At the first touch, the binding dissolved like chalk in rain.

Fisher Gesha smacked him on the side of the head. Before his advancement to Iron, she might well have killed him.

“You don’t touch madra you know nothing about,” she warned, shaking a finger at him. “Very dangerous.”

Lindon bobbed his head to indicate he’d heard her, but he couldn’t just leave it alone. “But honored Fisher, I believe I saw one of those before.”

In fact, he suspected he had one in his pack. His white spiral binding was large and pristine, whereas the one in the dreadbeast had been small and shot through with other colors, but he thought they may be the same crystallized technique. The same technique that had gone into the Jai Ancestor’s Spear, allowing it to steal madra.

She slapped him again, on the other side of the head this time.

“You’ve seen one? I have seen a thousand. Spent my life hunting these woods, you think there are surprises here for me?” She jabbed a finger in the direction of the corpse. “When a dreadbeast eats an animal, the meat goes to its stomach. When it eats a Remnant, the madra goes there.”

Lindon brightened. “If this can steal and process madra, like the Ancestor’s Spear does, doesn’t that make this a treasure? Every dreadbeast has the material for a new spear!”

He was working himself up with every word, envisioning himself standing in an arena against Jai Long with a white spear of his own. And a core bursting with stolen madra.

Gesha brushed her hands off on the front of her robes, though she hadn’t touched anything. “In my grandmother’s day, they tried such a thing. Used those bindings to make weapons and take power from the ones they killed. But it did to men the same things it did to…them. Everyone who used such weapons became monsters, hideous and deformed.” She shuddered. “If we could make the spear of the Jai ancestor ourselves, why would we prize it so highly, hm?”

Clearly, she didn’t know what he’d taken from the Soulsmith foundry at the top of the Transcendent Ruins. “But Fisher Gesha…I have the notes from the ones who made the spear.” He watched her as he spoke, anticipating her shock.

Without changing expression, she reached into the pocket of her outer robe and pulled out a wooden document case. “You mean these notes? Yes, you left them out the other night. These are ancient, you should be more careful with them.”

He would have reached for them if not for the gore on his hands. “I’m sorry, I was overeager.”

“Mm. These are brilliant; they will provide you with years of study and inspiration.” She tucked them back into her pocket. “Someday. First, you must learn the basics.”

Disappointment tightened into panic—he had wanted to use knowledge of the spear as a trump card against Jai Long. “If I may speak openly, honored Fisher: I was hoping to create a weapon according to those notes.”

“If an infant wishes to forge a sword of his own, should his interest be encouraged? Hm? No. I will return these to you when you have learned to stand on your own feet as a Soulsmith, and not before.”

Lindon wanted to argue, but he was unlikely to earn anything more than another hit on the head. And the smell was getting worse every second he knelt over the dreadbeast’s corpse.

Reluctantly, he let the topic slip away.

He dropped the tongs onto the tray next to the one binding they had secured, then staggered away to take a deep breath. They had left their belongings many paces away, to avoid the mess and stench—Lindon’s carried in a bulky pack that he normally wore on his back, and Gesha’s in a sealed chest of polished wood.

Lindon stopped to remove his bloody gloves and rinse his hands at a station he had set up for this exact purpose. With a wisp of his spirit, he activated a blocky blue construct that he’d nailed to a tree.

Blue liquid trickled from the box, madra Forged into water by a binding inside. Not real water, but anything would do to wash off this tainted blood.

It was only a crude device, barely worth calling a construct at all, as Gesha had repeatedly reminded him. But it worked, and water madra was common here in the Desolate Wilds, as the disciples of the Purelake School outnumbered most everyone else in the region.

Given that most of the nearby trees were at least spotted with black corruption if not entirely black, and the wildlife seemed to share the affliction, Lindon could see why pure water might be a valuable enough commodity to support a powerful School of the sacred arts.

When he’d cleaned his hands, Gesha had already rinsed off the binding and stripped away the extra muscle, leaving the Forged madra exposed: a spiked crystal of yellow madra, streaked with layers of deep red and pale orange.

Most other Forged madra tended to be one solid color, but this chaotic blend seemed to suit the dreadbeasts. They gave off a riot of conflicting auras, as though different powers warred within them.

Lindon thanked Fisher Gesha as he reached for the tray. “Are you sure you want to guide me so far? Rinsing a binding for me, that could be considered holding my hand.”

It was only intended as a light joke. Those had been Eithan’s words when he sent Lindon out to train his Soulsmithing with Gesha: “Don’t guide him too far, if you wouldn’t mind. I don’t need someone who can’t walk without his hand held.”

Thus far, Gesha had taken the Underlord’s instructions seriously, refusing to even carry her own trunk out into the forest and making Lindon haul it himself. But she’d seemed to relax as they’d hunted over the last two days, so he thought a small joke might ease the remaining tension.

Apparently he’d judged wrong.

Her face darkened, and she shoved the tray at him with enough force that he stumbled back. Despite her age, she was still a Highgold, and he was only an Iron.

“You want to report me to the Underlord, hm? You want to waste his time? Well, see if I help you any further!” She turned to shout at the air, as though she suspected Eithan was hiding close by and listening. “Not a finger more, you see? Not a breath!”

“Forgiveness, honored Fisher, forgiveness. This one intended no offense.”

“Offense? No offense, but see if I risk landing in a boiling kettle with the Underlord just to help you. If a dreadbeast comes up to nibble your toes, see if I pull you out of the fire. ‘You told me not to help him,’ that’s what I’ll tell him.” In a quieter voice, she added, “...and I told you to stop with 'this one, that one.’ That is what offends me.”

Lindon gave her a shallow bow and then turned to her trunk, throwing it open. On the top level were all her most common Soulsmith’s tools save her drudge, on which she stood. The spider-construct had identified the location of the binding in the dreadbeast’s body, and it would take much of the guesswork out of building a construct, but he wouldn’t have access to a drudge until he built one himself.

The tools all had components of goldsteel or halfsilver, the gold surfaces flashing white and the silver ones embedded with stars. They weren’t made entirely from the exotic metals, but there was still enough inside the trunk to count as a fortune back in Sacred Valley. Here, where the materials were even more rare, they might qualify as a sect’s treasure. He was lucky the Fishers had allowed Gesha to take them out…although, with Eithan Arelius standing behind Lindon, they may not have had a choice.