“This feels too convenient,” he said. The smith’s suspicion of just how much Zelsys knew was near tangible. She herself couldn’t tell how much he thought she knew, so she left that conversational thread alone.

“You underestimate my compulsion to hoard anything that I think could be useful later,” she grinned, using the moment to retrieve a plum-sized cherry as well, biting off half. Tiny arcs leapt between her lips and the fruit as she pulled it back, its Fulgur reacting with hers. It was just as intensely, electrically sweet as before. “Want some Stormbloom cherries?”

“Huh? Yeah, sure,” he held out a hand, to which she handed three of the fruits over. When he popped one in his mouth, his face scrunched up as if he’d just eaten a whole bitter citron.

“By the ancestors, that’s painfully sweet…” he uttered, smacking his lips, but he didn’t set it down. He took another bite after flushing the first with a sip of whatever high-proof alcohol he was drinking.

“My arms. Any other advice?”

“Right, your arms. Even with the pills and the Primary Spring, the metallization will be temporary. It’ll destabilize and you might end up with a permanently locked-up arm if you miss even one dose, and it will take years of continuous treatment and cultivation before it stabilizes depending on how hardcore you go on the regiment and various other factors. As a body-focused cultivator, and assuming you’re as insane as Jorfr implied, I’d estimate maybe ten months at the fastest, probably more like a year. However…”

“...However?”

He explained: “I can do something I ought to have done to my own arm. I’ve never done it to a person, since there isn’t exactly an abundance of willing and fitting subjects around, but I am absolutely certain that it is theoretically sound and at worst I’ll pulverize the bones in your arm, which… I mean you have one of Koschei’s grandkids, I’m sure he can fix that. I can forge sheets of Adamant Bronze into your arm - think of it as the bronze equivalent to cold-iron. I can’t even begin to explain why I think it will work, but I am certain. You will still need to take the pills for a while, but more importantly, your arm will be more stable to begin with and it will only lock up temporarily if you miss a dose.”

After mulling it over for a while, Zel answered: “When I forged my accord with the earthly spirits, they spoke to me of how they are one of the many ways through which humans pursue permanence, and thus immortality. They formed a hunk of fake cold-iron from pure metallum and had me watch the construct crumble. “Alone, the mundane is mutable. Alone, the arcane, too, is mutable. Permanence is only achieved through union of the two,” they said. You intend to use your abilities to brute-force that union, isn’t that right?”

Furrowing his brow, he agreed: “That’s… Yes, in simplified terms that would be right. How strange. Right, the reference I promised you - just a moment.”

Ingvald finished a second cherry, leaving the third on the side table before vanishing through the door. He returned with a piece of paper bearing a message in Borean on one side directed to someone apparently his junior, while the other side bore directions in Ikesian. Taking the hint alongside the paper, Zel began moving to leave the smith’s home, and he followed to see her off.

“In regards to when I think forging your arm would be ideal… Just come by, say, every other day so I can keep an eye on its state. I’ll be able to tell when the time is right. Your mockup cleaver will be ready in about a week.”

“Good, good,” Zel nodded as the two of them gradually made their way to the door. Before she left, however, she posed one last question to the smith: “Just out of curiosity, what would you say is the upper limit on how much power I could put into an artifact? Between the limitations of your expertise, Borea’s most potent ritual sites, and the material limits of metal from the core of a Fallen Star.”

“I’m not sure I fully understand the scope of the question you are asking,” he squinted.

”Let’s say that, I don’t know…” Zel started listing off on her fingers. “Somehow got my hands on a piece of the God of Sacrifice, tracked down some sort of rare, powerful beast as a sacrifice, gained access to Borea’s most potent ritual site, and then decided to use two full decks of Jade Dragons on the artifact.”

Ingvald stood there for a solid half-minute in contemplation.

“There is a forge, deep beneath the earth, so deep it reaches into the Foundations of the World where the very fabric of reality itself becomes malleable. The place from whence the god-fragment in my chest originates. With its might, I do not think there to be a limit, but the site in question is all but inaccessible unless one is granted a boon by the Revenant King himself, for even if you somehow find that place it will render you down to dust if you are not protected by His blessing. An artifact weapon forged in that place under the circumstances you laid out…”

He looked into Zel’s eyes with a hard, steely gaze, one which tacitly conveyed the mountainous weight of his words without making any accusations or implications as to her possible intent.

“...Such a thing, inhabited by a fitting spirit and wielded by a fitting master, could single handedly change the course of history. The master of such a beast would wield strength untold, able to stand toe-to-toe even with the Divine Emperor. They would possess fangs able to bite through fate itself. The forging of such an artifact alone would rival the erasure of the Nameless Clan in scope, it could forever change the landscape of Borea as we know it.”

Zel smiled at the smith.

“That’s just what I wanted to hear. Does this mythical forge have a name?”

“Eldartha. The Burning Heart of the World.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that, come my audience with the Revenant King.”