He wasn't allowed to use those facilities. Instead, he and Fisher Gesha had been pushed to one of the apprentice rooms.

It was barely big enough for the two of them and their tools. Fisher Gesha stood next to her drudge—the huge purple spider—rather than riding it around, as she was used to. Little Blue clutched Lindon's hair, piping up every once in a while in a high-pitched burble.

The foundry had a basic set of tools on the wall, though they were goldsteel-plated instead of made from pure goldsteel, and they were chained to their rack to prevent theft. In the center of the room was a boundary formation in the shape of a large bubble. It would keep the project suspended so that Lindon and Fisher Gesha could work on it together without letting their construct rest on a table.

Lindon wondered what a higher-level foundry would have allowed him. Could he have made his new arm stronger? Fisher Gesha had assured him that he would have to replace this one when he became an Underlord (though she found that possibility unlikely). It was made of Gold-stage components, so it wouldn't handle the stress of a transition to Underlord.

Then again, when he was an Underlord, maybe he would find the materials for an even better arm.

Fisher Gesha floated the Shifting Skies arm into the center of the boundary field. It floated there peacefully, gleaming like glass in the light, its spiked fingertips drumming against the air.

Then she sat cross-legged on the ground. “Cycle,” she commanded. “It calms the mind and the soul, hm? You should be at your sharpest when you Forge a new weapon.”

Lindon followed her lead and began cycling his pure madra, but he couldn't contain his excitement. His imagination kept providing all the things he would be able to do with his new arm.

And the alternative was to focus on the fact that he was missing a limb. He preferred daydreaming.

Their preparation seemed to stretch on and on, but finally Fisher Gesha levered herself out of her cycling position—moving stiffly—and started to limber up her shoulders. “Well, it's not naptime. Let's get moving.”

She sounded nervous, eyeing her chest which sat in the corner. Lindon knew why: even through the restrictive scripts on the box, he could sense the power of the white binding. It felt like intense hunger.

The more they prepared it for use, strengthening it with pure madra as though watering a flower while attuning it to Lindon's soul, the stronger it felt. Now it shone with power, which even the chest couldn't contain.

Using a set of halfsilver tongs, which would disperse any stray madra, she withdrew the small book-sized box that contained the binding itself. Then she shut the large chest, placing the small box on top. Reaching into her robes, she pulled out the notes that they had taken from the Transcendent Ruins along with the binding.

She and Lindon had both practically memorized those notes in preparation for today. They tended to be very technical, though they referred back to a “Subject One” as the source of the hunger madra. Lindon very much wanted to know about Subject One, as it seemed the entire purpose of their research in the labyrinth was to duplicate Subject One's unique madra.

“Soulsmithing is blending three elements,” she said. She had given him this lecture before, but he still focused on every word. A mistake here might mean weeks of going without an arm. “You have the binding, the material of the construct itself, and the Soulsmith's madra, hm? But unlike blending physical materials, you are working with the stuff of souls. Madra lives. It changes. Even the same Path, taken from two different people, can have subtly different properties.”

She traded her halfsilver tongs out for her goldsteel set. These could seize immaterial madra without damaging the subject. She opened the small box, which let a feeling of ravenous hunger wash over the both of them.

Then she withdrew a finger-sized shard from within. It was one of the pieces left over from the Ancestor's Spear.

“A Soulsmith must learn to predict those changes, hm? It's no good making a weapon that will turn on its owner. But even with the best drudge in the world and years of experience, we are working with living components. No two constructs are exactly the same.”

Gingerly, she placed the shard of white within the bubble at the center of the room. The transparent arm and the shard of bright white orbited one another, though the smaller piece seemed to be squirming through the air toward the larger.

Gesha crossed her arms. “Now,” she commanded.

Lindon reached out with his perception, sensing both the arm and the piece of hunger madra. They gave him very different impressions, but he didn't focus on that, instead pouring pure madra into combining them.

They drifted together faster than he'd expected, and he focused on Forging them like he would a scale. He held the shape in his mind, pushing it together with his will.

The shard entered the clear-as-glass surface of the arm, staining six inches of the forearm white. Pale strands ran through the limb like veins, and the sharp fingers shuddered.

Fisher Gesha gestured, and her spider scurried up beneath the floating boundary field. It lifted two legs, poking at the substance of the construct, spinning it around as though spinning a web.

After a moment, it hissed in three sharp patterns and withdrew its legs.

“Unstable,” Gesha reported. “Keep holding it.” She produced another shard of the Ancestor's Spear, and Lindon repeated the process.

The stress of holding onto the construct felt like cycling the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel for too long: his soul was under pressure, every breath was heavy, and he was having trouble holding onto the appropriate breathing pattern. Sweat had begun to bead on his face.

But there was a distinct difference. The presence of the arm had begun to change, as the Shifting Skies madra in the original limb was suffused with the power of the hungry white madra. Instead of tapping, the fingers now flexed, grasping, and he sensed...

Well, he wasn't sure what he was picking up on. Maybe Fisher Gesha could tell him, if he could spare the attention to ask. It felt as though the arm wanted something, and it twisted in the floating bubble like a hunting snake.

It must have been an effect of the hunger madra, as she added more samples inside and Lindon used his pure madra to Forge them together into one. With every piece, it seemed to become more aware, like they were building a Remnant instead of a Remnant arm.

This time, when Fisher Gesha's drudge tested the limb, it gave a high whistle. Immediately, she withdrew a shiny, twisted form of pure white light with a corkscrew pattern. The binding.

A crystallized technique, the binding was the heart of any construct. Without it, a construct would only have the properties of its material and whatever scripts they added on top. That would make it no better than any scripted object.

Ideally, this binding would allow him to feed on someone else's madra, though Fisher Gesha insisted that it would only allow him to pull another's power into his arm and then vent it elsewhere.

Either way. Both ideas intrigued him.

As the binding approached, the arm squirmed toward it, fighting against the hold of his spirit. He tried to ask her to wait, but the word came out as a croak.

Then the binding slid into the arm, and he had to absorb it.

The actual process of completing the arm was simple. He worked it into the Forging, and the arm flared with a brilliant white. Now it was all spotless and pale, and the claws had smoothed out into fingertips—Lindon didn't want to use an arm with needle-sharp fingers. It looked almost skeletal in shape, though it was thick enough to fit on his arm.