The last of the soldiers finished securing their equipment while the crew made the airship ready to leave. Owen followed Gareth into the passenger compartment, where the familiar smell of hot metal and engine oil hung in the air. Through the windows, he could still see Mowbray soldiers moving across the landing grounds below.
Then the deck began to vibrate, and the ground fell away.
Owen watched the Mowbray estate and the city around it shrink beneath them. On the way here, he had pressed himself to the window to take in every detail of another family’s territory. This time, he wasn’t looking as hard. He had already seen its soldiers fight and walked its forest, and he had learned just how dangerous an ordinary-looking subjugation could become.
Gareth came over and leaned against the frame beside him.
"It’s going to be strange sleeping in a proper bed again," he said.
"You slept in a proper bed last night."
"A village bed. It’s not the same." Gareth watched the city slide away for a moment. "I’m telling Father about the Steel, by the way. We might as well do it now, since we’re all stuck on the same ship."
Owen nodded and followed him forward.
Edmund was in the forward compartment going over the departure arrangements with Mercer. A few documents and maps were still spread across the table, and the steady vibration of the engines came up through the floor beneath their boots.
Gareth waited until Mercer had finished speaking. Then he said, "Father, Owen’s armament developed another ability. From the boar’s core."
Edmund glanced up. He looked interested, but not especially surprised. "Monster cores develop armaments. That’s what they’re for."
"It kept the fire," Gareth said. "It can use Steel and fire at the same time."
Edmund set down the document he had been holding. "Explain that."
"I watched him do it last night. Steel on its own, then fire on top of it, both active on the same sword." Gareth paused. "It’s like the first time. His sword only appeared after he held the fire core you gave him, and now another core has given it a second power."
Edmund turned to Owen. "Is that accurate?"
"It is," Owen said. "After I handled the Steel core, I felt my armament respond differently, and the ability was there afterward."
"Any difficulty controlling the two together?"
"They work separately or together. Using both at once draws more heavily on my core."
Edmund was quiet for a while. Owen could see him thinking it through carefully rather than reacting to it. A bonded sword wasn’t expected to carry two independent core-derived powers, and Edmund clearly knew that as well as Gareth did. But he didn’t declare it impossible. He seemed more interested in working out what it meant.
Gareth, on the other hand, looked as though he had been waiting all morning to say the next part.
"If his armament responded to two different cores," he said, "maybe a third would give it another power."
Edmund looked at Owen. "Do you have any reason to believe that would happen?"
"I don’t know," Owen admitted. "The first time my sword appeared, I didn’t expect it. Even the Steel surprised me. I can’t tell you what another core would do."
"It’s worth finding out," Edmund said after a moment. "We keep cores for armament development. Once we’re home, I can authorize a suitable one for a controlled attempt. I’m not promising anything will come of it."
Gareth looked pleased. Owen nodded along with him.
Privately, though, he could see the problem. He trusted his father and his brother. But he had never told either of them about the Infinite Arsenal, and if new abilities kept appearing every time they put a monster core in his hand, the questions would keep coming. Sooner or later, he would run out of answers that didn’t lead back to the system.
He didn’t have to accept every opportunity the Arsenal offered him. He could decide for himself what to show them.
Mercer came back with another matter about the returning personnel and materials, and Edmund turned to him.
"We’ll try it once we’re back at the estate," he told his sons.
Owen and Gareth left him to his work.
The rest of the journey passed quietly. Owen and Gareth ate, dozed for a while on the benches, and talked about nothing in particular.
"My break’s nearly over," Gareth said at one point, staring gloomily at the ceiling. "Do you know how much work is waiting for me back at the academy?"
"At least you got to spend some of it fighting monsters instead of sitting at home."
"That’s not the comfort you think it is."
By the time the airship crossed back into Ferrers territory, Owen recognized the land below. Cultivated fields stretched out on either side, roads ran between the settlements he knew, and the watch posts carried Ferrers silver again. Eventually, the city came into view, spread out around the estate.
The airship came down on the military landing grounds, where Ferrers personnel were already waiting to receive the returning detachment. Officers called out assignments, and soldiers started unloading equipment almost as soon as the ramp was down. Mercer oversaw the transfer of the recovered materials, including the small gold chest from Lord Mowbray, which was carried off to be secured with the house’s belongings.
Owen disembarked with Gareth and Edmund. Eleanor was waiting near the residence side of the landing grounds.
She greeted Edmund first. "You were gone longer than you said you would be."
"It turned out to be more complicated than the reports suggested," Edmund said.
"It always does."
Then she turned to her sons and greeted each of them in turn. Her eyes lingered on Owen a moment longer. He knew she could see how tired he still was, but she didn’t fuss over him the way she might once have. She knew he had been training seriously for a month, and she knew this had been his first real operation.
"How was it?" she asked.
"Eventful," Gareth said. "Owen had quite the first hunt."
"I wasn’t expecting anything as dangerous as what we ran into," Owen said.
Eleanor looked at Edmund for the real answer.
"There was a Giant Boar driving the other monsters out of the deep forest," Edmund said. "It’s dead, and the subjugation is finished. But Mowbray lost a soldier in the fight."
Eleanor took that seriously. She didn’t say anything for a moment, and when she did, it was only a quiet "I see." Owen could tell she understood exactly what it meant that the operation had cost a life.
They started back toward the residence together. Partway there, an attendant approached Eleanor about a household matter that needed her decision. She listened, asked one question, gave her answer and sent the attendant on their way, then picked up the conversation exactly where she had left it. Edmund didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t need to.
Once they were inside, Eleanor looked her sons over.
"Are you two planning to stay in your travel clothes all afternoon?"
"We thought we might," Gareth said. "To remind you how hard we’ve been working."
"Go and clean yourselves up. We’ll eat together once you’re presentable."
The family ate together later that afternoon. It was a relief after so many days of field rations and reports. Eleanor wanted to hear about Mowbray territory, how they had been treated, and whether William had been as much trouble as Gareth always said he was.
"Worse," Gareth said. "He spent half the time telling me how I’d forgotten everything I learned at school." He reached for the bread. "It was good to fight alongside him again, though. Don’t tell him I said that."
Owen found he had plenty to say himself. He told them about his first impressions of the Mowbray soldiers, how even their uniforms were cut differently, looser through the hips and legs, and how different their spear work looked from anything he had trained with.
"Their practice yards are much wider than ours," he said. "They need the space. Watching them fight, you could see how they keep their distance with the reach of the spear and make you come to them. We’re always trying to close the distance. They spend most of their effort keeping it."
Edmund nodded at that, and Owen could tell he agreed.
Later in the meal, Edmund mentioned Lord Mowbray’s gift in passing.
"He gave you gold?" Eleanor asked. "And you took it?"
"Eventually."
"How long did you argue with him first?"
Edmund didn’t answer, which was answer enough. Eleanor laughed. "I’m sure he enjoyed every moment of it. He’s been trying to give you things for as long as I’ve known either of you."
After the meal and a few hours of rest, Edmund sent word that he was ready.
Owen and Gareth met him at the storeroom beside the training hall, where the family kept its materials for developing armaments. It was the same place Edmund had given Owen the fire core after his awakening.
Owen hadn’t been inside since that day. Back then, he had been hoping for any usable sword at all. Now he had one that carried two different powers.
Edmund had a single spare core brought out from the family’s stock. It was an ordinary development core, nothing rare or especially valuable.
"We’re not going to force anything," Edmund said. "I don’t want you trying a process you don’t understand or putting your core at risk. Do whatever you did the last two times, and tell us what happens."
Gareth stood a little to one side, not bothering to hide how interested he was.
Edmund placed the core in Owen’s hand.
It was smooth and solid against his palm. For a moment, nothing happened, which was what Owen expected. Holding a core had never been enough on its own.
Then he deliberately turned his thoughts toward offering it to the Arsenal, and a window appeared in front of him.
[Absorb Monster Core?]
[Confirm / Cancel]
Owen looked at it while his father and brother waited. The prompt said nothing about what the core contained or whether it was compatible. It was only asking whether to begin.
He chose Cancel.
The window disappeared. The core stayed where it was in his hand, smooth and solid and entirely unchanged.
Owen waited another moment for appearance’s sake, then lowered his hand.
"Well?" Gareth asked. "Anything?"
"No," Owen said. "I don’t feel anything like the last two times. No new ability, and nothing different about the sword."
"Are you sure? Maybe it needs a bit longer."
"It didn’t happen that way before. I don’t think waiting will change anything." Owen looked down at the core, then shrugged. "Maybe I was just lucky the first two times."
Gareth looked disappointed, though not crushed. He had clearly been hoping for another discovery after watching fire and steel run along the same blade. "Should we try a different one?"
"No," Edmund said before the experiment could turn into a string of guesses. "We’ve already learned something useful. His armament doesn’t necessarily respond every time a core is put in his hand. Two times doesn’t mean a third will work."
He took the core back from Owen. "And I see no reason to burn through our materials or risk an uncontrolled experiment when he’s only just come back from a dangerous operation."
Gareth accepted that, though he didn’t look entirely satisfied. "Even with only two, that sword is going to keep the instructors at the academy busy."
"You were the one who insisted we try a third," Owen pointed out.
"And I was right to. Now we know."
Edmund returned the unused core to its case and had it put back with the family’s other development materials. Then he turned to Owen.
"You’ve already gained more practical experience in a month than any of us expected," he said. "And more development than your armament had any right to. You don’t need to rush after a third ability before you’ve learned to use the two you have."
It wasn’t a lecture. It was simply his father’s judgment, and Owen agreed with it. He had only just begun using Steel Reinforcement. He could activate fire and steel together, but he hadn’t yet worked out how that combination would behave across the different swords he could change between.
The experiment hadn’t produced a third power. But his father and brother knew now that his sword could develop in ways none of them fully understood, and Owen was content to leave it at that.
That evening, Owen went back to his own room for the first time since leaving for the subjugation.
After the cramped quarters in the Mowbray village, it felt almost luxurious. His training equipment was exactly where he had left it, and through the window he could see part of the estate and the grounds where he had spent the past month training under Edith.
He had no intention of trying anything else tonight. His body was still recovering, and the afternoon had given him enough to think about.
He summoned his longsword anyway, just to look at it. The dark blade and copper markings were as familiar as ever, but he knew now that it could carry two separate powers. He let Steel Reinforcement spread across the blade for a moment and watched the grey sheen settle over it, then let it fade again.
His thoughts went back to the core in the storeroom.
The experiment hadn’t failed because the Arsenal couldn’t respond. He had refused it. Whether that core would have been compatible at all, he had no idea.
For now, he was comfortable with that. His father and brother were curious, and they had every reason to be. But he wasn’t going to show them every function of the Arsenal just because they had the cores to keep testing it.
Keeping the system to himself didn’t mean he had to stop growing stronger, either. The past month had already shown him plenty of ways to improve that had nothing to do with collecting cores. His cultivation had carried him from Kindled Trace to Tempered Crest. Edith had turned six swords into something he could actually fight with, and the forest in Mowbray territory had taught him things no training yard could have.
He didn’t see the afternoon as a setback. What mattered most right now was getting better at what he already had: his fire, his steel, and every sword form the Arsenal had given him.
The academy was still somewhere ahead of him, but it wasn’t tomorrow. Until the letter came, there was still plenty he could learn here.
Owen dismissed the sword, set the day aside, and went to bed.