Astral Threads, Ch 27: A Forge on the Mountain (Patreon)

They spent nearly a full day digging the Shards of the Aurora out of the glacial cavern. It would have taken longer except that the ice flowed away wherever Sam moved, leaving behind a shimmering black dust that flickered with rainbow colors like the aurora in the night sky.

With Elemental Manipulation at Epic, it took barely any effort to bend the local elements, especially the ice that already liked him, although it was a drain on his essence. The ice blew away like fog, creating tunnels that followed the twisting, scattered path of the Shards of the Aurora. He liked the old name better and, with a bit of prompting, the World Core cooperated. Now, the material identified as that when he inspected it.

The dust was a drifting, hazy ribbon through the ice, like a stray breeze that had become trapped in it. It gathered around him in a spinning trail, looping in arcs around his shoulders and arms as he separated it from bits of dust and stone. As he purified it, he continued walking slowly as the walls moved back in front of him.

Now and then, he had to stop to meditate and regain his essence, but only once every few hours. His mana regeneration was at 50% an hour. When he was meditating, it was twice that, and with all of the essence he’d gained recently, his reserves were deeper than they’d ever been.

His senses swept out ahead of him, scanning for the densest trail, but eventually, his movement stilled as he reached the end of the vein and he looked down at the river of black dust that was spinning around him. For all of his effort, there wasn’t that much, perhaps a double handful when it was all gathered together.

With a gesture, he pulled on the ice in the tunnel wall to his left and drew out a sphere of the dark blue element. He molded it between his hands, shaping it into a small chest with a tightly-fitted lid that was about eight inches across. Crystal flame flowed through it, etching runes for hardness, durability, protection, and freezing cold into its interior..

The dust needed to be preserved in almost the same conditions as where he’d found it unless he wanted its quality to degrade. After a few minutes of work, he had a small chest of enchanted ice in his hands and he opened the lid with a quiet click of ice against ice. The dust swirled around him as it flowed into the chest and settled at the bottom. When it was done, a small hill of sparkling black dust filled the chest about halfway.

A sense of age and eternity radiated from it, like he was looking at the dust of frozen stones between the stars, but it also held a trace of vibrant life as different colors reflected from it like from the facets of a gem. The dust gathered light about it. There were traces of ice and earth in it as well, but mostly there was the sense of falling stars with a flicker of flame that was growing cold and the potential to be ignited again.

He was looking forward to what he could make with it.

“It is said to be one of the best materials for forging with ice and flame,” Krana offered from his side as she looked down into the chest. Her eyes were sparkling as they reflected the light from the dust. “It suits you. Perhaps it is time for you to make yourself some better equipment? You’ve forged many different things, but you continue to outgrow them. Maybe that could be used for something that could grow with you, or at least that you wouldn’t leave behind.

“If you want to save this dust until we reach Runekeld,” she added as she looked at him, “between this and some of the Earth mana that you have left, you will have the undivided attention of nearly all the dwarven crafters. They might be willing to let you into their workshops just to watch you work with it, and that is a very rare invitation. Are you sure you don’t want to save it?”

“There’s enough to use some now and save the rest for later,” Sam agreed as Krana’s words gave him an idea. He had enough materials for perhaps one good item and he already knew what he wanted to do with it. It would take a bit of preparation, but it would let him test out his forge.

To use the rest of the dust properly, he was going to need to collect a few more things. What he had should be enough for quite a few items, perhaps even several dozen, since it only needed to be sprinkled into them.

“The smiths in Runekeld should have some rare materials, right?” he asked Krana. “Do you think they would trade them for some vials of Earth mana?”

If he wanted to get more materials, the dwarves should have them. If not them, then perhaps the Bloodline Clans or a large city.

“A vial of Earth mana is worth nearly any other material in existence, or a pile of them,” Krana replied seriously. “Rarity is the problem, since some things are nearly impossible to find, like the shards in that chest, but rare things also accumulate over time, since sometimes there’s no good reason to use them without a handful of other rare things to make the most of them. Earth mana is different. You can use it for almost everything.

“If you want rare materials, you can probably trade for them, especially if you’re looking for rarity in general and not specific things. If you really are thinking of trading it, Runekeld is the best city in the kingdom to find materials that can match it in quality, except maybe the capital. My people save materials for centuries until we find the right use for them.”

Sam considered the contents of his pouches, as well as the bits of Outsiders that he’d collected, and nodded. From the dwarves’ perspective, using the dust on a basic project would probably be a travesty that would make them curse his name for generations. The thought made him chuckle, since he’d already used quite a bit of Earth mana like that in the past.

He wasn’t planning to waste this on something small, however.

The relic also needed rare auras and perhaps both could be found in Runekeld. Ideally, he would find some star or other astral-aligned materials, like meteoric iron, or something else that radiated with an aura that fit. Anything with a strong flame or ice element would work too, since both of those could be incorporated into his crystal flame and the stars.

First, however, they needed to get out of this tunnel so he could set up his forge. It would work better if he were able to see the stars. He sealed the enchantment on the chest with a flicker of essence and placed it in a dimensional pouch. Then he looked at the tunnel around them, sensing for the flow of the wind, as he turned to Krana.

“It’s a good walk back to the crevasse,” he said with a grin, “but I have an idea for how to speed it up.”

The wind was quiet this deep in the ice, but there was still a current circulating between the icy walls and the sky above with a constant restless movement. He reached out and pulled it toward him, wrapping himself and Krana in layers. There were only two ways out once they made it back to the crevasse: digging or flying.

A surge of wind swept around them, floating on top of a layer of crystal flame that heated the tunnel. Then they were gone, sweeping along the surface of the ice as a howling wind burned around them.

---

“Stop that and put me down,” Krana grumbled as they flew out of the crevasse and into the open air of the mountains. Her arms were folded over her chest as she frowned at Sam, who was laughing as his hair whipped back in the wind. All around them, a rippling line of crystal flame and wind burned like the corona of a star.

The seer was short enough compared to him now that he had her tucked under one arm. His Elemental Manipulation had improved a great deal, but it was easier to manage things that were close to him, so he’d picked her up before he’d summoned the wind to push them skyward. With his Strength, holding her was no problem at all.

“I suppose it’s better than being carried by the golems,” Krana groused as he set her down on the icy slope. Despite her complaints, she looked amused, perhaps because Sam was still grinning.

They’d soared up through the crevasse for more than a thousand feet. It was the first time he’d really flown under his own power and it had come with a sense of majestic freedom. It had almost felt like he was falling upward into the sky, like a star shooting across the horizon.

He looked around the area as he released the wind and flames, searching for a good area. He wanted a depression in the ice, like a bowl, so he could set up his forge inside. That way, he would only be visible from above and not to anyone who was looking across the slope. There weren’t many people around here, but it was possible some Visionary or Seer might send their gaze across the mountains and see him.

These days, he wasn’t bothered as much by the idea of being seen as he was by getting interrupted when he was in the middle of something. It would be irritating to have a visitor when he was busy. So, he wanted an area that had some seclusion and a clear sky.

It didn’t take him too long to find a depression in the slope that had a shallow depth, a younger cousin to the crevasse they had just come from. It was about fifty feet long, twenty feet wide, and thirty feet deep, and it was filled with fallen snow, some of which was turning to ice under the pressure of the years. It would work for what he needed.

When he reached it, he infused his essence into the snow inside and began to reshape it, pushing it to the sides as he smoothed out the walls. As he was working, Krana joined him inside and took up a position to the side, where she promptly sat down and began to watch what he was doing. They had worked together on forging in the past, but their paths in the craft had diverged too far now for her to be of much help, so she was content to simply observe.

He gave her a nod as he sent the remaining snow upward, adding a higher wall at the top of the area that curved inward to form a partial cover. A little while later, there was a reinforced ice dome with a circular hole at the center to release heat and smoke, and he had bored slender openings along the walls to allow for a flow of fresh air from every direction. When that was done, he looked around at the result.

It would work. He had turned the depression into a respectable forging chamber. The dusky shade of twilight was just spreading across the sky as he looked up to feel the position of the stars. In a few minutes, the first of them would be visible. It would help to support his work.

The silver-swirled black plate of his portable forge appeared in his hand. It was as heavy as an anvil, the surface flickering as it reflected the sky above in dark relief. He checked to confirm that it was ready.

Charge: 50,000 / 50,000.

Over the last two weeks, it had gathered energy during the night to charge itself at a fairly quick rate with the enchantment he’d inlaid along the edge, gaining about 5,000 essence each night. Like the relic itself, it just needed to be beneath the stars. He wasn’t sure how long it would last, but it should be a while, depending on what he did.

It was a curious thing that the sunlight during the day didn’t charge it as much as the stars at night did, since he knew that the sun was just a very close star, but he was fairly sure the answer was in the meaning of the astral void itself. Astral energy wasn’t just the energy of one star, it was somehow connected to the web of them all as it resonated in the dark.

And that meant it was easier to charge it at night.

He sent a thread of essence into the activation point in the runes and the plate began to hum with energy. The silver swirls of the enchantment on its surface flickered to life and then the weight disappeared as it floated up from his hand and hovered in the air. The enchantment grew brighter as the silver swirls lifted off the surface of the plate and began to spin around him, like stars searching for their home.

The pattern widened until it was about twenty feet across and a circle appeared on the floor around him, its border marked with interlocking runes and a spiral of astral energy. Arcs of silver energy like lightning bolts appeared around the edge, crackling with power, and then they shot to the center, striking just in front of him where the plate was floating.

When they stabilized, there was a swirling column of silver flames that spun in front of him at the center of the diagram. The plate floated at about waist height, in the absolute center of the space. A sheer, translucent sheen of astral energy enclosed the area in a perfect sphere that marked out the limits of the forge.

It was active.

The stabilizing and empowering enchantments that had been on the forge in the relic were slowly rotating around him on the walls of the sphere and the circle beneath his feet, wrapped around it like a celestial rune.

There was no physical forge here. Instead, the column of silver flames in front of him was the forge. The enchantments and the runic design that was reflected in the circle contained all of the same concepts as the permanent version in the relic. Anything that he wanted to forge just needed to be placed in the flames in front of him, where it would be held by a layer of enchantments until he released it.

He looked around with satisfaction as he took in the working design. He could feel the charge in the plate in front of him. Activating it had taken a thousand essence and there was a nearly imperceptible drain as it stayed active, but most of the stored energy was available for his use.

He pulled out his work table from his dimensional pouch and set it to the side, on a blank space inside the enchantment lines that was designed for it. The enchantments were a match for the ones in the relic and the places that held tables there were also open for the same purpose here. The materials he had available followed, from rare metals to crystals, gemstones, some aura-infused woods, a pouch of powdered Earth mana, a full sphere of the liquid version, and more.

The last thing he set down was his Starflame Bracer. He unsnapped it from his left arm with a click of crystalline clasps and let it rest on the table among the rest of the items. It had served him well, but with his growth it had only been a minor assistance over the last months. Its functions for focusing crystal flame and runic enchantments, as well as the engraved models for the star, flame, moon, and edge runes in it were no longer needed. It had only been an Expert tier item when he’d first crafted it and it was limited by his ability at the time.

His ability with runes had advanced enough that the models held in it were too simple now and his Runic Formation skill was beyond what the bracer’s focus could offer. The 200 points of essence and the starflame arrows it could release were still useful, but the damage it offered was far behind his other bracer.

It was time to make something new.

He looked down at the materials and at the forge in front of him as he considered what he needed, gathering together all of the possibilities he had imagined before now. Then he reached into his aura storage and pulled out one of the auras from the Armored Frostbone Crawlers, an Epic Aura of Frozen Bones, as well as an Aura of Vital Rot from the Entangling Rotstriders.

Neither of these auras was exactly what he needed, but if he was able to modify them so that one focused purely on Ice and the other on Life, he could combine them into something useful. His crystal flame and astral energy would add the element of Fire, and together the three concepts would reach for the stars.

He let the auras float in one hand as he began to rearrange the items on the table, mixing and matching them as he studied the possibilities. The icy chest that contained the Shards of the Aurora sat regally on the right side of the work table next to the sphere of Earth mana. Along with the auras, those two were the keystones to making something miraculous.

Eventually, he had a line of items on the front edge of the table, with a combination of mithril, ebonsteel, silver, the Earth mana, the shards, some translucent ice crystals that held a glimmer of the stars in them, and some supporting items. He would have to prepare these, since their current forms weren’t as good for what he had in mind as an alloy would be, and then he needed to combine them with the purified auras.

He needed to make something that the Toa’an smiths had called starsteel, or sometimes celestial steel. It wasn’t going to be easy. It required alloying mithril, silver, and ebonsteel together with elemental crystals to create a dark steel alloy that shimmered with silver highlights. Once it cooled, it was nearly unbreakable, but the intensity of heat required to melt the metals together and get them to alloy had been beyond all but the most advanced of their Fire smiths.

The alloy’s only downside was that it tended not to hold an edge, so it wasn’t used for edged weapons very often. That was due more to the difficulty of working with it than to the material itself, however, and the Toa’an had often searched for more advanced methods to make better use of it.

He didn’t know how to solve that problem right now, but it didn’t matter. Starsteel would be an ideal material for an astral bracer. It had an enchantment potential that was far beyond the infused mithril he’d used for his old bracer and once the alloy was formed, it would resonate with astral energy better than anything else he had.

Before he got to that, however, he needed to modify the auras to match, so that they would infuse the starsteel with the right concept. He held up the two auras in his hand, holding them up to the light of the forge as he focused on the flow of energy at the center of each aura sphere. Eventually he put the Aura of Vital Rot away, leaving only the Aura of Frozen Bones in his hand. He was more familiar with Ice than with Life, so he might as well start with it.

After a moment, he shook his head and chided himself as he put the second aura away too. Instead, he pulled out an Elite-tier Aura of Frozen Bone, the lowest of the ones he’d gathered. He had a few dozen of these, as well as a dozen at the Epic tier and three more from the First Evolution monsters, thanks to the crawlers that had been around the last cluster of Flaws.

He held the swirling sphere of aura between his hands as he looked into it. It was a condensed swirl of blue-white, which showed the Ice origin, but where pure ice would have been bright and intense, this was slightly yellow, like old bones lying in the snow. To his senses, it resonated with a frozen, bitter cold that ate away at fallen bones, seeping into them with quiet, dull tendrils, as passively as a stone leaning against a wall adds pressure to the bricks.

The image opened to his mind as he sank into it and he saw the bones lying there, resting below a blanket of snow on some abandoned, frozen plain. The snow piled up on them as the cold grew stronger until, one day, all that had made the bones part of life was gone and they were filled with the cold. In an instant, they shattered, exploding into shards that tumbled away into the snow.

There, the fragments lay silent as the snow built up and covered them again. Eventually, they shattered a second time and the slivers that were left melted away into the snow like ice, becoming smaller as they faded away, year after year, until there was nothing but the memory of the bones that had once been.

Sam could feel the movement of the bones in the aura. Even shattered, the essence of them remained, infusing the aura with an effect he didn’t want. He frowned as he studied it, considering how he might be able to separate it from the Ice. Modify Aura gave him the ability to do it, but the reality was much more complex. He’d practiced some, but not enough to be a master at the art. The ability was still at Basic.

This wasn’t like scraping runes off of a scroll. Instead, he needed to change what was, and that meant altering the fundamentals elements that made up the aura. To do that, he needed to find the right thread in the aura and infuse it with energy until the aura began to take on that new meaning. At the same time, he needed to separate out what he didn’t want and let it dissipate.

Fortunately, he’d seen many versions of Ice, and thanks to Siwaha’s blessing, he knew it in the depths of his spirit. Ice whispered to him like a brother. He had met it in a thousand different forms in the sylph village and on the peaks of the mountains.

It was Siwasir’s voice when they’d fought the Blood Elemental, the laughter of the children in the village, and in the faerie lights that danced around his sister as she ran. He’d also seen it in his enemies when they blended it with venom, paralysis, frost, whispers, winter, blood, and blades.

He knew how to find it here.

Slowly, he began to push on the aura in his hand, following his instincts. What he wanted was Ice itself, the pure and unchanged eternity of the element behind the snow. The ice of Aster Fall and the ice that was frozen between the stars.

The aura between his hands rippled like a wind was blowing through it. The pressure of the cold ice became deeper and more profound, its color brighter, and the sense of frozen blue-white power grew stronger. At the same time, he could feel the sense of bones in the aura protesting, as if they didn’t want to leave.

He pulled on them as he began to extract them, one thread of meaning at a time. Each one he pulled free was a fragment lost beneath the ice. When he had it in his grasp, he released it with a breath, blowing it away into the distance where it dissolved.

The aura continued to change, its color brightening as the sense of bones left it. It also shrank, its energy diminishing, but what was left was purer than what was there before. When he was finished, his face was streaked with sweat that was frozen in its tracks and there was a powder of frozen ice crystals along his arms and across his hands. As soon as he moved, it shook free in a small blizzard.

The aura between his hands had been the size of a fist when he started. Now, it was a quarter of that size. Despite that, it shone with the bright, fierce energy of pure Ice. He analyzed it as he studied the changes and nodded.

Aura of Ice (Basic).

Its tier had dropped to Basic, either because it was limited by his ability or because he’d pulled too much energy out of it, but it was pure. He felt the World Core’s voice chiming in his mind as it acknowledged his efforts, but he pushed it away for later as he focused on his work.

He turned the aura over in his hands as he let out a deep breath, and then he looked into his aura storage and counted how many other auras of the same type he had left. This one wasn’t strong enough yet. He would have to merge some to get one that was and then intensify it. He glanced at the astral forge in front of him as he considered the possibilities, but it wasn’t burning through much energy. The pillar of silver flames was a pleasant backdrop to his work.

Without hesitating any longer, he reached into his storage and drew out another Aura of Frozen Bones. Time flowed away as he continued to work. At the back of his mind, plans for the bracer flickered as he assembled and reassembled them, searching for the best way to enchant it.