magic newly imbued into the metal muscle embeds itself into the blue iron, dissipating the luminence into a subtle glint and sparkle, in spite of the heart's unpolished nature. Leone nestles the newly built organ into its cushioned carry-all, where it will travel with her, protected, until she is able to place it in the Steward's body just before the ritual is set to take place. The lid is carefully lowered into position and latched before a breathe is heaved out, and the hand nearest the engineer reaches out, intent to curl over her partner in construction's. "Excellent work," the diminutive farrier praises her compatriot, "Masterfully done, Alvina. It will function, I'm sure of it."

Alvina watches all this unfold with an a tingly, omnipresent feeling. It couldn't be her inexperienced eyes witnessing such things. It wasn't possible that her hands had helped form a piece of someone's internal workings. Leone's light grasp calls her back, and fuels the fire of her smile. "Masterfully done, Leone!" She was quick to return the phrase, feeling the smallest bit of relief at the completion of the final step. Part of the bard did not wish to go back in to the world and face the standstill her life had become in the wake of everything since the ball...Hudson, Eleanor, Josleen, Ansel...they'd all be set aside for this important thing. And now Alvina's portion ended. "Please, when she's...awake.." Saying Alive felt too strange, "let her know how much she's loved." If and when the Stewardess awoke there was no doubt that her awakening in of itself would show that very thing ten times over. In true Alvina fashion, the bard wraps her arms carefully around the priestess and hugs her gently for a moment's time. "I'll never stop thanking you." The Engineer winked at the raven haired woman, looking a little less weighed down than before. "I'll see you soon!"

Leone smiles brightly, vivaciously, to Alvina's praise, before her head bends forward like a performer exiting the stage. The plover nods to Alvina's request, not interjecting that the ritual will most likely leaving the plover's existence hanging in the balance. She accepts the responsibility of conveying to the Silver how much she is loved and has been missed since her death. The hug is returned, a grip of mutual intensity levied against the engineer, both in thanks and in support of the other woman's tribulations: the hurried manufacturing of a heart was something they both had lost sleep over. The bard earns herself another one of the blacksmith's grateful yet devilish smiles before the silver-and-obsidian crowned head is nodded in agreement. "Yes," sacred shoer agrees promptly, "I will see you again, and soon."