New Artifacts

"Just kill him. I don't want to see you." Alba said as she directed one of the few village men who had come in after them.

He picked up an arrow and began to draw it back when Tatio yelled, "wait, I can show you where these passages are and how these artifacts work! I've used most of them at least once and the tunnels are confusing, I can help!"

His lips weren't red on Page's head so she dragged him around and said, "tell me how these work. And don't lie." she stared hard into his eyes, "we will know."

He pointed to a large, two-handed, double-edged sword with a rope at the hilt and a yellow gem where the blade met the hilt, "This is one of the best swords here, it's embedded with a magical stone with an electricity circle carved within it, one of the most complex circles I've ever seen. The blade made purely from steel, one of the best conductors of electricity. And because of the skin effect, all of it is on the outside, increasing its electrical power than if it was other metals. One drawback is the sword rusts quickly, we don't expect it to last long."

Gror looked at it with longing and sparkling eyes. Leardio noticed and said, "mom, would you mind if Gror takes it? I think he can make the best use out of it, if the rust comes up he can easily turn it back to steel."

"You're right, that makes the most sense. Take it, child."

Tatio looked pained as he watched Gror pull it off the wall. He had hoped the weight would make Gror not want to take it, but he swung it around and happily tucked it in a sword sheath he had. Zeeth didn't notice it until Gror took the sword since he was sitting down, but Gror was really short. The sword was almost the entire length of Gror and the hilt easily went over his head while the blade was near his ankles.

Gror took a step back from the wall to examine his new sword and stood next to Zeeth, who had his finger and leg bandaged and healed by Alba. he didn't know why, but he was still bleeding despite being a robot. Maybe he wasn't a robot at those parts, but it was unlikely.

"Gror, how come you have a sword sheath on you without a sword?"

"Dwarves like to make and study weapons or anything that can be made so it's common to bring a sword sheath around with us on long journeys in case we get a cool sword we want to keep. This one can stretch in and out to encompass nearly any sword size and length." Gror stretched out the brown, leathery sheath on his back.

Zeeth also pulled on the sheath after Gror pushed it closer to him to test it out himself, "That's cool, it feels hard yet flexible."

"It's part dragon skin and part Kiluart eggshell."

Fascinated by these new tools and their strange customs, Zeeth asked, "What else is there? what else do you guys have?"

Gror, Glad to talk about his homeland that he missed so dearly, said, "Apparently, we have stronger arm muscles than most other races because of our tendency to made things and handle hot tough metals, although I haven't really experienced this much yet, at least not much compared to my parents and other relatives. But my tribe has been facing some trouble so they sent out a bunch of Scouters to look for places to live. I came to this volcano and it looked perfect, but then I found out others already established a town here. I decided to stay for a bit to see if I could convince them to have us live next door, this place is just too good. And then this all happened. I'm terribly sorry if I caused any trouble for you," he looked at the floor then quickly at Zeeth and waved his hands, saying, "Oh, sorry for rambling. "

"No, it's fine, I enjoy listening to new things about others. I think they would allow you guys to live here. There's a great palace of a cave right over there filled with Lumos gems, greystones, and explosive black gems."

"Really?! We dig a lot, we use all of those a ton!"

"Great, the place is huge and the person who was trying to control you owns it. You can dig it all up if you want. Although you need to be careful of some of the things there, he has a tough defense system."

"That sounds great. We can get back at him, we have numerous great fighters, if we combine all our powers with some more artifacts like these," he held up the sword, "we can probably beat him."

"Sounds good, you should tell Alba. she would probably invite you to do that."

As they spoke Tatio kept listing off things, Page had his screen jotting down what he said and a picture of the item next to it. Page had taken a few down for the others. Alba held a long glass cane with a large ball on it and a new purple hairpin.

Leardio had a pair of gloves, a few arrows, and sleek shoes. Page had a new spear with a blue gem in it and a large white plate. A few more had been taken down and the wall was noticeably more empty.

"Zeeth, I have a few items for you. This is a bow with water properties, it shoots out strong streaks of water and it freezes the center. This is a roll of wires that can unwrap and move with a bit of mana. Anything else that you want, Alba wants you to take it. Gror, you too."

Zeeth got up and said, "Cool!"

Gror was a bit more cautious, "really? But I destroyed your village and hurt Leardio."

"Hah, you think you hurt me? I was hurt by accidentally hitting the ground too hard myself." Leardio said playfully.

"It's fine, it was someone else who was controlling you anyways. You can have all that you like, these shouldn't be wasted away here like this."

"Yeah, good point. What does that pickaxe there do?"

"It's a transforming pickaxe that can grow larger and pumps the sharp parts out to strike harder when needed." Page read off his screen.

"Can I try it out?"

"Sure." Leardio climbed up the wall and pulled it down. Gror swung it around and tested it's transforming, opening and closing many of its compartments. The handle could grow longer, the pickaxe head could burst out and back in. one side could open like a bird's beak and clamp down to crush ores and the other end could detach to make it more lightweight.

Zeeth took a chest plate that powered itself by absorbing light and blasting it at anyone that hit it. The stronger the hit the stronger the blast.

Alba took the things that she thought would benefit the other villagers and the entire village. She got a little box that pulls up rocks and creates tall walls according to how you want them. She needed to rebuild the town. There was also a shovel that could dig up dirt and a bow and arrow pair that would help dig and repair the town. The rest was left for the other villagers to take.

A few days had gone by, Alba decided to have all the villagers who weren't a part of Tatio's little gang choose one weapon from the wall, nothing too strong or anything since those would be used for emergencies and special cases, they couldn't have those suddenly go missing. The ruling she gave for all the people who were part of Tatio's club was to go work on rebuilding the village with no new tools, excluding Leia. she had only known about it a few days but she still received a punishment, to motivate everyone to work and keep track of all the new weapons they got.

As she worked, she made a breakthrough in her talent. She could also make the people she came in contact with feel sleepy, which makes them fully rejuvenated after the rest.

Tatio's punishment was to tell them everything he knew about the secrets of the village that they might not have known and serve as the first sacrifice if anything were to happen to the village, the exact thing he was trying to safeguard himself from this whole time.

Page alerted Zeeth that it was time to head off, they had gained exactly what they needed. Zeeths constant closeness to Mag and getting so close to the volcano had risen both of their heat resistance levels above what he was even hoping for in a much shorter time. He wanted to leave for another place called Melanis, a town to learn dark magic and defenses against it, but Zeeth wanted to head straight to Gror's village to check them out. All this talk about dwarves had piqued his interest greatly and he wanted to learn blacksmithing and making things too.

"But Melanis has magicians full of knowledge on curses and how to create potions that can do things from changing your voice to melting metals. They are really interesting too, and you can gain a defense against dark magic from being there. Gror village can only teach you metalwork and building things, this can strengthen you as a person."

Gror heard him and replied, "Hey, our village doesn't just do that! We have tons of other things, like… like… umm. We Dwarves aren't great at magic, but we can use transformation magic really well! It's temporary on living creatures, but it's usually permanent on non-living matter."