"Och I must. I cannae just be leavin' all oop to a wee slip o' a thing loike youse. It would never be done, cert'ly noo right." He was clearly smiling under that huge beard of his, teasing her.<br/><br/>By that evening the big Dwarf had set himself up in the forge, he had, as it turned out, brought a set of basic tools with him, he laid and lit the forge and set about using the rest of the day to check over and repair the tools that the village had in place for metalworking. The evening was spent scrounging up a lot of raw materials from neighbours and abandoned buildings. By the time sun was sinking he had a great deal of steel, leather, brass, raw iron, sand, wood and lots of coal.<br/><br/>The first few days were spent building some kind of contraption that doubled the size of and automated the bellows. The 'Eeengin.' as Sour Belly refereed to it had to be wound up with a large lever which if the villagers were to do it on their own would take three big burly men. The Dwarf could do it on his own and a little faster. He made sure the men and women of the village were all familiar with how to operate this before he went on.<br/><br/>Thus the little forge was able to reach much hotter temperatures and the Dwarf was able, with another few days effort and some more modifications, to produce steel of a far higher quality than any the villagers had ever seen.<br/><br/>Then the real work began.<br/><br/>It was another two weeks before the bow as complete. There was a lot of delicate work on its own 'eeengin' which was similar to the simpler one that ran the forge. This one had two winding settings. One for Rose, which would take around three hundred turns before giving the loud 'click' to signal that it was ready and the other for Sour Belly that took only around thirty five but was impossible for any human to turn.<br/><br/>It looked like most human crossbows, only the bow staves, the string, the body, the lever, the nock, all were metal. Under the main body was a round drum which held the short bolts. After each one was loosed the bow, when wound, would automatically re-cock itself and load the next bolt without intervention in just over a second at full wind. The bow was incredibly powerful and had a tendency to shatter wooden bolts. Only the thin metal bolts that Sour Belly produced for it would work reliably with it. He had cast one hundred and fifty of these and the drum would hold fifteen. The eeengin was set into the stock, another drum, this one with a large winding key on the back of it that folded flat to the body when not in use.<br/><br/>When shot it kicked like a mule and took no small amount of becoming used to, though it was a lovely looking thing.<br/><br/>Inlaid with brass and silver it was very finely decorated, with scroll work and relief and some kind of lettering. Sour Belly assured Rain that it read, "Bite o' t' storm." in some language she didn't know, something to do with 'Pointy's init?'.<br/><br/>It was an incredible piece of work and it was hers. The bolts would, when shot at a tree, sink in to the solid metal flights. Sour Belly assured her that, "Thee could shoot t' bow through ten greenskins and kill the eleventh."<br/><br/>He had been doing a lot of other repairs and metalwork on the side and had, despite his prophesying doom by goblins, become very well liked and respected around the village. He worked hard and long, never seemed to tire and was friendly to just about everyone.