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Still, he did not hate the Golden Hour. There'd certainly been a time when he did, but no longer.

The Hour was the way it was. He'd come to terms with it. And he'd still managed to create some wondrous things with it, albeit very slowly.

Mostly in the aid of Sermung's campaign. That man deserved all the assistance in the world, whether he accepted it or not.

Unfortunately, that man also had a habit of obliterating everything Xander ever gave him.

Truly, the Magician of Light's greatest struggle had been creating an item that could withstand not only the perilous journey beyond the Veil but also the incredible power of the Crystal Titan himself.

Sermung kept assuring him that his attempts had indeed proved useful before being rent to dust, but Xander always had to wonder how true that was.

Time would tell if his last effort had succeeded. He'd come up with a new type of soul compass for Sermung. Typically, such compasses could not withstand breaching the Veil, no matter how much Sermung tried to shield them. They would always go dormant or even shatter.

Xander came to the conclusion that it must have been a matter of foundational physical stability. If the laws of physical reality were sufficiently distorted by these foreign realms, then objects that were especially attuned to such laws might become unusable.

The answer, therefore, was to create the new compass within the new realm that Sermung wished to search. So rather than simply handing Sermung a new compass, he'd instead given the man the means to create his own.

It was a kind of mini-Forge. A 3D printer, of sorts. Fully automated, of course. Sermung could not be relied upon at all when it came to technology.

All he'd needed to do was press two buttons. One to transform the printer so that it could acclimate to the new laws, and one to actually begin the printing process.

Xander had tested it plenty of times. Unfortunately, due to the required transformation process, he couldn't reduce it down to a single button press, but surely, Sermung could handle that much.

Surely. It was two buttons. And the High Commander was a brilliant man in his own right.

Yes, yes, if it did fail, it would be his own fault. The transformation process was quite sophisticated, after all. Plenty of opportunities for something to break there.

Xander chose to ignore the many counterexamples coming to mind in the form of sweat-inducing flashbacks.

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He sometimes wondered if the Hour simply hated him. He'd heard about such cases historically, but at this point, he'd been struggling with this Forge for so long that he was long past any desire to prostrate himself before it and curry its favor.

Instead, he was hoping to soon begin work on a Forge of his very own creation. He'd been studying for decades toward that end, but according to his research, he still wasn't quite old enough for that feat to be feasible.

Not without some kind of immense sacrifice, at least.

Supposedly, it was possible to give up a part of one's very soul, impairing both the reaper and servant indefinitely, in order to reach that final plateau, but Xander's need was not so great as that.

The marshals wouldn't even humor the notion, either. They always just told him to focus on mastering the Golden Hour. It was the heart of Vanguardian innovation for nearly a thousand years, after all.

Which might explain why there hadn't actually been much movement on that front, comparatively.

Despite all their age and experience, it seemed difficult for them to understand the true nature of the Golden Hour.

They seemed to think that all Fusion Forges were basically the same. All just grand engines of incredible creative power.

Which was true enough, of course. Especially when looking at history, which was what all the marshals did.

But there was a secondary truth there that could not always be ignored.

There was a reason why no two Forges were alike. They were living, thinking entities. They all had different capabilities. Different specialties. Different likes and dislikes.

Therefore, it would be foolish to assume that they were all equal, too. The sheer degree of variance among them rendered that a statistical impossibility.

But of course, it was also true that the Golden Hour had a storied history of grand creation. It was the child of one of the most famous integrators ever, after all.

Hamenszoon, the Undaunted Mind.

It was hard not to feel inadequate by comparison, but Xander knew that he was in good company. No other Vanguardian integrator had been able to wield the Hour as impressively as Hamenszoon. It was nothing to be ashamed of.

In fact, perhaps the Hour simply could not work as well for anyone else. Perhaps it ached for its creator, even now.

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Rarely had Jackson seen him take such a tone and disposition with him, but it always meant that he was in no mood for japes, despite all previous evidence to the contrary.

For his part, however, Jackson remained quietly suspicious, even as he acquiesced to the High Commander's order.

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The Golden Hour hummed lowly, growing briefly strong enough to send a shock wave through the polished floor.

The Magician of Light looked up from his broad desk, having just sat down after returning from a long and frustrating trip. He hadn't even attempted to communicate with the Fusion Forge in several days, much less actually use it.

So what was this now? Why was it acting up?

The monolithic thing certainly lived up to its name. It was a gigantic golden hourglass, stretching up the full height of the chamber and connecting with the domed ceiling at its central point.

Xander's green eyes narrowed at the sight of it there, and he stood up, shaking the malaise from his mind and the fatigue from his limbs.

To say that the Hour was a fickle entity was certainly an understatement. Xander had been privileged enough to work with multiple different Fusion Forges over the course of his life, but the Hour was the most mercurial by far.

Oh, how he missed the Silent Serpent. Not a day went by that he didn't envy Kurata for inheriting such a cooperative Forge.

Instead, he'd become the steward of this moody bastard.

He approached the Golden Hour but didn't yet deign to touch it. That was a mistake he'd made too many times before. He needed to give it ample time to prepare itself before making direct contact. He needed to speak to it, too. Help alert it to his presence.

"What's the matter?" he asked in a soothing tone.

This was key to its operation, he'd learned. He suspected it was because the Golden Hour was often lost in thought and so its ability to sense its immediate surroundings was greatly diminished--possibly even non-existent.

So he had to lure it back into reality, first.

This was especially important when the Hour had a project already running inside it, like it did now. Slow as it was, its projects could often take weeks to complete even just a single step; and worse still, if Xander approached it carelessly, the brewing project could be instantly ruined.

Months of work, lost in an instant.

Another mistake he'd made far too many times.