The door closed with a dull creak, and Dubs was left alone.
The hammer resumed its rhythm almost immediately, mechanical, almost independent of his conscious will, while his mind, meanwhile, wandered far away from the metal he was shaping.
Five years.
He had told Emrys that it had been five years, and that was true, but said like that, out loud, in a short sentence thrown between two hammer blows, it sounded almost trivial. It did not do justice to what those five years truly represented, what that boy who had literally fallen from the sky had ended up changing in an existence Dubs had believed to be permanently frozen in place.
He still remembered the sound. That dull impact, different from anything he usually heard in his quarry, that had made him raise his head from his ore that day. He remembered the surprise, almost comical in hindsight, when he discovered not a landslide or a stray animal, but a boy. A white-haired boy, broken all over, blind, barely conscious, who was still breathing despite everything that should, logically, have killed him on the spot.
He had almost left him there.
That thought, he had never shared out loud, not even with Emrys, especially not with Emrys. But for a fraction of a second, upon discovering that small motionless body in the middle of the rubble, a part of him, that tired part, that part that had eventually convinced itself that solitude was not only bearable but preferable to any other alternative, had considered simply returning to his work. Letting nature, or whatever deity might have cared enough, deal with the problem.
He hadn't done that, obviously. But the simple fact that he had thought about it, even for an instant, remained something he had never truly managed to fully come to terms with.
The hammer struck the metal with slightly more force than necessary for a single blow, before Dubs corrected his movement, returning to the precise and measured rhythm his current work required.
He thought back to those first few weeks. That boy who refused to stay still, who insisted on getting back on his feet long before his body was truly capable of it, who asked endless questions about giants, races, about the magical power he possessed without ever really understanding its extent. Dubs remembered finding it exhausting at the time. A real chatterbox compared to the silence he had grown accustomed to for decades.
And yet.
And yet, somewhere between the endless questions, the relentless training despite the pain, that almost frightening determination to always go further, faster, stronger, Dubs had started listening for the sound of his footsteps. Anticipating his questions before they were even asked. Feeling, for the first time in a very, very long time, something dangerously close to attachment.
He had always hated that word, in a way. Attachment. It sounded like a weakness, like another rope being woven around oneself, ready to tighten and hurt the day it inevitably snapped.
He set the hammer down, letting the metal cool for a moment, and remained motionless, his hands resting flat on the workbench, his gaze lost somewhere beyond the walls of the workshop, toward that small room where Emrys was probably already sleeping, or at least resting in that particular state that replaced sleep for his species.
I knew this day would come.
He repeated it to himself, as if to anchor that certainty more deeply, as though repetition alone could be enough to lessen its weight. He had known it from the beginning, in fact. From the very moment he had decided to keep that boy rather than take him to the nearest village, to help him rather than simply treat his wounds and let him continue on his way. He had known that one day, inevitably, that road would take over again, that this boy filled with an almost painful determination would eventually want to see the world for himself, to accomplish what he had promised himself he would accomplish.
A mother to find. A world to save, perhaps, if things got even worse than they already were. A place to find that, obviously, was not in an isolated forest alongside an old reclusive giant and his orders for pots.
Dubs let out a small dry laugh, almost bitter, slowly shaking his head.
Fifty years I lived alone before him. Five years that he's been here. And yet, those five years weigh more heavily in my memories than the previous fifty combined.
He picked up his hammer again, but did not strike immediately, merely turning it between his thick fingers, thoughtful.
He thought back to the first time Emrys had managed to stand for more than five steps in a row. The silent pride he had felt that day, a pride he had never truly expressed out loud, settling for a laconic "not bad" before immediately returning to his own work, as if the event were of no importance whatsoever. He thought back to the first time Emrys had materialized Drainda in front of him, during an improvised demonstration, and the almost childlike excitement he had felt upon seeing a weapon of a kind he had never encountered in fifty years of work. He thought back to the nights when Emrys returned from his solitary training sessions, exhausted, covered in bruises, stubbornly refusing to admit that he needed rest, and the quiet satisfaction he felt each time he managed to convince him, through trickery more than authority, to actually take a break.
He thought about all of it, and so many other moments besides, piled one on top of another over the course of five years that, in hindsight, seemed to have passed far too quickly.
I've never had a child. I never really wanted one, either. Too many complications, too many responsibilities, too many reasons to suffer sooner or later.
He looked at his own hands, broad, calloused, marked by decades of hard work.
And yet, here I am patching up a kid's wounds, teaching him how to forge, worrying every time he goes hunting for a demon a little too far into the forest, and...
He let the thought die, unable to fully put it into words, even in the silence of his own mind.
The hammer finally came down, resuming its steady rhythm, as Dubs gently channeled a portion of his power into the heated metal, that peculiar, almost electric sensation that always accompanied the moment when he searched, never truly knowing beforehand what he would find, for the ability that would best suit the object taking shape beneath his hands.
He thought about Emrys's blindness. About that permanent darkness in which he had moved for five years, with a courage Dubs never truly stopped admiring, even though he would never have put it that way out loud. He thought about his defense, that weakness he had eventually identified after so many years of silent observation. He thought about everything this boy would have to face, alone, once he left this forest, this war that continued to rage, these opponents whose power would undoubtedly, sooner or later, surpass everything Emrys had faced so far.
I can't protect him forever. I know that. He knows it too, that's exactly why he's leaving.
But I can at least make sure he takes something of mine with him. Something that will continue to watch over him, even when I'm no longer there to do it myself.
That thought, as simple as it was, seemed to crystallize something in his mind, a clearer direction for the power he was about to infuse into the still-malleable metal between his hands.
He continued hammering, alone in the silence of his workshop, the violet glow of the soul furnace gently dancing across the walls covered in shelves, while outside, night settled completely over the forest, and somewhere in the small room next door, a boy whom he had come to consider, without ever daring to put it into words that way, as something close to a son, rested, unaware of the storm of emotions stirring within the heart of the giant who was so rarely expressive, the giant who had, against all expectations, eventually become his family.
Five years.
It seemed both far too short, and yet more than enough to irreversibly change the course of an existence Dubs had believed forever frozen in chosen solitude.
He worked like this until the first light of dawn, refusing to stop, refusing to let sleep or fatigue interrupt what he now intended to bring to completion with absolute perfection, whatever the cost in lost hours of sleep.
Because if those five years had taught him anything, a single thing above all else, it was that some things were worth dedicating absolutely everything one had to offer.
And this boy, this son he had never asked for but would now trade for nothing in the world, was undoubtedly one of them.
Dubs turned around and came face-to-face with the cloak. The very one whose abilities he had been unable to reproduce from the original. The cloak imbued with the power of a goddess.
Wait? Imbued with the power of a goddess?
"I am a genius."
Dubs started running, something very unusual for him, toward his warehouse.