Story Seed - Anvil

Image Source: http://artofjosevega.deviantart.com/art/Lighting-Anvil-584182785

"Is it just me, or is it getting hot as damnation down here?" Carrik complained. He rubbed a calloused palm across his forehead, wiping away the beads of sweat that reformed just as quickly.

Jeen and Hathor both groaned. Jeen looked at the other woman and held up four fingers, making a wordless bet. Hathor nodded, a grim smile on her angular face as she tried to suppress a laugh. Ahead of them Carrik made some other complaint about the heat as the group trudged down the narrow tunnel.

At the head of the party Marolo shook his head and kept on walking, hawkish eyes scanning the path ahead. Carrik complained again which finally got Marolo to stop and throw his hands up, "NO! It is not only you! OK? It's hot; it's getting hotter. I think maybe it's going to get hotter still. So, for the love of all the dead gods, just SHUT. UP."

Jeen scowled and dug a silver moon from her coin purse, pushing into Hathor's outstretched palm. "I don't know what you were thinking," the latter whispered, "he's only lasted to the fourth like twice." Jeen just shot an acidic look at the other woman and kept moving.

An hour and four bets later the group found the tunnel at an end, a pair of elaborately carved stone doors. The heat was oppressive and the doors hot to the touch. "Let me look" Jeen said, speaking for the first time in hours. The normally loquacious entertainer had been unusually silent since the group had reached the second deeps. She moved to the front, an illuminated the doors with a simple cantrip. "These doors are quite old, but ..." Her voice drifted to silence as she studied the reliefs carved into the doors.

"This was the workshop of a god lost to the past. Valk the Smith, I think. The dialect is rather old even for my studies. Still, this says that here Valk created the weapons of the gods and ... yup here..." Jeen pressed a section inward and twisted it. With a thunderous crack the doors split down the middle and began to swing inward. A wave of torrid air, stinking of metals and sulfur, rolled out into the passage as a ruddy red glow filled the tunnel.

Beyond the doors a large chamber stocked with tools and lit by flows of molten ore was arrayed around a massive central work space. A great rune encrusted anvil that radiated divine power sat in the center of the space by a pool of semi-molten rock. "Well, I guess that explains the heat," Carrik said.