Chapter 445: The Blacksmith’s Path To A Knight

"Wait, hold on a second."

Luca’s voice interrupted her spiraling thoughts. He was looking around at all the gadgets with a new realization.

"I just noticed something." He turned to face her. "All of these inventions—they’re for combat. Defense, attack, battlefield tactics, escape, concealment. Every single one is designed for war or dangerous situations."

He gestured broadly.

"None of them are everyday gadgets. Nothing for making life easier."

He looked at her with curiosity.

"That’s strange. With your intellect, you could have created countless everyday objects that would improve everyone’s lives. But you focused everything on combat. Why?"

Mavis was quiet for a moment.

"I do have a few everyday devices." She admitted. "The thing over there polishes my hooves. That one toasts my bread extra crispy—just the way I like it."

She smiled briefly at the thought.

"But you’re right. Most of them are for war."

She paused.

"And that’s because...I made them for myself."

Luca frowned. "What do you mean?"

Mavis gestured to a mattress nearby, and they both sat down.

"You see, Dummy Hero." She began, her gaze fixed on a point on the floor. "I didn’t become the village blacksmith because I woke up one day and thought, ’I simply must spend the rest of my life repairing these muscle-heads’ dents.’"

She let out a humorless chuckle. "I became a blacksmith for one reason, and one reason only."

She looked up, meeting his eyes.

"So I could build weapons and gadgets for myself and then join the Galloping Brigade."

She said it plainly, and then, when he didn’t interrupt, she went on slowly, the way things do when you’ve been carrying them for years.

"You know how the Galloping Brigade works, don’t you? They’re the best of the village. Tallest, strongest, fastest, the ones who can run all day without stopping and carry a sword the size of a person. That’s what it takes to guard Lady Poppy."

"And then there’s me..."

She gestured at her small pony frame, the short legs, the compact little body.

"No matter how many drills I run, no matter how many sword forms I practice until my arms give out, no matter how many hours I spend on the training ground—I will never, ever be that."

"I was born like this. I’ll die like this. There’s no amount of work that changes it."

Luca leaned forward. "Is it—forgive me for asking—is it a condition? Something wrong?"

"No." She shook her head. "Nothing wrong. It just happens. Every generation or so, a centaur is born small—a runt, essentially. Sometimes they say it’s because there’s donkey blood somewhere far back. Sometimes they say we’re blessed."

She laughed without humor. "Nobody actually knows. But it doesn’t shorten my life or make me sick. I’m just...small. Permanently. That’s all."

She looked up at him.

"And I hated it. I hated it so much! Everyone else got a body that could do the job, and I got this, and the village’s answer was well, she can stay home and do something useful. Which is what they expected me to do."

"But I..."

She stood up again, her energy returning, but now it was fueled by a fierce, burning defiance.

"But I wouldn’t accept it! I refuse to be just the one who stays behind and sharpens the real Heroes’ swords."

"So." Luca said slowly. "You built yourself a new body."

Mavis’s eyes came up sharply.

"...Yes! That’s exactly it! I can’t make my legs longer. I can’t make my arms stronger."

"But I can make something that hits harder than I do, and fires faster than I can throw, and blinds people before they get close, and lets me run away when I need to."

"If my body won’t get me there, then I’ll build my way there instead!"

She looked around the workshop with something close to pride.

"So I started young. Very young. I built my own furnace when I was barely old enough to hold a hammer. I asked my sister to bring me books from the dwarf village on her expeditions—every trip, she’d come back with something. Metallurgy, engineering, mechanics, she didn’t care what it was as long as it made me happy."

Mavis’s mouth twisted. "She thought I was going to use it to make tools. Pretty little trinkets for the house. Something safe."

"And instead?"

"And instead I taught myself everything!"

She picked up a hammer off the table beside her, an old one, worn, obviously the first she’d ever owned and turned it over in her hands.

"Obviously I couldn’t start with the complicated things. The gadgets came later. So I started with swords, because that’s the simplest thing metal can do. Shape it, heat it, hammer it, sharpen it. And I turned out to be good at it. Better than good."

She shrugged.

"The village also noticed. They started bringing me their blades—fix this, replace that, sharpen the other. And then they started asking me to make them."

"And now I’m the blacksmith. The only blacksmith. Every sword in this village comes through this room."

"But that wasn’t the point." Luca said.

"That was never the point." She set the hammer down. "The point was always the practice. Every sword they gave me was hours of hammering, hours of shaping, hours of learning exactly how metal moves and how to make it do what I want."

"I took the title and the materials and the books, and I used all of it to build the things I actually wanted to build."

"And when you showed your sister those things?"

Mavis’s face darkened with vexation and gloom.

"Every single time she’d look at them like I’d done something wrong." She clenched her fist. "Every single time. Like I’d finish something good, something I was proud of and I’d bring it to her, and her face would just...close. She’d then tell me the same thing over and over."

"You’re not going out with that..."

"These tricks won’t work on a real battlefield..."

"Stop making these and stay at your forge..."

Luca frowned. "So she wanted you to stop being a blacksmith?"

"No." Mavis shook her head firmly. "That’s the confusing part. She’s proud of me being the blacksmith. She says I’m the reason the whole brigade can fight at all—that I’m the support in the shadows that nobody sees. She brags about me."

She threw up her hands. "It’s only when it comes to anything I could use to go out and fight that she shuts down. Anything that would put me in actual combat, she refuses. Absolutely refuses."

She looked at him with a raw, frustrated expression.

"And it’s not fair, Dummy Hero. She was born with everything—the body, the strength, the talent, all of it handed to her on the first day."

"I was born with nothing except my head. And I’m not even asking for anything big. I don’t want to be Commander. I don’t want a rank or a title."

"I just want to go out with her, and stand beside her, and protect her when she needs it. That’s it! That’s all I’ve ever wanted!"

Her voice dropped.

"But she...she calls my genius nothing more than ’cheap tricks’ and ’dishonorable shortcuts.’"

"She tells me to stop dreaming and to just be content to be the village blacksmith."

"She praises me endlessly for repairing a sword pommel, but the moment I try to use my own mind to forge my own path, it’s a betrayal of some thousand-year-old tradition.

She spat the last word like a curse.

"It’s....not fair, Dummy Hero. It’s not fair, and it makes me so angry I could scream."

Luca didn’t know what to say.

On one hand, it did seem unfair. Mavis had clearly demonstrated her capabilities—her inventions were brilliant, her mind exceptional.

She could be an asset to the Galloping Brigade, not in frontline combat, but as support. Her strategic mind alone would be invaluable.

But on the other hand...

Sigrid’s protectiveness wasn’t simple sisterly concern. He had seen how the other centaurs allowed their daughters to join the brigade, knowing the danger.

It was considered an honor to protect the queen.

But Sigrid’s resistance was different. Stronger. Almost desperate.

’Why?’ He wondered. ’What is she so afraid of?’

He filed the question away for later. For now, he had a job to do.

"Okay, enough gloomy thoughts." He announced, clapping his hands. "It’s a beautiful day. We shouldn’t waste it on sadness."

Mavis blinked, snapping out of her melancholy.

"Now, let me tell you why I actually came here."

And he told her. The training ground. Riley going down. The hoof, cracked and flaking, the bruising underneath, the way she’d nearly collapsed from the pain of a single misplaced step.

Mavis’s expression changed the moment he said hooves.

"That’s really bad." She said quietly.

"It’s not that—"

"No, you don’t understand." She was already on her feet. "That’s genuinely bad. If it’s happening to Riley, it’s not going to stay with Riley. She’s young, she trains constantly, she’s on the hardest terrain of anyone—of course it started with her."

"But it’ll spread. It’ll move to the others within months. And if it goes on long enough—"

She looked down at her own hooves, and for the first time since Luca had met her, genuine alarm crossed her face.

"It’ll reach me. And my sister. And everyone."

"And then?"

"And then Lady Poppy can’t leave the village." Mavis’s voice was flat. "If no one can run, no one can guard her, and if she can’t go out and purify the dead mana across the continent, it just keeps spreading—and that’s not a hoof problem anymore, Dummy Hero. That’s sickness. That’s darkness. That’s the whole continent rotting from the edges in."

She grabbed his arm with both hands.

"We have to fix it. Immediately!"

"Easy, easy." Luca held up a hand. "That’s why I came to you. The solution is actually pretty simple."

"...It is?"

"It is." He glanced around, spotted the paper and brushes on the worktable, and crossed over. "Give me a second."

He sat down and started to sketch. First a crescent shape. A row of small holes. A curve along the inner edge. Until finally—

"This..." He said, turning the paper around. "...is a horseshoe."

Mavis took it and stared at it.

"A horseshoe..."

"It’s a metal plate that goes on the bottom of the hoof. It takes the wear instead of the hoof itself, so the hoof doesn’t crack. It also gives better grip, better stability, and it spreads the load so the hoof can rest and recover."

He tapped the drawing.

"That’s it. That’s the whole fix. You put these on every centaur in the village and this problem is solved for the next several decades."

Mavis was already studying the drawing with total focus, turning it this way and that.

"...The shape is good. It covers the weight-bearing surface without restricting the frog. The holes are for the nails, I assume?" She looked up. "Wait. Nails?"

"Six or seven per shoe, driven into the outer wall of the hoof."

Mavis recoiled. "Into their hooves?"

"Into the wall. Not the sensitive part."

She winced before showing a awkward smile and saying,

"Dummy Hero, I know we’re supposed to be brave and powerful, but I’m fairly sure even my sister would scream if someone started hammering nails into her feet."

Luca shook his head. "She wouldn’t. That’s the thing—the outer wall of a hoof is basically like a fingernail. There’s no nerve in it. You can drive a nail straight through it and they won’t feel a thing. It’s the whole reason horseshoes work at all."

Mavis opened her mouth, closed it, and frowned at her own hoof.

"...Really?"

"Really. Back home, horses get this done every six weeks for their entire lives. They stand there and eat grass the whole time. Some of them fall asleep."

"Huh." She looked at her hoof again with new eyes. "I’ve never had anything driven into it. So how would I know?"

"Exactly. That’s why you’re worried. But it’s fine. It’s genuinely fine." He shrugged. "Worst case, it tickles."

Mavis studied the drawing a while longer, tracing the curve of it with one finger.

"...This is good design." She said finally. "The curve follows the natural shape of the hoof. The holes are placed where the wall is thickest. And the heel here—" She pointed "—you’ve left the back open so it doesn’t catch on anything."

"This could change everything..."

Her head snapped up, and the old, blazing, competitive fire was back in her eyes.

"No more cracks. No more pain. Our warriors could run on any terrain!"

"Can you build it?" Luca asked. "It’s a curved piece of metal with holes in it."

"Dummy Hero." Mavis flicked her tail at him. "Who exactly do you think you’re talking to? You’re speaking to the genius Mavis! The one who defeated you, and who almost defeated you a second time, which honestly counts."

She reached out and bumped his arm with her own, playful and quick.

"A curved plate with some holes in it? I could make fifty of those before dinner!"

"Then we’re done here." Luca stood. "All I need is the measurements. Let’s head back and—"

He stopped at the door...and turned around.

"...Actually." He said, and there was something very sly in his voice.

Mavis narrowed her eyes. "What."

"It occurs to me that I’ve gotten used to getting rides from Sigrid. Everywhere I go in this village, she’s carrying me." He spread his hands. "And she’s not here right now."

"So?"

"So, I’m just wondering if you could also carry me around and—"

"No!" Mavis planted all four hooves. "Absolutely not! The one who lost the bet was my sister, not me. I have no obligation to you whatsoever. Why on earth would I let you ride on my back?"

She trotted past him toward the door. But Luca called after her.

"Come on, Mavis. Maybe you’re just too weak to carry me? Maybe that’s why you’re refusing?"

Mavis whirled around, eyes blazing. "Excuse me?!"

"If you’re really the strong centaur you claim to be, prove it. Let me on your back."

Mavis scoffed. "Such childish tactics won’t work on me, Dummy Hero."

She turned and trotted away, heading back toward the village.

Luca watched her go, a knowing smile on his face.

’I’ll get on your back eventually. Just you wait.’

Then he hurried after her, ready to gather the measurements and begin the work that would save the village’s hooves.

And perhaps, just perhaps bring two stubborn sisters back together.