Mastering my Phoenix Cloak so that it could manifest as other Elements was one of the two Masteries attached to that Tat. The other Mastery concerned how the Phoenix could manifest and be controlled, both of which were vital to this final quenching, heating, and controlling the fire while forging.

Without access to comets or similar celestial ice, relying on my own soulrime to quench the adamant was the best choice.

Fifty days of Karma to boost effective Soulcaster Level to Fifteen via Soul Mastery. Fifty days of Karma to pay for Phoenix Cloak Mastery to Five, giving me control to go with the power. Fifty days of Karma to open the Tat to Five, for the raw power needed. Twenty-five days to get the Elemental Mastery to switch elemental damage around, thus being able to use lightning, cold, acid, or fire damage as needed... and even radiant, for the micro-etching of the smallest Runes. Induction, quenching, slaking, treating, heating, melting... my soul was intimately involved in every step of the process.

Some of the things were done concurrently, but generally it was part of the massive time suck, which this time-hastened zone of reality did so much to offset.

And hey, I grew a couple inches, too. Time does that for folks.

The metal settled and crystallized in strange patterns, the very movement from molten to solid state another final circumstance to imprint Runes upon it. The heavy metal in my hand, as Energized pure Earth elemental tungsten is three times as heavy as steel, settled into its final state with waves of ki and cold going through it, chasing away the heat, and I was aware of it on so many levels.

This was the Sword I remembered from the game, the Sword I had been awaiting for over eleven years of Nightmare and reality.

“Tremble,” I said softly, as I held the sword across the top of the fingers of my two hands, “it is time for you to come home.”

Power pulsed in this thing, but none of it was committed. I could forge a thousand gold worth of work into a Sword in an hour, using all my skill, my Shaping Tools, Floating Forge, and Anvil of Silent Thunder. It was a monstrous amount of work; a magical Weapon every two hours of work, if I so desired.

Forsaken can add goldweight value into an item by pure exercise of skill, something Powered have to do with Karma and Gold. Yeah, it takes money, but only a third of the cost of what we were making, as opposed to the half of Powered, so us Forsaken Smiths have a cost advantage. However, not many mundane smiths can do five hundred gold worth of work a day, and match the speed of Powered when it comes to making Gear. Infusion is half the cost of Investing, so unless you were a really good smith, Powered did it better.

I was a really good smith.

A QL 40 Crafting represented twenty-one thousand gold, forty-two goldweight, worth of labor. I had done that work thirteen times, and the remnants and echoes of that work still hummed in the adamant.

Then I had made the final version, at the highest level I could, the very limit of what adamant could attain. No mortal material I knew could be forged better.

QL 55 Adamant, which meant a check of 65, due to the difficulty of working with the metal. A Truly Perfect weapon, literally a stereotype incarnate of a bastard sword made for me... and it represented an additional 63k of value.

Tremble floated in. A fallen knight’s sword, refined and improved by me, still a pale and ugly shadow of the silver-edged, flowing black metal in front of me.

Tremble actually held a tremendous amount of power. As an Intelligent Weapon, she could allocate great amounts of the Naming Karma I earned with her to improving her special powers, and the allocations to Arsenal, Arsenal II, Armory, and the like sucked in massive amounts of Karma to expand her versatility. On top of that, there were many external powers that could be worked into a Sword that were actually Slotless, and she’d improved herself that way, too.

Indestructible, for instance, would cost 30k all by itself.

“I am ready!” Her humming voice was eager. She could feel the nameless power held within the Sword, more than three hundred thousand gold of raw value, enough to pay for a lot of stuff.

Each +III addition to Greater Arsenal cost 18k. Each +IV, 32k. +V...50k. Finally adding her Special Purpose Power... 90k!

It all wouldn’t be going very far. All that gold value of my forging would be disappearing right into the black hole of Gear upgrades.

Floating above me, she lowered herself point-down to the black star sapphire that was the eye of the waiting blade, touched it with her steel point.

Magic sparkled, and began to flow as Tremble transferred her Name.

Runes flared in polycolor glory on the new Sword. They lit up in series and combinations, representing every power and ability Tremble had and was bringing with her. The Sword hummed atop my fingers, my Soul Essence moving through it and making it Soulbound once again, my Item Familiar link transferring smoothly over through my connection as maker and wielder.

The old sword began to disintegrate as the magical meaning of it was removed. Flakes of steel shivered and fell apart, the gems inlaid in the guard shattered and fell to dust. From the pommel down, the old sword began to disintegrate, as the magic and essence of it poured down into its new home, less than the dust swept away by the breezes from the burning Floating Forges.

The last inch of her was blown away, and a flaring flash of completeness blinded everyone around who didn’t have Devasight. I watched the Slots light up, one after another. Einz, Zvei, Drei, Veer, Funf, Zeks, Zeben, Akt, Neun... and Zehn.

A Ten-Slot Sword. The number of Ten-Slot Weapons in the whole of the Dwarven and Elven lands was probably measured on the fingers of one hand. It was just a massive amount of gold to be putting into a Weapon, a minimum of two hundred goldweight, gold that could be spent on many, many other things, instead of burned away forever to make a single Magical Weapon. One hundred magical swords, or one very magical sword?

In combined Naming Karma and Forging, Tremble was now well in excess of four hundred thousand gold in value, closer to five. It was quite unreal, but that’s what happens when you feed Naming Karma into a Weapon for many, many days of battle.

“Mmmm.” Tremble’s stereo voice was crisper, clearer; still humming, but like it had gone to a much better set of speakers. “This is very comfortable, Sama!”

I smirked despite myself, as I flipped her up and grabbed her by the hilt.

She was a Heavy bastard Sword, admittedly a bit too long for me... but then, I hadn’t reached my full height, and she could morph and pull back her length to current perfect size for me. Her weight was something that would break a normal person’s wrists to use, but I had no problem with her, my Might effectively around 40. I flipped her about as casually as a willow wand... I’d have to do some katas to get really familiar with her again, but that was fine.

“Any problems with all the extra Slots? How’s Final Arsenal?”

“Active without problems. I picked the defaults as we discussed, and a III, IV, and V to make Final Arsenal open and effective.” She did a good false sigh in my hand. “You put so much into this, and it all went so fast...”

“A Grandmaster’s Sword should be special, and you’re all sorts of that.”

“I think it’s time to help Briggs with Endure,” she said softly. Her True Perfection shifted to merely QL 40 Perfection dagger-form, and she zipped around to her comfortable old scabbard... I was going to have to make a new one for her, but it could wait.

I glanced over at Briggs, and the head and handle of the Hammer waiting in the Forge for me to get done. All the smiths in the area sighed despite themselves.

He’d only done five reforgings, as mace, flail, axe, maul, and pick, before coming back to hammer. But oh, did that Hammer look nasty... without being an oversized joke, as so many of the Warped liked to use. No, using a Hammer with an end bigger than your head is not necessarily so effective, given how well you are controlling it.

“Let’s go, fuzzy,” I grinned.

Three hundred days inside, three outside, had been good to him. He’d gained his Levels and the Masteries he wanted; the unending killing we had to do every day had been good for the soul, as it were. He’d hit Ten, topped off his Grandmastery, and he could now officially Wreck Face. Even the Void Brothers were very respectful when they talked to him now. The power of his hammer blows was just freaking insane. I knew that I was extremely deadly with a Sword, but his Hammer was just overwhelming.

And you know, that was fine. We made a good team, there was no doubt about it.

We were working on his ultimate Hammer, the same way I’d worked on Tremble. I still had to do Stand... that was my next project, and wouldn’t take as long as Tremble did, but her little brother was already champing at the bit.

-So, what did you decide to go with?- I /asked her, as I readied my Hammer to help Briggs with his final poundings. His pale violet eyes were glowing with expectation.

-The four defaults will be +I, Water School Sword, Fire School Sword, and Courageous. All effects are constant and beneficial, but can be swapped out easily enough for Final Arsenal effects.

-I opened the +III paradigm with Speed, - !!!?,– and the +IV with Brilliance. The +V was Vorpal, of course.- Well, of course. Just in case we had to fight a Jabberwock. Blowing fifty days worth of Karma on that possibility... We’d had to bring in Ligaii, the male Valor dragon, for the Spellcraft Ranks for the IV and V effects, but if you can’t take advantage of having a dragon in Marktell, what kind of person were you?

-No Healing Edge?- I was surprised. I mean, Doc was fine and all, but I seriously wanted that effect for my long-term staying power.

-I’m working on that next. It’s redundant, and Speed giving you that extra attack is an offense boost I think we’re going to need.-

Redundant?... -Okay. Go on.-

Delighted I’d not second-guessed her, she continued. -I upgraded Impervious to Indestructible, of course, since I don’t feel like getting Sundered by a Greater Demon.- Mental thumbs up. -I picked my second Extraordinary Power to be Teleport, three times a day.-

Okay, that was a utility effect, and my greatest metagame disadvantage was a lack of long-range mobility. She could even upgrade this to five a day... with more Karma. It made my Visual File and Lived-Line useful. Naturally I’d have to pull in my Null to actually use it... but it also meant that she could pull me out of a bad situation if the need arose.

-I spent a lot on that Planecutting effect you wanted. There’s two uses of it.- Excellent utility value with that...

-I picked Umbral as a supplemental IV, given these over-armored steroid-inhaling rejects we’ve been fighting.- Okay, another 32k gone, but being able to ignore all their armor was pretty nice. Potentially meant up to a +14 to hit, more if they used a shield, which they seldom seemed to do.

I knew she was going to make me wait, so I just smiled as I hammered with Briggs, our blows a cadence of destruction on the adamant. I was just adding the force and putting things in motion, his ki was the stuff doing all the directing. At this point, he was actually a better overall smith than I was, except with Swords, given how his Hammer Grandmastery dovetailed with smithing overall.

-I thought a long time about my Special Purpose Power,- she finally /went on. -Thwarting the Curse of the Hag allowed for a lot of flexibility.- Choosing a special purpose had been all her, I’d just gone over how to approach it with her. Until she chose the power to go with it, it didn’t really have an Ego effect, but now she’d done it.

-Taking an offensive spell was very tempting. Fireballs in all directions would give me a direct effect on combat that could be used at close and distant range, I would always have something to do!

-Except when I wasn’t fighting, and then it would be useless. It was too much like the Curse... all death and destruction, no life and rebuilding.

- I was going to go with Telekinesis, as that would give me many, many options in uptime and downtime to do things.- I nodded at that choice. -But then you told me that power was available as a Ring, which meant it could also be used in a Rod, and thus usable in my Wand Chamber, or added to my Pommelstone.-

Also true. No need to have the power twice, and it wasn’t like I needed it right now.

-So I decided to completely break the rules and crash the magic. I picked Reach Cures.-

It didn’t affect my hammering, but I mentally blinked. -In a V Valence?- I /clarified.

-Yes!- She sounded quite smug at the fact she had just crashed the system.

No wonder she said Healing Edge was redundant...