Chapter 312: Forging
BOOM!
Kian kicked the Forge Temple's front doors open and stood there, hands on hips, radiating maximum self-importance.
"Servants! Out here, now! Come greet the Angel!"
A line of tech-priests scrambled into formation on either side of the entrance, fumbling to receive Kian — or, more precisely, Nor'n, who walked in behind him.
Kian led the way in, talking the whole time.
"Lord Nor'n here came down from the stars themselves. If anyone shows him the slightest disrespect, you're looking at a serious offence — do you understand?"
Antonius stepped forward, bowing with theatrical urgency.
"Of course, of course! Not a moment of disrespect, I assure you!"
Kian nodded, satisfied.
"Take care of my boy here properly, there's a little something in it for you."
He pulled out a small wad of bills and slapped it into Antonius's hand.
Antonius glanced down. Two credits, fifty-eight cents.
He rolled his eyes and pocketed it anyway.
"Count, Brother Astartes — what can the Temple provide for you today?"
"Brother Nor'n needs your forging equipment," Kian said. "Take us to your workshop."
Antonius gestured them forward with a small bow. "Gladly. This way, my lords."
He led them deep into the Temple complex to the forge hall, packed wall to wall with mechanised fabrication equipment.
Nor'n moved among the machinery, examining each station with a professional eye.
"This covers most of what I'll need. Father, I'll need to fabricate some specialised tooling first — could you provide raw materials?"
"Of course, Brother. It would be my honour."
The Mechanicus held standing agreements regarding Astartes — serving them fell well within compact, and beyond the compact, most tech-priests genuinely wanted to serve those who fought for humanity directly.
Antonius gathered a generous stockpile of materials. Nor'n spent half a day machining a set of custom tools.
By the time he finished, the forge hall had been quietly transformed into something resembling an ancient smithy.
Then he removed his power armour entirely, revealing muscle mass like a stack of forged steel plate, picked up a war-hammer, and got to work.
He started with the ruined breastplate — packing fresh material into the gouges, heating the whole assembly, and beginning to hammer it back into shape.
A few hours in, the badly-damaged plate was visibly, genuinely repairing itself under the hammer.
Antonius watched, openly impressed.
"Extraordinary technique. Ceramite is essentially impossible to reshape with a conventional hammer — and yet every strike from Brother Nor'n is reforming the material precisely, with tremendous force and absolute control."
Something tugged at the back of Kian's mind. He reached for his psychic sense, let his perception slip into the Immaterium layer.
A faint blue glow gathered in his eyes as he focused on Nor'n at the anvil.
He saw it immediately. Nor'n's forging wasn't purely physical. Underneath the hammer strikes, something deeper was happening — the concept of forging itself, operating as a rule, not a process.
Primarchs were beings the Emperor had created through some form of warp-essence shaping. Their sons — the Astartes — inherited fragments of that same essence.
Vulkan, evidently, had inherited something tied directly to the concept of forging, of making, of crafting — and passed that down through his entire gene-line.
That was the only explanation for how a hammer strike could reshape ceramite. It would be like a normal human blacksmith, hammer in hand, single-handedly forging fresh armour plate for a main battle tank. Not difficult. Impossible.
No wonder Vulkan's sons were never short on equipment. Every hammer-blow they delivered carried a fragment of the underlying rule of creation itself — something no amount of conventional skill could replicate.
By the time Kian's attention drifted back to the physical world, Nor'n had finished the breastplate, finished the green re-paint, and set it aside.
He was drenched in sweat from the effort, his dark skin gone matte under the sheen of it.
He noticed Kian watching and considered something.
"Count. I noticed the power armour you have on the shuttle. Would you like me to upgrade it for you?"
Kian's eyes lit up.
"Yes — yes, absolutely—"
Then something occurred to him, and his eyes narrowed with calculation.
"Actually, give me a few days first. I want to go find some really good raw materials."
Nor'n nodded and went back to his hammer.
"Bring the armour and materials when you're ready. With my hand on it, you'll see at least a fifty percent improvement across every stat."
He said this without the slightest hint of effort — pure professional confidence.
Kian turned to leave. Antonius, sensing trouble, grabbed his arm on the way out.
"Good materials? What exactly are you planning to go find?"
"Heh heh."
That was the entire answer.
Several days later, Nor'n was alone in the forge hall, hammer ringing steadily against the anvil. When he finally stepped back to look at his work, the once-ruined power armour stood there fully restored — clean lines, fresh plating, looking factory-new.
"Good. Next: a bolter and a thunder hammer, and I'll have my baseline combat capability back."
He started sorting through the material stock, looking for the best stock available for the build.
Kian's head appeared around the workshop door.
"Angel! Angel!"
Nor'n turned and found Kian lurking in the doorway with an expression that did not inspire confidence.
"Ah, Count. Are the armour and materials ready?"
Kian crooked a finger at him.
"Come on. I want to show you something genuinely incredible."
Nor'n's brow creased.
"My apologies, Count, but I don't have time to spare. I need to finish enough weapons to be combat-ready the moment I rejoin my brothers."
"Come on, just for a minute! I promise it's worth it — I won't waste much of your time!"
Kian wasn't letting this go.
Nor'n started to refuse again. Kian's eyes narrowed.
"Nor'n! You getting stubborn on me?
I fought through an Ork warband three separate times to save your life! We're talking tens of thousands of greenskins! Axes the size of doors swinging at my head! Guns the size of cannons spraying me down!
Saving you wasn't easy for me, you know! And now I ask you for one favour, one little trip, and you can't even—! Forget it, forget it, I'll just go die somewhere!"
Nor'n's broad dark face creased into a deeply put-upon expression. He genuinely could not handle this particular brand of emotional blackmail.
A normal mortal, he'd have dismissed with a stern word. This one, he couldn't.
For one thing, his rescuer. For another — and this was the part that actually got him — this same human had apparently soloed an Aeldari Howling Banshee in single combat. He'd heard the story over the last few days, watched the broadcast footage himself.
A genuine madman. A mortal, unaugmented, going toe-to-toe with an Aeldari Aspect Warrior and winning — albeit, apparently, with help from the Emperor's own blessing afterward.
Nor'n knew exactly how dangerous a Howling Banshee was. His own gene-line carried a documented weakness: marginally slower reaction time than baseline Astartes — still inhumanly fast by mortal standards, but a real liability against an enemy built entirely around speed. He genuinely wasn't sure he'd have survived that fight himself.
Respect for a fellow warrior, even an unlikely one, made it impossible to simply order him away.
"Fine, Count. But quickly. Time is short."
Nor'n yielded to his rescuer. Kian grinned.
"Let's go, let's go! I found something genuinely good, you're gonna love it!"
An hour later, Nor'n stood at the entrance to one of the hive's ventilation shafts, looking at an enormous half-buried drill head, and went very, very still.
"That's... is that... adamantium?!"
☆☆☆
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