To Live and Uplift Underground 10


I still had plenty of roots leftover.


Not enough that I could afford a screw up, but enough to heat up my clay oven and briefly reach the heat that I needed for a moment. Given I could smelt copper, I now knew that I could reach the 1700 needed to also forge it. Unlike the smelt, the time that I needed it hot would be significantly less, which gave me enough leeway that I didn’t have to do this “perfect”.


Which was just as well, because I was sure it would be a long time until I got another opportunity.


Despite still not knowing exactly when my gang would leave, I could feel it in my bones: if I failed here today, I would not get the extra days that I needed to collect more fuel for this.


The copper nuggets alone would go a long way to discharge my debt to Talia, so an argument could have been made that it was fine if I waited a bit more. That I needed to be better prepared to forge this. But Talia would not show off the copper nuggets, and the inventory of my male cousin’s stone weapons would only increase as time went on. Soli seemed not to mind me for the moment, but the gang wasn’t hers.


It was Aunt Kan’a’s.


If I waited, I might be better equipped to forge. But if I waited, I would be in a worse situation in my crew. 


In my gang.


I did not fear having to compete with them for scraps, but I did fear how long it would delay my improvements. Of how far it would keep me from climbing the technological climb that only I could climb.


On the other hand, if I did this and failed, it would amount to the same thing.


But it would be better than not trying at all.


I put about 1 and a half pounds of copper nuggets on top of the now-fired clay bowl and collected all my roots. I redug my clay forge and fixed whatever clay lining had cracked from the smelt, before rebuilding the whole thing. 


I already knew how to light it, and how quickly the fire would eat the roots up. The bowl with all the nuggets would go on top of all of that, and then a clay dome would take the place of the roots that I had covered the ore with last time. But as I said, getting the copper hot enough wasn’t the problem.


Working with it after it was.


The “why” of that went down to one rudimentary lack. I did not have any tongs.


Metal tongs would have been best for this, but even wooden ones would have served if I soaked them in water first. Tongs were not supposed to be hard to make or procure, even if you had literally nothing. A bar folded in half. A piece of wood bent down the middle. Even a tree branch could do it.


But I lived in the underground, and all I had was stone. And stone did not bend.


The alternative I came up with was rather circuitous and made this more difficult than it had any right to be, but I was honestly just glad that I had an alternative at all. Making up for the lack of tongs was not easy, let me tell you.


As the furnace lit and it started warming, I made two of the vital tools that I would need. Two of the tools that I could make.


With clay, I formed a shaft and then a long, flat, concave spade that could fit on the straight part of the stick that Suli gave me. Once the dimensions were “right”, I let the fire bake it. This would allow me to actually pick the copper up.


As for manipulating it? I had thought long and hard about it, and came up with what was, I hoped, a tentative solution. Not one I would enjoy using. But one that would get me what I needed.


I made a cast.


Now, I could heat copper enough that it just “sweated” and accumulated into the nuggets. But I could not produce enough heat to outright melt it. From what I could remember of my past life, that needed a huge furnace with some sort of way of creating a strong wind draft. I had not the time, and I had not the tools, so I would not even try to cast it.


All the same, the cast was going to be useful.


Forming clay into a block was, like anything clay-related, easy and simple. Digging out a long wedge into it, such that it would form a pocket, was easy but not simple.


But since digging holes into stone was harder, I was able to get it right the first time. I finished the cast by leaving a hole on the bottom and placed the clay cast next to the clay shovel. As they baked, I dug a hole in the ground.


I had to keep an eye on my tools, to make sure the heat didn’t crack them, but I already had all the materials that I needed for this part of the preparation.


With the hole dug, I dragged palm-sized slim stone slabs and placed them around the walls of the hole. It didn’t matter that most weren’t perfectly flat, only that they were rigid. The only one that needed to be flat I used to cover the middle of the floor of the hole. 


I had to gather the “filling” that I would use; my smelting had created a lot of gravel and slag that I had originally dispersed like so much trash, but lucky for me, they would help with this idea.


I gathered it all up and placed it aside. Just in time to pull out my red shovel and cast.


The cast went into the hole, fitting snuggly among the stone slabs. The hole was actually a bit deeper than the cast was tall, even with the slab under it, but thankfully, that wasn’t going to matter this time.


I filled the space between the cast and stone slabs in the hole walls with the gravel and slag that I had collected.


I filled, padded it, and even walked on top of it, until it was compact around my cast.


The fire was going strong now, and the copper nuggets had started to glow. I licked my lips as I my hands twitched, but no, I still had more time.


Enough, at least, to soak the stick that I had with some water and to affix the clay spade to its end.


It was weighty, and I did not trust its durability, but I wasn’t going to be digging holes with this thing.


I was going to wait until the copper was hot white, and extend the clay shovel into it. 


So that I could, slowly, retrieve one single nugget at a time.


With trepidation, I dropped that nugget into the cast that I had placed in the floor, and made sure that it settled in the cool stone.


Before it could lose too much heat, I repeated my action, and retrieved another small nugget to I place it in the cast. It admittedly made an exciting “clings” with its fellow.


But my appreciation for its audible quality would have to be momentary, as I kept shoveling copper nuggets into the cast. Only into the fifth nugget did the nuggets make no real sound, as they had been packed in too much to move freely.


That’s when I took my favorite stone knapper, the striker that I flaked pieces out of rock, and started smashing them together.


I had wetted my hands beforehand, of course, please don’t take me for an idiot, but using what was essentially a hand hammer on white hot metal still scared the shit out of me.


I still did it.


My first worry, though, was that the cast would hold.


“Come on, come on,” I recall saying, the stone in my hand heating up and starting to sting, “Please don’t break.”


The white hot nuggets, under the blows of my stone hammer, began deforming like butter. Each hit spread them out against each other, the confines of the cast not allowing them to jump. Even so, I didn’t hit them hard enough for the pressure to launch them up anyway, not at first. Eventually, continuous blows made them flow into each other.


It was this flow that would determine the grain of the finished axe, but I had already taken that into mind.


At that moment, all that I cared about was that this would work and, the clay cast? It held.


For the moment.


By the time I had packed in the nuggets, they were starting to lose their shine. While this demanded that I rush faster, it also thankfully gave me a chance to drop my hand hammer into cold water. The shovel was what I would need to drop more nuggets from the furnace into the cast.


The second round of stuffing soft hot copper into a hole was a test on its own. Had I been too slow the first time around, and the temperature difference too vast, the copper that I had just shoveled would not bind well to the one I had already stuffed.


Thankfully, the copper continued to flow into what I already had.


And the cast? It still held.


My hand hammer went into water, and my shovel continued to go into the furnace. Time after time. Continuously. Unceasingly. 


But a crack began forming on the cast.


It began at the time an errant hammer strike made a thimbleful of hard clay fly off. Taking a second to curse at myself, I looked at the breakage.


There now was a crack that went all the way through one side of the clay cast.


I was hammering the last bits of my copper nuggets down, so I told myself that it would be fine. But strike after strike of my hand hammer happened only with me staring at that crack. Praying, begging even, that it would not move beyond that.


I had the last nuggets under the stone hammer, molding and spreading into the hot copper mass already in the cast. The copper moved and the copper spread.


But the clay mold did too.


The stone slabs around it started to stir as the slag and gravel started being moved by what I could only presume was clay shards. Could I take a moment to compact the earth there with more dirt? Or perhaps even “repair” the broken clay wall with more wet clay? I didn’t know but more importantly, I didn’t have the time.


Only these last nuggets were still white hot, and any delays that I took could see them not bonding properly to the mass that I was hammering them into.


I had to finish it.


By this point, I had taken one of my many cloth wraps and wrapped it around the far end of my hand hammer. I wetted it constantly, and it was steaming from the heat of the copper being transferred into it.


My fingers hurt from clenching so long to a hot thing, but I increased my pace. I hammered away, desperate to finish forging this axe before I finished breaking the clay cast.


Before too long, before the pain in my hand made me let go of my hammer, before the cast shattered completely, the nuggets spread out completely. They diffused into themselves and into the mass that I was working on. They formed one final layer.


The last bit that I needed.


Yelling as I gave it one last whack, I let go of the hammer and sat as I cradled my hand into my stomach.


“I hate working with copper,” I breathed deeply, sweat coming off my brow and dripping into my arm, but a smile tugged at my face.


I looked at where the cast was, broken on one side.


But with a whole wedge filling its insides.


The only thing that was required of me, then, was to wait until it cooled.


This was ideal for me for many reasons, you understand. No, not just because I needed the rest or to take care of the mild burns on my hand, but because slow cooling was how you annealed metal.


Copper would never be particularly hard, compared to any tool metal, but there was a noticeable difference between soft and hard copper. Given how brittle copper could be, its hardness was something tricky to work with and, in that way, was a lot closer to iron than it was to bronze.


Yes, working copper at this level was like working with iron.


Except that, for all this work, you got a metal that was significantly weaker and softer. There was a reason why bronze had been the one that really developed civilization.


But, to me, the wedge that came out when the copper had cooled, when the clay cast came apart in shards and let me pull out a slanted plain of copper, might as well have been titanium.


When I said that I hammered a wedge into the cast, I mean that I had done so edge down. The whole of the cast widened as it went up and, so, the first bit that I had hammered in had been the prospective edge. It was round now, of course, as the room temperature orange-gold metal began turning gray. A bit of sanding with actual sand saw it reveal its true color, of course, but setting the edge to one of the flat boulders-


-And hammering it to a point-


-revealed the regard in which this was superior to stone.


Copper forms grains in the direction in which it flows. Since I was stuffing it inside a cast, that meant that it would run perpendicular to the ground. That is why I needed the edge to be at one end.


With the grain of the copper running parallel to the edge I now made, it flowed smoothly with every blow. Cold-working copper was a tricky business, given how brittle it could be, but, much like bronze, doing so hardened it.


That is why it was good that I let it anneal instead of dousing it with water immediately.


A nice uneven edge that I would have to grind a bit more later to make it straight stared at me. But it was still an edge.


So I took out one of my cloth strips.


And sheared it with the uneven edge.


“Yes,” I remember yelling, “YES!”


I had to hammer a slot on the blunt side of the wedge as well, one that ran parallel to its length, of course. But I no longer had any doubts that this was going to work.


Oh, you think I made a hole that ran down the side of the blunt edge like a normal axe? Hah, no, I quite literally had no way to do that. Instead, I hammered a slot that ran in the direction of its length, not a hole perpendicular to it.


The crooked end of the stick Suli gave me helped with precisely that, because I would widen the slot until it fit it perfectly. All that hammering hardened the slot, of course, and it would be ideal for this joint to be soft, but there was no helping it. As a last touch, I made grooves on the blunt sides and then smoothly slotted the crooked end of the stick into it.


Glue, rags, and sinew allowed me to affix it and time to cure would make it stick.


But, at long last…I finally had my axe.


Unlike the knife-club, THIS thing looked recognizable. It’s heft lent itself to its purpose. It’s simple look implied how it would be used.


I dared not swing it yet, but it tilted downward in my hands, as if begging to be used.


This-I would bite my hand off if this didn’t please my Talia!


And I already had so many ideas about what I would do with the rest of the copper that now belonged to me.


My furnace was still lively, but the roots inside it were just about spent. There was no need for me to douse it, so I would let it go out on its own. The hard mushrooms growing from the walls had noticeably grown in the direction of my forge since I began using this spot and, well, they could have the rest of the smoke and heat it created.


I came here with a basketful of ore and now I would leave with an empty basket.


And a copper axe in tow.


Now, it’s a bad habit to count your chicks before they hatch, I know. But, you see, I had already done all of the hardest parts. Turning my work in had always been the last stretch of my work, and was essentially an afterthought. 


It didn’t matter that I had to walk all the way back home before anyone so much as knew that I had made anything.


This victory was already mine.


But elation is like a drug, and could make you forget where you were at the worst of times. 


My legs gave out under me before I realized what was happening.


The ground going up the entrance to the mushroom grove that I had used as my workshop was filled with dirt, so I didn’t crash into rock when I fell.


It still knocked the wind out of me.


Wheezing, I looked around to see what I had tripped on. But, instead-


I met a pair of eyes.


“Arione,” said a voice that I had known all my life, “It’s been more than a month.”


“Why didn’t you talk to me?” said a girl with generous breasts that pushed against the thick fur we wore when going out, and hips that flared even through those folds.


“Why didn’t you come back to me?” she demanded, pain that I didn’t believe her capable of feeling bleeding through her words.


She was standing on top of me with a new addition to her arsenal that I wasn’t familiar with, a “wooden” stick as tall as she was. It was probably what had tripped me up, and I knew how lucky I was that it was all I did.


I had seen Jarn’at crack skulls with much smaller fare.


“Jarn’at?” I recall gasping, habits of a lifetime warring with the guilt that I felt from betraying her. A month was not enough to erase the assault on the small gang from my mind, but whatever trepidation I still felt for her had by this point been drowned out by the wrongdoing that I felt.


Betrayals of the kind I did were so common, so blase, that I was probably the only male in my gang capable of feeling bad about and yet…


“Oh, so you remember me now?”I had not known Jarn’at was capable of crying.


“What are you doing here?” I also recalled stupidly asking, given how obvious the whole thing should have been, but my mouth was on autopilot. This all went beyond what I expected.


“To see what made you betray me,” she said and I recoiled as if struck.


I had dropped the copper axe on my fall and my cousin bent down to pick it up.


She hefted it in her hand and gently swung it to feel how it moved.


“At first, everyone talked about the things you made with stone.” the copper axe fit her perfectly, “and then all the useless males started copying you.”


“But-” she said as she glared at the axe I had made, “I knew it would not be enough.”


“Not for you,” she glanced my way, “No, never for you.”


“I can explain,” I said, making to rise up,


A foot on my chest kept me from doing so.


“I’ve observed you going about the gang,” Jarn’at didn’t give me a chance to explain, “Making deals, pulling your own weight.”


“If that’s all it was, I could have understood, if just a little,” she said as she fingered the edge of my copper axe, “Never knew you to have any ambition, but there was no possible way someone as good as you would have been happy being treated like any other male your whole life.”


“That one’s my fault, I admit it,” she easily shrugged.


“Jarn’at…” I sighed, not knowing how to tell her that that wasn’t it.


When I went to Aunt Kan’a I needed to do something to change my life and, at that moment, I couldn’t bear to talk to my cousin. It was a sad confluence of events that led me to abandon her like I did.


“No, Aunt Kan’a leads a crew and I don’t.” She shook her head, “And mom saw you as my pet rather than an asset, so you were barely a hanger-on in her Crew.”


“But, Arione?” she said, voice thick with emotion, “I could have, would have, tried to give you all that you wanted.”


“You know that, right?”


There was no good answer to that, so I didn’t say anything.


“But I am just a newblood, I know that,” she supplied an answer that I had not even thought about, “That much, I also understood.”


“You know, “ she said, “I thought that all I had to do was rise in the ranks. Prove myself someone influential enough to have you.”


“But then that bitch Talia had to dip her dirty toes in,” she growled, and I winced.


“First, you let her force you into sucking her nasty cunt,” she spat, “Oh, and let her take that club you stole from me as if she were doing me a favor!”


“That wasn’t-” I began to say but the foot on my chest pushed me into the ground.


“And then, after all that was said and done, you came back to her!” she yelled, “And for what?”


“For some copper?” she demanded.


“For THIS?” she thrusted the copper axe at my face, its edge barely millimeters away from touching it.


“First you steal from me,” she said with a stony tone, “and then SHE does.”


“Well,” she pulled the axe away and twirled it in her hand, “I am not going to take it anymore.”


“You are going to take the axe?” I finally spoke up, feeling resigned.


I had enough copper nuggets to make another axe and make good on my deal with Talia, but this wasn’t ideal, not at all.


I would have to wait and I would have to work to catch up. All while my jealous cousins-


“I-” my cousin interrupted my thoughts by grabbing hold of my thick robe.


“-am going to take you,” and forced it open.


In the cold tunnels near the mushroom grove, the wind felt chilly on my skin as Jarn’at stepped over my body.


And let her own robe fall.


“I am going to take what’s mine,” she took hold of her loincloth.


And also let it fall.


I stared at the silvery, purple, practically pubic hair of her pussy. A featureless slit, completely unused, was almost hidden by it and reminded me of the girl she had raped.


“What should have always been mine,” she said as she bent down and flicked my loincloth aside.


My dick, 8 inches long and already hard, stood at attention as she did.


The memories of that day played out in my mind. The blood, the screams, and the helplessness of everyone we assaulted and killed.


Of the victims we left.


“You,” My cousin, resplendent in her fury, horrifically attractive in her sexual violence, put her hands around my neck, “Belong to me.”


And then she kissed me.


It was the first kiss I had experienced in this life. Aunt Kan’a had given me my first handjobs, and Younger Talia has given me my literal first taste of pussy, altogether my first sexual experiences, but this was my first real physical affection.


Drow did not usually kiss, even when having sex. Because that was what kissing was, even among Drow.


Affection.


And yet, Jarn’at used that affection like a sword.


To cut into me.


Her lips were so soft, even as her hands on my throat were so hard.


I moaned into her mouth as she sucked the breath from mine. Her pussy gingerly, with less surety than her hands and mouth worked, poked my cock. But as it made sure where it was, it started to make contact for longer.


Until Jarn’at was all but pressing it into her pussy, making it slide around my glans.


Taking from me my virginity in this life.


When she broke her kiss, my mushroom head was about to pop into her vagina, and she looked me straight in the eye.


“This is so you don’t forget,” she explained as she made her tight ass come down.


My cock slipped into her vaginal canal.


I felt a barrier in her insides shred against the thrust.


And blood started to seep out as Jarn’at, too, lost her virginity, “I am going to mark you.”


“W-what?” I moaned as the virginal blood, as the precum coming out of my dick and as her pussy juices all made her slip me inside of her.


“I am not going to allow you to forget,” she groaned as my dick went up all inside her twat until, with a tick that made me shiver, I felt the tip of my cock kissing her cervix.


“I am going to scar myself into your mind!” she declared as she fully sat on me, her featureless pussy expanding all around the base of my cock.


“What?” I moaned again, not being able to properly let her know that she already had.


“You don’t understand?” she asked as she lifted herself.


And slammed her pussy into me.


“It doesn’t matter, I don’t need you to understand for you to close your eyes every night,” she groaned as she moved up and down, her pussy flowing up and down my shaft., “And see me over you like this.”


The hands around my neck started squeezing now.


Restricting the air that could come into my lungs, “Hammering into you-”


She was choking me as she fucked me faster, our combined juices starting to splash, “-the fact that you are mine!”


“Maybe not now.” I could not breathe anymore, her hands tightening so much that they hurt, “And maybe not tomorrow.”


“But soooome day,” she moaned as her pussy tightened too, “I’ll own you not just in a moment like this!”


She was coming, she was coming and only quickening her pace! “But all the other moments too!”


“Sooome day-” she  started to promise as her orgasm only quickened and darkness started creeping at the edge of my vision.


I was about to faint. 


I was about to cum.


One last slam overcame all of my bodily control, and made me do the latter before the former: I pushed my hips up into her pussy as I let go of all of my cum.


As I inundated my cousin’s pussy with my semen.


“-yoooou’ll belong to me mind, body and soul,” she shook as she rode the last of her orgasm.


And my world went dark as I lost consciousness.


When I woke up, I was covered with my robes and I felt lightheaded.


My throat felt raw, and careful touches let me know that it was bruised.


I had no idea how much time had passed, but the air still smelled like sex, so it couldn’t have been that long.


I stared at the ceiling of that cavern for a good while, coming to terms with the fact that my cousin had raped me and choked me into uncousinsess.


And, though you might pity me, it was not horror, revulsion or anger that filled me.


It was…hard to describe.


It was a deep-seated longing that I now had.


That memory, indeed, would stay with me for the rest of my life.


But something cold was touching my side, and after finding enough resolve to find out what it was, I threw my robes back.


And found the copper axe that I had made for Talia still with me.


Tugged against my chest.