[Yeah, but you’re thinking of backwoods Truegolds from an aura-poor nation with only a handful of Underlords,] Dross said. [They missed it because they were…I don’t want to say they’re stupid. Ignorant? Poorly educated? Backwards savages stumbling through their Paths like blind men?]

Lindon's balanced sense of aura trembled, threatening to collapse, the fire aura suddenly much more vibrant than the others. He steadied himself, calming his emotions, holding his perception in place.

“I fight to save my family,” he said, this time aloud.

Had the earth aura beneath him shaken? He focused on it, which caused his spiderweb-thin meditative state to crumble. His perception reeled back in, the vital aura a mishmash of disconnected colors again.

Lindon kicked to his feet, scattering the natural treasures and not bothering to pick them up. He strode over to a table against one wall. He had already arranged tools and boxes here to give himself something to work on. He needed to focus on a problem that was possible to solve.

Dross spoke in a soothing, even voice. [Take deep, calming breaths. Relax. That's it...relax. Breathe deeply. You have three whole days left! You could do a lot in three days. Like reaching Underlord! Theoretically.]

Lindon grabbed a yellow-and-black striped binding shaped like a blooming flower and demanded Dross make a Soulsmithing model. He had spent much of the last eight weeks with Fisher Gesha, crafting constructs; if Yerin hadn't been dying, the Fisher would have chained Lindon to her foundry and worked him to death.

A certain failure rate was inevitable in Soulsmithing, because every sample of madra was unique. Even an experienced Soulsmith like Gesha tried to prepare two samples of her materials when she could, because she'd fail two or three out of every ten times.

So being able to run the experiment in his mind, as many times as he wanted, was the Soulsmith's dream. It exhausted Dross, and there were still madra interactions Dross was unclear on—if Fisher Gesha's success rate for simple constructs was seventy-five percent, Lindon's was now ninety. Not one hundred percent, but miraculous nonetheless.

However, there was more to Soulsmithing than simple constructs. Sacred instruments—like weapons or the Skysworn armor—were beyond him. At least for now.

Once Eithan returned with the Arelius technique library, or Dross had the chance to absorb dream tablets from more Soulsmiths...Lindon couldn’t imagine all the possibilities.

This time, Lindon was working with a common binding and a type of simple construct he'd made before. He only needed to run it through in his head once before he could pull the ingredients together on his table, Forging them into a shimmering red-and-orange ball.

He was working inside a protective script, this time. A ninety percent success rate still meant a ten percent rate of failure, and he was making a bomb.

When he was finished, he placed the bomb into a scripted case with the others.

He would not return to the Night Wheel Valley unprepared.

A knock at his door surprised him. Yerin should have been trying to advance, and who else would come visit him?

He opened the door warily to see Mercy standing there, eyes shining, her hair long enough that she could pull it back into a ponytail again. She wore her smooth purple breastplate over a black-and-white set of sacred artist's robes, so she looked just like when he'd first met her. She leaned again on Suu, the dragon's head at the top hissing at his presence.

“Hi! Are you meditating? Ooooh, no, you're Soulsmithing! Can I watch?” She stepped forward, and then hesitated. “Ah, can I come in?”

He ushered her inside politely, but was still unsure. Mercy had never visited him before.

She ran over to the table, stumbling once but catching herself on the edge of the bed. When she got to his Soulsmithing tools, she picked up the goldsteel-plated tongs for holding tricky pieces of madra and held them up to the light, examining them.

“I always thought it would be fun to be a Soulsmith,” she said. “But I never had the knack for it. My sense for Forging is good, but shadow madra isn't the most widely compatible, and my tutors said it was better to concentrate on my talents.”

“My mother was a Soulsmith,” Lindon said. “It's always been an interest of mine. I have to say, I didn't expect to see you here.” He didn't want to be rude, but he did want to steer this conversation toward a quick conclusion. Every minute wasted was a minute Yerin moved closer to the edge.

She placed the tongs back down and faced him. “How are you?” she asked.

He almost started to talk about what he was doing, the preparations he was making, but he stopped himself. He knew what she meant.

“I should be Underlord by now,” he said at last.

He expected her to say that he shouldn't be upset. Many people went their whole lives without the chance to reach Underlord. Instead, her eyes went wide in sympathy, and she nodded. “It's the most frustrating advancement. Some people go from Truegold to Underlord in an afternoon. I had a cousin who spent five years chasing sillier and sillier truths about herself before finally figuring out that her real revelation was that she practiced sacred arts for no reason. She just enjoyed it. Once she admitted that, her way was clear. It's hard, because you can never figure out when you're on the right track and need to push deeper, and when you're totally wrong.”

“Yes!” Lindon said. “Until now, advancement has been clear. You make yourself one step stronger every day, keep practicing and cycling aura and strengthening your spirit, and it adds up. Now, all of a sudden, it's different.”

Mercy pulled out the chair beneath the table, sitting down and leaning her staff against her shoulder. “There are a lot of sayings about it, at least in my family.” She imitated a deeper voice. “'To know the world, you must first know yourself.' 'You must deepen your connection to your own soul if you wish to command the world.' 'Underlord is the end of the path you walked for others, and the beginning of your own path.'“ She waved a hand. “They make it sound like it fits, but they’re all guessing. I did get one practical piece of advice from my tutors, though.”

She leaned forward, looking deep into his eyes. “Follow your fear. It's a trick that sometimes helps to figure out your revelation. A lot of people push themselves into deadly situations, to figure out what they care about enough to die for, but you've done plenty of that. Obviously that isn't it for you. So...follow your fear.”

“I'm afraid of a lot of things,” Lindon said. Especially at the moment. Losing Yerin, failing to advance and being left behind, failing his family. He was afraid he had left home for nothing and was wasting his time out here playing at being a sacred artist. He was afraid Eithan would see his effort on Lindon as a waste, afraid that Orthos would never return, afraid that Dross would somehow grow out of control and consume his mind, afraid that Blackflame madra would one day scorch his soul with damage he couldn't heal...

“Too many things,” he added.

Mercy thumped the carpet with the end of her staff. “Let’s try it now! We don’t have much time left, so it’s worth a try, right? Cycling position!”

It was somewhat embarrassing to start meditating on command in front of someone like this, but it wasn't as though she hadn't seen him cycling before. He climbed back down, sitting and closing his eyes.