“I fucking did it,” I muttered, looking at my empty hand. My skin still stung, a testament to the power of a single old thread. It worked.

  “I did it!” I shouted, bursting into a chuckle and slumping down on the kitchen chair.

  Who could have imagined that something so simple could be so effective? A coil of threads around a knot. A spool grenade. The corners of my lips tugged into a grin at the name. Spool grenade. Yeah. That was cool as hell.

  Now what would happen if I were to do the same with a bullet? Would the casing be able to withstand the pressure of being fired? Would the red thread be secure enough to not blow up the wand in my hands? Only by experimenting would I know.

  I checked the time on my accolade, the Corroded Pocket Watch. I hadn’t really used it yet. There was no reason to back on Earth where there were clocks wherever you turned. Back there it was rendered quite redundant; but here, where the crystals always shone, it was a magnificent belonging. It helped me feel connected to the people I cared for back home.

  “I’ve still got time left in the day,” I mumbled and stood back up. “Might as well spend it doing something useful.”

  I headed back to the smithy and the worktable. There, I already had a cartridge screwed open. Repeating the process that I’d used on the grenade, I filled the glass case with a cocoon of blue threads with a red threaded center. Carefully, I screwed it back together, and looked at my creation with a satisfied smirk.

  It looked secure enough. Now I just needed to stress test it. I drummed a finger against the table.

  Only I can’t just fire it with Jackpot. What if it breaks the wand?

  Sure it would repair itself with time, but I was deep in uncharted territory. I didn’t really have time to wait for it to repair itself. It had to be kept battle-ready at all times.

  I could also throw it, but that wouldn’t simulate the same stress as being fired from a wand. Not even if I layered a bunch of Bursts to empower the throw.

  Leaning back in the chair I pulled my hair back and considered my options, which were limited to say the least. If I couldn’t throw it, and I couldn’t fire it. Then what the hell could I do.

  It clicked.

  I could try out my newest accolade: The Threaded Crown.

  It was by far my most mysterious accolade. For some reason it didn’t seen to have a physical form, at least it didn’t seem like it in the description. Yet when I prodded the accolade with my consciousness I could feel it resting like a snare on my soul, and a crown on my brow. It was weird. Not that I’d expect anything else from an accolade ripped from the dying energy of the Puppeteer. A Legionnaire of mythical acclaim, according to himself at least.

  I went over to a box and rummaged through it for something simple, settling for a nail. With it in hand, I flooded the crown with my consciousness and magic, activating its Embroidery: Dominate.

  Dark tendrils seeped out of my blackened hand and enveloped the nail. It was a curious thing to see as they only existed in the same plane as the veil, but at the same time transcended the dimension, existing in a way that was entirely its own.

  Is this what a myth is capable of? I mused and lifted the nail into the air.

  At first, it was hard to keep it stable. If I put too much pressure on either side of the tendrils, the nail leaned to the side and almost fell, but I soon got the hang of it. One does not simply use their Blessing until their magic runs out almost daily without learning some control. I’d even go so far as to say I was quite talented at it, compared to others.

  Still, the hard part had yet to come.

  I squinted my eyes in concentration, feeling a bead of sweat run down the side of my head as my magic rapidly depleted. Slowly, I turned the nail so that the sharp tip pointed at the wall, then I strengthened the tendrils behind its head until it was a thick mass of darkness.

  The taste metal spread on my tongue, as if I held the nail between my lips. I closed my eyes, focusing on the feeling and flicked my finger, the tendrils mirrored the movement and shot the nail through the air.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Air parted in a whistle before the nail punched into the wall. I gaped. “Now that was cool.”

  My blessing had never really felt like magic to me. It wasn’t at all like Joanna’s Sanctuary, Yusuf’s smoke, or Nyla’s lightning infusion. But this embroidery, which was unique to me, now this felt like magic.

  Happiness practically bubbled in my gut and I could do nothing to repress it as a chuckle leaked out. Walking over to the wall, I felt the nail with my fingers. It had been slammed in all the way. Impressive, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t manage without the embroidery. Now the question that remained was: was it stronger than a throw? No clue. What I did know was that it was safer than flicking the bullet with my hand, so it was the means of which I would test the thread bullet. But not tonight, my magic was already running low from the crafting.

  Instead, I headed over to the bed and grabbed the closest book. It was the one with a green binder and runes covering its spine.

  Not being able to place where I’d seen the runes before gnawed at me, so this was the first book I planned to get through. No matter how long and dreadful the process.

  I pulled the curtains shut by the windows, and what little light seeped in through the various fabrics I’d used to cover them faded. My only light source being a bundle of blue threads I pulled from the veil. Reading was slow, and I really didn’t understand much. But after some time I learned to piece together the most basic of sentences. Although my understanding of them was more like a caveman interpreting charades.

  Sera didn’t offer much insight this particular evening, she was probably already sleeping or sulking that I didn’t pay more attention to her during the trek over. She was one to hold grudges after all, so if that was the case I didn’t expect to hear her voice for at least a few days. Which was fine by me. It would slow my progress in learning to read, but it would also give me the peace and quiet needed to do so.

  After reading for a few hours, my eyelids grew heavy, so I slept.

  When I woke back up I didn’t bother to check the time. I was feeling refreshed, so it didn’t matter how little or how much time I’d spent sleeping. All that mattered was progress.

  On the agenda for today, was exploration, crafting, and reading. Much like the day before.

  This day, however, I decided to stray farther from the smithy than the day before. I explored one street closer to the castle center of the bailey, where the quality of the houses suddenly soared. Instead of open courtyards, each of them were walled in by fences and gates, which surfaces wore intricate engravings of different themes. One house had a wall with flowers, another had swords. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what sort of embellishment the houses sported, all that made consistent sense was that they matched a sign hanging over the main door. A family crest of sorts, I assumed.

  The fences weren’t very tall, and just barely reached up to my nose, so scaling them was easy. Breaking into the houses was even easier. They’d stood empty for so long that all I needed to do was give the lock a solid smack with the pommel of Stoneflow and it shot inside, leaving the door unlocked for me.

  In this manner I searched all the houses on the street, one by one, without finding much of interest. A few of them had useful tools, fewer still broken accolades. I grabbed whatever I deemed necessary and gathered it in a pile on the street. And just like that, I scoured the third layer of the bailey in just a few hours.

  After searching all the houses, I hauled the pile back to the smithy and committed myself to the second day of tests.

  This time I would focus on making a case for the spool grenade. Something a bit more aerodynamic and sturdy than a locket. Preferably something that would shatter into a bunch of sharp pieces when it exploded, well at least the finished variant. Since I wasn’t quite sure the grenade wasn’t about to blow up in my hand, that particular function would have to wait until I had a few more contingencies at play.

  For now, a simple metal ball would do. As usual, however, that turned out to be easier said than done.

  First of all I had to find pieces of metal that I could smelt together. Which was hard. Not to mention the simple fact that I had to smelt them. Something I’d never done before. What normal teenager has? Not any where I came from at least.

  It took a few runs of trial and error before I managed to get the mould hot enough without breaking, and then I needed to shape the damn thing into a hollow ball.

  Realizing something like that was way above my skill level, I took two metal sheets, broke them into manageable sizes and banged them with a hammer until not even their metallic mother would recognize them. Then I melted the two half-ball pieces edges and pressed them together, using the molten metal like glue. They just barely stuck together, but that was all I needed. It would be a problem if the explosion didn’t make it out of the grenade after all. And then it was time for trial two.

  Having shoved the metal ball full of threads, and a much longer fuse than the day before, I threw it into the courtyard expecting grandeur. It did not disappoint.

  The ball flew gracefully through the air and smashed into stone. With a flash the metallic carapace exploded in opposite directions like two extremely large splinters and punched into the neighbors’ walls.

  I grinned. The spool grenade ’version ball’ worked more than well enough. Now it just needed some finesse and fragmentation power and it would be one of the more powerful tools in my arsenal. Next up for testing, the thread bullet.

  Taking a seat near the kitchen window I laid the bullet on the table in front of me. For some reason this felt scarier than the grenade. Throwing something was easy, flicking something explosive? Not so much. Yet here I was.

  Using Dominate I levitated the bullet over my hand and pushed it as far away from me as I could without losing control. No more than a meter. Still, better than nothing.

  Once more the taste of metal spread in my mouth as I shaped the tendrils to my liking. Then, with a flick of my finger I smashed the butt of the bullet.

  Thanks for the support as always,