Lady Neria’s airship was halfway between Reyldaren’s Scar and Ostanor Proper, on her way to meet with Lord Four, when a steppehawk approached the airship. It targeted Mr. Besseau, the wizard she had brought along for this express purpose. When Three caught the bird with a claw of green blood and hauled it back toward the ship, she plucked a pouch off its talons.

A message.

She unfolded a thin sheet of parchment. Someone had scrawled the note down fast and folded it without letting the ink dry. It was barely legible, and nowhere near company standards, but when she read it, she understood why.

Raid began three hours after noon. Two wizards searched the ship, inflicted minor hull damage and toppled the mainmast, then flew away. We are returning to Weavehome for repairs.

Control Dagger missing. Lost or stolen. Will report when know more.

—Captain Tolliris.

Lady Neria rubbed her forehead. The Embercore had known about the dagger, and he’d gone right for it. Either he had it, or it was at the bottom of the ocean, and he was moving in on her army. No matter which option, she had to take action.

“Three?” she asked. She stood in her office near the stern of her airship.

“Yes, my lady?”

“Can you or Lord Two make this vessel travel any faster? We need to head south, now.”

“To the Weavehome facility?”

“Correct.”

“We will work something out, my lady.” He dipped his head and marched away.

When he reached the stairs, Lady Neria said, “And one more thing.”

Three stopped halfway up the stairs. “Yes?”

“Mr. Besseau did not inform me that he had let the Embercore know what had happened. We will not need to accept any more messages, and his uses have run out. Remove the extra weight.”

“Yes, my lady.”

As Three disappeared, Lady Neria ripped the letter to shreds and threw it down to the floor.

Even without the army of Weavelings, she wouldn’t be out of options—she had backup plan upon backup plan—but it would throw a wrench in her workings. She couldn’t have that happen.

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The engraving equipment was unlike any other tool Pirin had used before. The chisel had a hollow core to store Ichor-ink. Thin, tiny rune-lines ran all around the tip, and when Pirin fuelled them, they congealed the ink components of the Ichor-ink, keeping it firm and in-place.

The hammer was only necessary to keep the needle moving. He tapped the back of the needle gently, and it left slight, shallow marks when it brushed past his skin.

It would have shredded a normal man’s flesh and just made a bloody mess, but Pirin’s enhanced body could take it. Instead of shredding, the chisel carved a clean line across his skin, and it deposited a dribble of Ichor-ink in place. It congealed at the command of the runes and held in place—just long enough for Pirin to trigger the healing of his enhanced body.

Since it was just a surface cut, he could patch it up in a matter of hours if he concentrated and pushed Essence directly to the skin he was engraving. A thin layer of skin covered over the Ichor-ink, locking it in place like it was a normal tattoo. Only, it was much wider, like someone had used a calligraphy brush to paint beneath his skin.

Pirin and Myraden still sat in the cargo hold with their Familiars. Myraden had already started. She was silent, with her tongue squished between her teeth and staring at her handiwork as she crafted it. Nomad watched over them, making sure they didn’t make mistakes.

But Pirin wouldn’t fall behind.

He started with his left leg, where he scripted the patterns and ancient threads onto his skin. They were the ones that spoke of birds and wind. He wrote them in straight lines, mirroring the orderly, clean Essence channels of his gnatsnapper Essence form. The flowed straight and carried the Essence without causing any instabilities.

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The chiselling process only left a faint sting and tingle. Gray said nothing—she knew better than to be a distraction during such an important process—but she still shifted and squirmed.

“It’s not that bad,” Pirin had muttered once.

It feels weird! Gray exclaimed. Just weird! Like ants crawling under your skin or fleas in your feathers!

Pirin hadn’t been getting that sensation, but he could sorta understand where she got it. “Just focus on the warm, soothing sensation of the healing.”

Alright, alright.

They hadn’t spoken since, and now Pirin had progressed to his upper thigh. “What if I make a mistake?” he asked Nomad.

“You’ll have to live with it,” Nomad answered. “It cannot be undone. At best, it will cause problems with your cycling patterns, making minor blockages and such. At worst…I don’t reckon there’s any need to worry you.”

Pirin was starting to understand why specialized runesmiths usually did this. He couldn’t lift the needle even once, now. It had to form a continuous and cohesive line all around the body—at least, for most wizards. An ultimate test of endurance.

By afternoon, he had worked up the side of his body and finished the coremark. The Ichor-ink was warm on his skin, and it had a sweet smell, like intense honey. Whenever he needed to refill the chisel, he held it in place, still half-embedded in his skin, and used his free hand to scoop more out of the barrel and pour it in.

Beneath the markings, his channels felt even more solid, more real. He figured if he pressed down on them, it’d feel like taking his own pulse, but he didn’t have a free hand to spare. When his Essence passed beneath the runes, it surged faster and moved through the channels with less resistance. When it cycled back to his core, it was slightly purer.

After he completed the coremark, his core stopped trembling and vibrating for a few seconds. It was almost like he had veiled it, but it still radiated energy and an aura…just in a more contained way, like he’d wrapped a blanket around it instead of shrouding it in a brick wall.

When he completed the advancement, though, that blanket would be necessary for holding his core together.

From the coremark, he dragged rune-lines out to the left side, then bent them up and across his chest.

Then came the hard part: his arm. He couldn’t hold the chisel and the hammer at the same time, not when he needed to reach lower than his shoulder. He only had one hand to work with.

But he had control over the wind. He cycled gnatsnapper Essence in a small loop beneath where he needed the chisel to hover. The air responded, creating a vortex that held the chisel in place while he hammered it. He etched a line of runes all the way down to his hand, and even pushed into the coating of cloudy tendrils.

When he had chiselled three lines up and down his arm and returned to his shoulder, it was nighttime. He cut off his technique of gnatsnapper Essence and grabbed the chisel with his hands again to draw a swooping mantle across his chest—it would be the boundary between bird and lightning scripts.

When he reached the other side, he formed swirling, winding patterns of rune-lines. He didn’t like the idea of them being purposefully unstable and broken up, but it was a necessary embodiment of his Embercore.

So, against common knowledge and wisdom of forming runebonds, he lifted the chisel every so often, breaking the rune line. The channels below didn’t immediately destabilize. He had formed the rest of the runes almost perfectly, and the edges were still clean and precise. He didn’t break any of the individual runes in the sacred sutras; he just separated the lines at acceptable intervals.

Nomad knew what Pirin was doing. They had discussed this beforehand, and decided that this was the best course of action to embody the instabilities of the Embercore.

But he still couldn’t take breaks. If the skin healed over before he started the next rune, he ran the risk of breaking what he’d written before—and that would be too much instability, even for him.

He made broken loops and halos of runes around his arm, then traced back up to his shoulder. With both arms complete, the neck was next. On the left side of his face, he drew rigid lines up to his eye, like he was crying golden tears. On the right side, he drew circles and broken, intertwining halos. They met on his forehead, forming a miniature, condensed version of the coremark.

This one was the soulmark. It wasn’t as important as the coremark, nor as prominent—just a thin, single circle of runes with a single line joining it on each side. It joined the soul with the rest of the spiritual system and allowed him to draw more on willpower to cycle Essence.

With his neck and head complete, it left the hardest part—his back. He couldn’t reach all the way around, let alone see.

And, now that the daylight had faded, they had to rely only on lanternlight.

“Alright,” Nomad said with a yawn. “It seems you two have it under control. I’m heading off for my night watch, but if you need anything…well, I would say holler, but I’ll probably sense a problem as it arises anyway.”

Pirin held his chisel in place at the top of his left shoulder, unsure of how to proceed and unwilling to potentially ruin the straight lines of the gnatsnapper side of him. He glanced around. Gray had tucked into her nest and held her wings over her head, as if trying to block out a sound, and Kythen had curled up in a corner on his bedding. They were trying to sleep.

It was better that way. If they slept, they could at least lend their wizards some non-exhaustion to last them though the night.

Myraden sat nearby, and she seemed in a similar predicament—with no way of etching the rune-lines onto her back.

“Do you trust me?” Pirin asked.

“What do you mean?” She was holding her own chisel in place on her shoulder.

“I’ll finish the runes on your back, if you return the favour when I’m done,” he said.

“You would trust me to…finish yours? Your marks are those of a king, and only your own hands or those of a master runesmith are worthy.”

Pirin raised his eyebrows. He looked down at the rune lines along her legs. They ran straight for a bit, then whirled around like snowflakes, then went straight again. Each rune was lithe, but the edges were straight and the corners were perfect. She’d spent extraordinary effort perfecting the coremark.

“Myra, I wouldn’t want anyone else’s help,” he said. “You’ve done an excellent job so far.” He looked her directly in the eyes. “But that wasn’t the question.”