Forged in Fire [Carter]

[ZOE CALIDA]

Zoe had never felt at home in Camp Half-Blood. The transition had been too artificial, too forced. Everything had been done without much input from her – the satyr had found her, explained the basics to her parents, and then taken her away in the span of a day. Moving to the Hermes cabin, then the Hephaestus cabin had been another mechanical and automatic process without much consideration for how she’d felt about the whole thing. Even after several years, she still felt like a guest.

But there was something about the forges that just felt right. Maybe that was too cliché to admit – and Zoe hated clichés so there was never any way she’d say it out loud – but she genuinely enjoyed her time in the forges, alone and exploring the boundaries of technology. She was in her element, even amongst the other children of Hephaestus, and she liked to push on the idea of what was possible to create. It had resulted in some interesting, and at times bizarre, inventions.

Today, however, she was looking for something a little more medieval. The forges, while 90% of the time a lovely place to invent and create and innovate, was also fantastic for blowing off some steam. Most demigods might go to the arena to work out their anger, but there was nothing more cathartic to Zoe than using a heavy hammer to shape the Celestial Bronze and work out some of her issues.

So she’d found a sword that had been bizarrely twisted during a monster fight (it was truly amazing what demigods could do to their weapons in the chaos of the fight), and after heating the metal was shaping the sword back into proper form. After four years of constant and near-daily use of the forges, Zoe was strong. Most children of Hephaestus were, really. Each drop of the hammer could visibly bend the heated metal and it made a jarring noise for those unaccustomed to it. But it was nothing new to Zoe, and she maintained a tight look of concentration on her face as she forced the metal back into its original shape.

Carter Petal Duncan

[Carter Petal Duncan]

Carter cursed under her breath as she looked over her hammer in the sunlight. Her weapon had seen better days. Her target, aka, her training partner, had rolled out from under her, causing the head of her war hammer to crash down onto the cement training floor and cracked the head. While it was made of metal and was fairly sturdy, it had already been chipping away a little and she had been putting off taking it to get fixed because she knew it would likely need to be kept for a day or two while they made a new head to mount into the wooden handle.

She walked into the forges and allowed her eyes to adjust to the darker room before she went over to the first person she saw. There was no one in there that wasn’t currently bent over something with a focused expression on their face. And Carter knew better than to stand around a wait for someone to notice her, everyone had better things to do. Fair enough. “Hey.” she said cautiously, not wanting to startle the girl she approached. “Are you someone I can ask about helping me fix my hammer?” she asked, presenting the weapon to her.

((I’m imagining it similar to this hammer on one end, blade on the other, on a wooden, carved handle.
ZOE CALIDA

[ZOE CALIDA]

Re-shaping the sword was a simple project, and Zoe had done similar repairs a million and one times. That left enough brainpower to allow her mind to wander, replaying the various teeth-gritting events of the last week. She didn’t focus too much on any one event – in all honestly, people mostly blurred together for her and it took a rather noteworthy thing to make her remember somebody. That said, she could still reflect on her embarrassment and wounded pride. But that’s what the forges were for. Zoe could increase the intensity of her hammer strokes without worrying about damaging the steel or the anvil underneath. Win-win situation.

She almost didn’t notice the other camper standing in front of her until she spoke. Zoe certainly didn’t acknowledge her right away, and pounded her hammer a few more times into the bronze sword until she was satisfied it was finished and could be cooled. It wasn’t that she was being anti-social! Well, yeah, she was, of course, but there was a perfectly reasonable technical explanation as well. It was too much trouble to start and stop a project constantly, considering the amount of effort it took to keep the forge at the right heat. It was easier to actually finish one project before shifting her attention permanently elsewhere.

Laying down her hammer, Zoe eyed the camper that had greeted her, although her eyes quickly drifted to linger on the weapon in the girl’s hand. She didn’t answer the girl’s question, but instead commented (with her eyes naturally still admiring the beautiful, but broken, hammer), “Beautiful craftsmanship. What happened to it?”

Carter Petal Duncan

[Carter Petal Duncan]

Carter didn’t mind having to wait to be helped, nor did she really mind when the girl didn’t answer her question right away. She knew that she was basically unwelcome here since she got in the way of their work and distracted them from what they really wanted to be doing, but she didn’t really care. It was part of camp and everyone knew it had to happen. Eventually the girl looked up, admired the hammer, and then asked what happened to it. “Uh, well it took a pretty hard hit to concrete, that was the last straw, but it’s also been through a lot of wear and tear. I can’t remember the last time i had it reinforced or maintained…” she admitted, feeling extremely embarrassed. She did oil and clean it regularly to stop rust, but she hadn’t brought it to the forges since she was maybe 13. About 3 years ago. And she had used it in battle thousands of times since then.

ZOE CALIDA

[ZOE CALIDA]

It was a shame to see such a beautiful hammer in this state. Zoe’s eyes traced over the finely carved handle through the Celestial Bronze head. It would need a new one completely, and it would have to be carefully fitted to match the existing handle. Not a difficult job – hammers were simple enough and Zoe was sure she had a mold lying around somewhere – but a precise one, to be sure.

The other camper seemed embarrassed about the state of her weapon, but Zoe just shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first,” she responded a little grumpily. “Everybody forgets to bring their weapon to the forges until it looks like this. You should see the one I was just working on.” She shook her head before clearing the anvil and returning her tools to their proper place. She’d usually just leave things lying around until the next time they were needed, but there was a guest now and that necessitated a slightly better clean-up.

“Anyway, I’m Zoe.” She left off the whole ‘daughter of Hephaestus’ thing. They were standing in the forges, no need to state the obvious. “And yeah, I can patch this up. It’ll take a few days, though. We’ve got a bit of a backlog right now.” That was always the case around the start of summer – all the requests flooded in for repairs and custom jobs. And it wasn’t like she got paid to do this or anything. But it wasn’t the worst thing in the world – while she’d rather work on an automaton, weapons were her second love and she took pride in her work. This hammer would look brand-new by the time she was done with it.

Carter Petal Duncan

[Carter Petal Duncan]

Carter already felt badly that she had to bring her hammer into the shop for repair. She knew it was her own fault and that there were many ways of preventing this sort of thing. She made a mental vow to herself and to her hammer than she would take better care of it. “I’m sure you hate hearing that…” Carter admitted with a small, pathetic smile. “I do care about it, and I oil the metal frequently, I just usually put off having to bring it in and leave it and not have it for a few days…” it was hard to be without. It meant if she wanted to train that she would need to use another weapon, one that had no loyalty to her. She supposed it would be a good time to work on her archery skills.

The daughter of Hephestus introduced herself as Zoey and said that she would get to the hammer in a few days because she was working on a backlog. Carter nodded and shrugged her shoulders. “I figured about as much. I’m Carter… Apollo.” she introduced herself. She looked around. “It’s kind of cool down here, it’s like it’s own little world.” she had only been down to the forges a handful of times and couldn’t really remember the last time.

ZOE CALIDA

[ZOE CALIDA]

Carter was right – Zoe did hate hearing excuses made about weapons. The right sword, or whatever, was pivotal to a demigod’s success. A dull or badly-maintained blade was no use in a fight, and demigods got into plenty of trouble without needing to worry about a bad weapon. But that didn’t seem to be the case here. The hammer, while in clear need of repair, seemed to be in good condition otherwise. Carter said she’d taken care of it, and there was evidence of that. So Zoe, while always a little grumpy, wasn’t any more agitated than normal. She waved off Carter’s apologetic tone. “Don’t feel bad. You’re here, aren’t you? Better to see you here now than the infirmary next time you get into a fight.”

The compliment about the forges was the right strategy to take – the children of Hephaestus took good care of the place, and Zoe didn’t know any of her godly siblings who didn’t take pride in that fact. “It definitely feels like its own world,” Zoe agreed as she cleared off her workspace and began to hunt down the tools she’d need to set aside for the hammer. “Most of us spend all our free time here. We’d probably spend all our time here if there weren’t required activities elsewhere.” Carter was a child of Apollo, so Zoe eyed her as she dug out her gloves. “You must get that too over in Apollo.”

Carter Petal Duncan