While Deorer went ahead and got started on detaching Alka’s arm at the elbow, Vin took the dwarf up on his suggestion, finally accepting that bottle of wine from Scule and downing it as quickly as he could. Despite his high levels of Resistance, he didn’t want to go through any sort of magical, medieval surgery without having something to take the edge off. Even if they did have Shia’s healing on standby.

  Deorer quickly showed them why he was so revered among the dwarves. Before Vin had even finished off the bottle of wine that he was growing more and more certain Scule had swiped from some poor Earther, the dwarf yanked off Alka’s arm with a grunt, sending a half dozen tools and shunts he’d jammed in between the arm and joint clattering to the ground.

  As Deorer held up the arm, Vin was surprised to find the limb was actually hollow. The strange, white, marble-like material was only about a half inch thick around the edges, leaving an opening running through the entire arm down to the wrist joint.

  “Halfway there,” Deorer grunted, bringing the arm over to Vin. Before he could take two steps however, he froze, frowning at the arm lying limp in his hands. “Hmph…”

  “What’s wrong?” Shia asked, eyes flicking back and forth between the frowning smith and the arm. “Did you damage it by yanking it off Alka?”

  “Hardly. Your friend’s body doesn’t work quite like I thought it did,” Deorer finally admitted, holding the arm up to the light and squinting at it. “Her body is functionally a bunch of specialized relics all connected together, so I’d assumed each would have their own smaller power source. But it looks like that’s not the case. That mana gem in her head must be powering the entire thing.”

  “Wait, I thought artifacts ran off ambient mana,” Vin pointed out, cursing his high Resistance skill that he barely felt anything even after downing an entire bottle of wine.

  “Normally they do,” Deorer nodded, shaking the arm as if that would suddenly fix the problem. “But this golem is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It looks like it was designed to funnel the ambient mana back into the gem powering it, effectively recharging it over time. Which of course means without a connection to the gem held within the main body, the arm will operate at barely a fraction of what it’s capable of. I can still put it on you, but it will feel sluggish and heavy.”

  “Well that’s a simple enough fix,” Scule shrugged, reaching into his cape and pulling out one of the shining mana gems they’d stolen from the library. “Can you like… Slap this into the arm somehow?”

  Deorer’s eyes went wide as they took in the glowing gem, and Vin thought the dwarf very well may have forgotten any of them existed as he all but ran at the petian, snatching the mana gem from his hands and staring at it like it held the secrets to the universe. “This… This is what’s powering your body?” He practically stuttered, glancing at Alka.

  “Yepp,” she nodded, tapping the back of her head. “Why are you acting all weird? I told you about the stones already.”

  “You told me you had a mana gem inside that daft head of yours,” Deorer frowned, bringing the glowing stone within an inch of his face and going cross-eyed as he examined it. “This… Frankly, I don’t even know what this is. I’m not too proud to admit this is far beyond anything I’ve ever made.”

  “That’s great and all…” Scule said, nodding his hand toward the all but forgotten arm. “…but can you shove it in the arm and power it up?”

  “Can I use it to power the arm?” Deorer blinked, before belting out a hearty laugh as though Scule had just told him the funniest joke in the world. “Aye, the arm is already designed to function off its power, so it should be doable. But it would be like using lava to warm a house. That incredibly dense concentration of mana in just one limb…” Deorer began muttering to himself, seeming lost in thought as he stared at the gem.

  Vin shot a concerned glance toward the now one armed Alka, who merely shrugged as if to say, sorry, didn’t know he was a bit crazy!

  “I’ll just need a moment,” Deorer finally said, going back to his bag and practically sticking half his body inside as he began rummaging around.

  While the dwarf did… whatever it was he was doing, Vin turned to look at Shia.

  “It is bad that I’m starting to have second thoughts about all this?”

  “I don’t blame you,” Shia frowned, watching the dwarf chuck tool after tool out of his bag, not seeming to care in the slightest what they hit or if they were damaged. Granted, seeing as nearly all of them appeared to be made from darthsteel, Vin supposed it was actually the house they were in that was getting chipped and banged up rather than the tools.

  “We’ve done some stupid stuff before now, but are we really going to let this guy do magic surgery on Vin?” Scule asked, reaching into his cape and handing Vin a second bottle of wine, this one also clearly from Earth based on the label. “I know I don’t know magic like you two, but this all just seems a bit dangerous if you ask me.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Worst case scenario, Vin’s boon should kick in and save him if the arm explodes or anything like that,” Shia pointed out.

  “We’ve come this far, might as well give me a sick golem arm,” Vin smiled, doing his best to hide his growing nervousness as he cracked open the second bottle and started drinking. After downing half the bottle in one breath, he gasped, eyeing the petian’s cape with suspicion. “Scule, how many of these do you even have?”

  “Enough,” Scule shrugged, slowly reaching over his shoulder. “Why, you need another?”

  “I’m good,” Vin chuckled, finally beginning to feel pleasantly buzzed as he finished off the second bottle. “I’m just growing more and more curious who you actually took these from.”

  “Let’s just call it reparations for insulting my people,” Scule said ominously, scratching Reginald’s head and earning a happy squeak from the rat.

  “Hey Deorer,” Vin called out, feeling strangely confident with so much liquid courage flowing within his veins. “How’re you even going to attach this thing to my arm if it’s indestructible? Don’t you need to cut it, or something?”

  “We smiths have a different definition of indestructible than you do, I reckon,” Deorer grunted, pulling out a small vial of orange liquid and carefully pouring it over the arm. To Vin’s surprise, wherever the liquid touched, the thin layer of darthsteel he’d covered it while it was still on Alka's body melted right off, as if it were made of paper. “For you, indestructible most likely means impervious to harm. For us smiths of the Crater, it means impervious to harm, with one exception.”

  “Adamantine,” he said softly, pulling out a tiny darthsteel scalpel with a rusty red blade attached. The dull, reddish head of the scalpel was barely an inch long, and didn’t look nearly as impressive as the darthsteel handle it was attached to. But Deorer held the scalpel like he was holding an infant, gingerly holding it up to the light and admiring it like he had the mana gem.

  “Nothing, is stronger than adamantine,” he said reverently. “Over the many centuries of mining deep into the depths of the Crater, we’ve barely encountered enough of the material for more than a handful of small tools, let alone entire weapons. But even this much is enough for my purposes. I could cut through a ten-ton block of darthsteel with this blade without so much as dulling it. Hell, I have a magical pocket enchanted within my bag just to hold the damn thing.”

  “You really think that dinky little knife will be able to cut into the arm?” Alka asked, cocking her head as her eyes narrowed in disbelief. “I waded through lava without getting so much as a smudge.”

  “Watch and see,” Deorer chuckled. Wiping the excess orange liquid off the arm, Deorer sat at the metal table and got to work. Gingerly, he leaned forward and placed the adamantine scalpel against the interior of the arm.

  And began carving like the mysterious white alloy was made of butter.

  Despite her lack of lungs, Vin heard Alka gasp quite clearly as her eyes flared in shock, and he didn’t blame her. Up until now, nothing had managed to leave so much as a scratch on any of the golems. Not Drintus’ giant battle axe, not his own empowered Stone Shot, and, like Alka had pointed out, not even a hot lava bath had done anything.

  Even though he was working with a tool that would no doubt cut his fingers clean off with even the slightest touch, Deorer worked with such speed and grace that Vin found himself completely enamored by the dwarf’s display of skill. He didn’t know if it was the wine coursing through his veins or if that was just how good the dwarf really was, but it felt like in no time at all Deorer had secured the gem to the interior of the arm, nodding as the arm seemed to glow with bright blue light for a brief moment.

  “That solves the issue of power,” Deorer grunted, carefully examining his handiwork. “…and then some. Frankly, I’m not sure what this is going to do. Like I said, the arm was designed to function off only a fraction of the gem’s power. Attaching the entire thing to it…” Shrugging, the dwarf scooped it off the table, bringing it over to Vin and giving him a painful looking grin that tugged on the dwarf’s scarred flesh. “…I guess we’ll find out for ourselves shortly.”

  “I’m starting to have some second thoughts about all this,” Shia admitted, clutching her staff and eyeing up the red scalpel in the dwarf’s other hand. “What exactly are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to remove what’s left of his arm up to the elbow,” Deorer said, using the scalpel to point at the few inches of forearm Vin still had past his elbow. “Then, I’ll use a combination of darthsteel and the slivers of the white alloy I carved out in order to insert the gem to attach the arm to him. That’s when he’ll have to start channeling his mana through the arm in order to bind it to him. You’ll be healing him throughout this entire process to ensure he doesn’t die of blood loss and that the arm takes. So long as he can stay conscious through the pain, there shouldn’t be any problems.”

  “I’ll be honest, this doesn’t sound quite as magical as I was expecting,” Vin slurred, sobering up a bit and going pale as he heard exactly what was about to happen to him. “And you’re sure you can’t knock me out?”

  “Definitely not,” Deorer grunted, glaring at him like he’d just suggested the dwarf snap his favorite tool in half. “If you don’t form a bond with the arm while it’s being attached, you’ll permanently limit your capability with it. As a master smith, I’ll be damned if I let you willingly damage anything I’m a part of creating.”

  “Alright,” Vin said, taking a deep breath and steeling himself. “If that’s the case, Shia, you might want to get some of your rancidweed ready. In the event I black out from the pain, it’ll be the fastest way to wake me up.”

  “Don’t worry Vin, I’ll be right beside you the entire time,” Shia said, offering him an encouraging smile. Vin was so nervous about the dwarf’s operation that for the first time since he’d met her, the elf’s jagged grin looked positively harmless.

  “That’s good, because I sure as hell won’t be,” Scule said, shaking his head. “As soon as scarface gets started, I’m out of here. I don’t need any more nightmares than I already have.”

  Even Reginald offered up an apologetic squeak, sitting back on his hind legs and covering his eyes with his paws to indicate he didn’t want to witness any of that either.

  “It’s alright guys, I don’t blame you,” Vin chuckled. “Alka, what about you?”

  “I don’t think I even can feel queasy at this point, so I’ll be here,” she reassured him.

  “Thank you. That actually makes me feel a little bit better,” Vin admitted, giving the golem a warm smile. Finally prepared, he turned to Deorer, nodding at the master smith turned surgeon.

  “Well then… Let’s get started.”

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