Xander left Uril to finish his writings and found a house with a large enough yard for him to spread his wings wide, leaping as high as he could, which was quite higher than he used to be able to on Earth, flapping his runed wings to continue his liftoff. Soon, he was soaring above the buildings, and above the walls that encircled Ilbek. He gathered more altitude for himself, feeling his ears pop from the altitude change. Once he was confident that he was out of the range of even skill enhanced arrows, he flew outwards towards a patch of woods that he could see in the distance.
As he passed over the Thraskian army, a few of the more keen-eyed observers spotted him. A few skill users still tried their best to reach him, but none were able to. Flying over and then past the encircling army, he began to lower his altitude as he neared the forest. He was on the look for any movement, occasionally using his scope to peer at the edges of the woods. Circling the outskirts of the forest, hoping he was high enough that any animals would ignore him, Xander caught sight of movement through his scope, further within the forest. Carefully bringing himself down to the ground, he crept further into the trees. There, he was able to catch sight of a small herd of deer, which had not yet noticed him, mostly thanks to his silencing runes on the armor.
Xander took aim at the largest of the deer, a buck, and fired. As the buck dropped, he fired upon the rest of the herd as they began to flee the silent deaths of their fallen herd mates. He managed to bag three deer in total. Enough to feed Freyja for a while. Xander hoped that he would be able to fit all the deer in his inventory.
Two of the deer fit in his inventory, but Xander was forced to haul the other deer back to the city by hand. And by wing. It took him significantly longer to take off, but he did manage to lift the deer off the ground. He went in wide circles, slowly gaining altitude. He must have looked like some massive predatory bird to anyone looking at him from a distance, carrying away its kill. Despite his increased strength from [Unstoppable Force], Xander’s arms were burning by the time he touched down in front of the inn, catching odd looks as he came to the ground hauling an entire deer. Dragging it out back behind the inn, he left it on the ground, and went inside to let Freyja out. She’d be getting a large meal today. The long marches had had even the cat eating lightly the past few days, and Xander wanted her to eat her fill. The other two deer would go into his frost box, where he’d be able to carve parts off them to feed Freyja at his leisure.
Finding and bringing back the deer had only taken Xander a couple of hours, and he was now free to begin work on the other projects he’d been considering. He really wanted to try adding another layer to his armor to turn it into a golem so that he could test out [Golemancer]. He already had plenty of carbon fiber to do so, after his bout of creating the stuff last night. He’d need to modify the armor some, though. For the movement runes to work as a single circuit, the armor would need to be better connected. No more leather straps and buckles. It wouldn’t be an issue since he could now equip the suit directly from his inventory.
Returning to his room at the inn, he caught Gabrelle on her way out.
“Oh hi, Xander! How’s your morning going?” She asked.
“Hey Gabrelle. Oh it’s going alright. Managed to snag a couple of deer for Freyja, so her food situation isn’t so critical now. Just heading back to my room to test some stuff out with my armor. Speaking of which, would you like a new set? Made out of the same stuff as mine? It’s a lot lighter than steel, but just as strong, if not stronger. And the way it’s made let’s me put a lot of runes on it.”
“That does sound nice…” Gabrelle said. “But are you sure it’s okay? It’s not going to cost you too much or anything? I don’t want be a bother or a drain on you.”
“No, no, don’t worry. You’re far from either of those things. I just hit level twenty in my [Combat Artificer] class, and it’s given me a way to make the materials I make permanent, as long as I provide them with a source of mana. So I was thinking that I’d make all of you a new set of armor. I figure Graffus will take one as well, but I don’t know if Atrax or Frazay will. Neither of them wear any heavy armor… Maybe I can at least convince them to take a breastplate or something like that.”
“That’s really nice of you, Xander. You’re spoiling us with all these items, you know? I don’t think many mercenary teams have someone that can just… churn out custom magical items for the team. I don’t think I can ever repay you for all the things you’ve given me. Literally, considering how much Erillian paid you for his armor. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the funds to pay for gear like that.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I really like the idea of keeping you all alive,” Xander laughed. “I doesn’t cost me anything but time, and mana I guess. But if it keeps my friends safer, I’m happy to do it.”
“Thanks, Xander. It means a lot to hear that you consider me a friend. I never had many growing up. I was always the ‘weird mercenary girl’ as a kid. So having you, and Atrax, Graffus and Frazay, too, has been really nice.”
“You’re welcome, Gabrelle,” Xander said sincerely. “And don’t sell yourself short, you’ve been a great friend to me as well. You really helped me think things through, back on the boat. But back to lighter subjects, where are you headed to?”
“Well, it’s maybe not a lighter subject,” she began, “but I’m headed to go heal the wounded from the battle. There aren’t a lot of healers in the city right now, so they need every bit of help they can get.”
“That’s our Gabrelle,” Xander said. “Hope you get a level or two out of it, too.”
“Here’s to hoping,” Gabrelle said, as she began to move towards the stairs. “Have a good rest of your day, Xander.”
“You too!” He called after her, before entering his room.
Xander called his armor into his inventory from his body, and then began to remove it piece by piece back out of his inventory and into his hands, where he began laying out each piece on the floor. He began sealing the suit together, using the carbon fiber he’d created the night before to make joints which could rotate, extending the layering of runes on them so that they matched the rest of the armor. Soon, he had a hollow, life-sized action figure. He was even able to stand the armor up if he propped the joins in just the right angle. Realizing that someone other than him might need to take the armor off of him if he were ever to fall unconscious, he created small hinges and clasps in the armor that could be used to extract him from the suit if the need ever came about. Xander pulled it back into his inventory, and then rematerialized it over himself. The armor covered him entirely now, even the backs of joints and his armpits were covered by carbon fiber. Experimentally, he began rotating his arms, and moving his legs to see if this new design would restrict his movement. He was no longer able to reach his arms straight upwards, nor could he squat down and rest on the balls of his feet anymore. The knee joints didn’t quite bend enough for that. But neither of those were major concerns, and the range of motion he needed to fight or complete everyday tasks was still intact. Now he needed to create a new layer of carbon fiber and fit it over the entirety of the armor.
The new layer would hold movement runes and intelligence runes that, when powered, would allow the suit of armor to be moved in its full range of motion purely by the runes, and the intelligence runes were set up in such a way that they mirrored his movements exactly. Putting the suit back on, he tested it once again. He didn’t notice any difference wearing it, which he assumed meant that the runes were working. After all, they should just be mirroring his movements. Taking the suit off once again, he posed it so that it was awkwardly standing on its own. It was time for the moment of truth.
Xander activated [Golemancer] and felt the drain on his mana. Checking his status sheet, he saw that the ability had taken a quarter of his mana. He looked back to the suit of armor, and saw that nothing had changed. He mentally commanded it to stand up straight and was delighted when it did so. He began marching it around the room, and having it strike poses. It seemed to be roughly on the same level as the things he could make with [Automaton]. He wondered how far he’d be able to push the intelligence of his suit with the [Golemancer] skill. He didn’t need it to be able to hold a conversation. What he wanted from it was to manage the movement runes on the suit and intuit his commands to apply greater force when he wanted, turning the whole suit into something akin to power armor. He also wanted it to be able to take over and ferry him to Gabrelle in the event he ever lost consciousness in a fight, or defend him if it wasn’t able to get him to Gabrelle. As long as he didn’t die from any wound that knocked him out, he would presumably recover just fine due to [Regenerative]. He didn’t think it was capable of such instructions quite yet, but it was a start. He wouldn’t be able to apply any more stacks of [Golemancer] to it until tomorrow.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
With the rest of the day looming, Xander dived right into Gabrelle’s armor. He didn’t want to stop and remember the dream he’d had this morning. For the most part, the armor was a copy of his original iteration of his carbon fiber armor. Despite having created it before, the multiple sheets of runes still took time for Xander to complete and then inlay, layering them on top of each other. When he got to the helm, he paused. What should it look like? A skull didn’t really fit Gabrelle. She was an enthusiastic soul, and full of life. Eventually, he settled on a helmet that was set up the same as his, including the air filtration system, but where his was a skeletal face, hers would be her own face, in a gentle smile. It would fit her attitude for most things, and perhaps the smiling face would be disconcerting to enemies in battle.
As he was finishing, Xander heard the sound of a distant explosion. He tensed for a moment, wondering what was going on, before he realized that it must be the siege engineers finally testing the mortars. He was done with Gabrelle’s new armor, though he wondered if she’d want it to be a color other than solid black. He supposed that he could cover it in a very thin layer of some other kind of metal or material if she really wanted. But for now, he really wanted to see how the mortars were fairing.
Leaving Freyja, as lazy as she usually was, to nap after her meal, Xander stepped outside of the inn and took to the air, trying to locate the mortar that was firing. He heard another explosion, closer this time, and swiveled in the air, seeing a cloud of smoke and dirt rising past the wall. That would be the Northeastern mortar emplacement. He flew closer, and saw that there were several men on the wall and a small pile of runed stone balls arranged next to the mortar. He landed a short distance from them on the wall and drew closer under their inquisitive gazes, giving them a friendly wave.
“It working alright for you?” Xander asked the group of men.
“Are you the [Artificer] who created these things?” One of the men asked him.
“That’d be me, yep,” Xander replied.
“Perfect, I was hoping you’d be able to be around for our testing. Is there anything special we need to know about this apparatus? It’s called…” He looked down at the sheaf of notes in his hands, “a ‘mortar?’”
“That’s what it’s called, yes. Umm, nothing particularly complicated about it. The two cranks let you change the directions the tube faces and is angled at, and the button fires it. Just don’t drop the ammo off the side of the wall, or it will probably go off. That’s really it. I heard you fire it already, so it seems like you’ve got it down. I just came to watch, honestly.”
The man nodded, scribbling a few more numbers down on the sheet. “As it stands, we are just dialing it in, as it were. The diagram of the distance you provided was quite helpful, but we wanted a few more angles and distances to confirm our calculations. And also, we wanted to see how effective it would be against the encamped forces,” he said with a malicious chuckle. “It seems to have them in slight disarray.”
Xander looked out at the Thraskian forces, where the dust had cleared from the site of the impact and explosion and saw the small forms of men running to and fro in the distance. “I take it you’ve already ‘dialed it in’ enough to be able to hit them, then?”
“Oh yes,” another one of the siege engineers, this one a dwarf, replied. “To be honest, we were able to make all the calculations based on the diagram you gave us, we just wanted to test and confirm the numbers. And what better way to test brand new siege weaponry than to fire it at your enemy?”
“Can’t say I can think of a better test, under the circumstances,” Xander answered to the dwarf’s rhetorical question.
“Now that we’ve confirmed the numbers and distances, we’ll be splitting up and each of us will be manning one of these,” the first engineer explained to Xander. There’s already a stack of ammunition at each one. With this, we should be able to force them to pick up camp and start moving it back until they’re more than a mile out. That will give us a lot more breathing room.”
“Good to hear. Lord Vard and captain Uril both know where to find me if you should need anything or run into any issues, though I don’t expect you to. You’ll want to give the thing about a minute between shots for the arrays to fully charge.”
“Thank you for the information,” a third engineer said, “and thank you for creating these. The next few hours are going to be very fun.”
Xander watched as the Thraskian army was bombarded from eight points on the city wall. The enemy forces quickly packed up their gear under the fire of the mortars and made a break for it. The siege engineers tracked their movement as best they could, raining explosive stone balls down on them as they moved further from the city, inflicting more losses upon the enemy. The encircling force was soon only barely visible from the walls, distant silhouettes that had been forced back over a mile from the city. The encirclement still held, but it was spread dangerously thin.
Spirits were high in the city. The supplies brought in by Lord Vard’s army and then the forcing back of Thrask’s army had buoyed the spirits of the tired defenders. Soldiers walked with a new spring in their step, no longer afraid of an assault at any moment. Now, it was just a matter of time until the enemy was forced to quit the field, or reinforcements came to break the siege once and for all.
Xander was called upon for little, now that his system of mortars was self-sufficient. He filled his days with hunting for Freyja, donating the excess to the cooks in the city, who were always ecstatic to have fresh meat come in, and tinkering with various ideas. Gabrelle had loved the armor, liking that it matched Xander’s, not desiring it to be any other color. Graffus, surprisingly, had politely declined Xander’s offer of new armor.
“Xander, this armor was my father’s, and his father’s. I appreciate you improving it for me, but to discard it would be… shameful for me,” the dwarf had told him. Xander hadn’t realized that Graffus had such a deep tie to his armor but hadn’t pressed the issue. Frazay had also declined a new suit of armor, on the grounds that she moved better and faster in leather. The woman would brook no arguments, as Xander had tried to explain that the carbon fiber would be just as light, if not lighter than what she was already wearing. He suspected that she simply didn’t feel like changing her outfit. Atrax had accepted a small breastplate that he could wear under his robes.
Each day, Xander cast [Golemancer] on his suit of armor, until it reached a point where it was able to follow his commands to his satisfaction. He now had confidence that it could defend him in the event he fell unconscious, and the few tests he’s managed to run in operating the suit like powered armor had gone well. He’d crushed several rocks into gravel in his hands with the suit. [Golemancer] had reached the point where it took a full half of his mana to cast before he was satisfied with the armor.
He decided that he wanted to create a personal ‘assistant’ of sorts as his first golem that he wouldn’t be wearing. Well, technically the third golem he wouldn’t be wearing if you counted the two spiders that were still dutifully working in the warehouse. For this one, he also opted for a human form, though it would be of steel since it wasn’t intended to be for combat. Just something to test out the limits of what he could do with [Golemancer]. He created a vaguely female form, slim and pointed. He gave it, her, as he thought of the golem already, four arms so that she would better be able to hold things for him or work on the tasks that she was set to. She was covered in ruby lines of runework, Xander having opted to leave the gemstone inlay visible. It made for good decoration. She was set up in the same way for movement as his armor was, giving her a full range of movement. He decided to name her Juniper. He’d always liked that name, and it wasn’t like he was going to have a kid he could give the name to, now. Every day, he cast [Golemancer] on her. By the fifth day, he could order the construct out into the yard behind the inn to play fetch with Freyja. By the tenth day, he had to add runes to the inside of her mouth so that she could produce sound, because the construct had become capable of relaying messages that it was given. Gabrelle had found out about it and began leaving amusing messages that the construct would give to him.
“Master, I have gained true intelligence!” Had been the first joke message that Gabrelle had left for the machine to tell him. Xander had nearly had a heart attack before he realized what happened, and he could hear Gabrelle laughing through his door. He’d set the construct on her, ordering it to put her in a headlock once it managed to catch her, though he left out a steel-fisted noogie for the order.
On the twentieth day, Xander could no longer afford the mana cost to cast [Golemancer] on Juniper. She was capable of performing any simple task she was given, and, if a task was demonstrated to her, she could copy the motions she’d been shown, allowing the golem to perform even complicated tasks.