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((Double Saturday -- Page 1 of 2))
Royo used his gloved hand, careful to be extra gentle, and bumped his soul against the first whirlpool up from the hilt.

He sensed the sword respond again, and suddenly, he saw duplicates of not just his arm, but his entire body.

There were now three Royo Rajus, one standing on either side of him.

And they were convincing, too. He had to phase his hand through one of them to make sure they really were just illusions.

They were. The projection flickered for a few seconds before correcting itself.

That was a relief. As much as he might have been able to accomplish with full, thinking clones of himself moving and acting in the world, he didn’t think he would like that very much, primarily because he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t try to kill him and take his place.

It was a thought he’d had before, though never quite this seriously.

Regardless, he had a fairly good grasp of the sword’s power, now. The other whirlpools in the ardor flow simply adjusted the placement of the illusions, relative to where Royo was standing. Useful for masking his position from opponents who would otherwise know to attack the center image, he decided.

The final whirlpool, however, the one near the tip of the blade, was different, and as much as Royo tried, he couldn’t quite understand what it did.

It seemed to transform the whole world around him, making everything come alive in a kind of ethereal fire--a visual representation of all the ardor around him, he was pretty sure. But what did that mean? What actual purpose did it serve? Was it really just to help him detect the presence of ardor?

If so, then that ability was sadly redundant for someone with his training. But it would make a certain degree of sense, he supposed. If the sword was designed for use by someone who couldn’t sense ardor on their own, then that pressure point would likely be very helpful.

At least, this was what he was thinking until he heard the one called Manuel’s voice again.

“Eleyo?” the man said. “Where did you go?”

Royo was looking right at him, and the one called Manuel should have been able to see him. Granted, the lighting was a bit poor, and these surface-dwellers seemed to have rather bad eyesight, but still. This was abnormal.

Royo supposed he should answer. “I am here,” he said.

The one called Manuel looked around, still apparently not seeing him. “Where? Even my reaper can’t sense you.”

Royo understood and smiled to himself. The Sword of Hamenszoon’s final illusion was to render its wielder invisible.

It did make him wonder, however, what the designer had been thinking. Why would he ever not use the invisibility? It was clearly superior to all the others in just about every way imaginable.

Almost as soon as he had the thought, he got an answer. The ethereal world all around him diminished, and the one called Manuel spotted him.

Royo bumped the final pressure point again, but it wasn’t doing anything now.

It had some sort of hard time limit, he realized.

How unfortunate.

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Royo moved his hand up and down, to and fro, marveling at the sight before him.

The duplicates faded after a moment, however.

He did it again. He bumped his soul against the ardor sword, and he was prepared this time, so he was able to sense the ardor resonate briefly, like a kind of invisible flash.

The duplicate arms and swords returned, but Royo wasn’t satisfied. It had to be capable of more than just this, he felt. He bumped his soul into it again and held it there, trying get a more complete feel of both the ardor and the blade itself.

He needed to know the sword, to see it completely and understand all of its components. Examining its ardor could help with that, potentially. Ardor adapted itself to whatever structure it dwelled within. More specifically, it was the “flow” of ardor which adapted itself, and to a trained mind like Royo’s, that flow was discernible.

It was a shame that ardor wasn’t more common in the Undercrust, Royo had always felt. This training would have been far more versatile and valuable, if that were the case.

He found it. The flow of ardor. He had to concentrate harder to see patterns in it, as if holding up an imaginary magnifying glass to reveal its secrets.

The smaller, jagged distortions in the flow indicated the material of the sword. Gold and silver made up most of it, along with several trace elements he wasn’t trained to recognize. There was, however, one long, thin vein of either iron or nickel running right down the middle.

Not terribly surprising. Ardor famously flowed through iron and nickel so smoothly and cleanly that the two elements were indistinguishable from one another, when judging solely from their flow patterns. No other elements acted as such perfect conduits, as far as Royo knew.

But that wasn’t all he was interested in, here and now. He wanted to know where the ardor’s “pressure points” were.

Any object crafted by human hands would have structural weaknesses. That was one reason why it was so desirable to place ardor into it--because the ardor would compensate for those flaws. But to do so, the flow of the ardor would have to be disrupted, which often left detectable “whirlpools,” as it were.

As far as the physical structure was concerned, these whirlpools balanced everything out, eliminating weaknesses entirely, but that was fine, because Royo didn’t want to destroy the sword. Far from it. He only wanted to know where it would be best to apply pressure from his own soul. And he immediately found one whirlpool in the hilt.

Sensible.

The designer had probably intended for it to be there. But Royo also sensed eleven more along the length of the blade, the last one sitting just below the tip.

He bumped his soul into the hilt a little stronger, and when it appeared to do nothing, he realized that it was the same whirlpool that he’d been using all along. It wasn’t that it did nothing. It was simply already in use, maintaining the duplicate images that Royo was currently seeing.

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It was so unbelievably overwhelming and terrifying. Like suddenly finding oneself in the ocean that he’d read so much about. Not being able to swim or move, for that matter. Just being completely smothered from all directions at once. That experience alone had nearly converted him into a follower of the Heart of the World.

After that first time, it was much more manageable, though not particularly helpful in day-to-day life. While the sensing of ardor required training one’s mind and soul, the actual manipulation of ardor still required enormous industrial tools built by the hands of the supermen.

Sadly, even as revelatory as it was, there simply wasn’t much literal value in that training for the average Hun’Kui outside of the mining industry.

But he was not average, Royo knew, nor were these circumstances.

If anything was going to help him activate this sword’s power, it would be this training.

He concentrated on his breathing. On regulating it. And unifying his mind with it.

It was comfortable like an old set of clothes. Familiar, though perhaps not as easy to slide back into as he would have liked. But he managed.

His mind became his breathing. He moved with it. In and out of his own lungs. An extension of his very soul, his life force. And with that ebb and flow, he could begin to feel the rhythm of the world around him, seeing the heretofore invisible movement in perceived stillness.

It was the pulse of life itself. Asynchronous and all-encompassing.

Holy fire, there was way more ardor around him than he had realized.

True, it had been quite a while since he had performed this sensory technique, thus making it only natural that he would feel a bit overwhelmed by it all again, but even so--this level of power was ridiculous. Not just from the sword, either. It was everywhere. The sword, the boots, his glove, all of the ridiculous treasure--even the floor and walls were practically bursting with ardor, as if threatening to erupt at any moment.

His old bosses would have loved this place, iron or not.

He gathered himself and tried to focus. On the sword. That was all that mattered now.

Indeed, he could sense the ardor flowing through it. Burning through it. He couldn’t help feeling like it would scorch his flesh and swallow him whole. But he knew that wasn’t possible. Or he mostly knew it, anyway.

But now what?

He didn’t really know. There weren’t any industrial tools handy, and even if there were, how would he use them on a sword, of all things?

This ardor was unlike that which he had worked with, as well. It didn’t need to be extracted or molded in any way. It was simply there. Waiting.

On him?

Perhaps so.

Perhaps he needed only reach out with his own soul. He could do that much, he was fairly sure.

The Sword of Hamenszoon responded with a burst of ardor that knocked him clear out of himself, shattering his concentration and forcing him back a few steps.

He waited for his disorientation to go away again, but his vision didn’t quite realign properly. Or didn’t seem to.

Because he suddenly had four left hands, each holding an identical sword.