But this dreadbeast had only one binding for several techniques. As though its bindings had all organically fused into one.
Lindon fueled the third of the four openings, and a Forged set of jaws appeared, its teeth shining green. It snapped down on nothing, and now Lindon finally felt the hunger component of the binding coming to the forefront. This was how the Hydra fed.
Eithan cleared his throat. “I hate to complain, but it’s pretty boring sitting here watching you hold on to nothing.”
Lindon remembered that he must look ridiculous, interacting with thin air. “Dross, can you project to Eithan?”
[I can, but that will cost me valuable madra.]
Lindon hesitated. He was doubly reluctant to exhaust Dross after what had happened the last time the spirit strained himself.
“Very well then, leave me out,” Eithan said. “I will infer from your conversation what you have been doing: are you testing out the Hydra’s binding?”
“It’s amazing. Like four bindings grown into one. I’ve seen dreadbeasts with bindings that had melted into one another, but they never worked well. They always felt like a failure, but this could be the perfected version.”
He activated the fourth binding, but nothing happened. He sensed it had been reaching out to the surrounding aura, but there was no death aura nearby, so the Ruler technique hadn’t activated.
Eithan tapped his fingers together. “Disturbing implications, but that was always one of the strongest theories about the origins of the dreadbeasts. That they were the failures, and the successes were the Dreadgods.”
Lindon examined the binding, turning it in his hands. “So you’re saying the Dreadgods have a binding like this one.”
“You’d have to kill one to prove it. But I would say it’s likely.”
Lindon ran his perception through the room ahead. The constructs were starting to slow down, but he still had time. He could take a closer look at the actual binding. It would help him later, and Dross couldn’t model it accurately unless Lindon studied it.
Eithan slowly slid into his line of sight. He was massaging his temples with both hands. “Let me see if I can divine your thoughts. You are tempted to examine the actual binding, but you are hesitant to do so, and…what’s this? Please, I know you admire my keen insight, but don’t let those thoughts distract you. Focus.”
“This might be my only chance at this. I don’t want to waste it.” A mistake Soulsmithing could damage the binding beyond repair. If Dross learned enough to be able to replicate the binding, then that was fine, but he still didn’t want to lose such a valuable material.
“There should be better facilities somewhere here,” Lindon went on. “I want to see the effect of the location myself. And if the hammer’s as important as you say it is, I want one of those too.”
Eithan cupped a hand around his ear. “I need to hear you say it. I need to hear you say the words.”
Lindon was lost.
“Say, ‘please, Eithan, solve this problem for me.’”
“It’s not a problem, really. I could examine it now, but I think it’s better to wait until later.”
“Okay then, say ‘If only I had a place to practice Soulsmithing right here!’”
“That would be convenient, but I’m not really looking to make a construct.”
“Please say it.”
“If only I had a place—”
“Worry no more, my student! With my incredible foresight, I have solved your problem long ago!”
With a flourish, Eithan produced a tiny object shaped like an anvil. Lindon could immediately sense that it was a void key, or something similar. Eithan practically forced it into his hand, so Lindon ran his madra through it.
He had to join his will to it and push through a faint resistance. Either the labyrinth’s suppression of spatial artifacts was increasing, or he was getting tired.
A moment later, a door opened in midair. It led onto a space that was much stranger than most void keys Lindon had seen.
A platform of stones hovered in the middle of an endless starry sky. Each of the stars were larger and clearer than usual, shining brightly from every direction. The stones themselves were large wedges that fit together into a circle about the size of a small room. Each wedge held a symbol that—
Lindon had to look away from the symbols because of a piercing pain in his head. They formed a script, he was sure, but they reminded him more of the runes in Suriel’s eyes. There was meaning there that he couldn’t pierce.
At the center of the platform of interlocking stones, there was a slab of dull metal. It resembled an altar more than an anvil, or perhaps half of a column. Inside that altar, a blue flame burned, visible through a small window. So perhaps it was more like a stove.
Lindon drew Suriel’s marble from his pocket and compared. As he’d suspected, the blue fire in his marble was eerily similar to the one blazing within the altar. Except the one here was many times bigger.
“Lindon, allow me to introduce you to the ultimate Soulsmithing tool: the Soulforge.”
Lindon reverently held his breath as he walked inside. He felt the world around him change as he stepped inside, in ways more than the physical. Echoes of creation filled the air. This was a place where wonders were born.
He paced around the anvil at the center, examining the stones, the flame, even the stars in the distance. “How does it work?” he asked.
Eithan beamed. “Why don’t you tell me?”
Lindon still couldn’t examine the huge paving-stones beneath his feet too closely, because the single rune carved on each of them was too overwhelming, but it was clear that the script-circle was focused on the anvil at the center.
And the anvil, if that’s what it was, was clearly the focus of all the creative energies in this space. In a mundane forge, you would heat up metal in the flame to make it malleable enough to shape, but that didn’t have much relevance to Soulsmithing.
He approached the center and felt the energy gathered above the altar-like anvil. There was little to see, but the air felt invisibly focused there, charged, as though waiting for something.
“I think anything you put there is…altered. Enhanced, maybe.” He knelt to look at the blue fire. “This fuels the effect somehow. I assume you have to burn something here? Soulfire?”
Eithan was about to answer, but Lindon cut him off as an idea occurred to him. “No…wait.” He pulled out the pearl necklace he had found earlier.
From Eithan’s proud smile, Lindon already knew he was right, but he tossed the necklace in anyway. The physical form of the necklace burned to ash in an instant, which dissolved to nothing with a hiss. But the flames strengthened.
Just to test it out, he tossed in some junk with no authority whatsoever. It burned up, but the flame didn’t change.
Lindon moved to his feet, full of confidence. “It takes objects with embedded authority and burns them, focusing it on whatever you’re making above the altar.”
Eithan applauded. “Very good! We say objects with invested authority or willpower are significant, but the terminology changes from place to place, so it’s not important. You’re so right it brings a tear to my eye.”
“But what does it do to the Soulsmithing?”