Chervin tinkered under the blasting heat of the crucible and silently cursed his master’s indulgence.

He was a journeyman of the Arjou jewelers guild, the most powerful and influential guild of its kind in the universe. He had proven himself repeatedly in contests against the other junior artisans, and received great acclaim. His master was the vice-chair of the whole guild, and called Chervin the most talented apprentice he had ever taught.

The masterpiece of an Arjou guild artisan was already expected to be exceptional. But Chervin’s needed to be truly extraordinary, something sublime. Something revolutionary.

Chervin spent three years designing it and another four putting it together, even as he took on other contracts to meet guild regulations. It took him two of those years just to source and acquire all of the materials. But it was nearly done.

His masterpiece fit in the palm of his hand. The base was a slab of hornblende, the bottom chased with stainless steel to avoid scratches. After shaping and polishing, he drilled one hundred and eight miniscule holes into the surface, each a sixteenth of an inch deep.

He crafted one hundred and eight fixtures, with a malachite base imitating soil and chrysoberyl threads knitted at a near microscopic level to resemble blades of grass. Into thirty-six of those, he further added taller stalks woven from strands of emeralds, topped with leaves and petals made from chips of ruby, sapphire, topaz, and amber carved and inscribed with realistic plant textures. Each of these turf pieces was fitted individually into the base.

Then came the difficult part. While the preceding steps were lengthy and taxing, they held no terror for a jeweler of Chervin’s skill. It was just a matter of time. No, the real challenge was the centerpiece.

Even finding the base matter had been so difficult that he had almost written off the entire project multiple times, but after two years of searching, with the entire guild’s influence behind him, he finally located it.

A single chunk of clear, glassy zoisite; valuable, but not uncommon in the guild. The size, approximately as long as his thumb and three-quarters as wide, made it rather smaller than many in the guild vaults. Even its rare night blue hue wasn’t unheard of, and would normally make it the centerpiece of a crown, or especially valuable necklace.

But this one was special. It had awakened a spirit.

The human soul was composed of three parts: the appetitive, the reflective, and the transcendent. The animal soul was merely the appetitive portion. Other forms of life, except in unusual circumstances, possessed even less than that, only a miniscule scrap of spirit as fragile as a dandelion seed. The mineral soul was even less, no more than a spark of the primordial elements. But sometimes, rarely, oxen could reflect upon themselves. Sometimes trees moved with an animal purpose. And sometimes, so very rarely, a stone could perceive.

Chervin was confident there was no other stone quite like this one anywhere in the universe. The fact that the guild even located it was a sign of incredible divine favor, and that he was permitted to use it in his masterpiece was a sign of even more incredible mortal favor.

So he cut and polished it with more care than he had put into any piece before. He loved it more than the actual child he left back on Fleur. He whispered to it before going to bed at night. He kept it in a fitted felt-lined box when he wasn’t working on it, right next to his heart.

The final result was a prancing blue bunny rabbit, and you would never believe it wasn’t alive. More than that, Chervin was convinced that its spirit had taken shape to match its form. The fragmentary spirit in the gem perceived the world as a rabbit would. He saw it prancing around in his dreams. If there was ever so magnificent, so excessive, so ostentatious a masterpiece in the history of the craft, Chervin could not imagine it.

He could have been done with his masterpiece six months ago. His master approved it, and all that remained was the casing and setting. Such tasks were left to the goldsmiths, and the chief artisan of Arjou’s sister goldsmithing guild had even volunteered his services personally.

Chervin refused.

This was his masterpiece, his baby, and he would do everything from start to finish. Nobody else would take even a lick of credit for it.

After all, it was just goldsmithing.

Both guilds erupted in controversy, but his master, his dear, permissive, sweet, and indulgent master, stood by his side. The very greatest jewelers have always resided in Fleur, he said, but the peak of goldsmithing has always been in Vintal. So Chervin packed up his bags and masterpiece with the utmost care and set out across the depths of space toward the planet Vintal, to the great and powerful city of Anthusa. There he resided with a renowned master goldsmith and would learn the craft to his satisfaction before completing the masterpiece.

He had just finished shaping a mineral soul. How hard could it be?

Very hard, as it turned out. Chervin had assumed working with a single material would be a piece of cake, but was quickly dazzled by the array of grades, colors, and qualities by which gold was classified. His goldsmithing grimoire, kindly loaned from the sister guild’s chief artisan with helpful notes in the margins, mocked his presumption at every turn.

But Chervin wasn’t the bright future of the Arjou guild for nothing. He memorized the book, margins and all, while still en route to Vintal, and arrived at the home of his instructor in excellent spirits, ready to prove his worth.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Which was when he discovered that both his master and the chief artisan had played a cruel trick on him. Neither indulgent nor gracious, they had assigned him to learn under a hairy lout of a man whose tongue had crawled out of a midden.

This fellow, Benicio Cecchini, was not the greatest goldsmith on Vintal, or even in Anthusa. He wasn’t the chief of his guild. He was just a smith, whose day to day income came from contracts like Chervin’s own, and had never taught an apprentice before. Supposedly, he had recently competed for a big commission from House Gulphay. Rather than losing the contest, Chervin thought the man never stood a chance of winning.

Yet this barbarian worked him to the bone, standing him in front of the crucible until he developed actual godforsaken burns. Somehow it was supposed to build character.

But worst of all, his unforgivable sin, was that he confiscated Chervin’s masterpiece the moment he arrived, and toyed with it in front of him like it was a common trinket. Those brute hands with thick, clumsy fingers were practically groping his dearest masterpiece while he was forced to stand and watch gold melt.

It was on just such a day, nearly two months since he arrived in Anthusa, that Chervin was standing at the crucible, stripped to the waist, with the edges of his finely oiled mustache halfway singed off, while Benicio played a most aggravating tune on the flute. It would have never occurred to him that those sausage fingers could play, but there it was, mocking him.

Prompted by nothing Chervin could imagine, the music stopped. Benicio got up, walked over to the crucible, and gave Chervin a mighty smack on the head.

He knew better than to ask why by now. The smith would spare no time in telling him.

“You are distracted.”

“Then perhaps you could leave off the blasted flute.”

Another smack.

“If I do not play you forget I am here. Start slacking.”

His command of the Fleur tongue was crude, but undeniably precise.

“Perhaps I would be better motivated if I knew what I was working towards, master. I’ve hardly done anything but melt the material repeatedly. What, pray tell, am I supposed to be learning?”

Benicio regarded him coolly. No smack. That was good progress.

“Fine. Melt, cool, and form. Inscribed sheet, sixteenth-inch thickness.”

That was more than Chervin had been allowed to do since the day he’d arrived. He took to the task with zeal, melting the gold to textbook consistency, letting it cool evenly, and drawing out a ladleful of the charge onto the forge table. Even as it was cooling, he worked with speed, using long draws of his sharp tools and sweeping motions of the ladle to create a repeating pattern, like a fern leaf. Textbook. Perfect.

“Garbage.”

Chervin threw his tools to the ground.

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do? Show me!”

No smack. Benicio didn’t even move or twitch. He suddenly appeared a great deal scarier than before.

But the smith just rolled back his sleeves and stepped toward the crucible.

“That thing,” he said, pointing to Chervin’s masterpiece, “is good. It has… beauty. It reaches toward perfection.”

Chervin was prepared to respond with a smug comment. Then Benicio stuck his whole hand in the molten gold.

“But your smithing does not. It is not ambitious. It is content with itself. Mediocre.”

The master goldsmith took the glowing-hot metal in the cup of his hand and dribbled it onto the forge table. He spread it with those barbaric sausage fingers, and lightning arced across them and the churning metal. Not only was he not being burned, it was like the gold didn’t want to burn him. He was applying spiritual energy directly, without tools as intermediaries, shaping the metal with his raw will.

In a few moments it had cooled. The sheet was of an irregular shape, but the patterns inscribed upon it… they were beautiful. Sublime, even, in a way that Chervin had never thought gold could be. It wasn’t something he could fully explain, but his soul leapt upon seeing it.

“To elevate the soul. This is the purpose of our art.” He turned, wild-eyed. “Whoever sees my greatest work shall ascend to heaven.”

Chervin fell out of his reverie, trying to parse Benicio’s words. Surely his skill with the Fleur language was just a bit rusty and he misspoke.

But the look in those hard eyes told Chervin he hadn’t misspoken, and wasn’t speaking metaphorically either. Benicio Cecchino wanted to create art so beautiful that whoever saw it would immediately ascend to heaven. It was a ridiculous, possibly heretical goal. Yet hadn’t his soul leapt on seeing even this simple, hasty performance? Next to this ambition, Chervin was just making a gaudier, more expensive tchotchke.

“Your master did not send you here to learn goldsmithing. I do not have apprentices. I do not teach. I would not teach you.”

That last part hurt more than Chervin would ever care to admit, after seeing Benicio’s true skill.

“He thinks you need to learn humility. He is wrong. You need to learn ambition.”

That great, heavy hand came to rest on the young jeweler’s shoulders, and he flinched, almost expecting them to burn him.

“I understand, master.”

“I trust that you do.”

He fished the masterpiece from his coat pocket and tossed it to Chervin, who caught it with jittering fingers.

“Do not place so much value in small things. It is-”

The bells of Anthusa rang out.

It couldn’t have been more than half an hour past six. They kept ringing. It was an alarm.

The two men raced toward the balcony. The streets below were a muttering chaos as people filtered out of their homes and raced toward the nearest church. From above, Benicio spotted a familiar face and yelled out in quick Vintal.

“Andolini, what is happening?”

The older laborer turned and doffed his cap, even as he was being jostled from all directions and moving with the crowd. Chervin could only make out some of the words above the tremendous din.

“Master Benicio, the Holy City! The demon sultan, great evil, prince Maximilian! A dark cloud, ill fortune!

Benicio dove back into the house, and a few moments later returned with a heavy pack and several sacks tied to his belt. With a great heave, he leapt off the balcony and shot up two stories in a single bound. Chervin could clearly see that this man had cultivated his entire body, not merely his hands.

“Chervin! Stay inside my quarters, they are safe.”

Before he could even ask what his master was doing, he was already out of sight, leaping across the rooftops of Anthusa.