Chapter Text
“What the heck.”
The cool morning wind bit into his cheek, but he barely noticed it. Staring right back at him with the same violet eyes he was born with, was himself.
Neither of them moved while Purpled’s lips parted in a silent question, his brain trying to figure out what he was seeing at six in the morning, before the sun’s cold greeting, and why. The other Purpled halfway up the small mountain just stood there, its expression neutral, its gold hair blowing across its eyes. Unconsciously, Purpled touched his own ash-gold hair, ruined from all the smoke that got to it.
When another gust of wind jumped out, rocking him, he inhaled sharply and threw his hood back over his face, never realizing it had fallen off. Glancing up at the mountain, he blinked and sharply inhaled to find that nobody was there. Instead the bushes waved their greeting, scraggly and famished as they were.
The rocks jutted out, sharp with shadow still, and his gaze tumbled down the hill as he tried to look for any footsteps. Small bumps were left over like there might have been someone, but he couldn’t tell anymore. Maybe if he squinted that free could resemble the shadow of someone.
Maybe he was just delusional.
Waiting a second longer, he shook his head and spun around on his heel, crunching through the light blanket of snow to his work. “I’m just going crazy because I’m sleep deprived,” he chided himself, skipping across the few rocks still poking their face out. The jagged edges cut into his thin soles, reminding him not to mess with them, and also letting him know that he still needed those new winter boots.
Well, he was going to worry about that later. For now, he needed to get to the shop or he would never get them at all.
Still, though, he couldn’t help but think of his double, standing there on the mountain. He could hear Tribe Four’s eerie stories of ghosts and omens wavering through his head, letting goosebumps crawl over his skin. Maybe he should have paid more attention to those. That or he was becoming just as crazy as they were. He couldn’t tell.
By the time he got to the building of his work, smoke was already wafting out of the black bricked chimney, which meant the Tribe Twelve Servers were up and running about already, and the jaws of the gate were wide open. With a slight sigh, he stepped through the blast of heat and shrugged his jacket off, hanging it up on the wall with the others.
“Ah!” Scotts Major piped up, rumbling up to him and giving him a greeting in the form of a slap on the back. “Look who the cat dragged in.”
“I’m not late, sir,” he answered, eying the man carefully. With Scotts booming voice and wide smile, Purpled relaxed his muscles. A shipment must have come in overnight, which would make it easier for everybody today.
He tsked. “Not late, not late,” he parroted, rubbing his hands. “Not not early either, eh, mate? Well. We’ve got another box load of weapons to smith. Since you are one of my best hands, I’ll need you more now.”
Purpled perked up. “I’m getting overtime?”
Scott’s eyes twinkled. “Ay. It’ll require each sword to have a dragon’s head on the handle, the government’s signature. I’ve seen you doodle, I know you can make it look real good. I still have some of your best drawings.”
Heat crept up to Purpled’s face as he thought of all those times he had burnt a stick carefully to ash and crept into a corner to draw on a sheet of rough paper. During off-time, when there was nothing to do, he would sketch little trinkets of future ideas that would never be used, or bring to life the fairytales Tribe Six would often recite to the small children as they grew up. “I wondered where those went,” he said, lowering his eyes to the floor. “I thought they got burnt up.”
“No, but I did send word to the government to take a look at some of them. They weren’t a big fan, of course, but they did say the design for your water fountain was good, with a few minor flaws. And yet they didn’t give that drawing back, just the others.”
The heat deepened, to where Purpled felt like he looked like a tomato. Coming from the government, a ‘good’ drawing by their standards was like getting free cash; it happened very rarely. “T-thanks,” he said bashfully, feeling his hair prickle his forehead. With one sweep of his hand, he tucked it further up his head, wondering what the flaws were in order to improve upon it, though he wasn’t getting the paper back.
“Anyway, we’ve got work sliced out for ourselves. Best to get to it.”
Giving a final nod to Scotts, Purpled waved a Server over and walked through the hard, stone floor, littered with piles of skittering sand to a larger room. Dozens of ovens boiled with fire already, melting the metal ores that would be worked on for today, and the heat grew more searing. It always amused him how different the temperature was here, where the heat seemed to burn off skin, rather than outside, where it would freeze blood.
“Are you nervous?” the Server asked, following in Purpled’s footsteps.
He turned towards the black-haired man, smiling. “No, I’m not, Wali. If anything, I need this. Metalworking doesn’t make a lot, and my shoes tell it.”
“Well, it is a lot of responsibility, making one hundred swords with their handles.”
“I’m making both by myself?” Walking into a smaller room where all the finer machinery lay, Purpled grabbed an apron by the door, blew off some of the metal flakes from the leather, and set the heavy weight around his neck. Without needing to be asked, Wali stepped forward and tied the thick string behind.
“I thought so,” he said, moving away after he finished.
Purpled just shrugged, feeling the leather apron hugging him tightly. Drops of sweat already meandered down his chest. “That’s fine. It just means more work. Start the fire, will you? And where are the instructions for the swords?”
Quickly obeying, Wali tossed coal pieces into the furnace, where blocks of metal ore already waited to be purified and melted. “There are no instructions. The government asked for us to make them how we please, only well-done, and with their signature on the handle. That’s why Scotts putting you in charge.”
His eyebrows arched up. “Really? He didn’t say it in so many words.”
Opening one of the many blackened metal drawers stuffed into the cabinets, Wali took out a match and struck it against a coal block, igniting the small flame, and tossed it into the whole batch. “Here’s the letter, then,” he said, digging into his pocket and taking out a wrinkled piece of paper.
Purpled took it and scanned the contents, wiping his forehead. “Huh. It doesn’t say much. How can you be sure Scotts wants me to run the entire operation?”
“He talked about your drawings, didn’t he?” Wali pointed out, blowing on the fire to ignite it further. “Why else would he randomly talk about it?”
Pausing, he shook his head a moment later. “I think you’re just dreaming.”
“Dreaming about what?”
A bolt of anxiety and excitement shot through his heart. Purpled whirled around, coming face to face with none other than Feinberg, one of the best Warriors around. And even though it was half past six in the morning, the Warrior’s chestplate, gloves, and knee pads flashed in the glow of the fires, with the second tribe’s signature, a shield, imprinted on every piece. Conscious that he looked like a sweaty dog, Purpled attempted to make his blundering fingers do their job to fix his hair as he stared at the Warrior, a familiar feeling playing with his heart. “Feinberg,” he greeted quickly, internally cursing himself for a thousand different reasons, and he ground his foot into the rock.
“Hey,” he replied smoothly back, a small smile set on his lips. His brown eyes were lit up like he saw something funny that nobody else did. “Anyway, what were you guys dreaming about?”
“I-I wasn’t,” he said, glad that his face was already red from the heat, so his excitement wouldn’t blush up his face worse. “Wali here was just saying that I was in charge of this entire shipment.”
“Are you Purpled, then?” he asked, and he felt his heart flutter up that Feinberg, the Feinberg, would know his name, a simple Metalworker.
He nodded.
As if satisfied, Fein ducked his head down as he leaned against the doorway. “Well, then, yes. You are going to be leading this shipment. From how thick the blades get to be, to how the hilt gets to be designed.”
Purpled stood there in perfect amazement, staring at the Warrior, then at the furnace, then at the letter in his hand. Thoughts bubbled up to his head, with so many questions and ideas on how to do it. Already, he was beginning to sketch an idea in his head. A thin blade, but not too thin that it wobbles around. That way, it could be sharper, and cut through things easier. And he would have to either make the hilt smaller to combat the weight, or make it out of a lighter material.
And to think, a couple of years ago he would have despised getting this position.
“Why?” he suddenly asked, snapping out of his happy thoughts with that jarring realization.
“Hmm?” Feinberg asked, frowning slightly.
“Why am I put in this position?” Behind him, Purpled could feel the heat of the furnace getting hotter, and feel more sweat dripping down his body. He would need to eat more fish or something to get his salt back up for overtime.
Glancing around, Feinberg looked back, his head tilted. “You are the most creative around here, right? I’ve heard that some of your drawings were kept by the government, and they wanted to see what you would do, I guess. Or, that’s what they told me to say.”
Flushing deeper, Purpled turned to the furnace, which was blowing with tongues of flames, and he took a heavy breath. “All right. I’ll do it, then. Wali, is anybody else going to be helping?”
“I think so. Really, if you’d like somebody particularly to help, you can call them, I think,” he answered, wiping his brow from the sweat that dripped down.
“Okay.” Taking another breath to still his beating heart, Purpled glanced over at the metal ores and sized them up for the idea he was brewing. With the hunks he had now, he could make a few sword blades. And did he want to make the same metal for the handle? “Wali, go check what metal we have in store please, and tell me how much for each of them.”
“Got it,” his friend said, and rapidly set off on his new mission.
Left alone and yet all too aware of the Warrior lounging on the door, Purpled decided to busy himself and rumbled through the drawers for a piece of paper. Finding a dry, wrinkled, but plain one, he pulled it out, and settled down on a chair with his back away from the intruder. Swiping a finger into the ash bucket nearby, he began drawing a few quick strokes, feeling the ashy grime under his fingertips clinging to the paper.
A thin blade with a medium-sized length and height came first. Then the rain guard draped lightly over the dragon wing shaped crossguard. The grip would be the dragon’s head, its mouth open at the tip to roll out its forked tongue around a gold pommel. Purpled smiled at his work, pleased with how his sketch came out. He had similar ideas in the past, none of them for the Government, but it would work.
Excitement grew inside him at the thought of testing the swords out in the training arena. He could already see him holding the grip tightly, swooshing it around with his practiced ease. It would be lighter than the usual swords they wielded, and would hopefully cut through the wind faster and sharper.
“Woah, I love that idea.”
Flinching, Purpled glanced up at the Warrior who had moved from his post and now stood above him, looking down. “Um. Thanks.” He sat there for a moment longer, wondering how he hadn’t heard the Warrior’s loud footfalls from his metal boots, before standing abruptly up. “Well, I should get to work,” he gritted out, before rushing from the room to go find Wali.
On the way to the store room, his free hand clenched and unclenched itself. Nodding to a few of his other co-workers already working at other machines in the bigger room, heat crept up on everything, making it harder to breathe. But, Purpled had been doing this type of job for years now, and was already used to it, as much as he despised it.
Why was Feinberg here? Didn’t he have anything else to do than to sit around, watching? Purpled’s hand clenched shut again, and, ironically, he knew he was green with envy. Greened would have been a better name for him at this point. He suffocated in his longing to be a tribe two, to wear the armor Feinberg did rather than make it, and to go to school and practice throwing swords around, rather than sneaking through the night to play with them and pretend he was one of them.
Why did he have to be a simple Metalworker at tribe eight, right smack dab in the middle of the social ladder? Sure, it meant that he had a higher ranking than half of the others, but in retrospect, it did nothing at all. Not when the majority of the classes were in the Working Class, stuck like him.
Shaking his head, he decided to just focus on the swords. If he pleased the government, he could get a higher pay than normal, something that has happened before. And maybe that would mean his sociality could climb up, at the very least to a tribe seven.
Pushing against the grimy doors to the Harvertery, he inhaled the burst of cool, fresh air that rushed out to greet him. Around him, as far as the eye could see, were cabinets lined in rows, stuffed full of boxes containing different types of metals. Some of them were overflowing, while others had spiderwebs growing on them. The doors shut tightly behind him.
“Oh, I was just coming back. Did I take too long?” Wali asked, peeking his head around a cabinet.
“Not at all, I just wanted a breath of air,” Purpled lied, lifting his nose up to complete the act.
His friend grinned. “Is the work getting to you already? Normally, you’re never here this early.”
“Just blunt it,” he snapped, being sharper than he meant to. Understanding flashed in Wali’s brown eyes as he glanced back at the swinging doors leading the main room.
“Jealous, much?”
He scowled, kicking at the floor and watching with a grim sort of angry satisfaction as metal dust floated up only to be dragged back down. “I said to blunt it.”
“Fine, fine,” he said, shifting closer with another paper in his shivering hands. “It’s really cold here, today.”
“It’s winter, rust-bucket,” he answered with a thin smile. Feeling the sweat on his body freeze up, he sighed. “Hand me the paper?”
Wali complied. “High-Carbon steel might have to be it for the blade. We’re almost out of Damascus and Stainless steel.”
“Then that’s fine. It’s a good material that lasts, so why fix something that doesn’t need fixing?” he said, glancing over the materials and numbers of them, the drawing of his sword peeking out from behind. “Although, maybe we can do stainless steel for the grip, and I’ll play around with a metal type for the crossguard.”
“Gotcha.”
Running numbers and weights in his head, Purpled turned around and exited the Harvestery, hearing the footsteps of Wali right behind him. He dragged his feet purposefully, walking only slightly faster in front of the heaters where the flames burnt hotter, hoping that by the time he made it back to the smaller metalworking room, the Warrior would be gone.
He tasted nothing but a bitter disappointment when the brown eyed, brown haired Warrior still lingered, watching him carefully. “You left suddenly,” he said airily. The type of airy comment that actually held a lot of weight behind each word spoken. Well, the Warrior could wonder his head off. Maybe Purpled could steal his armor if that happened.
Suppressing a smile at the thought, he replied with a shrug, “I needed a breath of air. It gets hot here.”
“Oh. Actually, a breath of some cold air would have been nice,” he said, blinking. “I’ve been sweating buckets here, and I’ve been born in and lived in a desert for most of my life.”
“Wali, if you would show him the way,” he muttered, walking past. “While you’re there again, get me some extra steel ready for when I’ll need some. How long are you going to be staying here, Feinberg?”
“Please, just Fein would be appreciated,” the Warrior said with a smile. Purpled watched him, but his face felt like a block, even as his heart thumped that a Warrior was trying to be friendly with him.
What right did a Warrior have to try and befriend a Metalworker anyway?
“Well, Feinberg, how long will you be staying?” he asked, watching as the Warrior shifted and frowned.
“Until the shipment is done. They want me to stay and test the swords out, and to see if you can actually do your job,” he answered back, his words biting.
Purpled lowered his gaze. He was acting rash. He couldn’t win a fight against a Warrior, no matter how badly he wanted to start one. “All right, Fein. I’ll see you around.”
Turning around without looking at the Warrior, he heard Wali nervously clear his throat and offer to take them outside.
“Are all Metalworkers grumpy like that?” Fein asked, his voice trailing off as they walked out of the room, and Purpled balled his hands, barely aware that he was wrinkling both papers more.
“I’ll show him,” he muttered through gritted teeth.
Opening his hands, he smoothed the papers against the wall, smearing the charcoal lines a tad. With the flames already on, it would be some time for the metal to melt completely, so he could work on the rough molds for molding later.
Making the hold and the blade into one would help make sure the blade doesn’t fly off later during a battle, and those can be more simple. Later, Purpled could weld the dragon onto it, complete with wings, and he could add the rain guard on top to finish the whole thing. It wouldn’t take too much time, he realized. Maybe a little more than a regular sword that was already planned out, but everything was simple enough.
Setting the papers down, he took a breath and massaged his head. Today was such a funny day already, with seeing a double of himself—he paused. Right. He had seen that, hadn’t he? But now he was beginning to doubt himself. It had been dark, so how could he have been sure that he literally saw himself? For all he knew, it could have been another worker already up, or some animal.
Yet it hadn’t looked like either . . .
“Stop going crazy,” he sighed to himself, looking around the room for some clay. For a hundred swords, they might go through a bit of clay for the molds, but since it was a new order, he couldn’t just make the molds out of stone mixed in with metal.
By the time Wali came back with the renowned Warrior, Purpled was already busy carving a dragon’s head out in the squared mold he got from the drawers, trying to picture it clearly and cleanly in his head.
“How long will it take to make the swords?” Fein asked, thumping closer to take a look at what he was doing.
“Depends. Generally, it takes longer than people can control their horses.”
The Warrior snorted in surprise before laughing, and Purpled felt a small smile growing on himself. “Good to know. My horses are trained really well, though.”
“Then it should feel like a week and a half instead of twelve years.”
Chuckling, the Warrior backed off. “All right, then. Is it okay if I stand here and watch? I’ve only ever handled swords, but I don’t know how they are made.”
Purpled shrugged and finally looked up from his work, stalling his hands. “Sure. Just please don’t interrupt anything.”
Raising his hands, he backed off. “Sure, sure.”
Pushing his hair up out of his eyes again, he set back to work, still feeling the lingering envy throbbing through his bloodstream. But, he couldn’t do anything about his situation that he was born to be stuck in. Yet, as he drew the dragon’s head, he couldn’t help but realize that he was making these swords more for himself than for the government.
This was a chance he may never get again. So why not make the most of it?