by Will Wight
He needed to take Lindon to shelter, and surround him with friendly faces. When he woke up, he wouldn’t be happy.
Chapter 7
“Prosthetic limbs,” Fisher Gesha said, “are among the easiest constructs for a Soulsmith to create. You were lucky. If we had to replace one of your organs, I would be singing a very different tune right now, hm?”
They were still inside the mountain, five or six floors beneath the arena where he'd fought. Apparently this whole place was honeycombed with shelters—it had once been the home of a sect living in secrecy, but had been abandoned for years. Or so the Fisher had told him in the last few minutes.
Lindon remembered nothing of the trip down here, and very little of the fight. He didn’t even ask how Fisher Gesha had gotten there, though he assumed Eithan had brought her. Yerin and Orthos were nowhere to be seen, but he didn’t ask about them. His attention was swallowed entirely by his right arm.
Which was lying somewhere above him, he assumed.
Now, it ended abruptly above the elbow. Gesha had wrapped his stump with scripted bandages, which weren't stained with as much blood as he had expected. This script must work the same as the one his mother had once used on him: it guided his spirit through an Enforcer technique that blocked out pain. Certainly, he didn't feel any physical pain. It was more like the opposite. He felt normal, as though he could reach out with his right arm just as always.
But he couldn't seem to peel his eyes away from the space where his hand should be.
The Fisher firmly grasped his chin and turned his head back toward her. Her wrinkled face was set in a stern expression, but a few strands of gray hair had escaped their normal tight bun. “Whatever state you're in, you listen to me when I'm talking to you, yes?” Involuntarily, he tried to turn back to his arm, but her grip was steel.
“Don't think,” she warned him. “After an injury like this, it is your thoughts that are most deadly. Your fears, your pain, your despair, they are deadly poison. Do not let them rule you.”
From somewhere, he mustered up a nod.
“Good. Now, limbs are simple. We simply take an arm from a Remnant that is compatible with your Path—or Paths, I suppose, since you always have to make things complicated—and we attach it to you with a combination of scripting and Forging. I happen to have some Remnant arms with me right now.”
She knelt by his bed, rummaging around in her chest, which gave Lindon a chance to look around the room. It was a rounded room carved out of the stone, giving it the impression that a mole had dug it out of solid rock. His bed was more of a cot, made of trembling wood and scratchy sheets. A single candle sat on a shelf bolted to the wall. There was one more source of light: a glowing script-circle on the wall behind a square of paper painted with an abstract landscape. Meant to replace a window, he was certain.
His pack leaned against the wall, which was a relief. Next to it was the Sylvan Riverseed's case, a box of glass with a tiny island inside. Little Blue herself, now almost too big for her enclosure, stood on the island and stared at him with her hands pressed against the glass. Though she was made entirely from ocean-blue madra, she had gained enough definition that he could read her face: she was worried.
Her concern almost broke him, but he tore his eyes away and took in a deep breath. Don't think about it. He was fine. Better than fine, really. He had expected to die if he lost, so walking away with three limbs out of four was a bargain.
Fisher Gesha straightened, carrying a wide wooden tray set with three limbs.
As Remnant arms, they didn't look quite real, like they were paintings come to three-dimensional life.
“These are the ones I have on hand for you,” she said, “and be grateful I have this many. It's not every day I have to match a limb to not one, but two cores.” She gestured to the first, a slick-looking purple arm with webbing between the fingers. “From a Fisher Remnant, this one has a Snare binding like the one you used against Jai Long. It is more compatible with your pure Path than with Blackflame, so you might have some trouble cycling Blackflame for the next few weeks, but it won't trigger a critical incompatibility.”
Lindon had seen Fisher Gesha use some of her techniques before, and of course he'd practiced with his Void Snare construct. He could imagine lashing himself to a wall to pull himself up the side of a building, trapping enemies who tried to escape, swinging across a chasm...
The thought cheered him. Just a little.
“The problem will be what the binding becomes when it absorbs your Path of Black Flame, you see? I see two possibilities: either it will become a sort of burning whip instead of an actual Snare technique, or it will work as usual, but carry a measure of Blackflame with it that burns whatever you attach to. It depends on how the madra balances out, and there's no way to test without slapping it on.”
She moved to the second offering on the table, a gray mass of cloud molded into the shape of a limb that looked as though it could blow apart any second. “You'll have to concentrate to keep this firm enough to interact with solid objects, but it's made from Cloud Hammer madra. It was one of their Enforcer techniques in a binding, though I'm afraid I don't know the name. It may have been a custom technique belonging to the artist who left this Remnant. Anyway, you'll pack quite the punch, especially once it equalizes with your Blackflame madra.”
He reached out and passed his fingers through the cloud. As he expected, it only felt like mist. He could find a use for this just as much as the binding inside—an arm that could reach through solid objects.
“I like the physical properties of this one,” he said, reaching for a set of goldsteel tongs at the edge of the tray. But he reached with his right hand, so nothing happened besides his stump twitching.
He blinked.
Gesha snapped up the goldsteel tongs and used them to grip the limb of cloud. You needed goldsteel to manipulate Remnant parts like this one, because anything else would pass straight through. Madra couldn't pass through goldsteel.
The golden tools flashed unnaturally milk-white in the light as she grabbed the cloud hand and stretched. The hand grabbed at her tool while she pulled, trying to wrestle against her. Remnant limbs often retained some life and will of their own.
She ignored the hand's attempt to fight back and stretched the limb, pulling it out to a good three feet before the cloud started to thin. The severed end stayed on the tray, but now the fingertips were halfway across the room.
“It can be stretched, you see,” she said, holding it there for a moment. “This is something you could learn to do in time, though keeping it solid while you do so would take quite the force of madra.”
Lindon had already forgotten about the Fisher arm. This one had endless possibilities. He could stretch it, reach through doors, and hit with the force of a Cloud Hammer Enforcer technique...
Maybe he hadn't lost as much as he'd thought.
Gesha folded the arm back onto the tray and placed down her goldsteel tongs, moving to the third limb.
“Now, this one...you're lucky I favor you, hm? I made this one myself.”
This hand had six fingers with an extra joint on each one, making them look somewhat like an insect's legs. They were tipped as though clawed, and the arm was inhumanly thin. It seemed to be made of glass, with the slightest hint of color shooting through it. The color changed every second, a wisp of green brightening to a hint of yellow before darkening to orange.
“Path of the Shifting Skies,” she said proudly, as though it was her own Path. “I caught this Remnant almost four years ago, and I recognized its potential immediately. Years of experience should not be underestimated,” she said, shooting him a glance as though he had been questioning her expertise. “It was an interesting blend of cloud, wind, and water madra, but I found it especially intriguing when I found that it was also extremely close to pure. It was only barely tinged with other aspects of madra, as though the artist who left it had cycled aura for no more than a month. Though this is a Highgold a
rm, so that certainly could not be the case. I do wish I knew the story of this sacred artist,” she said with a regretful sigh.
Lindon stared at the transparent arm. If he understood her correctly, then she had easily saved the best for last. Finding a pure Remnant in the wild was next to impossible, because there were so few pure madra Paths. Unless Eithan died, there was very little chance of Lindon ever encountering one. That was the whole reason Eithan had gone through the effort of raising him to Lowgold without hunting down a Remnant—because finding a Remnant would have been even more difficult and expensive.
But Fisher Gesha had found a piece of the next best thing.
“I say I created this because I've fed it with pure madra for almost the last two years,” she said. “It was difficult to do so without compromising the balance of the binding or the structure of the limb, but I did it, didn't I? If we join this to you, it should—should, I say—match perfectly with the Path of Black Flame while you're drawing on your Blackflame core, but lose that influence and match with your pure core while you cycle the Path of Twin Stars. Eventually, it will carry a slight Blackflame influence, but it won't affect the performance of the limb.”
“It can't be so perfect for me,” Lindon said. If it were, she wouldn't have given him a choice, and would have simply brought this limb out from the beginning.
She pointed to him. “And so it isn't. Very good. Always be wary of anything that seems to fit too well. There is no binding in this limb, so it will not bring any technique along with it. Only the properties of its madra. It will serve you perfectly well as an arm, but it will carry you no capabilities you don't already have.”
Lindon nodded absently, looking from one arm to another. So he had a choice between compatibility and utility. The cloud arm looked the best, but there was an argument for the Fisher arm. Though tying himself to a surface didn't sound terribly exciting, it would allow him some creative options. Of course, he was still worried about its interaction with Blackflame.
How could he only choose one?
“What about all three?” Lindon asked. “I could change them out according to the situation.”
Fisher Gesha raised two fingers as though she were about to smack him on the head, but grumbled to herself for a moment and lowered them. “You think binding a Remnant arm to your spirit is so simple of a process, do you? You think you can just stick it in and remove it whenever you want to?”
“Pardon, Fisher Gesha, but you said it was simple.”
She opened her mouth, but then closed it again. “I suppose I did. Well, attaching one is the simplest process in the world, but by the time you can use it naturally, it will be your arm. It will be attached to your body and spirit, you see. Losing it will be the same as losing the limb you were born with.”
Lindon's eyes drifted back to his stump before he jerked them away. “I see. I'll be sure to choose carefully, then.”
A thought occurred to him, and he nodded to his pack sitting in the corner of the room. “What if we added a binding of our own? To the Shifting Skies arm, I mean.” That one was clearly the best selection, if only it came with a technique.
Fisher Gesha clearly understood what he meant, because she hesitated. “You should know that we've studied bindings like that one for generations. Dreadbeasts have plagued our lands long enough that we wanted to know what kind of madra created such monsters.”
She waited for him to ask a question, but he remained silent, so she reached into her robes and pulled out a sheaf of papers bound together with string. The Soulsmith notes he'd taken from the foundry back in the Desolate Wilds.
“We never had a name for the white madra in dreadbeast bindings,” she continued. “Our drudges could measure some of its properties, you see, but not enough to identify it. These notes call it hunger madra, which is perhaps one of the most absurd names for a power that I've ever heard. Though it seems to fit.”
“Hunger madra,” Lindon repeated. He'd read the notes, so he had heard the expression before, but he hadn't put the phrase together with the binding he'd carried around for the past year. “Is it compatible with my Paths?”
“As far as we can tell, it's compatible with everything,” she said wryly. “Dreadbeasts attack us with madra of all aspects, and they all have one of those bindings inside them. Although it could be that the ones with incompatible spirits die off...”
She waved a hand in the air. “You're distracting me. These notes reference an origin for this madra, a single source from which they got all their samples. They were trying to breed sacred beasts that left Remnants of this aspect, but they never made it. At least, not by the time these notes were written.”
Lindon nodded. If they didn't have a reliable source of Remnants, then the bindings and madra for the Ancestor's Spear must have come from somewhere else. “So where did the bindings come from?”
“That is what disturbs me,” she said. She shook her head as though shaking off cobwebs. “But it doesn't matter, does it? I could put your binding into this arm, certainly, but there would be no framework for it. We would need more hunger madra to reinforce and adapt the arm to handle the binding. Besides, do you really want a hand that devours madra? It could start feeding on the spirit of anyone you touch.”
To Lindon, that sounded incredible.
“If it worked like the Ancestor's Spear, my Paths would be much easier to advance,” he said delicately, keeping his enthusiasm from his voice. If she knew how excited he was, she would try and talk him out of it. “Reaching the peak of Truegold would be no problem. I could even split my core again, and drain yet a third Path.” He nodded to the color-tinged glass arm, which was tapping its pointed fingertips on the tray like a woodpecker. “We have such a fine sample here. Why not try an experiment?”
He was trying to appeal to her curiosity as a Soulsmith, but she shook her head. “The Ancestor's Spear worked thanks to its script as much as its binding. Without those scripts, we can't be certain what it will do, and testing out the binding might destroy it, and render our tests useless. Besides, we need more hunger madra if we're to build it into your arm without collapsing it, and the spear has dissolved already. There's no—”
She was cut off when the steel-banded wooden door creaked open, revealing Eithan grinning and holding up a pure white knife.
Gesha pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a heavy breath, but soon composed herself and bowed. “Underlord.”
Lindon started to greet Eithan, but no words came out. The man's easy smile stabbed him.
“It seems you need further materials,” Eithan said cheerily, striding into the room. “I just so happen to have some to spare.”
He tossed her the spearhead, but instead of reaching out her hands to catch it, she jerked them back as though afraid. Lines of purple madra lashed out from her, lashing the blade to the ceiling and slowly lowering it down to her eye level like a spider on a line. Clearly, she didn't want to risk having her madra drained away, even if Eithan had been holding it in his bare hands with no apparent problems.
When she saw that her technique had remained intact despite its contact with the weapon, she gingerly plucked it out of the web with two fingers.
The spearhead was about a foot long and a hand wide. She studied it for a moment, and then two long purple spider's legs reached up from beneath her. Her drudge.
The two legs snatched the blade from her, juggling and spinning it between them for a good two minutes before the spider-construct let out a hiss.
Finally, she gave a single nod. “There's enough here to...try. I'll have to break this binding down to its materials to avoid a conflict, and once we have the fragments of this weapon, we can begin merging them with the Shifting Skies limb.” She jabbed a finger at Eithan. “I cannot promise anything, you understand. And you'll be giving up this weapon.”
“I expect to gain a better one,” Eithan said, his gaze on Lindon.
Fisher Gesha gathered up her tray, returning the limbs to her
script-sealed box before the madra decayed any further. “I'll need my assistant for this,” she said. “I don't want to muddy this with more aspects than we need, so Fisher madra is not the most suitable. We'll need his pure madra to link it all together, and perhaps Blackflame to break down the extra binding.”
Lindon was eager to begin working, and he started to struggle out of the bed—no matter how weak he felt, this was something to do. Something to focus on besides what he had lost.
Eithan held up a hand, stopping him.
“I apologize, Fisher, but I need a word with him for a moment. Do what you can on your own, for now, and I'll send him to you when he's ready.”
Gesha hesitated, looking between Lindon and the Underlord.
“Don't you give him any trouble, now,” she said firmly, and to Lindon's shock, she wasn't speaking to him. She was looking straight at Eithan.
He raised his eyebrows. “I'll try my best not to.”
“He ought to get some time to rest after a day like this. You hear me? He's not a construct. Even if he were, you couldn't push him every day like you do without ever giving him time to rest.”
“I don't intend to—” Eithan began, but Fisher Gesha interrupted him.
“A whole year I've been here,” she said. Her spider-legs carried her forward, and she actually rapped her knuckles against the Underlord's chest. “A whole year of my life I've given up, and I don't have many of those left, do I? Well, I've always wanted to see the Empire, and so I have. I've tried foods I'd never heard of before, I've worked on Remnants I couldn't imagine, I've met strange people and seen strange sights.”
She reached up as though to smack him in the face, but seemed to remember who she was talking to, and pointed at him instead. “How much of that has he done, hm?”
Lindon started. He hadn't given much thought to what Fisher Gesha had been doing while he was training. He supposed he thought she just...worked all the time.
Like he did.
“He's spent more time underground than a mole. At least he's got Yerin with him, she's a good girl, but she wouldn't rest if someone killed her. You have to slow them down, you hear me? They're not Underlords.” She lowered her hand and sighed. “Not yet.”