The Tower: Book One of the Legend of the Artificer

Chapter 8

Grim did return, with the leather and steel. It took him a full week, but he did make it back to him, and looking worse for wear.

"What happened to you?" he asked as he took in the sorry state of the curse breaker. He had stubble, which somehow made his jaw even more appealing, dammit, and bags under his eyes, on top of singes on his vest and a hand wrapped in bandages. His sword hand, if the holkind was guessing correctly. He also looked like he was favoring his shoulder, and honestly just looked incredibly terrible.

"Got in a bit of a skirmish, but my brother is shit at healing. Damn grave cleric," he grumbled as he set down the requested items and pulled out the receipts. "Here you go. And meat, like you asked for."

A bag was tossed onto the table, and Grim stretched out and looked around the workshop he had found himself in, his eyes skittering over all of the items and materials and open books scattered about. Teacher, again, was silent, and the holkind quietly cursed it for it. He could use some backup here.

"Really are an artificer, huh?" Grim hummed, and the holkind picked up the items and carefully arranged the hunks of steel on the shelf with all of his other metals.

"Did you doubt me?"

"Little bit, yeah. Never met an artificer who just made all of their own items, though."

"Well, when you're stuck in a tower off any major road, you have to get a little creative," he huffed, and then paused as Grim reached into the satchel slung over his good shoulder.

"You said ash was better, right?" Grim asked, and set down two hunks of uncarved wood on the table, followed by what looked like a cabinet scraper and a jar of oil. "I had these laying around at home, no one was using them, so..."

"Oh," he said faintly, staring at the hunk of wood, and Grim looked away.

"I pass by this forest every so often, and you're stuck here without meat, so I figured you'd like someone to hunt for you."

"... Oh."

"If you don't want to, that's fine, but a spell slinger shouldn't be without a bit of ash," Grim stammered, and the holkind coughed.

"No, it's fine, uh. How much do I owe you, again?" Hurriedly, he turned aside even as his eye caught on the bandages on Grim's hand. He could fix that.

"It's, uh, on the receipts."

"And for the meat?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I was planning on charging you, Red. It's just some venison we managed to snatch up on the way over here."

"... Right. Uh. Thank you." Gods, he had really forgotten how to function as a person, hadn't he? "You said your brother was a grave cleric?"

"Yes," Grim replied as he idly strolled around the workshop, clearly wanting to poke but restraining himself admirably. "Angel. He can basically only heal when he injures someone, or if we are quite literally about to die. I don't know what the hells he was thinking, pledging himself to Moshao like that."

"People generally don't choose the gods they worship," he said faintly as he filed the name of the god away for future reference. Culturally, they were Haimites, then, though that didn't necessarily mean they were from Haim, because he was pretty sure he was nowhere near Haim, though he wasn't sure what the accent sounded like. Or what accent even he had, because Grim rolled his r's and enunciated his ch's and cr's and harsh k's completely differently.

"Yeah, but Angel could have just told her no," Grim groused, with all of the aggrievance of a brother that was moderately inconvenienced, and the holkind's lips twitched in a smile before it faded before it had a chance to take hold. The longer he went without a name, the more the memories faded, but when Grim had given him a nickname, they were starting to come back, and...