Fire Rapier

One of the two rapiers Bolin forged for Gyllyn at Vlad, in two days and two nights, out of an alloy lighter than steel and stronger than it, because he had noticed on sight that the young man was ambidextrous. They left the forge as plain steel, and Gyllyn outgrew them: an enchanted pair replaced them, and Bolin's went into a bag. He never sold them.

That pair is why he still had weapons after the Minotaur destroyed the enchanted ones. The steel he had stopped thinking about became the best thing he would ever carry.

Quality	M5 — Masterpiece (+8 damage)
Enchantment level	7 (+32 fundamental bonus)
Caster level	35
On every attack	+35 fire damage
Once per day	a minor fire spell at CL 35

The fire is not a coating and does not run out. It is added to every blow the blade lands, at a value equal to its caster level, which is Aldor's and not Gyllyn's. That is the whole trick of the item: the wielder carries a fire he could never produce.

Gyllyn calls this one Feu and its pair Esprit. He named them for what they hold rather than for himself: the fire is Aldor's and the mind is Frolix's, so a man fighting with both hands at once is carrying his two friends.

How It Was Made

Charlie Stoneheart performed the ritual on Telus, in the villa the governor Tiberius Gracchus had given the heroes of the Minotaur. An ordinary enchanter of his level would have bound a fire spell he knew himself. Charlie did something else: he opened the ritual to a second caster and bound Aldor's fire, at Aldor's caster level, into steel he had not forged, for a man who casts almost nothing.

The enchantment rules call a cooperative circle the normal way to make a high-tier item (see 15). They do not describe what Charlie did with one, which is closer to using another wizard as a component than as a helper.

Why the Steel Mattered

Mana does not settle on an object the way varnish does. It looks for what is already in there, and a weapon made by a great craftsman is not empty: the balance, the alloy, the two days and two nights, and above all the idea Bolin had of the man who would carry it are all still in the metal. The enchantment did not add a property to a bar of iron. It found an intention and gave it life.

This is why the two rapiers came out complementary rather than merely both powerful. Bolin had built them for a man fighting with both hands at once — a pair, not two swords — and the magic finished the sentence he had started. Take the same ritual, the same gold, the same three wizards, and ordinary steel, and it produces two good weapons and nothing more.

See also its pair, the Psychic Whip Rapier, which cost more, does something no spell of its level should do, and nearly failed.