He made one more at that level. Kelsa’s had to be a little stronger, and Orthos’ stronger still. When he started working on Mercy’s, he paused.
“What about Ziel?” he asked.
Dross gave a boneless shrug. [The Dreadgod didn’t mention him.]
Was that because the Silent King wasn’t aware of Ziel, or was the Dreadgod playing some game? Maybe this was a mental trick to get Lindon to overlook Ziel…or to get him to focus on Ziel too much, as the one exception.
[Or maybe it’s a nefarious trick to get us to overthink this.]
They didn’t have enough materials for a seventh protective construct. Any bindings good enough for an Archlord were rare, much less soul Enforcer techniques. Lindon began to wish they’d stolen more halos from the mind-controlled people of Everwood; the hostile techniques could be broken down into raw components.
“We’ll find something later,” Lindon said, focusing on Mercy’s construct.
[Yes. Later…let us hope that Ziel is not turned into a prisoner in his own body in the meantime.]
Lindon let that thought pass.
Lindon hammered away at a new clamshell construct, which had taken on a darker purple hue. He kept his tone, and even his thoughts, casual as he spoke.
“And how is your condition, Dross?”
Dross hovered in position, vibrating slightly. [I am greater than I have ever been, and greater than any other mind-construct has ever dared to imagine being. I am the apex of all things.]
“So you’re not feeling…anything?”
[I can never be certain whether I would be more effective with my original identity.] Dross giggled. [But I would not take such a risk as to find out. Who would sell their soul for a chance at power, hmmmmm?]
Lindon had resolved to grow used to the new, dark-minded Dross, but it was difficult. He could work with this Dross, even like him. But he wasn’t quite the same person Lindon had grown attached to in the first place. Lindon missed his friend.
And Dross knew it.
[I am more effective than I have ever been. Perhaps there will be no returning me to who I was, and no need to. Will you throw me away then?]
“I’m not going to throw you away, Dross.”
[Then you had best grow used to me. Think of me as one of your organs. I am just as functional to you as a liver, and I can be just as squishy and sticky.]
“I’ll take your word for it,” Lindon said. He tried to bury his disappointment.
Dross wiggled through the air, enjoying Lindon’s inner conflict as though savoring a song. Lindon shoved the topic aside and returned his entire focus to the creation of the constructs.
Mercy’s was complicated, and Yerin’s more complex still. For hers, he had to modify an Overlord construct that he had purified and artificially raised to Archlord level, which he had planned to use as pure madra equipment for himself.
The residual wills of the two Archlord bindings he was fusing together fought him, trying to take control, each fighting the other to determine the shape of the final construct. He had to master them both, commanding them into shape, and use the blue soulfire burning at the heart of the Soulforge to bind them together instead of his own.
For the first time, the fire inside the altar dimmed a little. He needed to gather some more fuel.
While the constructs for his parents took seconds apiece, and Kelsa’s only a little longer, he found that two hours had passed by the time he left the Soulforge. Each project took longer than the last, but the number of simulations Dross had performed—and the strength of Lindon’s own will—meant there was virtually no chance of out-and-out failure.
Lindon was left with six scripted clamshell constructs in a range of similar colors, each radiating very different levels of spiritual power. He sealed them away in scripted boxes, some of which he had to carve himself with a quick application of Blackflame.
Gathering and making the containers took longer than making the constructs themselves, but when he was done, he had six boxes. Only then did he leave his house on Windfall, looking for his family.
As soon as he stepped out of the door, he found himself in another world.
His cloud fortress floated in a bubble of air surrounded by sunlit ocean. Far above him, waves rippled with light. Shadowed shapes moved with the water.
We haven’t been transported anywhere, Lindon sent to Dross. I would have felt it.
[To your senses, it feels like another world layered over this one. Like skin stretched over flesh.]
This technique felt like a more advanced version of a boundary field; instead of commanding all the aura in an area, it commanded the area itself. Lindon could see how to attack it, but that would mean going against the field’s creator.