Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2013 22:18:07 GMT
The boy was 20, barely old enough to be off his nurse's apron-strings, the first time he was allowed to visit the Crafthollow. Most of his life had been spent listening to its gentle music of course, the sounds of hammers and knives and saws combining with the songs of elves both young and ancient at their trade, but the youngest children were not allowed inside. Now his father had brought him for this one day, to see what was done in this place, and his eyes drank it in with hungry amazement.
As far as his sharp eyes could see, the hollow stretched back into the mountain, the work of nature and elves naturally dividing the massive cave-like chamber into multiple workshops separated by rises and falls in the floor and half-walls of stalagmites glittering with gems and veins of polished metal. To his right, on the higher levels, worked the mages and alchemists, sparks and flashes of multi-colored light accompanied by soft chanting as each individual worked on their own project; a woman inscribing runes of glowing silver on a pair of boots, an elderly man carefully inlaying dragon eggshell into an amulet, another male who seemed barely old enough to be called an apprentice using a stream of bright green light to carve sigils into a chest, while beyond their worktables laid the bubbling and smoking cauldrons and glassworks of the alchemists. Down below, where it was coolest, the woodworkers were plying their trade, the apprentices fletching piles of arrows while the masters inlaid horn and rare woods into recurved bows, or worked with wood and steel to create the even harder-drawing crossbows... And directly ahead were the sullen red pits of the smithies, extending what seemed for miles back, the sounds of dozens of hammers being wielded in harmony creating not a cacaphony, but a marvelously complex symphony of percussion.
Even as his father brought him down stairs worn smooth over hundreds of years of daily use, his eyes strained back toward the forges. And while he attentively observed his father's instruction on how the heavy bow he was working on was constructed, making note of the composition of the glue, of how perfectly curved and smoothed each individual component was, but the contact surfaces were intentionally left rough... It was that pounding, xylophonic song that stirred relentlessly in his blood, and even that night as he slept, he could still see the yawning red forges, feel the warmth against his face, and smell the hot metal and burned leather.
As far as his sharp eyes could see, the hollow stretched back into the mountain, the work of nature and elves naturally dividing the massive cave-like chamber into multiple workshops separated by rises and falls in the floor and half-walls of stalagmites glittering with gems and veins of polished metal. To his right, on the higher levels, worked the mages and alchemists, sparks and flashes of multi-colored light accompanied by soft chanting as each individual worked on their own project; a woman inscribing runes of glowing silver on a pair of boots, an elderly man carefully inlaying dragon eggshell into an amulet, another male who seemed barely old enough to be called an apprentice using a stream of bright green light to carve sigils into a chest, while beyond their worktables laid the bubbling and smoking cauldrons and glassworks of the alchemists. Down below, where it was coolest, the woodworkers were plying their trade, the apprentices fletching piles of arrows while the masters inlaid horn and rare woods into recurved bows, or worked with wood and steel to create the even harder-drawing crossbows... And directly ahead were the sullen red pits of the smithies, extending what seemed for miles back, the sounds of dozens of hammers being wielded in harmony creating not a cacaphony, but a marvelously complex symphony of percussion.
Even as his father brought him down stairs worn smooth over hundreds of years of daily use, his eyes strained back toward the forges. And while he attentively observed his father's instruction on how the heavy bow he was working on was constructed, making note of the composition of the glue, of how perfectly curved and smoothed each individual component was, but the contact surfaces were intentionally left rough... It was that pounding, xylophonic song that stirred relentlessly in his blood, and even that night as he slept, he could still see the yawning red forges, feel the warmth against his face, and smell the hot metal and burned leather.