The Weirkey Chronicles: Chapters 16-18 (Patreon)

If you have an account on RoyalRoad and want to support TWC, please check out the public version and give ratings/reviews/follows/upvotes! This week is my best chance of hitting the trending page or the top list, so building up momentum and total ratings is essential. We're in the top 25, so hitting the front page isn't impossible.

This week's set of three chapters is one reason I don't know how long I'll be able to stay on those lists. Last time, when Rick experienced too many setbacks and didn't get a MacGuffin, the story got downvoted quite a bit. I think this setback for Theo is essential to the story, but I imagine we'll see much the same.

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Chapter 16

Nearly three months into his time at the school, the first official contest was announced. Though no Archcrafter materials were being offered, the lower vaults would be opened and the winners would be offered a selection of the rarest first tier sublime materials. Despite claims about family, everyone would compete in teams, so excitement rapidly mounted.

Except with Magnafor, who Theo still saw from a distance on occasion. The other Earth-born human was scheduled to participate, but Theo didn't think that he cared about a few materials. Magnafor still intended to break through the barrier to the Landguard tree and steal everything there, which would make the contest prizes pale in comparison.

At the moment, however, he was blocked by Nanjuma's presence, so Theo thought he had more time. For now, the Tatian environment was good for his growth, so he intended to continue it. Soon enough it might grow stifling, and at that time he'd need to try to steal the resources from out of Magnafor's hands, but that was a future concern.

Since the contest would pit all the young soulcrafters against one another, it was finally time for him to complete his preparatory work and establish his blueprint. After so long waiting, he found himself making excuses, but he'd done everything he could in his soulhome without a central chamber.

Unfortunately, his concerns weren't entirely imaginary. By far the biggest problem was that every tree he'd attempted to plant at the center of his soulhome had either shriveled and died, or grown so stunted that it generated little cantae. He'd been checked repeatedly by various healers, none of whom saw any problem with his health, body or soul.

That meant that he had no choice but to skip the introductory step: instead of bothering with a tree at all, he'd jump to the true form of his blueprint and develop a central chamber with more powerful sublime materials. Doing it all at once would be tricky, but far from beyond his abilities.

Theo entered his soulhome and looked over all his preparations one more time. It had taken months, but he'd fashioned hundreds of solarstone blocks and built the core structure of his soulhome: a square of nine rooms, three on a side. All of them were empty, leaving him with no special abilities or traits, but his capacity to store cantae was now considerable, for a first tier soulcrafter. On top of that, he had perfected his vestibule and door, and had even set up a crude fence with leftover hearthtree wood. Few had similar advantages.

Currently, the roof was the weakest point, just simple wooden planks. But he didn't need the roof at all for his blueprint, so he could replace it with stone when he was ready to ascend to Archcrafter. What mattered now was igniting a powerful light in the core of his soulhome, which would channel cantae to the eight other chambers, giving him plenty of space to build all the abilities he'd imagined.

He slipped back to the real world for a moment, confirming that the sun was just beginning to rise. Time of day wasn't critical to soulcrafting except in certain superstitions, but this would be a major undertaking and he wanted everything to be perfect. The first rays of the sun would strike him soon, his mindset was perfect, and he had all the sublime materials he needed.

This was it: the culmination not of three months of soulcrafting, but of forty years of planning.

When he returned to his soulhome, he entered the vestibule and closed the door behind him. No distractions. Slowly he walked through the outer rooms, clearing his mind as he made sure that they were completely bare. The magnigem, the demonic materials, and sublime fruit he had left all over were stacked outside so they couldn't react. Not that they would cause major problems, but they would slow down the reaction and weren't needed until the foundation was complete.

Finally he walked into the central chamber. Unlike all the others, which were bare stone, he'd taken care to polish the walls and floor. At the very center he'd inscribed a circle with the pattern of the sun, and his final materials lay within it. 

A few remaining pieces of hearthtree wood remained around him and he recalled his plan to build a final defensive structure. It wasn't part of his blueprint, just a precaution in case there was excess energy from the process. He didn't think it was necessary, but propped up the defensive walls around the edges anyway, just to get himself in the right mental space.

Then he sat down and set to work. The ignition materials were fairly simple, just a spirit flint he'd bought in the market. It was highly potent, only affordable because this one would consume itself after a single use. All it needed to do was light the solar core until it created a reaction.

That solar core was the reason he had been chipping away at the noonstone boulder for so long. Eventually, it had cracked open to reveal a brilliant gem, one of many sublime materials that could ignite into a miniature sun. It wasn't the most powerful possible, but it was more than sufficient, and in the future, he'd be able to feed stronger materials into the blaze. He'd covered that aspect excessively during his years away.

There was nothing else to do. Theo took a deep breath, raised the solar core, and struck the flint against it.

Somehow he slammed against the outer wall of his soulhome, blown through the door by the explosion. If it had been his real body, he would have been incinerated, but he staggered up, his entire soul smoking. Shouldn't there be a sun ahead of him? He stumbled forward, part of him hoping that he had exceeded his wildest dreams, but a dark voice said that it couldn't be...

The heart of his soulhome lay empty.

Instead of a sun blazing in the air, supplying him with raw power, the central room had been devastated by an explosion. His eyes ran over the details repeatedly, refusing to take them in. The once pristine white walls had burned a glassy black, as if the stone itself had melted. His floor had been torn apart, leaving nothing but a small amount of rubble over barren earth. The flint and solar gem were gone, of course.

How the hell had it happened? Theo dropped to his knees, fumbling with the fragments as if he would find some mote of dust that would explain it all. But no trivial flaw could have caused such a catastrophic failure, it simply wasn't possible. All his careful plans...

To prevent himself from choking on despair in the central chamber, he forced himself back to his feet and struggled to the door. The outer chambers were mostly undamaged, though some of the roof had been torn off. Could the roof have been at fault? No, he dismissed that possibility almost immediately: the explosion had been instantaneous and the roof had been merely another victim.

In fact, he bitterly realized that it could have been much worse. The perfunctory defenses he'd put in place had blunted the explosion, preventing it from leveling his entire soulhome. Except as he stared at the empty white rooms, he wondered if that almost would have been better. Whatever the explosion had been, the heat of it had fused all the blocks together, leaving his foundation incredibly solid... and permanently flawed.

"Why?" Theo screamed his question into the uncomprehending clouds overhead, just as he'd bitterly asked for so many years on Earth. He stumbled outside, suddenly struggling to breathe. When he fell to the ground, he struck it angrily as if he could beat his own soul into submission.

There had to be some flaw that he could find, because that meant he could fix it. He carefully checked the demonic materials to see if they reacted, but they lay inert, just as theory would suggest. Nothing seemed to be out of place except the ugly hole in the center of his soulhome.

It had to be the fundamental elements of his soul, because everything he had soulcrafted had been perfect. One thing he hadn't planned on was awakening during the demon attack, and he fixed on that as the likely explanation. Though it hadn't weakened him in any way, it had drained the grass in the field and he hadn't adjusted for that in his initial blueprints. That had to be the reason.

After taking several deep breaths, Theo walked back to the center of the chamber to consider his next step. The floor could be rebuilt, but the blackened walls were a problem. His failure had altered the fundamental nature of the solarstone and he might need to replace it. Unless the black coating was very thin...

He took out his chisel and chipped at it, but to his surprise he couldn't put a scratch on the dark surface. It glistened like volcanic glass, which wasn't something he knew very much about. Sublime materials like that existed in other worlds, but it wasn't generally created by processes.

By the time his fingers were numb, he still hadn't accomplished anything, but Theo bitterly told himself that he wouldn't give up. It would require more powerful tools, but he'd eventually eliminate the evidence of his failure and start again. He wasn't back to the beginning, just taking a detour.

Those words were no comfort at all. When he left his soulhome, he could still taste the scorched ash in his mouth.

-

Chapter 17

Days crumbled away, taking them closer and closer to the competition, yet Theo barely even considered them. So long spent preparing, all ruined in a single moment. He hadn't realized just how many of his hopes had been pinned on returning to the Nine as a brilliant hero. It had been all that got him through the terrible jobs and broken relationships that had marked his Earthly existence, yet now...

It wasn't that he stopped working. On the contrary, he avoided all classes and skipped meals to spend even more time in his soulhome, feverishly trying to find a way to reconstruct what had been lost. There might be no way to easily regain the solar gem and he couldn't afford another flint, but those were trivial obstacles. More important were repairing the damage and finding the source of the problem.

Both issues had proved stubborn. He hadn't been hopeful that anyone could directly heal soulhome damage, but he'd still asked the local healers and even the Archcrafter when she returned. Other than informing him that all the power he'd gathered had been reduced to the unworkable black residue, they were useless to him. A few confirmed that certain Ruler tier materials might have been able to help, but he had no way of obtaining those with his current strength.

Try as he might, he couldn't find a flaw in his execution, so the only logical solutions were that he had misunderstood the blueprint, or that his soul had been the problem. The Landguard village didn't have many useful books, but he'd checked them anyway, looking for any precedent of a demonic awakening ruining a soul. Not only did he find nothing, the scholarly consensus seemed to be that demons lacked souls or the capacity to interact with them.

His only chance at new insight was speaking with Nanjuma, but the leader had been busy dealing with lesser demon attacks. Previously Theo had disregarded him as "only" a Ruler, never able to bridge the gap to the fourth tier, but he realized that was arrogant. Nanjuma had soulcrafted three extremely polished floors and spent a lifetime mentoring others. If anyone had a superior knowledge of soulhomes, it was him.

On several occasions, Nauda had attempted to draw him out of his room, and Fiyu had even showed up once. He'd been polite but ignored them, and though Nauda seemed hurt, she'd left him alone. Most likely she had used her technique and seen what had happened to his soulhome.

A bitter part of him was furious that they didn't try to help, but that was irrational: what could they have done? He had devastated his soulhome with a blueprint that was beyond all of them and they weren't exactly stumbling over legendary sublime materials. Their attempts to draw him out were what they had to offer, and he'd rejected it.

Once again, Theo found himself in the center of his soulhome, examining the blasted space. He'd removed all the damaged fragments, leaving only black dirt - the grass had never grown back and it had been scarred in a similar way to the walls. Other than repairing the ceiling, he hadn't been able to soulcraft in a meaningful way - he'd been smashing more solarstone into pieces just so he wasn't sitting idle, but every effort to clean the walls had failed.

He did know of a few solutions, all of them too far away to be of any use. There was a rare tool on Deuxan that could cut apart any sublime material within a soul. A water from Aathal that ate through anything not living like acid. Sources of light on Noven that could scour clean any impurity.

Without those, he didn't see any way of building past this. He had a solid first floor of his soulhome, but it was useless to him. Even if he built around the blasted area, which might make him strong enough to handle most opponents once he reached Archcrafter, he would never be able to face the monstrous demon he'd seen in the pale world beyond the Nine. And it would be a mistake to assume that was the worst he'd face.

Eventually he realized how long it had been since he'd eaten anything - his stomach actually hurt, though that could also have been the stress. Theo closed his soulhome and left his room, shuffling to the kitchen. Thankfully it was several hours before the usual time to eat, so he was able to take some of the previous day's bread and a few of the fruits and vegetables they were cutting.

He ate them but didn't taste anything, chewing over the same thoughts as he did every day. Before he could finish filling his stomach, Nauda appeared in the doorway. She said nothing until she sat down opposite him and so he just stared at her.

"You need to stop this." She gripped her staff with white knuckles. "I know that your soulhome took a terrible blow, but you need to stop-"

"Why should I?" Theo dropped the piece of bread he was eating and watched it fall with a dull clunk. "Everything I did was designed for a specific blueprint, but it failed. Depression is a rational response. There's no happy celebration that will erase the damage done to me."

"No, but you can stop doing more. You think that this misery is a consequence of what happened, but it's not. You're doing this to yourself."

"And you think that makes me feel better? You don't understand at all."

He thought he saw a flicker of pain on her face, then it closed in a polite Tatian smile and she lowered her head. "You're right, of course. You know far more about this than me and I was merely making a feeble effort to encourage you. I should not have insulted you by pretending to understand the pain that you, and you alone in all history, are suffering."

Though her words had to be a hollow shell of Tatian politeness, he just didn't care. Nauda stared at him a moment longer, then gripped her staff enough to rise and left the room. He remained there among the awkward cooks, trying to eat a few more bites before he gave up.

One thing she was right about was that he needed to change his pattern, which was clearly not helping him. In that conversation, he'd reminded himself too much of a teenager, a stage he thought that he'd put behind him decades ago. It was as if the failure in his soul had knocked his mind back as well, leaving him a bitter version of the person he'd been when he planned the blueprint long ago.

So instead of returning to his room, Theo went to talk to Navim. As he lived alone beside the mine, it was always easy to find the Mundhin, and this time there appeared to be no one asking him for assistance. Theo stepped through the broad door and into the rocky chamber. He wasn't sure if it mimicked civilization in Arbai, but to him it looked like a simple set of marble blocks, too high to be comfortable for humans to sit on.

They were the appropriate height for Navim to settle several pieces of his body on, however, and the largest block clearly served as a table. The Mundhin turned his central core to regard him, then turned back to his work. Unable to see from the ground, Theo moved forward and stepped up onto one of the blocks.

"Hello, Jake. I have not seen you in some time."

"I've been busy." Theo stared down at the melting strands of stone, several different varieties blending into something that could have been a complex device or a piece of art. "But I regret not visiting you more often."

"It is no trouble. The Tatians have been quite eager to have me mend much of their stone. It seems that if the living stone cannot be coaxed into the shapes they want, they are generally without recourse. I am puzzled over the fact that they have not developed stoneshapers of their own."

"I think there are some, but not this far out."

After that, Theo went silent. Navim worked in equal silence for a time, twisting several veins of stone together before finally hardening them. Then his gem-studded core turned up to focus on him. "So, what is it that you would have of me?"

Theo hesitated, the question throwing him from his grim mental cycles. "Does it... really seem like I'm just coming because I want something? I guess that's fair. But not this time. I just... need a conversation to get out of my own head. Do the Tatians really ask you for so many things? That doesn't seem very hospitable of them."

"They have done their utmost to thank me with gifts of food and warm embraces, regardless of my objections that I cannot use these things. I have found their hospitality to be somewhat focused on their own comfort, less about the true ideal of generosity and more maintaining a view of the world that they find to be comfortable."

And just like that, Theo was glad that he came to talk to Navim. "Believe me, I know exactly what you mean."

"Then I will ask again, reiterating that I will not be offended: do you require anything of me other than conversation?"

"Can you reforge soulhomes or shape legendary armaments that can be wielded by first tier soulcrafters?"

"I cannot do these things."

"Then I just want to talk." Theo bent down to pick up one of the stone blocks and, using cantae to lift the heavy stone, put it up on his seat so he'd have something to lean back against. As he did so, a different thought occurred to him. "But I suppose you might do something for someone else. Fiyu has outgrown the original mask you so generously helped create, so a better one might be useful."

"Her concerns are not yours." That was all Navim said, his gemstones completely unreadable. Theo had heard that the only way to read a Mundhin's mood was body language, not the unchanging gems, but all the ones he'd met had seemed unnaturally still. With no way of interpreting that statement, Theo decided to just move on.

"Then I want to think about something other than my own problems. What about you? Is your soulcrafting going well?"

"Again, I must inquire if you have an ulterior motive. Is this preparation for the contest?"

Theo paused, then laughed. "I hadn't even thought about it, but I suppose we'll be competing. Withhold critical information, if you prefer."

His tone must have been convincing, because after regarding him for a time, Navim spoke in a more relaxed voice. "In my time here, I have substantially developed my chamber devoted to stoneshaping, in addition to gaining experience with the art. I have also used some of their local stone to form a new chamber, though I do not know if it is durable enough to survive the ascension to Archcrafter."

"That's your goal, then? You want the Archcrafter materials, so you want your group to win the contest?"

"Yes, no, and no, respectively." Navim's sphere of gemstones remained still, but his arms rotated in a movement Theo interpreted as an idle tic. "Perhaps some of the sublime materials in this world would be useful to me, but when I say that I am more concerned with knowledge than with materials, I am not expressing a commitment to ideal scholarship. The master of my school can bestow upon me more than enough sublime materials to allow for ascension, if I prove myself as a student."

"One of the philosophical schools?" Even though he'd just set up his backrest, Theo found himself leaning forward. "I've never visited Arbai, but I've heard about them. Is it a big one?"

"Not by an objective standard, but we are well known within our field. I am one of the lesser students of Master Uvvah Ulim, of the School of Emerald Indulgence."

Theo had never heard of it, but nodded along as if he did. "If your master has enough high tier materials to distribute to all his students, he must be powerful."

"Certainly he is by the standards of our current surroundings. Master Uvvah Ulim has never cared for strength and ascended to the rank of Authority solely in order to obtain the ability to use weirkeys and travel the Nine Worlds. He spent his youth exploring as much of them as he could, but as his stones grew weary, he returned and founded our school. In it, he passes along his techniques only as a method to spread his philosophies of flexibility in thought."

"He sounds like a remarkable man, uh, Mundhin. You joined the school because you admire him?"

"Yes, just so." Navim's core shifted down to regard him. "He is an admirable scholar and I hope to make him proud. My monograph on the customs of Tatian will not be unique, but he will approve of the spirit of my research."

Though Theo wondered how much it was an academic school and how much it was a body of armed soulcrafters, he thought that question might not be appreciated. Best to try something more neutral... "Does the school teach soulhome blueprints as well? Clearly, you feel comfortable improvising new chambers. I thought you disliked approximation."

"To improvise is not to create a rough approximation." Navim drew back, as clearly offended as a cluster of rocks could be. "But to answer your question: no, my master does not believe in the use of blueprints. Instead, a student makes an attempt and the teacher asks questions of it, revealing flaws until the student learns better."

"Heh, we have something like that in the philosophy of my world."

"Oh? I would gladly hear more of this. Both I and my master would be glad to hear more of your world, if it truly does stand beyond the Nine."

Relaxed as he was, Theo hadn't realized that he was walking into a problem. He trusted Navim to a degree, but didn't want to start spreading information about Earth. If it was still largely unknown despite other travelers like Magnafor, that meant knowledge of it would be suspicious. If Vistgil or anyone else was looking for him, telling tales of home might be painting a target on his back.

He was saved an awkward refusal by a quiet voice that surprised him. "Navim? I would like-" Fiyu's smile froze as she entered and sensed Theo's presence as well. After a pause, she lowered her head and retreated before they could say anything. "I did not realize you had a guest. I will return."

Navim bade her farewell, but Theo just sat without saying anything. Clearly Fiyu would avoid him so long as he was in this state, which was a reasonable strategy. He sighed and ran his hands through his hair, his concerns piling back onto him. It was too early for that, so he decided to press on to something else.

"Does Fiyu ask you for things as well?"

"Yes, but I consider her a friend. I attempted to utilize what I have read of Ichili customs and it seemed to make her feel at ease. Once she realized how much I valued her recollections of her world, she became more eager to speak than I expected."

"Yeah, Fiyu is..." He had been about to say she was great, but it didn't feel right to compliment her while he was giving her the cold shoulder. "Okay, I'm thinking about the wrong things again. Distract me."

After a curious pause, Navim did his best, leading to a long conversation ranging from the nature of Arbai to observations about Tatian to general philosophy. Theo knew he wasn't stupid, and he'd learned a fair amount over the course of his life, but he still felt a bit coarse talking to Navim. The Mundhin really was a philosopher at heart, thinking deeply on issues that didn't grip Theo in the same way. His life had been too dominated by his central concerns to spare time for abstract questions.

The conversation was refreshing, but as he had never been able to shake his other thoughts, he left it with a clear plan. Before returning to his room and his futile soulcrafting, he would make another attempt to visit Nanjuma. He'd check again every day until he managed to talk to the Ruler, and if that wasn't successful, he'd try something else. Wallowing like this was not an option.

As if summoned by his determination, Nanjuma was actually available that day, sitting on the edge of one of the upper buildings. Theo habitually glanced toward the sealed tree, trying to determine if the barrier had been damaged further, but then shifted his focus to the old man instead.

"Nanjuma? I wanted to request your advice on a question of soulhome blueprints."

"Of course!" Nanjuma hopped off the edge, landing easily beside him. "But if I recall which student you are, you didn't accept one of our blueprints, did you? I'm afraid I'm only a simple Tatian man, and if you want some exotic foreign blueprint, this old man may not be able to help."

The false humility grated, but Theo smiled through it. "You're still the most knowledgeable person I know on the subject. I've crafted myself into a corner and I'm at a loss for what to do next."

"Well, then, let's take a look!"

All at once, Nanjuma's soul was pressing against his. It was almost an attack, but one he couldn't possibly repel, so Theo instead just rushed to enter his soulhome. He had a glimpse of a vast tower floating nearby... no, not a tower, the outer wall hiding most of Nanjuma's soulhome. Clouds wrapped around it soon, but not before a green blur leapt to land in his soulhome.

Nanjuma's spirit was formed from green fire, clearer than anyone via Nauda's technique but just as obviously not a real presence. The old man folded his arms and looked over the structure quickly. "Well, it looks quite solid from the outside! What seems to be the trouble?"

"I'll show you, if you come this way, but let me explain. I am following a blueprint from... a treasured friend, one much stronger than I am. I intended to build my soulhome around a single concept: light itself, both illumination and strength."

"That seems like an excellent decision." As they walked through the rooms, Nanjuma rapped his knuckles against the wall and actually seemed to touch it. That suggested he could have damaged the materials if he wanted, but Theo was well past concerns about being outclassed.

"Yes, but it didn't go as planned..." By the time they reached the center, Theo had explained almost all the details of his idea, though he left out the technical concerns that Nanjuma seemed to understand intuitively. The old man nodded and grunted approvingly at most of them, only shaking his head sadly at the damage done to the central chamber.

When at last Theo was done, Nanjuma remained silent for a long time. He bent down, his fingers grasping some of the dark soil, then ran a finger along the glassy wall. His spirit vanished abruptly, only to return with several yellowing blades of grass in his hand. After thoughtfully crushing them, he let the pieces slide out of his hand and turned back to Theo.

"Your blueprint is explosive, potentially dangerous, but your preparations seem to be adequate. I cannot examine your materials, so it is possible that there was a fatal flaw within one, but I agree that is unlikely. No, the core problem is you."

Theo sighed. "Thanks, that's just what I'd hoped to hear."

"No, you haven't heard yet. Listen well." Nanjuma loomed in front of him, one spiritual finger burning as it touched his chest. "This soulhome you described was designed for the soul of a young and hopeful man, one who thought of himself as a mighty warrior of divine justice. You, whatever else may be said of you, are not that young man. If you do not accept this, you will never be able to forge a true soulhome."

The words tore through him worse than any attack and Theo staggered back. His mind attempted to come up with justifications and counter-arguments, but here in the core of his soul, he believed it. 

How could he have been so stupid? He'd designed the foundation specifically to be compatible with himself, refusing to believe that he'd changed. Somehow he thought that his entire life on Earth was just a meaningless interlude, but of course it had changed him. These past few days were proof of that: he wasn't young and hopeful, he was a bitter and cynical old man.

As soon as he accepted that, his purpose became much clearer. This visit to the Nine would not be a whimsical adventure and it never had been: he was out for revenge, and for truths he probably didn't want to learn. He needed a soulhome to match his true purpose.

"Well!" Nanjuma stepped back and chuckled. "I see a new light in your eyes, though not one that many Tatian elders would approve of. I'm glad I could be of some help, but is that all?"

"Wait just a moment..." He was desperately thinking now, reconsidering everything. It was impossible to scrap everything he'd already done, so he needed to reinterpret it.

Slowly and surely it began to come together for him. His ex-wife had once referred to him as a black hole of misery that sucked all the joy out of his own life... perhaps he could be that. There were countless details to consider as he threw out his old blueprint and began working anew, but one thing was clear.

"Nanjuma, I have a request to make. One of the instructors told you that I earned an Archcrafter material in her class, right?" Theo smiled darkly. "I'd like to choose it now."

-

Chapter 18

As much as Theo wanted to lock himself into a room and focus on nothing but soulcrafting, he thought that might be taking exactly the wrong lesson from his revelation. When there was a lecture by the sole Deuxan instructor at the school that Nauda urged everyone to attend, he decided that was the right moment to return. Nauda smiled when he arrived, though he wasn't sure if it was a real smile or not.

"I'm glad to see so many of you here." The instructor entered the room in a shimmering blur that faded as he reached the front. "Many of you are making significant soulcrafting progress, which means you are starting to look upwards towards the clouds. This lesson is about ascension, how it's accomplished, and why you'd be a fool to try now."

That was... somewhat disappointing. Theo's knowledge might not be perfect, but he doubted that it would be corrected by a second tier soulcrafter. He returned to his soulhome to get back to work, keeping only part of his attention on the lecture. 

"Here on Tatian, little attention is paid to ranks and tiers... too little, if you ask me! I hold my tongue when it comes to culture, but in terms of soulcrafting, your limits are impossible to ignore. A few of you might even have come up against them if you've built high enough, and discovered that the clouds are truly overhead... and that they push back."

After that, the lecturer continued to talk about safe building heights and techniques, which he already knew. He glanced up briefly to the clouds roiling overhead, but they were irrelevant to him now. Ascending was impossible while he was so unprepared, and he wouldn't even have wanted to without having fully soulcrafted his first floor. No, for the time being, his concerns were on the ground.

With so much physical work done, his problem was now more spiritual: reinterpreting everything he'd crafted in a way that he could really believe on an intuitive level. Everything had been based around controlling the power of light, which was no longer possible. But even if his core plan had failed, in so many years on Earth he'd certainly had time to think about other soulhome concepts.

So instead, he intended to build himself around the concept of gravity. Solarstone was dense and embodied the sun, one of the largest sources of mass relevant to ordinary life. It didn't take much straining to refocus himself toward a fundamental law instead of a simple embodiment of an element.

The implications were vast, however. Gravity was a more precise and clinical concept, poorly suited for the soulhome of a mighty warrior... but that wasn't who he was anymore. Theo took a deep breath and tried to let go of his visions of himself as an invincible soulcrafter striding through the battlefield, shrugging off blows from all sides. His soul was cynical and brittle now... and extremely sharp.

Slowly he felt his soulhome shift on a fundamental level. The light itself dimmed and his solarstone blocks darkened. The grass surrounding his soulhome, once trying to mimic fresh young grass, shifted from yellow to gray. As it shifted, he could feel his soul coming into alignment, his foundation and his soulhome no longer straining against one another.

But he could also feel a deep spiritual exhaustion. Recognizing his limits, Theo faded out, tuning back in to the lecture.

"In Deuxan we would have a slate, but here you must use your imagination." The instructor placed one hand flat, then slid his second over it. "If you do succeed in piercing the clouds and ascending, your soulhome is reinforced, yes, but this is a secondary concern. More importantly, you will have opened up an entire second tier of space in which to build. Double the number of potential chambers, either to reinforce what you already have or to soulcraft new abilities."

"Does each ascension double the size of your soulhome?" a student asked. The instructor shook his head and slipped his lower hand over the top.

"No, each tier is roughly the same size as all the others. But the intensity of your cantae does continue increasing sharply, and more importantly each tier is qualitatively different from the previous. Third tier soulcrafters are called Rulers for a reason: they represent the first peak of attainment. At that stage, a person has rebuilt their soul so much that they are, in a sense, a sublime material themselves. Rulers generate their own cantae at all times, even from their physical body, and thus most realms are ruled by third tier soulcrafters."

Theo frowned, as the last part was untrue as far as he knew. Rulers obtained significant advantages and did represent a peak of a sort, but they were rarely actual monarchs unless the Nine had changed in his absence. It might be true in the backwaters of Tatian, but he would have expected a Deuxan to know better. Usually regions were dominated by those on the fourth tier... but it seemed that the other students were thinking in the opposite direction.

"How are Archcrafters different from all of us?" Famaj asked. The instructor dropped his hands and instead folded them in his sleeves.

"We gain the ability to push further outward, crafting structures away from our core soulhome. The primary use of that is to build a shielding wall, which is why I can appear to be a simple soulcrafter if I choose. But that is a lesson for far later, when you have ascended and begun work as an Archcrafter."

There was silence after that, many of the students apparently awed by the ideas. Theo started to wonder if he was going to need to ask the obvious next question himself when he saw Fiyu shift. She sat near Nauda and poked her in the leg, prompting the other woman to speak. "Even a Ruler is still called a Farmguard here. If they are the third tier of soulcrafter, what is the fourth?"

"Ah yes, the Landguards." Their instructor shook his head in a gesture that might have been dismissal or respect. "In other worlds, they would be referred to as Authorities, and they represent heights of power far beyond simple soulcrafters. The path from Ruler to Authority is difficult... or so I have been told. The truth is that there, I am as ignorant as all of you."

Theo suspected that was not strictly true, though he agreed that it was beyond all of them for the foreseeable future. It was true that there was a chasm between Authorities and those below, but it wasn't the peak. Soulcrafters in the tier beyond that were known as Strongholds, the highest stage he'd reached in his previous life.

Except it wasn't his previous life, just his past. Theo set his teeth and resolved to accept all of his history, including all his time on Earth.

In any case, even back then, he had met opponents who outclassed him, and not just the demon at the end. The sixth tier was named Dominion, and they did represent the highest strength he knew of... but he suspected that it wasn't the limit. If he was honest with himself, in his past he had been self-centered and short-sighted, so he could only just now intuit the movements of greater powers yet.

All of that lay so far ahead of him that it didn't bear thinking about. Instead, Theo returned to his soulhome as the questions devolved to youthful enthusiasm, asking starry-eyed questions about the strengths of Rulers and Landguards. He knew those all too well, and they weren't sufficient.

Theo had nearly completed the shift of his soulhome, but there was still so much work to do. He walked inward and stared at the blasted chamber, which had still resisted every effort to change it. Conceptually, he had decided to embrace it: a blackened shell ruined by his past decisions was a perfect metaphor for his soul. That didn't mean that he could actually use it effectively.

Maybe one day he would find a plant that could grow in the dark soil, but everything he had tried on Tatian had instantly felt wrong. It was the same lesson he'd misapplied when he tried to start the reaction: his central chamber wouldn't be a place of gentle growth, it needed to be a cold principle. If it couldn't be the blazing of the sun, it needed to be something more fundamental.

His conclusion, coming to him in a burst of insight while speaking with Nanjuma, had been to embody the principle of mass... but that was easier said than done. In an ideal world, he'd create a singularity, but he doubted that he would find any sublime materials representing abstract scientific concepts. That was likely far beyond his capacity at the first tier anyway.

What he did have was an Archcrafter-tier sublime material called a bogstone. Not visually impressive, just a dark sphere sitting in the center of the chamber, and swampy wetlands were not exactly as conceptually impressive as the sun itself. But the sublime material had a very useful property: the stone absorbed anything, sucking whatever it touched into itself. Though it wasn't truly the same principle as gravity, he thought it might be as close as he could get, from the resources he had available.

Unfortunately, he wasn't quite capable of using it. Even without generating any cantae, its mere presence put stress on his entire soulhome. Only the blackened walls of the central chamber resisted the effect, apparently impervious, but the force made the other stones tremble whenever he tried to use it. When he'd built a temporary roof over the central chamber, it had been blasted straight off. If he could repeat the process that had turned the center to glass, that might reinforce the whole building, but he lacked the resources.

No solution came to him, so Theo set about the simpler work of soulcrafting one of his outer chambers. Without a core chamber embodying gravity, he couldn't develop any techniques that he hoped would be the heart of his strength, but he could still improve himself in simple ways.

He knew that he would never be a physical powerhouse, at least not compared to others of his tier, but he couldn't afford to neglect his body. As he crafted simple furnishings from hearthtree wood, Theo continued listening in as someone finally asked a good question.

"What about demons?" It was a short Fithan woman he hadn't noticed before. Her question quieted the room, but she pressed onward. "When the demons sacrifice themselves to summon a second stage demon, is it their equivalent of an Archcrafter?"

"That's incorrect, but you've asked an important question." The instructor leaned back against the wall of the room, his gaze wandering out one of the windows. "The language for demons varies, but never let yourself be deceived into thinking they are the same. Teaching you about demons would be a class unto itself, so just remember this: the steps between demonic stages are vaster than those for any of the mortal races. If you think that their sacrifices will make your battle easier by reducing the number of opponents, stop at once. What they summon will be much worse."

It abruptly occurred to Theo that the system seemed to be net positive, as if in violation of conservation of energy. The thought was absurd, of course, since that law seemed less absolute in the Nine, and in any case he could easily explain it as absorbing power from another source. Yet even if it was wrong, the thought remained stuck in his head.

Previously, he'd never given much thought to how deeply unnatural the demons were. They didn't eat, didn't breed, didn't grow. Nothing about their nature made sense as normal living creatures, and their instinct to sacrifice themselves was bizarre, even by the standards of the Nine. In the past he'd assumed they were some kind of soulcrafting experiment gone horribly wrong, but how could soulcrafting produce something like that?

As he soulcrafted, Theo turned the problems over in his mind. He would find no answers via pure thought, but at least this time he could look. Perhaps he could learn the truth if he spoke to the philosophers of Arbai, or learned from the strange beings of Siata, or searched the divine archives of Noven. This time, he couldn't ignore those deeper issues, not with the memories of that demon in the pale realm still haunting him.

In his hands, the hearthtree wood had somehow become dark and jagged. Perhaps exactly as it should be.