He'd dressed in his casual clothes and walked there, leaving his armor, wings, and golem assisted backpack in his inventory. He had almost worn his more formal attire, but decided that might be overdressing after waffling back and forth on the idea several times. No one had recognized him this time without his signature armor, and he decided he liked things a little better that way. It was nice to just be another person on the street, not feeling people’s eyes on you or wondering what they were saying about you.
Xander took up a slow but purposeful pace towards the mercantile district that was near the guild hall. He found himself looking at every sign for every shop he passed, as he had no idea which one might be Valteria’s. He wished she’d been a little more specific with her directions. ‘Down the road from the guild’ encompassed a lot of stores and workshops. He just hoped it was actually on the main street and not tucked away on a side street. He noticed the tailor’s shop he’d visited with Gabrelle, Brakk’s, as well as the shoemaker he’d bought his boots from as he walked. By this point he was fairly deep into the area and was beginning to worry he’d missed a sign somewhere, somehow. It didn’t help that as it was getting darker, the signs were becoming harder to read. Rock’s Bay didn’t have the level of public street lighting that Anlet had maintained. Still, he hadn’t reached the end of the district, so he couldn’t double back just yet.
Finally, towards what he assumed was near the end of the district, where shops were beginning to mingle with homes, he spotted the sign. It was attached to a modestly sized, wooden two story building. A stone chimney rose from the far side of the workshop, though he noticed what appeared to be a metal vent of some sort mounted on a side wall nearer the road. A small window on the first floor was set up as a shadowbox, displaying a few odds and ends to anyone passing by. Xander saw a small clock – he realized he’d never set his watch and took the time to do so, hoping the clock was actually set to the correct time – along with an intricate looking crossbow with a winching mechanism, as well as some more esoteric devices whose function he was unsure of.
It wasn’t late in the day yet, but considering that many of the shops he’d seen seemed to be in the process of closing up for the end of the day as the light was lost, he wasn’t sure if he should just walk on in. He opted for knocking first, rapping his knuckles against the door. It was times like this that he appreciated having an artificial body. The fact that he didn’t have a heart that could beat faster due to the social anxiety he was feeling or that he didn’t have a stomach to worry about upsetting with stress sure made it a lot easier to manage his feelings and get out and take himself out of his social sphere of comfort. He knew it was silly. After all, he was just having a casual sit down with someone who he wanted to become friends with, or at least professionally acquainted with. But this kind of thing had always rattled him a little, though he'd managed to keep a handle on it for the most part. Outgoing would not have been the most apt description of his social life back on Earth, though.
He waited patiently for a reply to his knock and was rewarded as the door opened. He was confused, however, when a man, appearing to be somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, opened the door. He had a dark brown, bushy mustache that matched a disheveled mop of similarly dark brown hair and was wearing a leather apron over a sturdy looking shirt and pair of pants that had many small spots burned through them in multiple places.
“Can I help you?” The man asked.
“Uhh…” Xander started, stricken by awkwardness. “Uhm, I’m looking for Valteria?”
The man nodded in understanding as he opened the door fully. Looking back over his shoulder he called out, “Miss Valteria! Your guest is here!” He then turned back to face Xander and said, “Wait, you are the person Valteria invited, yes?”
Xander quickly nodded an affirmative. “Mmhm, she asked me to come by this evening.”
The man breathed a small sigh of relief. “Phew, I’m glad you are. I should have checked to see if you were a customer first,” he said with a small laugh. “It would have been a bit awkward if you weren’t the person she invited.”
Xander heard the clatter of tools being placed down and heard Valteria’s voice from inside the shop. “Thanks Jarrett! Go on and let him in and then you can go home for the night. I’ll see you tomorrow, as always.”
The man, Jarrett, stepped aside from the doorway and beckoned Xander inside before slipping out the door himself. “Good night, Miss Valteria,” he called behind him before shutting the door behind him.
Taking a moment to look around, Xander absorbed the eclectic workshop he’d stepped into. Several workbenches were placed against the wall throughout the space, and each one had their own pile of what appeared to be a clutter of parts, from gears to bolts to round little glowing glass baubles that Xander had no guess as to their purpose. Tools of all kinds hung on the remaining empty space on the wall. A small forge was placed near the vent that he had spotted earlier, with a metal hood to catch the smoke hanging from the ceiling and piped to the vent. Ingots and warped chunks of metal were piled near the forge, though there was no fire burning in it at the moment. Xander spied Valteria hanging a small ballpeen hammer on a peg on the workbench she was sitting at.
Hopping down from her stool, Valteria turned to face Xander and said, “Welcome to my workshop!” She gestured broadly at the room around her.
Xander gave a small wave and replied, “Hi. Uhm, thanks for inviting me…” Xander trailed off, standing awkwardly a few steps in from the door.
The two of them stared at each other for several agonizing seconds before Valteria finally came up with something to say. “What was that stuff you threw all over my armor? It’s going to take me weeks to chip it all off.”
“Oh! Uh, don’t worry about chipping it off. It’s a glue from an alchemical recipe I bought, but since I made it with my abilities, it should just sort of… disintegrate after about a day from when it was last close to me.”
Valteria’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Oh thank the gods,” she sighed. “I was considering trying an acid bath at this point.” She regained her posture after a moment and beckoned him over. “Would you like to come upstairs? We can both sit down up there.”
“Sure, that sounds fine to me,” Xander replied.
Valteria led him to a staircase at the back of the workshop leading to the second story of the building. As he reached the landing at the top of the stairs, he was met with a much cozier atmosphere than the disorganized workshop below. The stairs came up into a living and dining area of sorts, a small table with four chairs populating the portion closest to the stairs. The table had several drawings and sketches of mechanical devices in varying levels of completion spread out on top of it. Further into the room, a small couch was set against the wall, next to a bookshelf. A fireplace was ensconced at the back of the room, along with a table for preparing food. A narrow hallway led to the other rooms of Valteria’s home, though Xander couldn’t tell what they were, since the doors were closed.
“Come, sit, sit,” Valteria insisted, gesturing to the table.
Xander pulled one of the chairs out from the table and sat down, watching Valteria do the same. “So you wanted to talk about the fight in the arena, right?”
Valteria nodded. “That’s right, though I’m interested in getting your opinion on a couple other things as an [Artificer]. But we can talk about that in a little bit. First, I want to know what you thought about the suit overall, as someone who fought against it.”
“Mm, okay. Well, it can certainly take a hit. I got a couple of good hits in on you, and it seemed like I was only able to do cosmetic damage. I’ll admit, though, that the ball and the chain is not the weapon I normally use. The mace I use has a corrosion enhancement on it, though, so I thought it might be a little… deadly for a tournament. I imagine it might have been fairly effective on your suit. I also thought that the lightning enhancement on the ball and chain would be more effective. But once I got a couple of rounds in, it seemed like most people had some way to get around it, you included. So, the suit itself is pretty resistant to physical damage. Assuming you don’t already have some way to mitigate things like acid, I’d say that that’s all I can think of in that regard. Really, the two biggest things I noticed were some issues you had with range of motion and with your fighting style. Not exactly sure what you can do about range of motion. I imagine that’s more of a mechanical limitation. But it combines with your fighting style to make you vulnerable to someone – or something – who can actually damage your suit. Once I was able to get inside your guard, I was able to get a hit on you and away before you could do much. Admittedly, your gears or whatever it is that moves that thing were also gummed up with glue, so that was a contributing factor. So I guess that’s three things. Flexibility and range of motion, because it could make it hard for you to deal with a small or very agile opponent. Fighting style, you need to have something in the wing for when an opponent is able to get inside your guard, be it a different weapon, or a skill like what you used to create all that steam. And then a minor quibble about maybe finding a way to protect the inner mechanisms of your suit from environmental factors like mud, or glue, or whatever you might encounter.”
Valteria nodded along patiently as she listened to Xander think his way through his review of her mechanical suit. “Mm, that all makes sense. You’re right that flexibility and a way to shield the gears, bearings, pulleys, and all the other various little things I’ve shoved into my suit from the environment would be good, but, at least at this point, I don’t think that it’s something I can do. Your comment about my fighting style is, as much as I hate to admit it, spot on. I was able to simply outlast and then smash my opponents when they made a mistake throughout the whole tournament. I did struggle with getting you out of my guard. And there was the one with the knife, he got in my guard too. That would have been a problem if he’d had something that would damage the suit, you’re right. I need to learn how to adjust for that. Or maybe come up with something to keep people from being able to capitalize on being inside my guard.” She sighed. “Got any ideas?”
“Uhhh… Spikes that shoot out of your armor? Lightning that arcs around your legs? Fire? What about that steam thing you did? That knocked me around pretty well.”
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“The steam takes a while to recharge… it’s a magical device. Spikes? Lightning? That sounds good, but ah, how exactly am I supposed to implement that? Spikes, well, I worry they wouldn’t be able to penetrate armor. I like the lightning idea, but that sounds expensive. I could easily spend the entirety of the prize money for the tournament – which I didn’t win anyways – or more on something that would be able to produce that level of elemental power and is customized to work for my needs.”
Xander nodded thoughtfully. “If you did have the purchasing power, what would you need to implement a defense like that?”
Valteria rubbed her chin for a moment as she thought the question over. “Mmm… I can think of three different ways to do it. If I could get my hands on something with large amounts of latent elemental energy, like, say, a core from a lightning elemental or perhaps the right organ from a different lightning producing monster, I could use it as a battery and channel that elemental energy through conduits out around my armor. Similarly, if I was able to get my hands on something that naturally produces raw magical energy I could do something in the same vein, but I’d have to find, or more likely create myself, a way to convert that into the kind of elemental energy I want before pumping it out of my armor. That one would have the added benefit of allowing me to potentially change what kind of energy I’m converting the raw mana to, which would give me some added flexibility. Thirdly, I could pay for some kind of runic array. They’ve all got their pros and cons. The runes and a lightning producing core would be the least flexible. Between runes and a lightning core, the cost could vary… a low grade or smaller core would probably be less expensive than having runework done, but a more powerful core could run more than an array. A raw mana producing item would be the most expensive, I’d reckon. Not many beasts that use or produce undifferentiated mana, from my understanding. And the ones that do tend to be quite nasty, from what I’ve heard. But still, I’d easily be looking at upwards of three-quarters of a platinum to implement even a lower grade core between having to source and buy one and all the parts and materials I’d have to buy and create to implement it.”
“Wow,” Xander said. “I didn’t realize that things like that could get so expensive… and I thought spending twenty-five gold on a pair of boots was painful! So is that why you joined the tournament? Money to keep working on your suit?”
Valteria shook her head. “No, not really. Truth is, I wanted to use it to pay back a loan. Few years ago, back during the war between Thrask and Dardin, business was pretty bad. Trade had slowed down a lot through the city. I was getting by on selling crossbows for the most part, but it wasn’t enough to keep the shop afloat. So, I had to take out a loan to keep from having to close up shop. Now that things are back to normal, or at least close enough, I’m able to pay a small amount towards it each month, but it eats into the profits I would have been able to put away as savings quite heavily. If I had won, it’d have given me some more breathing room.”
Xander nodded slowly. He felt a bit sheepish having this conversation with Valteria, as he was the winner and had no particular need for the coin. “I see… That’s unfortunate. You, um, mentioned rune work, right?”
“Yes, why?”
“Say I happened to know a rune worker who might be willing to do some work for reasonable prices… is that something that would have a positive effect on your business?”
Valteria leaned forward, clearly interested. “It would, yes. I can think of a few things a rune worker could do that would allow me to sell higher grade wares. Clocks that never run out of tension on their springs, crossbows that shoot farther, and reload faster. That sort of thing. But… I haven’t heard of anyone setting up shop in town that deals in runes and arrays,” She said, looking at Xander with furrowed brows.
“Ah, what if I also told you that the rune worker is me?”
Valteria stared at him for a moment, before almost exploding. “Agh! Gods damnit, I should have known! That armor of yours, the weird…spider leg… thingies… the fact that it was so resistant to every damn thing that hit it! Ugh that is so unfair, how did you wind up with a rune class and an artificer class? And why. The hells. Are you doing mercenary work?”
“Uh… well, I like mercenary work? I quite like my team; I’d say they’re my closest friends. Also, my only friends? Wow, I need to make more friends. Um, and my classes are specifically [Combat Artificer] and [Rune Lord]. So it does lend itself well to merc work. But I’ve been known to do some side jobs here and there. And I’m quite interested in learning about that suit of yours and some other devices. I’m a bit at a loss when it comes to the more arcane bits of science and technology, aside from runes.”
“Hmm… I see. But why are you so interested in my armor and other things?”
“Well, I’m a [Godsmarked], so I don’t have any formal training in anything like what you do. And uh… Sooo, how do you feel about undead that fall into a sort of moral grey area with the circumstances of their existence?”
“That’s a very specific question.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I suppose I don’t have any particular qualms about them, as long as they don’t, you know, become evil or something like that. Or are smelly and covered in rotting flesh.”
“Okay, good start here. What if I told you that I was, essentially, a disembodied spirit powering a construct through my class skills?”
Valteria stared at Xander. “You’re lying!” She exclaimed after a contemplative pause. “You’re fucking with me, that’s what you’re doing!”
“No, seriously! I am.” Xander said, trying to placate the smaller woman after her outburst. “Do I need to do something to prove it to you?”
“Honestly? Yes. What you’re claiming is so… just out there in the field of things I’ve heard.”
“Uhm… Shit. How should I go about this? I guess I could pull a Terminator and peel off my arm covering.”
“What’s a ‘Terminator?’ That doesn’t sound promising to me.”
“Sorry, cultural reference from… well, back home. ‘Marked thing, I guess. But, like, I could peel off the ‘skin,’” Xander mimed air quotes at the word ‘skin,’ “and show you the base skeleton of the construct underneath? Would that work?”
“Okay… yes, I suppose that would be proof enough. But don’t you dare get blood all over my house if you’re just some kind of crazy freak who think’s he’s a construct.”
“Right, then. Here goes.” Xander pulled a small pocketknife from his inventory – the same one he’d [Analyze]d so long ago on his first day on this world. Opening it, he pressed it to his palm and dragged it downward, opening a slit from the middle of his hand to the middle of his forearm as Valteria watched, morbidly transfixed on the scene. “See? No blood,” Xander said, setting the knife down.
Valteria nodded slowly. “No blood…” she parroted. “But… what’s under there, then?”
Xander pulled the slit in the silicone wide, revealing the skeletal frame of the metal underneath. “Basically it’s a runed construct that I control by flowing mana into various arrays. It gives me feedback in the forms of various levels of mana for things like touch or heat. For whatever reason, I guess thanks to the gods in this world, I’m able to hear and see on my own. I don’t know what I’d have been able to do if I didn’t have that.”
“So, just to be clear,” Valteria said, “you are a spirit controlling some kind of manual golem that has realistic, but fake skin?”
“That’s right, yes.”
Valteria blew out a long breath, thinking. “That’s… I mean how does that even happen?”
“That’s probably a conversation for another time, but I can tell you that becoming a spirit was not intentional on my part. Neither was dying,” Xander chuckled.
“That’s fair,” Valteria responded. “I’m sorry for accusing you of lying, by the way. It’s just… well, not very believable.”
“It’s okay, I totally get it.”
“So you’re interested in my suit as a way to improve your own body?”
“Sort of? I mean, I think I could make myself my own suit if I wanted to. It would just be a suit of armor runed to mimic my movements. I’m more interested in the things you talked about like magically converting different types of mana, using elemental cores to produce lightning, that kind of thing. I can make runic arrays to mimic things like that, but I’d like to get an even deeper understanding of things like that.”
“Mm, I see. Fitting for an [Artificer] to have a desire to learn about those kind of things, I suppose. What do you say about a trade? You do some rune work for me, and I teach you some of my trade.”
Xander nodded his head in agreement. “I think that sounds just fine.”
Valteria clapped her hands together in excitement. “Excellent! What do you say you join me for dinner and we can talk things over in more detail?”
“Um, sure, but just a reminder: I can’t actually eat.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But I’d still be happy to sit and talk!”
Once Valteria had finished making dinner for herself – some kind of fowl that she fried in a cast iron skillet on her hearth accompanied by what looked to be mashed potatoes – the two sat down together to talk further. Xander found that he enjoyed talking with the small, violet woman. She had a passion for creatively solving problems with her tinkerings that he admired. She was similarly impressed by some of the ideas he had for runic arrays, such as the camouflage cloak idea he’d been tossing around in his head. He hated to admit it, but he was finding her more and more attractive the longer they spoke. It felt wrong – wasn’t he still married? It hadn’t been that long since he’d been pulled from Helen. Just around a year… plus three that he’d spent unconscious. He felt a little ashamed by the attraction. That didn’t stop him from talking to Valteria, though. Whether or not he decided if his attraction was something he decided to pursue, the two of them had a business arrangement. Plus, her company was enjoyable.
The deal they hammered out was simple: Xander would place arrays on some of the items that Valteria made, or had already made, and in return, Valteria would show Xander the basics of how to convert the mana in elemental cores and other various mana producing organs and how to channel it through conduits. He was hopeful that he could combine this with his rune working skills to create even more powerful effects, or at the very least, effects that were different than what he could already create.
The two spoke well into the night. Xander elaborated on his method of layering materials overtop one another to fit more arrays into his armor, as well as how he’d found that different filling materials had effects on the efficiency of runes. Valteria tried her best to give him a short beginner’s primer on creating a mana powered device. In short, one needed a source of mana, such as the aforementioned elemental cores, which could be induced to discharge the load it had accumulated with a small, targeted spark of mana. This discharge was then channeled into specially made conduits, and traveled through them to the apparatus that was to be powered. That was what Xander managed to gather, anyways. From there, it became even more complicated because one had to actually design an apparatus to be powered, and Valteria kept going off on tangents about interesting ideas she had for different devices and their combat applications.
The two talked into the evening, finally interrupted by the chiming of several different clocks echoing up the stairs from Valteria’s storefront as they reached the top of an hour. Xander checked his watch and realized that it had just reached eleven o’clock.
Valteria was also alerted by the clocks that it was growing late, as she uttered, “Ah, I ‘spose I should let you get back to your bed. It’s getting pretty late. I expect you’ll be stopping by tomorrow for your first lessons?”
Xander nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that sounds good to me. I’m at loose ends right now with the end of the tournament and waiting for our investment to pan out, so I can be by whenever. When works best for you?”
“Mmm, swing by late morning or early afternoon, roundabouts. I find the shop is busiest in the morning as people are running errands before their day and the evening after people pack up from their jobs.”
“Sure, I can do that.” Xander stood from the table, the motion a little awkward due to the fact that it was a little shorter than average and held his hand out for Valteria to shake.
Valteria also stood, and looked at his hand confusedly for a moment before taking it and completing the handshake. “Why are we shaking hands?”
“Where I’m from, it’s customary to shake hands upon the completion of a deal or transaction. Just a habit for me at this point, I suppose.”
“Oh. Hmm. I think I like that tradition. Adds a bit of formality to it.”
“Well, you’re welcome to appropriate it. I’ll see you tomorrow!”
“’Til tomorrow!”