Irwin took a step back from the ruby-bordered card, feeling elated. He'd managed it! At two points, he'd felt the card rebel, but his own words to Tindria and Mia, that brilliant little daughter of his, her words said what felt like ages ago on Mudball, had made him choose finesse over force, increasing the complexity of his song to make the card's resonance follow his will. The result was another thing he wanted to talk to Ambraz about. Although he'd tried softening his voice and reducing his volume many times before, this was the first time he'd increased complexity beyond what was required instead, and it had worked incredibly well.

  I can't wait to tell Mia all about this, Irwin thought as he picked up the card.

  He felt an incredible desire to continue, but he also wanted to see how the others were doing.

  Looking up and around, he froze. Only two people were still attempting to reforge while the other seven smiths stood in their workstations, staring back at him. The teachers who had been assigned to them were also there, watching him intently.

  Tindria stood in the workstation beside his, staring at him with eyes burning with desire, and Irwin quickly pulled his eyes from her. A hushed silence hung over the stands, and Irwin almost felt a pressure on him.

  "Smith Irwin, please continue with your other two cards."

  Irwin was startled by the soft whisper. Looking to the side, he saw Teacher Parka grinning up at him. There was a slight nervousness in her eyes, and she kept glancing at one of the two smiths still working.

  "The only other two smiths still working also use the music style of reforging, and both have had multiple epiphanies from watching you work. Please… continue if you can," Teacher Parka said.

  Epiphanies?

  Irwin's eyebrows shot up as he quickly glanced at the two Viridans working, and he only now realized they were both singing softly, using their strikes on the cards as the beat of their reforging. Neither had an instrument as he did, but their voices seemed multilayered- as if two or more people were singing at the same time.

  "I'll continue," he said, quickly putting the card away and picking up the steam-typed card. It was the card he had the highest affinity with, but he felt slightly rattled by both the attention and knowing two smiths had actually managed to make major leaps in their ability from watching him.

  Putting the card down, he closed his eyes again, calming himself and focusing his full attention on the card.

  As he struck down, he wondered absently if he should sing and play slightly louder to help the other two smiths. Then he decided against it. What if the epiphany they had was because he was playing soft and complex songs? That realization rekindled his desire to retry what he'd done with the previous card.

  Striking down on the card, he barely noticed his entire focus shifted back to the card, all thoughts about who might be watching fading in the background.

  The hovering image above the card showed an image of a small cloud. The first three reforges, he'd moved it up and sideways, closer towards the sweltering part of his own soulcard. As he watched it now, he decided he wanted to see how large he could make the card's influence. Could he create a card that would blot out the sun as it created a massive cloud coverage? Perhaps it could help the farmers back home to have rain when they needed it.

  Taking a deep breath, he began humming, thinking back to those times, long ago, when he and Greldo had sat on the dilapidated roofs of old Malorin, staring at the roiling gray skies that promised the spring-day storm.

  Striking again, his otherself began playing the soulstrum guitar, and a soft, howling tune began rippling around him. With each strike, it increased in intensity, sounding like wind whipping up to a frenzy. Five strikes in, the song seemed to reach the strength of a storm, and as it did, another image flowed into Irwin's mind—a memory of when he'd first heard the Chaos Whales.

  An entire song snapped into Irwin's mind as a single image. Not for the card he was making now, but for what it would- no, should become. His hand began moving by itself as his second soulcard's resonance increased in power, as if sensing something important. Within moments, nothing but the song remained important, and Irwin barely realized that he was keeping the card in a vice-grip of soulforce resonance.

  He struck again and again, and as soon as he felt the card start to settle, the image of the spring storm crystallized into a perfect whole, and a bubbling sense of desire grew. He wanted, needed, to continue moving the card to the next step.

  As the card flashed and gleamed, its green border turning a bright red, he took a deep breath, filling his mind with one of the strongest memories he had. Part of him thought he heard a sucked-in breath, a startled curse, but it was distant and unimportant as his hammer moved down in an arc, slamming into the card, which had only barely settled.

  No preparation was required, no careful planning, as Irwin felt his soulcard's resonance grow tenfold.

  If he'd taken the time to think, perhaps he would have realized he was going to reforge a card from Ruby to Diamond without Ambraz's help or that the state he was in now was something he'd never experienced before.

  The memories of the Chaos Whale song, the first one he'd ever heard, became overpowering, and the only thing he knew was that he was going to sing it.

  --

  Parka was sweating and shivering as she unleashed the full force of her four soulcards, trying to contain the raging storm that was still building.

  Things had moved faster than she'd anticipated, and before she could even stop the foolish Fiz'rin, he'd continued as if in a trance.

  He is bloody having his own epiphany, she thought.

  A powerful soulforce bubble flowed around her own, and she was glad to see Mei appear beside her. Within moments, the pressure on her lessened, but she didn't let up. Containing soulforce was far more difficult than creating a disturbance.

  "Did he just start on his own?" Mei hissed at her, her face contorted from the strain of containing the raging soulforce in front of them.

  "He's having an-"

  "I know," the Guildmistress hissed. "Otherwise, I'd have stopped him. Now, keep up. Mazzareth and the others are joining in, so make sure to harmonize with them, as I taught you. This brat is still building up to something, and his soulscape's capacity is monstrous!"

  Parka nodded before focusing back on what was happening before her. She wished she could listen to the beautiful, deep song she was hearing, but if she let her focus slip, the barrier might go down, causing untold trouble for everyone with less than two soulcards.

  And they ask me why diamond-rank cardsmiths only rarely reforge in public, she thought, as she gritted her teeth.

  --

  Greldo leaned forward on the railing, ignoring the panicky silence and tense atmosphere on the stands as the intense pressure continued to increase from the single still-in-use workstation down below. He ignored it, and the sight of his towering, madly grinning friend, eyes gleaming as he bellowed out a song so deep that no normal voice should be allowed to make it. He ignored the teachers and the Guildmaster, who surrounded the workstation, which was surrounded by a shimmering barrier.

  He ignored all of it. Instead, he closed his eyes as he listened to the song and the memory that was growing clearer. Although Irwin's soulstrum guitar wasn't able to contain the entire spectrum of sounds the chaos storm had held, and his voice was only a single one instead of the many, he remembered. Remembered when his friend had been on deck on his own, moving them through the Chaos Storm, surrounded by the enormous beings that had guided and protected them.

  Greldo could almost feel the swaying and sudden jerking of The Sonata as it had done then, and he knew what was coming. The lull. The quiet. That moment when they had moved into the heart of the storm, and the multilayered song had become stronger, when his own suppressed fear had weakened enough for him to fully appreciate the beauty.

  A deep, rumbling sound came from his shoulder as Ambraz began humming along with the song. Greldo took a quick look at the Ganvil to see his entire front split by a wide smile. He also caught the others, all but one, sitting in stunned silence, their eyes locked on the smith as the song's volume began increasing, going from merely loud to deafening. Only Rindiri seemed as calm as he was, with a small smile on her face and eyes closed as she swayed along with a movement that nobody else felt.

  Greldo focused back on Irwin as the high-strung guitar sounds slowly softened while his friend's voice, against all common sense, deepened even more, causing a soft rattling and shuddering to come from the surrounding stands. Everything began vibrating, including the railing. Greldo clenched his hand around it, his muscles bulging as he held the thick, long beam of metal that surrounded the stadium still. Some stupid little inanimate thing wasn't allowed to interrupt this.

  As the guitar sounds turned to an almost distant howling and Irwin's voice rose, Greldo closed his eyes again, his anticipation growing. He knew what would come now. Although nobody in the crowd did, they all seemed to sense something was coming as the silence remained.

  The thudding of the hammer on the card was drowned out by the voice as the sad but beautiful song continued for what seemed both too long and too short. Then, the howl of the guitar began to increase again, and Greldo picked up a whispered curse from the Guildmaster, followed by a hissed order.

  "Get ready, and don't let up!"

  Her words, only audible to the teachers around her and Greldo, were followed by a raging maelstrom of sound and pressure.

  Eyes closed, Greldo recalled this moment in time, reliving it.

  --

  Irwin was thrumming with soulforce, his face almost hurting from his grinning, and he felt elated as he slammed his hammer down. His second soulcard's resonance was so powerful it had drawn his first soulcard and his heartcard with it, and his entire soulscape was awash with a storm not unlike when a heartcard was transforming into a soulcard.

  The card he was working on, which had already been showing little to no resistance, seemed to be actively helping him, almost edging him on. It was also draining his soulscape at a rapid pace, and a tiny part of Irwin knew that he was lucky his soulforce lake was as massive as it was. If it hadn't been, he would have bottomed out by now, and he didn't need someone to tell him what the consequences of that were.

  As he sang the last part of the song, he recalled the last moment of the memory, when one of the Chaos Whales had hovered in the distant storm and let out a final bellow. His otherself, in all its gigantic size, was hovering above his soullake, slowly softening the song.

  Irwin felt the card finish, and he closed his eyes, letting out the final bellowing greeting.

  The silence that followed seemed absolute, and he slowly opened his eyes, staring at the diamond-bordered card hovering above the anvil. He gently grabbed it, seeing an image of storm clouds on it and sensing the pressure from the card.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  A hundred percent diamond card…

  He knew that he wouldn't be able to do the same thing again with anything but a card that resonated with his soulcards, not without Ambraz's help, but he also knew he'd gained something—a new perspective.

  If I visualize everything before I start, all the other steps come naturally.

  He looked at the card, his exuberance slowly fading as he stared at the anvil before him. It was cracked, with long tears running down the surface, and it seemed to have been forced into the thick stone layer. He couldn't recall having hit that hard, but he smirked.

  "And that's why you bond a Ganvil," he muttered, shaking his head and looking around, only to freeze in his movements for the second time that day.

  Thousands of eyes were trained on him, both from the massive crowd on the stands and from the smiths who had gathered in the smithing areas around him. Teachers stood between them, some with wide smiles, others with unhidden desire and jealousy.

  "Well then," a strained, slightly annoyed voice said.

  Irwin looked to the side and saw Guildmaster Joulihn staring there. Her metal hair had broken free from whatever had been holding it, tied together behind her head and dangling around her face. Her left eyelid was twitching oddly while naked curiosity filled her eyes.

  "As the Guildmaster of the Langost branch, let me be the first to congratulate you on joining the ranks of diamond smiths," she said. "Though, I would suggest that in the future, you keep yourself to the normal rules of these testing rounds!"

  The stands exploded with cheering, and Irwin looked around, somewhat startled, as he saw thousands of people he'd never seen before wave, smile, and cheer at him.

  So… I'm officially a first-rank diamond cardsmith, he thought, rubbing his neck as he thought back to the reforging he'd just done.

  He knew it had been somewhat of a fluke, a combination of a card that matched his soulcard so well and one that somehow made him relive the storm. Still, as he prodded his soulscape and himself, letting his soulforce sensitivity increase slightly, he knew that if he found another similar card, he could do something like it again. Not just that, he had the feeling that he would be able to reforge metal, fire, sound, and steam or storm-based cards up to diamond with little effort. If they were to become a hundred percent, it would likely depend on a lot of factors, but he knew he'd be able to succeed with time and effort.

  So… I wonder what I would need to do to become a second-rank diamond smith…

  The exuberant crowd continued until Mazzareth seemed to finally have had enough of the shouting and cheering.

  "Quiet," she roared, glaring at the crowd. The area she was looking at fell quiet instantly, but it took her two more shouts before everyone finally fell quiet again. She let out an angry harrumph before nodding at Guildmaster Joulihn.

  The Guildmaster cleared her throat, still staring at Irwin for a few more seconds before turning to the stands.

  "You can all call yourselves lucky for having witnessed a diamond-rank reveal," she said.

  "Lucky?" a voice called back, and Irwin schooled his face as he heard Ambraz's voice. "No luck, just pure skill!"

  Irwin looked up at the stands to see the people around his friends take a collective step back as if to get out of dodge. Rindiri was staring at Ambraz with a hand on her face, while Dagger and Youritz looked highly worried. Greldo merely grinned down as if there was nothing to worry about.

  "Right," Guildmaster Joulihn snapped as both her eyes began twitching. Before she could continue, Teacher Parka stepped in, a strained smile on her face.

  "Right!" she shouted, drawing everyone's attention from the Guildmaster, who looked ready to start shouting at Ambraz. "As a few smiths are still going through what they have gained-"

  Irwin blinked and looked around, immediately seeing two teachers who weren't with those surrounding him. They had remained at their designated workstations beside two cardsmiths who were sitting on their anvils, legs folded and eyes closed, a barrier around them.

  "-I will have to ask everyone to leave the stands quietly. Go outside and enjoy the rest of your day!"

  A slight moment of hesitation hung over the crowd, and then those closest to the doors began to slowly file out.

  The teachers and the other smiths remained where they stood, while Guildmaster Joulihn seemed to have regained her composure. Seeing her look at him, Irwin wondered what was going to happen next.

  It took ten minutes for the stands to empty, only Greldo and the others remaining behind. A small group of guards was moving towards them, seemingly intent on getting them to vacate the stands.

  "Leave them," Guildmaster Joulihn shouted, waving her hand at the guards.

  They bowed and quickly rushed back out.

  "Now…" Joulihn said, turning to Parka. "Did I notice correctly that he reforged the card up and sideways both from Emerald to Ruby and from Ruby to Diamond?"

  "Yes, M- Headmistress," Parka said. "And both reforges were perfect."

  Guildmaster Joulihn sighed, ignoring how Parka had almost used her first name in the presence of students. She turned to Irwin.

  "I presume there's nothing I can do to have you stay with us until the storm is done?"

  Irwin shook his head.

  "What if I tell you that with your current skill, you could get a paid trip to the outer regions of the central branches?" Joulihn asked.

  "Thank you for the offer, but I have other things to do," Irwin said.

  "Are you crazy?" Mazzarerth snapped. "Others would kill for the-"

  "Mazzarerth, enough," the Guildmaster said, her voice weary. She looked around. "Everyone but Parka, leave us." She hummed and looked at the two teachers still beside the two cardsmiths. "You two also stay, but change the barrier so you can't hear what happens outside."

  Both teachers quickly nodded, and Irwin sensed the soulforce around the barriers warp and change, turning opaque.

  "Headmaster…" Mazzareth muttered, wringing her hands.

  "Mazza, go and take care of the young ones," Headmaster Joulihn said. "I will talk with you later."

  Mazzareth looked like she wanted nothing but to stay, but she nodded, bowed, and followed the other teachers as they left.

  Only when they had left did Headmaster Joulihn turn to Irwin.

  "I know we just spoke about this, but I want to urge you to reconsider. I don't know what you need to do or why you would risk your safety. However, with your age, power, and skill, you have the most potential of any cardsmith from our branch in the last thousand years. If you head to the central branches, one of their large Guild Branches would be willing to spend astronomical amounts of resources to bring you up to a rank-three diamond smith."

  Irwin stared back, wondering what an astronomical amount of resources meant in the central branches. Did she mean things like Purperion, other similar special metals, and rare cards of hard-to-find types? Perhaps skills and training he couldn't get here?

  "What is the difference between the diamond ranks of cardsmiths?" he asked.

  Headmaster Joulihn waved at him. "You are currently at the first rank, having skipped the intermediate rank. To get to diamond-rank, which would be below rank one, you would need to be able to reforge any card into diamond-rank. Rank one means you must either reforge one card up to a hundred percent, reforge a card both up and sideways to diamond, or be able to reforge a card with which you have no soulcard affinity with up to diamond. To go from rank one to two, you will need to be able to do all three things, though not at the same time. So, if you can reforge a card that is of a type you have no affinity with to eighty percent diamond or better, you would be rank two. To become rank three, you need to be able to reforge a card that is opposite your own typings, again to diamond rank, but also above ninety percent. You will find that although there are a lot of diamond-ranked cardsmiths in the central branches, most never manage to get above rank two. Teacher Parka here has been stuck on that rank for over a hundred years now, as reforging a card at that point is… very difficult," Headmaster Joulihn said, her voice calm and collected.

  Parka grimaced but didn't voice any objections.

  Irwin quietly listened along as the Guildmaster spoke. When she finished, he wondered about something.

  "So, if I could reforge this card to diamond, I would become a rank-two diamond rank cardsmith?" he asked, taking the two emerald rank cards from his pocket and showing the odd sticky one.

  "Can you?" Headmaster Joulihn asked.

  Irwin hummed thoughtfully, looking at the card. It still felt odd, and he barely sensed any resonance between it and his soulscape, which, after what he'd done, was barely half-filled and only slowly refilling.

  "Probably, but not to a hundred percent," he said as he continued to examine the odd card.

  Parka let out a strangled grunt, her eyes seemingly rolling out of their sockets. Headmaster Joulihn just stared at him.

  "If I let you try, will you be causing another disturbance like before?" she asked, her eyes gleaming.

  Irwin thought for a moment, then hesitated as another idea came to him.

  "Not necessarily, but I would require a few hours to test something. Also, I need a bigger anvil."

  "Bigger? Why?" Parka asked, looking at him, then at the anvil. "Was it too small?"

  Irwin shook his head. "No, but I'll need to use everything I have for this, and that means a larger anvil and a few cards to test something out," he said, deciding that if he was going to practice reforging in his big shape, something he'd only done in his soulscape so far, having the Guildmaster of the Cardsmith Guild around to answer a few questions would be something he might never have available again.

  "So you can't do it right away?" Guildmaster Joulihn asked.

  Irwin hesitated again, then shook his head. If he was going to reforge the card in his hand, he already knew he'd not reach a hundred percent as he was. Knowing that, it would be best to use force when needed, and he knew exactly how he could use most of that. The chances of him reforging that card on his own to diamond were... slim in his current form.

  "I will give you two cards to test. After that, if you can reforge the adhering card up to diamond, I'll let you skip the first rank and promote you to a second-rank diamond smith."

  Parka seemed to be swaying on her feet, shaking her head in disbelief, muttering something in a guttural language Irwin had heard Boohm talk in on occasion.

  "Guildmaster," she whispered anxiously.

  Joulihn ignored her, removing two cards from her pocket and tossing them to Irwin.

  "How large do you need the anvil to be?"

  Irwin hummed, but before he could answer, a small shape flitted towards them from the stands.

  "Let me show you," Ambraz said, sounding excited.

  The Ganvil thudded on the empty stretch of ground between the working areas and the stands, growing within seconds to a massive size, at least fifteen feet high. As he stopped, he towered over all the people present.

  “What… the…” Parka croaked.

  Irwin could fully understand her reaction, but he was somewhat surprised when Guildmaster Joulihn showed barely any reaction and merely turned to Parka.

  "Get old Aboath's anvil over here. It should be roughly that size, and he won't be needing it anyway," she said, seemingly as calm as if she had asked for a drink.

  Parka stared at her, then at Ambraz, then back at her before nodding.

  "Yes, Guild Mistress," she muttered before turning into a blur of motion that vanished into the air.

  Irwin's eyebrows shot up as he saw her fly away at barely perceptible speeds.

  --

  Mei just stared at the anomaly before her, no longer capable of being surprised. She'd seen things like what he'd done before, but only when her own teachers had shown her. People twice her age! Having a smith that she considered barely more than a child perform something similar, even if it was with a card that matched his soulcard nearly perfectly, left her more rattled than she had been in hundreds of years.

  The only benefit was that she'd regained her outward composure and was too stunned inside to shout when he'd asked for a giant anvil. From what she'd heard from old man Seizer, Irwin had been a towering giant at some point during his battle, but she'd thought that had been something temporary.

  A few moments later, Parka returned, carrying an enormous anvil. It looked odd, the tiny being below the massive metal object, but Mei didn't react as the anvil was placed to the side. She probably couldn't even lift the thing herself, which was why she'd sent Parka.

  "Alright, you have two cards," she said, wondering if this was how her own master had felt when she'd become a third-rank diamond card at the age of two hundred.

  And I expected him to fail without his Ganvil…

  As the thought flitted through her mind, she felt a shiver run through her spine. If he could do this on his own, what the hell would happen if he had the help of that tool? She recalled the first times she'd seen Ganvils and her initial hope and curiosity. It had quickly been smashed as she'd seen how their bonded smiths had used them as a crutch to smash through ranks they didn't belong in, only to slow down and eventually get stuck due to a poor foundation in knowledge and skill.

  She watched as Irwin walked toward the anvil, and she wondered if she'd let her initial anger and aversion cloud her judgment.

  "Did you know he had a resizing form?" Parka whispered.

  Mei nodded. "Yes, but I didn't know-"

  Her voice faded as Irwin's form flashed, and his over seven-foot-tall form was replaced by a twenty-five-foot-tall giant version of himself. His clothes changed to a simple white tunic bound together at the waist by a metal chain.

  "I think it's a good thing you sent the rest away," Parka whispered.

  Mei nodded again, starting to feel like a bird that was bobbing its head up and down.

  I almost hope he won't manage, she thought, though she had the distinct impression she was going to see history being written as the first cardsmith not from the central branches officially move from ruby rank to rank-two diamond in a single day.

  Common = Quartz, Uncommon = Amethyst, Rare = Topaz, Very Rare = Emerald, Epic = Ruby, Legendary = Diamond, Mythical = Ammolite