The next day, we awoke to fantastic news that Hagor delivered to us over breakfast:

  “Your weapons are done, kids. And just in time, with the snow stopping. We can complete the Bonding this morning, give you a day to get used to the changes, then put you to work!”

  Breakfast couldn’t have gone by faster. We quickly finished our food and waited eagerly for Hagor to finish his own plate, then lead us down to his forge. When we finally got there and the master smith showed us his most recent creations, there was little left to say.

  Julia’s spear had the most dramatic transformation of all, as it was an entirely different weapon. The haft of her spear shimmered a pleasant robin’s egg blue, similar in color to the weapons conjured by the Harai yet unmistakably different. Like it had a certain permanence or significance that hastily created weapons couldn’t begin to mimic. Her spearhead was a lighter icy blue, but it gave off an even greater pressure than the haft. Like 10 tons of frost had been condensed into a single small chunk and shaped into a well-balanced blade. The remnants of her old spear could be seen on the edges of the spearhead, which gleamed the bright ivory of well forged Gwyniron. Julia received the weapon with reverence, tracing the grooves of the bony haft with a delicate and natural respect.

  Ann’s reforge was nearly as drastic as Julia’s remake. Her long, flat bladed saber had been shortened a little and thickened such that it now had a more stable and regular curve. The blade was cleanly divided by color along a singular center line, where the bladed side was a deep midnight that juxtaposed with the bright white of the flatter edge. It had also totally eschewed an normal cross guard, with only a small circular guard at the base of the blade. It wasn’t a curved great sword, like the one Goran wielded, as it was clearly lighter and thinner. The sword radiated a hunger and precision her old blade lacked. We had all had personal audiences with Hagor about what we would want our reforges to look like, but I was surprised that Ann had asked for such an overhaul. Hagor noticed my confusion and jumped in before I had the chance to ask:

  “Yep, Ann gravitated to this design when I asked her what kind of sword she was looking for. The fellows down south call it a “katana”, or so a travelling merchant told me when he sold me a couple of the things. Can’t say they became very popular around these parts, as the boys either want something with more heft or something entirely different like a spear. But these katanas are good for the most precise cuts, and they’re easier to wield two handed than her old saber, giving her greater versatility.”

  I, on the other hand, had the least dramatic change of all. My new duel short swords remained similar in shape to the old ones, with the only real shifts being a slight hourglass curve near the middle, to improve balance. The center was the snow white of Gwyniron, but their edges had been transformed into a stoic steel grey. In some ways, they looked even less remarkable than they did before, with some of the shinier white metal being replaced by the duller grey Oscillium. However, certain subtle waves on the slate grey edges moving outwards lent to the natural ripple effect that made the edges look like they were constantly vibrating. The swords seemed simple and unimpressive at first, but the more you stared at them the more enigmatic and dangerous they turned out to be. The slight vibrations were almost hypnotic as you gazed at them, like you were peering into a mirage and your vision was beginning to fuzz along its borders.

  Once we all finished admiring our weapons, Hagor clapped his hands to get our attention and exclaimed:

  “All right, now that we are done admiring my handiwork, we should get on with the difficult business. Do you all see the little steel circular medallion built into your handles?”

  We nodded; the little circle built into the wood in a way that didn’t disrupt our grip but was still strange to see. On other weapons, I would have called them merely decorative, but Hagor put that thought to bed quickly:

  “We’re going to use these to complete the Bonding ceremony. But first, we need to get to the basement.”

  The door to the basement was in the storage room across from the scraping room. We followed Hagor through the door and down the stairs into a dimly lit blackstone basement. The center of the floor played host to an elaborate script circle that surrounded a smaller, internal circle. This internal circle was just a line in the stone, but there were eight lines of connector script at regular intervals that drew straight lines from it to the outer circle. At the end of each of these lines was a “Power” symbol, and the 8 of these symbols were connected by other script to form the outmost circle.

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  Rubbing his hands together, the smith presented this apparatus to us with a flair for drama and a bit of pride:

  “This is an imbuing station. Technically they don’t have to look like this, but this design is the most efficient I’ve found. The more you use this type of thing, the more effective they start to get, so this badboy is probably the best in the city, with all the business I get!”

  In anyone else, this kind of boasting would be obnoxious, but Hagor was an easy man to like, so it was easy to overlook. Especially because it was both true and beneficial to us. I had volunteered beforehand to be the test subject, so Hagor ushered me into the center of the inner circle, instructing:

  “Remember the medallions on the handles? Dab a little blood on those suckers, and we’ll be ready to start.”

  I did as I was told, cutting my right index finger with my new sword and placing it on both medallions. Hagor wasted little time, taking chucks of Glasrock and placing each one individually on the power symbols. Both the rocks and the script began to glow blue, a phenomenon that trickled down through the connector script and into the central circle. The glow got brighter as Hagor placed more and more rocks. By the time he had covered all 8 symbols, the light was so bright that I was forced to squint in pain.

  The swords were vibrating, beginning steadily but increasing in intensity as the light grew brighter. The medallions on my palms began to burn and I found that I couldn’t unclench my hands. The handles of the weapons had stuck to my palms and forced my hands clenched. I watched helplessly my appendages vibrated along with my swords, totally out of my control. The vibrations diminished slightly as the first rocks to be replaced began to lose power and fade. They dimmed to nothing before shattering. Hagor swiftly swept away the pieces and replaced the lost material. Before long, I was soon dealing with a fresh round of rocks, the burning and vibrations returning full force.

  In response, my Giftseed began pulsing faster and faster. Channels of energy emanated from my heart and through my arms, the power snaking through my limbs down towards my hands. The burning grew worse as they made contact with the medallions, and I felt the suction force holding my fingers together grow even stronger. The connection made; pulses of vibrant energy ran through my new set of fiery veins, in time with the pulses of my Seed. The Giftseed was reaching out to its new friends. They reciprocated, and I felt a cooler, softer energy radiating right back through the energy attachments and back into my heart.

  As the ceremony dragged onward, the power exchange deepened and grew. I looked down at my arms in shock as the energy connections grew so powerful that they could be seen with the naked eye. Unnatural cerulean and slate veins slithered through my arms and established pathways between my Gift, the blue and grey weaving together and creating a corkscrew pattern running through my body. The grey grew stronger and stronger as Hagor ran out of Glasrock and the last round of the stones began to burn down.

  With a single metaphysical motion, the steel grey veins slurped up the last of the blue energy and flexed. The connective force reached its zenith, my knuckles white as they clenched the blackwood handles with bone crushing force. My ears roared, and I felt the air itself ripple strangely all around me, arcane power straining at something. There was a quiet *click* as something settled into place and the veins snapped back to straight before fading away.

  Suddenly, all strange sensations vanished instantly. In shock, I dropped my weapons, the forces holding my hands together suddenly gone. The blades clattering on the ground were the only sound in a deathly muted basement. The girls looked nearly as surprised as I felt, staring at me like I had transformed into an Arthus, fear and awe plain to see in their eyes. It was up for Hagor to break the silence, nodding seriously:

  “A successful operation, as you would expect. There is technically a chance of failure, by the way, but not if the administrator knows what they’re doing. Which, in fact, I do.”

  I was too busy staring at my dropped weapons to listen or respond. The swords weren’t visually changed in any way, but I felt an instinctual connection to them regardless. When I stooped down and picked them up, it was like picking up extensions of my own limbs. Moving them around was even more effortless than usual. They dipped and shifted minutely as fast as thought, my instincts enough to direct them exactly as I wanted. Without thinking, I moved into some combat forms, blades whistling through the air with absolute precision. The basement was big enough that I had the room to move through several before I came to my senses sheepishly.

  The girls had been waiting and watching. I expected to get chewed out for holding me up, but I only received appreciative applause for my effortless display of skill. Even Ann was too enthralled with thoughts of Bonding’s benefits to yell at me. She eagerly clambered into the hotseat after winning a brief bout of rock, paper, scissors.

  Ann’s and Julia’s procedures weren’t much different from mine, besides a few differences in color or elemental effect. For Ann, her connections settled on electric blue and the air around her crackled with loose strands of brilliant lighting. Julia’s connections finalized in a paler, more muted sky blue, the air dropping in temperature in a manner reminiscent of the Arthus.

  With the procedure now complete, we thanked Hagor profusely, which he accepted with his characteristic smile and a few gracious waves of the hand. But he could tell we were anxious to try out our new tools and insisted that he could handle any cleanup remaining. We offered to help anyways but he insisted, and it didn’t take much convincing to see us scampering up the stairs and out through the front door. We made our way over to the training ground with a skip in our step.