With a heave, Lindle dropped the mammoth tusk onto his worktable. He eyed the couple hundred pounds of ivory. With Aura and his Str stat, it wasn’t anything more than slightly uncomfortable to lug the weight around, though as his Str started to lag behind his classes primary stats he wondered if he’d need to start thinking up solutions to deal with equipment weight issues in the future.

  Either way, the entire tusk was above his limit for the amount of Pelos he could manipulate, but after his constant crafting and his Res stat reaching 18, he could handle its density. The solution then, was that he simply had to break off another piece of the tusk. He didn’t have a Str buff from his feat this time, but he did have tools and time to work at it, so after a few minutes of sawing, he had a much more manageable tip of the tusk to work with.

  He held it out to Nothing for verification. They had a much more mathematically precise understanding of Lindle’s limits, and Lindle wanted to eke out as much power as he could from the tusk.

  It looks good. You have the other pieces ready?

  Lindle nodded. He patted a canine skull lying on his table. Despite being far weaker in almost every way than the mammoth tusk, Lindle had felt it was important to remember that the mammoth had lost to the skeleton pack, not the other way around. There was valuable inspiration there he would use when plucking aspects from its Ethos for fusion. That wasn’t all however, he wasn’t just using two sources of Ethos for this artifact, he was going to use three. Untying a sack next to the skull, Lindle revealed a zmey heart.

  All the pieces of the zmey he had killed months ago that he deemed valuable had been nearly used up over time, but he had saved the heart, and he had gotten an idea that made him feel using it now was a worthwhile expenditure.

  That’s a lot of Ethos to be working on all at once. Still going to keep what exactly it is you’re making a surprise?

  “Yep,” Lindle replied, “You knowing what it is in advance so you can give me advice through it would defeat a bit of the point of this being a test. You'll be too busy yourself to talk me through finishing you after all.” He put in a slightly joking tone in his voice. Lindle had thought the idea of a test of his Ethos control while crafting before Nothing allowed him to finish their body a bit silly at first, like he was back in lessons, but he did realize it was a good idea after some thought.

  Fair enough. You can’t blame me for wanting to be sure though. You mess it up, well… Bad things happening is an understatement.

  The homunculus shivered anxiously at the thought, curling up from their spot in the fireplace. Lindle tried to reassure them with a smile. “Don’t worry, I understand. Just watch, if this doesn’t convince you I can do this, nothing will.” He winked, and the homunculus nonverbally sent him groans and exasperation.

  Lindle cracked his fingers and examined all three objects, all of them swirling with Ethos under the gaze of his feat, then he activated [Artifice Crafting]. He harvested the tusk first, leaving the glob of Pelos unmodified as he harvested the skull and then the heart next. He had an order in mind for the best way to make this work, so he placed the heart’s Pelos in the fire with Nothing. Just like fire kept Nothing’s unfinished form stable, flame would keep Pelos stable while he wasn’t manipulating it with his skill.

  He then activated [Ethos Ignition], blue flames flaring into being over his hands and melting the two chunks of Pelos before he brought them together, massaging them together. As his hands worked, Lindle began working on his chosen aspects. The mammoth’s tusk was the core of his planned artifact. He brought its primal aspects of strength and power to the forefront, alongside the undead aspect it had gained on its first death. The most difficult aspect to call upon was a very specific part of the aspect’s identity as a mammoth, its trumpeting call he had heard while it fought the undead pack. Isolating it into a single aspect apart from everything else took time, but he eventually managed it.

  The skull was simpler in comparison, but he pulled a similar trick in isolating a specific piece of the canine aspect, its identity as a pack animal. Apart from that, he didn’t promote any other aspects aside from its general undead aspect. From both the tusk and the skeleton, he didn’t use any aspects of their undead species, zombie or skeleton. Thalia hadn’t displayed any interest in controlling minions yet, so using them would be a waste. He allowed the two undead aspects to fuse into greater prominence without change while he took the pack aspect and inserted it into the tusk's pelos.

  Once he was satisfied all the desired aspects had solidified, he reached back and retrieved the heart Pelos. It melted in his grip while Nothing backed away, both of them careful not to let the unfinished homunculus touch him while his skills were in effect.

  He added the heart’s pelos to the combined mass and massaged once more. In the heart’s Ethos, he felt around for the right aspects. Madam Holly had told him about dragons during their training sessions. The intelligent ones tended to be arrogant beyond reproach, but almost all true dragons, no matter the species, had powerful abilities that tended to allow them to back up their arrogance. One of the most famous of them was Dragon Fear, an unnatural dread placed into the hearts and minds of foes by a dragon's presence. Even the zmey, one of the lowest of dragons, had this heritage, and as Lindle delved into the draconic aspect of the heart, he found it, drawing it to the surface.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  From the zmey heart, Lindle plucked another more familiar aspect of frost. He didn’t attempt to modify it much compared to when he crafted Frostgreed. In actuality, Lindle was attempting to replicate how he had promoted frost as he had when he made Frostgreed and its copies, wanting the aspects to be as similar as possible.

  He gathered all the disparate aspects into a single mass of Pelos, listing them, they seemed like a gathering of random ideas. Undeath, Primal Power, Mammoth Trumpet, Pack, Dragon Fear, and Frost. That was, until Lindle began fusing them together.

  The order would be important, so Lindle closed his eyes and concentrated. First, he took Dragon Fear and Undeath, fusing them together. Shivers ran down his back as he mentally verbalized the concept as the wails of the dead. Then Lindle took that fused aspect, and melted it into Mammoth Trumpet, infusing the effect to the cause. Lindle then combined together Pack and Primal Power, fusing the White Mammoth’s immense strength with the power of a pack working in concert. Lindle didn’t melt this dual-fused aspect to the triple-fused aspect however, instead, he took Frost, and used it as a bridge between the two, connecting it to both, but not allowing them to merge together. That aspect would be infused with both ideas, adding a deadly chill to the trumpet’s identity, and adding the power of cold to the pack.

  Minutes passed as Lindle worked, visualizing his intent harder than he had ever done before, finding thematic bridges and identifying shared ideas between various aspects. Convincing each aspect to allow the other to influence their behavior, and solidifying the Ethos’s identity into a multifaceted but ultimately straightforward idea, allow them to achieve a unified result. Lindle had no idea how long he had spent in his own little mental world, but when he emerged from it, his hands had already started forming the artifact's physical shape, his own mental idea of his final creation reinforced so many times in his head that he had begun molding the Pelos unconsciously. He deactivated [Ethos Ignition] and got to work.

  It wasn’t a very complex one, in fact, it would resemble the tusk it had started as, but it had a key difference. He had taken the curved piece of ivory and had hollowed it out. He was, after all, making a warhorn. Most warhorns were made out of horns, not tusks, but it hardly took a large leap of the imagination to make the switch. He carved intricate symbols along its length, imagery of skulls and claws hunting a great mammoth, and he formed banding and a hand strap to be made out of dragon leather, and a mouthpiece he imagined as bone white and cold to the touch.

  Eventually, Lindle beheld the finished form in his hand, and with a deep breath, he triggered the final part of [Artifice Crafting].

  With an exhausted sigh of victory, Lindle leaned back and held up his newest and greatest creation in triumph. He admired it for a few moments. He hadn’t really appreciated art much before, but after a while, he had found it easier to put more of himself into his creations when he put effort into their physical forms and not just their special effects. He had no proof, but he got the feeling that they were all the stronger for it.

  He held it out for Nothing to look over. They put a tendril to the horn and their expression, inscrutable to anybody except him due to their connection, shifted to surprise.

  Large boost? Drastic? Artifacts don’t use wording like that unless their effects are really powerful. And those two effects, honestly I wouldn’t expect a single artifact to do both of those things unless it was Journeyman tier.

  Nothing leaned closer, no doubt inspecting the internal work Lindle had done on the Ethos now. They had much better senses for inspecting his finished artifacts than Lindle had.

  I see. And let me guess, the temperature effects are to pair with Frostgreed?

  Lindle grinned and nodded. They tilted their head and pulled their tendril away.

  And to top it off, the effect was so powerful that it needed a cooldown. I hadn’t expected you to make a cooldown artifact for a long time.

  They shook their head, disbelief clear over their bond, but overshadowing it was a clear note of pride.

  This is something I wouldn’t expect from the most talented apprentice I had ever met Lindle. Whatever doubts I had, they’re gone now. You're more than ready to finish my body.

  Nothing sent him a mental smile, waiting for Lindle to respond for several seconds before a look of confusion overtook them.

  Lindle?

  They looked away from the artifact to see Lindle slumped over his desk, fast asleep once his mental exhaustion had knocked him out cold.

  Ah. Well, I should let him sleep I suppose.

  They peered up to see the piles of black dust covering the rest of the desk. Then they looked down to see the already full waste bin overflowing with more black dust.

  Now… how am I going to clean this up?