“So… I vote we set up camp for a quick break. Food, water, bathroom… and corpse dissection, I guess.” Jean said.
Gio grunted a mindless affirmation.
Gio stared at the pile of bodies, trying to make any sort of plan for what he was about to do. Hatra and Sapphire had already extracted a few small vials of blood and were busy running some tests on them.
There is no good or clean way to take apart bodies on a boat.
The outcropping that Jean had stacked the bodies on was way too small for him to work on. As it is, it was just an overcrowded rock. Fins and limbs hung over the side, drawing curious fish already. It wouldn’t be long before they started to stink.
“Does… anybody have anything we could use to build a platform… or hollow out some of the rock? I could start trying to fracture away some of it, but that might be sort of time-consuming. Ideally, I’d like to do it fast so the bodies don’t start to decompose. Besides that… I’m out of ideas.” Gio admitted.
“Oh man… earth magic is one of my weakest areas, unfortunately,” Sapphire admitted.
“Nothing like that in my spellbook,” Jean said.
“I’ve got a spell for levitating things in place, if that helps?” Chandrika offered.
“Hmm… I might have an idea.” Hatra said.
“I’m all ears,” Gio replied.
Hatra summoned the bizarre magical tool she had used earlier. She pressed a button on the side of the handle, and the nozzle receded into the device's body.
“Check this out,” Hatra said, grinning at Gio.
She closed her eyes and sat down with the tarnished piece of equipment in her lap. The device in her hands had three rounded cylindrical chambers with glass panels, all currently filled with the murky liquid she had used earlier to horrific effect on the Telchines.
The gray liquid in the leftmost chamber began to recede away from the glass, followed shortly by the middle and then right chambers. Looking down into the device, it appeared to Gio that each chamber was actually some sort of oblong cartridge. The cartridges continued further down, and Gio wrinkled his brow.
“What in the world…” Gio said.
He followed with his eyes, watching as the cartridges seemed to shrink away from the windows down into the device further than should have been possible. A tiny scissor lift brought the cartridges down to a rail platform, which was lifted off by a miniature mechanical claw and placed onto the track. Gio gasped as he noticed the claw being operated by a miniature Hatra, waving up at him.
Jean looked over his shoulder.
“Whoa,” he said.
“What? What’s she doing? Let me seeeee!” Sapphire said, straining to see over Jean. Jean moved to the side, allowing Sapphire to look down into the window.
The space inside the device looked like a diorama of an industrial warehouse. There were blinking string lights, industrial copper conduits, and even steam vents interspersed throughout the space. Mini-Hatra stood on a metal-grating catwalk while operating the controls. As the cartridge of liquid slotted into place, she pulled a lever, and the railcart retreated into a tunnel in the brickwork over to the side. From the opposite side of the warehouse-like space, three matching tubes full of glowing white liquid emerged. One after the other, they also slotted into place to replace the other set. Mini-Hatra reversed the process until they began rising to the surface.
Mini-Hatra stepped away from her control panel and began walking toward a door at the back of the warehouse, but the white liquid filled the windows before Gio could get a glimpse of whatever was behind that door.
“Pretty cool, right?” Hatra said, snapping her eyes open.
Sapphire shook Hatra by the shoulders.
“WHAT WAS THAAAAAT?! TELL ME EVERYTHING.” Sapphire demanded.
“I would love to. But first… a demonstration.” Hatra said.
She was clearly relishing in the attention from everyone (besides Chandrika, who was quietly working on something at the other end of the boat.) Gio loved seeing this new, bolder side of his cousin. Gone was the girl who dyed her hair black to avoid getting comments from customers. Hatra had always been brassy and opinionated, but she also put way too much stock in what other people thought of her.
I am also very curious as to whatever spatial shenanigans she has going on in her sludge pump... chemical thrower… thing.
Hatra cocked the device like a gun, and a new nozzle (a rounded cone with many small holes at the end of a lengthy pole) emerged. Hatra pointed it at the rock wall, emitting a stream of cold fog that caused the ambient temperature to drop instantly.
“About a month ago, we got a weird assignment. A really weird assignment, apparently straight from the very top of the food chain- like Goldwatch top. A full-blown spatial magic archmage came by the essence distillery, not even bothering to speak to any of us, and dropped off a mountain of ice and snow into our quarantine area. Real pretentious-looking guy. Anyways, the order was very simple. All we had to do was dismantle the snow and ice down to the barest essence.” Hatra said, still holding the trigger and allowing the fog to flow.
As she spoke, the wall began to twinkle with ice crystals, and a wave of ice began slowly growing into the water. She continued talking, now using the spraying device to paint over the area in slow, sweeping strokes as the ice expanded.
“Best guess? Some sort of emergency decontamination. Of what, nobody could say. We were told that the whole thing was “just a formality,” and that we “weren’t expecting to find anything, but safety is non-negotiable.” We had to use special suits around it and everything.” She said, mimicking the voice of a gruff man.
At this point, Gio decided to use [Flow] to ensure that the boat didn’t get caught in the rapidly expanding ice, moving the boat forward just a little bit.
“Thanks, cousin. Ice, in a thaumaturgical sense, is equal to water plus cold. Uninteresting and unsurprising stuff. They wouldn’t tell us what they were worried about finding, which was annoying… but like the boss said, we didn’t find it, so whatever. The point is that we ended up filling up our Water and Cold essentia tanks for the first time in decades, and we were going to have to get a discharge permit to get rid of the rest, which would have cost the distillery a lot of our profit margin... So the boss ended up authorizing anyone who wanted some to grab as much of it as they could hold… and I can hold a lot. So this is called Liquid Cold, or if you want to get fancy and use the proper terminology, [Liquid Polar Essentia]. It’s technically a different thing than [Liquid Frost Essentia] or [Liquid Ice Essentia], but in most applications, anything that you can call Liquid Cold will just make whatever you blast it with… cold.” Hatra explained.
“Dismantling it down to essence… to get rid of it?” Gio asked.
“Using thaumaturgical dismantling to break a substance down into liquid essence is… a very thorough way to get rid of something, yes. Overkill, if you ask me. We could have saved a lot of time and energy by just blasting the ice with heat until it was water vapor… but that was deemed too big of a risk, I guess. I can’t imagine whatever they were worried about finding could resist concentrated [Alchemist’s Fire].”
“Fascinating… but you’re skipping over the part that we’re all waiting to hear about. What was up with the inside of your… thingy?” Jean asked.
Hatra smiled while wiping the hoarfrost from the nozzle of her implement before stowing it away.
“That… is a bit more of a controversial subject. I purposefully hamstrung my class in order to take that upgrade. It’s called [Imaginary Workshop], and it is largely believed to be the worst ability that you can take for the first upgrade path of an [Apprentice Thaumaturge].” She said.
“I don’t believe that for a second. You have your own little world in your gun!” Sapphire replied.
“And until I upgrade it, it will remain just a way for me to store larger-than-average quantities of raw liquid materials. The next upgrade should let me work with powders and slurry. There’s nothing else in there right now. I had to give up the obvious skill that every other thaumaturge takes for that level, [Essentia Attunement], which would have let me determine the quantity and quality of thaumaturgical aspects in objects at a glance. The system gives you a cool pair of goggles and everything. I stick out like a sore thumb, because I’m the one trainee on my squad who has to bring her own protective eye-gear.” Hatra said.
“I can see how that would be an enticing upgrade over extra storage space...” Sapphire said.
“What’s your angle?” Gio asked, narrowing his eyes at his cousin.
“Angle? Who, me?” Hatra replied, batting her eyelashes with a mischievous grin.
“I can’t imagine that Hatra “The Mastermind” deGloria would make such a brash decision like that for no reason. I’ll ask again. What’s the angle?” Gio reaffirmed.
With a villainous laugh, Hatra replied, “You know me too well, Gio. I'm aiming for something else… something outrageous and absurd, something inadvisable and downright improbable. I'm going for [Artificer].” She said with devilish glee.
“Like… the magi-tech engineering class. Crafter of artifacts. Artifex manipulator. [Artificer].” Gio said in disbelief.
“Isn’t that class like… something you have to basically train since birth to get?” Sapphire asked.
“Or, you have to be rich enough to pay for a guild to train you for a few years, if you can get one to take you on as an apprentice,” Gio added.
“It’s not just about the money either… I think I had a cousin who got denied a position in an artificer trade school because he didn’t score high enough on a placement exam.” Jean said.
“And most of those apprenticeships usually require you to sign up for a contract with one of the big names. If you want to train as an [Artificer] in the City of Rings, your options are as follows: Starling and Co in the Silver Ring, who are known for their luxury spatial items and magitech jewelry. The word on the street is that they throw away applications from non-nobility as a boilerplate policy. Next up is Wizidyne, who I guess makes military communications… stuff? Whatever it is that they do, they pretty much exclusively hire Ring Guard vets. Getting in the door as a Copper-Ringer is unheard of. After that is Iron Ring Industrial Corporation, who have a near monopoly on the production and service of mining and smelting equipment. I think they mainly hire out of Iron Ring Technical school, which they sponsor directly with a pipeline program. Last but not least, the most reclusive of the local tech companies… but weirdly also the only one with a satellite office in the Copper Ring… Ring Union. Or if you prefer their more official title: The Inter-Ring Express Maintenance Group.” Hatra said.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Gio raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that the Inter-Ring Express hires actual artificers?”
“I certainly am. Think about the Express, it is a behemoth of a construct, right? Hells, you’ve ridden it more times than I have, so you should know firsthand how impressive it looks. Tell me, with the amount of times it traverses the Rings in a single day, do you think that it doesn’t need maintenance?” Hatra asked.
Gio tapped his chin.
“I guess logically, a machine like that should… but when do they find the time to do maintenance on it? Aside from picking up and dropping off people, it’s constantly in motion.” Gio said.
“That’s the mystery, isn’t it? How indeed. I’ve tried to get information on the schedules of the maintainers… or a point of contact, or a name… really any sort of a scrap of information that would indicate that they exist in some capacity. In fact, the only reason that I had even heard of them is that my boss called in a favor from one of them to fix one of our mixing machines. It’s hard to get a fully kitted-out [Artificer] to come pay attention to a lowly essence distillery out in the boonies of the Copper Ring. We were at a work stoppage, and it was to the point where we might have had to furlough some workers, starting with the apprentices like me. My boss called in a favor from an old friend at the end of the work day. The guy came in in the middle of the night like some sort of fairy tale, and by the next morning, we all came in to see the thing working like brand new.” Hatra recounted, with stars in her eyes.
“So… instead of trying to get your foot in the door the usual way, you’re planning on taking a roundabout path to try and get the class you want by other means.” Gio surmised.
“Correct.” Hatra gleamed.
“But… that class is very, very rare. How can you be certain that you could guide your class evolution toward getting it?” Jean asked.
“Take a look at any of the rest of us, Jean. We all started as [True Mage Apprentice]. You can influence your evolution by making certain choices.” Sapphire responded.
“Or by experiencing a major event…” Gio added, recalling the choices that he had turned down during his evolution.
“Yeah, but I wasn’t seriously expecting to be offered anything to do with Astral magic when I evolved my class. I just got lucky that [Student- Starfire Mage] was an option.” Jean said.
“Did you get lucky? Or, perhaps did you live, eat, sleep, and breathe your family’s magic for weeks since the school year started?” Gio quipped.
Jean thought for a moment. “I guess you’re right,” he conceded.
“And that’s exactly my plan. I take every opportunity I can to play with machines and stuff. I do still love the magical science of Thaumaturgy, and I plan on incorporating it into my crafting once I become an Artificer… but I want to be more than just a part of a process. I want to be able to fix machines across the Copper Ring, like at my mom’s job where they have looms that break down constantly, or at the hospital where Uncle Heath works, or even in the mines where Gio’s dad works… There’s never going to be a shortage of stuff to fix, and the current solution for a lot of Copper Ringers has been to either learn to work around broken stuff, figure out a way to do it with your class, or just do without it. It might be nice to make my own stuff, too.” Hatra said.
“I guess we’ll have each other for company with our crazy goals. You’re going to be an [Artificer], and I’ll become an [Archmage].” Gio said.
“Just promise me that you won’t be one of those jerks that refuse to acknowledge regular people like that spatial Archmage.” Hatra scowled.
“I promise.” Gio smiled.
Gio left Hatra and Sapphire to geek out over Hatra’s ability while they ran tests on samples of the blood. Stepping out onto the makeshift platform, Gio began dragging the bodies of the dead thralls out onto the ice.
The ice solves the decomposition problem, at least partially. I better work fast.
Gio crouched down next to the body, setting down his water-resistant parka beneath his knees.
The cold isn’t particularly pleasant, but I guess I’d rather be the one doing the dissecting than the one being dissected. Little victories.
He summoned the memories of his involuntary monster disassembly lesson with Professor A. He worked methodically, using the edge of his knife to pry off the straps from the dented plates of armor that some Telchines had been wearing. He noted the glimmer of enchantment present on the tarnished, muddy-orange colored plate mail. He raised an eyebrow, recalling a passage from his Grandfather’s notes about the thief’s bane curse.
“Hey Rika, is this armor cursed?” Gio asked.
Chandrika shot up as if she had been spooked, clearly deep in thought.
“I beg your pardon?” She asked.
“The armor that the Thralls are wearing… it should be made of the Pseudo-Orichalcum, right? If it isn’t cursed, then I think we just got our hands on a lot of it.” Gio answered.
Chandrika shuffled over, gingerly stepping off the boat with a little hop onto the ice, clearly not entirely trusting the sturdiness of Hatra’s hasty construction.
She knelt down, placing a hand over the armor without touching it. She winced back immediately. As she pulled her hand back, Gio noticed a black mark on her palm before it quickly faded.
“This doesn’t make any sense… yes, it’s still cursed. Breaking a curse of this level would require a far stronger mage than I… maybe an actual [Cursebreaker].” She answered.
“That’s so weird. Why would the spirits go to such lengths to make this metal difficult to obtain? I don’t see the benefit.” Gio said.
“Hold on… let me go through my system logs,” Chandrika said.
“System logs?” Gio asked.
“Yeah, like… all of the notifications you’ve received.” She answered, staring blankly.
Gio blinked.
He summoned his status, trying to focus on the usual interface. He could expand and collapse descriptions, move and sort information, and even exercise limited control over certain abilities, like the memory storage interface from [Specular Mind]. He focused, trying to recall the last notification that he had received.
“Oh! I didn’t know you could do that!” Gio said, scrolling upward to the body of the notification.
Divorced of the fanfare of disembodied voices and the charge of mana in the air, the once menacing notification felt far less imposing.
Rewards:
-MAJOR BOON for all party members
-Exclusive Spell from dungeon loot table
-Free access to the reservoir that you seek.
Failure penalty: Increased Aggression of Thralled Telchines. Time limit: Immediate future.
Do you accept? Y/N>
“I guess they would want us to throw the metal into the water,” Gio said.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m reading as well,” Chandrika replied.
Gio kicked a chestplate into the water.
Chandrika frowned. “I don’t know how I feel about acceding to their demands.” She said.
“That’s not it… hold on.” Gio answered.
While the tarnished brass-toned metal was not polished to a mirror finish, it was still reflective, so Gio could intuitively feel its presence around him with [Enlightened Catoptromancy]. He tracked the glimmer of the plate as it descended in his mind’s eye, feeling it with his newfound sense even though his eyes had long since lost sight of it down in the darkness below.
Blip.
It was gone.
Gio furrowed his brow.
“Hold on,” Gio said.
“Still holding from last time you said that,” Chandrika answered.
Gio took another piece of armor from the dead thrall, carefully avoiding touching it directly. He nudged it over to the side of the ice, allowing it to fall into the crystal clear water. He summoned a ball of light with [Prismatic Shape] and sent the spell into the water, trailing the descending metal. A School of tiny fish trailed the orb, following curiously.
They watched the metal as it sank lower and lower, until it was just a small speck.
“Are you looking to see if it hits the bottom? For that matter, is there a bottom?” Chandrika asked.
“No, and I don’t know. Probably? I’m watching because-”
Blip.
“Gotcha!” Gio exclaimed.
“What’s going on?” Jean asked, walking up while avoiding the corpses by a wide margin.
“The metal is teleporting.” Gio confidently said.
“Teleporting… That would make sense.” Chandrika mumbled.
Jean stared blankly at the two of them, both staring ponderously into the water.
“For those of us who haven’t pieced it together yet, would you mind explaining?” Jean asked.
“Oh, sorry! The metal is disappearing after it gets about… a couple hundred feet deep? I don’t know exactly how far down, but after it hits a certain point, poof.” Gio answered.
“Are you sure it’s not just dropping out of your range to detect it? How are you even maintaining control of a light spell from that far away?” Jean asked.
“Oh, I’m not maintaining control. I just overcharged the spell and let it sink. The important part is that it’s casting light onto the armor. I can’t see it happen, but I know for certain that there was a reflective surface down there one moment, and then nothing the next.” Gio explained.
“That’s a… different skill,” Chandrika gingerly said.
“I promise you that it’s more than just a skill for detecting mirrors.” Gio deadpanned.
Jean, Chandrika, and Gio all looked down over the edge and into the water.
“I… don’t have the energy to try and figure any of this out right now. I’m gonna leave the metal off to the side since we can’t touch it.” Gio said.
“You’re not curious as to what these so-called 'divine servitors’ want with this mystery metal?” Chandrika asked.
“Curiosity is one thing… but we’re dealing with something that can afford to put a potent curse on a whole bunch of materials, and then whatever’s going on with the teleporting? It’s just too much to deal with right now. It’s bad enough that we’re going against this so clearly by refusing the counter-challenge and pushing further into the dungeon.” Gio replied.
“I… have mixed feelings about that,” Jean said.
“Me too, but what do you suggest we do?” Gio asked.
Jean looked back at the pile of bodies.
“I don’t know.” He answered.
Chandrika sighed, turning to look Gio directly in his eyes.
“I understand your trepidation, Gio… but I meant what I said earlier about stopping whatever is going on here. There’s something wrong with this. It feels like these poor creatures are being farmed.” Chandrika said, enunciating the last word with a sneer.
Gio furrowed his brow.
“You’re… right,” he ceded.
“It’s a tall order, but we don’t have to do all of it right now… or even necessarily by ourselves. For now, let’s just focus on what we were already doing. Try and make progress on our assignments, complete the challenge, and get you to the spiritspring.” Jean offered.
“That sounds like a good plan to me,” Gio said.
He glanced at Jean.
“By any chance… would you mind helping me collect some blood?” Gio asked.
Jean looked like he might pass out.
“Uhhh….”
“Oh, come on- you speared this one through the face. You’re gonna act squeamish over a little material gathering? C’mon, we’ll all do it together.” Chandrika said, rolling up her sleeves.