The next time Ori’s eyes opened, the bright mid-morning sun streamed through the narrow windows. The sounds of an entire town crammed into a courtyard were shocking and unfamiliar to his half-awake state.

  ‘Good morning, apprentice.’

  “Morning, Sera. Did you even sleep last night?”

  ‘One of the many benefits of the ethereal form. The wonders one can accomplish without the distractions and fallibilities of mortal flesh. Speaking of which, how do you feel this morning? Well rested?’

  “Actually, yeah.” Ori yawned, stretching his arms to the ceiling as he took in the room. “Could’ve sworn I’d just fallen asleep, but I feel pretty good.”

  ‘Wonderful. Then it is time to continue your mana manipulation training.’ Sera said. Mana flooded the room. Ori felt it first as a tingle brushing over his exposed skin, before yesterday’s training kicked in and he saw the cloud of glowing, smoky blue mist emerge from his soul-bound artefact.

  “Did you just summon the wand into my hand?”

  ‘I did,’ Sera sounded pleased with herself. ‘Long, productive nights lead to lots of opportunities for experimentation. I hope you don’t mind the liberties taken?’

  “Er, no, it’s fine. As I understand it, we’re kind of sharing it, as our souls are literally bound to it, aren’t they?”

  ‘More or less. Now, how much do you remember from yesterday’s lesson…’

  Ori successfully moved the cloud of mana on his first attempt. Unlike the evening before, it was far easier to focus his intent on the cloud of nebulous, invisible gas that surrounded them. Sera expounded upon the phenomenon.

  ‘Always be mindful of your mental state. While mana reserves and physical stamina are paramount, there is a seldom-seen mental limit to the amount of spellcraft one can do over a period of time. This is tied to the strength of one’s will and spirit. And while the values for these characteristics in your case are freakishly high for a mortal, they are bounded by your rank, and will only grow with practice and as your rank increases.’

  Blowing mana vapour around as Sera lectured was fun, but it didn’t start to feel like real magic until Ori condensed the cloud to a point and, with his will, told it to become light.

  ‘Seraphs above!’ Sera mentally exclaimed.

  A prismatic hole in reality hung in the air above Ori’s bed. It outshone the light cast by the mid-morning sun, yet calling the energy pouring out of the dot of ‘light’ diminished all other sources of illumination to mere reflections of its radiance. Colours beyond the chromatic spectrum pulsed brighter than white, in time with the very heartbeat of fate. Ori could feel the twisted tension between order and chaos within, the power contained at the boundary between the astral and celestial, and how it teetered on the finest of tipping points, as if it were nitroglycerine given arcane form. And even still, that was only the merest fraction of the secrets held within.

  “I take it that’s not normal?”

  ‘No. Those with an inherent light aspect often express their affinities in reality for the first time with this spellworking. However,’ Sera whispered, her voice reverent, ‘I have never seen such an expression of light, never even heard of such.’

  At first, Ori stared in bemusement. Then, after several minutes, half-expecting the light to exhaust the small supply of mana in the room, he began to inspect it more closely, using mana sense and his beyond-Awakened perception. He could see the spray of aspected mana radiate from the ball of light before somehow being swept back in, its alignment changing from light affinity to neutral before being consumed for fuel once more, completing the cycle.

  “It’s like it’s self-perpetual?”

  ‘Mana Permanence,’ Sera said reverently, as if the words should be obvious.

  “What does that mean?”

  ‘It’s normally an advanced spellcasting technique,’ Sera sighed. ‘Mana doesn’t behave like mundane gases or liquids. It doesn’t naturally mix, diffuse, dissolve, or disappear. Only the alignment changes. That’s not to say you can’t force it to do one of those things. You can, it just requires intent. Without intent or other paracausal forces acting upon it, mana simply lingers and can be reused if you can realign it to your will.

  ‘Powerful spellworkings do this on their own, the spell containing its own source of will, enough to realign mana and perpetuate the spell. When this happens, it’s said that a spell is displaying Mana Permanence. That your inherent affinity does this automatically is unprecedented and reveals an important facet, one you’ll need to study and gain comprehension over. Now, please, if you would excuse me, I am going to enter enlightenment,’ Sera explained primly.

  “Okay,” Ori said dumbly, his inner engineer screaming at the floating, glowing, perpetual motion machine above his bed.

  “I’ll be right out!” Ori shouted in reply to the knock that broke him out of the trance. “Sera? You there?” Ori whispered as he wondered how to dismiss the white hole in reality. After receiving no response, he wasted little time getting dressed and presentable, before leaving the room in a way that ensured little of the strange light spilt out through the door.

  Soon, he was outside and deep in the bustle of busy spaces between stony keeps. He had been following a boy in his mid-teens towards the rally point for the ten thousand or so troops who would be marching with him to confront Eltitus. Behind him, the presence of the guards who had been by his door throughout the night did little to assuage his fear of being exposed and vulnerable amidst a mass of foreign people in this strange, but somewhat familiar, land.

  As they walked, the sounds of countless hammers mixed with the smell of coal and hot iron. Intellectually, Ori knew the logistics of a marching army required at least as much as he was seeing, but to witness it, to feel and smell and taste the smithing required for a nation at war, was another thing entirely. Instead of streets with stone forges arrayed in orderly buildings, several football pitches’ worth of mud field had been turned into a smog-filled triage, except instead of flesh, steel was wrought and refashioned under the discordant chime of anvils under hammers, thousands of hammers.

  It was all Ori could do not to gape.

  As he wandered, some order emerged from the chaos, with mass-produced items and something resembling a chainmail production line clustered towards the centre. Smiths worked on patching up plate armour and more bespoke pieces while the owners waited.

  An orderly workshop, distinct from the furnaces and forges around it, displayed a bespectacled elven man, wizened with liver spots and wrinkles. His wispy grey hair framed exposed ears Ori could only stare at, until a familiar build-up of mana caused his skin to bristle and a bloom of power to sear his mana sense. Blinking away watering eyes, Ori saw something, perhaps a sword, form from nothing. Beyond the amber glow of the metal, there were no glowing lights, no swoosh of magical sound, nothing dramatic, at least not to his normal senses. Yet the sight of the humbly dressed old man in an open-walled workshop, forging a sword in mid-air with nothing but magic, was one of the most incredible things Ori had witnessed so far in this new world.

  Turning a corner, more sights caught his attention and, without realising it, Ori found himself staring at a man missing an arm. Armoured plates still covered his shins and thigh, his upper body exposed except for a bandage wrapped across his chest recently amputated forearm. He sat with his head tilted towards the sky, palm resting on the sheathed sword across his lap.

  Staring back was a pre-teen boy, a bright lock of blonde hair contrasting with a face covered in soot and the darkest eyes Ori had ever seen. He sat on the ground just in front of the bandaged knight, his hands absently polishing a shield. The boy’s gaze was unblinking and not altogether there, as if he were in shock.

  “This way, Sir Summons.” Ori pulled himself away to focus on his guide, only now realising he’d stopped.

  With the city walls coming into view and the clang of hammers dulling to a background din, the road leading to the gates showed a steady stream of people, mostly bedraggled families carrying their worldly possessions on carts and dusty rucksacks. It was a scene that felt familiar, their dead-eyed stares, the caked-on mud of travel taken entirely on foot.

  Refugees, Ori thought.

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  At the wall was a building built into it, one that appeared more religious than martial. It wasn’t grand enough to be a temple or cathedral, yet it possessed more presence than a simple church. Outside, hundreds of armoured men loitered. Planted spears cast a forest of shadows in the mid-morning sun, while pieces of armour lay scattered between soldiers and squires in various states of gleaming, muddy, or bloody. The scent of churned grass, stale sweat, and clove oil lingered in the mid-morning stillness. Many men, and a fair number of women, sat in the mud, or knelt, or prayed. Given the circumstances, Ori supposed the latter made sense.

  As he drew to within a dozen yards, conversations stilled, and a ripple of gazes turned towards him. Ori fought the urge to curl his shoulders in, an instinctive response to their unspoken questions and forbidding, judgemental stares.

  Heavy oak doors revealed a church-like interior, stained-glass portholes illuminating a central aisle flanked by rows of empty, modest wooden pews. Towards the altar, half a dozen voices argued with a restrained intensity that suited the moment.

  ‘Sera, am I seeing Grace?’ Ori asked internally, unsure whether the thought would reach her. She had been conspicuously quiet for the hour or so since their morning lesson, and he suspected enlightenment carried its own meaning.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, what do you see?’ Sera said, as if returning to herself.

  ‘It’s like there’s a sheen of gold coating their skin,’ Ori answered.

  ‘I believe… thanks to unlocking Mana Sight, you’re now able to see the effects of Grace upon their presence. It’s a rare talent for a newly Awakened, but with your two-by-four-fold perception… Oh, Seraphs,’ Sera interrupted herself.

  Ori looked around for what had caught her attention and saw something large and gleaming behind the altar.

  ‘The Arsenal of the Maker… Ori, it seems the chapel has blessed you with an opportunity. Listen, be present, and follow your instincts—’

  ‘Er—’ he began, but Sera’s mental voice was suddenly cut off.

  As his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom, light filtered through the stained glasswork as if struck by a lone sunbeam on an otherwise overcast day. Distantly, he noticed how the animated conversation between higher-ranked Awakened ceased, as he was propelled by an irresistible force down the aisle towards a shrine of gleaming weapons.

  Each item was similar only in its meticulous craftsmanship. They shone as if made from silver, and even the parts made from wood or leather carried a preternatural sheen. Spears and polearms stood taller than his six-foot-plus height, alongside monstrous, impractical weapons suitable only for war, twice that length or more. Round shields, tower shields, kite shields, heater shields, pavises, targes, bucklers, and more barriers Ori couldn’t name formed a wall around the base of the forest of spears. Meanwhile, racks of edged and blunt weapons reflected the sudden multi-hued rays with even more variety.

  A part of him, an all too large part of him, wanted to pick up every weapon, to swing and prance around like a child fully aware that this divine armoury wasn’t quite real, but an astral dreamscape descending on reality like mist rolling down a mountain.

  If this was a dream, was his will not law?

  Yet there was another part of him, the sensible part he almost always listened to, and it was insistent. Yes, perhaps he was in no danger here. Perhaps he could move through this dream instance as he wished and leave if he wanted to. But why was he here in the first place?

  There were likely unknown rules and pitfalls, but what if there was something else? Why was he here? These weapons weren’t real, were they? And if they were, what use would he have today for a sword or shield he didn’t know how to use?

  Were these soul-bound items that could help him in future? Following that logic, were there other benefits he could obtain by playing along with this strange, dreamlike armoury? What knowledge could he learn? What prizes could he win?

  If there was an opportunity to be had, it would be a waste to abuse the dreamscape without at least trying to gain something through an honest interaction. It wasn’t purely avarice that drove these thoughts, but that newly honed survival instinct, his bloody-minded desperation to take all that was offered, and if no opportunities presented themselves, to invent them, fight for them, or steal all within his grasp.

  Looking around to catch the faces of the others, Ori was unsurprised to see those in the chapel, including the boy he’d been following, as distant, blurry, frozen echoes of the individuals he’d seen before. Perhaps they saw all within and could judge his actions. All that mattered was that he was here, and they were not.

  As altered as his mental state was, with only Sera’s distant advice to fall back on in this dreamlike runtime, Ori held out his hand and let a faint sense propel him through the display.

  First, he scanned the assortment for staves, wands, and other arcane tools, his recent experiences biasing him towards items with magic, before casting his gaze towards ranged weapons, like a bow or quiver. There were bo-staves, but they seemed purely mundane, blunt-force weapons used by monks. Testing mana sense within the dreamscape revealed nought but a hazy blur of shapes, doing little to confirm whether any of the items were magical.

  With his arm still outstretched, relying on what Sera described as his autonomic nervous system’s response to mana, Ori felt little magic, either from the environment or from arcane tools. However, some weapons pulsed with the faintest aura. Mana strongly aligned with potent affinities coated a collection of knives and daggers that seemed to drip with venom or death, tower shields that gleamed with the might of the earth, and mirror-sheen bucklers that promised to reflect physical and arcane attacks. As his hand neared each, Ori experienced a visceral reaction, as if caught in the briefest of memories, before being yanked out of one daydream or nightmare into the next.

  With a spear, he stood upon a blood-drenched field of mud, the aura of death pervading an endless sea of armoured, twisted corpses. They surrounded a frozen mountain of polearms, bowing before a single dominant spear. The inert iron-shod pole stood triumphant, as if declaring to all that if this world was the only one where it could be king, it would reign over blood and ash, everlasting, uncontested, proud and alone.

  Staring at the spear-warlord brought a pressure down on him: the staggering waste of life and potential, the crushing, all-consuming loneliness. A world he’d rather die to prevent, and yet this abomination stood proud, ruling over desolation. Ori couldn’t breathe, not even to scream ‘fool’ at the menace that stood against all he strove towards.

  Ori yanked his arm away as if burned, the glimpse into the spear’s nature one of incompatibility. The dream seemed less stable for it.

  With a buckler that gleamed to a mirror finish and a wand in his main hand, he dodged and rolled in feats of athletic brilliance as projectiles and lethal spells whizzed and flashed. Unable to dodge a ball of fire, it came careering towards his face, only to be reflected by his fist-sized shield. Unknown assailants continued the ceaseless barrage. Despite how magnificently Ori dodged and blocked, he could spend only fleeting moments on the offensive.

  Combat continued until a wall of water overwhelmed him, surrounding his paths of escape before enveloping his head and drowning his lungs, his final thoughts of unwillingness and humiliation.

  Ori gasped. The buckler had seemed promising, compatible even, but he now had the sense that either he or it was unworthy of the other.

  With daggers and maces came scenes where he couldn’t even wield the weapons in question, joined with grim atmospheres of loathing, dread, chaos, and gore.

  With various greatswords and longswords, Ori slashed in wide swings only to be disarmed by a swordsman of greater skill, an arrow piercing his eye, or a bolt of lightning incinerating his nerves.

  His frustration empowered the fear that such weapons weren’t for him, that he wasn’t worthy because he wasn’t a warrior, not truly. Sure, he’d been in fights before, and he’d learnt martial arts for a while. But before the events that brought him to Ghigrerchiax, he’d never considered becoming someone who fought for a living, let alone fighting with such archaic weapons.

  But so what?

  He was more than what he needed to be in one moment to survive. Tomorrow he’d be a fighter, the day after something else. Whatever he needed to be, he’d be, each experience forging him into something new, something better, and less limited.

  No. The idea that he was unworthy of the dreamscape’s opportunity because he wasn’t a warrior was bullshit.

  He was more. And he believed this shrine, or whatever this apparition was, was more too.

  “I come from a world where we could kill everyone in an afternoon, and you expect me to pine over shiny pieces of metal. Why? These toys are basic. This test’s a joke!” Ori’s incredulity warped the dreamscape as he shouted, his gaze sweeping above the weapon racks towards the chapel’s watery rafters, as if searching for something, or someone.

  “I see,” spoke a disembodied voice, ancient and cold, wholly unperturbed by his outburst.

  Ori had expected something like this. If the Crucible, an ancient, complex artefact that seemed to challenge all those who entered, had a sentient will, why couldn’t this dreamscape, which appeared to work similarly, have a sentience behind it too? Though the intention to provoke it was rational, his frustration drove his provocative choice of words.

  “See what, exactly?” Ori asked, hiding his uncertainty as the silence stretched beyond the point of uncomfortableness.

  “While many may receive some talent with any weapon they choose, my selection is not one for warriors,” the dreamscape’s will said.

  “Who’s it for, then?”

  “The finest tinkerers, the greatest enchanters, the most brilliant smiths of the age. Those with a maker’s soul call to me, as it has done with you. Though a fragment of spark your talent may yet be, I sense the same confluence of ingenuity, knowledge, and traditions that have overturned epochs within you. Now, if my selection is not to your liking, here is what I propose:

  “I would have you be my divination conduit into the weapons of your realm. While I have no interest in the artefacts of sieges or mass devastation, I would be made aware of the weapons of your battlefields.”

  “Okay,” Ori asked into the silence. “And then what do I get in return?”

  “In return, the very same conduit I would use to peer into your realm, will I use to plumb the depths of your soul and the limits of your fate. Together we will make something, if not wholly original, then at least novel.”

  Ori had no idea what the entity behind the construct was offering, but felt that asking would undermine his negotiating position.

  “The limits of my fate?” Ori asked boldly. “My fate was to be kidnapped, abused, and discarded. I’m here because I need better.”

  “Oh?” a cold amusement replied.

  “You search out those with a maker’s soul. Tell me, what is a maker if not someone who reaches beyond the limits of their fate?”

  “Excellent.”