For some reason the acquisition of the Hydra-souled seemed to propel my system along as I got a sudden upgrade to my status, informing me I was now a class-2 citizen.
This turned out to have an unexpected benefit: when we returned to the Waygate to ensure my recent escapades hadn’t damaged anything, I discovered more had been unlocked. The scanner that found everything in its territory turned out to have another function, if tuned to just the main chamber.
It could simulate the diagnostic scan, though I had to do some repairs first.
Because of course I did.
Once I’d done so, I sent the results to Ari the old fashioned way. By which I meant teleporting a tiny shard imbued with a recording of the scans through the waygate.
While I waited for Nexxa to have time to take them to the Golden Halls, I looked over the other features class-2 had unlocked.
Mostly more information on anything scanned by one of the beacons. Still not as comprehensive as a proper diagnostic scan, but a few details such as size and estimated mass and mana density.
The last seemed to be only partially integrated with the rest. Just looking at the underlying enchantments gave me a headache. There was no documentation or mention of the function, just a reading in units I was only able to determine were mana based on how my own changed when I cast a spell.
Unfortunately there weren’t many targets to test with in the Howling Wastes. There weren't a whole lot of Magus Domini or Protectus out in the area, so their pillars were equally lacking. It was lucky they’d even spotted the hydra. I doubted I would have, if the dragon hadn’t stolen a beacon and added it to its hoard. We only discovered that fact after one of the Forgeborn we sold the collection to found it buried in the back corner.
On the plus side, the improved scanning allowed me to fine-tune the Waygate further. If we ever got the energy, it’d be more efficient than ever. Unfortunately, connecting it to the Caves of a Thousand Doors would take me months on my own. If I had access to Aeternia’s resources, I figured we could get it done in a week.
Needed to find a way to deal with that mass of monsters.
After a few hours, Nexxa sent back the results.
Slipping the shard into my storage space after scanning it, I walked outside.
Calbern was practicing forms, blurring through the air, his sword practically singing as it cut through the air.
Above us, Inertia rested on her heels.
I could understand why she didn’t enjoy the thing. Seemed pretty boring in down times, and apparently getting out required the specialized gantry. Tresla remained bound to Inertia for the moment and would until Inertia powered down the Warform. There was only so much translating Inertia needed in such a form and most of it could be accurately conveyed through the cannon.
Calbern stopped after a couple more minutes, nodding to me as he sheathed his sword. He didn’t even have the sense to be sweaty after his absurd display. “Is it time?”
“Just about. Nexxa got my answers,” I said, fingering my pendant.
“Will you be going with the hearts or skulls?”
“Both,” I said, looking past Inertia’s massive form to the Iron Curtain. “Let’s head up. I’ll explain as I work.”
“Of course.”
We both gave our greetings to Inertia and Tresla, though understandably, neither replied.
Calbern followed me to the greenspace, which I quickly commandeered a corner of.
“So, which shall you choose?”
“Here’s a surprise,” I said as I sat down, staring up into the greenery. “It’s complicated.”
“Ah. Of course.” Calbern didn’t sit, though he joined me at enjoying the view.
“If I want to take the easy path, I could incorporate either. Told you how I suspected, the heads would increase my offensive capability? I was right.”
Knowing me as he did, Calbern didn’t hesitate to ask, “However?”
“However, the hearts would increase my regeneration. And not my physical regeneration, my mana.”
“A clear winner. What trouble you then?”
“Don’t particularly want to turn into an eight-headed version of myself.”
“Ah yes, one of your hard heads is quite enough.”
“Thanks. Don’t much want to be constantly phasing in and out of reality either.”
“I could see how that could pose some difficulties,” Calbern agreed, his lip twitching upwards.
“And those are the more pleasant side effects.” Even as I spoke, I pushed to my feet, marking off the sides of the area.
“It would appear you have a solution.”
“Yep. Copy Nexxa. Well, not exactly. I’ll be doing more trimming than she did. Conversion and focus.”
“And this will prevent the extra heads?”
“Really stuck on that part, huh?”
“I must admit, it does fill me with a great deal more fear than anything else I’ve faced these last few years.”
“Love you too, old man,” I grumbled, kneeling down as I brushed off the space. It would work as a base. “Yeah. Gonna be a bunch of work, and I’ll be sending a few more messages back, but the idea’s solid. And if I fail, we just need to find something else as perfect as a hydra with eight elements that all match my own.”
“It is good you keep your goals humble, Master Percival.”
“That’s me, humble as pie.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“It’s a play on an idiom I doubt I ever understood, forget it.”
“If only I could. It seems my memory is better than ever.”
“Guess it’s not all roses, then?” I paused in my inspection of the room, looking up at my friend.
He gave a slight smile. “It is hardly a matter worthy of complaining over. It is only the indignities I would prefer to forget. For other materrs.” His smile grew a few fractions at that point. “It is quite agreeable.”
“Good,” I said, meaning it.
We continued to banter as I worked.
Based off everything I'd heard from Nexxa, scouring my ingredients clean would improve the quality of the integration. Unfortunately I didn't have a rope-cat that’d been specifically designed for such a task. What I did have was access to the finest industrial workshops this side of the Front.
With the skulls, hearts and tail in tow, the latter mostly to be thorough, we returned to Inertia's armory. Once there, she and Tresla removed themselves from the war form. A process that took nearly two hours. Most of which was getting Tresla disentangled from the cannon.
The air in the armory had become less oppressive once Inertia had activated the ‘comfort’ options. And by less oppressive, I meant it’d only incinerate me if I lowered my shield, and we could have a conversation with only a bit of yelling. Practically on the level of Conflict’s own foundry floor.
Once they were free, Inertia showed me to entire pits of solutions, each one designed specifically for the purpose of stripping away any non-ideal material from different affinity materials. It took a fair amount of work, as well as several message shards back to Nexxa, to set up one for all eight affinities.
I didn’t intend to keep them, but removing them at this stage would hurt the process.
After they were clean, I inlaid each of the skulls with a set of complicated rune-work. This was even more intense. I spent nearly a month of time in Memory Palace doing the design work.
It was the most relaxing time I’d had since I’d last visited Aeternia, just me and enchanting design. The actual enchanting was simple by the time I felt comfortable performing it.
If that wasn't enough, the next step was to turn all eight of the Hydra hearts into specialized versions of a Forgeheart.
Since I had to do it myself, it meant it was time for me to take the stone oath. Or at least that had been my initial thought.
When I requested the oath from Inertia, she laughed in my face, clapping me on the shoulder.
Then she simply said the word, “friend,” before walking away, still laughing.
“That wasn’t a real answer!” I called after her, rubbing my shoulder. Her ‘true form’ was more than strong enough to leave a bruise, even if it healed in seconds.
Tresla soon returned to collect me.
“What Inertia was implying, is that because you are a trusted friend, she intends to teach you the secret of crafting Forgehearts without requiring the Stone Pact,” Tresla explained as we made our way back to the armory.
“Feels like she could’ve mentioned that any time in the last several months.”
“Yes, because you’ve both had so much time.”
“I… suppose that’s fair.”
“Fair enough, some might say,” Tresla said, elbowing me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled while following her towards where Inertia was preparing my first lesson.
The initial part, having a still-beating heart, was normally the hardest part of the process.
While it wasn’t a problem for the hydra hearts, since they were still beating, I wasn’t going to practice on them. That was a good way to throw away an incredibly valuable integration material.
Instead, Inertia had a regular hydra's heart, far less valuable, only a few thousand Waves a pop. Considering that was the price of a regular Hydra's heart, I didn’t want to know what the octo Hydra's heart would be worth if we attempted to auction it. I doubted even one would have a price in something as mundane as Waves. Best not to consider the value of all eight. Or the skulls and tail.
Instead, I turned my attention to Inertia.
When I balked at the cost of a regular Hydra heart, to my surprise, Inertia conceded. They had an abundance of hearts from recently deceased creatures, on account of monsters falling from the sky.
“You could say you chose a perfect time to begin learning,” Tresla said from where she was perched atop one of the nearby furnaces. It almost felt like she’d picked up some habits from the Tethered.
“You could say that, anyway,” I replied, before returning my attention to Inertia, who’d raised a hand.
The first step in creating a Forgeheart, involved infusing it with her own energy. Apparently this was something she'd been doing all throughout her stay.
It weakened her until she could recover. A process that took her weeks, which is why she’d been so sparing with Forgehearts. I thought we just hadn’t had enough suitable hearts.
“Wish you’d told me,” I said, staring at the still beating heart she’d infused with her energy. “Can’t believe you’re weakening yourself just so I can practice.”
She let out a hiss of steam, gesturing towards the warform’s gantry.
“In case you didn’t get that, she can recharge in the presence of the War Form's Forgeheart.”
“Right. So there’s no cost, doing it here?”
“A little bit of pain, but not enough to bother her,” Tresla confirmed.
“Thanks,” I said to Inertia, who waved me off while waving me back to the heart.
The first step, the pair explained, was to sync my own heartbeat up to that of the monster heart I was going to be forging the runes into. A trickier process for me than it was for a Forgeborn who could regulate their heartbeat as they needed.
“You do realize I don’t have the ability to regulate my heartbeat built into me, right?” I complained after half an hour of failure.
“Once you have your first forge heart working, you can use it instead,” Tresla said, her pipe having been pulled out long ago. “First one’s always the hardest.”
“Can I use an enchantment?”
Inertia hiss-clanked with laughter, her eyes whirring as she glanced at Tresla.
“She was certain you’d try that right away,” Tresla admitted, puffing out a ring of smoke in my direction. It shifted form to resemble one of the crude heating enchantments she often made use of. “After all, Forgeborn don’t have the ability to use magic built into them.”
“Right.” It took another half hour to set up, most of which was design time. The enchantment controlled the target heart instead of my own, since that seemed a lot safer.
My very first Forgehearts turned out to be like any regular heart, due to the way I crafted the first runes. Not my enchantment, the forgerunes.
In my defense, using a hammer and chisel to shape runes was a lot harder than the welding-like process I was used to. Thankfully, I hadn't completed the entire enchantment when Inertia informed me it was ruined.
Instead of starting over, I got her to explain the entire set of runes I'd be laying into the Forgeheart. Then I got her to demonstrate the entire process. She shifted her eyes in an exaggerated fashion, letting me know how silly she thought it was, but she complied. Tresla laughed from above us.
Crafting a regular Forgeheart only took a little bit out of the original Forgeborn's furnace. Crafting a child Forgeheart always left them nearly entirely depleted, no matter how powerful a Forgeheart was.
In addition to the ability to regulate the heartbeat, there were runes for regulating the heat and steam release, the conversion of mana rates, and another dozen functions that supported those. For a true Forgeheart like hers there were a number of functions that allowed them to link their intellect to the new creation.
This allowed a shard of themselves to gestate within the new Forgeheart, gifted some of each of their parents’s knowledge but few of their personal memories.
“Is that for privacy or…?” I didn’t really have anything for after the or.
“It’s an artifact of their time as a slave species. The skills were valuable. Personal experience, less so,” Tresla said, sliding down from the furnace and coming over to stand beside Inertia.
My Forgeborn friend had gone silent at the question.
“Help,” Inertia grumbled after a second, and I realized her voice was far clearer than I was used to. “When. Have. Time.”
The words were still slow, but it was obvious the effort cost her a lot less than in her previous frame. For a second, I was so caught up in her ability to speak I didn’t process the words. “Wait… help? You mean, you want my help to… get rid of that restriction?”
“To give a Forgeborn the ability to choose for themselves,” Tresla explained, patting Inertia’s calf, which was about as high as she could reach from the floor. “We’ll find the answer. Whether it comes from your research or stumbling across it in old Antean Empire’s ruins. Aeternia’s certainly been reclaiming its share.”
“Guess it has,” I said, returning my attention as Inertia restarted her work on the Forgeheart.
To my surprise, as she taught me about the techniques, Inertia revealed she’d deliberately crippled her other body, making her Forgeheart less efficient. Far less. This meant she had excess but she was more likely to cripple herself anytime she drew on it.
She'd done it mostly as a challenge to herself. At least that's what she told me.
Tresla’s snort cast some doubt on Inertia’s explanation.
Inertia paused, staring silently at the Forgeheart.
Since she’d stopped, I looked to Tresla, who’d reclaimed her spot atop the furnace. “She didn't do it just as a challenge.”
“No, that's what she likes to claim,” Tresla said, both of us looking to our friend. She was turning the hammer over in her hands, otherwise remaining still. A single hissed word. “Penance.”
“It was as much to punish herself for what she did to me as to anyone else.” Tresla’s cloak flopped side-to-side as she shook her head.
Feeling as though she wanted me to ask, I voiced the question. “What did she do to you?”
Tresla turned towards me. Then raised her gloved hand, gesturing towards the giant cannon arm, believing no further explanation was required.
And yeah… fair.
Without further explanation, Inertia picked up the hammer and continued the lesson.
Despite the interruptions, the Forgeheart still turned out functional. Even so, Inertia judged it a failure and tossed it casually into one of the furnaces where it was incinerated.
When I set to work on my own Forgeheart, I had a much better idea of what I was doing. I still couldn't craft a child heart and I likely never would.
For one, it’d be taboo for a human to craft, at least among the current Forgeborn culture. That might change if I helped her solve the slave-locked memory issue, but so would a lot of things.
The second reason I had no intention of crafting one was that it would require imbuing it with a portion of my memories. Unlike a Forgeborn, I didn’t have the ‘hardware’ to separate my skills form my memories. And honestly, I didn't wish my life upon anyone. I especially wouldn’t want to inflict it on a being who would effectively be my own child.
After getting the base design down, I had to rest for a minute. It drew on my aura, depleting it in a way unlike casting a spell. There was something there to study, but for the moment I stayed focused on the process.
There were some changes I needed to make from the default design for the hydra hearts I intended to integrate. For one, there was no need to include the runes keeping it alive. The hydra heart was handling that part entirely on its own.
In fact, if I didn't regularly trim it down there was a chance it’d regrow the hydra in its entirety.
If I was patient and wanted to risk it, I could grow an entire set of octo-hydras and then harvest them creating a perpetual cycle. It would just take me a few years. As tempting as that thought was, we didn't have that sort of time. Not with monsters falling from the sky.
Even so I did take sample to start growing an additional set of hearts. Once I confirmed both kept growing, I put the smaller shards in my spatial pendant for safe keeping.
With roughly ten days left until my System integrated, I felt prepared to integrate the remains of the Octo-Hydra.
I'd gone over everything Nexxa had shared with me about her ascension as well as several notes from Thozgar about his own ascension. It’d been a long time ago and not at all similar to the one I intended to go through. His own integration was a single element, and he’d hardly needed to refine it. However, in addition to his own process, he had records of hundreds of other hydra-souls he forwarded through Ari. Most were only fragmented accounts or oblique hints, but it all improved my knowledge base.
I ended up co-opting the green space carving an entire secondary runic array into it, much to the chagrin of the Iron Curtain's captain. At least I wasn't going to need any of the mana from the airship. That would’ve hurt the process.
After doing the carving, the next thing I did was hang nets. Those were for a closer connection to Bevel, though she sent Mr Kandle through too. Without Nexxa present, I would have preferred flying through a thunderstorm, but the Iron Curtain was so well insulated I'd hardly notice a thunderstorm from inside. Instead I set up the Home Spark anchor ran electricity through. Nexxa insisted that was too sappy, so she sent me a fried bug she told me to eat.
With a grimace, I did so. Eating a bug your sister gave you felt like a very brotherly experience.
With Inertia, Tresla and Calbern already present, I didn't need anything as a stand-in for them. I did however place the mirror directly across from my inscribed circle. I waited until it successfully connected with Ari, Bevel and Nexxa all available on the other end.
Only then did I sit down.
Around me sat the eight skulls each one on a point of the compass-like diagram I'd engraved into the deck. The hearts sat inside the triangles formed inside. Despite being separate, they thudded in unison.
According to Nexxa I needed to extend my aura into each and every one of my ingredients at the same time. I’d ended up not including the tail, other than to grind it down into dust to enchant the rest.
She had helped her own process along by engraving one component into the others. My solution had been to link everything using the array underneath me.
It was a calculated risk, one mitigated after getting feedback from the Golden Halls, but it was a risk none the less. It was the only way to do what I wanted without becoming an eight-headed monster though.
The first step, sending my aura out, ended up being easier than I expected. Far easier.
My array worked exactly as I'd designed it: channeling my aura down into the deck and then back up into each of the components. As it did so both myself and the components started to float in the air. Something Nexxa had neglected to inform me was a possibility. Thankfully she hadn’t been my only point of reference.
She would tell me later it’d happened, she'd just been so distracted by the difficulty she hadn't noticed.
As I bobbed there between eight still-beating Hydra hearts and its eight skulls, the absurdity of the moment struck me.
Here I was about to integrate an octa-hydra, its hearts and its skulls into my own being, making it a permanent part of myself. All while my family watched on the mirror, unable to see any details, my friends standing at my side. The laugh that burst free was a good thing to carry with me as I brought the hydra into myself.
Even as it was brought within, I was plunged into an arena, much like one of Conflict's trials. I didn't get to hang out and build a weapon prior to facing the hydra, getting thrown directly into the bog we’d met in. Instead of the long drawn out fight I expected, which was what Nexxa had gone through, the hydra immediately laid its heads down.
As I approached, I realized it was because each of its heads had already been bound by my authority.
While I hadn't expected it to go this far, half the point of inscribing them with my enchantments was to make the transition easier. I hadn't expected it to make the transition so there was no fight at all. Preparation really was nine-tenths of the battle.
Too bad there wasn’t much I could do to prepare the hearts. The heart wasn’t so easily tamed, not when there were eight of them, all from an angry hydra. Despite all the rune work I'd done with the Forgehearts, it’d been an unfamiliar process. More importantly, the hydra hadn’t been much of a thinker.
Overwhelming its weak minds was simple compared to purging all of the hydra's hunger and anger. Not a minor thing.
First we plunged through its past, to its earlier years, when it was barely more than a scavenger. Hunger was a constant for the beast. As was fear.
It had slowly grown out of the fear as it grew and discovered its resilience.
Then one day, it had consumed a particularly nasty frog. One that dripped with acid.
The experience had cost the hydra one of its heads. However, it had swallowed the frog. If it didn’t want to die, it had to adapt.
And somehow, it did. It learned how to detect the mana imbued in the frog, then replicated it in one of its heads. Soon after, the lost head regrew. After that, the hydra mostly lived a normal life.
Up until it enounted a deer-like creature with flaming hooves and antlers.
When the burns refused to heal, the hydra did the same thing it’d done with the frog. It ate the offender. Once more, it nearly died, it’s regeneration failing in the face of the flames.
Before it gave in, it figured out the trick, copying the deer’s trick as well. And after it was immune to fire and acid? Well, it thought itself invulnerable until it’s encounter with us. And from its poor understanding of time, that was likely decades of dominating its bog.
Then monsters from the Front invaded. It gained new powers when it ate one of the small elves who came to its bog to deal with them. An elf who didn’t die until after it figured out their magic, slowly digested in the hydra’s durable stomach.
Which was when it started attacking the nearby villages, hunting for new powers.
And that was when it met us. It had left the swamp to hunt us down, assured of its superiority.
The whole reason it’d been in Ashforge City was to eat me. It had been annoyed to find out Forgeborn were crunchy and empty of meat.
Its story made me feel a lot better about our current situation.
Letting it share had done a lot to shed its emotions. There was still a hint of resentment at being so thoroughly defeated, but patience saw that fade too.
With the hearts successfully drained, I set to the most challenging part of the process.
Re-attuning them.
A process made slightly easier by the hydra’s own memories. It’s stomach detection was similar to the shield method Bahama had taught me, if one learned in more brutal circumstances.
One by one, I aligned the hearts to my existing affinites. Old affinity in, pure worlds mana out.
Each heart processed a different mana type. In essence, I was turbo charging the process Nexxa had put me through in my early days, making it a part of my very being.
The heads served the opposite function. They locked in place a permenant ability to convert my mana back to each of the elements, though the affinites for each would be locked. As I understood it, this would increase my ability to grow my worlds affinity even further.
Of course, there was no getting rid of the most defining trait of a hydra. Even shifting as much of the focus to mana as possible, I was getting a massive increase to my natural regeneration.
Not terrible, all things considered.
Only then did I bring the hydra into myself.
Where Nexxa had passed out for a solid thirty one hours, I was unconscious for two days.
Considering the complexity of everything that had to be integrated, two days was lower than my initial estimate.
After how quickly the heads had submitted, I’d hoped for better.
The most amazing part of the integration was that the only pain had been at the end of the hydra's memories.
Turned out tearing out its hearts had been painful enough for it to pass the experience on in one last spiteful act.