The 1st fight? You need to talk to Miko's personal maid at her palace.

DQXI is pretty forgiving in the sense if you don't play for awhile and forget what to do. Pulling up your map should show you what to do next; or do party talk and your team should help you out.

When you load the game it gives you a brief description of the current story. When you bring up the map it gives a hint of what to do next. When you party talk your teammates will tell you what to do next. When you go to a town they often have pink dots of characters that will tell you what to do. This game is one of the most spoon fed RPGs I've played. I've played some that literally didn't tell you squat and if you got into the wrong area or did the wrong thing it would kill you or screw up the game to where you had to start over.

i love this community. thank you for your help

At this point in the story you're trying to reforge the Sword of Light, like the visions in the floating temple showed you. You can go back there to watch them again if you want.

You need ore from the Battleground, the hammer from Gallopolis, and in Hotto is the forge to make the sword. You can do these in any order you want but if you're in Hotto I'm assuming you already did the first two steps. So like the first reply said, go talk to the maid in Miko's house who will give you the key to get to the forge.

The other advice is good too. The map menu will always tell you what your current objective is and Party Talking the homies will also give you hints