Varek hoisted the fire basket above the workshop hearth while Hajin checked the core's receiving seal beside the anvil.
Three apprentices pumped the bellows while the paid trench-stalker core sat beside Varek's tongs, and the gauge lagged far below. Across the workshop, Corin guarded his drawings from sparks while two smiths took the basket, waiting on their master's hand.
Varek clamped the tongs around the sphere, careful not to knock its shell against the anvil.
"Full draft, damn it!" he barked over the bellows, "two thousand on the forge scale before that crust gives us anything to shape!"
An apprentice hauled the handles through another stroke as the two smiths lowered the basket into the coals.
The gauge stopped climbing the instant the core settled, and the flames shrank away from its untouched surface.
'Huh, pretty sure fire isn't supposed to back away from anything.'
