“Hey there,” said Zane, stepping casually out of the key-portal.

  “You’re back!” said Aiw?.

  He sat by the forge, heaving a hammer, with a copper welding mask pulled up. He sounded delighted, if tinny.

  “Just one moment.”

  He set down his hammer, donned some heavy gloves, picked up some tongs, and began straightening out a white-hot notification box.

  The notification box was not having it.

  “…A few more moments…” gasped Aiw?.

  It wasn’t just his legs. When Zane took a closer look at him, his whole body had this fuzzy, light look.

  Zane went on over, grabbed the steel with his bare hands, and unbent it.

  “Phew!” Aiw? popped up the mask and wiped his brow. “Thanks, friend… Strong hands.”

  Zane handed it back. “I've got an offer to make.”

  Aiw? perked up.

  He explained his situation. He was trying to finish up his Solar Flare—he just needed one last Concept. “I have a feeling you know what it is.”

  “I think I do,” said Aiw?, nodding slowly. “It sounds like the Concept of Stellar Infusion. I make use of it in my Path too. It’s crucial to the project, as it happens.”

  He picked up the dreamsteel with a glove and showed off its scalding-white color, slowly cooling.

  “It’s the only force that can forge Dreamsteel.”

  “Could you show it to me?” said Zane. He came to a knee, so they were eye-to-eye. “I’m pretty handy. I could help out around here in return, if you like.”

  “Really?” Aiw? blinked. “…I do spend rather too much time wrangling steels…”

  He studied Zane.

  “I must warn you, it’s strenuous work. I have no doubt you’re a capable man. But it’d be grueling for anyone.”

  He got the sense Aiw? felt bad for asking. “It’d mostly involve mining chunks of dreamsteel, bringing them back, and pounding them into shapes after I’ve infused them. And dreamsteel can take quite some pounding. It’s… really, it’s the same basic motion, over and over, in baking heat.”

  “Hold on,” said Zane. “You’re telling me you want to smash things all day long.”

  Aiw? blinked. “That’s about right, yes.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “…Really?”

  He was starting to think Fate really did bring them together.

  ***

  Like that, they worked out a trade. Two days of the week, Zane would come in, work the project, and see Stellar Infusion in action. The rest he’d work on his ownInfusions, with Aiw? there to help. There were many blast-proof places in the mines Aiw? said would be great for practice.

  ***

  First, Aiw? showed him the ropes. They started down the track with a fresh cart, took a few splits, and were soon headed into the deep-mines. The only light came from the odd glowing steel in the wall, silver and bronze and gold.

  But they were looking for that tell-tale bright blue.

  Aiw? hummed as they went. Everything here—from the girders to the rails—had all been set by hand. Even the tools he used seemed handmade…

  Reina thought he was either a prisoner, or in exile, or maybe shipwrecked. She’d taken to Aiw?’s situation nicely—it was a great puzzle. All this hand-crafted, hand-made stuff made her think he’d been cast out with just his clothes and his chair.

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  “He’s not trying to build some escape vessel,” Reina had said, through some fish. “Which makes me think it’s exile.”

  She tilted her head. “I wonder why…”

  Deeper in, the tunnels started to split, and Aiw?’s eyes unfocused. He held out a hand as he went. He seemed to be relying less on sight than on feel.

  Then—“There!” said Aiw?.

  They took a left and wheeled to a stop fifty steps later.

  There lay a fissure in the rock. At its end, you could make out a wink of bright blue.

  “That’s our dreamsteel,” said Aiw?, breathless. “A hefty one, too. Should take a good few months to free the full length of it, but it’ll be well worth it.”

  He handed Zane a pick. “Would you like to give it a crack?”

  Zane inspected the rock up close, taking the measure of it.

  “Have you mined before?” said Aiw?.

  “I have not.”

  “Then a word of advice: pacing is everything! It might not seem so at first, but all that swinging—it’s got a way of sneaking up on you.”

  Maybe it was tougher than it looked. He figured Aiw? knew the mine better than he did.

  “Sure thing,” said Zane. He stepped up to it and inspected it. Then he clenched his fists over the handle.

  He took a deep breath. He figured he’d start slow and build.

  And a savage heat rushed out of his heart.

  Even without Limit Breaker, his Asura Titan’s Body had achieved the Second Form—that was a full Tier of raw strength. His runes burned like low coals.

  Then he stepped in with intention and swung.

  BOOM!

  The mine shuddered and split.

  A fog of stone and dust blew out of the wall—and when it cleared, half the face of the dreamsteel chunk was exposed to the light.

  He blinked.

  …That went better than expected.

  He cranked back and swung—BOOM! Then again and again—BOOM-BOOM!

  He stepped back and inspected the damage, which looked to be about good enough.

  Then he set down his pickaxe, waded on in, grabbed the chunk by both ends, deadlifted it—and hauled it back, each step shuddering the tunnel, before depositing it gently back in the cart.

  “Was that about what you were looking for?” he asked the fellow.

  “Holy hell, man!” cried Aiw?. “What was that?!”

  Zane blinked, inspected the quarry, then inspected the steel.

  “Did I miss some?”

  “No—it’s only—”

  Aiw? looked a bit dizzy. For a second, Zane wondered if one of the stone shrapnels had hit him or something.

  “Your kind,” Aiw? said slowly. “Your…people. Are all of your kind like this?”

  “It’s just me,” Zane assured him. Though he could see why that was a dizzying thought.

  He waited patiently for the fellow to get his wits about him.

  “You are an Ascendant, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  Now Aiw? was studying him like he was some machine, muttering, “I see it now—the muscle fibers are denser than wrought steel and coiled tighter than cable… just… just a remarkable physique.”

  “I get it a lot,” said Zane. In the past six hours, now that he thought about it, though he got the sense Reina had meant something different. “Anything else?”

  Aiw? took a deep breath; he seemed to snap out of it.

  “Well then,” he said. “Shall we break for lunch?”

  “You’re hungry?” said Zane, surprised. He thought they’d barely gotten started. Though maybe the fellow forgot breakfast.

  “Wouldn’t you like a break? You’ll still have to roll the cart all the way back to base camp…”

  “That’s all right,” said Zane.

  “…You’re not even sweating.”

  Zane shrugged. “I’m good to keep going.”

  They quarried that chunk back, came back, mined out another, and quarried that back too. And then a third.

  Around this time, it seemed to be dawning on Aiw? just what he’d recruited.

  “Goodness me,” muttered Aiw?. “That's more dreamsteel quarried in a half-day than I managed in the last half-year! This… this changes everything. I could spend so much more time designing and infusing—the scope of the whole project…”

  He paused.

  “You truly don’t mind doing this all day?”

  Zane assured the man he’d be just fine.

  The more he saw this place, the more his being here made sense.

  Dreamsteel was the stuff of the System. Ethereal stuff. Dreams were the stuff of Astra. And Aiw? was a big concepts guy, but he just needed some muscle to forge his dreams into reality.

  It was time to work this place.

  ***

  After they hauled all the steel back to the forge, Aiw? brought out a few molds for the System’s basic components—they were preparing for the forging phase.

  The System mostly existed as a bunch of carvings in tablets at the moment. But the bulk of it was still in Aiw?’s mind. He held this massive blueprint in his head, it seemed like, and saw it clearly from the zoomed-out view—but he could also pick up a mold and talk about any one little part in dizzying detail. The generators, the engines, the pipes, the logic boards—it was all there, hundreds of thousands, all in his mind.

  And far from being scared by it—it seemed to excite this Aiw? fellow. His eyes just lit up more and more the more he explained. Zane supposed that was what you needed when your ambition was to shape the universe.

  ***

  They broke for lunch—Aiw? quite liked the steamed buns.

  “You know,” said Aiw? wistfully, “You remind me of an old friend of mine. Maybe someday you’ll meet him.”

  They returned that afternoon for the forging.

  ***

  “This is what you’re here for,” said Aiw? cheerfully. “Here goes…”

  He set a chunk of dreamsteel against the anvil, and gestured above.

  “Stellar Infusion — Holy Ray.”

  A faint circle of life sparked to life in the Astral Plane—swirling faster, and faster, and faster, until it was a swirling malestrom of vicious blinding light—so vicious its aftershocks leaked into the visible plane; started to tremble reality—

  Then a pillar of light screamed down from the heart of it, and smote the face of the dreamsteel.