Chapter 12

The Soulsmith foundry in the Skysworn’s tower was advanced enough to support the creation of Truegold and Underlord constructs. Lindon had picked up a rumor in the city that suggested the Emperor's Overlord-stage weaponry had been created here.

He wasn't allowed to use those facilities. Instead, he and Fisher Gesha had been pushed to one of the apprentice rooms.

It was barely big enough for the two of them and their tools. Fisher Gesha stood next to her drudge—the huge purple spider—rather than riding it around, as she was used to. Little Blue clutched Lindon's hair, piping up every once in a while in a high-pitched burble.

The foundry had a basic set of tools on the wall, though they were goldsteel-plated instead of made from pure goldsteel, and they were chained to their rack to prevent theft. In the center of the room was a boundary formation in the shape of a large bubble. It would keep the project suspended so that Lindon and Fisher Gesha could work on it together without letting their construct rest on a table.

Lindon wondered what a higher-level foundry would have allowed him. Could he have made his new arm stronger? Fisher Gesha had assured him that he would have to replace this one when he became an Underlord (though she found that possibility unlikely). It was made of Gold-stage components, so it wouldn't handle the stress of a transition to Underlord.

Then again, when he was an Underlord, maybe he would find the materials for an even better arm.

Fisher Gesha floated the Shifting Skies arm into the center of the boundary field. It floated there peacefully, gleaming like glass in the light, its spiked fingertips drumming against the air.

Then she sat cross-legged on the ground. “Cycle,” she commanded. “It calms the mind and the soul, hm? You should be at your sharpest when you Forge a new weapon.”

Lindon followed her lead and began cycling his pure madra, but he couldn't contain his excitement. His imagination kept providing all the things he would be able to do with his new arm.

And the alternative was to focus on the fact that he was missing a limb. He preferred daydreaming.

Their preparation seemed to stretch on and on, but finally Fisher Gesha levered herself out of her cycling position—moving stiffly—and started to limber up her shoulders. “Well, it's not naptime. Let's get moving.”

She sounded nervous, eyeing her chest which sat in the corner. Lindon knew why: even through the restrictive scripts on the box, he could sense the power of the white binding. It felt like intense hunger.

The more they prepared it for use, strengthening it with pure madra as though watering a flower while attuning it to Lindon's soul, the stronger it felt. Now it shone with power, which even the chest couldn't contain.

Using a set of halfsilver tongs, which would disperse any stray madra, she withdrew the small book-sized box that contained the binding itself. Then she shut the large chest, placing the small box on top. Reaching into her robes, she pulled out the notes that they had taken from the Transcendent Ruins along with the binding.

She and Lindon had both practically memorized those notes in preparation for today. They tended to be very technical, though they referred back to a “Subject One” as the source of the hunger madra. Lindon very much wanted to know about Subject One, as it seemed the entire purpose of their research in the labyrinth was to duplicate Subject One's unique madra.

“Soulsmithing is blending three elements,” she said. She had given him this lecture before, but he still focused on every word. A mistake here might mean weeks of going without an arm. “You have the binding, the material of the construct itself, and the Soulsmith's madra, hm? But unlike blending physical materials, you are working with the stuff of souls. Madra lives. It changes. Even the same Path, taken from two different people, can have subtly different properties.”

She traded her halfsilver tongs out for her goldsteel set. These could seize immaterial madra without damaging the subject. She opened the small box, which let a feeling of ravenous hunger wash over the both of them.

Then she withdrew a finger-sized shard from within. It was one of the pieces left over from the Ancestor's Spear.

“A Soulsmith must learn to predict those changes, hm? It's no good making a weapon that will turn on its owner. But even with the best drudge in the world and years of experience, we are working with living components. No two constructs are exactly the same.”

Gingerly, she placed the shard of white within the bubble at the center of the room. The transparent arm and the shard of bright white orbited one another, though the smaller piece seemed to be squirming through the air toward the larger.

Gesha crossed her arms. “Now,” she commanded.

Lindon reached out with his perception, sensing both the arm and the piece of hunger madra. They gave him very different impressions, but he didn't focus on that, instead pouring pure madra into combining them.

They drifted together faster than he'd expected, and he focused on Forging them like he would a scale. He held the shape in his mind, pushing it together with his will.

The shard entered the clear-as-glass surface of the arm, staining six inches of the forearm white. Pale strands ran through the limb like veins, and the sharp fingers shuddered.

Fisher Gesha gestured, and her spider scurried up beneath the floating boundary field. It lifted two legs, poking at the substance of the construct, spinning it around as though spinning a web.

After a moment, it hissed in three sharp patterns and withdrew its legs.

“Unstable,” Gesha reported. “Keep holding it.” She produced another shard of the Ancestor's Spear, and Lindon repeated the process.

The stress of holding onto the construct felt like cycling the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel for too long: his soul was under pressure, every breath was heavy, and he was having trouble holding onto the appropriate breathing pattern. Sweat had begun to bead on his face.

But there was a distinct difference. The presence of the arm had begun to change, as the Shifting Skies madra in the original limb was suffused with the power of the hungry white madra. Instead of tapping, the fingers now flexed, grasping, and he sensed...

Well, he wasn't sure what he was picking up on. Maybe Fisher Gesha could tell him, if he could spare the attention to ask. It felt as though the arm wanted something, and it twisted in the floating bubble like a hunting snake.

It must have been an effect of the hunger madra, as she added more samples inside and Lindon used his pure madra to Forge them together into one. With every piece, it seemed to become more aware, like they were building a Remnant instead of a Remnant arm.

This time, when Fisher Gesha's drudge tested the limb, it gave a high whistle. Immediately, she withdrew a shiny, twisted form of pure white light with a corkscrew pattern. The binding.

A crystallized technique, the binding was the heart of any construct. Without it, a construct would only have the properties of its material and whatever scripts they added on top. That would make it no better than any scripted object.

Ideally, this binding would allow him to feed on someone else's madra, though Fisher Gesha insisted that it would only allow him to pull another's power into his arm and then vent it elsewhere.

Either way. Both ideas intrigued him.

As the binding approached, the arm squirmed toward it, fighting against the hold of his spirit. He tried to ask her to wait, but the word came out as a croak.

Then the binding slid into the arm, and he had to absorb it.

The actual process of completing the arm was simple. He worked it into the Forging, and the arm flared with a brilliant white. Now it was all spotless and pale, and the claws had smoothed out into fingertips—Lindon didn't want to use an arm with needle-sharp fingers. It looked almost skeletal in shape, though it was thick enough to fit on his arm.

Fisher Gesha let out a breath. “Good. Now, normally we would add scripts at this point, but it will be attached to your body. Your own spirit will do the maintenance, protecting it from decay. It seems stable, but for a while you'll have to...prepare for...”

Her words drifted off as she watched the arm.

Lindon was staring at it too.

It had gone wild, twisting and writhing as it pushed its hand at the edge of the boundary field. He could almost hear a snarling in his head, as it sought to devour...something.

An instant later, the boundary field vanished.

The hand lunged for Lindon's head. No...not for his head. The link he shared with the arm gave him an instinctive understanding, and rather than ducking, he threw himself to the side.

It wasn't after him. It was after the Sylvan Riverseed.

Little Blue scurried down the side of his head, hiding in his robe, peeking her sapphire head out of his collar and trembling. Lindon reached out with his power again, but the arm wouldn't respond to him anymore. All he could sense from it was a boundless hunger.

“What now?” he asked, his voice creaking from disuse.

“It's out of control,” Gesha said sourly, pulling the goldsteel hook from her back. Sharp on the inside and as big as her torso, it was more of a sickle than a hook, and it gleamed white in the light of the room. “This is why you don't use unique parts, hm? Something goes wrong, and you can't learn from it and try again. You have to give up all your wasted time.”

She stepped forward, preparing to swing her weapon, but the arm was still scurrying across the floor on its fingertips. Toward Lindon.

Lindon kept his attention on the limb. There had to be something he could do to salvage this—it would be a waste of not only irreplaceable materials, but also far too much time. And a unique opportunity.

He held out a hand to Fisher Gesha, begging for restraint, even as he studied the arm. What he called hunger wasn't just that. It felt similar to hunger, but it was more textured, with deeper layers. He felt ambition, greed, gluttony, an endless desire to reach for more and more.

The hand lunged at him, but he caught it by the wrist. It burned his palm, as though he'd grabbed onto solid ice, but he kept his attention on it.

Without context, the arm was out of control. It needed a mind to control it. A will to keep it in check.

And it fit him. There was a little of this hunger in him already.

He focused on that, stoking his desire for power, the feelings of envy and awe he'd felt when Suriel had demonstrated absolute authority, the aching helplessness of living as Unsouled and his desire to get stronger. As strong as he could.

The arm stiffened, like a dog catching a new scent.

Lindon threw more at it. His feelings as he looked over the Heaven's Glory School's treasures: he wanted it all, but even that wouldn't be enough. He remembered the sensation of Blackflame, the desire of a dragon to conquer and to destroy.

Then he shoved the end of the arm onto his stump.

The construct didn't resist him, but pain blacked out his memory for a moment. When he came back to himself, he was on the floor, his back propped up against a cool wall. Fisher Gesha was muttering, her hook on the ground next to her, holding her wrinkled hands over his elbow.

Where flesh met pure white madra.

“Dangerous,” she muttered. “Too dangerous. Could have devoured you, you know that? Hm? And you made me Forge it on, so that will hurt your compatibility. An impulsive Soulsmith is a dead Soulsmith, I can say that much for certain.”

He forced a smile. “Forgiveness, and thank you. I can only tell you that I thought it would work. I felt...like it would,” he finished, though it sounded limp when he put it that way.

She grunted and thwacked him on the forehead with her knuckles. “You have to stay open to your instincts when you're Forging a construct. That's important. But don't go sticking things on your body just because you feel like it, hm?”

Full of expectation, Lindon flexed his new white arm.

It twisted backwards, fingers twitching, reaching for Fisher Gesha's face.

She stepped back, sighing. “It will take you some time to adjust so that you can control it naturally. Scripts could speed the process up, but they would eventually restrict you, so it's better to adapt over time.”

Lindon nodded, focusing on his spirit. The arm's madra wasn't flowing into his body, but his power was flowing into it, and it was quite a burden. It took more madra to maintain his arm than to Enforce the rest of his body together.

“Don't try to use the binding yet,” she warned him, sticking a finger in his face. “Lindon? I could not be more serious. Your madra channels are having enough trouble with the load of a Remnant's arm. If you try to use the binding, your spirit might tear itself apart. You have to get used to your new arm, and preferably strengthen your channels, yes? You should really wait as long as possible before you try to use the technique. At least four to six weeks.”

Lindon nodded attentively, but his mind was focused on controlling his new arm. Finally, he got it to run its white fingers over the floor.

Sensation was...odd, through the new limb...as though the arm were talking directly to his brain and spirit instead of his body. Like he knew the floor was rough and cold, rather than feeling it as he would through a hand of flesh and blood.

But at least he could tell if something was hot or cold, smooth or rough. He would take it.

Forcing the arm to move as he wanted it to was stressing his spirit, and Little Blue seemed to react to that. She reached up from his collar, slapping her tiny hand on his chin. A cold spark traveled through him, soothing his channels and giving relief to his spirit. When the spark reached his arm, it shuddered and stilled for a moment.

“That's better, thank you,” he said, smiling down at little blue. She dipped her head in respect and then gave him a broad grin. Where had she learned that?

No matter how much trouble it caused him, he had an arm. He could be careful for a few weeks if it meant having two hands again.

He leaned his head back against the wall, exhausted, and met Fisher Gesha's face. She seemed concerned.

“Gratitude, Fisher Gesha. I'm excited to see what I can do with this.”

Gesha watched him quietly for a few seconds before folding her arms and addressing him with the look of a strict grandmother. “What is wrong with you, boy?”

That wasn't the first thing he had expected her to say. “Honored Fisher, I humbly apologize for anything that I—”

“You've been running at a full sprint for more than a year. Well, I guess I can understand it at first, considering your fight with the Jai boy. Afterwards, I thought you'd settle into a routine, hm? No, it's adventure after adventure with you. You're going to burn yourself down to ash if you keep this up.”

Lindon held his hands out in a pacifying gesture, trying to reassure her. Well, he held one hand out. The other squeezed into a fist and shook itself aggressively.

“I have a lot farther to go,” Lindon said reasonably. “If my goal was only Jai Long, then certainly, I could have given up and gone home by now.”

“You think you hike up a mountain by sprinting all the way, do you?” she snapped. “You need a place to rest as much as anyone, if you don't want to crack like bad steel.”

“I can't afford a break yet. I started too late; only last year, I was still Copper. If I don't try as hard as I can, I can't catch up.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Catch up? Who exactly are you trying to catch up to, hm?”

Only two names flashed through his mind, but he was embarrassed to say them out loud.

“They call you the twenty-fourth ranked Lowgold on the combat charts,” she said. “You know what that means?”

“That there are twenty-three Lowgolds stronger than I am,” he said immediately.

“That you're ranked higher than three quarters of the Empire! If you settled down and lived in the Arelius family, you'd be Highgold by twenty-five. Considering it's you, probably Truegold ten years later. You could be an Underlord in your fifties. And that's living peacefully! You could settle down, rest, find a nice young lady, raise a family. You don't have to live every day like you're looking to die!”

She was shouting by the end, and Lindon winced as every word landed.

Because they hit him too close to home.

Since leaving Sacred Valley, he had risked his life almost daily. He'd given everything to move forward. He didn't regret it—if anything, his only regret was that he'd advanced too slowly.

But it was scraping him raw.

He felt like a man who had started to run down a hill, going faster and faster until he couldn't stop. Now he had to keep accelerating or stumble and fall.

The problem was, he really couldn't stop. As enticing as that vision was, he could never return to his homeland as an Underlord. Not if it took him more than thirty more years.

His home would be gone by then.

Lindon started to speak, and was surprised to find his voice rough. His vision had blurred—were those tears? Fisher Gesha looked down on him sympathetically.

There came a single knock at the door, and then Yerin pushed her way in. “They said you'd be fussing around with constructs in here,” she said, glancing around the room. “Didn't want to bump your sword-hand, so I knocked.” She saw the white arm and brightened.

“Skeleton arm! Scarier than a tiger's teeth, I love it. With your black eyes, that'll have them messing themselves before you ever throw a punch.”

That hadn't been Lindon's actual goal, but he was glad she was pleased. And it did remind him of another issue: he had to test the arm with Blackflame. All of the tests performed on samples by Fisher Gesha's drudge had suggested the two types of madra wouldn't interfere with each other, certainly not after his soul acclimated to the limb, but there was no way to be sure without testing.

“I'll take any advantage I can get, in a fight,” Lindon said, surreptitiously swiping at his eyes and rising to his feet.

Yerin straightened her back, the silver Goldsigns over her shoulders rising. “That wasn't why I came. I have news for you, and the sand's running down.” She met his eyes with a firm gaze. “Skysworn are going sword-to-sword with Redmoon Hall. I'm joining them.”

Lindon's new arm twitched as he lost control of his breathing technique. He had known she’d spoken with the Skysworn, but not how it had turned out. She hadn’t told him, and he’d been afraid to ask.

But now...Yerin was going. And he wasn't.

“Already?” he asked, and he sounded like he’d swallowed sand.

“Told you I wasn’t burning time,” she said, meeting his eyes. “They’ve got some test or something coming up. Could be my last chance, and I’m not planning to miss it.”

He wanted to say he was going to join her, wanted to leave Fisher Gesha and walk out alongside Yerin. They’d traveled together for so long, it felt wrong to be parting ways now.

But she was still rushing, he wasn’t wrong about that. The smart thing to do was wait.

If only it didn’t feel like slicing into his own chest.

“There will be another test, though? Perhaps I can join then.”

“Could be,” she said, with half a smile. “Couldn’t tell you when it is, though.”

Then, at least for now, he needed to say good-bye. He bowed at the waist, as deeply as he could. “This one thanks you for your long guidance. He could never have made it without you.”

She scratched the back of her neck with one hand. “Yeah, well...wouldn't have made it out of the Valley without you, would I? And having you around kept me busy.”

Lindon straightened and looked into her eyes. “Thank you, Yerin. I can't...ah, thank you.” It wasn't adequate, but he was afraid that if he said any more, he would embarrass himself.

She nodded, shifting her gaze. They stood in silence for a few moments before Yerin finally waved and turned on her heel. “Don’t need to make this any fancier than it has to be,” she said as she walked out. “I’ll see you soon, won’t I? Not gone forever.”

“I'll see you then!” he called after her, even as the door shut.

Fisher Gesha eyed him. “I'm sorry, boy.”

Lindon didn't hear her.

The excitement of his new arm had been completely dampened. He packed up his things in a haze, and the next thing he knew, he had returned to his room. It was simple—less appointed even than the cell where the Skysworn had kept him before, but mercifully bigger. It was connected to a kind of stable, where Orthos slept.

He stood in the center of his room, lost.

When Gesha had asked him who he was trying to catch up to, only two faces had popped into his mind: Yerin and Eithan.

Both of them were too embarrassing to say aloud. Yerin was the apprentice of a Sage, and a prodigy. Eithan was an Underlord and the Patriarch of a great family.

But they had both treated him as though he could catch up to them. They had made him believe it.

Now he was on his own.

Without knowing what he was doing, he grabbed his pack with his left hand and slipped it on. He froze halfway through, realizing he didn't need it, but it comforted him. Made him feel prepared.

Then, aimlessly, he drifted over to Orthos' room. It was broad, empty, and its walls were plated in dark, scripted metal. It had been designed to hold contracted sacred beasts, or so Lindon had been told.

Orthos hadn't been asleep, which Lindon had expected from the feel of his spirit. Instead, the turtle was munching on a pile of rocks and broken chunks of street that Lindon had scavenged from around the city. The red circles of his eyes pivoted to Lindon as he entered, but the turtle didn't say anything. He just kept chewing away.

Lindon hugged his pack to himself—with one arm, because the other had rebelled again—and sat down.

Orthos felt confused and weak again. The years he'd spent with a damaged spirit had left their mark on his mind. Now, he was struggling to think.

Little Blue popped up from inside Lindon's robes, eyeing Orthos. With a quick glance at Lindon, she hurried across the floor, resting her blue hand on one of the turtle's forelegs.

His spirit and body shuddered as the Sylvan Riverseed's power cleansed his madra channels, but he kept munching away on the rock.

“Lin...don...” he said, through a mouthful of gravel.

Little Blue gave him a mournful whistle and then drifted back to Lindon.

“Good morning, Orthos,” Lindon said.

“...arm,” the turtle forced out.

“It's a new one,” Lindon said, holding it up and twisting it with difficulty. “But it should be an improvement.”

Orthos' consciousness was growing sharper by the second, but he was still having trouble with speech. After a moment, he gave a single nod. “Good. Like it.”

Well, he'd gotten approval from Yerin and Orthos.

“I think you and Yerin will be happier the more frightening I look,” Lindon said, idly opening his pack.

“Dragons...are frightening,” Orthos said, the red in his eyes shining.

“That doesn't mean I want to be,” Lindon said, flipping through his belongings. He was taking inventory.

Here, in this room, was everything he had left.

Little Blue, Orthos, and the contents of his pack. Eithan would still help him, but Eithan was gone. Who knew when the Underlord would return? He had been fickle even before the Emperor had needed him to resolve an imperial crisis.

He dug down past a portable rune-light, a spare set of clothes, and a ball of string. Counting everything in his pack calmed him, gave him a sense of control. He had prepared for everything he could, and these were the fruits of his preparation.

After only a moment, his fingertips brushed old, yellowed paper. He pulled it out: The Heart of Twin Stars, the cover said.

Inside, he had written on the blank sheets the manual had included, and had added more pages within as necessary.

The Path of Twin Stars, he had written, in his own handwriting.

Here, he had recorded every step of his advancement. The uses of pure madra. Notes on the performance, range, and feel of the Empty Palm technique. He had recorded his experience splitting his core, and how he had used scales he Forged himself to expand his capacity. He recorded when he'd moved on to the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel technique—though he was vague on those details, following Eithan's advice to keep that cycling method a secret.

After that, his notes were sparse. He'd recorded the pills Eithan had given him to train, and how he had refined Lowgold and Highgold cores for Lindon's digestion. That was the method Lindon had used to reach Lowgold in his pure core.

But that was all. There were still more blank pages left.

Lindon sat for entirely too long, holding the manual in his hand. The feel of the old paper, the smell of it, brought back old feelings.

How he'd felt when Yerin taught him that an Unsouled was a fabrication of Sacred Valley. How he could carve out his own Path.

“Orthos,” Lindon said quietly. “Yerin went to join the Skysworn.”

The turtle grumbled for a moment before forcing out, “Why?”

“They're fighting against Redmoon Hall.”

Rage boiled up in Orthos' spirit. Lindon could feel it, pushing against the sacred beast's restraints. He had heard about the bloodspawn, what they'd done while he slept, and that they'd come from a Dreadgod. In his mind, Redmoon Hall had made a fool of him while he slept.

Orthos kept himself under control, but he rose up to his full height, turning his head to face Lindon. “And you? You will allow them to do as they wish, unopposed?”

At least he was back to full sentences.

“The smarter choice is to stay with the Arelius family,” Lindon said. “Get stronger first. If I went to fight now, I wouldn't offer anything. I'd be going to lose, or to die.”

Orthos backed him against the wall, looming over him. Lindon felt a pang of fear, though he could sense that the turtle was totally in control. He had fought against the wild Orthos too many times to be entirely comfortable.

“A dragon does not allow fear to make his decisions for him,” Orthos rumbled. “A dragon decides for himself.”

Lindon glanced down at the manual in his hand.

His own Path.

What did he want to do?

Little Blue looked up at him from somewhere around his shin, her ocean-blue body shimmering in Orthos' smoldering light. She reached up to pat him, giving him some comfort.

He reached down with his flesh arm, scooping her up, and she scampered up to sit on his shoulder. Then he stood.

“Let's go,” Lindon said.

Orthos stomped out the door. “You don’t need to tell me we’re going. Of course we are. He snapped up a chunk of the floor, munching on it as he spoke.

“A dragon always fights.”