The great hall of Jorrvaskr was a welcome symphony of familiar noise—the crackle of the fire, the clatter of tankards, and the boisterous voices of the Companions. Torin sat at the long table, shoveling stew into his mouth with the single-minded focus of a starving man, a contented grin on his face as he watched the scene unfold.
Aela and the Twins had Skjor cornered, pelting him with questions about the contract. They'd already given up on Torin, who had responded to their earlier badgering with little more than non-committal grunts around a mouthful of bread.
But the arrival of a heavier presence at the table made Torin's chewing slow. He set his spoon down as Kodlak settled onto the bench across from him, his wise eyes crinkling with a mixture of warmth and concern.
"So," Kodlak began, his voice a low rumble that cut through the surrounding chatter. "I hear you ran into some elves on the road."
Torin let out a small, weary chuckle. "And a werewolf. And an Ice Wraith. It was a very… eventful trip."
Kodlak offered a bitter smile. "Even with all that, it's the elves that concern me most." He let out a long sigh, the sound heavy with the weight of leadership. "Do you think they'll be a problem for us? For Jorrvaskr?"
Torin shook his head, his expression turning pragmatic. "For us, as a whole? No. Their target was Skjor, specifically. It's best not to let him take any contracts alone for a while."
Kodlak's frown deepened. He leaned forward, his voice dropping. "What of Vignar? He, too, bled in the war. His name is on their lists, surely."
Torin shrugged, picking up his spoon again to gesture with it. "They probably won't bother too much with that grumpy old man. He's very vocal about his opposition to the White-Gold Concordat and the Empire."
A darkly amused chuckle escaped him. "And those Thalmor bastards probably love him for it. A prominent Nord voice sowing dissent against the Empire? It's exactly what they want. Anything to divide Skyrim and Cyrodiil weakens us both."
Kodlak gave Torin a long, strange look, a blend of pride and unease. "I don't know whether to be comforted by your words or deeply disturbed by them, boy."
Torin's smile was sharp. "You're the Harbinger, old man. I'm sure you can figure it out." He took a final spoonful of his stew, then changed the subject. "That aside, are we doing something about that werewolf in Ivarstead, or what? It's still out there."
Kodlak gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "There's no need to worry about the beast. I'll find Ulf in the wilds tomorrow, and we'll take care of it together."
Torin raised an eyebrow, swallowing a mouthful of stew. "Wouldn't it be better to just wait for a contract to come in? The Companions don't exactly do unpaid work, as far as I know."
"Indeed, we don't," Kodlak agreed, a faint, knowing smile touching his lips. "But sometimes, the fight is its own prize, boy. Some problems are best handled quietly, without coin changing hands or questions being asked."
He pushed himself up from the bench with a soft groan. "Either way, I'll leave you to your meal now. Feast to your heart's content. You've earned it."
As the Harbinger moved away, Torin returned to his bowl, his mind already turning over the new information. He hadn't known what to expect when he reported the werewolf.
Part of him had wondered if Kodlak would treat it like any other beast, or if he'd find an excuse to ignore its existence entirely, given his own... condition. This, however, seemed like the best possible way to handle it.
Kodlak and Ulf would handle the feral werewolf quietly, without any public fuss or dangerous rumors starting in Ivarstead.
And speaking of that fight... the brief, brutal clash with the werewolf had been a stark reminder of his own limitations. His shield had barely held, and his hammer had felt woefully inadequate against such a creature.
The subsequent battle with the Thalmor assassins had only driven the point home. He'd survived on luck, quick thinking, and Echo's intervention more than sheer martial prowess.
As he scooped up the last of his stew, a new, determined thought crystallized in his mind. He needed upgrades. Better gear, potent enchantments, something to close the gap between himself and the true monsters of this world.
The climb was over, but the real ascent was just beginning.
...
One month later, the first light of dawn was just beginning to paint the thatched roofs of Whiterun in hues of gold and rose. Torin made his way up the steps to the Skyforge, a small crate tucked under his arm. From within came the soft clinking of silver trinkets, soon to be melted.
The last thirty days had been a cycle of intense, focused research. His first and most promising lead had been the enchantment tome Skjor had given him—a book Torin had privately dubbed the Enchanter's Code. The name was fitting, for reasons that had become immediately apparent.
Though he'd only just started reading it, the book was a revelation. It didn't just teach him how to dismantle existing enchantments; it laid out a method to create them from scratch. The process involved a complex, symbolic system for translating the principles of a spell into a stable, physical enchantment.
To Torin, it looked uncannily like a form of programming—laying down lines of arcane logic and command sequences onto a physical medium. The name had stuck instantly.
While his past-life education had only forced a bare minimum of programming knowledge on him, the underlying principles of logic and structure were enough. He found he could understand, and even memorize, this "magical coding" with surprising ease.
The problem was, knowledge was useless without tools and components. He only knew a handful of spells, and of those, only one or two—like a basic Fortify Health derived from his Restoration knowledge—were simple enough to be viable for his first attempts.
And even then, he lacked the one thing every enchanter needed: an enchanting table.
The book also proved increasingly difficult to digest, with certain sections requiring a great deal of interpretation due to Torin's limited knowledge—but that is neither here nor there.
After two frustrating weeks of very slow theoretical progress but zero practical application, he'd shelved the Code and returned to his kinetomancy training with a vengeance. But he'd quickly hit the same wall as before, his progress stalling out right back at the point where Skjor had first recruited him for the troll hunt.
The determination to find every possible shortcut—at least the ones that didn't end with him or someone else dead—burned strong in Torin. He'd never forgotten that tantalizing sentence in the Basics of Kinetomancy about materials that were naturally susceptible to telekinetic forces.
Following his original plan, he borrowed the heavy compendium of rare reagents from Kodlak's quarters.
After hours of scouring the dense, dry text, he'd found his target: Lodestones. The book described them as having a unique, inherent "gravity field" that was paradoxically compatible with telekinesis, even though it tended to disrupt other forms of magic.
It was strange, counter-intuitive, and exactly the kind of edge he was looking for.
The next two weeks, sandwiched between his usual training and studies, were spent relentlessly pestering the shifty Belathor and sending carefully worded letters to merchants, blacksmiths, and alchemists across the Holds. The results were uniformly disappointing. Either no one had any, or the price was astronomical.
Reality forced a grim acknowledgment: if he wanted a lodestone, he'd have to find one himself. And the only known source for them in Skyrim was deep within the treacherous, ore-rich veins of the mountains—a prospect he was in no hurry to repeat after his recent climb.
All of that brought him to his current, more immediate project and the crate of silver now sitting at his feet.
The legendary cling-clang of Eorlund Gray-Mane's hammer against the sky-steel didn't even pause. Torin waited for a lull in the rhythm before he spoke up.
"I need you to make something for me, Master Eorlund," Torin declared, letting the crate hit the ground with a purposeful thud that finally made the old blacksmith glance over.
The master of the Skyforge raised a bushy eyebrow, his hammer hovering over the glowing metal on the anvil.
"Do you have the time?" Torin asked, flashing a hopeful grin.
Eorlund set his hammer down with a definitive clank, wiped his sooty hands on his apron, and fixed his gaze on the crate of silver ingots.
He then looked back at Torin, a deep, world-weary sigh escaping his lips. "By Ysmir, boy. What hellish contraption would you have me forge this time?"
Torin chuckled, completely undeterred. "Oh, you'll like this one, I promise. It's practical." He quickly dug into his satchel and retrieved a piece of parchment, presenting a hastily sketched blueprint to the old smith.
Eorlund took it, his calloused fingers smoothing out the crinkles. He studied the drawing, his bushy eyebrows slowly lowering into a deeper and deeper frown.
It wasn't because the design was strange or outlandish. Quite the opposite.
It was a simple, almost classic halberd design—a cleaver-like axe blade mounted on a long haft. It was... normal. Too normal for the boy who usually brought him schematics that defied the very principles of smithing.
He was just about to look up and demand what Torin was really scheming when his eyes snagged on the measurements scribbled in the margin. His head snapped up. "What in Shor's name is this? A gift for a toddler? This haft is barely the length of my forearm!"
Torin shook his head, a glint of excitement in his eyes. "No, it's not a toy. It's a throwing axe."
Eorlund could feel the familiar throb of a Torin-induced headache beginning behind his eyes. "A what? How in Oblivion is this a throwing axe?"
"Look," Torin said, pointing enthusiastically at the sketch. "It's got the blade and general shape of an axe, so it's familiar. But what makes it better is that it's sharp and pointy on all sides. See the spikes on the top and bottom? And the curved blade? And the sharpened flanges at the base of the head?"
He mimed a throwing motion. "No matter how you grip it or how it spins in the air, it's got five different edges that can stick into a target. It'll land point-first three times out of four! And," he added, gesturing grandly to the crate of silver, "it'll be made entirely of Silver. Effective against creatures of the night—werewolves, vampires, undead... you name it. It's the perfect, versatile sidearm!"
Seeing the thoughtful, calculating look return to Eorlund's eyes as he studied the blueprint, Torin allowed himself a small, internal smile of victory.
In truth, this bizarre little throwing axe was the fruit of a two-hour, frantic brainstorming session. The memory of that Thalmor mage raining fire from a cliffside, completely untouchable, had been a brutal lesson.
He was painfully aware of his lack of any real ranged option.
A bow was the obvious answer, but Torin knew himself. He didn't have the patience or the years to spend becoming a proficient archer. He needed something simple, brutal, and effective with minimal training. Something he could hurl with all his strength to close the distance in a fight or finish a fleeing enemy.
This multi-pronged, silver "hurthing" was the answer he'd cobbled together entirely on his own. It was unorthodox, maybe even a little stupid, but it felt right.
It was a weapon of pure, desperate pragmatism.
Finally, Eorlund let out a grunt that was halfway between resignation and a craftsman's budding interest. He tapped the parchment with a soot-stained finger.
"Fine, boy," he rumbled, a faint, reluctant spark in his own eyes. "Let's fire up the forge and make you this... thing."
...
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