Pain.

It was the only thing Durin felt. The Ocean of Rot over him was like a conceptual plague.

It didn't just burn his skin, oh no it did much more than that

It was eating his sanity, his will, even the mana in his veins, turning his legendary dwarven vitality into grey slush.

His warhammer was gone. His armor was a pool of molten slag around his knees.

The High Priest of Rot floated closer, raising the Scythe of Decay.

"Look at you," the Priest gurgled.

"The Great King Durin. Just a piece of rusted iron waiting for the scrap heap."

Durin stared at his own hand. The skin was bubbling, revealing the muscle beneath.

'Rusted...' Durin thought. 'Is that what I am?'

For three hundred years, he had been the Master Smith. He stood behind the anvil.

He held the hammer constantly shaping metal. He believed his strength came from what he could create: the cannons, the golems, the armor.

But now, his creations were dissolving.

'I always relied on the tools,' Durin realized, a bitter laugh bubbling in his chest.

'I thought if I made the perfect weapon, I would be invincible.'

He looked at the veins in his forearm. Beneath the rotting flesh, there was a faint, pulsating glow.

It was the residue of the Fire Dragon Blood, the miracle cure Damien Voss had given him sixteen years ago to purge the Abyss poison.

It had been sleeping in his marrow, dormant, waiting.

Durin's eyes narrowed.

'A Smith hits the iron to remove impurities. To make it harder. To make it sharp.'

He looked at the acid eating him alive.

'Then why don't I take my body as iron?.'

With a trembling hand, Durin reached into the remains of his belt. He pulled out a flask made of obsidian, the only thing that hadn't melted yet.

Ale of the Dwarfen God. A drink so potent it could kill a regular human with a sip.

He had brought it here as a last result, however being forced to use it, he couldn't help but feel emotional

"Hey," Durin croaked.

The Priest paused, the scythe hovering inches from Durin's neck.

"Any last words, Dwarf?"

Durin popped the cork with his thumb.

"I've spent my whole life being the Smith," Durin grunted, steam curling from his lips.

"I think it's time I tried being the Metal."

He tipped his head back and downed the entire flask.

SSSSSSS.

The liquid fire hit his stomach. It collided with the dormant Dragon Blood in his system.

"RAAAAGH!"

Durin screamed. The acid tried to eat him, but the fire inside him pushed back.

Aelinor on the other end was also going through her own issues, right now she could be said to be drowning.

However, unlike regular drowning, there was no water, only silence.

The High Priests' Whisper Domain had enveloped her mind in a cocoon of regret.

Right now, she was on the brink of giving up

"Your daughter is fighting down there," the shadow whispered, showing her an image of Elena battling a Void Beast.

"She is going to die, just like her friends. Just like Theron."

Aelinor curled into a ball. "Stop it..."

"You are weak, Aelinor. You hit the limit of the 7th Order sixteen years ago. You stopped growing because you were afraid."

The shadow loomed over her.

"You gave up half your life to save the World Tree. You lost your purity. You are a broken vessel. That is why you cannot ascend. That is why you cannot protect her."

"We will harvest the Seed," the Priest hissed.

"We will take Elena, and we will plant a Void Tree in her corpse."

SNAP.

Something inside Aelinor broke.

As she heard her daughter being threatened, her mind suddenly became calm, scarily.

The restraint she had placed on her own soul for decades was suddenly broken under this calm.

Raising her head. Her eyes, usually a calm emerald green, were now glowing with a feral, blinding white light.

"Purity?" Aelinor whispered.

As she spoke she remembered the way a mother bear tore apart a wolf to save a cub.

She remembered the way vines strangled oaks to reach the sun.

"You think Nature is pure?"

She stood up. The darkness around her began to crack like glass.

"Nature is not peaceful," Aelinor snarled, her voice overlapping with the roar of the World Tree.

"Nature is violent. It consumes. It survives. And it protects its young."

She grabbed the empty air.

"Get away from my daughter!"

The battlefield went silent.

BOOM.

On her left, a pillar of white fire erupted from King Durin.

The High Priest of Rot shrieked as he was blasted backwards. The green acid of his domain hissed and evaporated.

Standing in the center of the crater was no longer a dwarf in armor.

Durin's skin had turned into living, white-hot metal.

His beard was made of white fire. He had absorbed the magma of his domain into his very cells.

Right now at this very moment, he wasn't wielding the forge anymore; he was the forge.

"My turn," Durin rumbled. His voice sounded like grinding tectonic plates.

CRACK.

Fifty meters away, the sphere of shadows shattered.

Roots burst outward, not brown, wooden roots, but translucent, diamond-hard crystal. They tore through the darkness, shredding the shadows into ribbons.

To his right Queen Aelinor stepped out. She floated in the air, her hair turning into leaves of light, her skin glowing like moonlight.

She had merged with the phantom of the World Tree.

The High Priest of Whispers backed away, his form flickering in terror. "Impossible... you were about to break!"

However neither of them answered

Durin took a step forward. The ground melted beneath his feet.

He looked at his hand, a fist of indestructible, white-hot iron.

"You called me a relic," Durin said, clenching his fist.

The heat radiating from him was so intense that the Void mud around him turned to glass.

"But you forgot the first rule of the forge."

Durin looked up, his eyes burning with the fury of the 8th Order.

"Iron only gets stronger when you beat it."

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