Path of Stars, Ch 9: Titan Hall (Patreon)

He unrolled the length of Frostscale Cloudwolf hide and held it up. It was nearly fifty feet long with intricate blue-white scales along the back and a dark, silver-speckled underside. In refining it, he’d infused his own astral energy and crystal flame into the material to strengthen and attune it.

It wasn’t finished yet, but the elemental properties that suited him were already stronger than they’d been before and a better match for him. The blue scales were nearly invisible in the light of the small blue sun in the distance, making the hide look like pure white ice. The underside was darker and imbued with silver flecks like stars against a shadowy expanse. Here and there, mottled twilight streaks flowed like swirling gas.

The properties of Ice, the stars, and the Void in it were clear.

The cloudwolf also had the innate ability to change its size, like the cloud that it was named for, so it was a good fit for him even if his height changed. With the addition of some strong spatial enchantments to augment that property, it would be able to expand and contract even better than the rest of his clothing.

With the complete enchantment pattern on the table in front of him, there was no need to hesitate any longer. For this enchantment, however, simply engraving the runes into the material with his talons wouldn’t be sufficient. The hide was extremely durable and stronger than most armors. When he was finished, it would be even more so.

It required more finesse.

A wave of astral energy flowed out across the table as he filled the enchantment pattern with it and then he lightly tossed out the hide on top of it. When he picked the material up again a moment later, a faint impression of the enchantment was imprinted on it with silver light.

He retrieved the material and walked to the far end of his crafting hall, to the most important area here. It was even more critical than his essence-gathering chair at the center.

At the end, taking up nearly a full quarter of the hall, a majestic array of nine pillars waited for him. A bright silver flame floated at the center of them all.

This was where he’d set up his forge.

Unlike his forges in the past, this one was far larger and more complex. Most of his time while healing had been devoted to building it. A spiral of enchantments covered the stones beneath the silver flame and wrapped around each of the pillars in an intricate web of runic lines. From one side to the next, it was a hundred feet across.

From the outer edge of the circle of pillars, the enchantment stretched outward across the floor and connected with the even more massive hundred-foot tall pillars that lined the hall.

The silver flame at the center of the forge was a focused form of Astral Fire, the main ability he’d gained from his Second Evolution to Astral Artificer, and the enchantments were designed to intensify it. Until now, he’d used the ability to attack, but that wasn’t its primary purpose.

It was a version of astral energy that focused on refining materials and enhancing their innate abilities.

He stopped at the edge of the smaller pillars and reached into his dimensional bracelet, retrieving the portable astral forge that he’d made on Aster Fall. It was a palm-sized, dark black plate engraved with innumerable silver lines. Without delay, he tossed it into the astral flame.

As soon as the small plate entered the flame, the enchantment lines around it began to glow. Then with a roar, the forge came to life. Streams of astral energy gathered around each of the pillars and poured along the enchantment lines to the center of the circle. The silver flame released a howl of energy as it turned into a fifty-foot-high tower of Astral Fire.

At the same time, all along the length of the hall, the enormous pillars that he’d engraved for the defenses came to life, glowing with silver light as they began to gather astral energy from the Void and channel it toward the smaller pillars of the forge. Moment by moment, the intensity of the silver flame grew brighter.

Soon, it was burning like the heart of a star. All around him, the crafting hall was humming with a vibrant resonance.

It was a dangerous moment, since the intensity of the forge was sure to gather eyes from beasts in the area, but he trusted in the defenses he’d built. He was close enough to the blue star that it would hide his energy signature from a distance, so at most it should only attract wandering creatures like those that he'd already seen.

This was the first time he was going to have the forge active for an extended period of time, but since he was healed, he thought it was worth the risk. Before now, he’d only activated it for short tests. One of those tests had drawn the cloudwolf here, along with a few other things.

He studied the active enchantments with a careful eye, making sure they were all functioning as intended, and then he nodded. Energy was flowing along the entire enormous structure of the crafting hall and being focused into the pillar of silver flame.

He reached through the pillars and into the center of the silver flames. There was a burning warmth along his skin, but it was harmless to him, like bathing in a hot spring. His movement left a ripple of flame in its wake as he tapped on the forge plate that was floating there and activated its central rune.

The small black plate sank to the bottom of the silver flames and locked into place in a small groove at the base of the forge with an audible click. As soon as it did, the energy throughout the crafting hall began to change, humming with a sense of restraint and balanced force.

This was the final key to the forge and the heart of its enchantments.

He could have created an entirely new forge, but he’d decided to use the plate as a focusing key. Without it, the forge was nearly useless, but the main reason was that it allowed him to devote the entire enchantment of his crafting hall to gathering and refining astral energy. All of the controlling enchantments for precision work were part of the plate.

Even more importantly, it allowed him to use the power here to continuously upgrade the key plate. The portable forge was an aura artifact and with this much astral energy flowing into it, it would be able to quickly grow stronger.

Even if someone managed to activate the forge without him, without the plate’s proper activation, the entire hall would explode as soon as they tried to use it. The enchantments were attuned to him, so it shouldn’t be possible, but that effect was the result of his slightly wandering attention while he’d been healing. He’d set a few traps in case someone tried to invade his house while he was out hunting.

Unless an intruder was immune to astral fire, they would have no chance of survival.

He studied the flow of astral energy into the forge for a bit longer, his eyes glowing with the same light, and then gazed around the hall. The enchantments were a vast web of silver lines that spiraled along the pillars and flowed toward the central flame.

It was a beautiful sight, an intricate star shining in the dark of the Void.

There was something he’d left undone until now, at the moment of the forge’s first true activation, and as he took in the completed forge, the words sprang into his mind.

“I name you Starforge Titan Hall.” His words rolled through the hall, imprinting themselves onto the enchantments as they sank into the stones. A shimmer of astral light swept across them, humming in approval, and it made him grin. At that moment, the hall’s updated information sprang into his mind.

Starforge Titan Hall.

Aura Artifact. Heroic. Unique.

Astral Charge: 7,004,018 / 50,000,000 (50,000/day*)

Required Keystone: Portable Astral Forge (Sam Hastern)

Innate Effects: Elemental Refinement, Astral Infusion, Augment Enchantment, Essence Gathering, Adaptive.

*Passive essence gathering requires the Starforge Titan Hall to be located in the Void and near a star that has a compatible source of energy. Approximate time to full charge: 860 days.

This hall wasn’t as self-aware as the Titan Star, but it was similar to the Heart of Magma in Runekeld, and its nascent artifact spirit was housed in the portable forge plate. Right now, it only knew him and itself, and it operated in accordance with the enchantments here, but in time, it might gain more of a consciousness.

Aura Forging had that effect on things.

He hadn’t expected it originally, but it seemed that when he forged with auras and put all of his will and energy into a creation, the resulting artifact had an innate spirit, or at least the ability to develop one.

That was what an Aura Artifact was.

Aura was the struggle to grow and change that was the basic property of everything in nature. When an aura was infused into an artifact, not just as an addition for power but as the basis of the item, the finished artifact took on similar properties and had a chance to gain self-awareness.

As for what abilities the forge would be able to imbue in the items crafted here, he had taken a page from his Elemental Smithing and given it the ability to enhance material properties by infusing them with astral energy and essence. Anything refined here should see an improvement in its tier.

As the forge continued to develop, it might gain additional abilities, but that would require many years of absorbing energy from the Void.

Amusingly, where the Heart of Magma was a cheerful and innocent little gemstone that liked Fire and Earth, this hall already felt ancient. Its personality was like the stone and starlight from which it was forged, slow to speak and enduring through the years, but with a thread of fire inside that held terrifying power.

At any rate, now that the forge was named, it was time to begin his work.

He patted one of the pillars of the forge as he turned his attention back to the cloudwolf hide, holding it up as he reached toward the silver enchantment pattern on it. With a flick of his talons, the design flew off the hide and began to float in the center of the silver flames. Moment by moment, it grew brighter as astral energy poured into it.

With this level of enchantment, even using the power of the forge to carve lines into the hide wasn’t the best idea. Instead, he allowed astral energy to infuse the enchantment until it was a gleaming web of runes. At the edges, the spatial enchantments warped in on themselves as the runes twisted inward, creating another dimension.

To create this cloak, he was testing several ideas and among other things, he planned to have it take the place of his old dimensional bags. As useful as the bracelet was that the Path had given him, he much preferred making his own.

So, as part of this enchantment, he had listened to the whispers of the Titans in his memory and studied the way the bracelet twisted space in on itself to create a dimensional storage. Then he’d applied those principles here.

That was only one part of this enchantment, however, and not the most critical. Within the tapestry of runes, the spatial ability was only the outermost layer and a thread within the core design. The rest was focused on defense.

He’d made several artifacts over the years that worked as defensive shields, but none that were strong enough to deal with an attack by the Firesail Void Lizards. With the ridiculous durability of the Frostscale Cloudwolf’s hide, he intended to change that.

When the enchantment reached its peak absorption of astral energy, he unfurled the cloudwolf hide and tossed it into the pillar of flame. There was a clash of energies as it entered as the power of the forge caused sparks to rise off the scales on the cloak.

Curls of frozen mist, a tiny amount of blood red energy, and fragments of cloudy black flared out of the hide and burned away to nothing. It seemed like even with his earlier refinement, he still hadn’t got everything out of the material.

With a few more scorching curls of astral flame that turned the wisps of energy into drifting stardust, the power of the forge corrected that oversight. Then it began to infuse the material, slowly softening it as the flames poured into the hide.

Some time passed, perhaps a week or longer, as Sam focused the power of the forge into the cloak and continued to refine it. By the time it was ready, the cloudwolf’s hide barely had a resemblance to what it had been before.

The entire material had turned ethereal, resembling a bright silver mist. The faint tracery of the blue-white scales and the darker underside with its speckled stars were still there, but they glowed with infused power.

More than ever before, it resembled a swathe of the Void itself. The outside looked like a mist of icy wind sweeping through the sky and the inside was a dark expanse of star-flecked distance. The stars were glowing with essence and astral energy, making the whole an entrancing sight.

He reached into the forge, directing the movements of the material and the enchantment with his will as he pushed the ethereal mist toward the enchantment pattern that was still hanging there.

Seamlessly, the material and the enchantment fused together. The lines of the enchantment wrapped around the stars at the center of the cloak like a constellation, linking into the points of essence there, and the runes sank into the ethereal mist, swirling as they began to warp space within it.

Once it was settled into the material, Sam opened one hand in a commanding gesture and the enchantment flared to life, extending throughout the material. From end to end, it stretched throughout the mist, pulling it around itself as it merged fully with the stars and ice.

Slowly, the mist and starry darkness disappeared as it sank into the enchantment, until there was nothing in front of him except a web of silver runes floating in the forge flame. With the point of his talon, he sliced open a finger on his right hand and squeezed out a drop of silver blood. A flick of his hand sent the blood droplet flying into the center of the runes.

As soon as the blood touched the enchantment, it collapsed inward, turning into a swirling silver sphere filled with misty blue and silver clouds. At the very center, there was an area of darkness that let out the occasional darker streak as it flashed with light. The sphere floated in the center of the forge flame, drifting idly like a rare gem in the sky.

Sam let out a delighted smile as he studied the result. Then he reached into the forge and picked it up. It sat on his palm weightlessly, as if all the physical properties of it had been purified until there was only pure aura left. He could feel a connection to it, and with a flicker of his will, he sent it a command.

The sphere disappeared from his hand as it dissolved into mist, which flowed across his arms and shoulders as it swept down his back. Then it changed, its structure materializing as it formed into a cloak that flowed along his shoulders and down to his ankles, billowing slightly in an unseen breeze.

The outside of the cloak was a pure, ice white with a faint tracery of blue and silver lines that seemed almost random, appearing and disappearing in the folds as his eyes traveled over it. The inside was a pitch black expanse that looked like the Void itself. All throughout the darkness, there was a field of silver stars that flickered and changed, disappearing and reappearing in time with some principle of the Void.

The stars were actually the spatial runes from the enchantment, each of them a node within the overall structure. Together, they were what allowed the cloak to change its size and governed its ability to open and close its dimensional space. Without any more delay, he analyzed it.

Cloak of the Frozen Void.

Ethereal Aura Artifact. Heroic. Unique.

Attuned to Sam Hastern.

Enchantments: Dimensional Storage, Ethereal, Field of Frozen Stars, Astral Shield, Mist of the Void.

Charge: 250,000 / 250,000 (Regains 2,500/day*).

Innate Affinities: Ethereal, Spatial, Astral, Ice, Void.

His smile grew wider as he studied it and ran his fingertips along the material. It felt like it was barely there, flowing between his fingers like mist.

He had known that the Frostscale Cloudwolf was aligned with Ice and the Void, but he’d underestimated its affinity for Mist. His forge had not. When the astral flames enhanced the material and he’d added the spatial enchantment on top, that innate property was brought to the forefront.

There was no longer any need to worry about the cloak fitting him. It was fully capable of changing to accommodate nearly any size. It was also a dimensional storage item, one that had far more space than anything he’d had before with the exception of the Path’s bracelet, roughly a quarter mile in every direction. With care and time, that space could continue to grow.

As for the other enchantments on it, the Ethereal effect was what allowed it to change its size and shape. That had come from the cloudwolf’s Mist affinity. The other three enchantments were defensive and evasive.

The Field of Frozen Stars channeled the cloak’s Ice affinity to slow and entrap enemies, the Astral Shield effect defended him from direct attacks, and the Mist of the Void was an evasion enchantment that would allow him to escape if needed.

He looked down at the cloak, studying the starry interior and the way it blew in the elemental currents of the Void, and he allowed himself a satisfied nod. He wasn’t sure if it would be enough to face the Firesail Void Lizards yet, but it was a lot better than what he’d had before.

As for offensive artifacts, his bracers would work for that once he found the right material to reforge them.

With a gesture, he let the silver forge flame disappear. All around the hall, the runic lines fell silent and the pillars began to dim. It was at that moment that a snarling growl entered his awareness. It dragged his attention to the area just outside of his hall, to the slopes of the asteroid around him.

There were three vicious snake-like humanoids assaulting the pillars. Each of them was about fifty feet long and twenty feet tall, and they resembled the Outsiders called nagas from the legends he’d heard on Aster Fall as a child, except that they looked a bit more human. The nagas he'd heard about were true monsters. The memory sent a shiver of unease down his back, even as his eyes narrowed.

These nagas had humanoid upper bodies with four arms and a snake-like head with blue and green-patterned scales, which came together to create fierce, angled stripes along their cheeks and a chevron design that rested on their forehead just above their eyes. Their lower halves were long tails with more blue and green scales that coiled under their bodies.

Their human halves were extremely muscular and their snake tails were lithe and ferocious, giving them the appearance of veteran warriors with a dangerous agility. He wouldn’t be surprised if they were as deadly as they looked.

These three were holding curved blades in their hands of a style that he’d never seen before, something like a cross between a sickle and a dagger, which they were using to attack his hall. The edge of the blades glowed with an enchantment in the same color as their scales.

It was the first time he’d ever seen a humanoid race in the Deep Wild, or at least a partly humanoid one, and for a moment surprise held him still. He hadn’t expected that there would be something like them here, and he wasn’t sure if it was better to fight them or to see if they were intelligent.

It seemed they were pushing the issue, however, as they continued to attack the shield that was stretching between the pillars. At the rate they were going, they were slowly draining the crafting hall’s stored energy faster than it could be restored.

They weren’t getting away with it entirely unscathed, at least. With each strike of their claws, a blade of silver light rose out of the pillars and lashed back at them, but it only left small streaks of blood on their armor.

His smile at finishing the cloak turned into a scowl as he watched. He’d been in a hurry when he built the hall and he’d focused primarily on the forge instead of the defenses. That looked like a mistake now. Wordlessly, he analyzed the three beings.

Asek Gotan. Deep Hunter-Bladestorm Magus. Level 315.

Emerald Naga Race. Coiled Clan. Status: Exiled to the Chaos Wild.

Guild Affiliation: Curving Blade Mercenaries.

Area of Operation: Chaos Wild.

The other two were similar exiles from the same race and guild.

Sleset Henke. Level 302. Deep Hunter-Ensigiled Sorcerer.

Naota Rekke. Level 305. Spatial Seeker-Treasure Master.

The statuses showed much more than he’d expected, making it clear that his Analyze was far stronger than before. The infusion of information from the Path had upgraded it. He had a feeling that some of the information he could see would be reserved for certain tiers of authority within the galaxy, like city governors or guard forces, but he’d been given direct access to it.

It wasn’t enough to know exactly why these nagas were bothering him, but it was enough to give him some ideas.

He was very surprised to see exiles this deep into the Chaos Wild, since he’d thought they stayed closer to the Borderlands. One reason he’d chosen this location was for privacy.

On closer examination, there were minor differences in their equipment, not that they had much visible. Besides the blades in their hands, they were wearing sections of metallic armor on their chests that were criss-crossed by a belt and a bandolier with pouches. Molded bracers protected their forearms.

None of it really matched their classes, which suggested it was more of a uniform for their mercenary guild than a personal choice, perhaps the only armor they could find that would resist the elemental currents in the Chaos Wild.

Their levels suggested they were barely able to travel in the Void on their own, but their primary classes seemed to be focused on exploring the Chaos Wild, which perhaps gave them some type of protection against the energies here. As for their subclasses, two were mage variants and the third one was some type of merchant or treasure hunter class.

Combined with the regularity of their equipment, everything suggested that their mercenary guild specialized in exploring the Chaos Wild, probably for its resources, but the real question was why they were here.

And if there were more on the way.