We awoke to the sounds of yelling, and right away I applied TR to myself, expecting a fatal blow at any moment as I tried to force my tired eyes to focus.

Most of the soldiers were just waking up, but three of them were in a rough semi-circle around us, one with a weapon already drawn.

“What, what’s wrong? Of course I’m Wulfric!” I heard a deep brassy voice boom from behind me.

I spun around, using ambient Qi to quicken time around me, and let out a loud gasp as I saw the massive metallic statue standing next to the wall. It was huge and intimidating, and I threw myself at it in a no-holds-barred hug.

“Wulfric!” I yelled, hanging off of his neck like a toy. I freed a hand from behind his neck and slapped his chest, ignoring the stinging pain (and the metallic ping) that resulted. “You are okay! This is great, it worked! I did save you!” I was so excited that I was more or less babbling at this point, and I didn’t care that there was an audience. Even if someone tried to persecute me, I was pretty sure that I could hold my own by now, especially if I had Iron-Wulfric and Lord-Wolfram-Spiritwind at my side. Hiding had become a lot less important.

“Heller…” He rumbled out, looking between me and Tetra (who was just staring at him with wide eyes, her jaw hanging open slightly). “Am… am I… I mean… did… uhhhh…. did I turn into metal?” He paused for a moment and then looked down and slammed a hand against his leg, causing an amazingly loud sound to bounce around the enclosed space of the shelter.

I couldn’t help by laugh, still giddy with relief. Everyone was holding their ears except Wulfric and me –Temporary regeneration had instantly healed the damage to my ears, and as for Wulfric… well, I had no idea. It just didn’t seem to bother him.

I jumped down from my perch, landing in front of him. “Hang on, let me check a few things.” I said.

Not even waiting for him to signal acceptance, I reached out and tried my healing sense again… and… nothing. No breath, no pulse, not even a single living cell… I pursed my lips while my mind was quickly working on the problem. It was a lot more thorough of a transformation than I had expected, with a plethora of little details that I hadn’t designed myself; there was no body heat, for one thing, and I had figured that there would still be subtle expressions of life… somewhere.

“Hold your breath and don’t move for a moment.” I said, walking around him. The first part was probably redundant: I had already noticed that he wasn’t breathing except when he needed to speak. But I was still surprised by how utterly… still… he was. Like a literal statue, there were no small muscle movements or miniature shifts in balance at all, nothing to indicate that he was alive.

“Say ‘Character Sheet’.” I told him, moving to the side.

Wulfric suddenly took in a breath, nearly making me flinch even though I had been expecting it. “Uhhh… Heller… what…” He mumbled. It was quite jarring when he transitioned from utter stillness to animation like that.

It was also a bit hard to tell where he was looking, because his pupils were roughly the same hue of polished chrome as the rest of his eyeball – though still not as silvery-bright as Tetra’s metallic scales. I decided to assume he was looking at me as I gave him a level look, arching an eyebrow. That usually worked on him.

The effects were immediate as he quickly followed my instructions. “Character sheet.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a blue window suddenly opened up beside me. What the beast! I can see it too?! That was yet another thing I hadn’t designed into the power. Trying to cover my shock, I looked over at Wulfric, who was staring at the modified Character sheet with his mouth wide open. Examining the simple graphical display that I had designed, I nodded to myself – that part, at least, had come out as planned.

“Tetra, can you see this?” I asked, pointing directly at the faintly glowing blue window. She raised both her eyebrows, giving me an inquisitive look before she returned her gaze to Wulfric. She was obviously having a hard time focusing…

“Tetra!” I called, louder this time, “Can you see this blue thing?”

I held her focus longer this time. “What blue thing?” She asked absently. Well, I guess that was answer enough. I glanced at the soldiers, who didn’t seem to be taking this any better than Tetra was. At least none of them looked like they were on the edge of violence anymore.

“Yes, Wulfric, you are metal. It is an ability that I gave you in order to save your life. Now let me show you how to turn your new power off.” I gave him an encouraging smile, wanting to make sure he took this in a positive light… and then I prayed to every spirit I could think of that the transformation wasn’t actually permanent.

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One of the soldiers spoke up while I was trying to explain how the menu worked to Wulfric. “Heller… did… ah… did you turn him into metal?”

I blinked, having figured that was kind of obvious by now. “Yes. Yes, I did. Let me finish up here, we can talk in a moment.” I said, giving him only a cursory glance. Not much point in lying about things anymore.

If you are going to reveal your hand, go balls to the wall or go home, I figure. Being treated like a child was getting pretty old anyway. Tetra chuckled and Wulfric just looked mildly surprised, but then again both of them had seen this side of me before – the ‘not-actually-a-child-on-the-inside’ part that I usually had to keep to myself.

The soldiers left us alone long enough for me to finish my walkthrough with Wulfric, and the three of us all breathed a sigh of relief when he finally managed the reverse-transformation. I examined him again, noting that his injuries were completely healed – it seemed as if the regeneration had been working all along… I just hadn’t been able to tell the difference.

Afterwards I spoke with the commander of this squad, a surprisingly pleasant warrior by the name of Buzac, and I had no choice but to fall back to the ‘Merrik lie’ again. He was surprised enough that he rocked back on his heels, nearly tipping over, before exclaiming that Lord Runax had commanded him to squash that rumor four years ago. I ended up giving a short demonstration of my powers, which made short work of any non-believers… and appeared to give me a weird kind of celebrity status amongst the soldiers…

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I continued to work on my relationship with the squad over the next few days while Wulfric was busy practicing his new ability (it was pretty amazing to watch him switching so rapidly between chrome-finish and flesh). To help pass the time we setup training sessions between us and the soldiers, the men and women of house Flameward generally seeming quite excited to try and help us out. It felt decidedly odd to have trained warriors treating me like this…

I took advantage of the situation to test my ability to manipulate Qi, helping me figure out the limits: I knew that while I had been able to remove nearly all the force from a blow delivered by thirteen-year-old Wulfric, it would be a different matter against some of the soldiers. Much like the green-skinned lizard-monkeys, a few of them were able to hit with a lot more force than I was able to safely deal with (though I could still greatly reduce the blows, as long as I saw them coming).

And on the offensive side I had a similar issue - two of the soldiers had protective abilities of their own that I wasn’t able to breach even after adding ambient Qi to the blow; although with my powers it was a completely different matter. Iggy, for example, quickly proved to be the most effective combatant in the room, even though I couldn’t use ambient Qi to add to any of my ranged abilities. Of course, Iggy wasn’t actually alive in any sense of the word, being just a construct I was controlling with my will, and I could rebuild him as quickly as any of them could tear him apart.

And, of course, if I had used my ice shards or magnetism I could probably defeat the entire squad in seconds. Not that I ever would, but still… if felt good to feel in control again.

Days went by quickly, and I did my best not to worry about my family in North Stone village, or little Zephyr. I considered leaving the shelter more than once, but I knew I could only slay a few hundred of the beasts before I was overcome with exhaustion… or made a fatal mistake. And meaninglessly throwing my life away wouldn’t do my family any good.

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On the fourth night Tetra asked to speak with me privately. I was secretly relieved, as I could tell that something had been bothering her for the last few days. Was she mad at me for taking such a risk at Wulfric’s expense, experimenting on a living being? I wouldn’t blame her if she was, though I felt justified in my actions.

“Heller…” She began, before taking an uncharacteristic pause. There was definitely something wrong here.

I stayed silent, giving her time to compose her thoughts. Best to get it over with quickly.

“Heller… I…” She stopped, swallowing loudly as though nervous. Wait... so… she wasn’t angry?

“Heller, I want you to give me powers like you gave Wulfric, it’s not fair, I know it doesn’t matter if it’s fair, but please please, I’ve always wanted to be strong, I….” She blurted out in a fast rush, not able to look me in the eye, her voice finally trailing off as she stood there, her head lowered, as though silently awaiting my judgement. What the beast?

I wasn’t sure what to say. It’s not that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind, but there was no guarantee that whatever power I gave her would end up being something she was happy with… And then there was the fact that it cost me so much CP…

“Tetra… it might be really dangerous…” I started to say.

Tetra cut me off, finally looking up, her silvery features transformed into a vicious scowl. So THAT’s why she had her head lowered, she was trying her best to ask nicely. “Do you think I beasting-well care! What, am I never going to encounter any other danger, then? Any risk is worth not being at the mercy of those spirits-be-damned creatures out there!” She finished, jabbing a hand towards the hatch as she narrowed her eyes even further. “I’ll stab you in your SLEEP if you tell me it’s dangerous again!” By the end her voice loud enough that everyone in the shelter was looking at us.

My mouth was partly hanging open in surprise, but I recovered quickly, snapping it shut just in time to start a deep and thoroughly refreshing bout of laughter. I couldn’t believe I had been so worried that Tetra was going to judge me. I laughed even harder at the indignant expression on her face, watching as she fought against joining me in my mirth. But it didn’t take long for her to start cracking up too, and soon we were nearly in tears we were laughing so hard.

In the end I agreed, but I told her it would be at least four tendays before I was ready. That would give me twenty days to gather up the remaining few CP I would need, plus plenty of time to design something she would like.

Author's Note: Whew, that's it for this arc! Work has already started on the next arc of the story, which will cover our first visit to The City, the Black Tournament, and intro the next big threat Heller will have to face. And that leads into the rest of the story. :D

I've really enjoyed these first two books, and I think they are vitally important, but I'm looking forward to finally having an adult MC as of (roughly) book 3.

Hope you enjoyed this arc! If you liked it please take a moment to leave a review, it helps keep me motivated!