Later that evening, Owen went back up to his room.
The inn had grown quieter. Now and then, footsteps passed in the corridor, and muffled voices still drifted up from downstairs. A lamp burned on the bedside table, his belongings had been brought up, and there was enough open floor to work with his sword without knocking into the furniture.
Owen closed the door and made sure no one was going to come through it.
Then, finally, he let himself think about Vapor.
He summoned his longsword, and the familiar dark blade settled into his hand. For a moment, he just looked at it, grinning. He had been waiting for this for hours, and now there was nobody around to stop him.
He sent the new property into the sword.
The blade began to lose its shape. Pale vapor drifted from its edges, and within a few heartbeats the whole sword had come apart into a shifting, drifting cloud. The weight vanished from his hand. But he could still feel it, through the connection to his core, exactly where it was.
Owen’s eyes went wide.
He moved his hand through the space where the blade had been, and the vapor shifted to answer him. It had actually worked.
He laughed quietly, delighted.
He tried guiding the cloud a short way across the room, then concentrated on bringing it back. The vapor gathered itself, and the longsword reformed in his hand, whole and undamaged.
He turned the blade over in the lamplight, half expecting some mark to show that it had just stopped being solid. There was nothing.
He wanted to do it again immediately, so he did.
This time, he tried to keep proper control of the sword while it was dispersed, steering it in different directions the way he had watched Wraith move. The vapor responded, but it took far more attention than any of his sword changes ever had.
As he worked at it, he remembered Edith’s lessons on Armament Extension. Hold the property steady through the sword first, then send the regulated effect back along the bond.
He wondered whether the same idea might help him control Vapor better. He wasn’t trying to change himself. He only wanted a firmer grip on the drifting sword. So he concentrated on strengthening the connection between his core and the dispersed blade.
The Vapor answered far more strongly than he expected.
It came back through the bond and into his hand, and Owen saw his fingers start to disappear.
He stared. Pale vapor was replacing his skin. Before he could even work out what was happening, it had spread up his arm.
His first instinct was to pull back, but it was already moving through the rest of him.
Within moments, his whole body had come apart into vapor, and his clothes went with it.
Owen was stunned.
He could still think. He could still feel his sword. But nothing about him was solid anymore. He tried to move, and found that he could steer himself through the room.
He drifted a short way, then concentrated on returning to himself. The vapor drew together, and his body reformed, every part of it, with his clothes back on him exactly as they had been.
For several seconds, he just stood there and stared down at himself.
He held up his hands and looked at his fingers, then down at his clothes. Everything was back to normal.
Then it hit him.
He had just done what Wraith did.
A broad grin spread across his face, and then he laughed in sheer disbelief. The power that had tormented all three of them in that clearing was his now. It wasn’t just making his sword stronger. It let him become vapor himself.
His thoughts started racing. He remembered how hard it had been to land a single blow on that tiger, and how easily it had gone wherever it needed to be. He started imagining what that kind of movement could do alongside his swordsmanship.
Still grinning, he tried it again, deliberately this time.
He dispersed the sword first. Then, carefully, he sent the property back along the bond toward his body.
He came apart into vapor again, clothes and all. He moved around the room for a moment, then reformed.
He laughed again, softly, with satisfaction. It hadn’t been an accident.
Owen spent several more minutes at it, dispersing and reforming, testing how well he could steer himself. Moving while he was vapor took real concentration, but each attempt came a little easier than the last.
When he reformed after one attempt, his ribs ached just as much as before. Vapor didn’t heal anything, then. That was worth knowing.
Once his first excitement had settled a little, he remembered that his sword had two other powers as well.
He wanted to know whether Vapor would work with either of them.
He started with fire. He let a small flame run along the solid blade, then sent Vapor into it. The blade began to disperse, but the fire didn’t go out. It moved with the pale vapor, still burning.
Owen watched it with open excitement. It worked.
He guided the burning vapor a short way, then brought the sword back. The flames stayed under his control the whole time.
Then he tried it on himself. He sent the combination back through the bond, and his body dispersed with supernatural fire moving through the vapor around him. He moved only a little and was careful to keep the fire well away from the bed and the curtains before he reformed.
He thought about Wraith slipping out from under their attacks, and then about doing the same thing while still carrying fire. The possibilities made his head spin.
Next, he tried Steel.
He brought the sword back to its normal shape and spread Steel Reinforcement across it. The familiar metallic sheen settled over the blade, hard and solid.
Then he tried to bring Vapor in at the same time.
Nothing happened. The sword wouldn’t disperse while Steel was holding it so firmly in shape.
Owen frowned, more curious than frustrated. He tried the other way around, dispersing the blade first and then reaching for Steel.
The result was the same. Steel had nothing to strengthen while the sword was vapor.
He brought the sword back and looked at it for a while.
Once he thought about it, it made sense. Fire could keep burning while vapor carried it. Steel depended on the sword staying solid. One worked through the vapor. The other needed something firm to hold on to.
He tried fire and steel together again, just to make sure, and they still worked perfectly.
Owen was satisfied. Vapor had a limit, but that didn’t make it any less useful. It just meant he had choices to make depending on what a fight needed.
He was tempted to keep going. He had barely started finding out what Vapor could do.
Then he shifted his weight, and a sharp pain pulled across his ribs. The excitement had let him forget it for a while, but Garrick’s axe hadn’t gone anywhere.
Reluctantly, he decided that was enough for one night.
Before he dismissed his sword, he let it dissolve into vapor one last time and watched it draw back together in his hand.
The grin came back. A little while ago, an ability like this would have seemed impossible to him. Now he had it, and he had already worked out how to do what that tiger had done.
He dismissed the sword and got ready for bed.
Lying there, his thoughts drifted back over the day.
His Status had climbed a long way since he last looked at it properly, and the Arsenal held three powers now. Fire gave him destructive force, Steel made his sword far harder to break, and Vapor let him slip out of a solid body entirely, into a form that ordinary blows would have a hard time touching.
Better still, fire and vapor worked together. He had only begun to imagine what that might let him do. Steel and vapor didn’t, but at least he understood why.
He felt genuinely pleased with himself. The armament that had failed to manifest at his awakening had already become something far beyond an ordinary bonded sword.
For a moment, he wondered what other powers might be out there, carried by monsters he had never seen. Wraith had held something unlike anything he had imagined, and there had to be countless others all over Asteria.
The thought made him smile.
But he had no intention of rushing off after another dangerous monster while Agnes and Hugh were still recovering. He had a journey to finish, an imperial gathering to attend and a new power that needed proper training.
Outside, the inn was settling into its nighttime routine. The last voices downstairs faded, a pair of footsteps passed along the corridor, and the sounds of the town grew quieter.
Owen turned down the lamp and lay back, still smiling faintly.
Tomorrow, the convoy would continue toward the Imperial Capital. For now, he had something extraordinary, and he couldn’t wait to find out how much he could do with it.