Grub spent the following morning crouched in a meadow at the edge of the forest, surrounded by wildflowers.
It was not the image most people would associate with preparing for war, but the concoction he was mixing required specific botanical ingredients that only grew in open clearings where sunlight hit the soil directly. He flipped through his enchanted notebook, cross-referencing the list Orobas had compiled for him against the flora scattered around his knees.
His fingers closed gently around the stem of a blue flower with jagged purple thorns spiraling up its length. The petals were vivid and almost artificially bright, a color that screamed don't touch me to anything with functional survival instincts. A noxious aroma wafted from its center, sharp enough to make his eyes water.
Grub held the flower at arm's length and compared it to the illustration in his notes. Shape, thorn pattern, petal count, scent profile. Everything matched.
Grub nodded. "Found you."
Carefully avoiding the thorns, he clipped the flower and placed it inside a small cloth bag hanging from his belt. He had to make sure not to accidentally damage the petals or release the poison inside or it could ruin the whole batch. Every few minutes he compared plants to the notes in his notebook before either harvesting them or moving on.
Between specimens, he spotted one of the Guardians across the clearing struggling with a tripwire mechanism. The man had the anchor point wrong and the tension line backward, which meant the trap would either trigger on a passing breeze or not trigger at all. Grub walked over, crouched beside the Guardian, and spent several minutes explaining the proper engineering. Where the anchor needed to bite into the wood. How the tension had to be calibrated against the expected weight of whatever stepped on it. Why the release mechanism needed a slight upward angle rather than a flat pull.
The Guardian listened with the grudging attention, clearly annoyed at the thought of being taught by a boy that looked about half his age yet had twice his skill. When Grub finished, the man nodded once and got back to work. Without thanking him, naturally.
Only after he explained it did he return to gathering plants. He was reaching for a cluster of spore-bearing stalks when a shadow fell across his bag and a voice cut through the quiet meadow.
"Hey, Bug. Took me a while to find you out here."
Grub looked up. Thi stood over him, her crimson eyes narrowed and her brow furrowed beneath her messy red-streaked hair. Soot and ash covered her arms and dress, and the faint smell of hot metal clung to her like perfume. She had clearly come straight from Urgor's forge.
She let out a heavy sigh and glanced down at his collection bag. A smirk crept across her face.
"Are you picking flowers?" She snorted. "What are you, Lu?"
Grub shook his head without looking up. "I'm gathering plants I need for a trap compound. And I'd advise you not to touch any of them. The thorns on a few of these will poke through even your skin if you're careless."
Thi waved the warning off. "Whatever, shithead. I'm not here for your little garden party." Her smirk shifted into excitement. "Urgor needs you. Your weapon is done."
Grub paused mid-reach. He looked up at her with his usual flat expression, but something flickered behind his eyes.
"Really?"
"No. I walked all the way out here covered in soot because I wanted to watch you pick flowers like a little girl."
Grub ignored her sarcasm then stood, wrapped his bag carefully, and tucked it under his arm. "Let me drop these off with Orobas first. I'm not sure I collected enough, but the rest can wait."
After a quick stop at the planning room where Orobas accepted the botanical supplies with a delighted examination of each specimen, Grub and Luthiel walked together through the village toward Urgor's shop.
Thi shoved the door open without a lick of tact.
"Hey, Shorty! I brought the Bug!"
The front of the shop was empty, but the rhythmic thunder of hammering echoed from the back room. Grub could feel the vibrations through the stone floor. Whatever Urgor was working on, it was heavy.
The furry blacksmith's booming voice carried through the walls. "HE 'ERE? HOLD UP, LET ME JUST PUT THIS BUGGER ON THE FIRE!"
A few moments of clanging and sizzling later, Urgor waddled out from the back room, wiping his thick hands on his soot-blackened apron. Tucked under one arm was a long object, wrapped tightly in dark cloth.
"'Ere ye go, lad." He held the bundle out with both stubby hands.
Grub took it from the furry smith. The weight was immediately noticeable, solid and balanced.. Thi watched him closely as he unwrapped the cloth, her crimson eyes tracking his reaction.
The morning star emerged from the fabric like a blade being drawn from a sheath. Its handle was roughly two feet long, wrapped in dark leather with a textured grip that molded against his palm naturally. The shaft was smooth metal with a faint luminescence running through it, barely visible unless you looked closely. At the top, a dense spiked head sat perfectly balanced against the handle's weight, each spike ground to a fine point that caught the light from the shop's forge.
Grub lifted it with one hand and gave it an experimental swing. The weapon cut through the air with a satisfying hiss, the weight shifting fluidly from back to front as the spiked head arced past his shoulder. He adjusted his grip, swung again from a different angle, then tested a quick thrust followed by a lateral sweep.
The balance was immaculate and the weight distribution matched his natural swing pattern as if the weapon had been designed around the way his body moved.
"It's perfect," Grub said.
Urgor beamed and puffed out his furry chest. "Of course it is! This baby is a nicely forged piece of work, if I say so myself."
The blacksmith reached over and tapped the shaft with one thick finger.
"The metal blend is Animanium mixed with high-grade iron ore. Animanium by itself isn't incredibly tough, ye see. It's a special metal that excels at hosting and channeling Anima without degrading, but on its own it would dent if ye looked at it funny." He chuckled. "So I blended it with iron in a ratio that gives ye both durability and conductivity. Best of both worlds."
Grub turned the weapon over in his hands, studying the metalwork. "You said Animanium channels Anima. What does that mean practically?"
Urgor grinned. The question had clearly hit one of his favorite subjects.
"Ah, now we're getting into the good stuff." He waddled behind the counter and climbed onto his stool so he could speak at closer to eye level. "Every weapon has three things that determine its strength, lad. The ore, the smith, and the core."
He held up one stubby finger. "The ore gives the weapon its physical properties. Hard metals make hard weapons. Flexible metals make flexible weapons. Animanium for example, makes weapons that play nice with Anima. The ore is the body."
A second finger. "The smith gives it purpose. How the metal is folded, shaped, tempered, and assembled. Two blacksmiths can take the same ore and the same core and produce vastly different results. A master smith turns good materials into great weapons. A poor smith turns great materials into expensive garbage. The smith is the mind."
A third finger. "And then there's the core. The heart of the weapon."
Urgor leaned forward on his stool.
"A core is crystallized Anima, lad. When creatures live and grow stronger, their Anima accumulates."
He made a sphere shape with his hands.
"For some creatures, that Anima sometimes solidifies into a physical object inside their body. A dense little nugget of concentrated power."
Grub immediately thought of Nihil. Urgor shook his head before Grub could even ask.
"Different thing entirely." The blacksmith pointed at him. "That creepy death stuff ye use ain't got nothing to do with the core."
Grub blinked. "You can tell?"
"I've been smithing for decades." Urgor snorted. "I know strange power when I see it."
Grub scratched his chin. So this core isn't directly connected to their soul or else I would absorb it as Nihil. It truly is just Anima made physical.
Urgor continued while scratching his beard. "Not every beast has one. Small critters and common animals usually don't produce anything worth harvesting. But the stronger ones, the bigger ones, the alphas among their species? They grow cores that carry power.."
Grub was writing in his notebook and Urgor waited for his pen to catch up before continuing.
"We blacksmiths have trained Anima techniques specifically for fusing these cores into weapons. Combining the core with the ore during the forging process is delicate work. Get it wrong and the core rejects the metal, or the metal cracks under the strain, or the whole thing explodes in yer face." He chuckled darkly. "Lost an eyebrow that way once."
"Now, cores come in all types and strengths. The type depends on the beast it came from and what kind of Anima it produced. A core from a fire-breathing creature would carry fire properties. A core from something fast would carry speed or agility enhancements." He tapped the morning star. "And the strength of the core often determines the rank of the finished weapon."
He held up one finger.
"A weak core limits everything."
Second finger.
"Bad ore limits everything."
Third finger.
"Bad smithing limits everything."
He spread his hands.
"All three matter."
Grub nodded slowly.
"What if you put a powerful core into weak metal?"
Urgor barked out a laugh.
"Then congratulations lad. The weapon explodes."
Thi snorted.
"Different ores can only handle certain grades of cores and different smiths can only forge certain grades of cores."
"You force something beyond the limits and things go wrong."
Grub looked up from his notes. "So the core's rank and the weapon's rank are always the same?"
"Not quite lad! No, they're not." Urgor shook his head. "Ye can take an Honored ranked, which is the same as Great Sage rank in official terms, core and put it in the hands of a poor smith with bad ore, and ye'll end up with a Dormant ranked weapon that'll shatter the first time ye swing it. The core provides the potential but the ore and the smith determine how much of that potential gets realized."
He gestured at the morning star.
"Yers is what we call a Conductor type. Meaning the core doesn't generate its own Anima. Instead, it channels whatever ye put into it. Ye push yer Anima through the handle and the core amplifies and directs it through the weapon."
Urgor hopped off his stool and walked around the counter to tap the spiked head.
"This is also why Morrigan's choice of Animanium was clever. The ore already conducts Anima well. Paired with a Conductor core, yer weapon becomes an extension of yer own power rather than a source of its own. What ye put in is what ye get out, just amplified."
"So when you eventually learn proper weapon reinforcement, this thing will respond beautifully."
Grub nodded slowly, absorbing the information. "What rank is it?"
"Morrigan provided me with a Cultivator ranked core, Tier Three. Or as we smiths like to call it, Bound rank, Tier Three." Urgor stroked his beard proudly. "Combined with my smithing and the quality of the ore, I'd rank the finished weapon at roughly Bound Tier Two."
He glanced at Grub. "Yer a Dormant, right lad?"
"Dormant Tier One."
"So yer weapon's grade is one step above yer own. That's a good fit. Close enough that ye can wield it comfortably, strong enough that ye won't outgrow it immediately." He winked. "And that Animanium blend supports growth. It holds a lot of Anima and can keep it stored for ya, so even when yer out your weapon is still rearing to go. I am still mighty curious on why Morrigan insisted it be made of primarily Animanium though. She seemed insistent that your weapon be made with the idea of holding Anima in there. Not a bad choice, very similar to Luthiel's skeleton there."
Urgor disappeared into the back room and returned with a set of leather straps designed for carrying the morning star across the back. He helped Grub fit them over his coat, adjusting buckles and tightening the harness until the weapon sat securely between his shoulder blades with the spiked head resting just above his right shoulder.
The weight felt reassuring. Like an answer to a question he had been carrying since his old club was thrown away.
Thi had been leaning against the doorframe throughout the entire explanation, her crimson eyes half-lidded with boredom.
"Ye all set then?" Urgor asked.
"Yeah." Grub rolled his shoulders, testing the weight distribution. "Thank you, Urgor. Seriously."
The furry smith waved a stubby hand. "Don't mention it, lad. Just make sure ye put it to good use."
As they headed for the door, Luthiel spun around and darted back for one more hug. Urgor laughed and patted her soot-covered back before shooing her off with a grin.
Outside, Grub felt the morning star's presence with every step. The weight shifted slightly as he walked, a constant, grounding reminder that he was no longer unarmed. He had spent months fighting with improvised weapons, borrowed equipment, and his bare fists. Having something forged specifically for him felt strangely elating.
He glanced at Thi beside him. A question that had been sitting in the back of his mind surfaced.
"Why don't you have a weapon?"
Thi sighed and folded her arms behind her head as she walked. "Because, dumbass, sometimes it's better to fight with your fists if that's where your strength lives. Weapons are tools. If the tool doesn't match the fighter, it's dead weight."
She flexed one mitten-like hand.
"Besides, there's a bunch of other reasons that don't concern you."
Grub looked away. "Rude."
A fist connected with his shoulder, firm enough to make him stumble a step. Grub has been taking the physical abuse as Thi's version of affection.
The days that followed blurred together in a rhythm of labor, training, and preparation. Grub split his time between completing the trap network, mixing his botanical compounds, and practicing with the morning star under Morrigan's unforgiving supervision. Luthiel continued working at the forge with Urgor while training with Morrigan in the evenings. The Guardians drilled their formations. Orobas finalized evacuation routes.
Every day the village grew a little more fortified and each passing day the tension grew a little thicker while the countdown in Grub's head ticked one number closer to zero.
The preparation days passed in a blur.