Melnir Bouldermark

A week has passed since the incident that made them have to leave Xam in such a hurry. While walking through the crowded streets of Kram she wasn't concentrating on her surroundings as all she could think about is, 'What if they know who I am.' Ten minutes pass before Katrina is in front of the Dirty Mind Inn, she walks in and sees Raymonde sitting at the table where she first had found him, she walks over and takes a seat.

Raymonde notices Katrina sitting next to him as he says with an excited tone, "Morning Katrina."

"Hey, Raymonde." She replies indifferently.

"What's the matter?" He asks and when she doesn't reply he moves closer to her and takes her hand in his, "Whatever it is, you can tell me." As Raymonde's voice stopped Katrina looked over at him with tears in her eyes as she began to cry.

----

Back aboard the Lords' Beauty, Llorva is loading supplies for the journey ahead. While loading the first lot of the endless boxes onto the boat a flash of light catches her attention as she sets down the box she was carrying and walks towards the piece of metal that is on the deck.

She picks the metal up and looks at it briefly before laying it aside and continues to load the boat with supplies. After an hour of constant picking up and placing down of boxes, Llorva had finally finished with packing. She grabs the piece of metal she had found earlier and heads towards the palace.

Twenty minutes pass before Llorva had reached the palace and tracked down the man she was looking for, she walks up to a large door at the end of one of the many corridors of the palace, she knocks.

"I'll be right with you." A muffled voice says through the door, a few broken pieces of glasses later the door finally opens to reveal a greased up Melnir, "Oh, it is just you." He says as a rush of relief is washed over him.

"Were you by chance expecting someone else?" Llorva asks sounding intrigued.

"No, no." He states as his face turns beet red, "Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure?" The door opens further to allow Llorva in.

"Right," Llorva replies as she walks into the room, she reaches into a pouch on her belt and pulls out the piece of metal, "by any chance would you know what this is?" She places the metal on the first free desk she could find.

"You've got yourself some rare metal here Llorva," he says while examining it, as he takes a closer look, he grabs one of his smithing tools and begins to chip away at it, "oh, this... this is."

"What is it?" She asks abruptly.

"It's Dwarven metal, but not the regular kind. How did you acquire this fine piece?" He says as the excitement begins to glare in his eyes.

"It was on my father's boat, in that exact condition you see before yourself." She gestures towards the piece of metal.

"Oh," he pauses, "you know it is not easy to melt this type of metal. It takes heat near the temperature of the suns to melt this, and to melt it in this way is incredible," still examining the piece, "I need to meet whoever did this."

"I know exactly who did this." She says while heading for the door.

"Good I need to know who owns a forge that is hot enough to melt this." Melnir continues to tinker as Llorva leaves the room.

----

As Raymonde carries Lildoris into his room within the Dirty Mind Inn, he spots Katrina on one of the beds without her shirt on and bandages wrapped around her abdomen, he places Lildoris in one of the chairs, sits next to Katrina and begins to take the bandages off to change them.

"This doesn't look too good Katrina." He says with concern as he carefully places a hand on it, "When did you do this to yourself?"

I know, something is wrong and it happened over a week ago, on the boat." She says as the pain got too much to handle and she screams to the heavens and blue light begins to spill from every pore in her body, Raymonde stands with a concerned look on his face.

"Sorry, Raymonde." She says with sorrow while still wincing at the pain, "I need to tell you something."

"What is it?" Raymonde says, but before Katrina could answer Llorva charged through the door, she looks seemingly out of breath.

"Katrina, I need you to come with me. "Llorva states struggling with each word attempting to capture her breath.

"Why?" Raymonde responds, "Why does she need to go with you?"

"Because the sword she melted a week ago, wasn't regular metal, and…" As Llorva says this Katrina stands stumbling over her feet positioning herself against Raymonde and raises her hand to stop Llorva from speaking.

"Fine, but Raymonde also comes," she says struggling to stay on her feet, "Raymonde has to come with!"

"Fine," Llorva responds, "he can come with, but he stays well enough away from who I am taking you to and is to stay outside the room." As Llorva finished Raymonde scoops Katrina off her feet, nodded, and follows her.

They were walking for ten minutes before Raymonde understood what Llorva meant when she said, 'he stays well enough away from who I am taking you to,' he shakes his head as he didn't want to think too much about who Llorva was taking them to, as long as was Katrina is safe and sound, that is all he cared about.

Llorva knocks on a large wooden door and waits for an answer, the door shifts open, Raymonde rushes through the door and finds a couch to place Katrina upon, as Katrina is released from his grasp he turns to see a Dwarf standing at the door, the Dwarf turns to face him, it was Melnir.

"Hello there, I am..." Before he could finish his sentence, Raymonde stood and didn't think for a second before he grabbed Melnir by the throat and holds him up against a wall.

"I swore the next time I see you, you would be a dead man," he barks, "you sent me into a battle you knew we couldn't win, everyone died because of you, my friends died because of you, people's families…"

"We understand Raymonde!" Llorva yells as she pulls him away from Melnir, he drops to the ground clutching his neck.

"Raymonde. Ah yes, I remember you, you were the best military captain this land has ever seen, you never lost a battle, you always came out on top, YOU WERE THE BEST!" Melnir screams struggling to breathe, he gets back to his feet being wary of where Raymonde is positioned in the room, and heads for his smithing table. Raymonde sits next to Katrina, who has gotten worse since they got there.

"What's wrong with her?" Llorva asks.

"I do not know," Raymonde responds as Katrina's eyes shoot open and start to glow bright blue, everyone steps back as her skin start to glow bright transparent blue, she sits up.

----

As she sits up the entire room becomes illuminated with celestial blue light, Melnir glances over at his workstation and begins to see all his chemicals start to boil, he rushes to his workbench and rapidly grasps the metal Llorva had previously brought to him and places it in a cauldron and brings it towards Katrina, to his surprise the metal melted in seconds. Raymonde looks concerned as Melnir starts to bring the cauldron towards her, but he was frozen and stuck in awe as she begins to melt the metal inside the cauldron.

"Katrina?" Raymonde asks walking towards her, "Are you okay?" Before Raymonde could get any closer to her the flames encompassing her body extinguished as she falls unconscious back on the couch.

"This is interesting," Melnir whispers to himself as he pours the molten metal into a mould, "this is extremely interesting."

"What is?" Intervenes Raymonde, "What is so interesting about her igniting into flames and causing everything in this room to boil and melt? HOW IS THAT INTERESTING!?" he says screaming at him.

"It is interesting because if she didn't do that I wouldn't have been able to create this fine piece for you," he states as he brings over a newly forged hammer, "here takes it." He tosses it towards Llorva, she swiftly grabs it from the air, "It is yours. Have fun with it."

"Why? Why is it mine?" Llorva says with concern, "why does it have to be mine, she was the one who helped you forge this, so it should be hers." She says gesturing towards Katrina.

"Well, I just thought…"

"Well, you thought wrong." Raymonde says cutting him off mid-sentence, "That hammer belongs to Katrina." He stands up and strolls towards Llorva and holds his hand out for the hammer, she promptly hands it over, he stuffs the hammer in his bag and walks back over to Katrina and picks her up from the couch and leaves the room, Llorva quickly follows.