Cold Iron revealed its rough texture to Lucifer as he placed his palms on his newest creation, his lips quietly mouthed words of power as beads of sweat ran down his forehead and fell to the lab floor.

He concentrated on weaving his magic, carefully to avoid clashing with the everchanging winds of magic and making small changes to the arcane whisper whenever such a clash was inevitable.

He paused briefly when he arrived at the most difficult portion of the spell, with closed lids he searched for a suitable being with his mind's eye,

moments later he spotted his target, between dimensions, the material plane and another he found a spirit with potential for use, if such beings could be seen with the naked eye one would only observe a faint glowing ball, however, Lucifer could see so much more with his specially selected magics, Lucifer focused past the surface like pulling down a thin silken vail and saw the faint outline of a blood-soaked warrior with a hidden madness barely contained behind his eyes.

This told Lucifer all that he needed to know and there could be no better spirit for this particular task.

While maintaining his current spell Lucifer sent tendrils of dark magics towards the spirit. The strain from maintaining a complex incomplete magic while casting another made Lucifer briefly consider stopping and retrying with better preparation.

Most mages created vast arrays of enchantments to either help them retain a spell form while they focused on weaving other magics into it, or if they are particularly crazy they have the enchantments cast the spell autonomously.

Lucifer's wandering mind made him acutely aware of why those mages used such complex arrays, the moment that the sprite was captured it struggled ferociously, even so much as damaging itself against Lucifer's dark tendrils, while his attention was diverted an unusually powerful gust of ambient mana impacted the unstable spell, unwinding and twisting its arcane logics in unexpected ways.

Lucifer was able to force pure mana through his body into the spell, the influx of pure power bolstered the unstable spell preventing it from collapsing, but the corrupted sections of the spell melded and changed from a tangled mess of magic into a dangerous swell of energy.

The unbound magic frantically surged back to its caster, the previously cold iron superheated to a red glow cooking Lucifers hand, the remaining untamed magic that Lucifer couldn't direct into the steel shot up his arm leaving jagged scars across his arm and shoulder.

Lucifer refocused on the spirit that was struggling free from his bonds, only dividing his concentration for a split second to deactivate the pain centre of his brain.

After a short struggle, Lucifer had the unruly spirit in his magical grasp and began pulling it fully into the material plane, it continued giving a futile struggle to his machinations, however, once it saw the purpose of its capture all of its struggled ceased, Lucifer would even swear that the thing was pushing towards his spells completion.

There was no resistance when he forced something resembling a contract onto the spirit, once the new bond was complete the spirit charged towards the object Lucifers palm still connected to, he didn't stop it because thats what he intended anyway.

The spirit flew directly into the iron giant whom Lucifers palm lay, a humanoid made of steel somewar resembling a human, but instead of hands and arms, strange instruments the spirit didn't know the use of took their place.

Once everything was in place Lucifer gave a sigh of relief as the spell finally fully formed and bound with the mock human's body completing the spell.

The first thing Lucifer noticed was the sickening smell of burning flesh, he looked down and frowned at the sight, his entire hand though magic and heat had melted and melded with the iron and he heard a sickening suction when he pulled his arm free, Lucifer made a mental note to not turn his pain center back on until he switched bodies.

Only now did he see and come to appreciate the scars from the backlash, they still glowed with a soft blue light appearing like static lightning carved onto his arm, when he inspected the scars more closely he noticed that they gave off a small particle matter, after a brief thought he realized it was his flesh still burning away from the raw mana. Another reason to get a new body.

Grinding metal brought his attention back to the metal giant, the spirit had started getting familiar with its new body. Lucifer laughed unironically cheering "IT'S ALIVE!"

However, his celebration was cut short when a spirit curious about its new body tried to figure out what his arms were supposed to be. It pointed its large hollow arm to the side and focused its will on the arm, unluckily Lucifer was standing right were its arm pointed, the hollow cylinder attached to the arm flashed and rendered Lucifer's chest into a bloody meat paste.

While Lucifer moved his consciousness towards a new "host" he thought to himself, 'even contracted spirits can harm you if they don't mean to and more importantly Note to self, don't leave testing weapons loaded'

Several hours later the iron giant now unimaginatively called golem was battling creatures of the dungeon in an arena Lucifer created specifically for this test.

Panthers circled Golem waiting for an opportunity to strike, one saw the giants back and couldn't withstand its instincts, the golem stepped to the side in a manner Lucifer recognized as some sort of martial arts footwork, then used the cylinder on its arm to pulverize the lunging cats head.

The body didn't even have time to slump to the ground before the other Panthers Lunged. Golem twisted out of the way of half of them and used its arms mass to devastating effect, several panters flew across the arena slamming into the spiked walls.

However, Golem wasn't able to dodge all the attacks, claws raked uselessly against Golems armor and fangs broke in a futile attempt to sever Golems nonexistent spine.

Golem's shoulders shook as if it was laughing before it began tearing the halftone beats made of pure muscle to pieces as if they were made of wet paper.

The last wounded panther lay on the ground with broken claws and fangs panting, Golem pointed its arm at it and let loose a deafening boom as the projectile impacted the floor through the cats head.

After the battle Golem stomped the corpses into a meat paste sending blood everywhere in some sort of victory dance of death.

'second note to self today, get a less bloodthirsty spirit next time', reflected Lucifer.