SFL 3 - Defiant Heart - Chapter 2

Chapter 2

No sooner had Casey’s eyes opened than Maude’s voice echoed in his head.

There are you are, Casey. I was worried because your mind was so quiet. I assumed it was built-up exhaustion, but you didn’t even react when I tried to wake you to let you know Vibeke was back.

Without needing to move, Casey knew that Maude sat in her sheath by his right hip. She wasn’t directly touching his skin, meaning he couldn’t mentally address her at the moment, but he could receive her communications.

Shifting slightly, he pressed his bare upper arm against the cool metal of Maude’s pommel. The motion was enough that Magnus shifted from where he was sitting at the head of Casey’s cot to glance down at him with one large, brown eye.

I was visiting your family. Apparently, Loptr got in a bit of trouble with your mothers for not checking with them first before sending you to help me, Casey sent to her with a thought.

The image of his lover’s smile ghosted through his mind, the impression something that he’d gotten used to over the last several weeks as their connection deepened. At first, Maude had only been able to communicate with words, but now she could project emotions and images to him.

I can imagine they were less than happy about that. Mother means well, but I hope she didn’t put you through too much.

Not much at all. Sigyn just talked to me, and Angrboda made some circuitous threats about your half-brothers.

Oh, Mother Angrboda was there? Casey felt the warm wash of his partner’s affection for the ice-skinned giant he’d just met. If she was warning you about those two, then we should take her words seriously. Jormungandr and Fenrir are wonderful brothers, but they can get a bit intense. I attribute it to their forms bringing their more bestial nature closer to the surface.

Noted. She just said to keep an eye out since they might still meddle, though they promised to not directly intervene. Casey pressed the concept of a loving kiss to Maude and heard her coo happily in response. What was that about Vibeke, though?

Oh! She’s across the tent in another of the cots. She took it upon herself to watch over you while you rested.

You’ve slept through the previous afternoon, the night, and most of the morning. From what she’s been telling Magnus, the Roaring Mountain will be dispatching one of the patrol ships to carry us and the other aspirants to their holdings at the center of the valley tomorrow. Apparently, a healer will be coming to check on you as soon as you wake, so you might want to let her know you are awake.

Why was she telling Magnus this? Casey asked, shifting his head slightly to look back up at the Gladewalker Elk. He hadn’t realized the elk could look smug, but Magnus definitely had a self-satisfied look on his features right now.

Our clever boy thought of that all on his own. He reacted when she was mumbling about something and so she started talking to him. Which had the effect of giving me more information, too. The pride in Maude’s words was obvious, and Casey rolled his eyes, shifting so he could reach up with his free hand and rub Magnus’ nose.

“He is a clever boy. Thanks again for getting me through that, Magnus,” Casey said aloud. The elk snorted derisively into his hand, but didn’t pull away from the pats.

A sound of surprise from the other side of the tent made Casey lift his head, and he glanced over to find Vibeke with her bare back to him.

“Sorry, Vibeke, didn’t mean to startle you,” he said quickly, letting his head fall back to the cot with a thump.

“It’s fine, Casey. I thought you were still asleep, which is why I was changing,” Vibeke replied after a moment, and there came a rustle of cloth before she spoke again. “There, all done. How are you feeling?”

A brief patter of footsteps on grass came, and then Vibeke was looming over him, concern glimmering in her green eyes while she tucked an errant blonde curl behind her ear. Casey noted that she paused to stroke Magnus’ snout as well, and the elk leaned into the affectionate caress with a happy huff.

“I’m awake and alive, which is more than was expected yesterday,” Casey replied blandly, getting a small giggle in his mind from Maude. “What about you? How’s your leg doing?”

“Much better. The healer fixed me up with an infusion. They’d have done more for you, but you were apparently in the middle of taking a few Steps and didn’t want to risk upsetting the process. So they just stitched and bound the wound without adding any supplements or infusions.”

Casey blinked at that statement. He’d barely been halfway along to the fourth Step of the Drengr’s Road. Each time he’d formally ‘taken the step’ and progressed down the road, he’d had to focus and guide it himself.

I handled it while you slept, Maude reassured him. You’ll need to consolidate the Steps formally, but as your soul-bonded partner, I was able to keep your qi balanced for you until now.

“I should check on that,” Casey said after a moment of thought, and Vibeke nodded sharply, not at all offended by his brusque change in attitude.

“Figured as much. I’ll go and let the doctor know you are awake while you focus on that. Don’t move if you can help it, though. You still have injuries to deal with.”

“Trust me, I won’t forget,” Casey chuckled. The throbbing in his side from the sword wound was a pain he’d been ignoring so far, but the injury would not be ignored forever.

“Thanks again, Casey,” Vibeke said after a long moment of staring at him before she squared her shoulders and hurried away, snatching her spear from where it leaned against the center pole of the tent as she passed.

She’s a good friend, Maude said kindly. She settled in here without even asking to keep watch on you, and it amused the others using this tent when she explained the multiple life-debts she owed you.

“Having an ally I can trust besides you and Magnus is going to be odd,” Casey muttered before letting his head fall back onto the cot.

Now that Maude had called his attention to it, he could feel the pressure in his chest that heralded the need to focus, so he allowed his consciousness to fall down into his core.

The center of his being came into view a moment later. The stone room was glowing brightly from the mass of qi that swirled over the floor. Just as before, the whirlpool of energy had overflowed the pool that normally retained his reserves and was several inches deep, filling the rest of the room. His Soulforge bobbed above the center of the pool, the calmly burning orb of blue-white fire riding on the surface of the qi pool like a rubber ducky cast overboard.

“I’ve been urging your qi through the Soulforge to refine it and then letting it settle once more. It was the most I could do for you,” Maude said from behind him, and he turned to behold his lover and partner.

Because of certain events before her birth, Maude had not had a normal birth or early life. Her form outside of this soul-space was that of an enchanted, shape-changing blade, and that had dictated how her power would grow, with most of it being centered around combat. But here, within the soul realm where only those ephemeral constructs of the spirit existed, her true form was revealed.

Much like her mother, Maude was well muscled and lithe of figure. Midnight-black hair hung in straight lines down her back, gathered out of the way by an iron clip at the back of her head. Despite her lean form, Maude’s curves remained undiminished. Strong legs lead up into wide hips and a tight stomach, which then belled outwards into a full chest which was constrained by the odd, leather-wrap dress she wore. The dress was made out of a single length of leather, about a foot wide and dozens of feet long. It started at her legs, wrapping around in a facsimile of shorts before slipping up her back to wrap and encase her chest tightly. The whole outfit left acres of her sun-kissed skin bare, and Maude stood proudly on display as she smiled at him.

When Casey had first met Maude, her leather wrapping had been simple and without decoration. As she grew in power, the garment had gained trimming and embroidery in repeating patterns. But what had changed this time was not her clothing, but her very skin. What had been a lightly tanned expanse was now shifting towards an iron-gray in color. It was subtle at the moment, and if he hadn’t just spoken with her mother to have for comparison, Casey might have missed it.

“Are you okay?” Casey asked, opening his arms and offering a hug to his love.

Maude’s smile grew wider, and she happily leaped into his arms, her long curtain of black hair swirling about them as Casey confirmed that, despite the change in color, her skin was still as soft and warm as ever.

“Oh yes, I’m doing wonderfully Casey,” Maude gushed as she clung to him, as if she was savoring the sensation of touch. “Fire and forge, I miss your touch every time you leave.”

“We just need to keep pushing so you are strong enough to manifest properly then,” Casey said before claiming Maude’s lips in a loving kiss.

Getting her to the point where she could take a physical form was a goal he could easily get behind, as one of Maude’s dearest wishes was to enjoy the simple things that having a corporeal body could give her. She could only manifest a corporeal body for a handful of seconds, maybe a minute or so right now, but that would change with time. And he longed for the day that Maude could walk beside him through the world, not just ride on his hip in her sheath.

“Enough distracting me,” Maude panted and pushed him back. “Focus on your strides! The qi you are seeing here is only part of it. You need to work quickly before you start leaking qi all over the place. Even Magnus would feel guilty absorbing what should be rightly yours.”

“Got it. What do I need to do?” Casey asked, turning his attention away from the lovely vision in his arms. He wanted to learn more about the changes to Maude’s body, but he could put that off for later when he wasn’t in such a rush.

“The fourth step is called ‘Smelting’ and is the beginning of the process that refines the human body,” Maude explained quickly, her strong hands pressing into Casey’s back and guiding him to the edge of the pool. “The fifth step is called ‘Reducing,’ as it is intended to reduce and remove the elements you do not want in the body. Everything up to this point was dedicated to gathering and preparing the forge.” Maude gestured meaningfully to the Soulforge where it hung above his qi. “Now you need to utilize it to burn out the impurities in your body and prepare yourself for the future.”

“Okay, and how do I do that?” Casey asked, amusement outweighing annoyance at her verbose response.

“Before, you focused on deepening your qi pool. You will focus in a similar way, but rather than deepening, you are hardening it. Your qi is loose and watery right now, you need to process it through the Soulforge until it is a white-hot liquid—like molten metal—and then pour it into your pool. There it will coat the sides and begin the process of smelting your body to prepare it for forging into the weapon it is meant to be. Once the pool is prepared, you will have completed the fourth Step. From there, you begin reducing down the qi from a mist into a true liquid and then into a solid. You want to fill the basin with grains of solidified qi, like iron sand. Once that process becomes automatic, you will have taken the fifth Step.”

Casey was about to ask again how he was supposed to go about turning the fog into a liquid—and argue that it was already somewhat like a liquid considering how it flowed like one without being wet—when he remembered how he’d forged his qi into a cable of power by passing it through the Soulforge before. It had reinforced his Skin of the Iron Bear technique against Damien and helped him hold out.

Repeating the process, Casey mentally seized on the liquid that was not a liquid and urged it up into the bobbing sphere of silver and gold flames. As he did so, he could feel the hard beads of qi deep in the center of his pool where Maude had been helping him to store the excess. They felt like lumps of dry ice at the bottom of a pool, smoking and dissolving slowly.

Dismissing the thought of the hardened qi, Casey focused on the Soulforge intently and directed the top layer of his pool into it. The shimmering orb of flames danced faster and began to spin as threads of foggy qi flowed up into it. At the top of the sphere of flame, right where the dancing sparks of silver and gold rose up, a singular bead of silvery liquid began to form, trembling like liquid mercury before running off the side of the Soulforge to drip into his pool.

To Casey, that droplet falling into the twisting mass of his qi felt like a stone falling from a great height to crash into water. The second it struck his qi, heat raced through his body, and Casey had to fight back the urge to scream. That urge redoubled when the droplet struck the condensed qi at the center of his pool, and those lumps rapidly began to dissolve as well.

“Focus, Casey. Keep the process going,” Maude coached him, and he gritted his teeth as a second droplet began to form while the Soulforge devoured and condensed the foggy qi on top of his pool.

Before the second droplet was done, the last of the fog had vanished to reveal the denser, near liquid qi that lay beneath it. A thick strand spiraled up from the pool to vanish into the base of the Soulforge. Casey felt his ears pop before the thicker liquid of the condensed qi began pouring from the Soulforge, burning like searing metal.

At the base of his pool, Casey felt the white-hot qi gathering before it began to melt the solid qi there as well in a rapidly accelerating reaction that soon had his pool boiling as the Soulforge continued to devour the cable of unrefined qi.

“You are doing well, Casey,” Maude coached from behind him, and the sensation of her hot breath on his neck made him shiver. “Don’t hesitate or slow down. You need to process all of this and then continue to refine it. The molten qi will imbue your pool first to sustain the reaction, then flow out into the rest of your body to empower it. But as soon as you are sustaining the reaction, you can rest.” 

Casey grunted in understanding, gritting his teeth through the pain as the molten heat continued to sear him from the inside outwards. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation though. It reminded him of the visions he’d seen when he first accepted the Legacy of Steel from Maude, and he took comfort in that.

Memories of the forge, of being pounded and shaped flowed past Casey, and time lost meaning for him within the space of his soul. He listened to Maude as she coached him to keep the pool of qi turning while the molten power flowed up the sides of the pool to polish and soak into the basin.

He felt the moment when he passed through to the self-sustaining part of the reaction, where there was more white-hot power within his pool than there was not. He still funneled power up into the Soulforge to heat it, allowing the molten qi to carry more of the unmelted along with it. After a time, the burning sensation faded as the qi pool absorbed more and more of the energy and hardened itself.

The level of qi in his center had long since dropped, with all of it running back into his pool to be processed. But there was more to be done. Casey could feel that he was ready to start taking the fifth Step. The burning fluid was, against all odds, beginning to crystallize into tiny fragments of power.

“That’s enough, lover,” Maude’s firm tone broke him out of his focus before he’d accumulated more than a spoonful of the powerful grains in his center. “You have completed the fourth Step on your journey and already are reaching for the Fifth. Rest and sustain yourself first. Rushing down the Drengr’s Road is a sure way to hurt yourself.”

“One step closer to catching you,” Casey teased, relaxing into Maude’s arms. While he’d focused, she’d pressed herself to his back and encircled his chest with her arms.

“You can dream of it,” Maude teased, kissing his ear. “But I’m not going to make it easy on you. Nothing worth having is ever easily attained.”

Casey didn’t respond verbally, instead reaching back to wrap his arms around Maude back and cup her bottom while studying his pool of qi.

Before, it had been a misty liquid that spun lazily. Now, the true depths of his pool were visible, as only a thin layer of brightly burning liquid oozed along the surface. It was as if the entire basin was a molten bowl being spun by some kind of magnetic force. At the very center beneath the Soulforge, Casey could see a little pile of solid sand stirring like it was at the center of a whirlwind.

As Casey watched it, thin cables of qi leaked into the room from the walls, flowing in from the environment. They were immediately sucked into the Soulforge before another droplet of liquid fell into the pool, soaking into the sand and vanishing.

“The smelted qi will spread throughout your body, reinforcing it and stripping away the impurities that will impede you. But the sand forms around the impurities which you can use, just as I use them in making my steel. Soon, you will be a weapon in body as much as I am,” Maude teased, nuzzling the back of Casey’s ear.

“Being a pair with you is easily a dream to aspire to,” Casey replied with a gentle squeeze to Maude’s firm rear, making her coo happily.