The cold seeped through gaps in the timber, curling around the edges of the frame, spreading across the stone floor in invisible currents. Christofer closed his eyes tightly, sucked in a deep breath and then exhaled. He heaved forward with an exhausted groan, hugging his knees on the stone floor. A delayed ripple of pain crawled across his shoulders.

  “Right. Survival continues.”

  Cold clung to his legs. He pushed himself to his feet and kicked the drifts of snow toward the wyvern and the doorway. Clearing a narrow path through the debris and snow, he stopped by the workbench and knelt beside a wooden stool. Layers of dust covered the stone, he grabbed a cracked leather apron someone had left to rot, and a smithing glove, too small for him to wear, left-handed.

  The winds outside gripped at the structure. The door rattled. The drawbar held but the whole frame shuddered. Snow whistled through the gap underneath, spreading across the stone in a white tongue. The door settled and he rose. He inhaled deeply as he looked down at the workbench. He braced his hands against the bench and blew away the dust. He ran his hand along the revealed surface. Scored wood. Old burns. A few rusted nails still embedded where someone had given up prying them loose. He scratched at them with his fingers.

  ‘Could be useful?’

  He folded the apron and glove over the anvil in the middle of the room. Crouching down, he checked the base. A large heavy rectangular stone sat wedged between the anvil's wooden block and the floor. He ran a finger over the coarse surface, dragging a fine line of dust. Rubbing his fingers against the dust. He paused, pointing at it absentmindedly.

  ‘That’s… probably a whetstone? I could probably use that.’

  He looked close-by into a wooden quenching barrel topped with ice. The wind slammed against the wooden shutters, hinges rattling. He turned his head to the sound and noticed something sticking out of the snow in the corner of the room. The snow crunched under his boots. He grabbed it and held it up to his face. The other glove. He turned it around. A hand was still left in it. He closed his eyes tightly in exhaustion. Too tired to process what he saw. He squeezed the hand out of the glove with surprising ease.

  ‘Fuck it. Future-me’s problem. You go to the dead pile.’

  He tossed it over his shoulder in the direction of the dead wyvern. He opened his eyes and grabbed the glove from the anvil. He compared the two, placed a glove on his palm. Same set. He judged how much bigger his hands were. He turned it inside out, looked at the seam which held the two halves together. He glanced at the hind legs of the wyvern, then back at the glove. He moved to the wyvern and reached into the open cavity in its belly.

  He pulled out the rib bone from earlier and crawled to the wyvern hind legs. The wyvern lay on its side across the stone floor, one hind leg trapped beneath the weight of its body while the other hung stiffly in the air. He ducked under, shuffling along the ground as if a death twitch would somehow make its leg kick out. He paused by the frostbitten leg below. Held up the bone, grabbing the iron chain, pulling it taut and using it as a guide. Pressing the rib bone against the iron fetter where the metal had already flayed the scales raw. The fetter bit deep into the lower tibia, just above the ankle joint. The skin there was torn open, black hide rubbed slick and red from the creature’s struggle. He jammed the rib into the torn flesh above the ankle joint and drove it deeper with the mug. A dull thock. He grabbed the chain. Pulled. The fetter twisted. Something inside the leg shifted with a wet grinding scrape. He reset the bone and pulled again, harder this time, yanking the chain like he was trying to start an antique lawnmower. The joint jerked sideways. A stringy tearing sound followed.

  “Huh, this actually seems to be working.”

  He wedged the rib deeper, braced his shoulder against the frozen limb, and hauled on the chain with his full weight. The fetter spun. A thick ligament snapped with a rubbery crack. The ankle dislocated violently. The foot hung crooked, attached by little more than sinew. Christofer leaned forward and drove the rib sideways like a pry bar, the bone jammed deep in the twisted ankle. The rib split with a dry crack as the last tendons gave way with a wet squelch. He fell back to the stone floor, clutching the severed hind foot in his arms.

  The iron fetter slid down with a metallic clang onto the floor, startling Christofer. He blew out a deep frustrated breath. He rose to his feet, wobbled from the dizziness of rising too fast, and stumbled to the work desk. He laid the Wyvern hind foot on the table and grabbed the two gloves. He made sure both were wrung out. Using the sickle claw on the foot, he carefully cut up the seams that held the two gloves together. A shutter slammed open. Wind screamed through the gap, driving snow across the room. The cold hit his face like a slap. Snow scattered across the workbench. Across the work in progress gloves.

  "Oh, for fuck's sake."

  He grabbed the shutter and yanked it closed. Held it there. The wind fought back, trying to rip it from his grip. He looked at the frame. A frayed rope tied to a handle, hammered in place with two nails. The rope had snapped. He held the shutter with his shoulder, reached for the rope. Too short. Wouldn't reach the hook on the wall. He looked around. Nothing close. The wind yanked at the shutter. His shoulder burned from the pressure. His eyes fell on the chain. On the ground, links of chain trailing across the floor. He grabbed it and fed a loop through the shutter handle, pulling the chain tight. The fetter scraped across the stones with an uncomfortable screech as he pulled the chain attached to it. He hooked the chain over the iron hook on the wall and let the weight drop. The chain went taut. The shutter pulled against it but held. The wind tested it. Rattled but didn't blow open. He grabbed the apron from the anvil and wedged it between the chain and the handle. The rattling stopped.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  ‘Gecko. Math me. Assuming I cut a long strip of wyvern belly skin, how much would I need to make this glove wearable to me?’

  The gecko rose from the back of his hand like surfacing from a lake. Its tiny limbs pushed its body up as it observed the glove. Christofer stepped back to the breach in the Wyvern.

  ‘Two strips needs to be cut three fingers wide, two hands long,’ rippled from the gecko.

  He pressed four fingers to jagged line on its belly along the gaping tear and hooked in the Wyvern’s hind claw into the flesh, pulling a clean line over the tissue, a little more than four hands in length. Three careful vertical pulls with the claw pulled the tissue loose. He repeated the same shaky maneuver with slight bit more confidence, using the previous cut as reference. A crack echoed from outside. Tree snapping under ice and snow’s building weight and thundered to the ground outside. He paused, then returned to the workbench.

  He laid out the four strips on the table, pressing and rolling the mug over them to squeeze out fat, clotted blood, and loose connective tissue. Cleaning them up as much as was humanly possible with the limited tools. He picked the hind foot again and moved to the mouth of the wyvern. The sickle claw slid between two long teeth. He twisted and cut the gumline until one loosened. He held it up.

  ‘Yeah, that’ll probably work’

  He moved over to the anvil, right hand slamming the mug through the frozen ice layer covering the quenching barrel. His hand momentarily slipped into the deathly cold as he scooped up a mugful of water and poured it on the whetstone. He worked the long narrow tooth on the whetstone, carefully making it thinner, sharper. Like a needle. Christofer held the tooth. The point was sharp now, the edges clean. But he needed something else.

  "A burr," the gecko rippled. "Grind a small ridge near the base. The thread will catch there."

  He turned the tooth over. Looked at the smooth enamel.

  "Like a notch? Hm, yeah that could work."

  He pressed the tooth sideways against the whetstone. The stone scraped against enamel. He adjusted the angle. After a dozen passes, he ran his thumb over the spot. He rose back up and walked back to the workbench.

  ‘Material, Needle… Thread?’

  Christofer looked down to his gambeson and pulled out a loose strand of the troll hairs that kept growing. Then pulled out a length of thread from the gambeson, more than he’d need. He tied the troll hair around the subtle groove of the teeth-needle. He methodically pressed the needle through the wyvern skin. In and out. Carefully, to make sure the needle didn’t snap. Then the glove sections. He turned the wyvern skin so that the rough scaly side faced inward. He pulled the thread up. He paused and looked at the stunted glove-fingers.

  ‘Gecko, more math. Fingers, how much more extending do I need?’

  The skin stretched as far as the glove fingers. Four strands of troll hairs hanging from the opening. Using the wyvern sickle claw, he severed the fingers on the gloves using careful pulls. The gecko swiveled to the finger portion.

  “One long strip. Thinner, two fingers wide. But as long as before. Then an additional five strips. Two fingers wide, half a finger long.” rippled through the gecko.

  Christofer returned to the wyvern, pressing the claw into the skin, slowly cut before he returned back to the workbench. He pushed in the tooth into the skin. Where the fingers had been, and then sewed each finger tips tightly. His right hand cramped. He flexed his fingers, shook it out. The cold was getting into his joints. He tucked his hands under his armpits for a count of ten. Warmth returned. Barely. He went back to sewing.

  Then the long strip covered the outside in one seamless motion from the thumb to the little finger. Numerous stray troll hairs hung like a rat nest. He wove the loose strands and tied each with a knot. His vision blurred. He blinked hard. The edges of the glove went soft, then sharpened again. How long had he been working? The light through the gaps was dimming. All the pieces were sewn, in place. He turned it inside out and pushed his right hand into it. A snug fit. He curled his fingers, flexed them out.

  “Not bad. Now I need to do that all over again with the other hand.”

  He gathered the second set of pieces on the workbench and continued. Each stitch followed methodically, although he had to pause to shake his head to retain focus occasionally. The edges of his work went gray. He leaned closer, squinting at the stitches. He'd need to finish soon. Working in the dark wasn't an option. He looked at the forge. At the charcoal. He tied the final knots and wrung it out, pressing his hand into it. He flexed his fingers for a moment.

  ‘Next problem.’

  He breathed out a shaky breath, unbuttoning the gambeson. He pulled it off, sensing a shift in the air as the siphoning stopped. The room shuddered with a flash of heat before cold gripped tighter around him. He belched out a plume of steam. He pulled a handful of the blackened troll thread from the gambeson and started sewing both entrance and exit openings shut. He made some extra careful stitches and tied the knots. He placed the needle back on the workbench. Quick and dirty. Enough.

  He shakily put the gambeson back on, feeling the fabric hug around his shoulders. He buttoned it up again, the fabric bit back on his torso with the leaks plugged, resuming to siphon the residual arcane bleed. He looked back at the unlit forge. He breathed out a tired sigh and moved toward it.