“I think I’ve got it!” After spending several hours feeling the ore which made the circle around the graveyard while waiting on the sun to arise, I finally understood its structure enough to try and replicate it. Or, at least I hoped I did.

Holding out my hand towards where she was sitting, I told Crystal, “let me see your sword for a moment.”

Looking a little curious, she unbuckled her belt and then passed the sword, scabbard, and all to me. Slowly, I drew the sword from the scabbard and left the belt and scabbard for her to deal with. Dino came over from where he was playing in the fire to watch curiously what I was doing, but Jess hung back and kept a nervous eye on our surroundings. I guess she’d probably prefer to head back, but she was simply too scared to leave and try to make it on her own.

“What’s up?” Dino asked curiously. “What exactly do you think you’ve got?”

“Watch and learn,” I told him with a smirk. “I’ll show you how a real wizard can manipulate earth and steel, with a little bit of practice and focus!”

“Hah! If you set your hair on fire or something silly like that after bragging on yourself, I’m going to laugh at you forever, you know!”

Smirking, I didn’t even bother to reply. I was simply in too good of a mood. It’s not every day that I get a chance to learn and do something new with Earth, and I was going to enjoy the moment. Taking a deep breath, I flexed my power a few times just to feel it and ground myself for what was to come.

Slowly and steadily, I finally started to pull in the power of the Earth from everywhere outside of the ring. I didn’t trust trying to reach or pull any energy from inside the graveyard, so instead I pulled strength from the deep veins of the earth and wound the strands of energy tighter and thicker with each moment.

As the flow of power around me grew steadily over the next several minutes, Dino’s eyes grew just as large. At first he stared at me with amusement, as if he was simply waiting for me to fail so he could laugh and make fun of me. Then after a few moments, his eyebrow began to twitch as he stared unblinkingly. Then his jaw slowly started to open, gradually gaping wider and wider with each passing moment.

By the time I’d pulled as much earthen energy as I could from all around us, Dino was a big-eyed, slack-jawed idiot. Sweat was beading up on his face and dripped unnoticed by him down off the end of his nose. Truly, I found it rather amusing as somehow it seemed as if my magic was pulling more a strain on him than it was on me!

Taking a few moments to get my breathing back under control, the ground rippled gently around us to match my breaths. Though I hadn’t linked myself to the ground anywhere so strongly since I’d left home on the island, I’d managed to once again connect my spirit to the land here. I was in a true state of affinity with the forest here, and with the flows of power in the deep earth below us. At the moment, I felt indestructible!

Brimming with strength and confidence, I finally turned my attention to the steel sword in my hands. A small tendril of power connected me to it intimately, and I could feel every crease, crack, fold, and striation of the metal with my very soul. Another small tendril of power connected me to the mysterious ore in the ground just as strongly.

Taking a moment to compare the two, the differences in them were almost too numerous to count – and that wouldn’t suit my wants and needs at all! With a surge of power that erupted like a thunderclap, I released so much energy into the blade in my hand that it exploded and shattered into millions of tiny fragments. The ground shook and rippled, rising and falling several feet in the blink of an eye. Trees toppled and then erupted into splinters from the energy flowing all around us.

All the trees, shrubs, and bushes within a half mile on this side of circle separating us from the graveyard, simply evaporated under the relentless onslaught of energy pouring up from the bowels of the earth. Moments later, fresh trees grew from the ripped and ragged soil, as nuts and seeds absorbed the same relentless pouring of power. Grow, bloom, grow, expand, explode – and then repeat the process over and over! A dozen generations of tree grew, bloomed, and exploded in the next half dozen breaths.

The scattered fragments of the steel blade hovered and twirled in a wild cyclone of deep, pure brown energy – but it still wasn’t what I needed!

Another surge of power flattened then ground all around smooth, hardened it to pure obsidian, and then shattered it into ultrafine sand as I shattered the miniscule fragments of steel again and again. Smaller and finer, I refined the metal until it was as fine as the hairs on a flea’s ass.

Nothing but a fine metallic powder twirled in front of me now – and now the difficult part began!

Taking a deep breath, I screamed with effort as I completely released the earth energy and immediately tugged as much power as I could from the sky above.

The rain stopped instantly as all the energy in the clouds was removed in the blink of an eye. Wind howled and screamed along with me as I struggled to control the power I was pulling from the heavens around us. A cyclone spun and twirled as I ripped the energy from the sky and channeled it into pure electricity and poured it into the metallic dust spinning wildly in front of me.

Slowly, and with much effort, pain-stakingly reassembled the pieces of dust together one fine flake at a time, imbuing them with raw energy from the air. Gradually, the dust began to reform into solid electric-blue steel and take on the shape of a sword once more.

Feeling through the connection I still maintained with the mysterious ore, I could tell that something was still missing. With much concentration, I slowly released the power of the sky and let it return back to its natural flows. All I needed was to cause a hurricane or some other natural disaster to deal with right now!

Once I was satisfied that the sky was returning back to normal, I released my pull upon it and once again grabbed for the strands of earth that I had woven together, before they could all unravel and make my job even more difficult. It took enough effort to gather the flows the first time; I certainly didn’t want to do it again!

“You guys might want to watch yourselves,” I warned no one in particular. If I lose control on the next phase of alteration, I doubt anyone for miles around would have to worry about trouble ever again. I was using the flows of deep earth energy to connect myself to a different, even more dangerous power – I was pulling on the raw essence of the deep inner fire from the earth!

Focusing all my concentration, I blacked everything else out of my field of perception, except for the twirling blue blade and a small finger-sized patch of ground beneath it. With a surge of effort, I tightened, compressed, refined, and then pulled the fire energy from deep in the earth. Like threading string through a needle, I slowly forced it out of the bowels of the earth, and, in a compressed beam like a laser, I forced it into the sword as it rotated before me.

For several long moments, the power of fire mixed and mingled with the amalgam of earth and air altered steel before me. The heat was unbearably intense, scorching my hair and eyebrows. The smell of burnt flesh filled the air, and some fragment of my mind screamed that it was my own flesh trying to melt, but I had to push it away.

The process of altering the sword was much more difficult than I imagined it would be, and I was weaving strands of magic in ways that were completely new to me. What I was doing was endlessly complex, and was something that I’d never even heard about even in a passing discussion before – I couldn’t stop now!

Fire. Earth. Air. All three energies flowed together and merged into something completely new and different from the plain steel that Crystal had carried so casually on her hip before – and it still wasn’t exactly right! I could tell that something was wrong, but it was difficult to put an exact finger on what the problem was.

Cautiously, I eased the flows of fire back to the deep bowels of the earth, and then I slowly unraveled the strands of earth that I’d wrapped tight. One by one, I released them back to their normal place in nature, and as I did so, I focused more and more of my thought and concentration on the ore encircling the graveyard.

“WAH HA HA!!” I cackled like a madman, as I suddenly understood! The final piece of the puzzle hit me like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky!

As I released the last bit of earth energy back to its natural flow, I took one last deep breath and steeled my will as much as I possibly could. Finally, I released the energy that connected me to the ore in the ground that formed the barrier, and focused all my concentration solely on the link between myself and the now brilliantly purple blade floating before me.

With one last surge of power, I pulled upon my own life and death energy and slowly pushed it into the blade. A breath of life to weave and hold the essences together. Death energy to rip a small shred from my own soul and wrap it into everything. Life as the internal Yin, Death as the external Yang, and Fire, Earth, and Air to blend together into the steel itself.

Exhausted, and in agony, I finally reached out and took the sword in my hand and released my energy completely. The process was amazingly difficult, and it required pure life and spirit to complete. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would’ve ever been able to create enough ore to surround a whole area like what was before us.

All my mind could believe is that somehow people were involved in a mass sacrifice of some sort to empower the ore fully. There’s no way that a single wizard would ever have enough life or spirit to do such a feat!

The last thing I remember thinking was that the darkness ahead might be even worse than what I had first thought. Dozens, and maybe even hundreds of people had given their lives to stop the spread of corruption!

And, we were going to brazenly walk forward and into the center of it all!