The Celestial Forge

By: Schin Ka'Tharos

CHAPTER 20

(Part 2)

The next day I implemented my plan without complications. Due to the rich benefits gained for meditation and contemplation in the Room of Reflections I went upstairs upon waking and entered into my morning routine that grandfather had instilled into me. After a lengthy time of still meditation of pure emptying of self I shifted to kata’s while trying to hold onto my emptied state. I focused solely on my body and its movements and became lost in the dance of the martial art. The room's odd qualities induced an almost trance-like state causing me to feel as if I was suspended in a void where nothing existed except my movement and connection to my physical self. My body was starting to feel like it was its old self and I was thankful the healing process was going so smoothly. I became lost in the flow and went far beyond my normal routine and stopped only when my body demanded a break.

Eventually I shifted to forging and while I often would combine the two practices of katas and forging that morning I needed to focus on my soulcore. When I entered into soul-forging and checked my soulcore I detected only faint traces left of cinder. The Red Lunar Drop was a miracle worker. I had only a fleeting moment of disappointment that I had yet to open my fifth flowline since being able to soul-forge while sleeping would have certainly completely purged me of the cinder already. Still, with the remaining Red Lunar Drop flowing within me I managed to finish burning off the remaining cinder leaving my soulcore pure once more.

Which brought me one step closer to being able to open my next flowline.

I went down to the workshop and began working at the first station. The previous day I had arranged and ordered all of the parts of the mask to prep the station for work. I was eager to see if this mask was what I thought it was. None of the disassembled parts were severely damaged and all were in fairly good condition despite a worn down state. This was fortunate since I wanted to avoid any tampering or heavy crafting type spell-forging with only one flowline open. I needed all five flowlines to really craft-forge properly but I also needed the boon of the mask.

The various pieces were simple yet elegant and I marveled at the deft expertise that went into crafting the mask. Assembling the parts required some minor forging as I linked the pieces together but it was well within the scope of what grandfather had taught me. Once assembled I ran some preliminary diagnostics through a simple spell-forging technique grandfather had called Pattern Sense and was pleased to find some functionality. I would need to service the mask constantly and would need to do some major work once I reached Disciple rank in order to get the full capabilities out of the mask but I was happy with a semi-functional item.

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I held up the completely constructed half-mask and stared into the joyless and menacing visage. The image before me reminded me of a story of the Ghost King that grandfather would tell me in my youth. Grandfather had always described the haunting figure with a dark cold mask hidden under a cowl and my young mind had always pictured something very similar to what I now held. The dark metal of the mask was cold and heavy in my hands.

The Ghost King mask it was.

I bit my lip and let a trickle of blood flow down out of my mouth. Finally I lifted the hollow face up to cover my own and pulled the temporary straps that I had added around my head. I would be able to remove the straps once my second flowline was open. The mask was designed to seal to the wearer through essence contact and once my skin flowline was open it would adhere to me without any need of straps. While the seal wasn't perfect with merely the straps the mask still came to life once it contacted my blood and celestial essence flowed into it.

My breathing was instantly labored and I felt like I was breathing in a dense fog. It took a few seconds to divert my attention from the difficulty of breathing to the noticeable difference in inflow of essence. The Ghost King had a two-fold effect. It was both enhancing the density of essence from the air by pulling the essence in more efficiently while also decreasing the density of oxygen in the air. It both thins and thickens each breath at the same time.

My excitement rose at the confirmation of my suspicions along with my incredulity of the increasing difficulty of using the mask. I pushed essence through my first flowline of my lungs and circulatory system as effectively and efficiently as I could but I was quickly overwhelmed. The taxation was too intense and I had to rip the mask off after only a few minutes. The mask would provide exponential increased benefits in both physical and forging training but it would also make it exponentially more difficult.

This was exactly what I needed to achieve my goals.

I spent the rest of the day simply sitting and breathing with the mask on for as long as I could manage before taking small breaks for meditation or contemplation. I still needed to get a better grasp on just how much my efficiency in soul-forging essence would increase with the mask on but with a pure soulcore, enhanced training, and Red Lunar Drops I had a clear and immediate path to opening my second flowline and reaching 2nd Apprentice.

Next Chapter...

Chapter 20 (Part 3)