"Right," Astrid nodded thoughtfully, leaning against the forge’s focal point as her power fueled the tiny sun burning inside. The sweltering heat of the forge bounced uselessly off her powerful body, only causing some small beads of sweat on her brow and the pale, supple skin of cleavage shown by her loose clothing.

Leaning with one hand while the other rested on her hip, she raised an eyebrow. "That doesn’t explain how you’re going to fuse it, though? I remember you couldn’t even pull a single bead more than an inch away from the rest before it snapped back in place."

Erik chuckled and nodded. One hand rested casually in his pocket, as the other was held open, palm up, with the bracelet resting on it. A few steps away from both of them, the newly-made hammer head was starting to glow red-hot in the forge.

He looked down at the bracelet. "You’re right, of course. But I’ve been doing a little experimenting with this thing since then, and obviously I’ve attuned myself to it."

Suddenly, he slipped the bracelet on his wrist. The dark blue beads glowed for a moment, then settled. But not for long. Erik’s fingers moved, and the beginnings of a magic circle began to form. Instantly, the bracelet began to rotate, its beads sliding across Erik’s skin until one was directly under his palm. That bead then dislodged and jumped into his palm, causing Erik to close his fist around it.

Erik grinned. The magic he’d been gathering immediately intensified, and the circle finished almost instantly. It floated in front of his closed fist. He kept it there for a moment, appreciatively inspecting the thrumming power in this spell. Power he’d not felt from his spatial spells before beginning to experiment with this bracelet.

Then he let the spell fizzle out, wisely deciding not to unleash anything destructive right now.

Astrid looked at him with a suitably impressed expression. Erik presented her with the bead in his palm with a grin. "As you can see, the beads can dislodge as part of the bracelet’s functioning. Each bead represents an aspect of the spatial affinity, and when you attempt to use that aspect, the corresponding bead activates."

Astrid parted her lips to respond, but before she could say anything, the bead began to vibrate. Erik tried to hold it for a moment, but then it shot back to its place on the bracelet. Wryly, he shrugged, and Astrid giggled. "Can’t hold it for long, huh?" she suggested teasingly.

Erik smirked and shook his head. "No, but I don’t need to!"

With a swipe of his hand, he pulled the hammer back out of the forge. The white-hot metal hammerhead pelted him with skin-melting heat, but he was unperturbed. He quickly got to work. Though he didn’t have a spell for every aspect of the spatial affinity, his research had told him what those aspects were, and so he could still summon that energy from inside him.

He activated the first bead. As it jumped into his palm, he immediately pressed the bead into one of the grooves forming a ring around the centre of his hammer. The groove was deliberately a little too small, but he used his powerful strength in combination with the softened metal to push it in just a little before using his smithing hammer to force it in all the way.

He didn’t pause to check his work, fully confident in himself. He activated the next bead and repeated the process with the next groove. The hammerhead rotated to give him access to every groove when he needed it. His fingers flew across the surface. His hammer was a blur. The bracelet got smaller and smaller, until only a single bead was somehow still pressed against his skin.

But, even that one was soon embraced by the metal of Erik’s hammer. When every bead was placed, Erik clapped his hands with a focused frown. When his hands separated, each hand held a magic circle of icy-white, fizzling magic energy. Thundersnow boomed and then hit the hammerhead.

Instantly, the freezing lightning energy surged through every molecule of the hammerhead to rapidly cool and quench it. Extreme heat clashed with extreme cold, causing a light vapour to sizzle into existence and spread throughout the room.

It took a mere few moments before Erik stopped the flow of energy. Only slightly nervous, he stepped forward. Waving some of the vapours away, he firmly grabbed his new weapon just below the hammerhead and yanked it up. A satisfied grin spread on his lips as he inspected the weapon.

Though mostly black, icy-white and light purple streaks of colour formed intricate patterns and runes across the metal. His symbol gleamed dangerously on the flat side. His fingers then trailed across the circle of now-filled grooves running from the base of the handle, across the left side, to the top, and back down on the right.

Circular, lightly pulsing patterns of sigils and runes emanated from the grooves. The beads were nearly fully enclosed by metal, only exposing their tops as small, dark blue spots of colour amongst the white and purple.

Astrid walked over and cooed as she inspected the weapon with him. Her hand touched one of the beads, and she cocked an eyebrow. "It’s... vibrating," she muttered in surprise, feeling the bead tremble lightly under her fingers.

Erik nodded, smirking lightly. "They’re trying to dig deeper into the metal. The beads are still arranged in a circle, with their centre being the core of the hammerhead. So... at this point, the beads would stay in place, even without my efforts. They can’t actually dig through the metal, but that’s the only place they want to go right now."

He then pointed at the softly pulsing lines encircling every bead. "These runes will dissipate the energy generated from those vibrations, so that they don’t slowly crack the metal over a long time."

Suddenly, he started gathering spatial energy and sending it through the hammer. Instantly, one of the beads started glowing harder, and a magic circle formed in front of Erik’s symbol at the flat side of the hammer. His grin widened. The enclosing of the metal would act as the enclosing of a fist, causing the beads to work like normal as the runes and sigils Erik had worked into the hammer would guide spatial energy through them. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

After nearly a full week of work, he had his new hammer.