The steel clanged with every downward swing of the heavy hammer.\n\nKrater didn’t sweat, but he was sure if he did he’d have soaked through the low slung cloth around his hips by now. He’d been at his forge for days, no sleeping, no eating, just hyper focused distraction from the antsy feeling that’s been plaguing him like an incessant fly against his nerves, chafing his irritation.\n\nA colossal visage he made, red lit from the lava of the rivers and the burning coals of his forge. A thick, relentless arm armored in simmering stone bringing the hammer to unbending god’s metal over and over again. Accompanied only with the rattling jingle of the chains bound to his stone body, weightless and useless against him even now.\n\nThe shackles had become his only company after a nameless millennia of banishment, and though they did nothing to restrain him, the weight of them - if he closed his eyes - felt like an embrace. His golden fire lit eyes were open though, unblinking at his work that melded to his will. The third claymore he’s made in such a short time. All in an attempt to shake the suspicion that coiled in his lower belly and threatened to send him into a spiral.\n\nSomeone had been here.\n\nBeen here to Emberhelm, to his domain where he’d been trussed up like a swine for feasting in chains and indentured servitude for thousands of years. Krater couldn’t even remember the last he’d seen another face, heard a voice, and he feared his mind - divine as he was - was finally dissolving. That he was finally reaching his limit of isolation, that he’d give to the curse lain by Vavher, buckling under the weight of it that bore down on his broad shoulders.\n\nIt was there though, the shift in the atmosphere of Emberhelm, the fire and magma that Krater wielded whispering of a disturbance in the pathways between the stony crags of his domain. The footprints in the black sands, it was all proof but how was he to be certain? How could he be sure his mind wasn’t conjuring some projection out of desperation? A cruel tease of companionship?\n\nThat scent.\n\nKrater had scarcely smelled something as mind numbingly good as the delicate scent that drifted towards him like beacon of hope when he least expected it. Only days ago, hunting down whoever it could’ve been that found a way through the curse barricading his realm. It’d hit him in the face like a physical blow, rendering him speechless as he knelt to the footprints and fisted the sand to bring it to his nose. That scent. It was elysium, ecstasy, a drug that spark long forgotten emotion in his stone chest.\n\nHe’d searched high and low, but whoever it was had already departed, made themselves scarce with the intrusion brought to Krater’s attention. So he paced. He searched again only for it to end in an ill tempered fit, destroying a cache of carefully displayed work by his own hands. He bathed in the lava rivers, and then fired up his forge, in a desperate attempt to remind himself that he was alone here. No one would’ve crossed the barricade with the possibility of invoking Vavher’s wrath.\n\nWhere he stood now, beating the brakes off of the god’s metal claymore, huffing his indignation at the mere thought that someone would be nosy enough to come see him, to come gawk at the stone flame like an oddity on display-\n\nA loud crash from just inside the mouth of the tunnel that led to his dwelling.\n\nThe clang and tinny echo of fallen metal, like a tumbled set of armor had his hammer arm stopping midair from another catastrophic downward swing, golden eyes snapping to the opening.\n\nFor as large as the half golem god was, stealth had never been an issue for him. Krater moved on light feet, silent as the night that shrouded his realm and pushed through the opening of the labyrinth tunnels. Divine instinct led - but that scent did more than anything - him towards a series of metal benches weighed down heavily with tools for his forge.\n\nFor a second he was concerned for whoever was hidden in one of the pantries, worried the bench would finally give out under the weight and crush them. Then he shook off the thought and ripped the door to the pantry open.\n\n“Out with ye then,” The unused gravel of Kraters voice was evident, “Out, ‘for I drag ye out myself, ye nosy twat,” Krater continued, snapping.\n\nThat’s it you lumbering oaf, snap at your first company in thousands of years. Krater chided himself, trying to sound less hostile but to no avail.\n\n“Ye’ll come out, and ye’ll tell me how ye got past the curse barricade.” He settled on, crossing his arms for their appearance. “Else ye’ll find ou’ why they locked me up in here to start with,” He was trying to remain stern, trying not to be distracted.\n\nAetherna’s hells, that scent.