Vigil's Valor: 33 - Sweat Equity

The door to the Steel Griffin let out a subtle groan as I pushed my way into the shop. This time around there were a couple of young Vigil’s I hadn’t met yet, perusing the barrels of Soul Weapon Skins while talking in muted tones as they compared various swords and axes. I ignored them both and weaved my way toward a rather glum looking Pascow. His face brightened the second he saw me coming.

“Well now, if it isn’t the Inkarnate come to grace my humble shop once more,” he said, back straightening.

“Why the long face?” I asked with a grin.

“Just dark and troubling times is all, lad,” he said, waving away my questions. “A Chaos Aberration haunts our streets, fifteen good men lie dead, and the city is on the verge of eating itself.” He sighed. “And here I sit, puttering about in the forge, selling basic skins to kids who’ve hardly ever seen a Mortka. At times like these, I find myself wondering if I made the right choice is all. Our Order needs Builders, I know that, but sometimes it can leave an old man feeling rather powerless.” He chuckled ruefully. “I can create untold weapons of might, and hardly use a one of them myself. There’s just a certain irony in it, is all. But what of you, lad? Have you come in search of weapons or better armor, perhaps?”

“On the contrary,” I replied, “I’m here to pay my pound of flesh.” I rapped my knuckles against the cobalt, scaled armor covering my chest. “This stuff is top-notch and saved my ass more than once out there. Wanted to make sure that I pay my debts and I figured there was no better time than the present.”

“Excellent,” he said. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to this. The idea that an Inkarnate would have the skills of a Builder is still bafflingly to me. Not saying I don’t believe you, lad—I know you’re not lying—but I’d still like to see it for myself is all. Why don’t you go head on back while I close up the shop?”

He ushered me behind the counter and into the backroom while he hustled over to see the other patrons off.

“Sorry about that,” I said, waving toward the showroom. “Didn’t mean to scare off any potential sales.”

“Think nothing of it, lad. Elowen and Martyn come in here at least once a week, staring moon-eyed at everything, smudging up all my displays with their greasy fingers. Good kids, but they never have bought anything. Although I run this shop, the majority of the money I make comes from selling my finer wares to the Vigils on the higher levels.”

“So do you run other shops than this one?” I asked.

“Run ‘em, no?” He shook his head. “But I own ’em all.” He thumbed his nose conspiratorially. “Little known secret, but I’m the senior head of the Builder’s Guild. The vast majority of the weapons and armor that move through the Citadel are my handiwork.”

I felt my jaw drop at the revelation. “Then why in the hell are you down here, working on the lowest level?” I asked.

“Because it’s easy, lad. Masters, Sages, Saints. The whole lot of ’em walk around with their noses stuck in the clouds, and they don’t care that I’m a Sage ranked Vigil myself. They talk down to me, treat me like hired help on account of the fact that I’m a Builder. The newer Vigils, at least, show some modicum of respect. Besides, working down here gives me plenty of time to tinker around in my forge—it’s the best of both worlds. Now, let’s give you a tour of the ol’ Soul Vault, shall we?”

He grabbed my hand in a rough, calloused grip and slapped his other palm against the altar stone, hovering above the pedestal.

The world vanished and I stumbled into a Soul Vault… Except it wasn’t my Soul Vault.

The central hub was similar to what I was so used to seeing: a wide marble basin filled with shockingly blue waters and a pair of fish, constantly circling; a domed ceiling, showing a brilliant expanse of glittering stars and twisting galaxies; an avatar, slowly rotating in the air. Not my avatar, though. It was Pascow. And everything else about the place was as wildly different as the avatar. I never would’ve considered my Soul Vault to be barren, but after spinning in a slow circle, I realized I was living in the Vigil equivalent of a dilapidated shack in the middle of the Kentucky backwoods.

Pascow had the same type of rooms as I did—a forge, an armory, a library, storage accommodations, and living quarters—all just bigger and better. His library had vaulted ceilings, frescos, a second story that looked like it belonged in a Swiss castle or some shit. And speaking of castles, his living space wasn’t some dingy barracks room with a single wardrobe, a squeaky metal cot, and a tired old footlocker, it was the actual interior of a castle, fit for Royalty.

“Awfully impressive for a simple builder, no?” he asked.

“The fact that you can apparently drag people into your Soul Vault or the fact that you somehow managed to turn your Soul Vault into a manor house from the French Riviera?” I asked. “Because both are damned impressive, and I didn’t know you could do either.”

Pascow chuckled in evident amusement. “As an outsider to our world there are so many things yet for you to learn. Bringing others into your Soul Vault is a simple thing. Merely hold onto someone and will them into your Vault when you access an altar. But a word of caution from an old soul—be very careful about who you bring with you. Your Soul Vault is your seat of power, a realm unto itself, and while within it, you are as a god of sorts.

“You will never be stronger than when you are within the hallowed walls of your Vault. Your abilities are more effective, you regenerate Health and Arcana at an accelerated rate—in many ways, the world itself is subject to your whims within this place. But it is a double-edged sword, because even though you are strongest here, you are also exceedingly vulnerable in many crucial ways. As for customizing the appearance of your Vault, it is a relatively simple thing to accomplish, though, like everything, it comes at a price.”

“Let me guess?” I said, “Scales or Essence.”

“A very keen wit indeed.” He grinned.

“I don’t remember reading anything about that in any of the training manuals.”

“There is no manual, lad, and I suspect you’ve been looking in the wrong place,” he said. “The Vault customization console isn’t a book secreted away on a dusty library shelf, it is an object you interact with in much the same way you do your Avatar.” He waved at the rotating version of himself. “It should be somewhere in your private sleeping quarters—typically it takes the form of a box or a safe.”

The footlocker, I thought immediately. I’d walked past the drab green box countless times over the past month, and I’d never once opened it. Why the hell would I? I had an entire room dedicated to storage inside my Vault. It had never occurred to me that it could’ve had some other purpose. I thought it was interior decorating, like a useless end table or a piece of motel wall art.

This whole time I could’ve been living in a hillbilly mansion instead of slumming it in rundown Inns with straw mattresses and sour beer. Thinking about it, that was actually pretty on brand for my life. Instead of winding up in a cushy Air Force Base with air conditioning and swimming pools, I’d opted for the Marine Corps and a condemned Iraqi squad bay in the middle of a war zone. I seriously needed to start making some better life choices…

I stashed the info about upgrades away for later and followed Pascow over to his Soul Forge.

Surprisingly, of all the rooms within Pascow’s Vault, the Soul Forge actually looked the most similar to my own—just bigger. And with more awesome stuff. The room had glossy onyx walls on every side and a host of benches, tables, and tools. An enormous crystalline forge sat in one corner with a large set of leather bellows jutting out from one side. Beside it was a hulking, black anvil and several barrels all lined up in a neat row against the wall. Each was filled with a different material—Aqua Fortis, Oleum Fortis, and Selitrium—all used for quenching crafted materials.

To the right of the forge was a large fabrication table with a stool. Hanging on the wall above the workstation was an odd assortment of tools, which were used for Arcana manipulation. With those tools in hand, any Vigil with the proper Wards could take refined fabrication components, overlay them on a three-dimensional blueprint, and manipulate them with mind and magic, transforming them into deadly weapons or powerful armor.

But he also had several pieces of equipment that I didn’t:

A circular grindstone with a bench and a small bucket of water dangling above it from a hook. An oddly shaped brick stove that looked almost like a kiln, except it was covered with pipes, valves, and steam vents. A circular table with runes engraved into its face. A workbench strewn with beakers, vials, rows of test tubes and jars brimming with Alchemic ingredients of every sort. Another covered with neatly assorted set of boxes filled with metal circular balls, clay pots, curling lengths of wick, and bags of what smelled like gunpowder.

I squinted as I studied that last table. This guy didn’t just make weapons and armor, this guy was making homemade bombs in his Soul Vault.

Pascow guided me to large storage cabinet and pulled the doors open, revealing boxes and bins filled with carefully labeled fabrication components.

“These are all raw ingredients, in need of processing,” he said. “That cabinet over there”—he turned and hooked his thumb toward a second cabinet towering beside the main crafting table—“is where the finished components go.” He slapped me good naturedly on the shoulder. “Work your way through this mess and once you get most of it sorted, I’ll walk you through a couple of projects. Critique your form a bit. That sort of thing.”

I swapped my heavy armor for a leather blacksmith’s apron and a heavy-duty pair of leather gloves that would protect my hands from the intense heat, then got to work.

The fabrication cabinet was near to overflowing with items, so I just started at the top, grabbing a hunk of Mortka Steel Orethen heading over to the crystal forge. With a grunt, I loaded the ore into a variety of specialty crucibles, all crafted from a wide array of materials. Once the correct crucible was loaded down, I used a set of industrial-sized tongs to place the crucible into the flickering yellow fires of the forge.

Thanks to Pellervo’s Guide to the Soul Forge, I knew that yellow and orange fire burned cooler and was perfect for softer metals with a low melting point such as gold, silver, and aluminum while red and purpled flames were ideal for iron ores or and steel alloys. Purple, blue, and green flames, on the other hand, were required for exceptionally hard metals likes Titanium, Mortka Steel Ore—which had a melting point of 3,500 degrees—and any Arcana-infused items, like Affinity Scales. The color-system made the forge damn-near dummy-proof, even for a crayon eater like me.

Hell, especially for a crayon eater like me, since I knew my colors so good.

Getting the flames to burn at the right temperature was still an assload of work. I steadily worked the billows until sweat poured down my face and my arms and chest burned from the effort. It was more than just a physical strain, however. After a few seconds, my Stamina bar and Arcana gauge appeared, slowly dropping as the process siphoned off a sliver of my power with every pump, feeding it into the forge to purify and refine the contents within the dancing flames. I needed to keep the temperature perfect while the material melted—not too hot, not too cold—or I risked destroying the material in the process.

It was a fine balance that took quite a bit of finesse.

After ten minutes the Mortka Steel was ready to come out and be poured into a rough mold that I placed on top of the nearby anvil. Before the metal could fully cool, I used another set of tongs to submerge the newly formed ingot into a barrel filled with Oleum Fortis, or fortified oil. Quenching was a crucial step in the process and had to be performed while the metal was still hot. If the ingot cooled too slowly it would form a weaker metal; dunking it in this solution created a vapor layer around the ingot which, in turn, meant the material would be stronger, harder, and more durable.

The barrel filled with water cooled the material much faster, which put additional strain on the material. That was fine for something like iron or even silver, but for more delicate components like Mortka steel, the oil was needed.

After twenty seconds, I fished the ingot from the Oleum Fortisand unceremoniously dunked it into another barrel, this one filled with a powdery black sand as fine as flour. Powdered Selitrium, which was as fine as the moon dust back in Fallujah. This was the same Selitrium Gustav and Sigge had been mining back in Ironmoor. It was incredibly rare and valuable as a crafting component because it had the unique ability to leech away impurities while simultaneously priming the material to be infused with Arcana and shaped via the workstation fabricator.

I ferried the finished ingot over to the other cabinet then started the process over once more.

“Might be there’s a quicker way to do that,” Pascow commented as I stoked the flames once more, preparing them for the next piece of ore. “Don’t suppose you have Unbound Flame now do ya?” he asked. “I know it’s an odd question for a Vigil of Justice.”

I held out my hand, conjuring a little ball of flickering fire in answer.

“Why would I think any different?” Pascow replied, as much for himself as for me. “Keeping the fire temperature constant is a tough nut to crack and makes the process go much slower. Instead of using the billows, try feeding the flames directly using Unbound Flame. It’ll cost you more Arcana, but it’ll save your arms and back and it’ll cut your fabrication time in half.”

Damned if he wasn’t right.

And not just about that.

Pascow was indeed a Master of his craft and he had countless tips to streamline the process and get the most out of every ingredient. Metallurgy Manipulation allowed me to create new alloys and form the Ingots more smoothly. As where Unbound Flame let me control exactly how hot the flames were while forging, Water Wright allowed me to leech heat through the quenching process, cooling the material to exactly the right temperature, which made every Ingot hard without being brittle. Run a charge from Electro Arc through the Selitrium? That slightly increased the number of impurities removed which, in turn, meant any Arcana Effect was amplified.

After four hours of steady labor, I could produce a refined Ingot in two minutes instead of ten and it was of a substantially higher quality than when I first started.

“Well lad,” he said, while eyeballing a cabinet full of restock, refined fabrication components, “you’ve earned what you owe ten times over. I’ll admit, I was a bit skeptical when you first sauntered through my doors, claiming you’d crafted that Stone Spider Plate Mail yourself, but my eyes tell the truth of the matter. Not only do you have the skills, but you have an even hand and the right temperament to become a true master builder if you stick with it. And, because I believe people ought to be fairly compensated for their labor, I want to give you a few extra lessons, free of charge.”

He gestured for me to follow him over to the crafting bench, then handed me a blueprint for a Mortka Forged Poleaxe, which was a long-hefted, two-handed weapon with a wicked axe blade on one side, a blunt hammer face on the other, and a spear like protrusion jutting from the top.

“I’ve heard whispers that you’ve taken a liking to axe. This monster is slow, but what it loses in speed it makes up for in reach and damage. Make it,” he said.

After toiling away refining the crafting components, I was only too happy to comply. I plopped down on the stool and placed the poleaxe schematic on the workbench, which instantly conjured the ghostly blue 3D model into the air. Pascow wasn’t joking, the weapon really was enormous. I scanned over the requisite materials list, then quickly grabbed the appropriate items from the cabinet and added them to the bench along with the blueprint. Now that I had everything I needed, the job was relatively straightforward and simple.

I snagged a silver glove off the tool wall above the workstation. It looked like metal but felt like silky cloth; engraved into each digit was a series of small runes, and another such symbol decorated the palm. I slipped the glove onto my right hand then picked up a thin metallic rod, not much larger than a pencil. These didn’t at all look like the tools a blacksmith would use to forge a weapon, but in the right hands they could do wonders.

With a flick of my wrist, a refined silver ingot rose into the air and hovered there. The metal rod allowed me to lift, rotate, and spatially manipulate any of the materials on the workbench, while the glove let me shape them—forming small, detailed pieces that could then be superimposed onto the ghostly image of the poleaxe. Honestly, it felt more like working with soft, malleable clay than metal.

Using an infused mixture of silver, iron, and Mortka steel, I shaped the metal into a long shaft, a foot taller than I was with a sharpened Hyanacorn horn sticking out from the bottom. The head of the weapon was constructed in two pieces, first a mounting that held the spear-like spike, then the axe face and the hammer head, which were built from a single piece of Mortka steel and reinforced with Nether Talons. I carefully wrapped tanned Harpy leather around much of the exposed weapon shaft.

I added a single Master Class Pure Affinity Scale to power the fusion of elements, turning the odd assortment of metal and monster parts into a singular weapon, perfectly suited for killing. Golden light pulsed out, momentarily blinding me. When the light faded, the ghostly image was gone and all that remained was the weapon, floating in the air, calling out to be used. I reached out a tentative hand and grasped the handle, pulling it free from the workstation. Like all weapon skins, it seemed to weigh nothing as I gave it a twirl.

“Well done,” Pascow crowed, slapping me on the shoulder as he appraised the poleaxe. “Well done, indeed. But that wasn’t the lesson. May I?” he asked, extending a hand and raising a bushy eyebrow.

I handed him the skin and followed in his wake as he plopped the weapon down onto the odd circular table with deep, angular runes gouged into its wooden surface.

The second the weapon touched the tabletop, the runes lit up like a Christmas tree. Instead of brilliant gold, the sigils burned in a multitude of colors—pinks, oranges, red, blues, purples, and greens. A faint thrum began to build as he picked up a thin engraving awl, crafted from wood and bone, and ever so carefully etched a flowing series of jagged script into the metal head of the weapon. There was no way the bone awl should’ve even left a scratch, but the metal melted away as though it were made from butter.

He paused and glanced over a shoulder at me. “I know you have access to Unbound Flame and Electro Arc. Don’t suppose you have any other spells or abilities that you fancy, do ya? I can add one more script if you have something in mind, though it needs to be low level.”

I didn’t have anything else, since I’d come ready to work, not battle, but I blurted out “Kinetic Blast,” because why the hell not.

“Good enough,” he said, turning back to his work, awl scritch-scratching over the surface as he layered on more and more sigils in increasingly complex designs. I watched in silence for ten minutes while he worked. Finally, Pascow grunted and straightened. He set his awl down and swiped a hand across his forehead. “Do me a favor, lad,” he said, while handing the poleaxe over to me. “Conjure Electro Arc and feed it into the weapon, same way you would a Mortka.”

I squinted at the unusual request but did what he asked. I focused on the weapon in my hand and let energy surge out from my core, calling forth a brilliant lance of lightning that could rip apart bodies and scorch the earth. Except it did neither of those things. The energy disappeared into the weapon like water into a wet sponge. After a second the poleaxe pulsed once with a weak silvery light, and I cut off the flow of the energy.

Pascow offered me a sly smile. “This is a secret known only by a handful of master builders. These sigils”—he tapped a finger against the blade of the weapon—“are letters of the Celestial. The language of the gods. They can’t generate power of their own, but with a little finagling they can store it and release it. Certain kinds of power any way.” He traced a finger over the first spiral of symbols. “This one is a command, allowing you to store Electro Arc. That one there,” he said, pointing to a second set, “is for Unbound Blaze, and the last, of course, is for Kinetic Blast.

“This fourth rune is the trigger mechanism that binds ’em all together. You can store the spells inside here in advance and if you channel just the tiniest trickle of Arcana into whichever sigil you want to use, it’ll activate in battle. These spells are only good for one shot apiece but, in my experience, having a few extra spells up your sleeve can be useful in the right circumstances. Especially since you can cast all three spells simultaneously if you had a mind to. The weapons yours, as a gift.”

“I can’t accept this,” I replied, pushing it back toward him.

“Like hell you can’t,” he snorted. “Do you know how much work you saved me? All that fabricating was worth twice over what a weapon like that would run you. I also got one other thing.” He reached beneath the table and pulled free something else… Not a weapon, but a golden scroll, tied shut with a piece of cord. A Legacy Scroll. “The Scroll of Celestial Scrivening. It’ll augment your Sage Smith Skill—allow you to do what I just did. I can’t use it because I’ve already got my own version.”

“No,” I said, with a firm shake of my head. “I don’t want charity and I just went Legacy Scroll shopping, so don’t try to bullshit me and tell me that thing is worth a couple of hours of fabrication work.”

“Gods above no,” he said shaking his head. “This is a treasure of the rarest sort. But I’ve been hanging onto that scroll for more than two decades, lad. Waiting for an apprentice I could pass it along to.” His face fell. “In two decades I haven’t found a single soul worthy and only a handful of Vigils that were even interested in taking on the mantel of a builder. I told you, there’s no glory in what we do. The other Vigils, they would die without our handwork, but they look down on us with a mixture of pity and scorn.

“But not you. I can see that you know the value of our work. My gut tells me it couldn’t be in better hands. All that I ask in return is two things. One, you put that scroll to good use. It would pain my heart to know it was languishing on some shelf or that it got sold off to ol’ Bakos Barna for a pittance of coin.”

“And the second thing?” I asked.

“Stop by every once in a while. There are a great many lessons I have to pass on and no one who seems interested in learning,” he said with a shrug. “But you’ll have to upgrade your Soul Vault first. Once you’ve unlocked the Enchantment Table, the Grinding Stone, the Scrivener’s Bench, and the Sapper’s Table come back and see me. I’ll show you how to use them good and proper like.”

“It’s a deal,” I said, accepting the scroll.

“Good. Lets call it a day, eh? Its late, my bones are tired, and I’m overdue for a long nap…”

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