The stone steps leading up from the underground forge caverns trembled under a rhythmic, heavy, slow rhythm. A shadow seven feet wide fell across the porch doorway before Old Man Tie ducked his massive head under the carved top door beam.
The Divine Titan Smith looked like an ambulatory mountain range wrapped in grease-stained leather aprons. His thick iron-gray fur was singed at the shoulders from exposure to earth-heat magma chimney pipes, his massive braided beard reached down to his brass-studded belt. His right arm—a grafted masterwork of living star-iron—glowed with faint internal star-patterns of molten gold. Tucked under his huge left arm were five heavy rolls of starched drafting linen, each bound with thick copper wire.
Behind him, towering ten feet tall, Da Shi and two black glass golems stepped into the open courtyard. Their polished dark rock shoulders bore heavy wooden crates packed with deep purple spatial squeezing crystals and dull black metal bars of void-attuned meteor iron. The granite courtyard flags groaned beneath their combined mass, but didn’t crack.
“BWAHAHAHA!” Tie Shan’s booming deep rattled the fine china teacups on the table. It shook the water in Lin Xiao’s basin. “The little fox girl told me you finally came to your senses, blue boss! You’re building something big! Something that needs real fire, real hammer-work, and enough void-iron to sink a royal fleet!”
