A daughter of Hephaestus stood in the doorway of Camp Half-Blood's forge, watching the sun lick the horizon. She looked like a runner, lean and muscular though not very tall, with tanned skin and long, dark hair haphazardly tricked into a ponytail. Her scarred leather apron, several sizes too big, was dulled with smoke and streaked with all manner of filth. Anyone else in shorts would have been shivering in the early March morning, but Natalie's face was still flushed from the forge's fumes. She pulled off a leather glove with her teeth and wiped her face with a relatively clean hand.
Motion caught her eye, and she looked away from the sun that would have blinded anyone else but an Apollo kid. Noticing a bleary-eyed camper stumble out of the Hades cabin, a smile sprang across her face.
"Hey," she called to the dark-haired boy, quietly enough not to wake any of the light sleepers but loudly enough for his sharp ears to catch across the grounds. He looked up abruptly, surprised that anyone else was awake (Why was he awake? Natalie wondered), then sighed and rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. Natalie laughed lightly as he waded through the dewy grass toward her, and admired how his dark, shaggy hair looked bronze in the morning light. She absently wished hers did that.
"What is it?" Nico asked when he reached her, trying to blink away sleep.
"Too early for you?" Natalie smirked at his dark, sleepy eyes. "You know what I want, Styx Boy."
"Yep." He glanced loftily down at her, and drew his sword from his hip. It slid gracefully from its sheath, and Nico watched the expression on her face grow jealous with a smirk.
Suddenly Natalie snatched the sword by the blade with her gloved hand, wrenching it out of Nico's unprepared limb with a grin from her and a yelp of surprise and maybe a little discomfort from him.
"Stygian iron," muttered Nico di Angelo, sulking at the fact that a girl had taken his weapon.
"Mhmm," Natalie answered absently as she examined the dark metal. She turned the sword and looked down its blade, balanced it across her finger, and finally came to a consensus. "That is one sorry excuse for Stygian iron," she told Nico with a look of disgust. "I'd expect a much better sword from anybody that bothered to forge Stygian iron. There's no way you can fight with that!"
"Hey!" Nico said indignantly, snatching his sword back. She made no move to stop him, and he stumbled backward. "That sword's from my father," he muttered, ramming the weapon back into its sheath.
"Well, go ask him for a b—." Natalie fell abruptly silent. Her eyes lit up. Would he let her reforge it? The idea was almost too good to be true—if Nico would just agree! "Can I—," she hesitated. "Can I reforge it?" she begged Nico. She was almost afraid to hope for a yes. "Ohmygoodness, please?" The words tumbled out of her mouth, tripping on one another. "I could make a magnificent sword with this much iron!" Her brow furrowed momentarily. "Of course, I'm used to celestial bronze, but iron's not that different..."
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Nico hesitated. "But if you know what you're doing..."
"Yes!" Natalie thrust a triumphant fist into the air. She rushed forward and hugged Nico so hard around the waist he coughed.
"Okay," Nico muttered awkwardly to himself, wondering if he'd made a wise decision.
Natalie tugged her glove back on and darted into the forge. Nico tried to digest what had just happened. Girls just did everything too fast—except for changing or going to the bathroom. But they talked, ran around, and thought way too fast for anyone with a Y chromosome to keep up. He had barely woken up—not even voluntarily at that; he'd had horrible insomnia again—and Natalie had no doubt been wide awake since before the crack of dawn.
Natalie reemerged laden with a huge leather backpack that made destructive clanking sounds at every step. She'd pulled on an orange Camp Half-Blood hoodie and a pair of jeans several sizes too big (Nico suspected they belonged to one of her brothers). Her apron appeared to have disappeared into the pack. "So," she said. "The Underworld? How do you travel nowadays?"
"Uh, yeah. Let's see..." He turned toward the forest and whistled. A distant barking made Natalie flinch. "The hellhound?" she asked gingerly.
"Well, yeah. Daughters of Hephaestus don't shadow travel too well by themselves, last I checked." Nico looked like he was trying to figure out what was bothering her.
Natalie fidgeted. "Well... tell her to be, uh—"
"You don't like dogs."
"Not especially," she grumbled at his unhelpful grin.
"So I'll tell her to behave, not to drool all over you," shrugged Nico.
Mrs. O'Leary burst out of the forest and bounded toward them eagerly. Second to Percy Jackson, Nico was probably the hellhound's favorite camper. He quieted the massive dog easily—she didn't even knock him down—and scratched her behind the ears while he apparently gave her instructions to the Underworld. She turned to Natalie, more docilely than usual despite an enthusiastically wagging tail, and lay down on the ground in front of the skittish girl. She yawned happily and looked expectantly over her shoulder at Natalie. A little more confident now that Mrs. O'Leary had chilled out, Natalie climbed awkwardly onto the black dog's back.
Nico was smirking. "See you there," he said as he literally melted into shadow she was pretty sure hadn't been there a moment before.
"Bye," Natalie grumbled. Mrs. O'Leary, however, remained sprawled on the ground where Nico had left her. "Um," Natalie hesitated, "go? Styx?"
The hellhound leaped to her feet and bounded into darkness that definitely hadn't been there a minute ago, and Natalie's stomach exploded, wind whipped her face, and odd noises echoed through the darkness. Abruptly the dog skidded to a stop, panting hard. In front of them was the River Styx.
"Welcome to the Underworld," teased Nico, rubbing his eyes even more sleepily, as she slid off the drowsy hound's back.
Recovering, Natalie made a wobbly bow. "Why, thank you, Nico."
The Styx, as it turned out, was horribly littered and smelled positively poisonous. She grabbed Nico's sword from his hip, and looked from the sword to the river, trying to make a connection. "That's it?" she asked incredulously. "That's the bucket of sewage that produced this gorgeous piece of metal?"
"I thought it was a sorry excuse for Stygian iron," supplied Nico.
Natalie ignored him. "That's what made this sword the beauty that it is? That's what the gods swear by?" she practically shouted. Clearly she expected far more from the river that muted a god for nine years. However, when the ground shook violently beneath her, she shut her mouth with an audible click.
"Moron," Nico said. "Makes a fine sword. That's what we're here for."
"I'll bet it does if I forge it," Natalie grinned. With a grunt and a clatter, she dumped her leather pack on the ground. Nico would be impressed if anything in it was still in once piece.
"What in Hades is in there?" he asked.
"Oh, only an entire forge," she answered with a shrug. Out of it she produced a small anvil, hammers, buckets, and different-size files. "Styx Boy," she ordered, trying not to smile. "I want your little Underworld-ness to build some stone walls right here"—she drew a large rectangle in the sod with Nico's sword—"two feet high and thick enough to be sturdy."
Nico scowled, apparently unappreciative of Natalie's barking.
"You can do that, right?" She put her hands on her hips. "What's that? Have I offended Styx Boy? I'm sorry." She rolled her eyes. "Nico, please make little Underworld walls right there." She pointed.
Hiding a smile, Nico turned his back on her and walked away, and just as Natalie was about to chuck the sword at the back of his head, stone thrust from the ground precisely where she'd drawn the lines.
"Impressive," muttered Natalie grudgingly, the sword falling to her side. "Um, am I allowed to get a bucket of water from the Styx to dip this sword in, or do I have to cool it in the actual river?" She looked up at the son of Hades.
"I'd cool it in the river," Nico said. "I don't know what would happen if you tried to take water from it. Probably nothing good."
"Alright, then." Natalie looked down at her empty little forge. "Hey, can I have a little platform thing for the anvil?" As she spoke, one wall of the makeshift forge thickened into a sort of table. "Very nice," she told Nico.
He mock bowed. "Why thank you, Hammerhead."
"Shut up," Natalie advised. "I have the knife here."
"S'not a knife," Nico muttered to himself, but he sat against one of the stumpy little trees along the river to watch her work.
Carefully, Natalie concentrated heat into a blue flame and sliced the tongue of flame with the black iron, which glowed instantly. "Ah, good old Dad and his fire. Watch this," she told Nico. She plucked the flame right out of the air and rolled it between her hands like a ball of clay. It glowed brighter and she tossed it in the air and caught it. She showed him her hands, which were of course unscathed. "We're the original pyromaniacs," she winked.
"Oh, forge the sword already," Nico rolled his eyes, but Natalie knew he was impressed.
She settled the flame among the pebbles at the bottom of her forge, turning them from black to a dull orange that glowed brighter every minute. She turned her attention to the sword, and figured she'd better unwrap the hilt first. "What's this?" she asked, peeling off some kind of monster hide from around the grip of the sword.
"It looks like dragon to me."
"Either that or dracaena, which is dirt-cheap and a crappy gift. It's like the fools' gold of the hero world. So I would rather think it's dragonhide. Would you like to know? If it's dracaena skin, well, you won't have it anymore, and nothing will happen if it's dragon."
He shrugged. "If it's dracaena, then it's not worth much, right, so why not?"
Natalie held a flame-crowned finger to the edge of the skin and watched as a cooler orange flame licked up the scales. "Nope, it's dragonhide. Nice stuff. So now for the blade itself."
She pretty much wadded the blade like a bunch of Play-Doh into a chunk of iron and made an entirely different weapon. She hammered and folded, hammered some more, but Nico thought she nested the blade in the fire far less frequently than another smith would have.
"So," Nico asked, "why do you wear those gloves if heat doesn't touch you?"
Natalie smiled. She remembered the talking-to she'd gotten from Jackson when she'd asked this very question. "Well theoretically, right, I could just mold the blade with my hands?" She shook her head. "A red-hot sword has sharp edges too. And the metal is really rough. I haven't actually tried to do this, but one of my brothers still has scars from when he was young and stupid." She shrugged with a grin. "More than he is now, at least." Nico chuckled, and silence fell again as Natalie continued to shape his blade.
Nico, to be honest, had had his doubts about letting a teenager reform a sword that had supposedly been forged by a professional, but he appreciated his decision more and more as his new weapon took shape. It was slightly curved, with a few inches of the inside edge serrated near the hilt. Inscribed along the center of the blade was Ancient Greek: δεύτερος βίος
"'Second life,'" Nico murmured. "Nice."
"It's read 'Betanima.' Probably should have asked you," Natalie said apologetically, "but it's usually the forger's job to name a sword, and it just felt right."
"No, you're fine," he said. "It's beautiful."
Natalie beamed. "I don't have to worry about durability because once it goes swimming in there," she gestured toward the Styx with a nod, "it's a Superman sword, so it's really light and graceful." She frowned. "I just have to make sure it doesn't sag."
She yanked off both her gloves and picked the red-hot blade delicately out of the flames. The whole sword was made. Even the hilt was iron, under the dragonhide that would cover it. Natalie walked to the Styx with reverence, all disgust and sarcasm gone. She thrust the newborn sword into the hissing water, careful not to touch the river. "Oh, crap," she said.
"What?"
"The sword is now Stygian iron."
"Yes?"
"Except for the hilt."
"Here," Nico offered to take the sword. She reluctantly handed it to him, forgetting that it was red-hot as well, but he gripped it by the hilt and plunged the whole weapon under. The river lapped over his fist and he swore in pain, but Natalie suspected that it would have done anyone else considerably more damage.
Steam curled off the gleaming sword, and Natalie gasped as Nico offered it to her hilt first. The metal was the color of obsidian, but had a distinct metallic sheen to it. The sword didn't even need to be filed; it was completely smooth, and fatally sharp. It the most beautiful weapon she had ever fashioned, and, quite honestly, believed she ever would. The heat of the weapon was still intense, but although Natalie was vaguely aware of it, it left her skin unharmed.
As the sword cooled, Natalie became aware of staggering fatigue. She swayed, and Nico grasped her arm. He looked concerned. "You alright? You were at it for a while."
Her brow furrowed. "Apparently." She gripped Nico's hand and tried to sit down while remaining vaguely vertical. "Heat has a healing effect on us Hephaestus kids, so I usually take a few eons making a sword, then realize when I'm done that I'm starving, dehydrated, and exhausted." Natalie glanced at the water. "Not drinking that."
Nico laughed. "You bring an anvil, buckets, files, scraps of metal, tons of other crap we don't need, and no food? Way to go, Hammerhead."