With his culinary training complete, Clive returned to the Lucia place. He found her in her laboratory, bent over a distillation apparatus.

  "You're back." She looked up from adjusting the flame beneath the central flask. "How was playing with fish for three weeks?"

  "I could tell you," Clive took out his sketchbook. "Or I could show you. One of them is tastier than the other."

  Lucia licked her lips. “Oh, I hope its not just sketches of tuna anatomy.”

  "Don’t worry, it’s not just diagrams.” He opened to a fresh page and began sketching. Rice grains first, each one distinct, then the fish draped across them. A flash of light, and a full sushi course appeared exactly as he'd drawn it.

  Lucia abandoned her distillation entirely. She picked up the nearest piece and tasted it. She closed her eyes to savour it. When they opened, her eyes were bright. “This is delicious. Just as good as master’s Jiro.”

  "Three weeks of playing with fish paid off then."

  "Three weeks to become a master chef…" She returned to her apparatus. “Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?”

  Clive shrugged his shoulders. He could always do anything he set his mind to. His [Obsessive Focus] passive ensured that.

  The workshop door banged open, revealing Garrett at the doorway.

  "Lucia, is—" He stopped when he saw Clive. "Good. You're here."

  "Try this." Clive pushed one of the wrapped pieces toward him. "Just made them."

  Garrett picked up the piece and popped it in his mouth whole. His eyebrows rose as he chewed.

  "That's egg?" He swallowed and immediately reached for another piece. "Tastes like custard had a child with the ocean."

  "That would be the uni." Lucia pointed to the orange piece in his hand. "Sea urchin reproductive organs."

  Garrett had already bitten into it. He stopped mid-chew, then shrugged and continued eating. "Had worse. Remember that fermented shark the northern traders brought last winter?"

  "Unfortunately." Lucia returned to monitoring her separation flask. "What brings you here? You only leave the forge when something's actually important."

  "The Church expedition came back from the mines this morning. They did it. A full vein of mithril ore, untouched since the kingdom abandoned those shafts."

  Clive eyes widened. It wasn’t that long ago that he and Garrett were preparing weapons for the Church expedition. To hear that they succeeded got him excited.

  Lucia nearly dropped her measuring vial. "They have mithril? Here? In Marblehaven?"

  "Three cartloads. And guess who got the commission for mithril weapons?"

  “Congrats Garrett! What happened to Blackwell?” Clive asked. The last he remembered, Blackwell had been competing with them for the mithril commission.

  "He left for the capital one month ago. Middle of the night, took three wagons. All thanks to the Saintess,” Garrett explained. “She’s been digging into Blackwell and found his name in the church ledgers twelve times. Payments for weapons that never made it to the Church armory. Hard to explain where those weapons actually went. I never really liked her. But she did a good job in purging the church of those unsavoury influences.”

  Clive sighed. He remembered the scene of the Saintess prosecuting Father Michael and Benedict, and was hoping Blackwell had faced a similar fate.

  "The capital's a good place to disappear," Lucia said. "Especially with three wagons worth of untraceable inventory."

  "The Saintess sent word ahead." Garrett examined another piece of sushi, considering. "But the capital's different. Blackwell's cousin runs the dockworker's guild there. His uncle sits on the merchant council."

  "Hard to arrest someone when their family controls the gates and ships." Lucia measured drops into her mixture without looking up.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Garrett grunted. "The Saintess has other problems now anyway. Found two more names in those ledgers yesterday. Both already gone. Blackwell was just the first rat to jump."

  Clive frowned. Just like in any organization, it's never just one person. There’s always more. That was why he always hated corporations.

  "At least you won’t have to deal with Blackwell’s forge anymore."

  "Hpm, don’t even get me started about his forge work." Garrett's jaw tightened. "Last month, a guard's 'blessed' breastplate cracked straight through during routine training. Hairline fracture hidden under the etching. Man's lucky it was just training."

  The workshop fell quiet except for the soft bubble of Lucia's apparatus.

  Garrett moved toward the door, then stopped. "They're delivering the mithril to my forge within the hour. Church guards, full escort." He looked at Clive. "Want to see what pure possibility looks like?"

  "Wait, now?" Lucia's hand froze over her apparatus.

  "Won't get another chance. Once I start working it, there's no stopping. Mithril bonds to itself as it heats. You get one continuous forging session or the metal's ruined."

  “Can I come as well?”

  "Since when do you care about metalwork?" Garrett asked.

  She was already pulling off her work apron. "Not for any ordinary metal. But this is Mithril we’re talking about. They say it has alchemical properties that no other metal possesses, that it can stabilize volatile compounds." She turned off the flame beneath her distillation. "There are formulas I've read about, applications that require mithril dust as a binding agent. But it's impossible to get mithril nowadays. "

  “You don’t have to abandon your experiment. I can save you some… errr… dust.”

  "This batch can wait." She recorded something in her notebook, then snapped it shut. "Mithril can't. This is something I have to see for myself.”

  They headed back to Garrett’s forge. But as they approached, the streets grew quiet.

  White cloaks formed a perimeter around the building. Six guards from the church.

  "Master Garrett." The guard captain stepped forward. Unlike the others, his cloak bore gold threading at the edges. "You're late."

  "You're early." Garrett didn't slow his approach. "Said within the hour."

  "Plans changed." The captain gestured to a iron-bound chest sitting on a cart between two guards. "Bring this in."

  Lucia had already moved toward the chest, but a guard blocked her path. "Authorized personnel only."

  "She's with me," Garrett said. "Lady Lucia Thornwald. She's consulting on the project. Unless you want to be the one who turns down the hero of Marblehaven, who cured the stone curse."

  “Her?” The captain glanced at Lucia with skepticism. “I was told the famed miracle healer was an artist.”

  “Lucia played just as important a role as I did,” Clive said. “Without her, we would never have gotten the midnight blossoms.”

  The captain turned to face Clive before addressing Garrett. “ And this is?”

  “Clive Weston, you’re looking at the miracle healer himself.” Garrett said.

  The captain looked between them for a moment, then stepped aside. "Marblehaven thanks you." He nodded to his guards. "Let them through."

  They headed inside where the captain produced an iron key. The chest's lid opened on silent, well-oiled hinges.

  Inside, lay chunks of raw blue ore. Each piece was roughly the size of a man's fist, with veins of pure metal running through darker stone.

  "Beautiful," Lucia breathed. She'd pulled out a thin glass rod, holding it near the ore without touching. The rod began to vibrate, emitting a low hum. "It's pulling ether directly from the air. No wonder it holds enchantments so well."

  "Don't touch it directly," the captain warned. "Not until it's been properly refined."

  Garrett leaned closer, studying the ore with keen eyes. "This is maybe fifteen pounds total, once we separate the metal from the stone. Twenty if we're lucky."

  "Can you forge it into weapons by month's end?" the captain asked.

  Garrett and Clive exchanged glances.

  "Month's end is three weeks away," Garrett said slowly. "For normal steel, yes. But mithril? The refinement alone takes days. Then the forging, then we’ll need the Arcanum for enchantments as well…"

  "The Saintess needs them by the new moon." The captain's voice dropped lower. "We're marshaling forces. Every temple knight, every weapon we can gather."

  "For what?" Lucia asked.

  The captain glanced around, confirming there were no unwanted eavesdroppers. "We’ve found him. The Devil. The Saintess will personally lead a crusade against him, and we want to be ready by then."

  The Devil. The unseen, unknown cause of the stone curse. Clive could heal the victims. But if they wanted to save Marblehaven, defeating the Devil would be their only long-term solutions.

  "The Saintess believes mithril is our only chance." He handed Garrett a sealed scroll. "Her specifications. Whatever you need to make this work, the Church will provide. But we need results by the new moon."

  After the captain left, they stood in silence around the chest.

  "Three weeks," Garrett finally said. "To create weapons that haven't been forged in a generation, from metal we barely understand, to fight a legendary creature."

  "We should start now," Clive said.

  "After I collect samples." Lucia was already pulling vials from her satchel. "The resonance patterns during refinement won't repeat. If I'm going to understand mithril's alchemical properties, I need to observe every stage."

  Garrett nodded. "Then lets begin.”

  [New Quest: Edge of Understanding III]

  [Craft a Mithril Blade]

  [Reward: 1 Certainty Point]

  Day seventeen in these monster-infested shafts. Found them at last, veins of blue fire running through the deepest chambers, untouched since the kingdom's retreat. The men whisper that mithril chooses its wielders, but I say we chose to descend where others feared to tread. Sometimes all we need is the courage to keep digging when the darkness seems absolute.

  —Captain Auron, Personal Journal, Mithril Expedition