Chapter 469: Forging Ahead in Toledo

Changing for dinner was an understatement.

Unlike in Barcelona, they serve dinner here at eight. None on the trip expected, except my parents, everyone getting mobbed by the staff and their kids. Each got bathed, guys groomed, girls got their hair done up, and everyone was dressed formally for dinner. It wasn’t quite the tux and tails formal, but it would pass for a casual dinner with some elite families that were royalty in their country.

We had a full five-course dinner, including wine. Everyone had the same meal. Surprisingly, everyone ate, or at least tried, everything served. Those with diet restrictions had what smelled and tasted the same but had some ingredients replaced. The chefs even had what appeared to be shrimp and muscles that tasted like them but weren’t even seafood.

“I hope that that shrimp doesn’t cause me to go to the hospital. It was so good that I will gladly use my Epi-pen when the attack hits,” one boy said.

The head chef came over to say, “Sir, that would indeed be the case if you have any shellfish or fish in your meal. What you had was made entirely using a plant-based shrimp substitute, which perfectly matches the flavor and texture. We had no seafood of any kind in tonight’s meal. Everything was a vegan plant-based substitute. We desire to provide you with traditional Spanish cuisine without the risk of cross-contamination with shellfish or seafood. It is a great honor that none here, including Mr. Sushi Disposal, couldn’t detect the substitution.”

“No, it is just because you are that damn good,” I praised.

He laughed and said, “My staff and I are damn good. That is why we regularly have large groups come here to have dinner, stay overnight, have breakfast, and then tour Toledo before departing.”

I saw that some of the kids from my class were getting a bit restless. I went to each of them to palm off six rubbers. I suggested that maybe they would like to walk off dinner out in the gardens after changing clothes. Some never got past the getting undressed part and stayed in their rooms. Others were casually handed a backpack with a blanket, more rubbers, water, flashlights, and small armored GPS units with the walking paths marked out. The software automatically did its best to keep space between the others. It also gave a thirty-foot radius bubble showing groups of two or more people nearby that were stopped or strolling. My implant told me this area had over a hundred little paths that ended in little nooks. Each had vines or shrubs carefully grown over specially designed roofs that gave shelter and blocked out light for privacy day or night. We did have path lighting that gave low light. Those turned on in the nooks and just outside when someone stopped in there for whatever reason. The lights leading to the primary walking paths are turned off when “in use” to give additional privacy.

I see some parents and even groups of younger kids going out on private walks.

When I saw one, very horny as in wet spot and hard nipples anyone could see from across the property, heading off with two of the fathers on the trip, I was about to intercept. Alex did something that worked better than what I had planned.

Two gorgeous eighteen-year-old women came up to ask the men to join them for a walk.

It was a perfect night to take a walk and enjoy some bottles of wine from the grapes they grew here. Since both women had the girl’s body outclassed and beat her on looks easily, the men agreed to them coming along.

Sorry to throw cold water on your plans to get those men to fuck you. You won’t get what you want anyway, and it will be over as soon as it starts.

The second part of Alex’s plan came running down the hall. Two boys slapped the girl’s butt, yelled tag, and ran off toward the barn.

A girl came by, grabbed the horny girl’s hand, and asked? “What are you waiting for? They tagged your butt. We are girls and faster than them, plus we can hold them down and make them do anything we want.”

We heard the kids chasing each other around. I watched the men and two women hurry off in the other direction to find a place to do what all four wanted, but away from prying eyes.

“That is one of the many reasons dad had me take over day-to-day operations. Yet one more of the skills I learned when being a wet nurse. That little girl’s body wanted something her mind wasn’t ready for yet. Both boys are about the length of your middle finger and have a similar circumference. The girl from here was right about those men not having much more than the boys. The difference is that even if she had gone with the men, it wouldn’t be what she expected, and then she would be resentful before getting angry. Girls her age can’t keep a secret about something like that from their best friends. Those men wouldn’t intentionally hurt her, but they would worry someone would come across them. They will do it as fast as it takes them to get off, zip up, and go. If the boys fail to impress, they are still boys her age, not parents of other kids on the trip cheating on their wives to fuck her,” Alex’s daughter told me. “I did have another reason for intervening. I need your dick before you run off to give Alex what she can’t find anywhere else. Her sisters and cousins need some of it too.”

You need to get more dick. Can you even go ten minutes before you can’t take more for a while?

“Dad did call from the forge and said something cryptic. He said something about the young ones rushed and were stuck,” she told me.

I hugged her and told April, “You have to ask her if you can sleep in her bed and nurse her empty even if you hadn’t breastfed in over two years.”

Alex’s daughter had a nipple in April’s mouth as soon as she could pick April up. They moved to a rocking chair as I dressed. Both were off to a shared world built from the bond years ago.

I told my parents I was heading to the forge, and my mom asked if I was taking April.

“I’m not taking her out of her happy place. She has one of Alex’s nipples in her mouth, trying to help drain Alex’s engorged breasts so that Alex doesn’t have to pump to keep up her milk production. Both are where they want to be right now. April will come along with the group in the morning. Nobody told me for sure, but I suspect she has some two-year-old half-siblings there she wants to meet,” I explained.

A taxi took me up to the store and forge. When I walked around the back, I saw that the same kids who had filled up the large crucible, trying to shortcut the process, had grown a lot. Both were at least six inches taller and had fifty more pounds of muscle. That didn’t stop me from moving up behind the walk, grabbing the straps of their overalls and lifting them in the air.

“You two should be in there helping the young ones fix their mistakes instead of Alex calling his daughter to have me come do it,” I told them as they tried to get loose.

Before they knew it, I had them turn around to face me as I hugged them both.

“We tried. The three kids put in two of the large crucibles. Trying to get the first one out, they pushed the lift too far and got it stuck. Before they told anyone, the arms got too hot. Getting it out cracked the front crucible and the metal all over the arms. Alex said you were visiting with kids from home, and if anyone could get the lift and crucible out without having to shut the furnace down, it would be you. We remember you not being bothered by the heat without protective clothes on,” they told me.

Both kids were delighted to take me to the changing area to strip me, find me some heat-resistant biking shorts, thick leather overalls, a long-sleeved shirt, a leather apron, and my boots. All this was in a spot with “David” made from scraps of metal that someone had made in the last two years since I was here.

In the furnace part of the forge, I saw two girls and a boy crying as they tried in vain to move the lift away from the furnace. I picked up two by the straps of their overalls and put them on hooks over in the cooler part of the area. I then did the third.

“You three aren’t going to get hurt by getting in my way. Just stay where I put you,” I told them.

Using the place in my head, I super-heated the metal holding the arms to the cracked crucible. It came free, and I moved it back out of the way to cool down. I went over to where they had long bars of the material used to make the lift forks. Someone had already made the plate on the ends that grabbed the lip on the crucibles to keep them from sliding off. I went to the forge, put my arms around behind Alex, and moved her out of the way, much to Andy’s amusement. I got the forge running as fast as the fan would go to get the ends of the arms white-hot, then I pushed one end into the opening in a granite block. Carefully, I pulled the bar down to make a curved hook opposite the plate that would catch the lift slot in the crucible. I did the same to the other bar before quenching them in the big oil bath to cool them off. A bath in cold water cooled them off more.

Back in the furnace area, I took the two bars, put them in front of the furnace, got one girl off the hook to go pee, and waited for her to return. Once she was safely back on the hook, I moved the bars into each side of the crucible lift slots. I squatted down, got the hooked parts over my shoulders, grabbed each bar, pushed in, got the plate hooked on the back crucible, grabbed the bars, and stood up. I carried both crucibles over to where I could put them down. I got one over where it could get picked up to pour. The cracked one went over a deep-slotted mold. Once in place, I put the bars up high on hooks where no one could touch them as they cooled. Using a hammer and long punch, I got on a ladder to where I could put a hole in the cracked crucible so the metal would empty.

Once draining out, I moved the old lift over the second crucible. That went to where the two kids who helped the last time had a mold ready to take the molten scrap metal that would need to be cooled, re-melted in smaller crucibles, and have their impurities removed from the little kid’s hurried attempt to shortcut the process.

After emptying the second crucible, I moved it to cool and used the forks to get the cracked crucible outside, where the younger kids would work off their punishments by breaking the crucible into small pieces. For generations, their grandparents said, that was to recover all the metal. In actuality, there wasn’t enough metal recovered to make a tricycle.

It could take little kids weeks to break it up into one Peseta coin-sized pieces. None of the kids ever wanted to be forced to do that as punishment.

It is an effective deterrent for little kids too small yet to work cleaning up the forge.

All three kids were hanging there limply from the hooks, sound asleep. I took them down, stripped them, and put them into the shower. The water wasn’t only cold water, but it wasn’t warmer than ninety degrees. They knew they had better be scrubbed clean from head to toe before even thinking about getting out of the shower. I got nightshirts and underwear on them before tucking them into the bed in the bedroom set in the back of the furnace part of the forge.

Andy and her Alex had headed up to bed. Alex, Andy’s granddaughter, was over hammering on a chunk of metal. I could tell she was pissed at the three little kids messing up and breaking one of the large crucibles. There were still older kids in the forge old enough to leave in charge of keeping an eye on things. I got the hammer from Alex’s hand, put her over my shoulder, and headed to the building across from the forge door.

Wow! Alex bought this entire building and leased out the shops to cover her costs to maintain the apartment and building. Can she be so horny that she didn’t even notice I didn’t need her keys to unlock the door?

I locked the door behind us before removing my leather apron and dropping my overalls and biking shorts. I didn’t bother with Alex’s apron, only pulling down her overalls and panties. I bent her over the nearest thing to support us that could handle my pounding her soaked, needy pussy.

When she was finally sated, at least for today, I asked, “Any surface or room we didn’t christen?”

I guess I will ask again in the morning since after you peed, you slid down the fireman’s pole and fell asleep.

“Day-id,” April said, bouncing on the bed. “Abuela Andy said to come to use long sticks to get the pot of metal out of the hot place. Alex comes too. Everyone says I’m too little to help.”

That is what they think. I saw what Andy was doing last night when she thought no one noticed.

Andy saw me walking in carrying April, and I got an odd look, so I told her, “I don’t think Alex or I want to know if April walks through walls, found some way to climb up through a window, or down a chimney.”

I walked into the changing room and stripped April down to her panties. She got a fire-resistant base layer and the overalls with her name embroidered in pink on the front and back. Her boots had her name on the sides. She even had a leather apron with her name in pink dyed leather. I got her hair braided back out of the way. When her gloves were on, I carried her back out.

“The clothes fairies brought April a surprise. Now you can show everyone what you and Alex were doing here so late last night,” I told April as I handed her to Alex.

Alex, in English, since Andy didn’t want to take the time to learn it if she was going to be in the forge all the time, said, “I guess some introductions are required after my daughter and her staff used those forge metaphors. My name is Alex. My family lives down the road. When I met Andy, I was just a kid not wanting to apprentice under my father. We learned how to tend to the forge. Once we had built enough muscle to carry around a four-and-a-half kilo sledgehammer in both hands for hours at a time, her father moved us up to learn the basics of forging a sword. At the time, there was a lot of work to do. Going back and forth to my home lost time in the forge. Andy’s father built us a bedroom in the back of the furnace room. We worked side by side for years, slept together in that bed, and were the closest friends. Andy worked as hard as I, and we had a similar build, so it was a shock one night when her father told us to take a night off and go into town to have dinner. It wasn’t until Andy got into the tub with me that I discovered Andy wasn’t a guy. She was a young woman. I never knew or noticed.”

He gave their history with him, only returning here when he took me to learn about making swords.

“Over beside David is Andy’s granddaughter Alex. After Andy came to take over the forge when her father retired, it became a gender-neutral forge. The children all end up here, learning to clean up the shop. When they are old enough, they tend to the furnace. Those who take an interest in crafting swords get to give it a try to see if they have an affinity for it or not. It seems mixed between the girls and boys who want to follow in the family business,” he explained.

He then challenged those on the trip with me, except April, to pick out the girls and boys they found working based on gender.

“I only did a bit better when I tried years ago,” I told them, and that got us a nice laugh.

“Ten Cuidado, April. Muy Caliente,” we heard Andy tell April over the sound of the small forge where April was standing.

“Si, si, si,” April replied with a dismissive wave of her hand.

She hugged Andy before pulling a face shield down in front of her face, and then we all heard the ringing out of a hammer and saw the red-hot sparks fly off whatever April hit with the hammer. No one could miss her distinctive giggle. Each time she hit the metal, she giggled. As I moved closer, I saw her use small tongs to take the hunk of deformed metal, move it over the heat, and step on a pedal that turned on the blower to heat it back up. None of those on the trip noticed that she had a dagger template that would be about the length of a table knife.

Andy looked at me, frowned, and pointed to the furnace room.

“Si, si, si,” I joked as I imitated what April had done earlier.

“This you have to see,” Alex told them as he directed them toward the furnace room. “While Andy and her family could have converted to an induction furnace as the shops in Toledo made stamped stainless-steel imitations, it wouldn’t keep the process authentic. Environmental concerns modified it to no longer run on coal but now uses propane. The forges still use coal. Last night it was fortunate that David happened to be visiting the area. The little ones move from sweeping up to melting the scrap metal down and tending the furnace. Yesterday the three children doing that job made a mistake that has plagued children their age for centuries. They got impatient and tried to do too much at once. While, in most cases, it is only one of the five-hundred-kilogram capacity crucibles that get filled, they did two. Unfortunately, they didn’t know better and jammed the lift in quickly to fix their mistake when they realized what they had done. It cracked the crucible and poured molten metal all over the arms, fusing it where they couldn’t get it loose. David got it free, but the bars are now damaged and must need replacements. What you are going to see is something only David has the strength to do.”

I got my armbars over my shoulders, moved them into place, and moved toward the furnace. I yelled for the three kids to get out into the furnace room. They didn’t even notice the crowd as they stripped off their nightshirts and rushed into the changing room to get dressed. They wore overalls, long-sleeved shirts, boots, and aprons a few minutes later. It took them more work to get their gloves on than their clothes.

They opened the furnace doors, moved safely out of the way, and watched in awe as I lifted out one of the large crucibles. The three kids ensured no one was close by as I took the white-hot crucible over to where I could set it to get the old pouring lift in place. A group of the kids, who moved off furnace duty to ingots, had one set and waiting.

While I poured out the crucible, Alex explained how the different powders got used to changing the metal’s properties. What I had now was the harder of the two types of steel they use here. Because the little ones messed up, the furnace had to shut down, and the spilled steel chiseled out when cooled. When done, any cracked or chipped plates get replaced. Where the metal sat in the furnace kept them from using anything but the large crucibles. Once done pouring, I moved the crucible over to where the little ones pushed it to let what was left inside drain out when they used the long torches to melt it.

Not being hot, I went to get another of the large crucibles, but this one was rectangular and could hold seven-hundred-fifty kilograms of material.

“David is now preparing a large batch of the softer of the two steel used in the swords. It requires precise amounts of multiple powders to change the properties of the metal,” Alex explained.

I counted out the ingots, made a close guess to the weight, and then grabbed each barrel of the powders and poured in a bit less than was needed.