Forged Destiny [Book 6: Ch. 9; Book 9: Ch. 19, Ch. 20]

My vision began to black out. My chest was being crushed, my entire body, and I couldn't draw breath into my lungs. I was going to suffocate before she squashed me like a bug. My free hand flailed toward the mass of black, plunging into it, for all the good it did. It wasn't her arm, more a mass of demonic energy.

The Exp from Willow continued to pour into me.

F-Four… Levels….

Something inside me moved. Shifted. Information crashed into my skull, into my very soul. My eyes flashed bright blue, as did my hand, lodged inside of the black mass crushing me. I felt a rush of heat, of force, of something more. My fingers closed around something in the darkness, something familiar. My amulet. Her amulet.

My lips formed words I'd never uttered. Shouted them.

"Purify!"

Light exploded in front of me. It pushed me down, but it also let me breathe – tearing away the dark energy that threatened to crush us all. The oppressive nature of it was shattered, and from the corner of my eye I saw everyone move, suddenly free of Salem's influence.

As the Exp I'd gained finally ground to a halt, the information filtered into my head.

I'd gained a new Skill. Purify Object. The descriptor of which read that I could remove curses from cursed items or weapons and imbue them to resist or protect against demonic taint.

Demonic taint…?

I'd gained a Skill that would only work against one creature. Only a single individual. The only `demon` I had ever faced, and the one currently floating in the air, gripping her wrist with one hand, snarling down on me with hate-filled eyes.

[...]

I'd purified my amulet, and at the same time caused it to become something that could repel her power, saving myself. But in doing so, in removing her power, I had removed the very essence that made it what it was. It felt warm on my chest, comforting, but its purpose was now to protect and to repel.

Not to change the truth, or to hide it.

I was a Blacksmith once more.

And everyone knew it.

—Forged Destiny [Book 6: Ch. 9]



"I see you understand." Salem squeezed my right shoulder harder, making bones snap and me scream out through my Resilience. "The language you call Runes is my own. It was a… gift impaired on your people long ago."

The way she said gift made it clear it was anything but. Another cursed wish.

"The ones I gave it to destroyed themselves, as you humans so often tend to. Since then, it went forgotten. And yet it returns with you – not because you were born of that line or because you are important in some way, but because I granted it to you on a silver platter."

Her smile widened.

"Or was that a silver pendant?"

The Pendant…? No. How? It had a Rune on it, but I'd never interacted with it. Except I had, hadn't I. Every time I wore it and let the magic within change my Class, I was technically using a Rune. I was allowing a Rune to shape me, relying on it. I'd been adapting without ever realising it, and that small interaction over so long and so many levels had warped my Path.

"You should have died so long ago that it wouldn't have been an issue," she said. "You did, in fact. You fulfilled the terms of the wish by dying a Hero at the battle of Vale, in doing so escaping my contract."

He… what? But he hadn't died. The only thing he'd done in that was fight Cinder…

"It still isn't a problem," she went on. "As galling as it is to see my own powers used against me, you're no closer to besting me than you've ever been. You're just an aggravating little pest that won't keel over and die."

"How?" I gasped. "The Seal… doesn't change class…"

"Oh, you mean this Rune?" She tapped my sword with a fingernail. The symbol flared. "Well, I needed some way of making for you an item that would change your Class, did I not? A simple illusionary spell would do." Salem chuckled and waved her free hand toward my face. The words above my head shifted, first to `Knight` and then to `Fool`. "But how to lock that to you? I certainly didn't want to have to follow you around for weeks and months reapplying it, did I? I needed something to do that for me."

"But the Rune doesn't do that…" I'd applied it to our weapons and there'd been no such change.

"No." she agreed. "It does not."

—Forged Destiny [Book 9: Ch. 18]



The `Seal` Rune was all over her outfit too.

[...]

"It's for infusing items with spells."

Blake's head shot to mine. "What?"

"It's not locking something away – not exactly. It's more like… putting a spell into an item. Or a weapon. Do you remember my amulet? That changed my Class name to Knight. Nothing more. I thought the item itself was magic, but it wasn't. Sun recognised the symbol as being something from Vacuo. It was literally just a bauble picked up by Salem. It wasn't magic at all."

"But the effect-"

"An illusion spell. The very same one Neo used to pretend she was a Maid." A reminder that I hadn't been the first to hide my Class. "Salem didn't give me an item that changed my Class; she wanted me to die from my bravado, so she gave me something that just hid it. But she couldn't afford to follow me around for however many months it took maintaining a spell. She put the spell into a random piece of jewellery, sealed it in with a Rune and gave that to me."

"Seal," Ruby whispered. "It's just glue-?"

"Pretty much. It sticks a spell to the object and keeps it from ending. There's probably more, something to make the effect perpetual, but that's pretty much what the spell does. And why Salem was so amused when Raven tried to use it on her."

"Because Salem could read it – and because it was empty."

—Forged Destiny [Book 9: Ch. 19]



There wasn't much more time to think as a black beam rushed in toward me. I got Crocea Mors up in time.

Agony.

I slammed back into and through a wall, smoking and choking for air. Why? Why hadn't it blocked the attack? Crocea Mors was still glowing, but she'd done nothing to protect me. I groaned and pushed up on one arm, looking out the wall as Salem prepared another blast with my name on it.

Rune. Seal. Container. I slapped my free hand down onto the blade, over the Rune, and pointed it up at the oncoming attack.

"Purify!"

I felt it deep inside me. A subtle tug and a release – a miasma of black oozing out Crocea Mors and forming a fine mist mere seconds before the beam struck. Purify Object, which removed Demonic Taint from an object, had pushed her previous spell from the `Seal` Rune.

[...]

"Purify!"

It was the same as what I'd done in Vacuo. I hadn't destroyed Salem's attack as I first thought; I'd purified the illusion spell contained within the `Seal` Rune on my amulet, making it empty. Salem's attack had been absorbed into the amulet, saving me. It must also have been why she was so insistent on destroying the amulet after that – because she knew she couldn't leave that kind of power in our hands.

—Forged Destiny [Book 9: Ch. 20]