Forging Fate

Missing Magic

  The title intrigued Augus to no end, but even with the added inspiration it toon him two months before he translated the first chapter, and his expectations did not seem to be met.  The chapter was on mental control and various mental problems to solve, such as imagining your mind receding from your body and focusing only on a goal, and believing a rock is going to fly if you let it go.  What use was this book anyway, if all it taught him was how to get a headache with it's unnerving perfection and flawless lettering.  He did them regardless, if only because he could do them while working.        
  As he came of the age of twelve he chose to begin an apprenticeship, in order to have a lifestyle when his inheritance ran out.  He chose to ask Terb if he could study metalworking under him, and was accepted under a three year contract to make him a junior smithy.  Augus found the body-projecting technique, that the odd book called the Alar, would help him bear the heat of the fire, enabling him to move with greater precision than even Terb, not that he was praised for it.  Augus suffered the weight of Terb's displeasure when his work turned out to be of a better quality, of which it always did.  "I better not catch you ruining my tools with your half assed swings I done seen you do". Of course Augus never ruined his apprentice tools, while the "master" always seemed to break his with what Augus recognized as misuse.  As he was in no position to point this out however, he just applied the alar and kept silent, even as Terb punished him for things he never did.  In the second chapter this theme was expanded and he was constantly busy with mind games in all his waking hours, and most involved playing against himself, who he found to be the hardest and most annoying enemy he had ever faced.  In chess he always tried to distract himself from the game while he played, leading him to sharpen his focus enough to cut diamond, as he hammered nails he believed that the nails were connected to the fire, and the anvil was connected to the nail, but not the fire, and that the nails were all connected to the nail not yet made.  In the midst of this he began to feel faint and hot, for reasons he would not explain, his hammer was too heavy to carry, and he dropped it on the ground where it made a sound akin to a heavy broadsword.  He stepped back as the nail began to bubble in front of him, and with this he lost his focus on believing.  He instantly began to feel better but the damage was done, his hammer was dented and rendered useless from where he last hit the anvil, and the nail had melded to the selfsame spot.  "What the bedevil have you done to that anvil you idiot apprentice?" Terb scolded him as he looks over.  "I... have no clue what happened." Augus replied his face overshadowed with confusion.