A Song for Winter: Earth Maul

William decided it was time to craft an earth elemental weapon for himself. At first, he was going to make a set of metal knuckle weapons that would gather stone around them when activated. That idea was scrapped however when William made a prototype of said metal knuckles and found them incredibly uncomfortable and difficult to slip on and off in a hurry. Several other ideas were bounced around until William found one he could make work. He had a water sword and a fire ax so naturally, the next weapon to add to his inventory would be an earth maul.

 

The first step was to craft a haft for the maul that would be extra durable and could support the weight of stones and earth when activated. Word of a metal stronger than titans that could be combined with iron and silver aster reached William’s ears through his network of spies and informants. William used a portal to visit a deep earth quarry to see about acquiring some of this metal. Unfortunately, the mine was owned by a greedy king that was only interested in profits. Some aggressive diplomacy later, William walked out of the mines with a bag full of the metal ore he was after and some scrapped-up knuckles. 

 

William’s forge had to be heated hotter than he had ever heated it before to get this new metal to melt and combine with the iron and silver aster. He was sweating buckets at a time as he used his water sword to cool himself down.  Once the new metal was mixed with the iron it had to be hammered out into a rod. Hammer blows rained down upon the metal hour after hour and day after day. The constant need to reheat the metal to its almost forge melting temperature along with the massive amounts of strength needed to shape the metal was taking a toll on William. By the end of the week, he was sore and tired but he had a three-foot-long rod of metal.

 

After a week of warm baths and relaxation, William was ready to start working on his new weapon once again. A special magitech saw that ran on fire magic had to be located to cut the end of the haft. The cut pieces were carefully heated and rehammered into four prongs that were then closed around an earth pearl. At this stage, it looked more like a scepter than a maul but there was still more work to be done to complete it. Leather was wrapped around the haft to create grips for both one and two-handed wielding along. William also crafted a sheathe to wear on his back that would allow him to carry his new weapon with ease once it was ready. With the earth pearl in place, the next step was to charge it with primal earth energy to fully activate it.

 

There was only one place that William could think of that had the proper earth energies, the Grove of the Harvest Druids. At the center of the grove was a wellspring of earth energy that enchanted the nearby trees and vegetation which made them grow faster and larger than normal. William plunged his new weapon into the wellspring and left it for a week. After that week he returned to retrieve his weapon. Flowers and ivy had become magically sketched into the metal of the weapon haft and the earth pearl shone brightly. With his weapon charged, William left the grove to test out his new weapon somewhere relatively safe. 

 

Back in the frozen northlands, William held the haft of his new earth maul tightly in his hands. With a mighty two-handed swing, the earth magics were unconsciously activated. Earth and stone gathered around the earth pearl in the rough shape of a fifty-pound maul. Despite the weight, it was easily wielded in both one or two hands. The weight of the weapon shifted as it moved through the air to make it easy to swing and bring back with relative ease. Gravity seemed to shift around the impact point of the hammer to make the hits more devastating than they would have been otherwise. When the hammer aspect of the maul wasn’t active it could be used as a scepter to grow plants and heal wounds. Plus the metal haft made an excellent dueling staff in situations where nonlethal attacks were needed. With this new weapon in his arsenal, William finally had control of all the elements to himself.