Mosh started to scratch his burns and stopped as his plastic tipped nails touched his arm. He forced his arm out like it was possessed. He berated himself for a moment for lacking focus, and just let himself breath as the burns crawled like some sort of horrible rash. He forced himself to work, taking some of the scrap he kept in his crafter pocket, fingers playing with twine and sticks, his mind forcing it into a tiny ballista, then shifting the wood to a violin he plucked once before crushing it back into parts.
The goblin crafter was sitting at the desk in the belly of the huge truck, the huge human sized drafting table cranked down to it's lowest setting. Even then, it wasn't actually all that comfortable to work at. Still, it was large enough to hold everything he was working on and a big-folk sized mug of coffee. He noticed a chip and carefully ran his finger along it, moving some of the material like a liquid to fill in the gaps.
He took a deep breath, then tapped the drafting screen and started looking at the math involved with building a shield glove. He grabbed the wires and plastic chips from a pile he had rolled and carved and once again started visualizing the object he wanted, pulling the reacting mass of wires and rubber into a glove shape before using his other hand to pick up a finely made mitten, then as they started to mesh and form the shape he had on the screen he guided the wires in his mind, the bits of plastic into the guard, smelling the faint smell of new plastics as Lythandies let his fingers turn into it's first mold and last solder, snapping everything into place. No time to account for sweat making his scars itch: The next part was pulling an energy source in, so he did a quick run through with his mind of the ongoing reaction of glove and machinery, threading the wire tighter in his mind then willing it so in his hands.
As the glove shifted back and forth from a hazy image one moment to a real object the next before going back, Mosh waited until it felt right then slammed the blue gem into the mix, aiming for a gap he had made like a little nest.
For a moment he had it, a perfect mental image of the glove, power source, and nearly mile of wire he had wrapped around everything, holding it all in his head...
Then he felt an itch on his side, like his scar had been dragged over a carpet made out of a cat's tongue, and he tried to push the gem in before he lost the image but it was too late, some of the wire blurred together in his mind into a wad of something, and when that clump went he tried to re visualize it but the gem had fused with part of the glove and a moment later searing pain flashed in his hands and he flung the little pile of melting junk into his sand bucket before it ignited, and frustrated Mosh pulled the plastic tips off his claws and started scratching his face, trying to get some relief from both the peeling feeling and the fact that he had wasted another four hours of prep work. He needed better tools!
The hot line of blood on his chin stopped his frantic scratching, his little black claws too sharp for the scars. At least, he was pretty sure it was blood. He looked at his hand, and saw the dark lines. No tears this time, but only barely. Even after mending himself, the skin grew back scarred and burnt still. The itching crept back in as well. It made him just want to sleep. Mosh was the worst thing he could be: Stuck.
He had no idea how to refine anything better. He didn't know enough about shields to shape them. He didn't know how to engineer nanobots with Lythandies' skills. He was brute forcing his way through enchanting everything to keep up with the stuff coming out of the dungeon, and he was starting to run out of tricks and patches on his work to keep adding anything onto the truck.
He watched the wisp of smoke drifting from the wrecked lump of crud, then reached under his desk and tapped a button to start a vent up. The whine of the fan made the air a little less hazy and removed the burnt metal smell. He was back to where he started, again, the third time today. Tonight. Grunt had left open the cargo hatch to bring in more magic items and high tech crap for him to break, and he could hear crickets.
He had hit the cap on the simple stuff he understood in and out long ago, undermining his confidence. He couldn't remember the little details for controlling or building nanites. Forget other things, he couldn't fix himself. had taken a green fireball for the team that the Goddess Lythandies's powers weren't able to fix, the necrotic energy infused in the wounds resisting the workman like powers when he requested her healing, and that left him unable to sleep anything more than a few hours. He itched all the time, and the feeling of his ugly burns made it stuffy everywhere. To get any rest he had to push the air temp down to near freezing. Poor June had to sleep wrapped up in blankets to be in his bunk with him.
"I dunno why I'm here Boss." he said, as if Corvayne was still there to bounce ideas off of. "I'm just a shmuck that makes stupid crap for coffee tables."
Mosh hopped off his chair and started moving towards the open hatch to grab some mundane metal. The electric bearing red stuff they were pulling out of the source was miserable to try to craft electronics out of, basically shorting itself and any chips out.
Once again, hands on metal, he thought about how every garage on his Ark had a set of green crystal class tools, and how if he had payed any freaking attention to history of crafters class he'd have an idea how you could go from gathering pebbles to turning yourself into a crystal cyborg that could eat a dozen hellfire fireballs, all in the space of two weeks.
He sighed and grabbed a kitchen mixer on his work bench, threw in the metal he was going to make wires out of, and then started maxing them to get something with consistent properties. After the third attempt he wasn't even trying to optimize his wires into high quality high purity metals. At this point, he was ready to brute force craft a working shield glove then go back and fix it.
Something like a summer sausage tapped his back, and he spun, thinking it was even odds between Grunt needing something or Mister I actually offering him sausages. His first guess was correct, the titan was looming behind him, somehow fitting into the cramped space behind his desk. Mosh had a theory that Grunt was partially some sort of projection, as he only seemed to act with his apparent size when Corvayne was around. Over the last few weeks, he seemed to be a lot less... careful... with whatever persona he was playing at.
Not that it mattered. Mosh liked Grunt, and everyone had things they wanted to hide. Mosh smiled and adopted his normal sleazy voice. "Ya scared the crap outta me Grunt! Whatcha want? I'm working here."
Grunt gave him a look, then handed him a scrap of paper. Written in very fancy handwriting that took Mosh a minute to decipher, was a message.
-I am waityng byhynd the wagon for yow to come. This meetyng ys for 'Tiger-Lambs' only-
"We going to a ren fair or something big guy?" That might be fun. He could make everyone costumes. He'd go with a fools get up. A bitter thought, as it felt like everyone was less fun since Corvayne split. Mosh kicked himself mentally for being a coward, as he could have gone with. Then his skin crawled and started to furiously itch, and he had to grab the counter so hard he snapped one of his little black nails.
Grunt pretended he didn't notice Mosh silently screaming, waiting for the pain to subside then shaking his and then putting a finger to his lips. Somehow he turned fluidly and gestured with his chin for Mosh to follow.
One of the assassins around the camp was waiting as they left. Grunt did what looked like a series of ninja hand seals, and the assassin responded in kind then ran off. He vanished into the dark night.... two new moons and the jeweled moon was a sliver of almost sinister shimmering light under red scattered rays. The entire moon must have been made of a giant clear jewel. Think of how many fancy coffee tables one could buy and decorate for that wad of cash.
Instead of pulling off a moon heist, he tried to be the fun he was sorely missing. "Hey Big Buddy! It's a dark night for dark deeds right?"
He turned a corner to the other side of the truck and saw the spider thing waiting in front of a fire. He had a moment of absolute panic at the horrific insect outline before he remembered it was on their side. It didn't help it always was changing forms, with at the moment the creature sprouting long jagged spines from it's shoulders. They were barbed and rigged in a pearlescent edge. The thing looked like a bio-lab reject but acted sort of like a very smart cat who got bored of people quickly. Mosh mentally reminded himself this was an intelligent being who might be psychic. He had seen the creature training Corvayne so she was better at things that even Boss was. It only seemed fickle because they didn't understand what it wanted, and since it couldn't communicate it probably didn't think much of them, either.
Varia was there too, wrapped in a shawl against the chill of the High Plains. She looked up at him, and smiled. Mosh smiled back. She was lovely and kind as ever, but he had to think about June too. He just wasn't sure she would tell him if she was comfortable or not with him dating Varia. He felt bad just playing stupid, he should give the girl some sort of answer soon. It would be great if he could just not give a shit like Boss did.
Mister I was there too. The lovable jerk had his hands folded, looking at the fire. "Is that everyone?"
Grunt pointed at himself, raised a finger, then pointed a few more times and held up six fingers, then sat down.
The Spider hissed something, and Grunt flashed hand signals at her first, then turned to Mosh and held out a handful of what looked like coal. Grunt mimed a pancake motion, and Mosh opened his hands to accept the pile of slate, then willed them together to form a smooth edged foot by foot chalkboard. He handed it back to Grunt.
"That all you needed me for?"
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Grunt shook his head. He passed the slate to Varia, then at her confused look pointed to the claw being held out next to her. The spider took the chalk board and one of those horrible looking spines, then started tapping it. Morse code? Just seeing if she can break it? About to make a terrible scratching sound as a practical joke?
The spider flipped the tablet around.
In neat, if over-ornate HAF script, he read aloud, "Doon ye understand me?" He recoiled. "What the hell? Does she understand us?"
Grunt made hand gestures. More tapping. It passed the tablet back and pointed at Mosh and Varia.
"I doon not speak youre tongue. Or perhaps, I understand a word yn five. Ye short byrde manie of the words and it ys confusyng, but of the ones here ye and hire speak byst."
Mister I leaned in, looking over at Mosh. "You can communicate with her?"
"She understands me, and Varia." He was already thinking about the most annoyed Corvayne had ever been, which was when he had to act as a go-between for translating.
Grunt made gestures to the spider, and it quivered for a moment. It tapped a few broad strokes on the chalkboard.
"I am Gylwin Imauk Demeris."
Huh. Someone's else parents were a HAF history buff. Mosh puffed up his chest. "Mosh'Po Tricyklax of Ark Verardis. Excuse me," He cleared his throat. "Mosh'Po Trickyclax of Ark Verardis, Fourth Section, Born in Bellbrook City to Gullyclax and Trickyfur, crafter of fine wood things to place on coffee tables."
He hadn't thought of his dad Trickyfur in years, and he briefly felt intensely homesick at the thought of his mom being told Mosh had vanished for... however long had passed back home. Would he go back when this adventure was finished? He hadn't met any otherworlders, though with a name like that the spider... Gylwin, he corrected himself, yes, Gylwin popped to the top of the list. It was one thing to have a historic name, as he was, for example, named after Mosh'Po the prime, the first Goblin Adept and almost certainly the reason goblins had made a place within the Hundred Ark Fleet. It was another to just give your kid the same three names in the same order as the most pivotal women in HAF history.
"Well, given you've been training Corvayne in stealth, I'd say your living up to the name!"
The spider wiggled again, hissing a few times, then took the tablet back.
"I am who I am." She wrote.
He laughed "I love the attitude on this broad! Check out what she wrote!"
Mister I coughed. "I can't read it..."
Varia took the tablet, then looked over at the Spider. "She's claiming to be my grandmother."
The spider took the tablet out of her hands. Mosh was offered it to translate. "Ye are the blood of my blood. I knowe my brood. Of an oother historie perhaps. Where hath youre sister gone to? Youre Twyn? The oother you of my brood."
The spider was looking around, but Mosh's mind was racing. She called Vaira brood? And Varia offered that the spider was her grandmother. How? Was her crush because she thought she could eat him? No, she had been a sheltered college student from Cascadia before they met. Whole different universe. Didn't have a single dust clone following her around. And what if it WAS Glywin? Did that mean he was dead too? He should have paid better attention in history class. "So let me get this straight. We got a spider claiming to be a long dead figure in history, and given how long folks live in the HAF... I mean millions of years from where I stand... Varia you keep telling me your twenty one... How freaking old is your mom?"
Varia looked a little guilty. "I'm... nineteen."
"Hey... you mean every time we went to the Inn together and got drinks, I've been breaking the law? Tch. Don't tell all the cops camped around us."
Mister I cleared his throat. "We have a rather large communication barrier right now, but I take it there's some sort of revelation?"
The spider took back the tablet and clacked a few times. Mosh took it back and cleared his throat.
"Please request honorable great grandfather to speak yn oure native voice, as my gaijyn ys rusty."
Mister I raised an eyebrow. Uncle I was Great Grandfather? Maybe the spider was a hell of a black sheep. Mister I then started talking in a language his translator couldn't pick up. The Spider then looked excited, writing on the chalk board in lines that was a language his machine hadn't been loaded in. Hey! He had seen a few of those in pictures of Babel! Usually written in neon signs, for some reason.
After trading the chalkboard back and forth, Mister I cleared his throat.
"I think I can summarize. Miss Spider is holding a meeting to try to get all of the 'ringers' in this team on the same page. Though she says one of 'us' is missing, and she is embarrassed she didn't notice because she thought Varia was the same person."
"Doppelganger?" Fuck! He wasn't in the mood to be depressed, itchy, AND paranoid.
Varia put a hand on his arm. "No... it's Bearer-of-Burdens isn't it?"
Mosh didn't see it. Maybe Corvayne couldn't tell the difference, but anyone else would say they were two different people. "For spotting eight eyes she sure is blind, calling you sisters or twins? You guys don't look anything like each other. Different hair and eye colors. Heck, just look at the way she moves..."
Grunt snapped his fingers, then signed to Gylwin, then made some more signs and nodded. Gylwin tried bobbing her head, then started writing again.
"They are the same person, not twyns nor copies. I have eight eyes to see closer to the sooth. She ys garbed yn the vestments of the adept, body suit weaved with elder gold and dragon oil polymares and the hides of byast great and smale ynjected with magic weaved with a nano thimble. It makes oon sweaty."
Mosh folded his arms. "I get it, the clothes make the woman, but Varia, do you know why you'd have a clone running around?"
Varia looked very nervous, and Mosh nudged her. "Nevermind sweetheart, just because everyone else here is blabbing state secrets don't mean you gotta pony it up."
Someone in the truck cabin gave the horn a little honk, with perfect timing as if they were listening. Mosh could guess why someone had honked the horn for a little beep. He thought they should make a rule that you can't have sex in the front compartment, even if it often was the most private place left on the truck.
His pep talk also seemed to have the opposite effect, because Varia stood up rod straight. "I think I have a problem with assuming I'm Bearer or the opposite. I've never been able to manifest an Adept power. I'm a Seeker, and a lowly one at that."
Grunt made a gesture that to Mosh looked like putting a crown on his head, then twirling. Like a dress? Princess. Then a series of hand gestures ninja style.
Mosh took a deep breath. "Mister I, can you tell me what he's saying? Grunts showing off to his new girlfriend."
The big man actually started blushing. Gylwin grew two psudopods and ruffled both Grunt and Moshes hair.
Mister I rubbed his chin. "He's 'talking' in hand sign slang so not entirely, but I catch timeline."
The spider took the tablet, then handed it to him so he could read much smaller font. Mosh had to squint. Even with nightvision, it was hard to see with so little moonlight.
"The flowe of tyme ys as broken yn this universe. The boss floors yn the upper reaches have shown me alternate forms of foe, friend, family. It may be pullyng the what was and what was never from oure own tyme, liketh a thrashyng byast stemmyng a wound. We are it's scars."
Everyone was quiet a moment as he finished saying what Gylwin had written.
Mosh started thinking about it. "Or... it's crafting, pulling in both the perfect fit and sometimes whatever's at hand. Like how I mess up now and then, it knows what it wants the parts to do, and is trying to get them to come together."
Grunt was nodding, tapping his head. He produced the mangled mess Mosh had made before, and pushed his thumb into the melted gem attached to the glove. For a moment, the stationary shield appeared before fizzling out. Mosh felt his eyes nearly pop out.
He had missed a few words from Varia. "... but I don't see how I fit in."
Grunt made a fist, then circled his other fist around it. Orbit? Or everything revolves around a core?
Mosh was thinking. "Varia has a talent for earth magic. I make tools. Grunt is muscle. Mister I acts as a spiritual teacher, father figure. Gylwin is a combat tutor to end all combat tutors."
Mister I gestured then, to the statue of Lythandies taking shape, and how the camp was starting to form buildings, and then to where well worn paths leading to and from the heart of camp were.
"Was our eight legged ally some sort of hero queen?"
Mosh and Grunt both nodded.
"And you are a walking advertisement for Lythandies. You converted me, partially, after all. We have an army and a fading empire with two of it's heirs traveling with our second most prodigious lover, after myself of course. I am willing to bet that Seru's status has been shooting up because she posted a video on how to directly enter a pact with her god that has tangible results. The goat-herder we hired to guide us to the ruins suddenly is a major economic player in the region and is fueling Mosh raw materials for developing weapons and vehicles."
Mister I leaned in. "The System woke up months ago. Pulled itself from a state of being dead, threw open doors long sealed. It's open for business. I bet if we turned around and went through the portal we came from, Cascadia would be nearly a ghost town, everyone having moved into the Tower. It would be the wild west for a while, but an era where healers can cure the sick with wishes? Where every person lives longer and is stronger and smarter than before? Where if you don't like where you are, you can just hop up a stairway and you are on an entirely new world?"
Mosh got the feeling Mister I had thought about this more than a little. Grunt was nodding.
"We were given the tools to build an empire, at the moment when either our civilization falls apart, or thrusts itself forward into a golden age." Mister I then looked up, staring directly into Mosh's eyes like the old man was going to drill a laser into him.
Mosh did his best not to waver. The old monk was about to laugh if he didn't look away first. Bring it on. "Why are you looking at me like that Icarriii? We all know it's Boss or Glasses girl who's the real ringer."
He felt a hand on his shoulder, which made him feel itchy but somehow transmitting warmth. Varia was smiling at him. "We were still at war in my era."
Gylwin put one of her weird long fingers on his shoulder. She handed him the tablet, with a ship bearing the Black Tower of Babel, the citadel of the Adepts oversized on what must be the original Ark, then pointed at the huge black crystal bearing Lythandies face, lit up against the night by blue light as June worked on it.
Grunt pointed at Mosh, then pointed at his own head and closed his eyes, tapping his forehead.
What the hell? Mosh was a nobody.
Then he thought about growing up on an Arks. Vast super ships, with untold trillions on each, connected in a teleport web across the universe. An unstoppable empire that had already reached a state of content immortality. Yelling at the princess. She didn't understand.
She didn't understand. Gylwin wouldn't either. She died sometime when the Ark was it's namesake, a lone ship carrying survivors of some long forgotten galaxy. Died a hero saving the ship, no less.
"You carry karma with the Dao of Ultimate Prosperity. The vision of a golden age drives you forward. It is one thing to fix limbs and make toys. A good thing, but when you are frustrated, you speak of paradise, and what we ask is that you keep doing that, show us what we don't understand."
He looked at his scarred flesh. Visions of green crystal, the stuff every entry level adventurer was made of until they proved their stuff. They gave the grunts immortal bodies. He looked at the batteries he had made, powered by grinding up no doubt priceless black crystal. Everything in the HAF was running on zero point energy.
He took a black crystal, and ignored the pain as he pressed it into one of his burns on his arm. Blood welled from it, and he felt Varia grabbing his arm, but he ignored her. Corvayne could do it, so could he.
A sliver of the crystal shard vanished, and he saw three tiny hexagons on his skin where he had forced it, just a few pennies of black crystal over his scar. He couldn't help feel his mouth twist upwards. Not because he had opened up the next set of tools for the group. Not because he felt the warmth of more divine attention on him. Not because Varia was pushing her chest into his arm.
Instead it was burnt green now gleaming black.
It no longer itched.
He looked back up at his allies. "Okay. Let's see if we can't start a golden age before Boss gets back."