Soul Alloy
3 — A Peculiar Resonance
Everyone in the city of Medparchen had heard of master blacksmith Dennery van Leuphāarl. He knew more about the properties of mithril—the soul alloy that resonates with the wearer’s astral body—than anyone, even among the elves. This was, however, the first time he had attempted the forging of a mithril suit for a human, and as such he was both nervous and excited.
The human’s name was Azonia á Bien, a warrior tribeswoman from the uncultured lands of the far West. She was also more than a little nervous; not least because the mystical metal could not be sold under elven law, only earned, and one of the few ways in which an outsider was permitted to earn it was through prostitution. Dennery assured her that although he found her extremely desirable (itself a dangerous assertion, if any of the more puritanical of his race found out), he had no intentions beyond experimenting with the effects of mithril resonance on a human body.
She cast the worries to the back of her mind, and resolved to put up with this strange little man’s stares until he had finished crafting the armour, and then leave for her battle against mad sorcerer Por’tak á Bien, whose conquest of peaceful lands had disgraced her whole family.
Her worries returned when the elf said she must be naked for the fitting. “These chains need to fit exactly,” he explained, “and they have to be in contact with your skin.” She was disgusted by the prospect, but she knew she had come too far to turn back to now, and the blacksmith’s skills seemed to be her only chance of returning with the equipment she’d need to get into the warlock’s tower. She shrugged off her cloak and tunic and stood in the middle of the workshop with as much proud dignity as she could muster.
The blacksmith started slowly, carefully paying out a length of chain around her waist. He took measurements with instruments whose purpose she could only guess at, maybe assessing the precise position of the chakra and energy points of her body’s aura to determine where each part of the armour could lie. As he worked, he affixed some of the chain’s links to her skin with tiny drops of gum. She tried to ignore the confident yet gentle touch of his fingers on her hips and back, warm fingers and cold metal making quite a contrast. Finally he was satisfied, cutting the chain to the desired length and then using a pair of pliers as small as her littlest finger to adjust the width of the final ring. That done, he opened a strongbox in one corner of the room and extracted six mithril coins.
He walked more slowly back to the area where Azonia was standing. He handled the coins carefully, with reverence. It made no sense to the human, until she remembered that in his faith, the mithril coins were said to be corporeal representations of the soul of their gods.
“This may feel a little unusual,” he lowered his voice in the presence of his divine money, too, “The mithril resonates with your very soul, you understand? We just have to hope that you will have the ability to feel the spirit of the metal.” Azonia nodded confidently. She wasn’t worried about not resonating with the coins, because she had already felt their power the first time she had been able to touch one. Right now, her major concern was avoiding shivering from the chill in this subterranean cavern.
The blacksmith didn’t smelt the coin, or work the metal at all. Instead, he slipped it underneath the chain about her waist, where the tension held it snugly against the top of her hip. He did the same with another coin, on the other side, before starting to loop the adjacent links of the chain through the holes in the centre of the coin. “Can you feel it?” he asked as he worked, “The way every vibration in the coin elicits an echo right from your heart?”
Azonia trembled as his tools tapped against the coin and she felt the vibration run right through her. It was like a wave of pure emotion, relaxing and reassuring. For an instant, she felt safer than she could ever remember feeling before. Her eyes closed reflexively as her body decided to savour the feeling, and then as quickly as it had come, the sensation faded.
“Wow,” she gasped, catching herself just before the relaxation caused her to fall, “That was incredible!”
“Now you see the full beauty of the soul alloy,” the smith seemed almost as impressed as she was, “It resonates, and your body responds with emotion. If you know the right equations, you can deduce a way to create almost any known emotion, and at the same time your astral body will learn to project the natural resilience and strength of the Engine God from whose divinity the coins were gathered.”
As he spoke, he tapped both of the coins with a small tuning fork. The waves of bliss rushed through her, two patterns of inner peace coalescing somewhere deep within her being to produce a sense of absolute trust that seemed to fill her world for a whole minute. When it was done, she found that the whole world seemed comfortable and secure. Her earlier worries about being tricked into this were gone completely. In any other situation, seeing her opinions changed so easily might have been disturbing, but here she knew she was safe because Dennery’s honesty and integrity were beyond question.
The first two coins set in place, the elf leaned closer to adjust the closure of the chain below her navel. Below the first chain, he hung an inch of finer silver links, and then another. He worked quickly, with two pairs of pliers to weave parallel chains into a wider, double row of rings. After a while, Aznia grew used to the man’s presence and could even let herself forget that he was crouching so close to her naked crotch. That chain would have to pass between her legs eventually, but she knew she could trust the elf not to touch her any more than was strictly necessary for the fitting.
Within an hour, the garment had grown more substantial, and Azonia thought she was starting to see the complex patterns that the elf used to shape it. Some rings were linked to five neighbours, some to six. There were six mithril coins in the weave now, though it barely covered her crotch. Every time one of the special coins clinked against some other part of the chain, she felt waves of powerful emotion rush through her body. The worst part, though, was when Dennery tapped the mithril coins with an array of tuning forks, creating a wide variety of emotions. Fear, contentment, confusion, anger, and resignation had all flooded her consciousness at his touch, and every ring added made their power that much more intense.
He gestured for her to squat, thighs separated so he could bring the chains hanging down from the armour’s waistband together. She carefully lowered her body, and tried to ignore the feel of his hand brushing against her inner thigh. It was a sensation she never thought she’d experience in an armourer’s shop, and it still brought her more than a small flush of embarrassment. He leaned closer to measure the tension in the rings, and she could feel his breath on her most intimate areas.
“Could you not… uhhh” she muttered, finding it so difficult to keep her focus, “I mean, be careful how you touch me…”
Azonia gasped as the tuning forks came together on the rings at her waist, and a flood of arousal greater than anything she had ever imagined overwhelmed her…