The hammer's beat filled the air, each tap folding the metal over a small bit more. Smoke billowed around the smith with each strike. Deep crimson skin barely seen amid the furnaces' glow as his arm set the rhythm for the whole factory. Tam-hattu watched smiling, as the metal rod lifted up, turning slightly between each blow. Gold sheathed teeth gleamed between the clouds the billows kicked out from the ancient ovens before him.
From the shadows, the screams of women and children echoed, more fodder for the blades, waiting to be sacrificed, watching their fathers and husbands offered up to the Annunaki. Afreet and Dao both worked in this forge, side by side, hammers all moving at the rhythm set by the smith-spirit forging the Traitor's Blade. Batulbel's muscles threatened to tear out of earthly flesh with each lift of his mallet. Flesh taken from an earlier sacrifice to house this spirit of flame and destruction.
From the shadows behind him, his adad's voice came softly. "So, you hope to bear this blade?"
The smile faded from the assassin master's face. "Raish, you should have been the Master of the Blades. Had that fool oro not risen up, all blades would be made here." Venom laced the words.
A soft chuckle came from the shadows, as a withered hand covered in sick green scales extend out to Tam-hattu's shoulder. "The Hazuuattuu will rise again to hold the guild, adadlu. By the blood we mingled, I promise you. But the words of the Annunaki spoke ages ago that the blades of blood, spirit and honor would clash. The spirits fell long ago. But we had to let the honor bound rise, so we can offer their souls up to the holy blades you lead now." A single step brought the face into the red light of the forge. "And the traitor to honor will betray it all. The Annunaki told us this, in the sacred writings."
Tam-hattu shrugged off the hand on his shoulder, shivering from the dead hand's chill. "You trust too much in the words of the Erib Bithi, brother. No Entum goes out with blade in hand seeking lives as we have. They only slay slaves, not imrua they grew up with. I cannot trust them."
Cold eyes of solid black met the gold toothed man's. "You fear we will fail?"
A flare of fires behind him, as the forming blade returned to coals to heat again, lit Tam-hattu's white hair with hints of blood. "Raish, the one who saved you is not of the Blades. He is of the dark, and twisting you to his ways. That I do not trust." Challenge flared on the assassin's mocha face.
His adad's face became thoughtful as the hammer song of smiths rolled on for many stanzas. Though he seemed still young, Adresh Raish Quradlu carried more years on his body than his blood brother did. They rose together amid the Allegiance of the Blades to rule the Dark Coast, and now most of a continent with fear and death as their emblems of power. Doubting his friend was not natural to him, but of late their discussions turned heated far too often.
"I agree, the Necromancer has not true idea of the Allegiance's purpose in the world." He nodded to the smithy behind Tam-hattu. "When the blade is done, we go to Kvaeg. Tell Batulbel to come as well. A new forge awaits us there, where he will forge the most sinister of blades." A hint of a smile creased the light brown face, so perfect save the eyes that sucked souls from men.
Fighting the scars that marred his own face, a hint of a smile came to Tam-hattu's lips. "There are no blades more dangerous than the Traitor's Blade."
Raish's expression drained away, like wax melting in the heat. "There are, in the old texts. Blades Batulbel forged for the Allegiance in ancient days." His master turned away with those words, fading into the shadows in ways even the assassin did not understand, despite years with his friend.
Screams of agony urged him to turn for the best part, as the three parts of the knife lay of the coals, with bodies of three humans being added, bound tightly to prevent their profaning the sacred creation of the blade. A man lay upon the blade, his woman on the hilt, with their small child upon the still to be formed pommels liquid pot of molten metal. For the assassin, this was the best part. He watched Batulbel the Afreet lift the spirit tongs, tearing out their hearts, minds and souls to bind them to the purpose of treachery. The rest of the corpses added to the coals, the fat sizzling as other organs ruptured.
Under his breath, he muttered a prayer to the tin idols of the temples of Anzu, the greatest of the Annunaki. "Let the blade come to my hand, the shadowed one must die for what he has done." Like a benediction, the hammer of the afreet smashed the lives of three humans into the blade, with several more families to die as the process continued.
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