“Dross,” Lindon said aloud.
[Yes?]
“…what do you think about this situation?” Lindon had thought that question would go without asking.
[This room was recently the repository for sacred instruments. All, or most, hammers. Most likely the intact instruments were looted after the battle.]
Yerin nudged a pile of rubble aside with her foot. “Wake me when we find a room like this for swords.”
Orthos had already hopped off of Lindon’s shoulder and started munching at a defunct hammer.
“Stop that,” Lindon said. “That could be a thousand years old.”
Orthos met Lindon’s eyes and deliberately took another bite.
Eithan skipped to the middle of the room, then twirled in place. “Ah, I see, I see. Well, this is a disappointment. This is all quite ancient by modern standards, of course, but none of it dates back to our first Patriarch. They must have removed any of his relics when they first arrived.”
[I know little about the Arelius founder. You should tell me more, so that I may form a more accurate picture of our situation.]
Lindon knelt for one of the hammers and ran his fingers across it. He could sense its madra composition just as easily standing, but there was something more immediate about feeling it himself.
“These aren’t hunger madra,” he noted. He had hoped to find some materials to upgrade his arm here. As it was, he was reluctant to use the Consume technique at all, since the binding was always on the verge of breaking again.
Eithan slapped his forehead. “Ah, that’s right! I forgot we had neglected that aspect of your education. You see, these are Soulsmith hammers.”
Lindon stared blankly around the room. He had used hammers in Soulsmithing before. They were only used to physically batter certain stubborn types of dead matter into place, or to crack open a Remnant’s carapace.
There didn’t seem to be any reason to store a massive variety of sacred instruments for such a simple task. And all those that remained were broken, so there wasn’t much else to learn.
“Oh,” Lindon said. He stood, ready to move on.
“I hear from your lack of enthusiasm that you don’t know what that means. Well, ahem, you see, there is a reason why hammers are often associated with Soulsmiths besides the use of hammers in more mundane smithing.”
Mercy hopped from one foot to another. She looked between the three exits in the room. “Yes, this is fascinating, but don’t you think we could scoop everything into a void key and move on?”
Ziel jerked a thumb toward her. “We can have the history lesson on the way. I don’t know why we would…what do you have there?”
Orthos had pulled a huge pile of wood and debris away from the wall, then ignited a smoky red flame so he could examine something around the base of the wall.
Ziel edged closer, and they both examined what appeared to be a barely visible line of inactive script.
“So this goes to the outer boundary of the room…” Ziel murmured, tracing a line of script with his finger.
“What does it do?” Orthos asked.
Lindon longed to go over and take a look for himself, but Eithan was gesturing him over to the other side of the room to show him a mostly intact hammer.
“Once upon a time,” Eithan said, “the tool you used for your Soulsmithing was as important as the material you used. It was said that our Patriarch could make a weapon fit for a Sage with just his hammer and a Gold Remnant. The hammer is used to inject your will into an object, shaping its function according to your intentions. And each hammer has its own specialty, some being better for crafting weapons, some made for altering dream tablets, and so on.”
Pink sparks flew up from the cracked hammerhead as Eithan spun it between his fingers. Lindon examined it, intrigued.
“So what did this one do?”
“Difficult to tell now, but you can sense the dream madra as well as I can.”
Lindon had the vague sense that this hammer had once been used to shape memories. If he had to guess, he would say that it was made to alter dreams from their natural form, modifying them.
As Lindon looked over the collection of hammers, he started to understand. And new libraries of possibility opened up to him.
“I see. It’s only useful to Soulsmiths who can directly manipulate their willpower. So only Lords.”
As Lindon was lost in the possibilities of Soulsmithing, he overheard Yerin talking to Mercy. “You think we should pick a hallway and leave them behind?”
“We really don’t want to get lost in here. But if we stay in here too long, that’s what’s going to happen!”
Lindon dragged himself out of his trance and snatched up the most intact hammers. He tossed them into his void key…which took a moment longer than usual to open. He would have to check its script.
From his pocket, he withdrew the case containing the white hand.
“Apologies. I’m ready to go.”
“It’s a pity,” Eithan said, as Lindon readied the hand. “I was really hoping to find some Arelius relics here. But if there were any, they were taken.”
Everyone present knew that someone had fought in here, and it was probably the same one who had deactivated the suppression field.
There were no traces of the intruder’s madra left, or at least none that could be sensed compared to the leaking and broken hammers. This battle had taken place days ago, or maybe weeks.
If everything went according to plan, they would eventually run into this person. So there was no point speculating.
It was time to move on.
This time, when Lindon revealed the hand, all the uncontrolled power in the room flowed toward him immediately as the hunger devoured it. The hand twisted in his grip as it fed, and a howl echoed through the room.
Instead of ghouls rising through the floor, this time strands of Forged madra—like Mercy’s Strings of Shadow technique—shot from each wall and webbed up the entire room.
In the first instant, they were all on their guard. Each of them dodged or blocked strands shooting out from the walls, and they ended up separated by webs of hunger madra.
For a breath or two afterwards, they all waited for the next part of the trap.
Finally, Eithan cleared his throat. “I guess this one is free.”
The borrowed authority of Subject One pulled Lindon toward the door on the left wall, so he sealed the hand back in its metal case before unleashing a Hollow Domain with a wisp of soulfire.
The blue-white sphere filled the room, wiping out all the hunger madra. Each strand resisted a little, holding a small amount of will behind it, but the entire room was clear in a moment.
“Ten scales if somebody can tell me what the point to that technique was,” Yerin said.
“I don’t think that was a conscious attack,” Lindon responded. It was just a gut feeling, but he thought he was probably right.
Orthos grunted. “It feels like something stirring in its sleep. I don’t like it.”
Little Blue shuddered as she made a tinkling sound in agreement, snuggling closer to Lindon’s neck.
“I suspect these are indeed instinctive defensive reactions,” Eithan said. “Like scratching at an itch while you sleep. But attacks of this level would never trouble someone like the Sword Sage, even taking the suppression field into account.”