Souldancer Deleted Scene: Forging the White Sword

            The sun was falling below the Edge of the World when a vision appeared to Aber Lico. The blacksmith sat on his doorstep looking east toward town and watched as a strange figure walked out of a heat haze a few hundred yards away.

            More details surfaced as the stranger approached. He wore a black shirt under a ragged tan jacket with matching pants. A mane of shock white hair crowned his head.

            Lico stood and gripped one of the rough porch beams. “I’m closed for the night,” he called out.

            The stranger either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He steadily advanced to stand at the foot of the stairs. His skin was ashen; almost grey, and his eyes were an odd yellow-green.

“I need a forge,” he said in a rigid, unfamiliar accent.

            “I told you,” Lico said. “Shop’s closed.”

            The grey man stared into the house that also held Lico’s workshop. “This is where the blade was Worked,” he said. Then he walked past the blacksmith and into his home.

            “Wait!” Lico shouted over his family’s startled cries. “I make pins and hinges; not swords!” The smith followed his unwelcome visitor through his house to the forge, besieging him with curses.

With his wife and children huddled in the doorway, Lico seized a stout hammer and approached the man who’d invaded his home.

            “I don’t know where you’re from,” the blacksmith said, “but you’d best return there.”

            Ignoring his unwilling host, the stranger set about stoking the coals.

            “Stop him, Aber,” urged the blacksmith’s wife. “He’s like to burn the house down!”

            Gritting his teeth, Lico hefted the hammer and brought it down upon the stranger’s back. He felt the impact running up the shaft and heard a sickening crunch. The intruder fell to his knees but started crawling toward the forge.

            The smith swung again with far less reluctance. The blow knocked the stranger flat, but he dragged himself along the plank floor.

            Lico brought the hammer up again and let it fall with a savage cry. He swung again and again, only stopping when the broken and bloody form on his floor lay still.

            The considered informing the city guard. Instead he dragged the body to the Edge of the World and cast it over the smoking precipice.

 

            It was pitch black when Lico woke, panting and soaked with sweat, to the sound of ringing metal.

He started when his wife grabbed his arm.

“What is that?” she whispered.

            “It’s coming from the shop,” the blacksmith said. The rhythmic sound of metal striking metal continued for several moments before Lico found the courage to rise from bed. Lighting a lamp, he crept toward the workshop.

            The orange-red light of live coals bent and magnified ordinary objects into hellish shadows. A lone figure stood at the forge. His right hand rose and fell in a familiar motion that turned Lico’s stomach. The small silversmith’s hammer sounded clear, chiming notes.

            “What are you doing?” asked the smith, his voice trembling. “Who are you?”

            The delicate hammer rang once more and stopped. The figure turned, revealing a bloody ruin of a face, and gazed at Lico with one yellow-green eye.

            The blacksmith ran to his children and found that his screams had already woken them. Hastily loading his family into their wagon, he raced through the night toward Highwater.

 

            When Lico returned after dawn with the city guard, the stranger was gone. All that remained to mark his presence were a few lumps of slag. Boasting a mirrored sheen, the impossibly light metal cast purple reflections in its white surface.