[You know, I don’t think so, but now I’m questioning it. I’m starting to wonder if he can see thoughts.]

“Once you reach Underlord, then your real training can finally—”

With a gentle effort, Lindon pushed Dross out of his palm.

The spirit manifested, one-eyed and purple, and raised one of his stubby arms in greeting.

Eithan froze in mid-speech, his wildly gesticulating arms stopping in the air.

[These things can be awkward, can’t they? I know who you are, but I’m not sure if you know who I am. Do you know who I am?]

Lindon imprinted Eithan’s expression of pure astonishment in his memory forever.

Eithan slowly lowered his arms. His spiritual sense swept through Dross, and then—in a focused probe—flicked through Lindon’s spirit. He focused especially on the spot at the base of Lindon’s skull where Dross usually lived.

“I had no idea,” Eithan breathed. “Even now…if I couldn’t see you before me, I would have no idea there was a spirit inside him. With a fully formed consciousness and madra system. Tied to…” His eyes widened, and he slowly shut the box of Heaven’s Drops, setting them to one side. “…tied to his brain…”

He waved frantically at the bustle around him, where workers and spiders were still moving around them. Some glanced curiously over at them, but most continued setting up Fisher Gesha’s barn.

“Fisher!” he shouted. “Would you clear the area for us, please?”

Gesha gave a loud ‘harrumph.’ “Underlord or no Underlord, if you’re walking into my place of business and telling me to clear out—”

Eithan pulled out one of the sacks of natural treasures, which—at Lindon’s rough guess—was worth enough to buy Gesha’s entire business. He shoved it at her, as well as reaching into his pocket and throwing an entire purse of scales after it, and Forging another superior-grade scale out of nowhere. He pushed it all at her, adding, “You can return if you like, but keep everyone else away.”

Gesha’s eyes bulged almost out of her head. “Right away! Never said I wouldn’t do it, did I? All of you! Drop what you’re holding! Drop it on the ground and get away!”

As the spiders and workers scurried away, Eithan fumbled behind him for a seat, pulling it up.

“I’m not used to asking this,” Eithan said. “What happened?”

So, with a certain pride, Lindon told his story in Ghostwater from the beginning. From finding Dross in the Dream Well, combining him with the Eye of the Deep, to upgrading him over the entire facility. All the way to the end, when they completed Northstrider’s grand work.

Orthos crawled off to chew on some nearby lumber—he had been present for the entire story. But everyone else, even Little Blue, listened attentively. He skimmed the parts with Harmony, for Mercy’s sake, though that left some holes in the story at the end.

He had shared most of these details with Yerin already, but not everything. He hadn’t had a chance. Now, he was glad to have the whole story out there. Fisher Gesha returned at some time in the middle, listening quietly.

Dross popped in every once in a while to add a correction or embellishment, but for the most part Lindon was allowed to tell the story without interruption.

When Lindon finished, Eithan sat quietly, hands pressed together, staring off into the distance. The darkness of the Night Wheel Valley settled around them, the wind cold.

In the end, he turned to Dross. “If I’m not gravely mistaken, then you are only a seed of what you will eventually become.”

[I don’t like to think of myself as a seed. Not very flattering, is it? Maybe an egg, but a really nice egg.]

“Oh, we will make sure you grow. Yes…” Eithan’s smile slowly widened until Lindon would have called it manic. “Planted in the fertile soil of Lindon’s spirit, we will grow you until you dwarf Dreadgods and tower over Monarchs! The world itself will struggle to contain you! When I fear I have set my sights too far, I find that I was not ambitious enough! Who will dare to hold us back when we have such an ally? Let the day you completed Northstrider’s work be known as the day that the very foundations of history trembled!”

He cackled like a madman, and Lindon honestly couldn’t tell if it was for theatrical effect or not.

A thread of doubt wormed over from Orthos, Yerin folded her bladed arms in front of her, and Mercy looked at Eithan askance. Little Blue pressed herself against Lindon’s head and shivered.

Dross, by contrast, laughed along with him. [Aw, go on! No, really, please continue.]

~~~

Eithan spread the four Heaven's Drops before him, hanging gray and dull in the air.

“What you are about to experience is a myth for many Golds. It is their life's ambition. The glory their families strive for.”

He lifted a bottle—provided by Lindon—over his head.

“Let's get it over with, shall we?”

He tipped the first bottle over a Heaven's Drop, spilling vivid blue water into the hovering construct.

Lindon, Yerin, and Orthos sat before Eithan in a lonely hollow amidst the darkened woods of the Night Wheel Valley. They hadn't sold any of their natural treasures in the camp, but had instead traded a few. They now had packages that exuded aura of many different aspects waiting for them nearby.

Mercy was next to them, but she didn't sit. She stood, toying with her staff, a complicated expression on her face.

The Spirit Well water fell into the construct and was absorbed, as though the energy drank it down. As the water vanished, the Heaven's Drop grew brighter and brighter, from a transparent and colorless gray-green to an almost blinding emerald. The scripted circles around the outside of the construct spun faster, until it spat out bolts of vivid green lightning.

Eithan stopped his pour precisely at that point, reserving the last of the water in the bottle.

“Orthos, if you would,” Eithan said. “Age deserves consideration.”

Orthos approached the Heaven's Drop, but not with the excitement Lindon had expected. Instead, the turtle felt resignation, almost fear. As though he had dreaded this day.

Other than when he was forced to fly, Orthos never showed this sort of apprehension. Lindon wanted to ask what was wrong, but the turtle snapped up the Heaven's Drop in an instant.

His madra began to swell almost immediately, growing more dense and potent by the second. Eithan had told them the effects would be quick, but in Lindon's experience, pills and elixirs always took time to cycle. Even the Spirit Well water worked best over time.

Eithan repeated the process with the second Heaven's Drop, emptying the first bottle and beginning on the second. When it shone like a green star and shot out lightning, he beckoned Yerin forward.

Yerin showed all the eagerness that Lindon had expected from Orthos; she couldn't swallow the construct and return to her seat fast enough, taking a cycling position.

While Eithan prepared the third construct, Lindon watched Yerin. He couldn't feel her spirit as clearly as he could his contracted sacred beast's, but he still sensed her growing stronger. In only seconds, her Goldsigns grew more solid and defined, as though they had been cast in real physical steel.

Then they slid back into her back.

More advanced Truegolds gained control over their Goldsigns, but the degree seemed to differ depending on the Goldsign itself. He hadn't imagined that she would be able to withdraw them like that, and seeing her without the sword-arms sticking out of her back felt incomplete. Like he was seeing her without her real arms.