Sophie evades the projectile with an economy of motion she’s never displayed before. If I didn’t know her any better I might say she did it with a contemptuous ease, but that wouldn’t be right. She does put so little effort into it that certainly seems that way, though.

The ball sweeps around and moves to strike her again, but she flows out of the way with ease. Mom responds by throwing a second sphere at Sophie, which she also avoids, but I notice there was a moment’s hesitation, like the addition of another ball threw her off. Regardless, she quickly adapts. Both balls fly around Sophie, striking at seemingly random intervals. Sometimes they’d move in sync, others staggered slightly, others more at completely different times. Sophie continues to evade them with nearly the same level of efficiency as with the first on it’s own.

Mom steps up, launching two more balls at Sophie. Now with four projectiles to keep track of, her efficiency diminishes, yet still not one scores a strike. So Mom adds another two. Then half a minute later, three more. At this point Mom has triggered her own enhancement, body and clothes turning to steel, purely for whatever minor boost to her reaction time it might give her.

I honestly can’t see how she’s managing it, but Sophie is still finding gaps to slip through. Her movements are getting increasingly complex and acrobatic as time goes on, and Mom is tightening the movements of her spheres. On and on, Sophie steps, spins, slides, and rolls around every attack. It’s almost trance-like as she does it, like she’s yet to fully realise what she’s been doing.

Mom keeps it at nine for a full minute every ball in the air before suddenly stops and backs away. That same instant, Sophie collapses to her hands and knees, seemingly suffering from physical exhaustion, mana deprivation, and the shock of suddenly losing her enhancement all at once.

She stays like that for a bit. I push down the small part of me that starts screaming I’m going to start falling upwards - which is absurd anyway because it’s reliant on my enhancement - and walk over to her.

“That was amazing,” I say.

“What… was that?” she gasps, looking at Mom, “Slayer didn’t direct me to attack at all, it’s never done that before.”

“The Aspect works like a sort of second mind,” Mom says as she approaches, “It’s focused solely and completely on reading your opponent and telling you what move is best to make within the limits of your own skills. When you aren’t powering it with your mana, it is dormant, almost asleep. The knowledge and insight it grants you needs time to build because what you are getting from it is like fragments of a dream. Merely pieces of a whole. It’s why it's so easy for Valerie to disrupt it simply by changing weapons. A sleeping mind won’t be able to think that far ahead, or that laterally.

“But when you feed it mana, it wakes up. It gains full access to all your senses, even those you don’t fully know how to use, like the secondary effect of your Wind enhancement. You’ll want to add that to your training by the way, it’s an extremely valuable tool. Regardless, the Slayer mind reads every minute detail it perceives and tells you the best approach possible, as long as it is within your skillset. You can’t just pick up a sword with no training and expect it to tell you anything other than drop it and find a spear, because for you a sword might as well be a sharp stick for all the good it would do you. So then, what would that mind tell you if the person you were fighting was someone you had no hope of defeating? Survive. It would tell you what you need to know to live, so you may learn, grow, and one day surpass and overcome that person.

“That’s what happened here,” Mom continued, “It didn’t tell you to fight because it knew you had no way to kill me. It didn’t tell you to run because it knew you had no way to escape me. The only reason it told you anything at all was because it knew I was going very easy on you, and because it hoped to stall for a lucky break, as that was the only possible way it could see you surviving.”

“That was going easy on me?!” Sophie exclaimed.

Mom gives an almost sympathetic look. “Sophie, I earned my title by single handedly ending wars. Nine is not the limit to the number I can control, nor was that the limit to the degree of complexity I can move them at. If I truly wanted to win, I could have done it with just two.”

Sophie gapes at her. “How the hell are you able to keep track of so many things at once? I’d practically go mad with how much focus that would need, and you can do so casually? What the actual hell?”

Mom looks at me, “I believe I once explained how my own Aspect worked to you Valerie. Do you remember?”

I nod and say to Sophie. “Steelweaver makes it significantly easier for her. It drastically reduces the level of focus required for controlling large numbers of small objects, as well as helping keep track of their positions and such. Though I get the feeling that even for those with Aspects like Steelweaver, Mom is something of an anomaly.”

“Most Steelweavers my age can manage up to around fifty,” Mom says, “Suffice to say, there are a lot more than fifty feathers in my cloak.”

“I’ve counted 256, if you’re curious,” Armsmaster says distractedly. She’s been putting most of her attention on Mom’s cloak for the past two days. She said it isn’t strictly necessary, but she prefers to be present for each time the Armoury processes a Relic for the first time for a Claimant. I think it’s a little superstitious on her part, though I think anyone who lived even a fraction as long as she has would develop some odd superstitions eventually. “Speaking of, it should be finished by tonight. You’ll get to watch the final change, which is usually pretty spectacular.”

Would it hurt me at all to tell Sophie about all this? I’m not liking keeping the truth from her.

“Loyalty is a big deal for wolfblood beastkin, even halfbloods like her. If talking about something she knows would put you at risk, there are very few things that would get her to talk. You should be fine.”

Thanks.

I return my focus to Mom and Sophie, who seem to not have noticed my distraction and are discussing Sophie’s Aspect.

“The second mind from Slayer, or sub-mind as it's sometimes called, can be trained as well. If you would like to, I know a few ways to redirect it’s focus towards ‘winning’ instead of simply killing. It will be difficult, but it would be better for you in the long run, so it is worthwhile,” Mom says.

“Okay. Yeah, I would like that,” Sophie replies.

Mom nods. “That being said, it is also vitally important that you improve your own skills, as the more you can do with it asleep, the more effective it will be when awake. And to address your concerns about Slayer not being much help lately, consider the kinds of fights you’ve had recently. One was when you were outnumbered against opponents used to working together, and the other against someone who could change her fighting style as she liked to suit her opponent. Both are things that Slayer struggles with while asleep. If it was awake, then it would be a different story entirely. Highly skilled Slayers, especially Wind mages like yourself, have been known to handle five opponents on their own with ease, though admittedly that is in somewhat rare cases. Still, if you had used Slayer more actively that day, you would have had a much easier time.”

Sophie’s ears droop at the reminder of her mistakes. Her confidence is rather brittle, I can’t help but note.

“I didn’t want to kill them. Just knock them out or something.”

“And that’s admirable Sophie, it really is, but for all you knew your life was on the line. Both of you survived, yes,” Mom looks at me as well as she says this, “but next time you may not be so lucky. If you’re ever in a situation like that again, you cannot afford to hesitate.”

Sophie nods.

At this point, I decide to bring up what I mentioned to Armsmaster. “Mom? Can we head inside now? I want to tell Sophie everything about my Aspect, and I don’t think we should risk being overheard.”

Sophie’s ears flick up at that, and she cocks an eyebrow at me, but before she can ask the inevitable, Mom says, “Are you sure, Valerie? Armsmaster was right to not let you tell me until it became necessary.”

I nod. “I’m sure. I don’t really like keeping secrets.”

“So am I finally going to find out why you keep dodging the question whenever your Aspect comes up?” Sophie asks wryly.

My face reddens. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?”

She smirks. “I’ve been treating it as a game, to be honest. I wanted to see how long it would take for you to say it’s name by accident.”

I can feel the heat on my face as I push Sophie towards the house, Mom snickering behind me. My haste is definitely because I’m flustered, and is in no way because I want to shut up the part of me screaming to get back under a roof.

Not at all.

**********************

Sophie seemed to take the news of my bearing a Legacy rather well, all things considered. She did start ranting about how it was apparently completely obvious in hindsight and she was an idiot for not figuring it out herself, but in fairness the Legacy of Armaments is the least active of the seven, and hadn’t had a Claimant for over a thousand years.

She can be forgiven a bit of selective ignorance, and I told her as much.

Before I went to bed, the Armsmaster taught me how to remove objects from the Armoury, which is rather important if I want to return Mom’s cloak to her. The process is largely the same as storing items there. I simply neutralise some mana, and gather it into a dense bead in front of me. Then, I focus on the object I want to pull out being removed from the same space inside me that it went into, whilst rapidly expanding the bead. When the mana disperses, it should appear in my hand. If there isn’t enough mana in the bead to contain the object once it's spread out, then it fails and the mana dissipates. I practiced this on a book I had lying around, before I was confident I had it right.

Then I entered the Armoury, where Armsmaster then started helping me figure out how to work my enhancement’s gravity manipulation. I quickly discovered that it was a very, very good thing that we saved any further experimentation for the Armoury, as early on I learned I could create a gravity field around myself that would push in a given direction. I also learned in the same moment that the strength of the shift indicates the strength of the gravitational force.

I was very grateful for that fact, when I accidentally shifted the wrong spot much too hard and ended up crushing myself from all directions with a force of gravity equal to that of a small star.

It used up all my mana in the process, but it crushed my projection instantly. I didn’t feel a thing.

Eventually, we decided that this was going to be a long term project. We were essentially pioneering entirely new magic, so it was going to take a hellish amount of time. The Armoury let us take risks we normally wouldn’t, but reckless trial and error was still trial and error. We kept at it for a few more hours, and I did manage to figure out how to lessen my personal gravity, but so far that’s the only certainty we’ve had. There has been evidence of my being able to affect gravity for specific limbs, and I just know I’m going to screw that up at some point and accidentally rip my arm off or something.

Armsmaster agreed to make my projection more fragile next time, like she did for the obstacle course.

But now here we stand, about to enter the Armoury’s lesser Relic containment.

It’s time to see Mom’s new Relic.

The walls here were a little different. None of the dark wood the rest of the Armoury that I’ve seen had. It's all just nearly black stone, with some dark steel for embellishment. It also doesn’t have the starscape banners that are scattered around elsewhere as well.

“Well this is foreboding,” I comment as we walk through the hallway.

“It’s meant to be,” Armsmaster says, “This may be lesser containment, but keep in mind that’s containment designed for all but the worst of Feral Relics. Not only must it be more durable than the rest of the Armoury, but it needs to be easier to defend in the event of a breach. From either direction.”

“That doesn’t sound remotely feasible.”

She snorts. “Normally, it wouldn’t be. The Armoury’s shenanigans tend to help with that though, so it’s a little more feasible here.”

As she finishes talking, we come up to a vault door, made entirely of the same glittering dark steel scattered through the hallway behind us. There’s no combination lock on the door, no wheel to turn or waiting keyhole. Just a solid dark metal face. Once again, I can only think that the Armoury deliberately affected the distance so we’d reach the door once Armsmaster finished speaking.

“Here we are,” she says. “You can open the door for us, only fair you learn how. It’s fairly simple, just need to put your hand on the door and focus on the Relic you want to access and it will be behind it when it opens. Oh, and channel some mana in as well.”

I look at the door warily. “It’s not going to explode me if I do it wrong, will it? I’ve had enough of violent demise for one day.”

“For you? No, you’ll be fine.”

I nod, and place my hand on the door, thinking of Mom’s steel feather cloak and feeding the door some mana. Immediately, I begin to hear heavy, distant thunks, like immense pins in a lock shifting.

“Now, if anyone else had done that, then yes, it would have ‘exploded’ them.”

I give Armsmaster my harshest glare, and she just grins wolfishly.

Once all the pins have moved, seven in all I counted, the door slides back into the wall, and rolls to the side. As we step through the door, I can only marvel at the fact the door has to be at least six feet thick, which feels frankly absurd.

“And this is supposed to be lesser containment? How were the Twilight Vaults breached if this is what’s considered ‘lesser’?” I can’t help but ask.

Armsmaster grimaces. “I was… not having a great day. I am very, very old Valerie. That comes with memories that will haunt me for the rest of my existence. There will come a day, hopefully not soon, that some of those memories will… resurface, to put it mildly. I’ll be incapacitated for a time. Either by luck or planning, the thief chose exactly the right time to make her move. Leon, the Claimant at the time, was charmed and manipulated. Lied to. The poor boy never had a chance. She was prepared to a degree that honestly frightens me, Valerie. She didn’t know the Vaults’ exact defences, but she had so many tools and tricks that by the time the alarms had roused me it was too late. She had gotten in, and I could only stop her from taking the very worst of the weapons within. Her escape is, to this day, my greatest shame.”

I can only offer silence to that.

The room behind the vault door is made from the same metal as the door itself. Dark and glittering, it looks like it holds countless stars in it’s depths. I realise now it's the same metal my weapons are made of.

“Does this metal have a name?”

Armsmaster shakes her head. “It only exists in the Armoury, so I never bothered to give it one. Not many Claimants have cared enough to ask.”

It needs a name. Metal this pretty deserves it.

“Astral Steel,” I decide.

She shrugs. “Good a name as any.”

After the doorway is a short set of steps leading down to the floor, where there is a pedestal glowing a soft silver light. Suspended in that light is Mom’s cloak, though I can see from here that it is different.

The metal it’s composed of has gained a strange depth to it, like I can see more within the metal than is technically possible. The feathers have separated, keeping the cloak’s general shape but leaving an inch or so of space between them. It makes it seem like it’s intended for someone much larger.

“So, is that it?”

“Nah. That’s just what it looks like on the precipice. Literally any mana interacting with it will trigger the final changes, it’s that close. I thought I’d let you have the honours.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it.”

She grins a little. Not sheepishly, just in gratitude of her own.

“Well, step forward and feed it a bit of mana. Any will do, though I recommend neutral.”

I nod, and do just that. I pull on the tiniest strand of mana I can, neutralise it, and push it into the cloak.

Instantly, all the feathers of steel making it up rush towards its center of mass. There’s a flash of light bright enough to make me shield my eyes, and the sound of a hammer striking anvil.

Then the light dims, the sound echoes away.

And I look at what Mom’s cloak has become.