I grabbed my hobo sack, slung it across my back once more, and crawled into the forge. I could practically hear Drill Instructor Screw Y’all thundering at me to keep my chin up and my ass down, “Don’t want to take a bullet to the spine, do ya, Recruit?” Turned out, taking the corner of a building to the spine wasn’t any better.

The forge itself had glossy onyx walls on every side and a host of benches, tables, and tools. A huge portion of the room was taken up by a crystalline forge with an enormous set of leather bellows jutting out from one side. Beside it was a blackened anvil and several barrels that, according to Pellervo—the dude who wrote Pellervo’s Guide to the Soul Forge—were used for quenching crafted materials. But although this place looked like a normal forge in many ways, nothing could be further from the truth.

To the right of the forge was a large fabrication table with a stool. Hanging on the wall above the workstation was an odd assortment of tools that I had no names for, though Pellervo sure did. These were not like a typical blacksmith’s tools. Nope. These were instruments of Arcana manipulation, meant to interact with the new Wards I’d opened up in my chest and shoulders. With them, I could take refined fabricated pieces and overlay them on a three-dimensional blueprint, manipulating them with mind and magic.

I left my sack on the floor near the workbench and struggled onto the stool, balancing myself precariously, using my legs to keep me propped up even though they were numb. With no small amount of effort, I peeled open the hobo sack and pulled the first item out that I wanted to practice with—the flanged mace I’d looted from the Grass Hounds. I placed it on the workbench and immediately got a message:

Activate Sage Smith Skill: Would you like to harvest this weapon and create a unique weapon schematic? Yes/No

I hit yes and the workbench immediately started to glow with a blue-white light; a silver handprint appeared on the face of the tabletop. I pressed my palm against it and felt a trickle of energy bleed into the table as my Arcana bar appeared. On the workbench, the mace rose into the air, enveloped by a nimbus of electric blue power just like the table. The weapon spun and rotated slowly as my Arcana bar continued to drop. The glow seemed to sink into the weapon after a few seconds, and as it did, metal and leather began to melt away.

It rained down from the weapon in a steady stream like snowflakes, evaporating into pure energy before it ever touched the table’s surface. The entire process lasted all of three minutes, and by the time it was done, my Arcana gauge was on “E” and I was shaking and covered in a thin layer of perspiration. As for the weapon, nothing remained except a ghostly blue 3D version of the mace. That and a leather-bound book that had appeared on the workstation, summoned from thin air as though by magic. It looked suspiciously close to the USMC weapons manuals that were lining the library shelves.

When I removed the book from the tabletop the ghostly blue version of the weapon winked off. Now that was interesting. I fished one of the rifle manuals from the sack and dropped it onto the workstation. When I cracked the pages open, the faint blue light resumed, this time coalescing into the shape of an M16. Experimentally, I flipped the page to a section detailing the bolt housing group. The gun vanished, replaced by the mechanism displayed on the page, along with a list of fabrication ingredients necessary to create the specific components.

Well how ’bout that? Looked like we were officially in the weapon-building business.

The rifle skin was far and away more complicated than the mace skin. Sometimes in life, it was better to walk before running, and that certainly applied here—especially since I had a limited selection of fabrication ingredients to work with. I couldn’t afford to waste any of them by messing something up. I swapped the M16 schematic out for the mace schematic and gazed over the necessary list of components needed to forge a “Basic Morning Star Skin.”

Basic Morning Star Skin Ingredient List:

(2) x Iron Ingot (1) x Rawhide Strip 100 Sacrificed Essence OR (1) x Pure Essence Scales (Novice Class)

Because I’d chosen Mortka Forger, there was also a secondary option for “Mortka-Forged Morning Star Skin.”

Mortka-Forged Morning Star Skin Ingredient List:

(1) x Iron Ingot (1) x Refined Mortka Forged Steel (1) x Rawhide Strip (1) x Powdered Mortka Horn (1) x Reinforced Mortka Bone 250 Sacrificed Essence OR (2) x Pure Essence Scales (Novice Class) OR (1) x Pure Essence Scale (Disciple Class)

I’d left all my fabrication ingredients in here before heading over to the bathhouse. A quick search told me I had everything I needed to take a crack at making the upgraded Mortka-Forged Morning Star, though even that would take a little elbow grease. I had a lot of raw ingredients, like Raw Iron Ore, Grass Hound Leather, and Non-powdered Mortka Horn. But I couldn’t use any of it—not without refining it first. After briefly consulting Pellervo’s Guide to the Soul Forge, I learned that was where the crystal forge in the corner came into play.

The imaging bench was where the majority of the actual fabrication work took place, but refining and building the individual components was the business of the forge.

Thanks to my injuries, it took me four times longer than it should have, but eventually I got myself set up by the crystal forge with my sack full of ingredients in hand. With the sage words of Pellervo to guide me, I got busy. After putting on a leather work apron and a pair of heavy-duty gloves, I loaded the Raw Iron Ore into a specialty crucible—there were a variety of different types and molds, all crafted from different materials—then used a set of industrial-sized tongs to place the crucible into the flickering blue fires of the forge.

From there, I worked the bellows, pumping them steadily with my arms to get the flames to burn at exactly the right temperature. And how could I tell how hot the flames needed to be? Simple—they changed colors. Yellow to orange, orange to red, red to purple, purple to blue, and blue to green. Dummy-proof, even for a crayon eater like me. Especially for a crayon eater like me, since I knew my colors so good.

My Stamina bar appeared during the process, but so did my Arcana gauge, siphoning off a sliver of my power with every pump—feeding it into the forge to purify and refine the contents within the dancing flames. After ten minutes the iron was ready to come out and be poured into a rough mold that I placed on top of the nearby anvil. Before the metal could fully cool, I used another set of tongs to submerge the newly formed ingot into the first of three quenching barrels located to the left of the anvil.

The barrel I used contained a strong solution of Aqua Fortis—fortified water—while the second held Oleum Fortis, or fortified oil. Both were used for cooling the fabrication components as they left the cleansing fires of the crystal forge. It was a crucial step in the process and had to be performed while the metal was still hot. If the ingot cooled too slowly it would form a weaker metal; dunking it in this solution created a vapor layer around the ingot which, in turn, meant the material would be stronger, harder, and more durable.

The second barrel, filled with oil, was used for the same purpose. Quenching in water cooled the material the fastest but also put added strain on the metal. That was fine for something like iron or even silver, but for more fragile components, like Mortka steel, the oil was needed.

After twenty seconds, I fished the ingot from the Aqua Fortis and unceremoniously dunked it into the third barrel, this one filled with a powdery black sand as fine as flour. The guidebook said the dust was called Selitrium. That didn’t mean jack shit to me and there was no further explanation of what exactly Selitrium was or where it came from—the important thing was that the powder leeched away any final impurities while simultaneously priming the material to be infused with Arcana and shaped via the workstation fabricator.

Refining the materials was not a quick process and it was more exhausting than a ten-mile hike through the rolling hills of Camp Pendleton, but it was also rewarding and strangely calming. I lost myself to the work, focused on the task at hand, and I transformed Raw Iron and Silver Ore into usable ingots and Grass Hound leather into supple sheets of reinforced hide. I even stripped out the affinity typing from a handful of my Glamor Affinity Scales—all thanks to my Affinity Retrofitter ability.

Through a laborious and tedious process, I also imbued four Glamor Scales worth of Affinity into a single silver Rjuhella coin, transforming it into a low-level Arcanum Token.

>>

Fabricated Token of Deceptive Presence

Token Type: Armor Inset, Blessed

Rarity: Disciple

Effect 1: Gain a 3% Bonus on all Ward Abilities from the College of Deception: Stealth Step, Deft Touch, Dream Thief, Crystalline Shell.

Effect 2: +5% resistance against psionic attacks, glamor spells, and mental magics.

>>

It took me three hours to transmute and transform all of my ingredients into useable components, and by the time I was done, my legs were, miraculously, starting to function again. Instead of being completely numb from the waist down, it now felt like both legs were filled to bursting with pins and needles. Significantly more uncomfortable than feeling nothing at all, but I’d never been happier in my life. The injury I’d sustained was the type you didn’t bounce back from—not on my world, at least—but here, even debilitating damage could be shrugged off with a little time.

I plopped down on the stool and placed the mace schematic on the workbench, which instantly conjured the ghostly blue 3D model into the air. I carefully read over the materials list and added each of the requisite items to the workstation as well. One of the items hanging on the wall above the bench was a silver glove. It looked like metal but felt like silky cloth; engraved into each digit was a series of small runes, and another such symbol decorated the palm. I slipped the glove onto my right hand then picked up a thin metallic rod, not much larger than a pencil.

I felt like Harry Potter going wand shopping for the first time. Especially when I pointed the tip at an iron ingot and it rose into the air at a flick of my wrist. Wingardium leviosa, I thought with a grin. The metal rod allowed me to lift, rotate, and spatially manipulate any of the materials on the workbench, while the glove let me shape them—forming small, detailed pieces that could then be superimposed onto the ghostly image of the mace. Honestly, it felt more like working with soft, malleable clay than metal.

Using an infused mixture of regular iron and Mortka steel, I shaped the refined metal into a thin handle, slightly thicker on one end than the other. The mace head was more complicated, especially since I used reinforced Mortka Talons—shaped and sharpened using another tool that was equal parts sander and orbital bone saw—to create the spiked flanges that jutted out from the mace head. Affixing the head to the shaft was as simple as overlaying them on the ghostly mace, then using the wand to create a seamless weld. I used cured Grass Hound leather for the handle wrap—the process powered by two Pure Essence Scales, since I was running painfully low on Essence of my own.

There was a flash of brilliant golden light as the Essence Scales released their pent-up energy, fusing all of the elements together into a singular weapon. I reached forward with a tentative, shaky hand and grasped the mace’s handle, pulling it from the air. It was a thing of beauty. Brutal and deadly, it had wicked claw-like flanges and glowing runes and intricate swirls running along the handle and over the mace head. It seemed to weigh nothing at all.

Excitement buzzing through me, I tested my legs—they held my weight, though just barely—and hobbled over to the armory, where my Soul Forged Weapons waited. There were tons of racks positioned along the walls, perfect for storing weapons of all shapes and sizes, but instead of placing the Mace Skin on any of those, I carefully laid it over the top of the K-Bar, which was prominently displayed on a pedestal in the center of the room. There was a flash of golden light as the weapons seemed to melt together. A spectral image of the morning star overlaid my K-Bar.

Now, instead of summoning the Marine Corps issued knife, I would be able to summon my fancy, new upgraded mace—at least until I switched it out for another weapon skin. With this system, I would be able to manufacture the right weapon for the right job. Swords and daggers for creatures weak against piercing damage, warhammers and maces for heavily armored foes, billhooks, spears, and halberds for keeping an enemy at arm’s length. Sure, I’d need to enter the Soul Vault to swap between skins, but as long as I had a good idea of what I was up against, I could be prepared for damned near anything.

With the mace skin done and tucked away in my armory, I moved on to something a little more difficult—leather armor. I didn’t have the right kind of components to replace my Brigandine Armor, but I did have the shoddy leather armor I’d looted off the Crave Ghouls and I had more than enough materials to replace that with Mortka-Forged Leather Armor. It was more complicated than the mace, but significantly less complicated than even the most basic firearm I had access to, which made it a perfect item to improve my skill with.

For the next three hours I went through the laborious and time-consuming process of harvesting and deconstructing the Crude Leather Armor to generate a blueprint, then fabricating the small and intricate components I needed to assemble the new item. The trickiest part, hands down, was putting it all together. There were about a thousand rivets, overlapping leather plate segments, and untold straps and buckles that needed to be shaped and molded. Then, to top it all off, there were special procedures to affix the Grass Hound spikes to the pauldrons that would protect my shoulders.

In the end, it was worth every monotonous and mind-numbing minute.

The armor was sleek and a green so dark it was nearly black. A series of interlocking leather plates covered my chest, stomach and back, and because of the way they were assembled, it gave me a far greater range of motion than what my metal, scale-covered Brigandine Armor provided. It also weighed next to nothing—less even than my flak jacket—and the spikes, crafted from Grass Hound quills, jutting up from the shoulder plates were brutal looking. Best of all, it retained a small portion of the natural power of the Grass Hounds I’d carved the leather from.

>>

Mortka-Forged Grass Hound Armor

Type: Light, Reinforced Mortka Leather

Class: Adept

Masterfully crafted from the hides of several Grass Hounds, this leather armor offers excellent protection against the cutting edge of a blade and some limited protection against piercing damage. The overall design grants the wearer exceptional mobility and makes this suit of armor ideal for those who rely on agility or seek to specialize in Stealth or other unsavory abilities.

Primary Effects:

Charmed Armor: Stealth Step, Crystalline Shell, Wyld Wisdom, and the Fae spell Cunning Glamor are 8% more effective. Charmed Insight: +1 Insight Bonus while equipped.

>>

I’d been in the Soul Vault for the better part of nine hours by the time I finished with the armor and though my legs felt like I’d just got done doing a thousand max-squat reps at the gym, I could feel them again. It still hurt to stand, and I wobbled like a geriatric penguin when I walked, but that was a certified miracle as far as I was concerned. I wanted to keep going—to learn more, do more, push myself more—but there was nothing left to do. After checking over the Pistol Skin upgrades, I quickly realized that I needed better quality fabrication components, and a lot more of them, for even the simplest builds.

Fact was, I couldn’t progress any further on that front and I still had a good three hours before I could reset my Ward Points via Threads of Fate. So, I did the only sensible thing I could think of. I shuffled over to the cot with the starchy wool blanket, stripped down to my skivvies, and flopped onto my side, letting my eyes slide shut.

***

I had no idea how long I’d been down for the count, but when I woke up, I felt like a million bucks. And not just any million bucks, a million bucks that comes tax-free from overseas combat pay. I sat up and stretched out my arms and legs, twisting my back this way and that to check potential mobility issues or signs of tenderness. I sure as shit didn’t feel like a guy who had mangled his spine the night before. This Vault of mine was magic in more ways than one.

I rolled out of bed and pumped out a quick fifty, followed by a round of crunches and burpees. I wasn’t just healed, I was better than ever. I felt like I could run a marathon with a fifty-pound rucksack and not even break a sweat. My extra points into Brawn were already paying dividends. The only downside? I was hungrier than a polecat and ready to take someone’s head off if I didn’t get some chow into my belly.

Unfortunately, food was one thing the Vault couldn’t provide, at least not yet.

But I couldn’t leave. Sage Smith, Mortka Forger, and Affinity Retrofitter were all amazing skills, but for fighting monsters they were about as useless as tits on a bull. I headed over to my avatar, pausing long enough to glance down and watch the silver koi flip its tail and take a lap through blue water, purged of the black taint that had been there before. A small smile crept across my lips. After poring over nearly a hundred pages of the handbook, I knew that the silver koi represented my physical body, while the golden koi represented my soul.

Both were looking damned healthy.

I called up my character screen with a thought and once again activated Threads of Fate. I thought that knowing about the pain would make it better, but if anything it made things worse. But once the agony of having my soul flayed passed, I climbed back to my feet and got busy picking my next round of abilities. I had thirty points to work with, since I’d left my Sidhe Pact in place, and I knew exactly what skills I wanted to unlock this time around.

>>

Expanded Ward List

Ward of Justice

Boon of Gadriel: Soul Bound Weapons (Unlocked) Ranged Weapon Mastery Overcharge; Cost: 4 Quick Hands; Cost: 6 Maximum Penetration; Cost: 9 Guided Shot; Cost: 15 Automated Sentinel; Cost: 20 Melee Weapon Mastery Rend; Cost: 3 Peerless Warrior; Cost: 5 Crippling Strike; Cost: 8 Festering Wound; Cost: 15 Juggernaut; Cost: 25 Warforged Mastery Arcane Armorer; Cost 5 Armor Evocation; Cost: 6 Weapon Mastery: Blades; Cost: 10 Weapon Mastery: Blunt; Cost: 10 Weapon Mastery: Range; Cost: 10

Ward of Valor

Boon of Voch: Diamond Body (Unlocked) Bastion of the Protector Combat Sense; Cost: 4 Matchless Endurance; Cost: 6 Purity of Form; Cost 10 Spiked Shell; Cost 14 Unmoving Bulwark; Cost: 18 Bastion of the Healer Empathetic Healer; Cost: 5 Plague Doctor; Cost: 10 Heal Wounds; Cost: 15 Circle of Restoration; Cost: 20 True Resurrection; Cost: 27 Bastion of Presence Mantle of Strength; Cost: 5 Mantle of Authority; Cost: 8 Mantle of Sanctuary; Cost: 10 Mantle of Scales; Cost: 14 Mantle of Healing; Cost: 22

Ward of Balance

Boon of Lero: Tongue of the Cosmos (Unlocked) Bestial Magics: Totem Transformation; Cost: 2 Bestiality Vigor; Cost: 5 Ravenous Feeding; Cost: 12 Rabid Infection; Cost: 18 Totem Bound; Cost: 22 Fae Magics Fae Tether; Cost: 4 SidhePact; Cost: 5 Pierce Veil; Cost: 10 Cunning Glamor; Cost: 12 Fae Footed: Cost 28 Elemental Magics Spectral Roots; Cost: 4 Absorb Elements; Cost: 6 Water Wright; Cost 10 Earth Sculptor; Cost: 10 Metallurgy Manipulation; Cost: 10

Ward of Wrath

Boon of Thuriel: Arcane Insight (Unlocked) Path of Violence Warded Shield; Cost: 5 Kinetic Blast; Cost: 5 Unbound Blaze; Cost: 12 Arctic Spike; Cost: 12 Electro Arc; Cost: 12 Path of Retribution Upheaval; Cost: 12 Rain of Fire; Cost: 15 Storm Caller; Cost: 17 Circle of Banishment; Cost: 20 Raguel’s Divine Retribution; Cost: 30 Path of Death: Life Siphon; Cost: 4 Soul Jar; Cost: 6 Mind Vault; Cost: 10 Ritual Reanimate; Cost: 22 Soul Storm; Cost: 28

Ward of Truth

Boon of Akora: Threads of Fate (Unlocked) College of Rhetoric Master Mentalist; Cost: 4 Calm Emotions; Cost: 8 Honeyed Words; Cost: 10 Greater Suggestion; Cost: 16 Grave Communion; Cost: 24 College of Deception Stealth Step; Cost: 5 Deft Touch; Cost: 8 Wyld Wisdom; Cost: 15 Dream Thief; Cost: 15 Crystalline Shell; Cost: 25 College of Reason Sage Smith; Cost: 10 Mortka Forger; Cost: 10 Affinity Retrofitter; Cost: 10 Arcane Transmuter; Cost 10 Alchemic Mastery; Cost: 10

>>

Combat Sense had saved my ass more times than I could count since waking up in this world hell-bent on killing me, and at only four Ward Points I couldn’t afford to pass it up. Maximum Penetration was good because it relied on Stamina instead of pulling from my Arcana Pool, but with my bare-bones Colt, it hadn’t done dick to stop the Elder Changeling, and it was damn pricey at nine points. Too pricey. I replaced that with a melee-oriented skill called Peerless Warrior, which only cost me five points.

Peerless Warrior

For a brief time, channel the strength of Gadriel, the Face of Justice, and become a warrior without equal. While possessed of such power, the Vigil is able to move faster, hit harder, and fight with a ferocity to rival even the vilest of Mortka. When activated, Peerless Warrior will consume Stamina, making the Vigil immune to Hold and Movement-Reducing Spells, increasing overall movement speed by 10%, and temporarily increasing the Vigil’s Brawn Score by 10%. When Stamina lapses, the Vigil suffers extreme exhaustion.

Recommended Attribute Minimums: Brawn, 18; Verve, 18

I wanted to keep Kinetic Blast in my arsenal, but I also wanted to try something with a little more stopping power. I only had so many points to play with and because of my relatively low Arcana stat score, I couldn’t afford to be overly reliant on offensive spells. As much as I hated to do it, I swapped in Unbound Blaze instead for a painful twelve Ward Points. That left me nine points left to spend. After getting my ass tossed around like a rag doll, I decided I needed something in the defense department, so Warded Shield went onto the list.

Unbound Blaze

Fire is the great equalizer of nature, for all things burn. Call upon the cleansing retribution of Thuriel and hurl a javelin of primal flame at a given target. The longevity of Unbound Blaze is directly tied to your available Arcana Pool. Feed more Arcana into the spell to increase its overall intensity.

Recommended Attribute Minimums: Arcana, 16; Finesse, 15

Warded Shield

Channel your potent Arcana into a shimmering shield of golden light capable of deflecting or stopping most types of physical and mystic attacks. Through force of will and self-discipline the shield can be extended to entirely encompass the Vigil or be used to protect others—though the larger the shield the quicker it will diminish a Vigil’s Arcana Pool. Warded Shield is one of the most effective and versatile defensive skills in any Vigil’s arsenal.

Recommended Attribute Minimums: Arcana, 15; Insight, 15

I was below the Recommended Arcana Threshold for both skills, but that had also been true of Kinetic Blast. Chances were that meant casting each spell even once would drain my Arcana Pool. I would just have to keep that fact situated squarely in the back of my head. Finally, with my last four points I opted for Fae Tether. Sure, it didn’t have any specific combat benefit, but having access to an interspatial bag of holding was too good to pass up. Satisfied with my choices, I distributed the points, slipped my Brigandine Armor into place, and exited the Vault.