Waking up was a mistake. The lingering exhaustion from yesterday had yet to give way and my joints protested as I pushed my way out of bed. I paused for a moment to watch as Tim wriggled his legs in the air in protest to my departure, wheezing slightly as he tried to curl into a ball only to bunch up the furs and trap himself in their warm embrace. What a little goober. While he struggles to free himself I'm going to get ready for the day ahead.
Today I was the first one out the door with bag in hand and bug curled under one arm, ready for the day ahead. The rain was still coming down, but at least it had become a light mist rather than a torrent threatening to drown us all. I hopped on the lift down, feeling somewhat good despite my aches and sores when that odd sensation hit me. Fate, what are you up to? Why do I feel that weird tension like you're about to change?
Snap.
I had to look up to make sure that sound wasn't the elevator cable breaking, and with a sigh of relief I composed myself. Okay, who is it this time? It can't be anyone on the lift, they're all bleary eyed and grumbling about the cold, and if it was somebody it would have to be someone I met recently. It couldn't be him, could it?
I approached the hall with a bit of hesitation, feeling those invisible strands of fate pulling away even now. My sensors couldn't detect them, but my spine tingled and my scales puffed out with every shudder they made. One knock on the wooden door and it popped open as normal, but everything was fine. Whew, must have been a false alarm then. I started walking into the hall looking for Raevu when a voice caught my attention telling me that the boss was waiting for me.
I turned to face one of the senior scribes I had yet to catch the name of standing between two of the bookshelves waiting for me, pointing up to the tower where the old geezer hides. He led me to the bottom of the pillar and showed me that there was a magically powered lift at the back used for getting up there, and because I was summoned I had permission to use it. There was an offer made by him to power the lift and show me how to get back down, but I didn’t get to answer before the lift rose on its own accord just from me touching it. Eh, I’ll figure out the getting down part when Faerkurch and I have a talk.
Arriving at the top I was greeted not by the sagely man, but a leaning tower of scrolls and tomes set to one side and a cleared area with dozens of blackened samples lying on the floor. Following a whistling sound I found the resident lord of lore sitting at his desk dozing off in his big comfy throne with my research papers laid out before him in neat order. He jerked awake at my arrival and motioned me closer, explaining that he did indeed stay up all night trying out my methods of sapping mana from rocks and metal samples. The roadblock he was now facing was performing the inverse, putting the mana back into the decayed object, and he wanted to see first hand how I did it. Sure thing, I love a bit of magic manipulation to start my day.
Faerkurch started off by showing how it was he was draining the mana from his samples, which for him was a bit trickier than my instant form runes. He calls it a Mana Extraction Array, but to me it looks like a pressure cooker with one of those old timey alarm clocks on top, and I was absolutely thrilled to see that it worked just as I thought it would and just used a big stack of mana collector runes to make a manaless space in the chamber. In went an unassuming empty ink pot, and out came a pile of dust devoid of color. He then handed me a broken quill and asked that I do the same, and right before his eyes I did exactly as his gizmo did and turned a feather into black dust.
Then came the interesting part: how to put it all back together again. He had another device that was supposed to work in the inverse by pumping mana into a space, but no matter how hard his device tried it couldn’t fix what he broke. I demonstrated how I did it by just picking up what was once a normal cave rock and cupping it in my hands and blasting it with mana, though as I did so I became aware of how the two methods were different. The inverse device, which I’ll just call the Mana Microwave, just sort of filled up its chamber with mana until it reached the extent of how quickly it could replace the mana that leaked out. Meanwhile, my method was like putting the sample right in front of a concentrated beam of mana and hitting it in one quick injection. We shared this idea and passed some notes between ourselves as we cooked up an improvement for the Microwave.
Faerkurch let me in on a fun little tidbit about the process that he knew, and that was the problem with recharging matter with mana. Most matter has it’s preferred limit to how much it holds normally, how much it will saturate up to, and how much it can go in a deficit before it loses its ability to hold mana at all. Say you drain copper down to -50%, that’s bad, but give it enough time and it’ll recharge itself with minor damage, but go any further and the mana will bleed out and never replenish again unless it gets shot back up past the falloff point. As he put it, my method of recharging the samples was effective but it lacked refinement.
That was where our combined Idea came into play. By taking all of those collectors and retooling them to work like capacitors, we could fire them all off at once into a single point and fix a sample by shooting it with a concentrated surge of mana right to its core. We ran into some trouble at the idea of how to make something that would pass along a surge of mana like that, but then the time my dad and I experimented on gemstones came to mind. When I explained the kind of notes I had back at my house to the old guy he had this twinkle in his eye as he told me he could teleport us back to my house and we could grab them. Even when I asked how he knew where we lived he didn’t explain himself, but an instant ride crossing over a hundred floors doesn’t sound all too bad.
Now that we had all of my notes and a few crystals so I could demonstrate the kind of effect they had, the old guy and I worked on putting the microwave back together in a new manner. Actually it was more like I put it all together while Faerkurch went bonkers over all of the notes I had, his reaction being alarmingly childlike considering this guy had to be over a century old. He did catch me peeking back at his display of enthusiasm and quickly hid it, but it was too late for him and I knew what kind of face he made when he was in a truly delightful mood. There was another thing about that smile that got my attention though, and that was the lingering feeling of Fate coming off of him. So he was the one who I changed, huh? If my friends are any indication, then maybe it’s a good thing for him, even if he’s completely unaware of it.
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With a few final adjustments our makeshift modification was complete, and for once I felt as though I had made something pretty. The chamber was unchanged and still a pot-like shape with a big bolt on lid, but it was the array of silver lined collector runes connected with flat emeralds that made it shine against the orange metal drum, and all of this led into the chamber itself where there was a large ruby fixed with its pointed bottom facing directly at a small gold plate. If theory proves correct, then this whole setup will only fire once all of the collectors are full and concentrate all of this mana into one fine laser in the machine. With a final check with Faerkurch to see if our designs were right, we put a lifeless chunk of what once was a paperweight into the chamber and took a step back to see what would happen.
To the normal eye it looked like it wasn’t working, but what I saw in the magic was exactly as we had predicted. Mana from all around the room was flowing into the runes and staying stored there until full, then when full they would push their mana into the emerald connecting them and their partner collector, which then funneled into a secondary row of emeralds, then another, and then one final emerald before the ruby. A crude way to get an eight to one ratio set up, but it was working by not letting any of the collectors set off the ruby early. Once all eight runes were primed and ready the last emerald got its two-fold signal and passed the mana along all at once into the ruby, thus causing a single red flash from within the device.
Faerkurch approached quickly in order to shut it off before it charged up for a second round, and with great haste opened the test chamber to see what had become of the sample. In his hands was pretty white river stone, fully restored to its normal state and holding the minimum charge of mana. The old wizard lizard wasn’t done quite yet and put in a second sample and readied the machine again while asking me to release some mana to rapidly charge the machine. Another red flash, another sample restored, then another, and another until we had fixed every last item he had decayed. The old mage made that same elusive smile again as he pulled a perfect sheet of parchment from the machine, though I didn’t let him know I had seen it this time.
Seeing the machine take all of those completely ruined items and make them whole again got me thinking about how a regular object would react to this process. I inquired with Faerkurch to see if he would be willing to run a test, but it seemed that he didn’t want to push his luck with an experimental device he had only just gotten and was still trying to understand. Right, don’t want to break the new toy right after you got it, I can understand that even if I really want to put this nice shiny rock in there and see what it turns into. He got out his paper and quill all ready to write a report on what he had seen which meant he didn’t want to discuss this any further, though even as I turned to leave I still felt some strange happiness after all of this. Maybe, just maybe Faerkurch isn’t as prickly as he lets on to be.
Things must have been going too good for me, because I reached the edge of the pillar and realized that I didn’t have a way down now that the lift was gone. Looking to the floor now I realized there was some kind of latch for keeping it up here once it reached the top, but my dumb ass had completely overlooked it when coming up here. Since I couldn’t call down to the scribes working below and they were too busy moving things back around after the leak had been fully plugged I had to turn around and request for a ride on his hovering platform down to the ground floor. Embarrassment was one of the many emotions on my mind as I uncomfortably dangled on my heels to not fall off on the way down, but with the way everyone was looking at me I took it that this was uncommon to say the least.
It must have been some kind of punishment for asking, but he told me as I got off that I still had scribe work to do now that things were going back to normal. Buddy, you’re the one who had me come up there and invent something with you for half of the day! I felt more than a little irritated as I made my way back to my desk, but when I got there one of the aides was clearing off the desk save for a few scrolls and telling me that was all I had to do today. If this is his idea of teasing me it’s not funny, but thanks for being considerate anyways I guess.
The day went by quite smoothly after that, though as I deciphered the scrolls I could feel flickers in the magic in the air coming from the tower I had left. He was probably taking samples from one machine to the other in order to see how well it worked and how much strain the process put on materials and the devices, or at least that’s what I thought he must have been up to. I noticed something a bit peculiar in regards to Tim’s reaction to the change in mana in the air, and in between lines of translation I made a note of it. Tim would always look and see what was going on as the magic moved, but unlike with Mibata and I he wouldn’t dash after it in order to get closer. A small flicker of my own magic confirmed this as he spun on the spot and hopped towards my hand, seemingly eager to catch it despite his burdened form. Alright fine, I’ll go over the monster book again later and see if it’s safe for you, but for now stop eating the parchment and getting fatter.
Eventually the bell rang and all of the scribes filed out of the room after collecting their pay. I heard quite a lot more jingling this week than other weeks, and after getting a heft fifty Draks along with a receipt explaining why I understood exactly how much the old man valued the safety of his books. On the short walk back to the lift Raevu asked me if I wanted to join her at the market tomorrow in order to blow some excess coins. Who says no to a shopping trip with their best friend? Not this kobold, that’s who.
The lift ride was a little damp, as to be expected given the ongoing drizzle and the hurricane-like downpour from the days before, but other than that it was going just as usual. Raevu got off on her floor, the lift made a little jerk it always does around the thirtieth floor, and kobolds got on and off every so often. I was looking off the side of the lift when I felt someone lean against my arm, pushing Tim into my chest a little harder than I would be comfortable with, but otherwise this was just what happened every day for a big girl like me. I thought it was all normal until I realized that the person next to me was soft to the touch, almost like they were wearing some kind of cloak.
“Don’t look this way.”
Their voice was oddly quiet, but it felt like they were speaking right in my ear. In fact, ever since this person got close to me it felt like the air around us got still and all of the noises were muffled. A quick sniff confirmed that this was some kind of silencing magic like Tokols, but I could tell it was coming from a stone that the kobold had in their hand and not from themself. I almost peeked over at them to catch a glimpse of their face, but a firm nudge to my arm holding my pet told me that they didn’t want me to do that.
“My master wishes to warn you. The dark priestess knows what you have done, and her recovery is nigh. She will seek to undo your work. My master knows of your quests and warns you not to fail. A visit to the Altar will allow you to prevent her success.”
The lift rocked a bit and the rain picked up a little, but regardless of that neither myself or the mystery kobold moved from our spots. I felt tense, as though this person were dangerous to be near but I wouldn’t be able to escape if I ran. A chill ran down my spine when they looked my way, and even through the corner of my eye I could see some kind of mask over their face.
“My master is your ally, but cannot reveal themself. You are chosen, you must succeed. Protect yourself, for the enemies you face are growing impatient. Stay safe, Kayrux.”
With that the cloaked kobold pushed their way through the crown and stepped off onto the floor we were passing, vanishing down a tunnel in a fraction of a second. Their departure left my knees feeling weak, forcing me to catch myself with the railing of the lift. That kobold, whoever they were, looked just like the one from before when I took the drone. I could barely keep my composure as my floor arrived, my feet carrying me home before I could recognize the door in front of me. I slipped inside and set all of my stuff on the worktable, pacing back and forth trying to calm my jittering nerves before anybody else got home. Oh man, they’re going to love hearing about this.