As the weeks flow by, the ominous chaos storms wax and wane. The only consistency in the middle of the uncertainty is that the storms and spatial anomalies seem to drift farther from Silaraon, affording us some relief. I don’t want to lose my edge, but I have to admit that it’s nice not to worry quite as much about imminent death and destruction.

Carrying that much fear is exhausting.

The days meld together as we alternate working on our two main projects. My progress on the glass armor is slower than I would like, simply because of the amount of mana it takes to transmute even a small amount of glass into an acceptable similitude of the mother of pearl. I’m continuing to practice my mana soaking methods and I can tell I'm seeing progress by my own rough, unscientific estimation. I’ve added probably close to twenty or thirty percent capacity to my mana pool over the last year. But it's still not enough to handle the kind of volume I need to make an entire chest plate.

Instead, I turn my attention toward creating smaller, palm-size scales. After consulting briefly with Ezio, we’ve decided that it’s simply not worth the frustration of trying to brute-force a singular piece by fusing on tiny additional layers once or twice a day. He suggested a few dusty tomes filled with dense dissertations on armor types, and in between the yawn-inducing descriptions, I found something more my speed: pictures.

I snicker at the memory of Ezio’s long-suffering expression when I told him that pictures were way more fun to look at than the historical texts. Regardless of our scholarly differences, we’ve agreed on the path forward. The illustrations inspired me, and now I’m crafting dozens of overlapping scales that I’ll affix to a high-quality, woven gambeson. It will suffice for our purposes for now. Over time, as I gain more strength and a deeper mana pool, then we can experiment with larger pieces and a unibody construction approach.

In the meantime, the majority of my focus is split between working with my team on our collaborative distance casting on the one hand, and good, old-fashioned craftsmanship on the other. While I'm still trying to push my [Lesser Manasight] up in rank, and I generally want to take advantage of my [Heat Manipulation] while working on commissioned pieces, I’ve also picked up a new tactic. When I’m practicing instead of working on the clock and rushing to fulfill orders, I try to hone my traditional glass work skills—sans magic.

I try not to rely on [Architect of Unseen Worlds] when it comes to glass work, and not just because of its exorbitant mana costs. Unquestionably, it’s my strongest and most useful Skill—if the situation calls for it. I've won a few commissions for more intricate pieces because of my ability to duplicate other [Glass Smith]’s creativity, but I'm putting in serious work to improve my techniques. I want to gain further skill working directly with glass in a more mundane manner, without magic as a crutch.

That’s led me to today’s predicament: training my admittedly underdeveloped aptitude for flamework with Avelina. She’s sculpting jewelry with her fingers, oblivious to the fire she can summon from the tip of her index finger as it wreaths around her hands. She expertly rolls the colored glass rods between her hands, melting the glass until she deems the molten blob large enough for her purposes.

“No [Heat Manipulation] today, Nuri,” Avelina reminds me cheerfully. She nods toward the nozzle clamped to the workbench, which is connected to a magitech furnace that feeds the flame with gas and oxygen. “That’s your station. Use that little flame for finicky work, just like a real [Assistant]. Here, catch!”

I fumble the handful of glass rods she tosses my way, and wince in embarrassment as they drop to the ground with a crash and clatter. I remind myself just in time to bite my tongue, annoyed equally by my clumsiness and her cavalier attitude. I may have some resistance to the fire thanks to my [Heat Manipulation], but shards of glass will still slice and dice my skin.

“Suddenly, I think I know why I haven’t shed the [Assistant] label,” I say with a laugh, as I try to act more like Lionel and not let things get me down as much. There’s no point complaining about what happened; I just have to get my act together and keep moving forward.

I pick up the rods that are still intact, toss the scraps into the recycle bin, and grab an extra couple rods of various colors for our project. We’re making little pendants today, which is way outside of my comfort zone. I’m accustomed to larger vessels—big vases, full windows with shapes and colors, plates and bowls, and huge decorative work. I’m partial to fantastical shapes when I get to play around instead of creating functional pieces.

Following Avelina’s lead, I turn the valve on the gas, pick up the metal sparker, and ignite the flame. As soon as the fuel catches, burning nice and orange, I ease open the valve for the oxygen, changing the color of the fire to a hot blue jet as long as my forearm. We don our own in-house creations: didymium safety glasses to protect our eyes from sodium flare.

I insert the end of a clear rod at the tip of the fire, slowly turning it as I inch it closer to the base of the flame jet. The glass takes on a cherry-red glow as it melts and balls up around the rotating end of the rod.

“Gravity is both friend and foe,” Avelina reminds me, tilting her own rod to speed up the gathering process. She deftly manages her flame, eschewing the magitech I’m tied to in favor of her own Skills, and soon has a small glob of hot glass spinning in her hands.

I nod, relaxing as I copy her techniques. It’s very different from what I’m used to in the hot shop, but glass is still glass. It flows and gathers in familiar ways, and as I turn my rod in a never-ending revolution, I make small corrections to keep the growing ball of glass from falling off the end. I aim the flame at the still-cool glass just below the molten ball, bring it all up to temperature so it can join the growing globe, adding more material to my final piece.

The amount of material is soon difficult to control, so I pick up a thin piece of glass rod with my other hand, enter the tip of the flame, and keep it turning while I bring it closer to the hottest portion of the fire nearest to the nozzle. Once it’s hot enough, starting to melt in the oppressive flames, I stick it to the other side of the rotating ball I’ve collected. Now my two glass rods are fused together, and I continue to turn them both while I gather more glass.

Satisfied with the size of the molten glob at last, I detach the thin rod by over-heating it and spinning it in small circles until the tail of thinning glass pulls apart. Humming to myself as I work, I select a red rod, heat it up, and trail it across the ball of glass I’ve already gathered. The delicate criss-cross pattern is difficult to control at first, but years of practice with glass helps me maintain a steady hand and even sizes.

“I’d hate to be the woman who wears that gigantic pendant,” Avelina teases me. “I’d get a crick in my neck before lunchtime!”

I glance down at the intricate piece, roughly the size of a goose egg. “Your neck muscles need some exercise. It’s not that big!” I scoff.

“Look at my pendant,” Avelina retorts, holding out a nearly finished piece held between metal tongs. “It’s maybe a quarter the size of yours! Most people want jewelry to accessorize, not to make a statement that can be seen halfway across Silaraon.”

We share a laugh, and I place my globe to the side. “Point taken. Maybe someone will want a paper weight or a decorative piece. I’ll start over.”

This time I’m much faster, gathering the glowing glass into a globe that’s significantly smaller than the first attempt. I layer red and white across the clear glass, creating a monogram of two well-known ancient runes: love and happiness. It’s finer detail work than I’m used to, and I’m not completely satisfied with a few of my lines, but it’s good enough to sell in the general shop. We wouldn’t offer this to our more discerning clientele, but it will do for the average lad looking for an inexpensive but special gift for his lover.

I press the entire ball flat with my paddle, careful to preserve the shape of the intertwined runes that I created. I have to plunge the entire thing back into the flame jet, still turning the entire time, to heat it back up to sufficient temperature to press flat. When it passes Avelina’s critical eye test, I aim the fire at the top end of the flattened disc, heating it until it glows white, and then snip a cut a third of the way down the disc with my shears.

Using the edges of the shears, I pry the glass apart, creating a rough, heart-shaped pendant. With a judicious application of heat and gravity—the two eternal tools of the glassmaker—I smooth all the edges and refine the overall shape.

Turning the piece over, I examine it from each side until I’m certain it looks exactly as I envisioned it in my mind. I carefully melt a little more colored glass from the red rod, affix it to the top of the heart, and gently pull it apart. Patience is required to maintain the balance of heat and pressure, but I manage to elongate the glass without breaking it, pleased with my efforts working with such small and delicate pieces.

I pinch the length of molten glass in the little tongs, and bend the long, slender strand of glass into a loop, using the flame jet to melt it and fuse it back to the main piece. We’ll thread a golden-colored thread through it later to turn it into a necklace.

Before I finish, I polish the rough spots with the fire, ensuring that it’s smooth and sleek, although I don’t completely obliterate the last few inconsistencies. People want things that look handmade, not something that could have been developed with a Skill and mass-produced. It’s a funny thing how the lack of perfection enhances value for many buyers.

Avelina flashes a big smile at me. “Well done, Nuri! You should work with us more often. Anyone can turn out a vase, but it’s satisfying to finish something smaller and more intricate.”

Her words echo the rising sensations in my chest. Mana is building unexpectedly, as though moving in response to my work, and I feel like I’m stuffed to the gills. Keep going on this path, the energy seems to whisper. This is the way to advance!

=+=

On the weekends, Ember instructs us with further combat training. The team still shows up and puts in work to improve, although the urgency we once had is diminished as the chaotic storms and spatial tears seem to have migrated farther away from the city. I don't really have an explanation as to why they're moving, and that unsettles me. At first blush, the development appears to be beneficial for us since people are breathing more easily—and I can't say that I don't welcome the respite; we're simply not ready for a void war—but something about it niggles at the back of my mind.

After setting off the charges to delay the wraiths, surely we won’t get off this easily, right? Yet in my furtive attempts to use the PPP, it does seem to indicate that we’re farther from the epicenter than before, if I’m reading it correctly.

Ezio convinces me to keep training in the meantime and not worry about things so far outside of my control, so I fling myself into my armor project with abandon. So it is that after nearly two months of constant work my efforts pay off. While a full suit of armor is still a ways off, my chest piece is, at the very least, ready for its first real test. I’ve passed the prototyping stage and now I'm ready to find out just how much force damage the armor can soak up before actually threatening me.

We're gathered by Mikko's house so that we can make use of the iron lunk. That way we can standardize the power and vector of the attacks. I have to admit, it’s a smarter approach than what I had been doing: guessing at how hard I’m hitting the armor with brooms back at the studio. I'm fairly confident that the armor will handle a few blows, but I also don't particularly want to break my ribs unnecessarily.

Lionel has improved in his second Class at a staggering rate, already earning a second dedicated Skill, but he's still not a full-fledged healer. If I break a bone or puncture a lung, I will be in a world of pain until we can get to his aunt for proper care and recovery.

“Remember,” Melina admonishes, fixing us each with a stern stare, “in the pursuit of academic rigor we need to establish baseline durability and then re-examine the armor after every series of impacts in order to determine the efficacy of its impact resistance. I know it's not a perfect methodology, but it's the best we have given our time constraints and Nuri’s, ahh, limitations with his [Architect of the Unseen World] Skill.” She trails off, blushing at pointing out my inadequacies.

“You mean because my bro has a mana puddle instead of a mana pool?” Miko says, chuckling at his own joke.

“Let's just get this over with before it rains,” I say, resigned to the pain I'm about to put myself through. Avelina smiles at me sympathetically while Lionel and Mikko stand shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed and huge grins cracking their faces.

“You know, we could just put the armor over the iron lunk,” I venture for the third time that night. “Surely Mikko can hit with roughly the same force if he uses one of his blacksmithing hammer Skills. Besides, we're not publishing an article in a journal; we just want a rough idea of how sturdy this armor is before we field test.”

“Actually,” Melina admits, “Ezio and I are planning to publish an article in conjunction with his colleague—the one who wrote that bloviating piece on mother of pearl. We agreed that this would be a good follow-up article to discuss some of the practical implications of the discovery, rather than merely look at biology for biology's sake. Not that I disapprove of any form of study on its own merit, of course.”

“Of course not,” I reply with a sigh. “Very well. Carry on.”

I roll my shoulders and make a show of warming up, but it's really just to buy some time to work out the building tension headache. The impending test has me breathing heavily and my hands shaking. The jolt of adrenaline makes my stomach flutter and flop. Something tells me I'm about to go through a very unpleasant experience. I breathe in deeply, swelling my chest with air until my lungs feel like they're bursting, and then slip on woven gambeson with the glass scale armor over top.

“No more stalling. It's go time,” I declare.

Melina is taking notes, so Mikko volunteers to operate the iron lunk. He thumbs over the control rune, dials up the first level routine, and announces that he’s disabling headshots, much to my great relief. Just in case, he hands me a spare helmet from the forge. It's plain and looks unfinished, like he made it in a hurry, but it's sturdy metal. More importantly, it should keep my skull from splitting open like a melon in case of an unfortunate mishap.

A light drizzle begins to fall just as I step forward within striking distance, and I can't help but laugh at the timing. Of course it's going to rain. I can't possibly have a comfortable test for once. “All right, bring it on. We'll test the weather sealing, too!”

“Can't complain about a little bit of precipitation if you plan on doing more delves,” Lionel points out, still smirking at me.

I grunt an agreement and brace myself as the first flail smacks into my chest. As hoped, the force of the blow is distributed across the armor, leaving me relatively unharmed. My [Lesser Manasight] and my new Skill, [Architect of Unseen Worlds] are running passively, although I'm not trying to transform anything with my Architect Skill. Instead, I'm monitoring the state of the armor with its ability to perceive composition, noting how the glass surface deforms and cracks into thousands of little micro-fractures. That’s the secret to absorbing so much force; the blows are spread all across the structure of the armor and absorbed by the intentional weak zones, crumpling on a small scale rather than transmitting the kinetic energy of the hit to my body directly.

Nine more blows rain down on me, combining with the cold water droplets to make me thoroughly miserable, but the armor holds. I don't even feel too bruised, just battered around a bit. The last hit knocks me on my butt, much to the amusement of the gathered peanut gallery.

“Are you sure that's level one?'' I complain to Mikko, crossing my arms and giving him an accusing glare from my seat in the mud.

A look of pure panic flashes across Mikko’s face. Fumbling, he brings up the interface in his mind, his fingers dancing across the control bracelet. He looks up sheepishly, his bronze cheeks deepening in color to a rust-red blush. “I, uhh, accidentally may have put it on seven instead of one. I was a little nervous, and they looked similar! In my defense, the stylization in the enchantment is a little bit difficult to tell apart. He went for fancy flourishes—you’ve seen it yourself! Anyone could have made that mistake.”

I groan, dropping my helmeted head into my palm, but Melina interrupts me with a raised hand. “Don't complain! This just means that you don't have to do levels one through six. Thanks to Mikko, we can move on directly to levels eight, nine, and ten, assuming that the armor lasts that long—and that you're still cooperating at the end of everything. Look on the bright side, Nuri. Mikko’s saved you from a good bit of beating.”

Mikko grins at the unexpected praise. “Hey, what are brothers for?”

=+=

Beaten down into the mud, over and over again, battered by the iron lunk and slick with my own sweat and the soaking rain, I nonetheless rise again. My body’s shaking with the force of each impact now at level ten, and my muscles are screaming in protest, but I’m committed. Forcing myself to do hard things isn’t getting any easier, but it’s strengthening and sharpening me, like a blacksmith working over a blade, quenching and tempering it through water and hammer and flame. There are no shortcuts.

An errant blow catches me in the head, jarring my helmet loose and twisting it over my eyes so that I can’t see anymore. Rain hammers down on my skin, pelting so hard that I don’t even want to fix the helmet and open my eyes; a raindrop to the eyeball is painful. I ignore the cries of the Linas to kill the test, holding up my hand to stop Mikko from turning off the iron lunk with his control runes.

Of all my available skills, only [Lesser Manasight] can help me right now. I flare the Skill, pushing my senses to their limit as I tried to feel the movement of the world around me instead of just seeing mana activation. [Architect of the Unseen World] isn’t going to help me at the moment; the time it would take to either analyze the iron lunk or change the composition of its limbs will leave me vulnerable.

I steady my breathing and track the movement of the iron lunk only through the faint echoes of its mana use, grateful that it can’t use footwork to reposition. If I’m ever truly in danger, I only have to step backward out of range. I’m turning my body, taking the blows on parts of the armor that haven’t already sustained micro-fractures during the training session. Eyes squeezed shut, I extend my senses outward.

A faint wave of energy on my right warns me just in time. I turn and duck, hearing the whistle of wind as a near miss flies past my right ear. My hands clench into fists, but my knees relax, staying loose and ready to move. Where will the next blow—there! I shift forward and leap, letting the strike pass harmlessly underneath me. My friends’ teasing and good-natured chatting soon fades into silence as they, too, seem to sense that I’m on the cusp of something new.

On a whim, I activate my [Heat Manipulation], not changing the environment but rather feeling the difference between the ambient air temperature and the cold limbs of the iron lunk. I try overlaying the two Skills, weaving the shape of their mana forms together as I sense an epiphany building. The feeling is fleeting, barely there . . .

A dull thud echoes through the training yard as I take a blow to the ribs, spinning to the ground with a loud grunt. My head spins from the loss of air, but I push myself back up, moving away to give myself a moment of breathing room. Once I regain my focus, I charge back into the fight, putting myself in striking distance as I pour mana into my Skills.

Again, it’s almost imperceptible, but as I focus, I feel my two skills start to harmonize. No discordant feedback; I think I’m clear to push harder. The world around me takes shape, moving from the vague hints of colors belonging to distinctive mana aspects to a more well-defined, stereoscopic impression of energy and heat and color. I dodge past two more sweeping strikes, weave past a jab and thrust, and shout in triumph as I duck under a follow up blow.

Inwardly, a seething sea of energy rises. I gather it together with a pulse of my will, and with a final surge, I shove through a barrier I barely realized was there. In an instant the world around me snaps into sharp relief. And I know with unerring accuracy the lunk is striking from below, swinging upward. My attention latches onto the iron lunk, and I move more slowly but with great certainty than before, always a half-step ahead of its attacks.

I instinctively twist my body to the side, dodging the blow by a hair’s breadth. No longer simply content to test the durability of my new armor, I’m pushing my Skills to their maximum, shaping my mana until it's tight, compressed, and utterly under my control. The more focused application of energy enables me to reach across the distance and to shore up the weaknesses of my Skills. Something new is happening, I’m certain of it. I’ve never sensed the world around me with such pinpoint precision.

There’s still something holding me back, however. Shaking with fear and excitement, I rip the helmet the rest of the way off my head, tossing it aside. Deep in the recesses of my mind, I know I'm risking a concussion or worse without the helmet’s protection, but I need to trust the Skills I’m nurturing. Besides, the thrill is unlike anything I've ever felt before. I know that I'm taking charge of my life, grasping my future in my own two hands.

I weave in and out of strikes, tilting and shifting my body at just the right angle to avoid every blow. My confidence builds as the repeated whistle of the iron limbs meeting nothing but air fills my hearing. The vicious power strikes pass near me but never touch me.

In a lull between the strikes, in the space of a single heartbeat, I lunge forward. My legs uncoil like a pair of powerful springs, and I drive my shoulder into the iron lunk with a predatory roar. The full body tackle topples it over, but even as I’m falling to the ground, I contort my body, avoiding a retaliatory blow that should have cracked open my skull.

Instantly, power churns within my inner being and I fall to the ground with a gasp. I sink inward, seeking that space within my soul that visualizes the Skills I've learned and potency I’ve gained. Everything is alight, limned in gold fire, humming with a pleasant resonance that sounds faintly like music. There's no actual song, but it moves me emotionally nonetheless—the same way that a dirge from a bard brings tears to my eyes, or an energetic jig at the pub fills me with excitement and makes my feet tap on their own accord.

In a flash of insight I know that I finally reached the next level, that I've gathered enough potential to break through. A raging fire surrounds me, the glow of multifaceted mana so intense and dazzling that it blinds even my [Lesser Manasight]. My inner world, the proud domain of not one, not two, but three Skills, vibrates with pride. There's no recognizable song, no grand harmony, and yet the musical analogy feels accurate.

I’m bursting with power, and it’s as though the heavens have opened. A veil I didn't even realize was covering my eyes is suddenly lifted. I see in exquisite detail the shape of my path, the amount of potency I’ve gathered, and the budding potential for the future. Mana fills me to the brim. The very essence of who I am, not simply the professional path I’m on, takes on a clarity I'd never before envisioned.

With a shock, I realize none of the Skills are of the lesser variety any longer. I grin hard enough to make my cheeks ache. My [Manasight] has ranked up, and I see tendrils of mana reaching out, connecting it with my other two Skills, although the strongest resonance is with [Heat Manipulation]. I take it as proof that I’m on the right tack using them in conjunction. The ripples of simpatico between [Manasight] and [Heat Manipulation] excites me about future applications of the Skills.

In the core of my being, the banner announcing my Class takes on a new shimmer. My previous Class, [Assistant Glassworker], glimmers with a burst of overwhelming light, and by the time I can see again, the Assistant prefix has disappeared. I’ve done it! I’ve gained a full Class!

I flex my fingers, almost throwing myself out of my core space. My emotions are running hot, oscillating between elation and disappointment. After all this time, I finally tiered up, I’ve finally shed the Assistant label. Yet, I was hoping for more. I thought that perhaps with the addition of my third Skill, [Architect of the Unseen World] I may have pushed the rarity of my Class and future potential upward into a new tier. I'm still secretly harboring hopes of some sort of [Magical Glass Smith] class, although that appears to be well out of reach.

Then I laugh, shaking my head at falling back into my old patterns. My story isn’t over. I have years—decades!—of growing left. There’s still time for greatness. I’m not giving up yet.

A clear chime rings out, bell-like and beautiful, and I freeze in place. The roiling ocean of mana in my inner world suddenly coalesces, compressing into a massive, solid shape covered with dense, geometric runes. The gleaming angles of the esoteric structure are difficult for me to follow, far eclipsing my old Skills in sheer complexity. Only the [Architect of the Unseen World] compares, and it’s a truly unusual and potent Skill to earn pre-Threshold.

I move forward with a thought, soaring above the twisting fractals to see the banner proclaiming my new Class Skill’s name and function. When the name comes into view, I let out a shriek of excitement so loud that it throws me out of my inner world. I find myself lying on my back in the mud, blinking up at my friends’ worried faces, and a cackle bubbles out of me.

“Congratulations, Nuri!” Melina shouts, the first to make the connection as her worry transforms into happiness on my behalf.

I take the offered hands, allowing Mikko and Lionel to haul me to my feet, and let out another whoop and holler of exhilaration as we all share hugs, dancing in the mud and rain without a care in the world.