Three days had passed since Owen returned to Ferrers territory.
He had spent them on his usual cultivation and sword practice, working on controlling fire and Steel Reinforcement rather than looking for more cores. On the first day back, he had asked Edith for another spar. He wanted to see how his new ability held up against the person who had trained him through his first month. Edith had military responsibilities to deal with and couldn’t fit him in straight away, but she had agreed to meet him on the third morning.
The evening before that, during his cultivation, the familiar pressure had started to gather around his core.
He had spent days drawing in ambient mana, sending it through his pathways and refining it back into his core, and he knew what the sensation meant. This time, though, the compression was far stronger than it had been before any of his earlier breakthroughs. Owen didn’t try to force it. He kept his circulation steady and let the accumulated mana settle in its own time.
Eventually, the system confirmed it.
[Cultivation Advanced.]
[Resonant — Trace]
He spent a while afterward making sure his circulation was still stable. His core felt considerably deeper, and the mana moving through his pathways answered him more readily than before. That pleased him most of all. Deeper reserves meant he could hold fire and steel together for longer.
The next morning, Owen dressed in his Ferrers training clothes and went downstairs.
The residence was already busy. Maids moved through the corridors carrying folded clothing, attendants passed with breakfast trays, and servants were preparing rooms for the day. Several of them greeted him as he went by, and he answered each of them, stopping briefly to exchange a few words with an older attendant he had known since he was a boy.
Outside, the estate was just as active. Soldiers crossed the courtyard toward the training complex, their boots striking the stone paths, and equipment was being carried into the drill yards. The clash of practice weapons grew louder as Owen got closer. One instructor stood beside a formation with a roster, calling out surnames and sending soldiers off to their morning exercises. Another was correcting a recruit who had stepped out of line before his name was called, and he sent the young man back to wait his turn with the others.
As Owen passed one of the training areas, two soldiers recognized him.
"That’s the younger son," one of them said under his breath. "He was in Mowbray territory with the force. They say he fought that Giant Boar."
"I heard the stories," the other said. "Half of them sound exaggerated, if you ask me."
Owen heard enough to know what they were talking about and kept walking. He had a spar to get to, and no interest in correcting soldiers who hadn’t been there.
He thought back to his last assessment with Edith. He had made her reinforce her sword, and she had beaten him the moment after. Now he was Resonant Trace, and his sword carried two powers instead of one. He wanted to find out how much difference that actually made.
Edith was already waiting at the reinforced training strip. She wore her fitted Ferrers uniform, with her dark hair secured for training, and she had been watching the soldiers nearby finish their drills.
"General," Owen said.
Edith looked him over. "I’ve heard some interesting things about your sword since you came back from Mowbray."
"Is it true?" she asked. "That your armament picked up a second power?"
"It is," Owen said. "It changed after I got the Giant Boar’s core. I still can’t properly explain why it responds to cores the way it does."
Edith knew enough about living armaments to understand how abnormal that was, but she didn’t ask him to explain the process. "Show me what it does now."
Owen summoned his longsword. The dark blade settled into his hand, its pale edges bright against the copper markings beneath its surface. He channeled energy into Steel Reinforcement, and a dense metallic sheen spread over the weapon.
Edith stepped closer to look. Her eyes followed the way the reinforcement settled over a blade that was already metal, strengthening it further.
"Does it change the weight?" she asked. "Or the balance?"
"No. Mostly, it makes the blade harder," Owen said. "More resistant to damage. It doesn’t make me any stronger, though."
Edith looked more interested than he had expected. Then he remembered what she had used against him in their assessment, and understood why. She knew a metallic property from the inside.
"Your father tells me you can use fire and steel at the same time," she said.
Owen pushed fire into the blade without letting go of the Steel. The copper markings brightened, and flames spread along the longsword, with the grey sheen still clearly visible beneath them.
Edith studied it for several moments. Then she laughed, short and genuinely surprised.
"I’ve seen a lot of unusual armaments," she said. "I’ve never seen one sword hold two powers at once." She looked at the burning, reinforced blade a while longer. "A sword that won’t break and burns whatever it hits. That could be very useful." Then she stepped back. "But you asked me for a spar."
She took off her military coat and set it to one side, rolled her shoulders loose, and walked out onto the reinforced strip. Then she summoned her own longsword.
Unlike his, her weapon carried a Metal property, developed through years of cultivation and combat. As she channeled power into it, a steel-gray sheen spread across the blade. The surface darkened and seemed to grow more substantial, with mana gathering tightly along its edges.
Owen recognized it at once. It was the same reinforcement she had used to meet his burning greatsword at the end of their assessment.
Edith settled into her stance.
"You asked for this," she said. "So I expect you to use everything you have." She paused. "I’ll use twenty percent of my power this time."
Owen’s attention fixed on that number.
Edith was Sovereign Trace. He had only just reached Resonant Trace. He had trained against her for a month, but in nearly every one of those sessions, she had been controlling the fight deliberately, never showing him anything close to what she could really do. He had no real idea what twenty percent of a Sovereign’s power would look like.
He didn’t think his new rank or his new ability would let him match her. But he wanted to find out whether he could put enough pressure on her to make it worth her while.
"Your move," Edith said.
Owen advanced with the Steel already holding on his longsword. He closed the distance with controlled footwork and cut diagonally, pushing fire into the blade as he committed. Flames swept along the sword’s path and threw a wave of heat ahead of it.
Edith stepped outside the cutting line and met his blade with her own.
Clang!
Sparks scattered from the collision. Owen followed with a second strike at once. His reinforced blade held up under the pressure far better than it would have a week ago, and he kept the exchange going instead of having his sword shoved aside.
Edith adjusted the angle of her blade and began to redirect him.
Owen recognized what she was doing. She was taking control of the bind. Rather than staying in it, he changed the longsword into an arming sword. The blade shortened, the point of contact shifted, and he stepped in to take advantage of the opening.
Edith answered with a compact parry, but Owen followed fast enough to make her reposition. He sent fire along his next cut, and the trail of flame swept past close enough that Edith had to move away from the heat, not just the blade.
She slipped past the edge and advanced before he could recover.
Owen gave ground and changed to the greatsword to take back his reach. He reinforced the longer blade with Steel and drove fire through it at the same time, then brought it around in a broad diagonal sweep. Flames rolled along its path, filling the space Edith was moving into.
Whoosh!
Edith met it head-on.
CLANG!
The collision sent sparks scattering across the training strip. The reinforced greatsword held, but the force came straight through his grip and into his arms, and Owen dug his feet in to keep from being driven back.
For a moment, the exchange held.
Then Edith changed the direction of her pressure, and Owen had to adjust. He could tell she was about to redirect his blade, so he changed the angle of his next attack and brought the greatsword around toward her exposed side. Her longsword was too far out of position to defend it. He was sure he had found an opening.
Edith didn’t move her sword at all.
Instead, the steel-gray sheen on her longsword spread across her free forearm. A dense metallic layer formed over her skin just before his blade arrived.
His burning, reinforced greatsword struck her arm.
CRACK!
Sparks burst from the contact, along with a sharp report and a wash of heat.
Owen faltered. He had only ever seen her reinforce her sword. He hadn’t expected her to stop an awakened blade with her bare arm.
Edith used the moment immediately. She turned his blade aside with her reinforced forearm and stepped inside the greatsword’s effective range, then drove a controlled knee into his midsection.
"Hngh!"
The breath went out of him, and his stance broke. He tried to recover, but she had already taken the distance from him. A short strike with her body followed, her reinforced arm keeping him from bringing his sword between them.
Thud!
Owen went backward, hit the reinforced ground and rolled onto his back, breathing hard.
Edith stood a few paces away with her longsword lowered. The metallic layer was slowly fading from her forearm.
A few of the soldiers nearby had turned toward the noise.
"The General’s training the younger Ferrers son again," Owen heard one of them say.
"What happened to the ground over there?" another asked, looking at the scorch marks.
Their instructor called them back to their exercises before their attention could wander any further.
Owen stayed on his back for a few moments. His arms ached from the impact, his breathing was heavy, and sweat ran along the side of his face.
Edith came over and looked down at him. "Your cultivation has come a long way since our last session."
"I broke through to Resonant Trace last night."
Edith was quiet for a second. She had taught him to sense mana barely more than a month ago, and he had gone through Kindled and Tempered since.
"You’re a monster," she said, and there was as much amusement in it as admiration.
Then she went on in the same practical tone she always used. "The Steel is helping. You held up under impacts that would have broken your attacks apart a month ago. But your positioning is still vulnerable. And you were holding fire and steel together through a few movements where you didn’t need both, which cost you more energy than it had to."
Owen accepted all of that, but there was something else on his mind.
"Your arm," he said. "The metal over it."
"Some properties can be extended past the armament," Edith said. "You can use them to reinforce or enhance parts of your own body. Not every property is suited to it, and it takes a good deal of control."
Owen recognized the principle. As a child, he had read about it in books from the Ferrers library while he was learning about cultivation and living armaments. Awakened fighters reinforcing their bodies with suitable properties had been mentioned more than once. He had never learned how it was done, though, and until he obtained Steel, his sword had only carried fire, so it had never occurred to him to try.
"It’s called Armament Extension," Edith said. "Your armament is what carries the property. You channel your own energy through the weapon first and let the armament regulate the property and express it safely. With enough control, you can send that regulated effect back along your bond and spread it over a part of your body."
She held up her free hand. "It isn’t the same as putting a monster core into your flesh. Your Armament Core still supplies the energy, and the armament still carries the property. That’s why your sword has to be summoned."
She demonstrated as she spoke. With her longsword still in her other hand, she let the metallic layer spread from her grip up over her forearm. Then she drew it down until it covered only her fist.
"You can concentrate it on a smaller area, too," she said. "Metal and steel are well suited to this, because they give you hardness and resistance. Other properties can strengthen the body in different ways, but they don’t all work like this. Fire doesn’t give you protective armor, and it doesn’t make you immune to heat."
She let the metal fade from her hand. "A swordsman’s sword isn’t the only thing that matters in a fight. Once someone gets too close for a proper swing, a punch, an elbow, a knee or a kick can make you an opening or break their balance. You should know how to use them without letting go of your weapon."
Owen thought about the knee that had just knocked the wind out of him and couldn’t disagree.
"Teach me," he said.