Chương 82: Artifact Shopping

The Binder's workshop sat in a low, windowless annex behind Regional Command's main hall, and Keth's first impression, stepping through its heavy iron door, was of heat — not the ordinary warmth of a hearth, but something denser, more deliberate, radiating from a forge set into the room's center that burned a color he didn't have a proper name for.

"Sit wherever you'd like," the Binder said, not looking up from the workbench where she sat hunched over something small and pale, turning it slowly beneath a magnifying lens.

"I'll be with you shortly. This piece is delicate, and delicate doesn't forgive being rushed." She was older than Keth expected at least sixty, her hands scarred and calloused in a way that spoke of decades spent handling material considerably more dangerous than ordinary craft. Gray hair pulled back severe and practical, a leather apron scorched in places that had clearly, at some point, stopped being accidents and started being simply the cost of the work.

"Mira Halworth," she said, finally setting down her lens and rising to greet them properly.

"Census-appointed Binder, Eastern Sector. I understand you've brought me something worth my afternoon."

Lira laid the requisition slips across the workbench, the accumulated material from three days' hunting spread beside them — teeth, scale fragments, a coiled length of something dark and sinuous that had once belonged to one of the Inferno-Sign serpents. Halworth's eyes moved across the collection with the particular, focused hunger of someone who genuinely loved her own work, her scarred fingers tracing over each piece with careful, practiced assessment.

"Good material," she said.

"The serpent scale especially — steel-hard, heat-retentive, considerably more workable than most Wild Evolution remains I'm handed. Whoever killed this creature did it cleanly enough not to damage the internal structure."

"That would be me," Lira said, flat.

"I expected as much." Halworth's mouth curved, dry.

"Cataclysm-Sign work tends to leave things either perfectly intact or completely obliterated. Rarely much middle ground." She set the scale aside carefully.

"Now. Tell me what each of you actually wants, and I'll tell you honestly whether your bounty covers it."

Aurelian went first, unable to contain his eagerness any longer.

"Magma," he said.

"My Echo already manipulates it, but the range is short — close quarters, mostly, unless I'm willing to burn through considerably more effort than I'd like to sustain a longer lance. I want something that extends that reach. Five feet, if possible. Better control at distance too, not just raw range." Halworth studied him a long moment, her scarred fingers already sorting through the collected material with practiced efficiency, setting aside a particular cluster of the serpent's heat-retentive scales.

"Echo of Inferno," she said, not quite a question.

"Rare enough that I've only worked with it twice before. The good news is this material's ideal for exactly what you're describing — these scales held heat well past the creature's own death, which tells me they'll bond cleanly with a fire-adjacent Echo rather than fighting it for dominance." She turned the scales over, considering.

"A vambrace, I think. Worn along the forearm, close enough to your own casting point that it amplifies rather than redirects. Rated at Flame-Sign, matching your current tier — you'll draw its full output immediately, no gap penalty to fight through." This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"How long," Aurelian asked, practically vibrating with anticipation.

"Three days, if I work steadily. The binding ritual alone takes the better part of an evening." Halworth's eyes flicked to the requisition slip, calculating.

"Your bounty covers the labor with a small margin left over. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Aurelian said, immediate, delighted.

Keth stepped forward next, his own requisition slip feeling considerably heavier in his hand than its actual paper weight suggested.

"I don't know exactly what I need," he admitted, honest.

"My Echo's Shelter. Barriers. The problem's not strength — it's division. When I try to protect more than one person, the barrier splits unevenly instead of holding full strength across all of them." Halworth's expression sharpened with genuine interest, setting down the material she'd been sorting to study him more directly.

"Shelter's rare enough I've never actually worked with it," she said.

"But division problems in a barrier-type Echo usually trace back to focus rather than raw power... the caster's own attention splitting, not the Echo itself lacking capacity." She considered a moment, thoughtful.

"An amplifier, then. Not something that adds strength directly, but something that helps your own focus hold steady across multiple points at once — anchors the barrier's shape so your attention doesn't have to do all the dividing work alone." She moved to a locked cabinet along the workshop's far wall, retrieving a small, unmarked pouch, and from it produced a pale, smooth stone, faintly luminescent even in the forge's dim light.

"This isn't from your hunt," she said, setting it on the workbench.

"Older material. Recovered from a confirmed Cataclysm-Sign kill years back — a creature whose Echo, best anyone could determine, involved some form of dimensional stability. Holding space steady against collapse." Her eyes met Keth's, careful.

"I've been waiting for the right Echo to pair it with. I think yours might finally be it."

"What tier," Lira asked, careful.

"Ember-Sign, at minimum, given the source material's own strength." Halworth's mouth tightened.

"Which means, at his current Flame-Sign, he'll draw a reduced fraction of its true output. Not nothing. But not everything either, until his own tier catches up properly."

"I'll take it anyway," Keth said, without hesitation.

"Even reduced, if it helps the division problem now, it's worth having." Halworth nodded, satisfied.

"A pendant, then. Worn close to the chest, near enough your own center that it can properly anchor the barrier's shape rather than simply adding weight to carry."

Elian, when finally asked directly, gave the same answer he'd offered around the campfire three nights earlier, though something in the quiet, unhurried delivery here carried even more weight than it had then.

"I don't want one," he said, simple. Halworth studied him a long moment, genuine curiosity rather than judgment behind the attention.

"Most soldiers your rank take whatever the bounty offers, without asking themselves why."

"I'm not most soldiers," Elian said, and something small and real curved at the corner of his mouth.

"My Echo's built on accepting what already exists rather than reaching for what isn't there yet. An artifact would be exactly the kind of reaching I've spent a year and a half learning not to do."

"That's an unusual philosophy for a soldier heading toward whatever's actually coming," Halworth said, careful.

"Maybe," Elian said.

"But it's mine. I'd rather meet it as exactly what I already am than as something borrowed." Halworth didn't argue further. She simply nodded, once, something that might have been respect settling into her weathered features, and turned back to Lira, who shook her head before the question could even be fully asked.

"Same reasoning," Lira said, flat.

"Different Echo. I earned Cataclysm-Sign the hardest way possible. I don't intend to dilute it now."

They left the workshop as evening properly settled, Aurelian already imagining aloud the shape his vambrace might take, Keth turning the promise of the pendant over in his mind with careful, cautious hope, and Elian walking quiet and steady between them, entirely at peace with the empty space where an artifact might otherwise have sat.

"You could have taken something," Keth said, once they'd put some distance between themselves and the workshop's heat.

"Even something small. Nobody would have thought less of you."

"I know," Elian said.

"I didn't decline because I was worried what anyone would think. I declined because it's true. I don't need something added to be enough for what's coming." He glanced sideways, something warm and certain in his tired eyes.

"I have you. I have Aurelian. I have Lira, and Voss, and a whole year and a half of proof that what we've built together already holds, even when nothing else does. That's not nothing, Keth. I think, honestly, it might be more than any artifact could offer."

Keth didn't have an answer for that, so he simply walked beside his brother in comfortable, grateful silence, the winter dark settling fully over Regional Command's black stone towers, and somewhere behind them, in a workshop still burning with forge-heat and careful, patient craft, two pieces of the coming week's hard-won preparation slowly, deliberately, began to take shape. End of Chapter Eighty-Two