“The customer would like an explosive construct that will detonate when he wants it to, with minimal power loss, and of course without exploding in his pocket, hm? However, he has brought us only one binding to work with. What would you do?”
Lindon knew the problem. He had to test the interactions between the binding, his own madra, and the sample from the customer without destroying the binding itself. Then he had to try it with all three types of dead matter, choosing the best one. Incompatibility might result in weakening the binding to Highgold or Lowgold output, effectively wasting the Truegold technique. But instability could result in the construct exploding on its own.
If he had three bindings, he could be fairly confident of success. If not in his own safety. With only one...
“Apologies, but I can't do it. I would need a drudge.” A drudge would be able to test each sample in detail, giving him a much more thorough understanding of the composition and how they should interact.
“Hold that thought!” Eithan said. “Instead, use your perception to sense each piece deeply. Get a complete feel for it, and how they relate to one another, as though you were the drudge yourself.”
A still-cycling Dross cracked his eye and drifted slightly closer, as though he found the task intriguing but didn't want to admit it.
This was an exercise in futility, and Lindon looked to Fisher Gesha for support, but she gestured for Lindon to get on with it. He would never be able to duplicate all the functions of a drudge himself. If he could, there would be no need for drudges.
But he tried, spending five minutes apiece on the binding, the customer's sample, and all three piles of dead matter.
At the end of the process, he had a guess, but it was like guessing how to glue together a broken vase using only his sense of touch. One of the piles had come from a force Remnant; would force madra add the right punch to the fire binding, or so much that it canceled out the flame? Would the rainbow Remnant's lingering resentment spitefully interfere with the bomb's activation, or not? He couldn't tell.
He pointed to the third pile, the white parts that looked like a disassembled claw and felt like razor-sharp wind. “This matter in a shell around the binding, bound with pure madra, should have minimal interference with the customer's madra.”
Gesha's wrinkled face was a mask, giving him no hint if he had succeeded or failed. She turned to Eithan.
“Dross,” Eithan said, “did you still sense what Lindon felt?”
Dross' eye opened, and he frowned at Eithan. [How could I? I'm all the way over here. I would have to reach into his memory and...oh, never mind, I actually did. Sorry, I was paying attention to something else.]
“If you would, please simulate the experiment in Lindon's head.”
Dross helped Lindon visualize the experiment. Lindon saw himself taking the white Remnant pieces and Forging them into a shell around the corkscrew binding. The whole thing turned a pink color, bound with his pure madra, and sealed into a shape like a lumpy stone. He rolled it across the floor and activated it with the sample of the customer's madra, and it detonated violently, blasting a crater into the floor and cracking the walls and ceiling, filling the room with smoke.
In the vision, Lindon felt no impact, only observing the successful explosion.
[It's a very nice image,] Dross said, [but I couldn’t tell you if it’s what would really happen. Here, look at this.]
The scene repeated successfully with the gray dead matter. And with the one made out of rainbows. And when Lindon sealed the construct with Blackflame, which changed the entire nature of the experiment.
[See, I can make it show any result I want. Couldn’t even tell you which one was most likely to work.]
Lindon sighed and opened his eyes. “He will tire himself out at this rate. The only way he'll be able to accurately project the experiment is by using my senses to understand all the madra completely. And if I could do that, I wouldn't need him.”
[That seems deliberately hurtful.]
“He's still a great help,” Lindon hurriedly added, “just like before. But he can't replace a drudge.”
Eithan smiled as if Lindon had stepped into his trap. “So he's lacking knowledge of madra aspects and how they interact.”
[You know, it's nice that someone pays attention and speaks properly. Hey, what do you have there?]
Eithan held up a ball of spinning copper plates. He caught a glimpse of colored lights flashing from between the plates themselves.
Lindon's heart leaped. The Arelius family library had all the information about Paths and techniques they had collected over generations. It could simulate hundreds, maybe thousands, of different Paths and their permutations. Lindon had missed it ever since leaving Serpent's Grave.
“I was surprised to find it here as well,” Eithan said. “Cassias carried it with him when he left Serpent’s Grave, and I…borrowed it. This is your gift, Dross.” He held up the ball of copper in one hand. “Dive in, and learn what you can.”
With a gasp, Dross gleefully leapt in and vanished, like a child into a pond.
The light at the center of the spinning copper turned purple, and Lindon heard Dross' exclamations of wonder echoing out from the ancient construct.
He couldn't help but worry. “He has consumed a lot of other memory constructs. You don't think he'll empty it out or ruin it somehow?”
“If he can break this,” Eithan said, “then he is welcome to do so.”
Dross emerged from the library, gasping like a drowning man. [No, this is too much! It’s too much! It's like being part of the tree again, only there's no space for me, and everything's moving too fast! I think I'm going to be sick.]
Eithan shoved another scale into his mouth. “The deeper you can go, the better.”
Many of the information constructs that Dross had absorbed back in Ghostwater were left by Soulsmiths, so he had a solid foundation in Soulsmithing, but their memories were fragmented and often contradictory. The more Dross learned, the more connections he would be able to make. Or so he and Lindon suspected.
Dross spent a few moments gasping for breath—though surely he neither needed air nor had any lungs—then nodded, diving back inside.
A few minutes passed, during which Lindon and Fisher Gesha speculated on what changes Dross would experience, while Eithan sat nearby with a content smile. Then one of Dross' stubby purple arms emerged, quivering, from the construct. He seized the edge of the copper, sluggishly dragging himself out.
Lindon extended a hand, and Dross rested limply on it, face-down. He felt like a damp rag, and was a little too big to fit entirely in Lindon's hand, but he wasn't heavy.
[No more,] Dross said. [That's all I can take. I need to digest.] He groaned.
“While you're digesting, why don't you try our little experiment again?” Eithan suggested.
Dross slowly dissolved, slipping back into Lindon's hand and up to his spot at the base of his skull.
Dream madra filled Lindon's head.
Fisher Gesha and Eithan vanished. Otherwise, the room existed in complete detail, so that Lindon couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or closed. He moved over to the table, closing one hand around the binding.
This time, he could visualize the experiment with perfect clarity. The white madra was actually a dud, and would not detonate at all. He tried it with the force madra, and the bomb went off early.
He repeated the experiment six more times.
The actual solution was a shell of the rainbow madra, but if he used too much, he would smother the binding and weaken the explosion. The shell should be mostly hollow, with only a few columns connecting the binding inside to the outside. The whole thing transformed into a smooth ball that was fifteen different shimmering shades of red.