Storm clouds gathered overhead, swirling as the humidity in the air ticked up a little at a time. Every raindrop held a pattern of Chac. Supreme, the pattern yelled: winds that sweep away huts, waves that devour ships, and lightning that strikes the soul.

A storm was a welcome distraction to eat, far better than our troubling news. There was something in the village radiating chi. It wasn’t a spirit; I only knew it thanks to old subroutines built into the puppet programming. I copied and dabbled with that kind of virtual intelligence, nothing more.

Alarms pinged off my cube, warning of something outside our dimension.

An anchor had been dropped in a hut, and I had no idea how it happened. I had no concrete idea but plenty of guesses. At this point, it didn’t matter how there was no stopping it.

Preparation was the key to turning circumstance into luck instead of misfortune, so I ate as many as five men, added an extra meal, and trained.

There was a way to reach Chi gathering faster. It was simple: All I needed to do was add mass. I threw back 12 raw eggs and ate a mouthful of coconut oil deep-fried fish. Tiny pin bones crunched between my teeth. I also needed the calcium for my bones.

I considered myself officially in wartime preparation mode. With no clue what I was dealing with, I could only build and race forward. An invisible clock was counting down.

A lightning bolt struck a tree, exploding, showering wood chunks everywhere. Thunder made a horse jolt and jerk on his halter. I wiped my face, tossed my leaf-wrapped natural treasure in the air, and caught it while the puppets worked to put the horse pasture together. No, we weren’t putting down roots here and building a village—not that I was opposed, but I had an idea.

In the sand, I meticulously drew a few diagrams of natural treasures. Each was numbered by element, the number of spiritrons on its axis, and its mass. These were the critical components of my idea, the foundation of my plan.

When I reached the chi gathering and after the celebratory orgy, I was going to get drunk, really drunk. I picked up a coconut, gripped it in both hands and tore it in half. The meat made an excellent dessert. I shoveled handfuls in my mouth.

All I could do was set a foundation, allocate resources, and delegate command of my growing workforce. We needed a blacksmith in the chi gathering yesterday. I planned to scout out the younger boys for someone to begin teaching the cultivation side of things. During my early years in the sect, I was taught the basics, and we were tested to see where our talents lay.

To move forward, I needed a periodic table, reaction table, and numerous other useful charts. If I could mathematically balance my mortal weapon with the natural treasure and predict its reactions, I could build a predictable recipe for upgrading weapons.

I wasn’t a smith, and no man was an island. Manipulating chi was out of my reach, so I had to use seals. Those were the same seals the puppets carved into their posts to isolate the horse pasture from the spirits and feed nature chi to the plants in the area.

Another experiment was underway, something I hadn’t planned to implement. It was as dangerous as it was lucrative.

Unlike cultivators, natural chi seamlessly molded to an animal. Their cultivation was somewhat smoother, if even bloodier, than cultivators'. They were also mostly bound to a single planet or plane until they reached a high enough level. For cultivators, anything below the core realm was given a grade F to S. After the core, there was an elemental spirit, earthbound immortals, Earthly Gods, and Void Titans. Anything after S was something I read about.

Unlike with cultivation, the knowledge of spirit beasts was widespread. Any creature with a little green tint to its chi was considered a spirit beast. Demons typically had layers of black and red to their chi. As a seal expert, my forte was modifying my environment to get the best result. So I felt my spirit water for its element, spiritron count, and mass, adding it to a table. After trying to balance it, I realized my mistake immediately. Yin and Yang weren’t accounted for, and I erased my chart before writing a new one from scratch.

My spirit-inert sword didn’t bother the calculations much, only adding a little yang and mass to the formula from the metal, which completely messed up the balance. I needed something to counter the metal that was also spiritually inert for my seal to have any hope of working. The five-element cycle wasn’t the be-all and end-all, but it was a great outline to go by, even if some parts of it were wrong.

Having more natural treasures wouldn’t help. I knew enough about what I was doing to get into trouble. I tossed the natural treasure in my hand again and caught it. Fire wasn’t smothered by water; it was believed to be smothered by water. Wet tinder didn’t light, and so we believed water was the antithesis of fire. What kills a star isn’t water; it’s the iron sinking into its core.

I stared at my simple mortal rapier and understood that what I needed to contain the power of the natural treasure was the rapier. Steel had no problem subduing fire. It required a metal yang component to balance the yin flames.

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Adding spiritual energy to metal wasn’t easy, and yang is power without form, while yin is form without power. So, to thread this needle, I needed to empower my weapon with lots of raw energy. In other words, I strapped a seal on it, filled it with raw power with no purpose, and then sealed the natural treasure with metal power.

That felt like it would work. All I had to do was try it.

…

“What are we doing?” Venus asked me.

The other girls looked out the heavily reinforced and sealed window as the puppets placed the sword in the blood-soaked ritual circle. A trench between circles would hopefully deliver the finished product to a circle between the others with stabilizing seals plastered all over it. We were in a small wooden hut fit for 20 people while the final preparations were finished.

“I don’t want to be too close if it explodes,” I said.

“We should not be anywhere near it then,” Venus said.

All six girls looked at me expectantly. “If it fails, it won’t be violent. The sword may crack, and I must get another one.” I said.

They looked around the room and then back at me. Venus, the smallest one, had taken to cutting the hem of her dress to her knees. She loved showing off her glistening ebony legs, freshly rubbed with coconut oil.

My blood boiled, and a feeling welled in my gut. Want raw and radiating crawled through me as I struggled to hold myself back.

I glared out of the window as a biting fly slammed into my face, and I caught it out of the air. That was a bad sign, so maybe I shouldn’t bother with this. My girls looked at me expectantly. I bit my lip and tried not to think about it. All three circles lit up with a carefully placed final drop of chemical X.

This wasn’t really sealing anymore; I was using alchemy, artificing, and smithing. Each was a sin in its own way, not because I wasn’t trained but because I knew I was trained poorly in them. I had so much catching up to do in those fields if I wanted to build a foundation for others to rise from.

I wrote my findings in a separate journal, even as my diary took my doubts.

Light blazed from the center as a metal lump appeared. What was once my sword was now a piece of metal containing the full power of the natural treasure. I stared at Venus’s oiled knees and sighed. I had work to do.

This was going to take a firmer hand.

…

I used to watch Forged in Fire, but those memories were hazy compared to my short-lived apprenticeship with a smith. After numerous tries, I understood that lump form was the shape because the yin chi was in the natural treasure. It was formed into a heart-chapped lump, and so my sword was warped into a similar approximation. That was the extent of what I understood.

Jorje de Rodrigez was a good kid. He ran and fetched me charcoal when the puppets were busy and didn’t complain much when I showed him where to hammer. The kid asked no questions and was likely a spy for one of the captains or Cortes himself. On land surrounded by my puppet army, which was growing by the day, I felt rather safe to be a bit freer with my nature.

“Get the spirit water,” I said

Every pound of the hammer held my will to see the blade complete. As it turned out, Smithing was more about images and will than hammering. My former teacher in the Thunder Eagle sect most likely had only taught me the basics to build my stamina. I felt drained at my latest attempt to make a proper weapon.

Sweat beaded down my face after I repeatedly hit the metal into form. A new guard from the same metal and a pommel carved from a spirit-water-submerged stump wrapped in leather would complete the blade. Then, I would have to sharpen it carefully, careful not to burn my hands on the occasional spurts of flame.

“You mean holy water? Did Fray Juarez bless it?”

“No, bring it here. I need to quench.” I yelled.

The boy jumped to get the job done. I dipped the blade and felt some of the chi from the water soak into it as it quenched. Every moment I held it, hot steam blasted my hands as the rapier’s flames evaporated the water. They didn’t fear the ocean’s depths, something I caused with my desire to contain the natural treasure in steel.

I grabbed my cup of spirit water and drank greedily, the skin on my hands sizzling even through gloves and thongs.

“Remember, it's not about how hard you hammer the metal; it's about what you see it becoming when you’re done,” I said.

“Are you going to be alright, sir?” Jorje said.

I placed the cooled blade in some clamps as my hands healed. 8% was a considerable number. I was almost at the first level of body tempering. Only 2% more, and I would get there. The blade didn’t resist me sliding its guard on but fought the clamps when I started hammering it. A terrible screech sound filled the small smithy, and the boy covered his ears.

“Master Atom, what’s going on? Is it demon-possessed?”

“No, it doesn’t like getting dressed, is all. She is a stubborn girl but a tomboy.” I said.

The rapier only stopped when the pommel was fully on. I watched the sword rattle in its clamp as I wrapped leather around it before tying it off. I grasped the handle and slowly lifted it out of the clamps. The sword jerked, attempting to pull itself out of my hand. I smacked it against the anvil, and it rattled before bursting with flames.

Jorje ran for it while I smacked the blade on the anvil again. The flames sputtered out as I flipped the weapon and sat it back in its clamps. With a wet stone in hand, I began the back-breaking process of sharpening it.

I stared at the sword in my hand. We had been waiting for our scouts to return for days. The men moved fast, especially the puppets that worked day and night. We had the makings of a small town already. Chac had already struck down four men by lightning, adding them to the number of puppets that was slowly rising every day despite the spirits' attempts to possess them.

We were in the Yucatan with no legal right of conquest with a hostile tribe not far away.

“What are you going to call it?” The boy asked.

“La Ceniza would be a good name for a tomboy like her,” I said.

I held up my rapier and gave the body a look at the small orange to its fiery edge. A tiny ember sat at the tip of my weapon, hungry to burn even as it pierced.

A runner shot in. “You have orders from Cortes to mount up and meet the emissaries from the Tobasco tribe. Geronimo de Aguilar is already translating, and I heard the tribe is giving us some of their women.” The man swallowed. “We might have two to one-man slaves to carry our gear.”

I stepped out to a line of puppets on standby awaiting orders. They would remain ready for anything I asked day or night so long as there was chi to continue maintaining their seals. Fortunately, with the malevolent heavenly blasting us with its pressure, chi wouldn’t ever run dry.

With that thought, I decided to make plans for the eventuality that the malevolent heavenly disappeared.

I made my way to the center of camp La Ceniza sheathed at my hip. The rapier wanted to pierce through bodies and slash flesh, leaving burning wounds behind. It was a remarkable weapon for my meager talents.

Like monsters, weapons followed the F—S system until they reached core grade and beyond. My blade was an F+ spirit weapon. That was nothing to be ashamed of; it could only improve, after all. Spirit weapons could only grow stronger by absorbing natural treasures or by their owners using them. Regardless of the consequences, I could feel its desire to slash and stab until it rose through the ranks.

Rain pelted the sand, and La Ceniza felt hungry for battle. Thunder erupted like the pounding of war drums as I joined the group for our official meeting with the chief of the Tobasco tribe.

I turned my attention to the oddest thing in view. A stallion was at full mast, sniffing the ground and folding its lips back while turning its head to search. Every time the stallion jerked, I heard a tiny crack in the wood. Little flecks of green so small I might have imagined them twinkling in its body.

The parasites and common predators were blind around my puppets. Enough of them created a shroud protecting the animals in our care.

Some of the men had small amounts of chi in their systems. I may have added some spirit water as stock in a soup once or twice. If they snuck off, the predators would get them. That worked as spy protection.

None of the men had spoken up about seeing things, which was good.

My attention moved to a column of men moving through the woods, with a group of teen girls among them. None of my puppets were among them, which was good. I doubted speaking of Christ would help them blend well among the Yucatec.