Feeling the searing heat emanating from their soul, they knew they had to work quickly. Stabilise the link, before it collapsed and left them crippled. They needed the skill. Now.

    One half still floundered, unused to the rigours of true mental communion. The other knew what to do. They trusted, and they acted.

    It was time for the bloodrite.

    They knew, even now, that they could back out. Even splitting their minds, they knew they wouldn''t. Pain was acceptable, risk was acceptable. They would be forged anew, and rise above, or they would die.

    Opening their eyes, they were treated to a mind spinning duplicated sight of their bodies. One stout, red, furred, and strong. The other tall, pale, lithe, and strong. They moved slowly, mortal flesh struggling to cope with the sensation that flowed across their link.

    Their human body drew their hunting knife with a shaking hand. Their meles body raised their paw to their mouth. Diverting a modicum of effort, they suppressed their Health.

    The sting of tooth and blade was lost in the all consuming pyre that lashed across their link. Heartblood sprayed. With their Endurance they would survive for a short while, but the oath had to be forged so that they could heal.

    They clasped arms, anointing the stone below with the ichor of their covenant. Hearts thumped in sync.

    "We are one, by the rites of strife and adversity, the pact of the hunt, and the oath of fire and blood.

    Be it searing sun, or frozen moon, we will endure.

    Our blood is our bond, unbroken in the face of storm and starfall.

    We are the fangs in the night, and the heartbeat of the dawn.

    Forged in blood and pain, we rise. Unity will be our sword, and loyalty our shield.

    Witnessed by fate, and seen by the Arbitrator, let it be known.

    We are one." They spoke, voices thrumming with the potency of an ancient pact revitalised once more.

    The system noticed, and a familiar ding sounded in their minds.

    **Ding! General Skill Available! Would you like to learn: Soulforged Covenant (Unique)?**

    They accepted.

    The might of the system thrummed. Two seeds of power, the realisation of their shared might, substantiated in orbit around their souls. The new shard joined the procession of their constellations of legacy skills, filling the missing slots, completing the preparation for their final ascension.

    Their skills thrummed with anticipation, vibrating with barely concealed power as they waited for the final skill to be ready.

    Then Soulforged Covenant activated. Power surged, torrenting from the skill to suffuse the ragged holes in their souls. Soulstuff melted, channelling and bleeding across the yawning chasm that was their link. Then it started to contract. Finger-length by finger-length, the tunnel of meaning and connection shrunk, pulling their souls into alignment.

    As they drew together, the tears in the border of their centres widened. They gasped, feeling the last remaining shreds of difference dissolve. They writhed, the dissolution of ego as much agony as it was ecstasy.

    Souls united, the bubbles of their soul''s dominions intersecting, woven together with arcane might and a harmonious thrum of unity that burst free from their souls.

    Then a pearlescent shimmer burst into existence, sealing the bridge. It wasn''t a total severance, for that had become an impossibility with a shared centre. Yet, it was enough to delineate. They became he, and Kaius returned to himself.

    "By the fucking gods, what the fuck was that!" He called out, reeling backwards to slump into the bunk behind him as a rapidfire ping of dings screamed through his mind.

    Porkchop groaned on the floor. "They said it would be bad-weird, but I didn''t expect that."

    Kaius shot him a wild look, before he burst into hysterical laughter. "Holy shit! We were we, what the fuck! You can feel your claws!? That''s so weird!" he asked, the vivid memory of feeling his own handspan long nails clacking on the stone floor.

    Snapping up, Porkchop stared at him in bewilderment. "That''s what you took from this? Not the fact that, oh, I don''t know, we apparently share a soul-space now?"

    He turned his attention to the final notification that burned at the front of his mind, bringing it up with a flick of intent.

    **Ding! 10th Skill Capped!**

    **Ding! Completed Legacy Detected!**

    **Ding! Initiate Special Skill Evolution - Soulforged Covenant?**

    Looking up, Kaius locked eyes with Porkchop, receiving a slight nod in return. Taking a deep breath, he accepted the system''s prompt as he felt Porkchop do the same.

    He dropped into his soul-space as he felt the system descend, the undeniable power of the omnipresent force blanketing his soul. It made him feel small, like a gnat in the face of the burning might of the sun.

    He watched his soul flare, burning light reaching new heights, engulfing the nebulae that were his resource pools to brush up against the locked points of his equidistant skills.

    Right by him, he could feel -see- Porkchop''s soul doing the same.

    His legacy skills started to SCREAM. Not hatefully, not with the avaricious violence that they belted out during each and every one of his skill mergers. Instead it was pure, a note of harmonised, utterly complete, joy. One of purpose fulfilled, of destiny made manifest.

    It washed over him, the hairs on the back of his neck rising as they sang to a new crescendo. Thrumming, shifting with a scintillating platinum light. Where previously they looked like shards of the purest crystal hued with a metallic shine, now they looked liquid. Amorphous.

    The system reached out. Implacable. Inexorable.

    Ten chains of his purest essence were ripped free from his soul, entirely outside of his control. They plunged into his skills, all of them. A second later he was awash in their power. A storm of might and fury that threatened to drown him in its potency.

    A typhoon only made worse by his exposure to Porkchop''s own. While he may not have felt it as keenly as his own experience, it was there, yanking at him.

    Once more the system stepped in, bolstering him in the face of concepts made manifest. Then it began to weave. Chains of light, meaning, and understanding shot between the skills, before linking them in a great decagramic web.

    With his soul -the totality of all that he contained- as the conduit, the firestorm of power rushed through the network. Sacred geometry magnified and refined the power, directing it to suffuse Soulforged Covenant.

    It was more than the skill could bear. Great ripples shot through the liquid crystal, threatening to disperse the conceptual nexus into a fine mist. Constrained by the system until it boiled, the pressure grew more explosive by the second as it railed against the forced limits of an unclassed.

    The system refused. Forcing the skill to maintain its shape as it packed more and more power into its tight confines.

    Kaius knew an agony that he had never known before. Every facet of his being felt wrung out. Drained of all vitality as all that he was was scoured by an unrelenting forceful torrent of pure arcane might far beyond what his mortal form could tolerate.

    His body, his mind, his very soul began to break down. Fraying at the seams.

    Again the system refused. Forcing him to bear witness to its majesty.

    Soulforged Covenant could take no more. Even boiling with forcefully contained power, there was only so much the skills structure could take. It shattered.

    The system swept up the refuse, forcing more current through his soul, whirling it into a raging typhoon that sucked at the surrounding power of the ritual. Kaius started to scream, eyes locked on the declaration of supremacy that occurred before him.

    With deft will, sheer gaseous meaning was condensed, suffused with the purity of essence contained in his legacy skills. There, in the eye of the maelstrom, a new skill began to germinate.

    One shining with the purest platinum light. The final member of the conclave.

    It grew, and with a snap it was over. His centre returned to stillness, his ten skills locked in equidistant orbit around his soul, slowly dimming to its normal radiance.

    The system withdrew.

    A ding sounded in his mind.

    Kaius blacked out.