He dropped his pack to free his shoulders and drew the halfsilver dagger. The constructs back in Sacred Valley had been deadly if directed, but predictable enough if unguarded. But this was the product of a Gold Soulsmith at the head of a sect full of Golds. It might drill its legs through his flesh, leaving little spurting holes, or tear into him with its mandibles, or leave him spun up into a cocoon to decorate the ceiling of the nearby barn...
One of its legs hitched and it almost stumbled, its gait uneven, before it righted itself and continued on. A stumble meant a defect. It must be old, in need of maintenance. That was a weakness he could exploit.
But it was close now, so close that he could hear its sharp feet pricking into the dirt, and that one stumble no longer looked like a weakness at all. Sometimes constructs didn't perform as they should. Maybe the ground had been more treacherous than it looked. It was a slim chance to gamble on.
Then it had reached his feet, and Lindon moved.
He seized the pack from the ground beside him with one hand, holding it like a shield as he flopped belly-first on top of the spider-construct.
The spider tried to scuttle out of the way, but he caught it on the edge, imprisoning it beneath his pack. Its legs flailed, and it gave an angry chirp, but it was pinned. He had it.
His body surged down suddenly, as though he'd grown twice as heavy or someone was standing on his back. His head was pulled down until his nose was all but pressed against its slick gray-purple back, and he realized the truth: the spider was pulling him in.
He didn't know how—undoubtedly it was some function of its madra, or some kind of script—but the spider was using an invisible force to pull him closer.
The halfsilver dagger was in his hand, burning to be used, but he kept it gripped in a tight fist. He'd need that option available, but he had something else to try first.
With a good deal of writhing, he squirmed forward enough to get his left hand onto the spider's back.
Then, adjusting his breathing from panic to a measured cycling technique, he fed pure madra into the construct.
Something like the Thousand-Mile Cloud was relatively simple in its construction. It was made of densely packed cloud madra, which floated. You could activate a single script-circle buried at its core in order to get it to move. It followed the direction of the operator's spirit, not any directions in its actual script, so it was a flexible but simple tool. It would never be able to fly off without active guidance.
The spider, by contrast, was an intricate clockwork of branching scripts, interlocking plates of madra, and delicate organs that must have been extracted from Remnants. His madra flowed through it, giving him a vague picture of its functions, and of the scripts that had to remain active to keep it following orders.
A spark of madra came from a crystal chalice, a tiny speck of a vessel that must power this construct's operation. Using his own madra, Lindon forced the flow from that chalice aside.
It didn't take much power to do so; there was no will behind that madra, so it was easily directed. He simply blocked the flow into the script, keeping it bound inside the crystal.
The spider shivered once, then collapsed. The invisible force on him vanished, leaving him panting in gulps of air.
Irregular, spiky footsteps scraped along the dirt as Gesha slid closer on her drudge, and she would arrive to find him limply hanging on her deactivated construct. He pushed himself up, running shaking fingers along the edge of the spider's leg.
He might have noticed a defect before, a place where the construct was in need of maintenance. If that was the case...
One plate of the leg made a harsh noise as his hand moved over it, crackling like thin ice. He pushed madra into it desperately, fueling it with all the force his rapidly cycling spirit could churn out.
The best way to maintain a construct's parts was to infuse it with madra of the same Path, which would keep that part fresh and new for as long as you wanted. The second best way was to purify madra through a device like a crystal chalice or a specially designed script and use that instead. It took much longer, was less efficient, and resulted in less accuracy for some cases that required delicate craftsmanship. But it worked.
In fact, Lindon had only recently understood that the purity of his madra was why his mother let him work with her on her projects at all.
The leg-plate strengthened a little. Enough that it wouldn't collapse under the construct's own weight, at least, which should demonstrate his value somewhat.
He looked up to see Fisher Gesha an inch away from him, her gray bun even with his head, peering into the construct. After a second, she slapped his hand away, feeling the spider with her own fingers.
“Did you steal the Path of the Fisherman? Hm?”
“No, honored elder,” he said, though it was just a formality. If the Path of the Fisherman was what the Fishers followed—and he had a good feeling that it was—she would be able to sense that power on him if he had it. She'd only asked out of irritation.
“Then come here.” She grabbed him by the back of the neck, and he remained perfectly still. In his experience, those with Iron bodies tended to forget the fragility of those without.
She pushed him back a second later, eyes wide. The expression looked comical in her heavily wrinkled face. “You have no training?”
“No, elder.”
“No Path at all?”
“No, elder.”
“You're Copper, but you've never taken a taste of aura?”
“I was never given a Path, honored elder. I don't know how.”
Something like pity sparked in her eyes, and she patted him roughly on the back of the head. “You come from a clan of fools.”
He hesitated before protesting. “They are my family, honored elder...”
“Bah.” She made a spitting noise at that. “No family of yours. But you can make scales for me, so I'll take you.”
He searched her quickly for signs of mockery, disappointment, irritation. Anything that might indicate she was lying. “You'll teach me?”
She slapped him in the back of the head. “I'll work you until your bones are nubs, that's what I'll do for you. You won't get the secrets of the sect until you've brought enough value to us, which you'll do slowly and obediently. Is that clear enough?”
Lindon dropped to his knees, pushing his head into the dirt, blinking back sudden tears. “The disciple greets his master.”
“Stop that. I'm not your master.”
“Your disciple understands.”
“I'm going to make you do what my servants can't do, because they've advanced too far. You understand? Hm? You're lower than my servants.” She waved a hand aside, and the barn door rumbled open.
He understood that he was going to be working inside a Soulsmith's foundry. Even if he did nothing but sweep the floors, it was an opportunity for him. He'd take it. He'd take anything.
“Get in there,” she said. “Maintenance on all constructs by dawn, and don't think you'll get any sleep. If you look like you're going to finish early, I'll make another one.”
“Yes, master,” Lindon said, hurrying inside.
At last, he was going to be a Soulsmith.
As dawn's first light filtered through the blackened trees surrounding the Five Factions Alliance, Yerin returned, dragging a bright blue corpse behind her. It looked something like a crab painted onto the world in the colors of the sky, and it leaked azure light as she trudged through the outer gates and down the main street.
At her peak condition, she should have been able to run carrying something as light as this, but she felt like her bones had been filled with lead. Now that she settled down and thought, she hadn't had a real rest in...months, probably.