Soul-Forge was the strangest of my Broken-Celestial skills, and the one I understood least, which is saying a great deal, because I did not really understand any of them.
The others did things to the world. They threw lightning, wove threads, passed sentences. Soul-Forge did things to me. It was the skill that had taken the unravelled pieces of Narghul Sorcerers and burned them into my heart, that had fed the raw stuff of dead monsters into the channels Cor Telluris was still building, that had, more than any single thing, made me into whatever I now was.
It did not break the world. It ate the world, a careful mouthful at a time, and rebuilt me from the pieces, and I was sure that I was not using this ability to its utmost, or seeing a fraction of what it was truly capable of.
I could not break the warden. I had established that with a thoroughness I was almost proud of. But from what I understand of Soul-Forge, it could reach into things and find the part that could be taken, and take it.
Under all this impossible cold metal, I wanted to see if I could see the inner components of this Warden. I was not able to penetrate the head of this golem with my threads, but I swore that I could feel something inside it, and perhaps Soul-Forge could reveal this to me.
A heat haze appeared over my palm, and I brought it close to the head of the Warden, and like my lightning, there was no effect, however, I knew that I could control lightning, but this skill was beyond me, I had gained it from the actions of the Hollow Avatar when it created Cor Telluris, and I don’t know how far I had to push to fully learn how to use it.
The skill growth gave me much technical knowledge about this skill, but the creation of Cor Telluris in my heart was beyond anything that my current skill level could even touch, and this Warden was the same, so I knew what I needed to do.
I let my sense of self sink deeper in the dark pool inside me and allowed the Hollow Avatar to come to the fore: "You have to help me with this."
The Hollow Avatar whispered, "I am here. You understand this will cost."
If I could, I would have rolled my eyes. Did it have to whisper so sinisterly? I am already a bit freaked out with everything that is happening. I sighed, "Everything costs. Let’s go."
As I sank deeper, the Hollow Avatar took charge of the Soul-Forge, and the heat haze over my palm became a silver flame that was eerily beautiful, but the Hollow Avatar did not care about this; I just felt that it was creating countless complex configurations inside the Soul-Forge, and it did not see the beauty in its creation.
I saw it, and it was like seeing music in numbers, and I wanted to share this with the Avatar, but I did not think this was the right time or if it would understand, but if I had another passenger fused to my soul, then perhaps it was time for me to begin to show it how I saw the world.
Unlike when I used the skill, the silver flame went past the metal, which did not so much resist as fail to notice it was there, and as the flame sank past the metallic skin, I began to sense a hum beneath it.
This was the magic that I could barely sense with my threads, but now I was beginning to feel it more deeply; it was like putting my hand into a still pond and finding a current.
The metal had been dead to me, but I think I was beginning to touch the magic under it, and this magic was old, and slow, and vast.
For a long moment, this was all I could sense, as the magic was a structure of intent so large and so patient that touching even its edge made my own will feel like a candle held up against a furnace door.
This... this magic was the thing the Architects had built, and the entire golem, the Gate Warden, was only the shape they had poured it into.
I could not imagine that you could create something in this manner, and it showed me a path of magic that blew me away. This great cold patient pressure was the warden, and it had been keeping its post in the dark for ten thousand years with its head cut off, because nobody had ever told it that it had died.
The Gate Warden was still alive!
If I were the one in control of my body, I would have removed my hand and moved back until I could settle down from the shock, but the Hollow Avatar did not know the meaning of fear, and it did not matter if it was before a magic that could eradicate us in the blink of an eye; it just continued exploring the vastness beneath the metal.
I was forced to follow the Hollow Avatar along, and as I explored deeper into the magic, although calling it explore was quite a stretch, I was just skimming above the vast magic; going any deeper would call attention to the Gate Warden, or I would just burn my consciousness to ash if I went deeper into the magic.
However, the Avatar moved with intent, and the further we traveled above the magic, I soon began to see more of the magic, and then I touched its purpose, and if I did not have the Hollow Avatar welded to my soul that had a similar purpose, I would not have recognized what I was seeing.
Stand.
Watch.
Hold.
Open for the ones who are allowed, and for no one else.
This instruction encoded in this magic when it was created had never stopped, and even now, with its body headless and nearly split in half, it was still holding the door, the way a dead man’s hand stays shut around the thing it died gripping.
This magic was still alive and had purpose, but its shell was broken, and the moment its shell was repaired, it would come back to ’life’.
As amazing as all of this was to discover, the Hollow Avatar kept pushing deeper, and I soon found what it was looking for... I saw the thing that killed the Gate Warden, and it was the void.