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He wouldn’t go so far to say that their efforts had been worthless. It had taken Arwin more time than he’d thought to get used to actually working with Reya’s power. He’d thought it would have been just as easy to work with as Lillia’s, but apparently not everyone’s magic functioned the same.

That made a certain amount of sense in hindsight. It still hadn’t stopped Arwin from spending nearly an hour just finding out how to direct Reya’s power without completely losing his grip on it.

And that had just been the first step. They’d had to pause for a short while so Reya could recover her strength before they got back to work — and then the hard bit had started.

There was a subtle but painfully important difference between using someone else’s magic to empower himself and trying to put their power directly into an item. Arwin had done the former several times together with Lillia.

It worked great at empowering an item and establishing a better connection between it and its intended wielder, but that wasn’t his goal right now.

Arwin was looking to imprint Reya’s soul upon the metal. He needed more than just the magic. He needed what made that magic up to be preserved. And, unfortunately for him, that bit was painfully fragile. He couldn’t control Reya’s magic with his own without accidentally crushing it down into pure energy that would give her a stronger connection to the item but fail to imprint her soul upon it.

No matter what Arwin tried, Reya’s magic did not just go right into metal like his did. Even when he completely gave up on all the more advanced techniques he’d learned in recent times and just tried letting the Mesh do everything so he just get something to start from, her magic still stubbornly refused to enter anything on its own.

There was something fundamentally wrong about his approach. He continued to tweak it. Arwin tried different strategies, brought in different techniques and approaches. He let Reya take the hammer while guiding her blows. He tried getting the Infernal Armory to bond with her — it refused — and he tried several Dwarven Smithing strategies.

The most promising of them was synchronizing his song with the metal before Reya worked on it, but that failed to solve the problem. The next attempt involved trying to hear both Reya and the metal’s song, but that too met in failure.

Reya didn’t have a song. As best as he could tell, that was because she wasn’t a hunk of metal or some form of component. The songs could only synchronize when he was actually putting something into the metal, and it wasn’t like Arwin was actually taking her soul out of her body.

After another try failed to provide them with any results, both Arwin and Reya flopped down on the ground to gather their magical energy again. Reya absentmindedly fed the Infernal Armory scraps she’d taken from Lillia’s kitchen while they both recuperated.

Arwin’s fingers drummed against the ground as he thought.

Maybe I need to find some form of carrier for Reya’s soul? Like a middleman that I can get Reya’s soul to imprint onto, then pass that on as a component to the piece of equipment I’m trying to make?

The idea seemed promising. Making Reya’s soul into some form of item would likely give him more ways to connect with it. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the faintest clue as to what could possibly contain a soul.

Well, I do have a few ideas, but none of them are particularly fun for the host and they’re definitely not something I’m looking to get into learning how to make right now. I’ll leave phylacteries to the liches. Twelve didn’t need anything like that as far as I could tell.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Arwin blew out a long breath. It was the most promising idea he’d had so far. Synchronizing the songs of all his components was probably the best way he could approach this problem, and he couldn’t do that if he didn’t actually have a song to work with on Reya’s end.

He refused to believe there wasn’t one, which just meant he had to find a way to get it. If her soul wouldn’t give him one normally, he’d have to find a new angle.

Arwin wasn’t too concerned about that. He’d ruled out a lot of possibilities and learned a lot about how to work with someone else’s magic in the hours of work. Progress wasn’t always about hitting the right note on the first try. Removing a bunch of wrong ones until only the good remained was just as viable of a strategy — especially when one was flying blind.

Hm. Maybe that’s another part of the problem. Lillia was right. I try too hard to do everything on my own. Maybe Reya and I don’t have to be flying blind here.

“You know what?” Arwin muttered under his breath.

“You’re hungry?” Reya guessed.

“I — no. Not really.” Arwin blinked. “Sorry. Have I kept you in here for too long? How long has it been?”

“Six hours,” the Infernal Armory provided, its voice audible only to Arwin’s ears.

“Not that long. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I can keep—” Her stomach grumbled. Reya’s cheeks reddened and she continued, “going.”

“Right,” Arwin said dryly. He braced his palms against his knees and rose to his feet before holding a hand out to Reya. “Time for a break. Up we go. You’re getting dinner.” ṝ

She accepted his offer and let him pull her to her feet. “Thanks. I was low on magic anyway I guess… but don’t worry. I’ll be back right after. We’re going to get this figured out.”

“We are,” Arwin agreed. “But don’t lose sleep over this. I’m not trying to grind you into dirt testing my theories. You can always rest and we can try again—”

“No,” Reya said firmly, fists tightening at her sides, features as serious as Arwin had ever seen them. “I can do this, Arwin. I don’t need more breaks than you do. I’m not a baby. This will help everyone if we can figure it out.”

Arwin opened his mouth. Reya’s eyes narrowed.

“And don’t say I shouldn’t push myself so hard,” she added. “You’re doing the same shit. I’m not a child. I can make my own decisions. If you can do this, then I can to.”

“Actually, I was just going to say you should bring some extra food from Lillia to help you recover your strength faster. This isn’t going to be easy.”

Reya blinked. “Oh. Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

“Take an hour or two off,” Arwin said. “Recover and see if you can think of anything we can try.”

“I’ll be ready before that. You don’t have to delay so long. We don’t have that much time to waste. Who knows when the tournament can start, and you need this for Olive and her team, right?”

“I do, but I think I’ve come to realize that there might be better ways to find a solution than bashing our head against the wall incessantly for hours on end to no avail. This isn’t just about delaying. I’m diversifying.”

“You’re what, now?”

“Asking someone who might know a whole lot more about messing with specialized equipment and fancy enchantments than I do,” Arwin replied with a smile.

Reya blinked. Then realization washed over her features.

“Esmerelda?”

“I — yes, actually, but how did you guess that? Why didn’t you say Wallace? He’s the one that actually knows smithing.”

“Because messing with souls is definitely on the creepy side,” Reya replied in a matter-of-fact tone. “There’s no way a goody dwarf like him would be an expert on finding ways to stuff somebody’s path to eternal life into a metal bar.”

Hold on. We all know she makes potions and the like, but I swear we never told everyone that Esmerelda knows about or sells cursed items. Did everyone else just know she sold cursed stuff already?

Arwin pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a pained sigh. “I’ve already told you, this isn’t going to actually consume your soul. Just think of it like using your soul as a mold. At least, that’s my running theory. I don’t actually know how it works… but we’ll find a different solution if this actually involves leaving your body a husk.”

“You think you’re going to get a different solution from Esmerelda? She’s going to say you have to pickle me.”

“Oh, come on. She’s not that bad.”

Reya squinted at him. “Probably not. But still — No pickling.”

“No pickling,” Arwin promised. “Now go get some dinner while I track Esmerelda down. Meet me back here in an hour. If Esmerelda can give me any good ideas, we’ll try those. If not… well, we can just get back to it as we were. There are always more things to try.”

Reya gave him a sharp salute before darting out of the Infernal Armory.

Arwin wasn’t sure how she still had the energy to do that. That thought made him wince. He was starting to sound old.

I’m only a few years Reya’s senior. This is bad. I’m going to start going gray at this rate.

Shaking his head, he ambled out of the armory and headed for the small shack down the street in search of Esmerelda.

If there was anyone that could help him figure out how to smack any part of a soul into a weapon, it was the batshit crazy old lady.