Kiresula asked in Je-ashvehanu: “What is happening?”

Mayana responded: “This machine… is working. Or trying to. I don’t know. Something is not right.”

Kiresula nodded: “Can you make it stop working? So we can see inside well?”

Mayana pointed at a place: “I can move the crystal that keeps magic inside. Then it is not working? But the synthic magic is still ongoing then?”

Kiresula nodded: “Go ahead.”

Mayana shook her head: “Can you please, move this thing? It is too hot for me.” She pointed at a crystal.

Kiresula carefully touched it and dislodged it. Touching it felt painful, like touching a hot stove. Kiresula shouted in pain, earning a nasty stare from Haina.

Mayana picked it up: “That’s a magic storage crystal. Way over any rarities, I normally work with.” She used the mainlandish language to express this.

Kiresula shrugged: “Is that what it is? It feels like utter misery to touch it.”

Mayana shook her head: “Not to me. But then, I am not a glitchling.” She continued in Je-ashvehanu: “I have just a green class, so it might not be the same towards me as to you, but maybe… glitchlings can glitch?”

Kiresula looked at Mayana: “Maybe, but that is tomorrow’s matter.”

She looked at the machine and shuddered. The area had slowly started to produce less and less synthic magic and slowly, she started to see an origin. Mayana showed her specific locations as origins of the synthic magic and Kiresula looked into those to investigate. Many times, there was nothing remarkable. Just equipment with unknown purpose and enchantments: Wires, strings, levers, cogs and other strange contraptions. Removing the covers in hope to see anything that could help, but being completely unaware of magical machines made the task harder. Eventually, another cover was lifted and something dropped. Kiresula looked down and gasped.

A shoe. A wooden shoe fell onto the ground. It looked like the footwear of a farmer. Kiresula checked it and looked confused: It had partly been mangled by the machine. It looked like it had been hammered. Kiresula moved it back and forth in her hands, removing some of the dust she saw from the thing. “I take it, a shoe, a sabot, with an anti-Order message is not part of the normal workings of the machine,” she said to Haina.

Haina nodded and asked if he could see it. Kiresula walked towards him and handed him the destroyed piece of footwear: “Here, you see the message? The oppression of glitchkind must be stopped! Break the machines of oppression! Long live the green spring!”

Haina looked white upon reading this. “Green spring‽ Them‽ How did that happen‽”

Mayana responded: “Not sure about the how, but the when seems to be: a long time ago. There was too much dust on it that it could have just some from one year or two years! Especially when this place is enchanted against the stuff, there shouldn’t have been such an accumulation.”

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Kiresula looked at the machine. “We should place the crystal back. I think we found out why the device didn’t work. There was sabotage afoot. Now, there is no synthic magic being generated anymore.”

Mayana nodded: “Yeah, and it apparently had not been discovered for decades. With the broken magic emerging from the machine, they couldn’t approach.”

Kiresula however asked: “The magic crystal still confuses me though. How could it work all that time?”

Mayana shrugged: “The machine was not used for scrying but merely idled. And yet, the crystal was almost exhausted.”

Kiresula shuddered: “I don’t want to know how badly it would have messed me up if it was full.”

Mayana nodded: “I don’t want to think about that either! You looked like it was a hot potato. Can you shield me when I am trying to put the crystal back?”

“Of course!” Kiresula held Mayana’s hand while the two walked back to the machine.

Kiresula was ready to interpose at a moment’s notice, but after the crystal was placed back, there was only a very minor emergence of synthic magic, low enough that even Haina would only have slight accumulation, but would not glitch even if he ran straight into it.

Kiresula looked at Mayana and grinned: “Too bad! I was hoping to sweep you off your feet!”

Haina looked confused: “Is it safe to approach now?”

Kiresula looked at him: “There is still some ambient broken magic, and for as long as this thing is running, there will be, but it is far less so. A candle as compared to the sun. I would feel better if I kept around you if you go closer to it. Accumulation can work over time.”

Haina nodded: “Good thought.” He then walked to the machine, went to a glass screen, pulled a huge lever and said: “Kedsel-tsei-Hantakgiventa.” The machine started clicking, then, the glass screen showed symbols. While it did, Mayana seemed to glow in blue and green light for a moment. Eventually, there was a series of letters and numbers, which made no sense to her and, looking at Mayana, not to her wife either.

Haina wrote the long series of numbers and letters down. He didn’t say anything about those, but eventually Mayana asked: “This is a location code of the Holy Order, right?”

Haina nodded: “It is a series of them, yes: the current location, the location where she spent most of the time in the last thirteen days and the location where she slept last.”

“Can you read them?” Kiresula asked.

Haina shook his head: “I need to ask someone who can. Let’s get back to Ilkshehir and I will check it there. We just need to wait until it’s okay to return. If we return too fast, they notice that. Generally the advanced interrogation technique takes a few hours, or well into the afternoon.”

Kiresula nodded and then turned to Mayana and spoke in Je-ashvehanu: “You got to 5?”

Mayana shook her head: “6. And… I am not sure how to say… 4, 3?”

Kiresula hugged her enthusiastically: “43 in your conventional class and 6 in your synthic class? That’s very, very good!”

Mayana smiled: “I got good new things, but I cannot talk about them in Je-ashvehanu.”

Kiresula hugged her and while doing so wrote on her back: “But you can write.”

Mayana nodded; both of them sat down in a corner of the room, had their hands on each other’s back and wrote. They did the equivalent of chatter initially, joking about the shoe being literal sabotage and talked about Mayana’s new class features. She learned a few new enchanting sigils and couldn’t wait to test these out.

Eventually, they left the place and were on the journey back. Haina explained that they were under the spire and that the scrying device actually took up most of the spire, but no one could control it anymore as the control centre was flooded with synthic magic. The [cleric] seemed to enjoy talking even though the others just gave the absolute minimum of effort to keep the conversation going. They were in their own thoughts, and only sometimes exchanged messages written letter for letter on the other person’s back. Eventually, they reached the place where they let out Kju and looked for him. As they saw him, they immediately saw that he looked tired. And wounded.