The central foundry sanctum was dominated by a huge circular platform surrounded by a moat of bubbling, orange-yellow molten melted rock waste. At the center of the platform stood an anvil forged from a solid block of dark, rainbow-bright iron-hard metal steel—ten feet long, six feet wide, and streaming enough surrounding heat to scorch clothing at twenty paces. The air above the anvil shone in waves of distortion, blurring the massive chains and hanging iron hooks suspended from the cavernous ceiling. Every breath drawn within this chamber tasted of boiled away sulfur, zinc fumes, and hot motor oil.
Standing beside the anvil was Forgemaster Vorn.
The cult’s chief smith was a towering monstrosity of flesh and iron. His torso had been stripped of human skin and wrapped in a said clearlycuirass of blackened steel plates, bolted directly into his ribs with heavy hex nuts that puckered the keloid scar tissue around each seam. Emerging from his broad shoulders were four arms. Two massive human limbs corded with thick veins, and two lower appendages grafted from the hard-shelled limbs of an Abyssal Hydra. He ended in three-pronged serrated iron pincers that clicked and snapped in rhythmic agitation. Implanted directly into his chest bone was a heavy-duty brass bellows that hissed and pulsed in time with his labored breathing, pumping white-hot air directly into a potion-made fire pack bolted to his spine.
