Gael ignored the smell of antiseptic as he swept his arm across the surgical table, sending scraps of emerald dragonfly chitin clattering to the floor. The only things he left staring up at him were the two giant, glossy black compound eyes. Round, bulbous, and unsettlingly intact.

  Cara smacked him on the back of his head. "Or, I don't know, you could move them normally instead of scattering them all over the floor like an animal."

  He didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he yanked in the surgical cart nearby with his cane, rolling it close. The metal tray atop it rattled, stacked with all the tools he needed.

  First things first: he picked up a pair of calipers, leaned over the dragonfly eyes, and measured their dimensions, width, and curvature.

  They’re just about the right size, huh?

  How convenient.

  “Doctor," Maeve piped up from the side, curiosity laced in her voice. "What, exactly, are you trying to make?”

  “An upgrade,” he muttered back. That was all he gave her before selecting a fine-tipped scalpel from the tray.

  He adjusted the grip between his fingers, then pressed the blade against the delicate outer casing of one giant eye. He ran the precise incision along the curvature, parting the outer membrane without piercing too deep. After all, the compound eye was fragile, and every cut required a surgeon’s patience. The ‘ommatidia’ as he knew it—thousands of tiny hexagonal lenses—glistened under the bioarcanic lamps, layered in a natural fractal pattern.

  Can’t break the pattern. It’s much like a human eye in that sense, so gotta cut it just… right.

  He switched tools, lifting a pair of fine-tipped tweezers and carefully peeling back the outer membrane. Underneath, the real prize revealed itself: a film of thin, transparent lens that filtered light into the dead eye.

  "Hold still, bitch," he muttered to the dead dragonfly, then slid the scalpel beneath the lens. One wrong move, and the whole thing could tear like a piece of paper, but his hands were steady. Practiced. Slowly, surely, he clipped the edge of the lens and lifted the flimsy thing free, before setting it down onto the surgical tray.

  Alright.

  And now…

  With the flimsy dragonfly lens sitting on the tray, he reached into the bottom shelf of the surgical cart and pulled out a small, round glass lens: a spare, identical to the ones currently fitted into his mask. He slammed it onto the surgical table, then carefully picked up the dragonfly lens with the tweezers, placing the translucent film over the glass lens like it was the most delicate thing in the world. He had to align the edges. The natural curvature of the dragonfly lens meshed perfectly with the glass lens, but even after he managed to successfully layer the former on top of the latter, he knew a simple breeze would blow it all apart.

  Which was why he had this.

  He grabbed a small vial from the tray, the thick liquid inside sloshing sluggishly. Maeve squinted at it. "What's that?"

  “Physical hardening liquid.” He popped the cap off with his thumb, tipping the vial. A drop of thick fluid landed on the stacked lenses, immediately spreading and diffusing outward in a thin, almost invisible layer. “It doesn't change anything chemically or biologically. Just makes stuff tougher, like an adhesive.”

  As he blew on the liquid to make it set, it crystallized, binding the two lenses together. He gave it another minute before nudging the edge of the dragonfly lens with his scalpel.

  No give. Perfect.

  “Exorcist,” he mumbled, reaching into his coat and tossing Maeve his book with one hand, “flip to the back pages for me."

  Maeve blinked. “Huh?”

  “Look for the three glyphs that say ‘give’, ‘dark’,and ‘vision’. I know they’re in there. I saw them earlier.”

  For once, the Exorcist didn’t protest. She did as she was told, flipping through the thick tomes, so while he waited for her to find the right pages, he selected one more tool from the surgical tray: a fine, razor-sharp dagger.

  A minute later, Maeve turned the book toward him. “Found them.”

  “Hold the book up for me.”

  She did, angling the book so the three glyphs spread across two pages were fully visible. He leaned a bit closer, studying the complex swirls and interlocking lines. Glyphwork was a bitch. The book did mention that the glyphs didn’t have to be one hundred percent accurate to achieve its intended effect, but the fact remained that one wrong stroke—one wrong cut—and he’d render the whole lens useless.

  He took a deep breath, pressed the tip of the knife against the hardened lens, and began carving.

  The blade scraped against the material, sending thin curls of dust spiraling away. He didn’t take any risks. He followed the exact lines from the book, carving the patterns into the hardened lens… but unlike the clean, flat surface of the book's diagram, he was working with a curved, three-dimensional object. Every slight shift in angle had to be accounted for.

  His wrist ached. His shoulders tensed.

  Carving a single glyph was already tedious, and this was just one glyph. To make what he wanted to make, he’d have to carve three glyphs.

  No wonder bioarcanic engineers are rare. It takes a goddamn eternity to make anything with an activating effect.

  Still, he worked through the discomfort, dragging the blade along the surface, deepening the etchings with each flick of his wrist. It took him an hour. Maybe two. He wasn’t paying attention to the time.

  Eventually, though, the three glyphs did near completion—the complete pattern taking subtle shape over the glass—so just before he could finish the entire thing, he stopped.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  He didn't carve that final line.

  The glyph sat there on the surface of the lens, ninety-nine percent finished, but without that final ‘threshold line’, it’d remain inert as a harmless symbol.

  He set the dagger down, flexing his fingers. Then, without a word, he turned to the girls.

  “Turn around for a sec.”

  Cara, used to this, turned without argument. On the other hand, Maeve frowned at him.

  “Why?”

  “I gotta take off my mask for a bit.”

  Maeve still looked confused, but before she could argue, Cara grabbed her shoulder and physically rotated her.

  Once their backs were to him—and once he was sure the Exorcist wasn’t peeking into a mirror or something—he reached up and unfastened the straps of his mask. The leather lifted away from his face, the cool air of the room biting against his skin.

  Ow.

  Gotta do this quick.

  Setting the mask down on the surgical table, he removed the standard glass lens from the right eye socket. Then, carefully, he picked up his dagger one last time.

  He pressed the tip against the empty metal rim of the mask’s right-eye slot and carved the final stroke.

  It was easier than expected.

  Without further ado, he picked up the dragonfly glass lens and slotted it into the right eye socket. Since the glass lens itself was a spare in case he ever broke a lens, it fit quite snugly, seamlessly replacing the old one.

  And only once he was absolutely sure everything was in place, he put his mask back on and adjusted it over his face.

  “... Alright. I’m done.”

  The girls whirled back around immediately. They seemed puzzled at first—after all, it didn’t even really look like he’d switched out his lenses—but then he made a big show of rotating the rim of his right lens.

  Light flooded into his vision as he turned the rim a full half-circle.

  He blinked. He reeled back. The gloom in the surgical chamber peeled back like a curtain, revealing every crack, every mote of dust, every old stain on the walls. It was like the world suddenly took on a glowing greenish tint, darkness turning into grayscale.

  “Science prevails,” he muttered, grinning wide. “Science prevails!”

  Maeve’s voice cut through his satisfaction. “What did you just make?

  He ignored her, still turning his head, marveling at the shift in his sight. There was no adjustment period, no blur, and no strain on his part. Just perfect, instant night vision.

  Maeve’s tone sharpened. “Doctor.”

  Still ignoring her, he strode back to the surgical table where the second dragonfly eye waited for him, gleaming wet and untouched. He dragged his surgical cart closer, fingers already reaching for his tools.

  “Alright!” he cackled, flipping the scalpel between his fingers before plunging it into the second dragonfly eye. “Time to do it again!”

  Maeve made a small, exasperated noise. Cara, on the other hand, smacked him on the back of his head and almost made him plunge his scalpel straight into the dragonfly’s eyes. “At least pretend like you’ve heard her, Gael.”

  “It’s night vision,” he said, carefully slicing through the delicate tissue of the other eye. “The book said that emerald dragonflies have special eyes that allow them to see in the dark, so I extracted the lens, fused it with my own, and then carved ninety-nine percent of the ‘give dark vision’ glyphs onto the lens. But I didn’t complete the glyphs on the lens. I left the final one percent on the rim, so when I rotate it until all the lines match up, the glyph completes, and bam! Night vision!”

  Maeve’s eyes widened while Cara gave a slow, approving nod.

  [Appraisal Complete]

  [Name: Emerald Dragonfly Lens]

  [Penetration: 0, Sturdiness: 1, Resilience, 4]

  [Bioarcanic Effect: Night Vision]

  [Brief Description: When the glyphs are completed, the emerald dragonfly lens’ mesh of photosensitive chitin threads tightens, allowing it to capture and amplify low-light particles while filtering high-noise wavelengths, granting the wearer clear, multi-spectrum vision in near-total darkness]

  “Actually… pretty cool,” Cara admitted. “Gimme. I wanna try.”

  “No. Make your own.”

  “You’re making another one right now. Give that one to me.”

  “This one’s for my left eye.”

  Cara grumbled aloud. “You know, if you made more of these, you could probably sell them for a fortu—”

  “Nope. I’m not gonna sell this shit for Marks.” The second time around, he managed to smoothly separate the outer lens from the rest of the eye, then laid it flat on the tray. “I thought this would be fun, but I am not spending my life hunched over carving these damn glyphs. Three symbols took me… how long?”

  “Three hours. But you’ll get better at it with—”

  “Fuck that. I’m a doctor, not a bioarcanic engineer. I’ll do this every once in a while for a solid upgrade, but it’s probably easier to find someone who can do the menial labor for me than to spend time getting good at it myself.”

  Cara smirked. “So you do have a work ethic.”

  “I’ve always had a work ethic,” he muttered, grabbing his dagger again and settling into the slow, meticulous task of carving the glyphs onto the second lens. “Now stop staring at me and go do something else. Were the two of you just standing there the past three hours?”

  Cara shrugged, but she didn’t waste another second and walked away to do something else, considering he was going to spend at least another two hours or so making sure he wouldn’t fuck up the glyphs.

  But he noticed Maeve staring out of the corner of his eye, utterly transfixed.

  Gael smirked. “Like what you see?”

  Maeve startled. “What? No—I mean, yes.” She huffed, crossing her arms. “It’s just… interesting. Bioarcanic constructs. But don’t you feel kind of itchy where it’s close to your eye? It’s a Dragonfly Class equipment to your Wasp Afflicted. There should be a bit of incompatibility that compels you to not want to equip it for a long time, right?”

  He made a point of looking up, down, left, right, and then he blinked several times for good measure.

  “Not really,” he said, moments before breaking composure and snickering to himself. “I mean, I’m perpetually drunk and drugged up with a hundred different poisons, anyways. If the incompatibility is supposed to make me itchy and irritated, well, you’re looking at the only man in Bharncair so desensitized he can’t feel none of that shit.”

  Maeve’s eyes widened. “I… see. It really is interesting, then.”

  A sudden flash of an idea popped into his head. “You learn how to carve glyphs, then,” he offered. “Take the book and read it. You already have the glasses for it. From now on, I’ll be the one coming up with ideas on what to make with the Nightspawn parts we get, and you’ll be the one doing the boring carving.”

  He said that as a half-joke, so he didn’t quite expect her eyes to go even wider at that.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m a doctor. I don’t wanna be stuck here carving symbols all day.”

  “I’ll learn! Give me the knife!”

  “Not now. I’m already working on it. You can work on the next.”

  “And what about the robber fly parts? What are you doing with those?”

  He waved a hand lazily. “Later. I can’t be arsed to think about it today. These night vision lenses are already enough of an upgrade for now.”

  Maeve was still staring at him, eyes gleaming with excitement, and Gael had to admit: she looked more like her age when she was thinking and talking about bioarcanic constructs.

  So she’s a weapons nut, huh?

  In that case, I’ll just make her do all the carving for me from now on.

  He smiled as he kept carving, feeling satisfied.

  “Let’s celebrate by getting dinner outside tonight,” he said, laughing to himself. “Who knows? Maybe with these night vision lenses, we’ll even spot the Flighty on the way.”

  here with over five hundred and fifty members, where you can get notifications for chapter updates, check out my writing progress, and read daily facts about this world, while the Patreon is with twenty advanced chapters.

  follow/favorite/rating. It helps me out a ton! See you tomorrow for the next chapter!