"It is only in the confluence of these three concepts does steel show its true value. It strikes me every time I examine it, every time that I experiment with the metal, that so many decades were wasted on trying to make the steel affix work with the material. Truly, it shows the lack of value in the philosophical approach of the fundamental sect. Why would steel require mana of its concept in order to grant it extranormal properties? I can't tell whether it is in hindsight that it becomes so obvious, or my predecessors were simply lacking a basic understanding of thaumaturgy. Likely, it is both."

Galea pauses in her diatribe as I have to move. The day is clear, not a cloud in the sky, yet I hover under a shadow. Above me, more than a mile in the air, hovers the island of Faeth, slowly moving across the sky, and a few hundred feet below me is the barren and rocky earth that slopes slowly toward a volcano rising in the distance. The air itself shakes, the monster far below me bellowing and wailing as it tries to pull itself out of the hole I have cast it into. The hole, a wide expanse dug into the rocky earth, was a happy coincidence that I found on this trip down to the land. The corpses of eight other rank two monsters litter the earth inside. Only the ninth, a scaled monster in the shape of a wolf that has three razorous mouths stacked atop each other, still moves.

The edge of the volcano proves as a good spot to hunt monsters with the fire affix, who knew?

The monster below screams and shakes, but no matter how hard it tries, it is thoroughly pinned to the ground inside the hole. Two long spears of heavy metal stab through its back legs, sticking it there. The second mouth opens, a spear of blood growing out from between two rows of tiny and serrated teeth. I stand on the air, more than a hundred feet above the monster, waiting.

"There has to be a way to not make it waste its power on these kinds of attacks," I mutter, watching the blood spear grow.

Dust shakes up from the earth as the monster launches the projectile. A hint of electricity sparks across the surface of the solid coagulant, helping to carry it through the air far faster than should be possible. Still, with almost two hundred feet between us, the spear itself isn't that difficult to dodge. Like I have a dozen times before, I drop and roll to the left in the air, allowing the spear of hardened blood to sail more than ten feet past me. Just as the projectile comes level with me, I feel something through my presence, something off.

Galea doesn't have the time to shout a warning before I push the shroud of sand floating around me to the side, interposing it between the spear and me. The blood spear detonates in the air, shards of deadly shrapnel cutting out in all directions. The wall of black sand catches only a few of the pieces; black sand is a poor defense against physical attacks.

Burning heat rips through my side as a piece of crimson crystal tears a hole right through me. The bang of the exploding spear echoes off the ground and rings in my ears. A moment later, I open my eyes again, lowering my arms from where I raised them to protect my face. A shard of blood sticks from my forearm like a dagger, digging in so deeply that it scratches the bone. With a grunt, I rip it free. Blood wells in the hole left in my arm, pooling for a moment before spilling over and running down to drip off my fingers. The healing energy waiting in my body, always ready for a moment exactly like this, rushes to the wound, rapidly healing the hole in my arm and stomach in mere moments. I toss the shard of blood away, and before it can even reach the ground far below, the damage is repaired. Inside the hole down below, the monster bellows. If it roars in triumph or despair, I don't know, nor do I much care at this moment.

I click my tongue and stretch out the hem of my spidersilk blouse to see the damage. Yep, a hole as big as my thumbnail is torn right through the material. Likely, there is a matching one on the back.

"This is supposed to be sturdy fabric," I complain.

"This monster is level eighty-six," Galea reminds me.

"It is, isn't it?" Waving my hand, two more spheres of black dust manifest in the air beside me.

The spheres descend, and right when they near the creature, I force all the focus of my presence on the monster. Sudden pressure rocks the monster; the spears already pinning it to the ground like nails move and grind deeper into it. It fails to move its head, not in time at least. The black sand collides with its three-tiered snout, the sand writhing over the surface of its face for a moment. Without cohesion, the sand does little more than block its vision for a moment.

Without endless nights spent toying with the sand, I would never attempt this. Those endless hours, manipulating this strange material that holds a special affinity with me, I've come to learn it better. My fingers dance: there is no purpose to it, just an impulse. The black sand, the black gold, squirms, grains connecting in a lattice of hard and sharp lines, solidifying over the monster's snout. It roars, shattering the lattice of black sand crawling over its face, but the grains continue like a colony of ants, inexorably moving together, linking together. Its struggles grow less and less potent as two muzzles of black sand conjoin and strengthen. It locks together over its face, holding two of its three mouths tightly shut, leaving the bottom to froth fire like drool.

Now, there is deep hatred in the eyes of this monster when it stares up at me, snarling. Hatred and pain.

It takes another twenty minutes of struggle before the monster expends the rest of its fire. It falls, exhausted, to the ground. A final spear ends it.

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I pull all the fire from the sand I can manage, nurturing it into a ball of mana more nutritious than anything. Swallowing, I feel the power ignite my soul from the inside, the power of pure fire mana imprinting itself on my soul. Weeks of daily trials, culling these monsters below the city, and the fire has only grown more blazing.

Until I began this journey of purifying the affix, I never knew how powerful it might become. All of my fire, especially my dragonfire, has grown stronger, the heat more terrible, the explosive power more potent. More, I feel the fire now. Corinth spoke of being able to reach out to the world, to feel and interact with the mana around us, and this feeling isn't that. No, I have tried that every few weeks, and my ability to touch the mana of the world is as feeble as the first time I tried. What I feel is something else.

Since the coffin, I have become aware of my three selves, the three avatars that make up me: the body, the mind, and the soul. This growing connection to fire, I feel it with my spiritual self, something removed from this world entirely. I don't know what it means.

The earth rises to meet my feet as I descend. My soul presence begins to contract to its new natural, extending just a few feet from me. No matter how hard I try, this seems to be my new normal. Black sand pours out of the earth, scattered there and absorbed into it over the course of the previous fights. The spears pinning the corpse of the monster to the ground disintegrates, drawing up to me and vanishing back into the vault. Alighting in the midst of the carnage, I have to push to move my presence over all the dead monsters. With a snap of the fingers, the bodies transform, becoming a pink mist that vanishes as it reaches me.

The hole in the barren earth becomes vacant of everything other than myself. With a motion, my inventory window opens, and I start organizing my new gains. With the upgrades to Galea, organizing and categorizing everything has only grown easier. She can store more information, and if I ask her to pick out everything containing fire mana, she can even do that. Creating…

Galea tries to flash a warning, but I am already in motion. The speeding shadow moving through my presence strikes from the ground just a few feet away. The appearance is so sudden, the attack so out of nowhere, that I fall into the battle fever without meaning to. Even with the world slowing around me and all of my significant speed, the striking shadow still carves a gash across the side of my torso, tearing two and a half inches of flesh away as it tears through me.

I explode. Dragonfire erupts all over me, blasting from my hands, my mouth, my eyes, and even my skin. Before my feet even touch the floor again, the hole I stand in becomes a volcano of burning orange. The conflagration turns the world to fire, and the lash of shadow still next to me vaporizes in an instant when exposed to the undeniable heat.

My presence blanketing the burning crater catches more movement, and even the full focus of my soul presence does little to stop it. From my side, a beam of shadow bursts from the ground. The fire melts the tendril of darkness, stripping it of its speed just enough to allow me to land a kick on the shadow. It feels like I kick a chain rope. Before the shadow can strike again, my wings appear on my back, infused now with the growth and strength affixes. With a single flap of the massive appendages, I leap into the sky, escaping the inferno. At the edge of my rising soul presence, I see another tendril of shadow burst from the ground toward where I just was.

I soar away, flying recklessly backward, keeping my eyes on the burning crater as it grows distant. When I've made it a good half mile away, I slow, stopping the air more than five hundred feet up, my heart beating out of my chest. The crater still burns, flames climbing high. The pain hits me then, barely; the deep gash in my side is mostly healed by now. If I hadn't reacted in time, that first attack would have drilled straight through my chest and torn my heart out.

Then, I see it. A puddle of shadow moves across the rocks. A perfect circle of shadow no more than five feet across rolls across the red rock and cracked earth, weaving like a snake in my direction. It moves almost as fast as I can fly, racing toward me. Before it can even reach me, a tendril of shadow leaps up from inside the puddle of shadow, climbing into the air. I can see it clearly now; it isn't a tendril of shadow, but rather the body of a python, its scales wrought from the dark. It hisses silently as it comes for me, its mouth wide and ready to bite. The snake head manages to climb into the air, seeming to extend infinitely from the puddle of darkness, until it begins to fall. I watch, dumbfounded, as a three-hundred-foot-long snake made of shadows falls back to the earth. The body of the snake begins to slip back into the darkness as the puddle makes it directly beneath me. Two more snakeheads try to strike at me, making it no further than the first.

"Tits and Honey, what is this thing?"

???<???><???>

The snake heads continue to strike up from the puddle of shadow until there are four jumping from the dark. I blast some with dragonfire, but there doesn't seem to be an effect on whatever this monster is. Then, as abruptly as it began to attack me, the snakeheads retreat into the darkness. For a moment, the puddle just lingers there, open below me.

I don't see the moment the puddle changes. One moment, it is below me, a small puddle dying the rocks black beneath me, and in the next, it has grown to the size of a lake. Everything, all of the lifeless earth for nearly a mile around, is eclipsed in darkness, its color gone. The leafless trees, long dead effigies standing in the dark soil, groan as they begin to sink into the bog of shadow they stand in. Far afield, the lake of darkness beneath me roils, a mass of shadow slowly escaping the black. It is the head of a snake, a large as a small hill, rising from the depths of the shadow. Again, my eye makes an identification, the sign above the serpent's head standing with letters as large as three-story buildings.

???<???><???>

I don't think. I don't plan. I just fly.

Everything I have goes into pushing myself higher and faster. I don't think I even breathe as I soar upward, burning a trail of fire behind me as I climb.

I don't stop, I can't stop.

I collide with the underside of Faeth before I can bring myself to slow down.

I don't look back, rushing to the guild's underside entrance to the city. Even with the solid doors slamming closed behind me, it is hard to force myself not to run. I pant there, knees on the hard stone, panting and sweating as I stare down at my hands.

"What in the hells," I mutter. "What…"

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