Hallowed Ends

By Travis Hill

Hallows' End is our three-day celebration at the end of the harvest season, where we eat, drink, and give praise for all that we have. It is also when my father, Tarver Irondale, Master Blacksmith of Uric, performs his annual Hallowed Forging. It is a ritual carried out since The Fall over a thousand years ago, when the dark sorcerers ruled the continent.

Most Hallowed Forgings are mundane affairs, though the weapon my father creates on these special nights are anything but ordinary. A "Hallowed Weapon" has not been forged in more than three centuries, but each year, he performs the ritual and ends up with what he calls a "Harvest" weapon. Harvest weapons are priceless works of art, yet they are unbreakable, never need sharpening, and will never rust or corrode. No one remembers what a true Hallowed weapon is, though everyone remembers the upheaval that such a forging precedes.

I, and the rest of the crowd gathered in Torren's central square, believed tonight would be no different. How wrong we were...

"Hallowed Ends" is the introduction story of a new epic fantasy series by Travis Hill.

18,900 words / 60 pages

• Language: English
• Publisher: Travis Hill
• Release date: Feb 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524294960

Travis Hill

I'm an author in the Pacific Northwest. I live with my five completely worthless but awesome cats. I write stories I want to read that no one else is writing. My mailing list: https://www.angrygames.com Writes: Science Fiction / Fantasy / Horror / Adult Fiction / Drama / Humor

Book preview

HALLOWED ENDS

By Travis Hill

Copyright 2014

Cover art by: Rebecca Weaver

www.rebeccaweaver.com

ONE

The sun has finally begun its journey below the western mountains, signaling the upcoming end of our Hallows’ End celebration. But not before the forging. The Hallowed Forging is the last ritual of our yearly festival, three days and nights thanking and praising the various deities and spirits. Or even the very essence of life itself, that spark which runs through all of us (and stronger in some of us). It is mostly a time of excessive eating, drinking, and dancing, though my father told me once that such activities were simply another way of thanking and praising.

I watch my father calmly walk to and fro, making last-minute adjustments and placements of his tools. He talks, even smiles and jokes with various citizens who stop for a moment to say hello, say thanks, or more likely, to invite him to their tables the instant the forging is over so they can have the honor (and bragging rights) of being the first to serve a cold ale to the Master Blacksmith of Uric. I smile and nod my head to no one, having seen the ritual, both the forging and the jockeying for my father’s favor, for thirty of my forty years. I cannot remember the first three years of my life, and the other seven I served in the provincial army. I have no doubt those missed years played out no different than the rest.

The ceremonial forge begins to exhaust heat, causing the citizens milling around the area to unconsciously take a few steps back. The Hallowed Forge is my father’s life work. It is not as large, nor as complex as the main forge at his shop in the warehouse district two blocks to the west, but that is a bonus. That shop forge produces a vast number of metal objects, which means my father and his workers, including my son Davon, must keep an uncountable number of different tools, molds, and other essentials close at hand. The Hallowed Forge has only one purpose: the creation of weapons.

***

Forty-six years ago, Tarver Irondale of Calbrea, High Cliff Province, was named Master Blacksmith of Uric by Emperor Almurra. With that title, my father could choose any location within the realm to build a brand new forge. Money was no object, as such Masters of the Realm were far too valuable to restrict with a budget. My father—like almost every other master before him—procured the best materials, the most skilled laborers, and the finest artisans. It was expected of his position, but beyond that, he was neither greedy nor foolish with money.

From the earliest days of the nation of Uric, the emperors knew the money would be reclaimed tenfold, sometimes a hundredfold, from the masters over time. Be it from taxes from the sales of thousands of supremely crafted items per year, or profits from export sales to the nations across the three oceans, or from the spoils of war won on the backs of the emperor’s best soldiers. Soldiers who, of course, were fitted from head to toe in weapons and armor far superior and more deadly than what the realm’s ordinary blacksmiths could possibly hope to produce. The masters always kept the empire’s vaults full and its ledgers in the black.

As Master Blacksmith of Uric, Tarver Irondale chose Torren, the capital of the northeastern state of High Cliff, as his forge’s home. He married Sonora Pintera, the daughter of a Sundeenan ambassador to High Cliff. My mother, already lonely and homesick—Sundeen is a nation across the southern ocean near the middle of the world—only agreed to marry my father if he chose Torren to settle down, which would keep her close to her mother and father. Their marriage, the very meaning of love and affection until my mother passed on three years ago, was a boon to both nations because of voxite, a rare, powdery orange substance found only in the Dragon’s Maw region of Sundeen and in the ancient dwarven mines of the Dread Mountains. No one had successfully journeyed (or returned, were they foolish enough to try) to the states of Loric, Baric, or Meric in the millennia after The Fall. The Dread Mountains barred entry from the south through Uric, while the coastlines were impassable for any number of reasons, all of them supposedly terrifying thanks to the sorcery unleashed during The Fall.

A block of unrefined voxite was worth a small army. Ten ingots of refined voxite was worth a medium-sized nation. A single gram of refined voxite could make a thousand swords twenty times as strong and durable as the finest steel sword, at a quarter of the weight. The supply of voxite from Sundeen and the supply of Master-forged weapons in return from Uric had strengthened both nations militarily at a radical pace, and grew both into economic powerhouses. My father kept an ingot of voxite within the warded vaults of the holy clerics’ monastery to be brought out each year just in case.

***

Minister Rockledge rings the bell, and the crowds begin to solidify around the outdoor forge. They will spend the next ten minutes milling about, grabbing another mug of festivity, and talking to each other about what kind of weapon the Master Blacksmith will produce this year. No one suggests that this might be the year they get to witness a true Hallowed Forging.

My emotions are torn between anger at these people who suspect my father might in fact be incapable of creating a true Hallowed weapon, and sadness that in his forty-six years as Master Blacksmith, his best was never good enough. Of course, even his failures are treasures. The weapons created on these nights are what my father calls Harvest weapons. They are the most valuable arms money can buy, though anyone daring to sell such a fine piece of warcraft would be immediately labeled a thief or a destitute noble. I have never heard of a single Harvest item sold within my lifetime.

Every year after the forging is complete, my father presents the weapon to its new owner. He alone chooses who receives this gift. Not even the emperor has that authority. Sometimes he chooses a person completely at random. Whenever it happens in my presence, I always ask him immediately after why he chose who he did. Each time, he looks at me as if I were suffering maladies of the mind, and explains that the weapon chooses its owner, not him. When I once asked if there was a power, an entity within these weapons even though they were not true Hallowed items, his face became dark. He told me if he truly channeled the essence of other realms into a failed forging, he was frightened of what a real Hallowed Forging would take from him.

Every so often, my father will present a Harvest weapon to its new owner at the request of Emperor Almurra. These gifts are often given to solidify treaties, agreements, or other official Empire functions. He does not seem to mind fulfilling these requests, as it is a rare event. More importantly, my father is a worldly man. Though he grew up in a small village in what was then a backwater region of Uric, he traveled the world as an officer in the Imperial Navy. His experiences gave him a unique insight as to what Emperor Almurra’s administrators face when dealing with the nations across the oceans. At times, they have been invaluable in helping to secure commitments between multiple parties.

I received my own Harvest Blade on