Natasha had picked the first, and simplest, flying contraption Archibald had abandoned. He had simply taken a rowboat and added flight runes to its hull. The construct was dusty, and half buried by a number of other prototypes that had been stored inside of it. When she took stock of what she had, she found that one of the Enchanted Oars had snapped, and would need to be replaced. The boat was made from beechwood, and Keith had set off to find some, as he had plenty of connections even if it wasn’t peak trading season yet.

She had gotten to work on affixing the pendulum to the rowboat. It hung from the bottom of one of the bench seats, and she was just testing its balance by pulling the boat’s supports away. It seemed to her to be more stable than a boat normally would be in water, but then again she hadn’t gone boating since Master Cole had taken her for her eighteenth birthday. That had been shortly before he’d taken Tommen on as a full time apprentice, and after he had convinced her that it was for the best to go do her journeymanship under his old master.

Unlike her apprenticeship under Master Cole, Master Archibald had told her he was gonna start her out with extreme freedom, and as she found her passion he would help her focus on turning it into an area of expertise. She had already been planning to do artifice, but from the stories Master Cole had told her, she had feared he wouldn’t be interested in her more practical applications. That couldn’t be farther from the truth, as her passion for projects seemed to infect him, pushing her to try greater and greater leaps. Flight had been her long term dream, always having loved anything that soared through the sky.

~~~

Not more than two hours into the trip, the Soulsteel had pointed out a wyvern to Cole. It seemed to have taken a cow from some poor rancher. Such a thing was not unheard of, and they rarely went after humans. People called them “skysharks” sometimes, but while sharks were a normal animal, wyvern were most definitely monsters.

He had called for the carriage to stop, as he needed to cast an illusion over the cart incase it was looking for more prey. However, as he exited and then tried to weave dark mana into a Disguise Presence, he found that the structure was being torn apart as fast as he could put it together. Pulling out his managlass, he saw the Soulsteel was channeling a ludicrous amount of light mana in its right arm.

It wasn’t a second after that the strange spell released, the supercharged mana seemingly just disappearing in a second. It wasn’t until he saw the wyvern had dropped the cow that he realized it had just drawn first blood.

“Tommen, get back in the Stagecoach. Coachman, Take him off into the grass away from the wyvern.”

“Yes milord.”

“But master, what about-.”

“Get in the carriage Tommen, I’ve killed one bigger than this before.”

“But that was with Master Archibald.”

“Yes, and now I've got the Soulsteel. Hurry up and get out of range.”

“If you’d just let me practice real spells I could be helping!”

Tommen had only been learning magic for six months, and Cole had forbidden him from trying any spells that could backfire, as almost all combat spells could. He didn’t regret it, as it was considered the height of folly for novice mages to start real combat before they finished their first year of apprenticeship.

Unlike the Soulsteel’s light mana attack, Cole’s Earth Lance needed to lead its target. This meant he didn’t fire his spell off until just as it was bearing down on the Soulsteel. It seemed to be unafraid of the giant winged monster about to bite it in half. The spell made contact with the creature’s tough, mana resistant scales, and while it did peirce, there was little power left to actually damage the monster’s neck.

The Soulsteel had formed a weapon of some kind, but he couldn’t make out what as the wyvern slammed itself into the ground where it had been bracing. Soulsteel was highly resistant to physical attacks, but it wouldn’t stand a chance if the wyvern took back off while holding it. As he prepared another spell, the wyvern didn’t take flight, instead spasming weakly before falling limp.

He held another Earthen Lance above his head as he approached the motionless wyvern. Taking a second, he saw it was one of the worst that he personally could have encountered, a brown scaled greater wyvern. When he’d told Tommen he'd killed a bigger one before, it turns out he had been lying.

One of the Soulsteels arms was just visible under the dragon’s torso, the ground having been churned up when it struck. He had started to entertain the idea of trying to dig it out when the whole wyvern started moving.

~~~

I hadn’t spent any of my time trying to design myself a combat form. The closest I had was the armor I was now, but I had no weapons, and certainly nothing that could reach the dragon flying towards us. I was going to have to try some things on the fly, and the first mana to hand was my white mana.

Its elastic properties seemed perfect for slinging a projectile, so I took a couple strands, hooked my finger around their midpoint, and then pulled them back like I’d done with rubber bands back in grade school. I stretched the mana out until I could hardly look at it, the mana was shining brilliantly with all the energy it now contained. I lined my arm and thumb up to the dragon, I hoped this would hit. I don’t think mana has air resistance, and if it's like light it should have a negligible travel time. Just point, and shoot.

My light band must have hurt, as the thing dropped the cow it was holding. I took just a moment to pray the cow was already dead, but had to focus back on the dragon as it started diving. It was gaining speed, and at this rate I wouldn’t be able to hit it again before it got behind the trees. I readied another blast just in case, but my focus was now on what to do when it got down here. If it could breathe fire, I would need a shield. A spiked one. If not, I would need some kind of polearm.

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Something more complex than a simple spear, as while it was likely to peirce, it would easily come back out, and it wouldn’t do a lot of damage. As it disappeared below the treeline, I kept the blast ready. I glanced to check on the wizard and the kid, and while the kid and the wagon were a distance away, the wizard had stayed with me. He had his own spell prepared, but it also seemed far more complex than mine. Brown and green mana concentrated in his hands.

I turned back to the forest just in time to see it come rocketing straight for me. I let the light mana lose, and this time I could see the impact it had. The second the light mana disappeared from my arm, a blister formed on its chest. It didn’t seem to be trying to breathe fire, but it was closing extremely fast. I planted my feet, and then the pommel of my new halberd just as it brought its mouth down to snap at me. The Wizard’s spell caught it by the base of the neck, but its momentum carried it onto my halberd, and then me. I could only guess as to where its heart might be, but as I clove though its scales, and then flesh, I could feel just how much mana this thing possessed. Complex mixtures I had yet to discover seemed to almost tease at me.

I figured a little extra energy couldn’t hurt, but while the mana in its scales resisted my pull, the gentle stream through the halberd's tip turned into a raging river. Its crash had slammed my body almost completely flat, so when it briefly tried to stand up my weapon’s barb and spike were the only thing that kept it on the ground. It stiffened up as I kept draining more if it’s mana, and as I reached over double the mana I’d had in me when the fight started, I felt so strong I felt I could lift the whole thing off me with one hand.

The electric feeling had never been this powerful, and I was drowning in it. As the dragon seemed to finally run out of mana, I struggled to dominate it all. Rushing to disassemble it all into forms I was used to handling, except one kind that seemed almost too familiar. The mana was the same as my excess mass when I tried to shrink myself. I focused on calming the rest of my new mana from leaking out at any second, as I didn’t need to keep the new mass mana as mana, and the puddle I was now promptly grew. I started turning myself back into armor, starting from a gauntlet and one of my boots that hadn't been crushed flat. I simply kicked the dragon off of me.

~~~

The Soulsteel was the only thing not covered in blood. It seemed unable to stick to the silvery surface as the Soulsteel shifted the wyvern’s chest off of itself. Cole hadn’t seen a cleaner wyvern kill. A single thrust, straight into its heart. The strike seemed to have drained all the mana the creature had. Living Metal and especially Soulsteel were legendary for their lethality against anything magical, but Cole had all but forgotten this with how it had been acting.

As the blood began to boil away, and the flesh started to do the same, he figured it was a waste to lose out on the normally valuable reagents. However, the almost pristine wyvern leather would more than make up for the cost. Tommen caught him from behind with a surprise hug.

“Master Cole, is it dead?”

“Yes Tommen.”

“And the Soulsteel?”

“Tommen, Soulsteel can eat a wyvern for breakfast. Just give him some space. He’s never taken in this much mana at once.”

“Is he still getting taller?”

~~~

Archibald had spent most of his life trying to push the frontiers of magical knowledge. He was one of the rare few wizards that managed to keep himself multidisciplinal, and while it had suited him just fine in his younger years, he was getting worried he might not live long enough to see the fruits of his discoveries. This was why he had pushed so hard for Cole to send him Natasha, as she had already formed multiple ideas on how to apply his life’s work.

She was currently focused on direct applications of his artifice, but he tried to guide her to the deeper meaning of things she might be overlooking in her youthful zeal. While Cole had written a simple, formal letter telling him he was bringing Virgin Soulsteel to the capital for him to appraise, his excitement had been measured. He had originally figured it would make a good companion for Natasha, but that was before Natasha brought him the designs she had received from Tommen. When she had tried to jump straight into applying it for flight, he had forced her to pace herself.

Since he’d sent her away, he couldn’t stop chucking to himself. Tommen couldn’t have made these designs, and Cole wasn’t interested enough in Artifice. The diviner Baron Rawphor employed was also unlikely to have made them, and seeing the portrait of the Soulsteel Tommen had sent with the designs made him certain. There were no labradors in Kruthburg after all, Rawphor kept only bloodhounds as hunting dogs.

~~~

Duke Drake was busy these days. Reports of a blight in Hendrik’s Crossing, Pressure from both the Kingdom and Cordillera’s Gap, and while the “demon king” that had popped up in Harvale had managed to get himself lynched before causing any real problems, things just didn’t seem to be setting him up success, especially with how long and harsh this winter was going to be.

When he met with his court mages, The headmage Archibald had finally brought him some good news. Soulsteel had fallen in the Greenwood, not skysteel like had originally been predicted. He told him to make sure Mage Cole made a full report when he was settled in, as one of the biggest reasons he had been having so much trouble dealing with Queen Edith and Petty King Ein was that the two states had split the original Kingdom of Ridgewern’s Soulsteel during the succession war.