THEMYSCIRA
CLANG. CLANG. CLANG.
The sound rolled like thunder through the cavernous forge, reverberating off walls darkened by fumes of heat and smoke. The place was not built for mortals. Every surface, every tool, every anvil was sized for a being of his stature — thick steel beams overhead, a furnace mouth large enough to swallow a warhorse, and a colossal anvil wrought from a single slab of ironstone, its face etched with precise geometric grooves for holding strange and complex shapes.
The air shimmered with the breath of the forge — waves of heat warping the vision, making the towering figure at its heart seem more apparition than man. Atrius stood over the anvil, hammer in hand, each strike a fusion of muscle and mind. Sparks bloomed with every blow, golden fireflies that danced and died in the hot gloom. His eyes were fixed on the glowing piece clamped in his tongs — not merely a chunk of metal, but a precision-machined cog, a gear that would soon sit deep in the joint of his armor's hip assembly.
This was not a simple plate-and-rivet suit. He was building a machine — an exoskeleton of tempered alloys, gear trains, and hinge bearings, each one meant to capture and multiply his already inhuman strength. Without the advanced artificer's tools of the Imperium, he had been forced to improvise: casting gear blanks in custom stone molds, then shaving, tempering, and truing the teeth entirely by hand and psychic will.
BOOM!!
His mind reached out as his hammer fell, threads of unseen force curling around the metal's atoms, coaxing them into perfect alignment. It was as if he forged in two realms at once — in the physical, where iron bent to steel beneath his strikes, and in the micro, where his thoughts refined the crystal lattice itself, eliminating flaws before they could be born. No mortal smith could have shaped a gear tooth to within a hair's breadth by hammer alone. Atrius did it without measuring tools, the rhythm of his strikes as precise as clockwork.
CLANG.
A pause. He rotated the piece in the tongs, studying the glow along its teeth, watching how the red faded at the tips while the core still pulsed molten yellow. The faintest narrowing of his crimson pupils told of approval. With a controlled exhale, he quenched it in the deep water trough — the hiss rising into a white shroud of steam that curled around his broad frame like ghostly armor.
He lifted the piece once cooled, turning it so that the furnace light gleamed along every edge. It was flawless — a central gear that would anchor the thigh rotation assembly, meshing with its sister gears through a locking bearing collar he had yet to finish. Dozens of such pieces lay in ordered rows nearby, each one an acting "mechanical muscle fiber" in the body he was constructing.
Beside the anvil, the humanoid model stood waiting — his exact height, his exact proportions, formed from hammered brass and iron, assembled by hand and psychic shaping. Upon it already rested a completed breastplate, sculpted shoulder guards, and gauntlets, all locked in place by heavy torque rings and rotating hinge pins. Now came the heart of the suit's movement — the gearwork that would bind every limb into a whole.
At his side lay the tools of his own invention — hammers flat-faced and ball-peened for fine detail, a hand-cranked drill press with bits he had forged himself, chisels and punches to clear the stubborn filings from gear teeth, and a brazing crucible that hung on a chain like a censer in some strange iron-lit chapel.
for pouring molten filler metal into hinge joints.
And the most important tool — his mind — wrapping each component in invisible tethers of force, aligning, adjusting, and marrying metal to metal with impossible steadiness.
He set the cog into the thigh assembly and raised the brazing crucible, tilting the molten alloy into the joint. His mind held it perfectly still as it cooled, each molecule locking in place like soldiers in formation. This was not smithing as mortals knew it. This was engineering, ritual, and art made into one.
A faint shuffling behind him did not go unnoticed. He spoke without turning.
"You've been standing there for some time. What is it you seek?"
There was a pause, then a voice — soft
"Your way of forging… I have never seen the like. How do you shape the metal so precisely with only a hammer?"
He finally glanced over his shoulder. Hippolyta stood in the half-light, her red cloak draped like a blood tide over her armor. Her brow was knit, her lips drawn tight — not from anger, but from the weight of something she carried.
"It is not something you can imitate," Atrius replied, his tone as flat as the anvil face before him. "Now tell me why you are here."
She stepped forward, boots echoing on the stone floor, her gaze never leaving his.
"I am lost," she admitted, the words heavy as though pried from her. "It has been days since the incident, and your assigned attendant still lies in unbroken slumber. I have respected your solitude, kept my people from interfering… but now I require your help. You are… my only hope."
Atrius's eyes narrowed, the furnace glow casting sharp lines across his face.
"I do not meddle in matters that do not hold my interest. You have kept your people silent about the event — yet you come to me now. Why? What makes you think I can help?"
For a moment, her jaw clenched. Then she met his gaze, unflinching.
"Because you are a god."
The words hung between them, swallowed by the forge's heat. She took another step, close enough now that the steam curled between them like breath.
"You are my only hope," she said again, softer this time — but with the force of one who would beg if she must.
Atrius regarded her in silence, the hammer still in his hand, the half-assembled armor glinting in the shadows, a budding mechanism for slaughter.