Poetics of the Forge (Rave Merrill) COMPLETED

[Masamune Tametomo]

A lone figure sat in the room,
His breathing quiet and steady.
He waited for the other, whom
Would offer a challenge to the man
Who sat in the room, his hands
Folded and sitting on his lap.
The simplicity of his demands
Had scared many, and drawn few
To his calling offer that stood
Tall and asked for one to step forward.
One who, when tasked by fate, could
Make a work of fine art that rivalled
Anything that existed here or in Heaven.
Most who took part appeared to the man
Cocksure and arrogant, but with leaden
Hearts all left without succeeding.
For the Smith was of quality and skill,
His name was Tametomo the Swordsmith
And while the room remained quiet still
He knew the next challenger approached.

 

[Velok the Younger]

His focus bled respect, like sap drawn from
A winter tree, awaiting fire to call
The sweet to life. The man sat like a stone.
A Nightsister could honor such a man,
But never bow her head in true defeat.
Survive or die - the mantra of the blade -
Distill the maple's blood to syrup sweet.
Refinement, born of focus, was his goal
And she should take it too, learn at his feet
Or he at hers. A gesture sparked the coal.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

The coals were lit, the duel begun
The man simply knelt in his place.
Patience was needed, he would shun
Haste in his work for only time bred art.

The Songsteel ore melted, flowed
Down where it would form the medium
Of his work, his passion, while heat glowed
And his face burned in the fires before him.

Tametomo would heat the steel
And burn the impurities from the
Soul of the ore and make the metal heel
To his hammer's ringing voice.

 

[Velok the Younger]

"A dozen times I tried and failed to learn
The art of shaping songsteel, and I feared
I'd never gain the art for which I yearn
And in my skill, a lack of proper grace."

Thus Merrill spake as she stripped off her cape
And tied her shipsuit's arms around her waist
A breast band, leather apron, in the nape
And creases of her neck, an inch of soot.

In synchronicity she matched his rhythm.
A hammer fell, a tool of alchemy.
And with its surly beat she forged a hymn
Of arts as black as cruel prosperity.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

"Patience is needed, every ounce.
The steel resonates within you,
You must let it echo and bounce
Through the recesses of your soul.
Beat in time and rhythm to your heart
And feel the steel through your hands.
Only then shall your soul find art,"
Masamune intoned to the other.

 

[Velok the Younger]

A Kaggath-winner, she should know the feel
Of risk and loss and placing bets at stake
But that had been a fight, and not so real
That forge-wrought honest work could not supplant
Whatever urge or drive or motive force
Had led her from that rooftop, sword in hand
With riches, and with loyalty, of course,
For who could serve a plant, unless he craved
A mistress far more human, and less beast?

But in that fearful duel of blade and skill,
She had not felt as she could feel today
As if this contest wagered her whole soul
And skill alone might not be all at play.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

The hammer rang as the metal folded
Sparks flew as the steel purified
And bound tighter to itself, molded
By Tametomo's hammer and patience.

"Fold the steel on itself, child
And pour your essence into the blade.
Your soul will toughen the blade, so that the wild
Forces of the galaxy and dare not harm the steel."

 

[Velok the Younger]

Upon the anvil unfamiliar, Rave
Examined her own life, and saw the lack.
But self-refinement would not win the day
When Masamune's forge-walls charred to black.

She fell behind, her skill unfit for praise.
Her pride could not bow down, nor once admit
That purity of soul could lift and raise
The forge's temperature, though his burned bright.

"I have no mastery of pale songsteel."
She laid aside her hammer in discord.
"I cannot find the art you hold so dear
Though many arts have fallen by my sword."

Then steel came to her eyes, and from her heart
She drew a blade more keen than winter's bite.
"But Masamune, I refuse to fail.
This metal is my servant, by my right
As alchemist, as Guardian of the Forge
That hides on mighty Aza'zoth, in light
Of hellish glow. I cannot and I will
Not place aside the truths with which I fight
As ally and as wielder, not as foe."

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

"You are wrong in your skills,
Though your honesty with yourself
Is commendable, though you must still
Know it is within you to succeed.
Many have come to me and tried
In vain to prevail with only arrogance
Within them and, only pried
With angry hands what was theirs
If only they sought within their soul.
The steel is in your eyes, Child
You must only reach out, take hold
And place it within your work."
Tametomo set his hammer aside
And gestured to the woman's tools.
"Take up your hammer, inside
Yourself look with clear eyes
And clear mind to find your core.
Breathe deeply and feel the coals
Alight within, reach out until more
Burn inside your heart and spirit.
When such is done, you have found
Your center, your soul
Only then can you take steel, bound
With yourself, and perform art."

 

[Velok the Younger]

A sharp retort unbidden rose, but Rave
Could hold her tongue and learn, it seemed, tonight.
Her teachers had not been such humble souls,
Nor so straightforward in each craft and fight,
Nor so solicitous of her own needs,
But lords and ladies stern and wreathed with might.

And in her wheeling fury, like a hawk
That turns and ever turns about the gyre,
She found it in herself to know their lack
And with their failings to confront her own,
Not as excuse, but as foundation new.
Her soul and, thus, her arts could stretch and grow:
Masamune Tametomo spoke true.

With diligence she raised her hammer high,
And in a single stroke her challenge wrought.
Her soul through alchemic songsteel would fly,
Her pride reforged, a brave new vision caught.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

Masamune nodded once, his face stone
The woman known as Rave had found
Within herself, that what was her own
And in that single finding had
Discovered what changed a blade
Into a work of art that would become
Legend long after the tool was made.

The swordsmith took up his hammer, worn
But worthy in skilled hands and
Returned to his work, the tool's voice born
Of patience, determination, and the heart of the smith.

 

[Velok the Younger]

A fundamental alchemy adorned
Rave's expectations of herself and him.
For as the smithing duel now transformed,
From frank instruction to a race of sorts,
Rave understood his victory was complete.
A great success could not be hers alone;
He'd shown her how to overcome defeat.

The blade itself took shape beneath her hands;
Her hammer folded songsteel sixteen times.
Now she could break the metal's staunch demands
And bend them to the fear of their demise.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

The hammer's song rang out in glee
As the steel folded and shaped
In the skilled hands of he
Who worked it in the fires of the forge.

Between each folding he applied clay
And water and ash to the steel
To protect the metal and stop stray
Impurities from marring the blade.

Masamune also folded the blade sixteen times,
Applying his mixture with each fold.
The application slowed him, but the chime
Of his hammer upon the steel kept his rhythm.

With the last few folds, he hammered the steel
Thin and stacked the hammered plates into a brick.
Hammering the brick into the blade once more, real
Art began to show through as the grain became visible.

"What do you make, young one?"
The swordsmith asked the woman.
"Do you make a tool to shatter and shun
Or to protect and save those you love?
I ask for one cannot do both with one soul.
You must know and remember, that when
One pours their soul into a weapon, whole
Or unwhole, that weapon now posseses
A soul of its own and from that blade
Or tool, the deeds and victories that it
Achieves shall match the soul of when it was made
Which, in turn, matches that of the maker, my child."

 

[Velok the Younger]

She laid her hammer down and took a drink,
And listened to the smith less grudgingly
Than e'er she had before. "I cannot think
Or be sure of what kind of soul I have,"
She said. "I cannot call myself of one
Determination or the other, friend.
It seems that I must kill for love alone,
For worlds that I defend, for those I serve,
But also for the glory that is mine
When I and I alone have faced the wrath
Of every ancient beast undimmed by time.
I am a murderer for righteous ends.
A Jedi, you might say, if peace was mine."

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

"Ah, but peace, child, is in your heart
You have but to grasp it with steady hands
And pull it close within your soul, hark!
I speaks to you, child, you need but listen."

The smith knew it was time to quench
The blade he had wrought, but did not
Place it within the pool, but with hand clenched
He instead applied another mixture of
Clay and minerals only he would know
To cool the blade slowly, properly, patiently.
Quickening the process would strike a blow
To the soundness of the blade and rob
The weapon of its purpose as both tool and art.
Once coated in the mixture of his design,
Tametomo placed upon the coating his mark
To show that the next step began when the blade cooled.

 

[Velok the Younger]

Proprietary blends of clay and soil
And chemicals of nature and decay
Could offer him an edge, or so to speak.
Rave knew that she could not afford delay.

For now, she laid her hammer down again,
And murmured incantations o'er her hands.
Her fingernails began to turn sheer black
As Sith inventions answered her demands.

With nails of purest alchemy, she cut
A line of purple blood into her neck
And dripped, with incantations, on the blade
As crimson pain her neck and breasts did slick.

And as her clothes acquired the stain of gore,
The songsteel twisted hot beneath her grasp,
The lattice of the metal perfect-grown,
Drew heart's-blood from her with a bitter gasp.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

Though the magic and alchemy was potent
Tametomo did not balk with his face of stone
But instead turned back to the steel, the portent
Of art still lying with the unforged metal there.

He drew more steel and began work
On another blade, this one shorter than the
First, and beat the impurities that did lurk
Within the virgin steel beneath his smithing hammer.

As he did with the first blade, clay and ash
And water coated the blade at each folding
And though the heat and soot did, at his face, lash
With fiery, smokey tendrils, he continued to work
The steel beneath his hands into the shape
He knew it could be, unlocking the steel's
True potential with every strike of the hammer
And every fold he made, forsaking meals
And water, though much, much time had passed.

 

[Velok the Younger]

But time could not yet overcome her heart
Nor soften hammer-blows, not staunch the flow
Of heart's-blood flowing from her throat
To quench the blade with all that she did know.

When finally she drew the blade from oil
And found her blood-stains would not wash away,
Rave drew a kolcta line across the wound,
Though still she knew that scar was there to stay.

Now Svolten rhyolite she drew along
The blade's edge, grinding it with prayer
To every nonexistent god of Dathomir
And every spirit subjugated there.

And from this blend of Nightsister and Sith,
Of crafting and of alchemy most dire,
She made an edge that never would be dulled,
A sword that could withstand white-hot starfire.

 

[Masamune Tametomo]

He stacked the plates as he had before.
The impurities were gone and the hammering
Almost done, though in his mind, something implored
Him to stop, though he knew that he could not.

The blade was done and ready for the clay
Which Tametomo applied to the metal
Coating each portion of the blade in his own way
To cool the blade differently and purposefully.

He then made his mark and pulled the last
Of the steel for one more blade.
The blade was large, far larger than the past
Two blades had been.

Tametomo was far more careful here,
His hammer ringing and singing true.
This blade was far larger and near
To a spear in length, though there was no haft.

A great sword of tradition was in his hands.
A weapon of great power and complication
Though he knew well the great demands
Set upon such a blade's construction.

Slowly the blade took shape, and though
The clay and ash and water slowed him
Greatly in the process, only he could know
The grave importance of the great blade.

Crafstmanship and Soul went into the metal
More than the previous two, if that were possible.
The grains, one by one, turned and settled
As the hammer rose and fell to the ringing sounds.

This was the work of art Tametomo spoke
Of when one poured their heart and soul
And skill and sweat and blood and Hope
Into the blade of their own working.

This was the Legendary work of Art,
This great sword, this masterwork blade.
The blade resonated with the hammer and heart
Of Tametomo and, soon, with a heart of its own.

 

[Velok the Younger]

As consciousness drew down its focal point
To lattices both crystalline and Sith,
In metaphysical construction, Rave
Worked wonders straight from heresy and myth.

Delays she straight ignored, but thoughts abound
When stars begin to wheel and journeys end.
When projects near their close, distractions mount
And while some find their way, still others crack.

Rave carved from Brylark wood a sturdy grip
In moments when she felt her mind go slack
And wrapped the wood, from pommel to the hilt,
In leather from an old terentatek.

Its virtue, or its power, she would steal,
Resistance to the full destructive Force
Of all techniques of death and misery
Against which she had ever stayed the course.