The Iron Ghetto was an underground maze of roaring blast furnaces, steam-hammer foundries, and soot-blackened brick chimney pipes carved into the lower tiers of Sector 4.
Even in the dead of winter, the air in the Ghetto was stiflingly hot, thick with the metal reek of sulfur dioxide, molten pig iron, and burnt cool oil. Massive overhead steam pipes hissed rhythmically. It condensed foul brown water that dripped onto the greasy cobbles below.
Arthur walked down Smelter Alley, Grimm flanking his left hip. The hound’s claws clicked sharply on the iron trench plates that covered the drainage chimney pipes. Grimm’s ears swiveled constantly. It tracked the rhythmic thump-hiss of heavy high-pressure presses running behind windowless brick facades.
At the dead end of the alley stood a massive stone brick foundry with a towering smokestack banded in rusted iron hoops. Above the massive sheet-iron double doors hung an eight-foot anvil forged from blackened meteorite. It was stamped with a single, brutal mark:
SZABO’S Disaster FORGE: SPECIALIZED Metalwork & HEAVY RIFT GEAR.
Arthur reached for the heavy iron knocker. But before his knuckles could strike the plate, a deep, ringing voice boomed from inside:
“The latch is lifted, lad! Don’t stand out in the drizzle like a drowned rat!”
Arthur pushed the iron door open.
A wave of dry, searing heat washed over them, smelling of red-hot coke and crushed limestone powder.
The forge floor was sixty feet across, dominated by three massive coal-fired hearths whose draft vents roared with blazing bright yellow flames. In the center of the hall, anchored directly into the solid dark rock bedrock, stood a huge steam-driven trip-hammer. Its four-ton cast-iron head rose and falling with earth-shaking concussions.
Standing beside the main hearth was Master Olgierd Szabo.
The fifty-five-year-old master armorer looked as though he had been carved out of the same meteorite iron as his anvil. He stood six feet four inches tall, with broad, boulder-like shoulders covered in faded burn scars and a thick, iron-gray walrus mustache caked with soot. His left leg was missing below the knee, replaced by a stout, beautifully turned peg of solid drop-forged steel capped with a textured rubber traction pad. In his right hand, as casual as an artist holding a paintbrush, Szabo cradled an eight-pound rift-forged rounding hammer.
Lying in a bed of warm cinder dust beside the hearth bellows was Szabo’s shop guardian. A massive, six-year-old Melted rock-Mane Mastiff named Forge. The seventy-two-pound hound had a dense, slate-colored coat that shed sparks like leather, his heavy jaw resting on his front paws. He watched Arthur enter.
Grimm stopped three paces inside the threshold.
The jet-black hound didn’t growl. He lowered his head into a respectful, measured stance. His molten amber eyes locked with Forge’s dark brown pupils. Forge gave a single, low snort of recognition. A mutual hunting beast greeting between working beasts who respected each other’s territorial mass.
“Well, well,” Szabo rumbled. He set his eight-pound hammer down on the anvil face with a ringing clang. He wiped his soot-stained palms on his leather apron, his sharp hazel eyes scanning Arthur from his battered leather satchel to his worn boots. “The young surgeon from Ward 9. The whole Ghetto has been talking about you for three days, Vance.”
Szabo barked a deep, chest-shaking laugh that rattled the hanging tongs on the wall rack.
“Julian Vance’s lab drake, broken in three point eight seconds by an alley stray!” Szabo grinned, exposing a row of gold-capped back teeth. “The high-born prigs in Sector 1 were so embarrassed they banned the duel footage from the town broadcast towers. Served that pompous bastard Gregory right. But you didn’t come to my forge to talk about dead drakes. What do you need, boy? Iron plates? Shovels? Or did you come to buy a real dog?”
Forge let out a lazy whuff from the cinders, his tail swatting a cloud of ash.
“I need specialized tactical equipment, Master Szabo,” Arthur said. He stepped up to the clear oak workbench beside the tool racks. “And I need it completed before midnight.”
Szabo’s thick eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “Before midnight? High-grade rift metalworking takes annealing, lad. You can’t rush the cool. What are you preparing for?”
“Debt Enforcer Fang seized our winter bone meal shipment,” Arthur said. His voice flat and was cold and exact. “He’s holding it in the Under-City scrap ring at Roundhouse Nine. He demanded Grimm’s carcass as a wager, or he burns the commoner grain siding.”
The genial warmth vanished from Szabo’s face like mist before a fire blast.
The blacksmith’s eyes narrowed, turning as hard and cold as tool steel. He spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the cool vat, where it sizzled into steam.
“Sterling and Fang,” Szabo growled, his deep voice dropping into a dark register. “Those gutter butchers have been running illegal spliced fights under the roundhouse for two years. They kidnap commoner watch-dogs, pump them full of man-made combat stimulants, and bolt air-powered jaws to their skulls until the poor bastards chew through iron cages. They think because they pay kickbacks to Dean Pendelton’s court guards, they own the lower city.”
Szabo leaned his massive forearms against the workbench, staring intently at Arthur. “What do you have in mind?”
Arthur drew two detailed drafting scrolls from his satchel, unrolling them across the scorched oak surface.
Szabo looked down at the schematics. As his eyes tracked the crisp, ink-ruled lines and precise space-folding tolerances, the blacksmith’s scowl gave way to genuine skilled shock.
“Gods above...” Szabo whispered, adjusting his steel-rimmed magnifying visor over his eyes. “These aren’t blacksmith sketches. These are master armorer blueprints.”
The first drawing depicted a close-fitting moving shock-collar engineered specifically for Grimm’s neck anatomy.
“The collar uses three layered leaves of high-pulling spring steel,” Arthur explained. He tapped the blueprint with his brass measuring tongs. “The inner layer is lined with hardened rubber to insulate against electric-shock-batons. The outer plates are studded with heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron impact studs set to protect the main neck blood vessels, neck-vein veins, and chest nerve bundles from high-pressure clamp jaws. But the core gearwork is here: an internal moving-absorption shunt that redistributes crushing jaw force around the neck bones and into the shoulder girdle.”
Szabo traced the shunt gearwork with a calloused thumb, his mouth slightly open. “By the cinder... It’s a floating mid-air ring. If a 4,000-PSI jaw clamps his neck, the collar doesn’t choke him—it transfers the load directly into his chest muscle base.”
“Exactly,” Arthur said. “And the second blueprint is for me.”
The second blueprint showed a wrist-mounted air-powered hollow tube gauntlet.
Built from a curved heavy dark metal-hardened carbon-iron forearm guard, the gauntlet housed an eight-chambered rotary metal tube connected to a high-pressure carbon-dioxide gas cartridge. Along the ventral channel ran a care brass guide barrel capable of launching eight-inch hardened steel cannulas loaded with bio-chemical solutions up to twenty paces with flat flight path.
“An eight-shot rotary air-powered needle,” Szabo breathed, shaking his head in admiration. “You want to fire beast-doctor cannulas from your wrist under matchlock squeezing?”
“Not beast-doctor medicine,” Arthur said coldly. “Aether-cooling neuro-inhibitor darts. If Fang’s cyber-hounds are running on neural overdrive pumps, I can shut down their motor heat flow from outside the pit with five drops of curare-zinc buffer.”
Szabo straightened his massive back, his peg-leg clicking against the stone floor. He looked at Arthur, then turned his gaze down to Grimm.
The jet-black hound was sitting calmly beside Arthur’s boots. His yellow eyes watched the glowing coals with unblinking focus, his massive jaw resting casually on the floorboards.
“You’re a madman, Arthur Vance,” Szabo rumbled, a fierce, feral smile spreading beneath his walrus mustache. “A cold and exact butcher with the care of a royal engineer. I like you.”
The blacksmith grabbed a pair of three-foot tongs from the wall rack.
“We don’t need until midnight,” Szabo bellowed, slamming the iron tongs against the trip-hammer frame with an ear-splitting ring. “I have two plates of pre-forged rift-fall meteorite plate in the annealing kiln, and six feet of aircraft-grade high-pressure tubing under the lathe! Forge! Wake up, you lazy hound! Pump the left bellows! We’re lighting the third fire!”
Forge scrambled to his feet with a deep, eager bark. The massive mastiff walked over to a heavy leather treadle connected to the hearth bellows and began stepping step by step on the pedal, pumping rhythmic blasts of high-pressure air into the coals until the yellow flames turned to a blinding white heat.
For the next four hours, the Calamity Forge became a whirlwind of moving creation.
Szabo worked with demonic energy. His eight-pound hammer blurred through the air, striking red-hot meteorite steel with rhythmic, bone-jarring concussions that scattered showers of brilliant orange sparks across the hall. He snapped the plates on the heavy clockwork guillotine, rolled the spring-steel collar leaves on the three-roll bender. Then he hardened the heavy dark metal studs in a vat of boiling sulfur-saline oil.
Arthur worked at the care jeweler’s lathe, turning the eight brass hollow tube cylinders, threading the high-pressure gas valves, and fitting the hair-trigger release lever to the forearm bracket.
Grimm watched every movement with hungry curiosity. Szabo brought the glowing collar out of the cool vat. Then, hissing and venting plumes of white steam, Grimm stepped forward without fear, sniffing the hot metal oil with calm test.
By ten o’clock at night, the work was finished.
Szabo picked up the completed moving shock-collar. The metal was a dark, non-shiny gunmetal gray, inlaid with polished heavy dark metal studs that caught the firelight like stars against black glass.
“Kneel, boy,” Szabo instructed Grimm.
The hound lowered his chest to the floorboards. Szabo wrapped the heavy collar around Grimm’s thick neck. It slid the double linked slide-pins into place until they locked with a crisp, solid clack.
The collar fit with clean, steady care. It rested flush against Grimm’s black fur, shielding his throat and neck spine without impeding his throat pipe or restricting his ninety-degree head rotation.
Grimm shook his head once. The heavy studs clicked softly, and the hound let out a deep, appreciative rumble that shook through the floorboards.
Arthur strapped the air-powered gauntlet to his left forearm. The curved heavy dark metal plate was remarkably light, contoured perfectly to his outward bone, the hair-trigger resting tiny fractions of an inch beneath his index finger. He loaded eight steel-tipped cannulas into the rotary metal tube. It slid the breech block shut with a satisfying clockwork snap.
“How much for the materials and forge time, Master Szabo?” Arthur asked, reaching for his pouch of brass credits.
Szabo glared at him, his heavy hammer resting against his steel peg-leg.
“Put your brass back in your pocket, Vance,” Szabo growled, his voice deep and solemn. “You stood up to Gregory Vance when every craven merchant in this city licked his boots. You saved forty commoner draft beasts without charging an intake token. Szabo doesn’t take coin from a man who fights for the lower ward.”
The blacksmith leaned down, extending a massive, calloused hand that gripped Arthur’s forearm like an iron vise.
“Just do one thing for me down in that pit,” Szabo said. His eyes burning with was cold fire. “When Fang sicks his wired monsters on you, break their high-pressure jaws into scrap. Show those trade ring bastards what happens when an honest craftsman’s work meets a butcher’s razor knife.”
Arthur gripped the blacksmith’s hand firmly.
“Consider it done.”
Arthur turned toward the doorway, the rotary gauntlet gleaming beneath his sleeve, Grimm pacing silently at his side in his gleaming meteorite armor.
Midnight was approaching.
The Scrap Ring Cauldron was waiting.