Grae didn’t stay to hear Oriole’s future. The witch shooed them out of the room, into the setting sun. Grae’s skin prickled with faint discomfort as oranges and reds painted the horizon, settling out over the trees. This witch really did live a strange life…

Between worlds, she showed no discomfort with beasts. No doubt she’d seen stranger than him.

But her magic was limited. She could only do what could be paid for, or the price would be paid another way. Magic flowed through her; she did not command it.

It was the wrong path for him.

But it gave him some comfort knowing she was here. It meant that some magical traditions had survived, and the world wasn’t as badly damaged as he feared.

But it left a strange taste in his mouth.

He had become Eldest. That implied terrible things for the world; that there were no dragons left, none of the great beasts that Grae had been told stories of, as human children were no doubt taught stories of knights and kings.

And there was evidence of some disaster, some sickness in magic itself that had toppled empires and changed the face of the earth.

But it was a long time past. Perhaps hundreds of years now...

And the dragons, among others, were known to survive terrible things. Surviving through calamity was the way one grew truly old, after all. Had all of them really fallen at once?

Or… seeming more likely…

Had something hunted them down?

Grae found a bench amidst a row of half-grown lemon trees, their branches fragrant with small, bright blossoms. He sat himself down, letting a fat blue beetle crawl onto his hand. It was a curious thing, this world.

It could contain things like his fight with Heidrich, bloody and desperate, and then, before the memory had faded, the immense peace of this little garden.

The world marches on, he mused. It really doesn’t care about anything.

The beetle opened its wings and buzzed away.

Moving to the wagon, Grae dug into his bed of leaves and rot, pulling out the belt containing the spell-shaper that had given the swordsman his metal skin. With a claw he pried out the two stars.

“Inspect.”

[ Star of Forged Steel ]

9.7 Motes

Chaos

Contains a Rune from the Heavens of the Earthsource, bearing elements of craftsmanship, resilience, and metal. Can be attached to a Constellation to add its Form.

[ The Resilient Star ]

10.8 Motes

Order

Contains a Rune formed by artifice, containing elements of resilience and defense. Can be attached to a Constellation to add its Function.

“Interesting…” ‘Formed by artifice.’ A similar label was appended to the Bursting Star. So these were Stars made by human hands, then…

Kneeling by a small pool in the garden, he Inspected his own reflection.

Grae Mangefur

the Eldest, the Last Blood, the Strong (2x), the Coward, the Defeated

Race

Tuskling (Ascended)

Level

Red (4/10)

Capacity

81/81

Attunements

Decay

Constellations

The Open Eyes (2/2), The Gentle Beast (3/6)

His capacity had risen, he noticed. He was on the cusp of being able to summon three sequential water bullets. More tellingly, his level had advanced slightly. Even if his progress was blind and fumbling, it was progress, and he had managed to find the right direction.

He focused on the Open Eyes until a new window expanded.

The Open Eyes

“Barkskin”

Passive

Grants the ability to use Inspect.

Completion

None. Does not lock.

◆ The Star of Vital Strength

◆ The Shieldbearer’s Star

Grae wasn’t happy with this ability. Twice, it had failed to defend him. Heidrich had cut through the defensive skin like butter.

He pulled out the Star of Vital Strength, and substituted the Star of Forged Steel.

The new ability was solid, concentrated, heavy. When he pushed against it with his will, metal poured out from the back of his arm. It divided into petals of shining silver, expanding outwards like a flower blossoming, and became a shield.

Grae tapped a claw against it.

It sung like a bell. He scraped his clawpoint down, and it didn’t leave a scratch.

“Metal Guard.”

It was a far more concentrated form of defense. Solid and brittle, rather than soft and flexible.

Out of curiosity, Grae took out the pieces of his water bullet magic, using the six slots of the Gentle Beast to experiment. Placing the Resilient, Forged Steel, and Vital Strength Stars together caused armor to erupt from his skin. Not merely a layer of surface protection, like the swordsman had gained from his spell-shaper, but true plates of thick armor.

“Juggernaut Plate.”

And strangely, the spell poured through him easily and without resistance; it took hardly any mana compared to the water bullets.

He paused to consider. There was little difference in the Stars themselves, but somehow, the ability cost less than even Barkskin.

Was it the combination? Were some combinations better than others? Or did adding together two Stars with similar effects, Vital Strength and Resilient, reduce the cost?

Or…

Was it the Constellation itself? The Gentle Beast….

Did the Constellation itself prefer defensive abilities? Abilities that did no harm…

He considered.

Either way, he needed Water Bullet more than he needed a stronger defensive power. He could try to rely on brute strength and an unbreakable skin. Against Heidrich, his clumsy water bullets had done nothing. They were too easy to evade.

But that was something he could change.

Choosing the metal-skinned combination of Forged Steel and Resilient for his Open Eyes, Grae put the components of Water Bullet back in place and manifested a bullet in his hand. Before, he’d focused on changing how it manifested. The size, the power, the composition…

Now he simply focused on making it happen fast. The split-second of lag as the bullet formed meant its actual speed and power barely mattered. A fast enough opponent could keep them from connecting at all.

So he forsake building up power and simply unleashed the attack as quickly as he could, letting go of each spell-formation as quickly as it grew.

Raindrops fell from his hand.

They were light, without force, without substance; yet instantly Grae felt the potential. This was what his water bullets should be. A shower of attacks without beginning or end. The difficulty was giving them enough force to injure and kill; there was a missing element.

A killing edge.

But as he was trying to find that missing element, the door swung open. Oriole stepped out, his face looking bleak.

---

The day had passed, and the night-star rose over the garden. The sky’s single moon was at its most visible; it would fade over the course of the night as the night-star approached, until the two overlapped, and the moon vanished. It would reappear as the night-star vanished over the horizon and the day-star took its place.

Grae went back into the house. He took up the whisper-trap from the table.

“Be careful.” The witch cautioned. She was stirring at a heavy iron pot where something fragrant and medicinal smelling boiled away. “You need the voice at the whisper-colony’s heart to tell you its name. Only then can you catch it.”

Grae nodded.

“And the tree?” He asked.

“You won’t miss it.” She said with confidence.

He nodded again, and took his leave. The kobolds looked up at him as he stepped back into the garden.

“We go with you?” Larktongue asked.

Grae smiled. “No need. I’ll be back before dawn.”

And he stepped out into the forest.

---

The dark between the trees was home to many things. Grae saw owls with horns, and slender, long-bodied creatures whose fur was turned green by living moss. An insect fluttered past, moving between nocturnal flowers. It had a flat lower body, shaped and colored like a leaf. As it settled against a treetrunk the emerald color of its carapace faded to match the environment.

A wolf with red around its eyes and mouth like a mask stared him down from atop a rock. Grae unleashed a low, hideous growl, and the wolf was gone with a flick of its tail.

But not for long.

As Grae walked, more and more wolf-shadows gathered in the trees. He could only see three, but he could smell eight. They stalked him through the woods.

He could see the tree clearly. In the entire forest, it was clearly the tree, as wide around as a house and with a sprawling crown of green leaves. Places along the bark had been injured long ago, forming deep wounds filled with a luminescent yellow-green sap. Motes of drifting pollen flavored the air with the scent of pine resin and rain.

But as he approached, the wolves moved.

The alpha came rushing for his throat, throwing itself forward in a bolt of gray fur.

Grae swung around and struck it hard, teeth and spit and blood spilling off his knuckles in ricochet. He seized it by the foreleg and flung it into a tree. Already, two more wolves were aiming for his back, for the delicate tendons on the inside of his legs. They met metal. Grae was suddenly a titan of cast steel, teeth scraping his skin uselessly.

He reached down and plucked the wolf up, lifting it by the throat and bringing it down as his knee rose. Ribs caved in under the blow and it rolled away, its companion retreating, whining, suddenly afraid. The five remaining slid forward in a steady walk.

All this time, he fought one-handed. His other arm was curled protectively around the whisper-trap.

They had Grae encircled, their lips drawn back to show teeth. Their howls and barks split the cold night.

But his skin was metal and their fangs were only bones.

The alpha returned, limping with one leg lifted to its chest. Froths of spit and blood hung from its jaws as they opened wide. A beam of light erupted from its throat and shot towards Grae, piercing through the air in the blink of an eye and stabbing down into his belly.

His weight atop the wound was too much, and he went down to one knee, lifting a hand to create a water bullet.

The pack leapt to save their leader. Fangs grasped his arm with the weight of huge, full-grown wolves behind them, dragging his hand down. They leapt onto his back, claws scraping harsh, dissonant notes from his steeled flesh. For a moment he was overwhelmed. The water bullet dissolved; the spell collapsed.

It was all he could do to keep the porcelain box of the whisper-trap safe.

He brought his head crashing down into a wolf’s skull. Before it could recover, he’d kicked it away, and ripped his hand free of the other beast trying to restrain him. It came down like a club onto the attacker’s head, the wolf’s limbs dropping out from under it as the blow landed with brute impact, stunning it.

The wolf leader opened its mouth and spat another beam. Grae twisted, letting it slash across his shoulder, and with a massive heave broke his way out of the squabbling mass of wolves. His footsteps were slow, weighed down by the wound, but his hand reached out and two bullets formed.

Holding the spell doubled was a strain, but as Grae unleashed them, it was necessary.

The first one only made the wolf leap aside, escaping easily. The second fired off a second later, once the beast had committed to a path; it tried to veer away again, but it stumbled, unable to turn quickly on its wounded leg. The water bullet slammed into its belly and sent it rolling through the dirt, bones shattering.

Grae opened his mouth and roared.

The pack fell back in terror as he took three earth-shaking steps, lowering his head to aim his tusks for the alpha’s throat. With a single motion that lifted through his spine, planting all his weight onto one forward, bent leg, he drove his killing fang upwards through the wolf’s jaw and skull- sending it high into the air with a spray of blood.

It fell back down in a dead, limp pile.

He turned. More water bullets formed.

As the wolves shot for the cover of the trees, he cut down two more. It was a needless violence, but-

The title of the Strong only descended for five ‘worthy’ kills.

He advanced and finished off the last of them, still trying to crawl away but brutally dazed by the blow to its head. One good grasp and he simply wrung its neck.

“Sorry, oh noble hunter.” They had chosen the wrong prey.

Grae turned at a flickering of light. The alpha’s body was dissolving; thousands of embers burned on its fur, slowly dissolving its body from the edges.

The clustered lights sank inwards until nothing was left but polished bone, and then spiraled up, forming a helix of little fireflies in which a glimmering gemstone hung.

A Star.