CoR Forging Forward

Sune

Grumpy Badger
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Location
Train yard
The ground was made clean.

Broch’s hands worked slowly, deliberately, scraping the earth bare. He crouched low, running his palm across the soil. Every inch was inspected, every imperfection noted and corrected. When it was flat—truly flat—he stamped it down, heel to heel, over and over until the dirt answered him with silence. No crunch of looseness. No whisper of shifting grains. Only quiet, sturdy earth.

His father had always stressed the importance of this. Neglect the foundation, and the forge’s soul will extinguish before the first coal glows. That was what he’d said—what he’d sworn, with the iron certainty of a man who lived his life one hammer strike at a time. The forge was never just a place. It was a spirit, a companion, a sentinel. Build it poorly, and you buried that spirit before it had a chance to speak. Build it right, and it would walk beside you for the rest of your days—and maybe, just maybe, wait for you beyond them.

Broch stood, muscles aching, back stiff with time and memory. Four hundred years. That’s how long it had been since his father last shaped metal at his forge. Since his voice had last echoed against the stones. And though the forge was long gone, more than likely scattered by moss and wind and time, Broch still wondered: had it found him in the next realm? Did it still burn for him?

When he found a shovel—old, half-rusted but sound—he began to dig. The dirt moved easily, almost respectfully, as though it understood his assignment. Each time the spade sank in, he saw his mother again: bent over garden beds, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back with a bit of twine. Every spring, she’d take the boys into the yard and point at the corners. A little farther out this time, she’d say, and they’d help her make the garden just a bit bigger. Just a bit wilder.

He could still see her fingers pressing bulbs into the soil, her gentle command of the land. Tulips. Lavender. Blue star creepers near the edges. Was it still blooming now, somewhere beneath the vines and stone that had been Iveria? Or had the creeping gray of those new stone ‘kingdoms’ taken everything? Had her flowers vanished beneath marble and mortar, history overwritten by architecture?

Broch pressed the blade in again. The rhythm came back, slow but sure. With every lift of soil, he carved a space not just in the earth—but in memory. A foundation, as his father had taught. A garden, as his mother had loved.

Maybe this forge wouldn't be the same. Maybe it couldn’t be.

But it could be honest.

And that would be enough.

Once the pit had been made to his satisfaction, perfectly square and smoothed with a care that bordered on reverence, Broch straightened with a slow groan and turned toward the river.

The foul-smelling vein that cut through the heart of the city like an old wound that never healed. Its banks were choked with refuse and forgotten things, runoff from a civilization that had grown upward and outward, but never cleaner. He didn't grimace. Didn’t flinch. He had to ignore the rot if he wanted to find what was useful underneath.

He dug.

The shovel’s edge bit through layers of mud and slime, until he struck it—dense, cool, and red-brown: clay. It clung to the metal like it didn’t want to let go, sticky and slick, but perfect. Clay to shape the forge’s lining. Clay to whisper the old spells of heat and endurance. The twins had always been the best at finding it—better than he had been. They’d sniff the air and knock the ground with their knuckles, laughing when they struck paydirt like they were on a scavenger hunt with stakes no higher than pride. He wondered if they would laugh now, or just look at him with those same wild eyes and say, finally.

The clay here was thick with sand and gravel—some of it good, some of it just grit that needed washing. All of it was filthy. It needed cleaning, like the forge grounds had. Like everything needed now.

Broch wiped sweat from his brow and realized he’d need something to carry it in. Something that wouldn’t break under weight or crumble under damp. That meant Rhetta.

He found her eventually. He didn’t need to say much, using his hands to describe what he needed: a vase, a container or something. She eventually would understand and left to find him what he needed. He went back to dig.

She eventually returned and provided something he could use.

He grunted a thanks. She just nodded.

And then he was back at work, the container beside him, slowly filling with clay, his arms moving on muscle memory alone. The light began to fade, golden first, then copper, and finally iron-gray. Still he worked, shoulders aching, knees stiff. The river whispered beside him, low and constant like a chant that only made sense to the old gods.

He thought of his father again—of the clang of hammer on steel ringing through the dark like a heartbeat. They’d work until their fingers were blistered and bleeding, until the moon hung heavy in the sky and their shadows were long and crooked across the ground.

Work was the rhythm of life, and fire.. the breath that carried it forward.

Now, the fire was only a memory. But the rhythm—that, he could still find. One spadeful at a time as he filled the container with the materials he needed.

He continued well into the night and into the next morning. The stars blinked out one by one, yielding to a bruised dawn, but Broch didn’t pause. Didn’t sit. Didn’t drink or eat or breathe too long. There was a rhythm now, deeper than exhaustion, more sacred than sleep. His fingers were raw and red, knuckles split open where clay had bitten skin, but he pressed on.

He had to see it through.

By hand, he mixed the cob—earth, clay, straw, and water—in the vessel Rhetta had given him. He stomped it, folded it, kneaded it like dough until it held shape and promise. Slowly, steadily, he built the pit walls. Each layer pressed in place with care, each seam smoothed with his palms. His hands knew the shape the forge should take, even if his mind wandered elsewhere. Maybe his body remembered what his spirit could not forget.

He found stones along the riverside, odd ones. Red, as if scorched in some long-passed fire, some of them shaped unnaturally flat, like they’d once been part of something sacred. He didn’t question where they came from—whether they’d been tomb markers or remnants of an old sanctum. He only knew they were solid. He used them to line the inner wall, locking them in like memories too painful to name but too precious to discard.

His arms trembled. Sweat ran into his eyes, stinging and hot, but he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. The world had narrowed to the feel of earth beneath his fingers, the weight of each brick, the rhythm of effort and memory.

His father had been the first to fall that night.
The memory tore through him like a hot wind, sudden and searing. No warning. Just blood, and fire, and shouting—shapes in the dark, fast and many. Too many. They came out of nowhere, spilling through the fields like a storm with no sky to speak of, no thunder—only the tearing sound of chaos. The forge had still been hot, the coals breathing like a living thing. The twins were shouting something he couldn’t remember now. His mother had held a carving knife as if it were a sword.

And then—

Broch’s breath hitched. But his hands stayed steady as he continued to work.

He laid another layer of cob, pressed it into the shape it needed to be. Afternoon crept in behind him unnoticed. He pushed forward.

For a moment, everything around him was still. The wind held its breath. Even the river stopped its low, constant muttering.

His mother had been next. Her grief hit like lightning, pure and violent, when she saw her soulmate fall. She didn’t scream—she charged. A mother. A widow. A force of fury. And then the brothers—surrounded as the rain began to pour, drenching them in a curtain of silver and mud. All four stood back to back, steel flashing in the night, fighting against an enemy that seemed to spill from the horizon without end.

Broch grabbed another brick and placed it carefully. Brushed the sweat from his brow, leaving a smear of clay and dirt across his face.

Finn fell next.

Worn down to the bone, he collapsed mid-swing, breath hitching as the blade meant for another found him instead. His twin, Niall, didn’t have to live long without him—Fortune’s only mercy that night. Broch remembered the splash of red, warm and wet across his own face as Niall’s head was taken, clean and cruel. There was no time to mourn. No time for anything but survival.

Caden stood behind him then, a mountain of a man, the eldest, the first into any fight and the last to flee. His voice had been hoarse from shouting orders—then battle cries—then nothing at all. They fought together, shoulder to shoulder, as the enemy surged.

But there was no end. Not then.

Broch pressed the final brick into place. It sat perfectly, completing the shape. No longer just a pit. No longer just a hole in the ground. It was something now—familiar. Sacred. Something that meant something.

It would need to dry. And then he’d need bellows. A fire could not be coaxed back to life without breath.

Caden was the last.

Broch had taken his father’s axe, and Caden’s too, when the screams died and only he remained. He remembered the weight of them both—steel and grief, blood and fury. He remembered swinging until the enemy broke, or he did. Until nothing moved. Until vengeance and survival blurred into one. He would kill them. He would bring the ruin back to them.

His breath was shallow. His hands, filthy and shaking, found the hem of his shirt, and he wiped them there—old habits from a different life.

Joints cracking like tired wood, he stood and turned away. The sun was low once more in the sky.

Time to find Rhetta again.
 
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He'd been at it for days. Rhetta had kept watch over Broch's forge project, while he was at it - not consistently, but she'd looked in often enough, just in case there was trouble. Whether she was looking for a problem Broch was causing or for a problem someone was causing with him or for one of the ghouls to tunnel up under the earth he'd so carefully tamped down, she didn't know, but she'd kept watch nonetheless, just in case.

She hadn't offered to help. There were some things that people wanted to do themselves, and she could recognize this as one of them. It wasn't about producing something; it was about the production. It was a need to keep himself occupied, to busy his hands while his mind turned things over, or maybe to busy himself enough that his mind didn't have a chance to turn things over. Rhetta didn't try to interrupt the process. Well. She'd been busy, likely for much the same reasons. She made sure to keep watch, though, a subtle guardianship, or maybe an investiture.

He'd come to find her, once, when he'd needed something - her, specifically, not just anyone who he might run into. Rhetta still wasn't entirely sure what that meant, but she had certainly noticed, and made no comment on it other than to find him an appropriate basin for whatever he needed. Whatever conversation they were having about all of this seemed to work just as well in silence as it did in her limited Iverian and his even more limited Lutetian.

She'd been working on the language barrier. A matter of days was hardly enough to become fluent, but studying gave her something to do when she wasn't doing something else, and there were still a number of things she wasn't willing to think too much on, just yet. Later, perhaps, when things were safe, but until then she needed to keep them behind bars.

Things were never going to be safe. Rhetta knew that. She just didn't necessarily see it as a bad thing. And so: she'd stayed, in the liminal space, between the grieving badger trying to carve out a safe place and everything else that would deny that such a thing could ever happen, and offered a bastion, for a little while, because someone ought to - and because she'd rather be there, where it wasn't safe, than to try to get any closer to somewhere that might be.

The darkness was rising when he came looking for her again. She could tell by the silence. She'd been listening, aware of the sounds of whatever he was doing, and now aware of the fact that they'd stopped, and that he'd moved into a pattern that she recognized as searching. It was possible that he was looking for someone else, but if he was, he could let her know.

She'd been up on the wall again, the cement barrier that theoretically separated the Railyard from the river. After the ghouls had broken through, she didn't trust it any more, even though they'd patched the thing somewhat. Still, that just meant there wasn't a hole in it right now, not that someone wouldn't come through it again. She'd have liked to get a barrier lock in the river, but there was no way that Lutetia would allow it, especially not for the Bloodstones. So, for now, she watched the river traffic, getting a better idea of what was expected and what it was that should imply danger. She'd want to talk to someone about getting a set of cameras up here, linked into the guardhouse. Dev, maybe. He was good with that sort of thing.

Not that it was her decision, but she doubted Desmond was going to tell her not to, and Ragenard still wasn't telling anyone anything just yet. She didn't like that. He should have been up by now, and they all knew it - they all knew that whatever was going on with him, it was bad, and it was just a question of what and how bad. She thought about the lightning that had danced in his eyes, strange enough that even she'd looked at it for a fraction of a moment. She wondered if it would be there now, if someone pried his eyes open. It wouldn't, though, because Jesse would have checked his eyes as standard procedure, and he'd have mentioned it. That much, she knew. The rest of it was uncertain.

She tumbled down off the wall, deliberately controlled, landing with a tiny crunch in the gravel. She could have made the landing silent, but Broch was still seeming like he might spook easily, and she wasn't going to creep up on him silently and scare the shit out of him. She reserved that behavior for prospects.

He wasn't one.

Rhetta supposed he could have been, if he'd wanted, but she wasn't sure that he would understand what it meant, or even who the Bloodstones were, and it wouldn't have felt right. If he came into it, it had to be willingly, knowing what he was getting into - so she hadn't said anything. Maybe some day. Not today.

She made sure her steps weren't silent, and that he'd have enough time to turn and face her, if he wanted, keeping her gaze shifting over the Railyard, never fixed.

"You're looking for me again." It wasn't a question, but then again, it didn't need to be. It wasn't in Iverian, though, either, and it was possible it did need to be that. "-What is it?-"
 
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For the first time in days, there was no purpose pressing on his chest. No spade to lift. No stone to fit. Just stillness—and the things that stillness brought with it.

Memories.

Silence.

The ache of a thousand thoughts he’d managed to hammer quiet.

Rhetta was watching. He could feel her attention like a warm weight—not heavy, just present. Not demanding. She hadn’t asked anything of him, which was almost more disarming than if she had.

He’d gone to her because he’d needed help, and she’d offered it without question. No ceremony. No debt. Just given.

He didn’t know what that meant.

He didn’t know what he was supposed to mean now. A blacksmith without a forge. A warrior with no enemy. A relic trying to find shape in a world that no longer recognized his outline.

He looked at her—mud-smeared, sweat-soaked, worn.

And still standing.

“I… have to wait now,” he said, the words catching in his throat, brittle from disuse. His voice sounded like old iron—rough, unused, beginning to rust.

He rubbed a hand down his face, trying to gather something clearer, something more honest, but all that came was:

“I need a strong drink.”
 
The werebadger wanted to get drunk.

Rhetta felt that, all things considered, that was a perfectly good reaction to things. She was actually moderately surprised he hadn't wanted to get drunk earlier, like when he'd had all those arrows in him. Maybe he'd just needed to work up to it. Still, it was a reaction she'd seen plenty of times in the Pack, when things got a bit too real for a little while. She'd been there - not getting drunk, but there, in the room, while other people did. She didn't like the feeling of not being in control, and she definitely felt better knowing she was alert, if everyone else was trying very hard not to be.

If Broch was like a lot of shifters, he'd probably metabolize it fairly quickly anyway, especially if the rate at which he'd healed from his injuries was any indication.

Undoubtedly, there was something in the Railyard that could take the edge off. Probably several somethings. She'd figure it out. She gave him a nod, and started heading for the kitchens. There would always be something, in the kitchen, and he could probably use something to eat, too, even if he hadn't realized it. Maybe not yet, though, if he wanted the drink to hit - better to start with an empty stomach.

"-No axe with drink.-" She was going to establish that one right away. If he wanted to get tipsy, fine, but he wasn't going to do it swinging a battle axe around, especially not indoors. "And if you start causing problems I have to solve, I still have all those arrows and I swear I will put them right back where I found them, got it?" He was not likely to understand that much Lutetian all in one go, Rhetta knew, but she had a feeling he'd get the sentiment behind the statement anyway.

She wasn't entirely serious, anyway. There were better things to impale someone with than old arrows, after all.
 
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