“THE HEILONG FORGES,” read tall, stern block letters inscribed in the wrought-steel door. The thing looked like a shield built for a Godbeast, a hunk of simple, opaque steel overrun with patterns like metal thistles. Dorian went up to it, squinted for a second, licked his lips, and shoved a finger in the indent.

There was again that horrifying silence. And then there was a shriek of steam, a guttering of pistons, and the huge door split up the middle upon some infinitesimal seam like a mountain cracking open. Bright red light gushed from the seam, flickering like a lively fire, and Dorian strolled in with a grin.

He stood in a cavern ringed with stone torches, and under those torches rose in a semicircle of hulking monoliths—a dozen furnaces made of pitch-black metals. They made the furnaces back at the Artificery seem like children’s toys; these were twice as wide, sporting impressive, thick gold plates up their sides, and the flames within leapt in startling yellow tongues. Each was equipped with silver anvils, tool-racks, and a store of materials: a board pinned with dozens of neatly-labelled Interspatial Rings, each with its own stock of raw metal.

Oho! This is big boy territory. No more of the beginner forges. As Dorian rubbed his hands together, prowling the space and eyeing each forge, he bet these things were state-of-the-art. The stuff the highest-Tier Artificers used, no doubt.

My thanks to the Heilong family! Thought Dorian as he picked a furnace. Rest assured, I will put this thing to good use. Namely, to help me steal one of your family’s most valuable treasures—under your noses—without your noticing.

He still wasn’t certain of the last bit. He had the ghost of an idea of how to do it, but such ideas often failed to materialize in the harsh light of day.

Well! He shrugged. May as well give it a shot! What’s the worst that can happen?

At this point it might’ve been his life’s motto.

One perfect replica, coming right up. He slapped a lever and the furnace flared to life, belching a wall of vicious heat which sent his hairs fluttering. Then he yanked out the Interspatial Rings he needed—aquamarine, topaz, silvers to forge a silver-alloy, and just a dash of artificial colorings.

Then there was much clanging, and there was much banging. There were blasts of heat, gouts of fire licking softening metal and the ruthless rhythms of hammer on anvil. And above it all were the fingers of a master: fingers which knew when to be gentle and when to be firm; fingers which could tease metals as easily as they could flatten them. Silver contoured by firelight, folded in on itself, dripped out in a wide arc, took solid form slowly, surely. It was no challenge for a blacksmith of Dorian’s caliber. Not thirty minutes later, a princely sterling ring sizzled on the anvil, and on it lay a gemstone which, down to the faintest swirls of dark-blue, was indistinguishable from the one in the vault room. Dorian heaved a sigh, dashing a sheen of sweat from his brow. It was nearly perfect.

Nearly. But with a task as sensitive as this, that word was the difference between heaven and earth.

Dorian could forge a shape, and a texture, and a look—but not its substance.

Not its aura.

That primeval mark of the Serpent. To stand in its presence was to be locked in its coils; every breath was a labor and the pressure alone could break the wills of lesser Beasts. It was the aura of a king, an original. Oft-imitated, never replicated.

Which meant the only way to affect that Aura was to draw from the source. The bloodline of the Evernight Basilisk. The bloodline running through Dorian’s veins.

He held out an arm, palmed a knife in his other hand—a knife meant for shearing obsidian—and, without a hint of hesitation, slashed.

Blood sprayed out in a crescent. More than enough of it, dropping to a steady, pulsing stream. He let it fall in a stone bowl, let it grow from speck to droplet to pool, and more, but still it was not enough. There was an aura there, but it was a flickering candlelight when he needed a bonfire.

He squinted. The bowl had reached mid-way, and he could feel the loss of the Blood—the qi and vital energy slipping out of him. More. It must be more. But qi was stitching his skin together again. Growling, he slashed again, wider, stronger, and blood flew in a waterfall.

This was the ghost of the idea, brought to light. If he could gather enough of his Blood and condense it into a small enough space, he could affect that domineering aura. Not forever. This was no true self-sustaining Relic. He’d have maybe one month before the aura decay became obvious. But if he could gather enough Blood essence, and squeeze it into his replica, he’d have a darn convincing fake.

Which was all very nice in theory, but theory was the prettier step-sibling of practice. When the abstract was brought to the level of the real, things tended to get wonky.

In this case, that wonkiness was turning out to be himself.

He licked his dried lips as a spell of sudden dizziness broke across his brow. How much blood is this going to take? Or perhaps the more relevant question—how much blood did he have to give? Would he be enough?

It was nearing two bowls now—two big bowls, and it was still not enough. Not even halfway there. A torch of aura, perhaps; he felt the it like heat washing against his skin, but he needed a bonfire. He scrabbled for a third bowl and let loose another thick slash in his arm, wrist-to-elbow.

A hiss escaped his lips. The blood was gushing out in rivers now, sloshing against the bowl; stray splatters spilled on the floor. Warm, viscous blood. His head felt light, stuffed full of clouds.

Not enough!

It had crossed the halfway point. His eyes flashed. He could do it. He had to do it. The ring was made, the bowls were filled, he’d lost a quarter of his blood. No turning back now. No—now was the time for conviction. He had to take the risk.

Up and down the knife went again, and this time he fell to a knee, swallowing, feeling his tongue like a stick of dry wood against his cheek. Black spots dotted his vision, but with a trembling hand he brought up a fifth bowl and poured himself into it. Time passed. There was a kaleidoscope of sensation; the pain lancing up his arm, the wooziness, the rattling of his palms, the sweat on his brow, but he wrapped it all up and shoved it to a dark corner of his mind. This measure was necessary when he was slipping into that liminal space between the conscious and the unconscious; this was the way to walk that tightrope of being.

Instead of all that, he put his focus on a simple action: Breathe in, breathe out. Tick-tick-tick. In, out, in, out. The world became simple: him, the filling bowl, the untold darkness. Simple. Tick, tick—

The aura. Creeping up, torch to cackling flame, and further, hotter, crueler, a tyrannical fist of an aura bearing down on him. His breath caught in his throat. Yes. Yes! It was almost there. Almost! His breaths grew harsher. The world swam before his eyes, warbling, growing indistinct. Just a little more. A little—

The thing about that tightrope of being was the longer you walked it, the harder it was to keep balance. After a while, even a small disturbance was enough to throw you off.

Dorian didn’t even feel his body hit the ground.

***

He came to in a daze, and it felt like his whole body was made out of cottonballs and rays of mid-day sunshine. He was floating, lighter than air. He smiled. Thoughts were hard, slipping through his grasp like water through a sieve. Where was he? What was he—

Then he blinked.

Oh shit. Oh SHITTTTTT—

He leapt to his feet. He spun around. Blood on the floor, blood in the cups, everything else untouched, the furnaces boiling calmly at rest. There was no alarm. He was not being led away in chains. They hadn’t discovered him. How much time had passed? Why hadn’t he set an hourglass for when Tan had left? Why hadn’t he brought an hourglass? What was this amateurish idiocy? FUCK!

His blood was cold, like he’d been dunked in ice, and yet his heart was thumping faster than ever. This kind of error could be run-ending. This was a fuck-up of a multiversal scale.

But he was still alive, and things weren’t over, and there was time to beat himself up later, when the job was done. The only thing now was to salvage this mess.

Rough calculations. How long was he out? He looked at his arm. Only the faint pink skin was any indication of a wound. No salve, natural healing, in a qi-deficient state. Must be at least half an hour. Perhaps an hour. Perhaps two. Or three, with the sheer amount of qi he lost? Shit!

No more risks, no more tangents. Originally he thought he’d have time to get cute; maybe he’d first steal the Relic, then come back and forge a Spirit Weapon out of it, then bond with it as he ascended. Not anymore. He had no time.

Cursing, he swept up the bowls one by one and dropped their contents into a vat with one hand; with his other hand he scrubbed away the mess of blood on the floor. His mind was in overdrive, his body thrumming with nervous energy. He leapt to the vat, then turned his mind to it as an Alchemist, swirling all that blood and guiding it inward, condensing it, packing it into the space of a pearl.

Two minutes of deep concentration later, one shining sphere of raw Blood lay at the vat’s center, pulsing shockwaves of aura. He’d blacked out at an opportune moment, apparently. He had but a wine glass of blood leftover.

Heaving a deep breath, he clasped the sphere with a tong, then placed it with tender slowness over the surface of his little pearl. There was a hole there—tiny, but enough to allow liquid to slip through. And the pearl began to fill.

It was excruciating. He was a patient man, but here, stranded in enemy territory without a clue of when they’d come for him, watching that thick liquid drip through felt like watching the last seconds of this life slip by before his eyes. Any moment those doors would burst open. Any moment his eardrums would burst with the clangs of alarm-bells.

But none of it happened as the last of his blood dripped through the pearl.

He lifted the tongue, picked up the stopper, and fitted it through the opening. It was seamless against the rest of the swirling blue pearl. Then it was done, at last and with far too much heartache.

He grabbed it, spent a nerve-rattling half-minute dashing about rearranging the room to how he’d found it, grabbed the relic, dashed out the big door to the forges, closed it just as Tan had done, and hightailed it for the vaults. His body was so hot he felt like he was burning alive.

He dashed past the doors, dashed down the long hallway, past the stacks upon stacks of priceless treasures, and skidded to a stop before the most priceless one of them all. One of the three crown jewels of the Heilong family, their ancestor treasure: the pearl of the Evernight Basilisk.

It was shrouded in qi-lines. It sat atop a pressure plate. And it was encased in a glass dome with lined with a detection array. Three layers of defense.

The glass might as well have been cosmetic. It probably was; it certainly wouldn’t keep any halfway decent Artificer out. The detection array was child’s play; Dorian glanced over it once, sussed out the weak-points, stabbed at them, and it shrank like a cowed animal. He unscrewed the glass dome and lifted it over the top. No alarms. First defense passed.

The second was much tricker. The ring was encased in qi-threads; to disturb one was to set off an alarm. The thing was immovable.

Unless someone with precise enough qi control could carefully, gently unwrap it, then re-wrap it to a very similar item—all without disturbing any of the other threads. And then do that again for every single thread.

But it would take a true master to do. A master Artificer for certain, but also someone with qi-manipulating skills worthy of a master Alchemist. A rare creature that would be indeed.

Dorian set to work. He willed his breaths in deeply, slowly, let his muscles relax, let his heart slow. His panic was no longer useful. Here he needed control.

He closed his eyes, and in his mind’s eye he saw the qi-strings: little shards of light in the void. He grasped ever-so-gently for the tip of one, saw it shiver down its length—but not enough to disturb whatever array sat at its end. Then, as though coaxing a baby bird, he guided it out. Three swirls about the inside of the ring, arcing past the rest of the strings. Then three more, attaching to the replica. He breathed out. One down; a dozen more to go. He did the second without issue. Then the third. The fourth was faster, and the sixth and the seventh went easily. Not half an hour later, he’d rerouted every qi-string. Second barrier passed. His heart leapt. Almost there!

The last defense was the pressure-plate. It was keyed near the exact weight of the ring, no doubt, and this would be the most precarious step of all. Dorian had eyeballed the ring’s weight, and he’d eyeballed the alloys he used to mimic it. Those he was fairly confident of. The only thing he was unsure of was the weight of the pearl; he’d spliced together reasonable guesses of density based off of other Serpent body-parts, but it could throw off the weight by up to 10%. How precise was the pressure plate? How precise was his guess?

He held his breath. Then, in one quick motion, swapped the two out.

And for the third time that day, waited for death.

And for the third time that day, death did not come. His heartbeats thundered in his ears. He swallowed, a thick grin splitting his face. He’d done it. He’d fucking done it. In his hand was the essence of a God.

It was time, at last, to take it in—and ascend to the Profound Realm. To the Gods, the Profound Realm was the true first step of cultivation. At this Realm you stopped borrowing qi from the Multiverse; you made your own.

How much more powerful would his qi be, nourished with this big ol’ hunk of Godly essence?

He licked his lips. I suppose I’m about to find out.