Dellen lost track of how many times he lost control in the chair. He sat with Electrical Aether coursing through his body, pathways drinking it in, eyes shining like beacons, skin glowing like embers in a forge.

The power flowing through him compressed into lines, a storm of change rippled out from his Spark Core. There was a disquieting sensation of organs moving within him. Fern-shaped scars spread on his skin; he felt a branching network of lines rising from under this collar up his neck.

Electrical Aether flowed from his Spark Core and gathered in his hands; this was familiar. His breath caught in his throat, and he gritted his teeth, bracing himself for the transformation that was about to take place. The iron cuffs at his wrists dissolved into gas, and flooded into his body.

The change began at the tips of his fingers, a tingling sensation that grew into a pulsing ache of fire and pain, Aether and iron assaulted his body. He could feel the very structure of his bones shifting and changing, threads of organic material replaced by dense, unyielding iron, woven within him, like lace. It hurt, but he found himself unable to cry out, pain rendering him mute in the chair.

As the transformation continued, the pain gave way to a strange sense of power that radiated from his hands and arms. The Aether swirled beneath his skin, its electric charge effecting a new storm of change, causing his flesh to take on a hard-to-see sheen. Traces of iron threaded through his skin, strengthening it, its appearance almost indistinguishable from unforged flesh, yet with new strength and resilience.

The pulsing ache in his bones stopped just past his elbows, as did the swirl of energy beneath his skin.

Dellen felt Electrical Aether circulating through his hands and forearms, almost without interference from him. The newly formed steelskin and iron-laced bones acted as conductors, focusing his Aether.

The sensation was both thrilling and disorienting, a strange mix of the familiar and the alien. Dellen flexed his new hands and forearms, his aetherforged limbs, feeling the iron bones and steelskin move with a fluidity that belied their inorganic nature.

“You can stop the flow.” He said, almost as an afterthought. His channels could now handle the flow running through him with ease.

Tristan flipped the switch.

Dellen sat in the middle of the room, smoke rising from his clothes. “Did I pass?”

The Aetheric Cultivators stared at him, and as one sank to the floor.

“We shouldn’t have done that.” Said Tristan.

“Isn’t this exactly what you do here?” Dellen said.

“Look at your neck!”

Dellen felt the burn. “It’s a fair price to pay for forging.”

They looked at him agog, mouths hanging open. “You forged yourself?”

“With the lights coming from your eyes and skin, they shouldn’t have missed that,” Gilgamesh said.

Dellen waggled his fingers, “Right here.”

“This, this.” Tristan began. “This is unprecedented, this is madness. No one forges themselves their first time in an affinity chamber.” He shook his head in an expression of negation. “No one has ever forged themselves their first time in an affinity chamber. It cannot be done.”

“I would argue to the contrary,” Dellen said.

Gilgamesh whirred in the air, nearby and invisible to all but Dellen. “That was madness.”

“So, have I proven myself to your order? Do you think I’ll be worthy to peruse your library?” He stood and saw that, unnoticed in the chaos, one of his collars had burned off, leaving behind an ash stain on the fabric.

Tristan stared at Dellen again. “Aurelia, please escort him to a library. I need to… seek guidance.”

Dellen articulated his fingers. He could feel a difference. His hands were steelskin over steel again, or well, low-grade steelskin over bones that were slightly less fragile than those of the unforged, an improvement. Sensation still ran through them as he ran them over fabric, perhaps even more so, they just weren’t as breakable. He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He’d taken the first of many steps to reclaiming what he once was.

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“Aurelia is it?” He said, looking at the lady in front of him. She looked at him with not quite fear, but hesitancy, like she didn’t quite know what he was.

“Lord Northcote?” She said.

“You can call me Dellen.”

“What’s it like?”

“Forging?”

“Yes, I’ve been pursuing forging myself for three years.”

Dellen considered his words. “Painful, exhilarating.” He looked her in the eyes. “Satisfying.”

“How did you do it?”

“Ah, I wouldn’t recommend my technique to, well, anyone, really. Extreme risk, extreme reward. There were any number of times when, if I’d lost control, the Aether would have consumed me.”

Aurelia nodded. “We’re always warned about the risks, it’s just that… You made it look so easy.”

Fingers on the burn on his throat, Dellen smiled, “It wasn’t easy, but I’m glad I did it. There was a time or two when I thought it might overwhelm me.” Dellen smiled again, more for himself than for her, “But I think I got lucky. Now, weren’t we talking about a library?”

“Oh! Yes.” Aurelia looked visibly more comfortable with this line of discussion. “Absolutely, right this way.”

Together they left the laboratory and Aurelia took him through a series of sterile-looking hallways, with the walk interrupted by one extraordinarily loud bang that shook a wall to their right. “Nothing to worry about.” She said. The hallways led to a plain door adorned with a single small round window, and circular handle that had to be spun open. Once open, the door was revealed to be a span of steel as thick as Dellen’s clenched fists. On the other side was a walkway open to the sky.

Stepping onto the walkway, Dellen took in a moment to gaze down at Copperopolis. He felt like he could see it ever so slightly better than before. He glanced up at Gilgamesh who hung over his shoulder, a silent ghost.

Aurelia led them over the walkway to a door that was no more than half as sturdy, and a great deal more ornate. It would have been more at home on the Northcote estate than aboard this floating hulk of ships and purposes.

Inside the ship, every surface was covered in a rich, dark wood, polished to a high sheen.

“This seems luxurious for an airship. Are there many spaces like this?”

“Oh no, but some of the elders like this. Right this way now.” She said, opening another door revealing a three-storey room filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

Dellen looked around, this was what he needed.

“Who are you, and why are you in my library?” The words came out more as a strident attack than a query. “Is that ash on your collar? If you leave a single mark on any of my tomes I will personally have you thrown off of this airship and impaled upon the sharpest spire beneath us.”

“Master Corthos.” Aurelia hurried to say. “This is Lord Northcote, Lord Northcote just… passed… an affinity test conducted by Tristan.”

Master Corthos was tall, and narrow, with a face like the blade of a hatchet, and a nose that could cut trails in the air, a pair of intense, emerald eyes locked onto Dellen and Aurelia, like an owl inspecting its future meal. “An affinity test? Bah, all that is very well, but it doesn’t clean ash off of my books.”

Dellen waited a moment to be sure that the assault of words had come to an end. “I can assure you Master Corthos, I will leave every page unblemished, unsullied, and unharmed.”

Master Corthos gave an unsatisfied harumph.

“I’m just here to try and learn a thing or two about the pursuit of the Aetheric Arts.”

“That, at least, is a worthy course of study. Though I don’t know about you nobles, dabbling in the shallow waters of a subject and thinking that makes you better than the common man.”

“Perhaps I would like to learn more than a thing or two. Could you perhaps point me at a shelf or section that would help me better understand how to better use my Electrical Aether?”

“First of all young man, it is not your Electrical Aether. Your fundamental misunderstanding of this puts the paucity of your scholarship on full display. You draw Electrical Aether from the air around us.”

Dellen knew this, but he didn’t think Master Corthos would take well to being interrupted, and judging by the scope of the library, he was going to need help finding anything useful amongst this ocean of information.

“At best, you may be considered to have borrowed the Aether, but as you use it, it shall continue on, returned from whence it came.”

Dellen hid a frown. Something about that explanation seemed off to him.

Gilgamesh was not so subdued. “Wrong.” He said with a snort.

Dellen buried a smirk behind a serious expression. “Thank you for instructing me Master Corthos. What texts would you recommend that I first study in order to remedy the deficits in my understanding?”

Master Corthos gave another unsatisfied harumph but led Dellen and Aurelia to a section that looked no different than any other part of the library, and certainly wasn’t marred by anything as pedestrian or mundane as labels or any attempt at cataloging.

In an aside whisper Dellen said to Gilgamesh, “Try to make yourself useful and see if you can spot any spines that might be worth reading.”

A book was thrust into the space in front of Dellen. ‘The Rudiments of Handling Aetheric Flow’ he read. “Thank you, I’m sure this will be most instructive.”

“Master Corthos.” Aurelia began, “Lord Northcote actually.”

Dellen held up a hand in an attempt to politely interrupt her. “I’m sure that Master Corthos needn’t find me another title, I will endeavour to understand its contents.” He turned to Master Corthos. “If I have questions upon my return, I hope you will allow me to trespass on your good nature and point me in the direction of additional material that might further my studies.”

Master Corthos cut the air with a side-to-side swing of his nose. “Books do not leave my library.”

“I see,” Dellen said, setting his teeth into a fixed smile. “Is there perhaps an armchair that I can make use of?”