Astrid wrangled a chunk of metal that was about 4 foot by 5 foot and much as half a foot thick at its thickest area into the metal works room. It landed with a great clatter as she dropped it. It was too big for the village to use it in any way so she would have to break it down into more manageable chunks. It was a very physically demanding process, the ancient metal was tempered in ways to make it insanely durable. She dressed down for the occasion, wearing little on the bottom and barely wrapping her top before putting on her work smock and gloves. She put in about four hours of work trying to cut away, chip at, bend, and beat the jagged slab of steel. She made decent progress but it was going to be a multiple day job. She organized the pieces she'd broken away by size and leaned the remaining mass of metal against the wall. It was time to move on.
She went over to her anvil, which weighed about ninety pounds and Astrid it with one hand and lifted it straight overhead. She moved her arm up and down around thirty times and then bent her elbow back so she held the anvil back behind her head. She repeated that motion, from overhead to behind her head about 12 times. She went on with other moves, like lifting it straight away from her side as far as she could stretch her arm up. After she was done with those moves she repeated everything with the other arm.
Sweating from all the work she sat down to rest a while and inspected her arms and their swelling muscles for a bit. She decided to get food once she felt more rested.
She went out back to the chicken coop to collect the eggs from her couple dozen chickens. When she opened the little box to start she flinched back away from a stone chicken sitting inside. Seemed her coop had an invader, but was it still here? She would have to check the coop for a hole but that would have to come later, first she started to check the nooks and crannies carefully. Nearly at the end of the little box nests she heard a subtle hiss. She held both hands at the ready, if a cockatrice locked eyes with its target for a full second it could turn them to stone. She opened the box with one hand quickly and shot the other one in to clasp around the creature's head.
It started flapping its wings furiously, thrashing its snake tail and kicking out, trying to fight free. Astrid saw another petrified chicken in the box as she pulled the cockatrice out, making sure to keep a firm grip so it couldn't exhale its poison breath in enough volume to matter.
"Oh, not Gertie..."
Frowning at the death of her favorite chicken Astrid increased her grip on its head. Under her strength its bones snapped and then a wet feeling exploded in her hand and the creature's thrashing stopped. She glared at the carcass, cockatrice meat wasn't safe to eat so the best she could hope for was selling the body to someone and she didn't really want to go through the bother.
She finished collecting the eggs and left the petrified chickens for now since they wouldn't rot or anything, she could figure out what to do with them later. She washed away the blood, brains, and exploded eyeballs smearing her hand before fixing herself the eggs she gathered and decided to go out for a run.
A little over two hours later she found herself at a marker that suggested she had run a bit less than 75 miles per hour at average. A little annoyed at that estimate she wiped at the sweat on her brow. A deer jumped out of the forest and stared at her for a moment before trying to bolt away. It was far too slow and just as the cockatrice never had a chance to look at her for a full second, so too the deer had no chance of escape. It staggered as she jumped on it and nearly fell down on its front part as it was surprised by her additional weight. She clenched her thighs together harder but tried to avoid putting in enough force to break or crack ribs since that would make a butcher's job harder. She grabbed its head and pulled back. The animal fought for its life but it could only make its neck twitch and bend as it vainly tried to move its head out of her hands. She leaned back and snapped its neck. The body fell and she landed on her feet with graceful ease as it fell to the ground beneath her.
She slung its body over her shoulders and frowned at the weight, hardly enough to add much to the exercise of the run. She was tempted to find another one to put one on each shoulder but this close to town there weren't that many and it could take a very long time to find another one so she settled for just having the one and ran back. She dropped the deer off at a butcher and went back to her metal shop. She started working on finer projects, little trinkets of silver and such. She got bored after a while and headed back outside. She jumped against her markers on the side of the building and found she was managing to jump a bit over three times her own height, very nearly able to grab the edge of the roof. She felt exasperated at the near success.
"Getting better at that," the voice was familiar, an old acquaintance but no one especially important. "I think it's more muscle build up than any improvement in my wind magic though. I'm still only pulling low 70's in speed."
"That's still ridiculous to anyone who's not a wind mage." "I know, but it's not enough to be a courier with that kind of competition."
"So competitive. Anyway, I'm here to pick up the gem insets?" "Yeah, right here," she led them into the shop and sold most of the silver workings she'd just made.
After they left she grabbed two of her anvils and went out back to where she had an old tree wrapped in cloth. She had to climb the tree a little to reach the wrappings and wrap her legs around it. She leaned back so she was upside down and reclaimed her anvils, one in each hand and did ab crunches until she finally tired.
She looked her own stomach over approvingly and set down for a nap. She tended the garden near the coop a while and settled back in the shop to read a book until the sun started to go down. She changed back into her early morning attire, the chest wrap and scant shorts and added bandages around her hands. She put a heavy coat on over herself to look modest enough and headed into town to find the fighting ring. She had some money to bet on herself.
