I sat down to study my Goetia forms, excited to get them all fixed up, but as I got into it I made an unfortunate discovery.. Unlike the last time I’d made a form, I wasn’t working with partial Skill forms low level enough to be glued together. This time though, my Goetia staff art already existed (albeit folded into my DS Mastery) which meant I had to BREAK those patterns and remake them properly.

Now normally I suspect this wouldn’t have been a problem. Skills were easy come easy go, and I’d combined multiple Skills with DS subskills in the past without any lasting effects. Breaking them shouldn’t have been much different.

Except for the fact that my Goetia Staff Art was technically part of my Path of the Doom Sovereign, meant to act as a bridge between my legend and the Doom Sovereign Skill. A Skill that was now part of my fucking SOUL. My soul physique had been created by winding my soul through that Skill to make it part of me, the same way my original ability was.

Because of that inextricable link, DS Mastery and therefore my Staff Art were part of me in a fundamental way, and breaking my forms was HARD. Using the amplified version of Eye of Revelation granted by my crown, I’d been able to find the runes that represented my two current forms easily enough, and I winced at how terrible they looked.

Where Dust Construction had been a little dinged up and ugly from being mashed together with my soul, these two looked like someone had put a tumbleweed made of barbed wire in a trash compactor. Jagged edges, crushed spots, and the whole thing was barely holding together.

In fact, looking closely, I could see that both Skills were putting a small but consistent amount of strain on my soul just by existing. Not enough to cause damage or tire it out, but diminishing my capacity just a bit. So, with a plan of attack in place, I reached down and began the process, grabbing hold of Belial, the first of my forms.

It wasn’t the less complicated form by far, with the pieces being made of subskills I was intimately familiar with and used constantly. Now, I could and sometimes did use them together without the staff art, but it was more powerful, versatile, and useful when I used the form. I recognized the warped runes that represented Touch of Tears, Consecration of Flame, and Stone Limb, having worked with the last when making Mornax.

The process of Skill building was hard, kind of like making a pair of hands out my soul and using them to perform surgery, except the hands in question are formed from a quarter inch of skin on the back of your hand that you have almost no control over.

Focus and effort let me work with my soul in the delicate way necessary, and all the practice lately had relieved some of the cramping in my “hands”. And I reached out and started to slowly untangle the ball of twisted patterns. As I did it, they cut deeply into my hands, the soul damage insignificant on a larger scale but agonizing because of how much of my will was shoved into the appendages.

One of the big questions I’d had from my last time doing this had been what exactly I was doing it WITH. What made up these fragments of energy I was welding together. As I sifted through the form I was working on though, it became clearer. Stats were the building blocks of Skills. They made up the entirety of my self that wasn’t soul, filling in the rest of me to balance out the soul growth so my physical and mental self didn’t get left behind.

That was what smoothed the rough edges off Ascendants, making them less human and more story. Pouring in stats diluted our core personality with legend. I hadn’t realized that when people said stats were the building blocks of Skills they were being LITERAL.

All of these runes were made of of Stat points. I didn’t know what else they would have been now that I thought it through, but it was a shock to discover what I was working with.

It also made me cognizant of the face that Skill creation was more than just jamming together runes. I mean, it had to be, or else where did THOSE runes come from, they had to be made up of something, but what I was doing was entry level. If I wanted to make really perfect Skills I’d have to start constructing the patterns from the ground up using stats.

That was a problem for future Shane though, current Shane was just stalling because this next part was going to suck. I’d managed to unwind the barbed wire construct of Belial, but the wires were still connected at the weld points. I took a deep breath, steeled myself, and then exerted my will on the Skill.

Snap, snap, snap. Once by one I tore apart the fragments of Skills, separating them into component parts, and I was barely able to bite back a scream. My SOUL. Cracks were spiderwebbing through it as I snapped the intricately interwoven pattern. It was…horrifying. My soul was past the Master threshold, which meant that while it was much more durable, real damage was harder to recover from.

Stolen novel; please report.

Strain was fine, but CRACKS were dangerous. I’d heal from them, but it would take a bit of time. It didn’t matter, I’d already started, and if I didn’t finish the damage would be worse. Patching up the Skills themselves should help.

Focusing hard, I began to pull apart the shattered remnants of the pattern, identifying what I knew. Stone Limb had been on the outside, slapped over top of the others, and that wasn’t ideal. Consecration of Flame was the interior, also not what I wanted. After I identified the right fragments, I started to mold them.

Stone Limb was the base. Obviously. It was stable, reliable, tough. It made a perfect foundation for the form to sit upon. Ignoring the feeling of internal bleeding of the soul (ten out of ten, would not recommend) I pressed the fragments of that Skill that had been smashed throughout the ball of barbed wire and gently pressed them together.

Using my soul to weld them like last time, now I understood more about the process. Wearing this crown instead of studying it and then basically ignoring what it could do had been the right call. When I welded the Skill, I needed to use stats to smooth out the bumps. I couldn’t rework a whole Skill yet, but deciding which kind of soul solder I needed was easy, and I poured Might into the pattern to join the Stone Limb fragments.

Once that was done, I started adding the fragments of Consecration of Flames. Unlike Stone Limb though, I didn’t rejoin them completely. I welded them into place along the outside of Stone limb as a framework before stringing the fragments of Touch of Tears along them and pulling it tight. There was a SNAP as the Skill recombined, and I felt the pain in my soul decrease exponentially.

There was still a light throb in my head from the damage, but it was offset by the lack of the almost unnoticeable strain from maintaining Belial all this time. I wanted to do Mephistopheles too, but after that experience I was pretty sure I’d need at least a week to recover enough to fix the second form.

Releasing a breath, I opened my eyes, and screamed in surprise, falling over backwards as I came face to face with Callie, glaring at me menacingly from where she was crouching RIGHT in front of me, face only inches from mine.

“Oh…” I said with a weak laugh. “Hey honey. Fancy seeing you here. If you’re looking for the bakery that used to be here I’m afraid they demolished it.”

I literally heard her counting ten under her breath before she pasted on a bright smile. “Shane. Darling. Light of my life. How has your day been? Do anything noteworthy? I’m sure you didn’t for instance, CRACK your soul casually during meditation for no apparent reason without warning me or asking me to watch over you.”

“I had a reason.” I shot back indignantly. Then I winced. “Ah, probably should have had someone keeping an eye out for me.” I looked around the rock filled clearing pock marked with holes and partially buried super dense bricks. “I guess I got distracted. In my defense, I DO have Danger Sense.”

She raised an eyebrow. “And would you have NOTICED those danger senses going off in your prior state?”

“No. Sorry.” I said with a sigh. “You’re right, that was stupid and thoughtless. Are you ok? Did you hurt yourself because of the surprise or anything?

Rolling her eyes, she huffed. “See, this is why you infuriate me. You do something stupid and scary when we’re under threat of death and then you ask about me like you weren’t just in agony. I felt that pain and thought you were under attack. How are you both so sweet and so inconsiderate at the same time?”

“In my defense, when are we NOT under threat of death?” I joked. When she didn’t crack a smile I decided to change tactics and just apologize. “Look, I really am sorry. This was my first time accruing real soul damage since the rank up. Strain didn’t feel different, so I thought it was fine, by the time I experienced it I was already in the middle of resetting my Skill and any delays would have been worse.

She slumped, collapsing from her crouch and turning fluidly in the air to plop down in my arms. “That’s…pretty reasonable.” She winced. “Sorry. I overreacted. The new bond is intense, and the sensation of feeling your soul crack was super unpleasant. I shouldn’t have bit your head off though. You don’t deserve that.”

I pulled her against me with a low chuckle. “Deserve to have you care about me so much it drives you crazy? Nah, I haven’t done anything good enough in my life to warrant that kind of special treatment. Lucky for me we don’t get what we deserve, or I’d never have met you.”

She snorted, which I was pretty sure was to cover a sniff as she looked away. “You’re such a sap. How do you get away with saying stuff like that without it sounding cheesy?”

“I have a great poker face.” I said solemnly. I pointed to my featureless wooden mask. “See, no tells.” She burst out laughing at that, snuggling up against me, and I laughed along with her. I could feel the throb in my soul ebb slightly, and I realized that Benny’s belt might not be the only way to relax the spirit and improve recovery.

Standing up, I ignored Callie’s squeak as I maneuvered her into a princess carry. “What are you doing you big thug?” She laughed, half annoyed and half amused. “I can walk you know, I wasn’t the one injured.”

“Ah, but you were.” I said sagely as I strolled off towards the barracks. “My thoughtless actions wounded your gentle heart.”

“I’m going to punch you gently in the throat if you keep treating me like a helpless bimbo.” She said sweetly, fluttering her eyelashes. Through the bond I could feel it didn’t bother her that much, she just liked keeping me on my toes.

I dropped her. She squawked, flailing in the dirt, and I ignored her, laughing as I strutted away. Over my shoulder I called. “Fair enough, you can walk.”

“Shane!” She shouted through her own gales of laughter. “Get your oversized ass back here! I didn’t say I didn’t want to be carried! Shane! You got dirt all over my coat!” I might have been more worried if not for the reassuring pulse of adoration coming through the bond. I knew she wasn’t really mad. Besides, it was hilarious. After all, I liked to keep her on her toes too.