My reckless attack doesn’t seem to bother the wounded bodyguard. If anything, he gives me a nod of respect when we return to camp. Gently tapping the fresh gauze on his shoulder, his eyes crinkle up when he smiles at me. That makes me feel far worse than if he’d been angry. My cheeks burn in shame whenever I catch his eyes on me, and I excuse myself from the evening campfire to gather up some stones to transmute into glass.

  Guilt drives me to work faster on creating a new flying golem to scout ahead. I need to find a Mender outpost so I can help the man heal up.

  To my surprise, Nicanor is the one who stops me before I even get halfway through the first rock. He crouches down next to me and clicks his tongue. “No Skill use without following the plan. You don’t have time to waste with half-measures.”

  “You trust the specialist that much?”

  Nicanor doesn’t hesitate. No consideration, no arranging his thoughts. His face lights up, blazing with excitement. “With my life. He’s guided me from a raw recruit to my current position. I’ve yet to meet anyone else with such a solid grasp on how the heavens assign gifts.”

  “Is that what bestows Skills on us? The heavens?” I ask, trying to keep the skepticism out of my tone.

  “No one knows. But it doesn’t hurt to be respectful,” the intimidating [Spear Commander] replies. He taps on a brown rock with red striations sitting next to me. “I know you can shift this to glass in a few seconds, but I want you to go slow. Activate all of the recommended grouped Skills together from now on. No [Vitrification] without the rest of them. Ever.”

  I gulp at the thought of how much mana I’ll waste, but I’ve committed to this course of action. Backing out now would make me seem weak-willed and double-minded. I firm up my conviction and pull up the list the Skills specialist sent me. [Artisanal Acuity] will do little to help until I’m creating the golem, but I can at least see how [Compositional Analysis] and [A Master’s Touch: Thirty Seconds of Greatness] will improve the process of [Vitrification]. Less clear is how [A Perfect Prototype] will assist the transformation. Only one way to find out.

  Power flows out of me in multiple threads as I start over, this time trying to think of my work not as [Vitrification], but as gaining deeper insight into understanding the way the world is put together. Holistic as that approach seems like it should be, the magic feels disjointed. I’m flailing around, like trying to pick up an object after growing a few extra hands.

  Now that’s a terrifying thought!

  Snorting in amusement at the mental image, I accidentally drop [A Perfect Prototype]. It wasn’t doing anything yet anyway, so it’s all too easy to let it go.

  My wince must have shown up on my face, because Nicanor shakes his head. “Throw out the entire batch and start over.”

  “You could tell I slipped up?”

  “Your scowl announced it more loudly than a bugle signaling a charge,” Nicanor replies with a chuckle.

  “Amusing,” I deadpan.

  Mischief sparkles in his eyes. “Happy to help, recruit.”

  Old me would have bitten back a snarky reply. Instead, I smile. “Any words of wisdom?”

  “Sink into your soul space. Focus only on the Skills on the list. Push them toward each other. Don’t try to activate the Skills as discrete parts, not even at the same time. You have to conceptualize that they’re one entity.”

  “That’s surprisingly helpful,” I say.

  Nicanor hurls his spear into the distance, then holds out his hand, posing heroically until the spear returns to his grasp with a rock impaled on the end of the blade. He tosses the new chunk of rock to me. “Don’t thank me yet. The resistance will be painful.”

  His grin almost makes me sigh, but I stifle that childish reaction and catch the gray rock. Time to get to work upgrading my Skills. If I haven’t combined them by the time we return home to Silaraon, I’ll be disappointed in myself.

  My first attempt goes precisely nowhere. The resistance isn’t painful, because I can’t get anything to budge. I flop on my rear in the dirt, my legs splayed out, and wrinkle my nose. “Feels like shoving a mountain.”

  “Push harder,” Nicanor says.

  “Helpful,” I mutter, but it’s probably sound advice, so I give it a shot. This time, I block out the world around me, reducing my Domain to just my core, and fall inward. A jolt of surprise hits me as I realize how much I trust Nicanor to keep watch. After relying on my Domain for so long, not being able to sense the world around me instantly ignites panic in my heart, but I know I’m in good hands.

  I block out distractions, focusing only on the five Skills that I want to use in concert. That might be a good way to think about it instead of just using them simultaneously and hoping they have some sort of crossover. Fundamentally, I have to change the way they interact.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I’m a conductor, a [Maestro], and the Skills are all playing a singular song. They have different parts to play, but they’re not accomplishing different goals. They’re coming together to create something more, something greater than individual sounds.

  Grinding cracks ring out, like a rockslide rumbling in the distance—like teeth shattering under a hammer’s blow, I think darkly. The Skills shift, creaking ominously as they slide toward each other. The spike of pain makes me stop shortly after I begin, but at least I have proof of concept now, imperceptible as the difference in distance between them might seem.

  Memories of combining the remains of my old Skills back in Scalpel’s laboratory burst into my mind. The experience was far different. Less pain, more a sense of intense wrongness. But I’ve done something similar before, and I’ll do it again, I tell myself sternly.

  And this time, I’ll cheat.

  [Legacy of the Scalpel] ignites, humming with power, and I move the Skills structures closer together. They shiver and screech, like a metal frame twisted out of true, but I hold the runic arrays in place with my Skill and clamp down harder.

  Warmth spills down my face, thicker than tears, and a distant part of my mind wonders if I’m bleeding. I can’t spare the energy to split my attention and confirm my suspicion, not when I can taste success on the tip of my tongue, so I press onward and ignore the building pain.

  Inch by excruciating inch, the Skills draw closer together, drawn along by the force of my will. Time fades away, seeming to lose its meaning as I haul on the invisible ropes tying me to all the crystalline structures of impossible fractals. Trembling with anticipation and agony, I flood my Skill with more mana, overloading [Legacy of the Scalpel] and forcing it to pull harder.

  Abruptly, the Skill sputters out. I yelp and fall out of my inner world. Arms pinwheeling as I fail to catch my balance, I crash backward, hinging from the hips, and smack my head on the dirt. It doesn’t hurt with my mana-reinforced body, but it does earn a snicker from Nicanor.

  “Shoulda warned you not to try to do it all in one night. Might take a few weeks.”

  “You said to push harder!”

  “And look how far you got.” Nicanor beams at me.

  I peek inside, although my senses feel raw and strained. “Two are touching. The other three are close.”

  “Never thought I’d envy a crafter’s talent, but here we are. Take a breather. We’ll do this again tomorrow while we run. Excellent work for your first time. Almost like you’ve done this before.”

  I ignore Nicanor’s probing question and stare at the pitted gray rock he threw at me earlier, marveling at the deep, smooth cut he pierced through the center with his spear. With a half-smile, I mentally raise my conductor’s baton and call forth the song of transformation.

  Only [Vitrification] and [Compositional Analysis] activate initially, though all five Skills soon blossom into music. Even so, it’s progress, and I can barely keep from trembling as my heart rate spikes and my blood thunders in my temples. Small steps tonight. I don’t want to undo my victory by pushing too hard and injuring myself. For now, I’ll take any win I can get. Next time, I’ll try to bring another Skill into the cluster. Then another. When I’ve recovered enough from the exhaustion, I’ll shove them all together and use them as one. Let’s hope that will be enough to allow them to combine.

  Eager as I am to try again, I know resting is the right choice. I shift my priorities from merging my Skills to my original task: recreating the glass falcon that I lost in our desperate struggle in Gilead a few months back.

  The glass feels right as it takes shape, like an old friend coming to visit. Working with all the Skills in each group simultaneously drains me more quickly than I thought possible, even with my upgraded Capacity, but it’s good practice. Ten minutes later, the golem blinks and tilts its head, regarding me with preternatural intelligence. Whatever spirit animates the thing feels both utterly foreign and a part of me all at once.

  “It’s like staring into a mirror and watching my reflection wink at me,” I mutter to myself. Unnerving. Reaching out along the connection between us with a pulse of mana brings me back to more familiar territory, and I shake off the feeling.

  The finished bird of prey gleams in the flickering light of the campfire when I walk back to rejoin the group. Avelina coos at it and holds out her arm. Falcon leaps over, alighting on a thick bracelet she’s taken to wearing just for this purpose.

  “Hey! Little traitor!”

  “Clearly, your creatures are smarter than you are and know how to win the favor of the best member of the team,” Avelina says, her smile growing wider as I make an exaggerated show of rolling my eyes at her.

  The [Honorbound Bodyguards] come over to take a look, murmuring to one another as they point out the sharp beak and realistic textures of the feathers. I preen almost as much as the falcon does at their praise.

  “All right, friend. Fly ahead and find a [Healer],” I instruct, speaking aloud for the benefit of the bodyguards.

  In a flash, it launches into the air, soaring aloft on outstretched wings, carried along by swirling mana flows visible only in my [Arcane Domain]. All the colors in the world glitter as it flies—a living prism refracting mana instead of light—and I gasp in excitement at the upgrade to its flight capabilities. Moments later, it’s gone, flying beyond the range of my Domain. I’ve never seen such a colorful display. My heart warms within me at the thought that I had a hand in creating something so beautiful.

  “We’ll let it search while we sleep. Maybe tomorrow it will find what we’re looking for, or the day after if we’re unlucky.”

  Cheers meet my announcement, and we all turn in for the night on a high note. Sleep overtakes me in a heartbeat as I succumb to exhaustion, and the next morning seems to arrive far too quickly.

  Of course, after my boasting, the glass falcon doesn’t find signs of civilization the next two days. To my chagrin, nearly a week passes before it sends back a garbled image of tents and stalls set up in haphazard rows.

  I’m not quite sure what we’ll find when we reach the bird’s current location, but I send instructions for it to hover high above the bazaar and wait for us. A gathering that large is sure to have a [Healer] or two.

  And even better, we should get a chance to sell some imbued glass and earn ourselves some spending money for the rest of the road, I consider as I rub my hands together in glee. Inns and taverns sound like a luxurious upgrade after all the nights sleeping in shallow caves to keep out the rain, or staring up at the stars from a hastily-collected bed of pine boughs for a little bit of comfort.

  We’ve been pushing too hard for me to create a [Sanctuary] at night, since Nicanor’s training has me scraping the dregs of my energy without fail. I’m all for building a strong body and a strong mind, but surely the doughty [Spear Commander] won’t begrudge us a little bit of luxury, right?

  Right . . .