Jamie awoke with a coughing fit, like a Mormon's first hit from an unmaintained bong, they had to physically restrain themself from dry-heaving. It was like a rat was trying to crawl its way up out of their lungs; unsuccessfully.
“There there,” A gentle voice intoned as a hand barely caressed Jamie’s upper back.
Catching what breath they could, Jamie quickly surveyed the room. Billy Joe was right beside them as usual and Zippy was quickly making his way inside by floating on a small purple cloud.
“W-what happened?” Jamie’s croaking voice asked.
The young man holding them as they sat up leered daggers at the approaching gnome. “Our gracious instructor gave you an advanced spell to try. And you were unable to meet the requirements.”
Jamie shot a death glare at the gnome who slowed his advance. Putting up both of his hands in defense, “Oh come on, you’re a dragon; I thought you could handle a third-tier spell. It was going to be a whole thing where you make the class double down on their studies because you impress them so much.”
Jamie shook their head, crossing their arms, “Except, that’s not what happened.”
“I had better explain,” The student intoned, causing Jamie to turn back around and look at the beautiful fae man. His eyes were a little larger than everyone else's, his hands were slightly longer, but he moved with such delicacy. He had the wings of a moth and his body seemed to be furry. If Jamie hadn’t known any better, they’d have thought it was a costume for a convention.
The man continued, “You likely pulled from a source your mana pool hadn’t finished digesting. Meaning that you gave it the identity of some of your recently drawn-in mana. From what I understand, you have been underground in an old coal mine for over a week. Using your lungs as a spellcasting focus and then considering the kind of freshly absorbed mana you pushed into it…”
Jamie nodded, “I gave myself a short case of black-lung.”
As the moth-man nodded, Zippy floated down and hopped off of his cloud. “I assure you that it slipped my mind that you had been in a cave for so long. There has been so much going on out here that I truly didn’t recall. Still, it is my fault you blacked out there. Please, come back for a night class. I’ll make sure I better match your skill if you give me another chance.”
Jamie took the gnome’s offered hand, shaking it. “You got it Zippy, I mean, you are one of the biggest experts on the planet after all.”
After Zippy had double-checked their lungs for any lasting damage Jamie decided that it was best to go home for the day. Spellcasting was something they’d get the hang of when they didn’t feel like a small gravel quarry was located in their throat.
Billy Joe and the others stayed for the various lessons but truthfully, Jamie didn’t care enough about magic to study. It was just one more thing on their giant list of possibilities.
***
“Alright, charity work is done, everything is taken care of, now what?” Will intoned, a small thread of mana poking out of their lamp.
“Well… well, truthfully I do not know, Majesty,” Theodore answered, clipboard in hand, he looked down, and indeed, everything was checked off the list.
Will giggled, then laughed, then it grew to the laugh of a mad villain, “MWUAHAHAHAHAA!”
“Uhm, Are you okay Majesty?” Hero asked, now off duty and floating in a wisplike orb around the treasury. Most of the challengers had gone home for the night and Hero highly doubted that he would be of any use with the stragglers, likely just getting annoyed at them and pushing them to the next room instead of fighting.
Will made a throat-clearing noise, “Ehm, I mean, I have the best idea. It’s time for a redesign.”
In a new set of rooms located directly under the first, Will carved them smooth in the needed dimensions for the spacial enchantment. The first room would have a gargoyle motif.
The enhanced room was a 30X30X60 hallway, thirty feet wide and tall, with sixty feet long. Near the poorly-lit roof, Will carved out several gargoyles similar to those found in the greeting area. Each of them had various different animal designs, such as a pig-monkey-parrot and the ever-popular fish-fish-fish, at least, popular with them after they had made it. A hammerhead shark with the body of a seal and wings like a flying fish’s fins. Sure a seal wasn’t a fish, but fish-fish-fish sounds way better than fish-mammal-fish.
“Hey Theodore, we should serve eggs and spam.” Will intoned.
“Why do you say that Majesty?” Theodore asked, looking up from his clipboard.
“No reason, it wouldn’t be the same without the Vikings anyway,” Will mumbled out, returning to their work.
After the room had a gargoyle lining the upper walls every five feet it became time to add the trial. Including a minor fear rune under each of the gargoyles, Will was hoping that it wouldn’t overload people’s senses if spread out. Then, Will started slicing the stone floor, two circles thirty feet in diameter were left along with the stone under them. Raising the now carved floor up Will added a few metal gears to turn the two wheels. Carving a corkscrew into the central rod they would be spinning on and adding a few minor runes and engineering techniques.
“Alright, Hero, Care if you hop in the body down there?” Will asked, and before Hero could ask why there wasn’t one, a body copy exactly the same as his own room’s had popped into being.
“Sure boss.” Hero said with a smile, that is if his wisp could have. With a quick focus of his mind, Hero popped into the attuned body and looked around. The room was pitch black but looking up gave vague outlines of ghoulish creatures.
Hero stepped forward, out of the doorway he had started in and stepped onto the first massive circle. His weight triggered the mechanism to start spinning, the wheel he was on started to spin slowly at first in a clockwise direction, speeding up the longer he stayed on. Then, suddenly, when he thought the spinning was over and he came to a halt, his stomach lurched as the wheel spun the opposite direction, rising slightly. Instead of stopping halfway through, several runes placed in the gears creation caused the wheel to continue up all the way to the top of the screw, before being sent back down and sent spinning the first direction again from gravity.
Hero grabbed his mouth and bent over, unused to the spinning before Will froze the mechanisms in the room. “You okay down there buddy?”
“One-second majesty,” He visibly wretched, “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Will marked that down as a minor success, if it was surprising, then it would stall them. And clearly, Hero was having trouble not vomiting, even though his current stomach was mostly empty.
With the room still stopped Will sent a push of mana into the room, transforming the raw mana into some basic anti-sea-sickness medicine from the medical textbook they had been given. “Here, try this and see if it helps any.”
The anti-nausea medicine kicked in a little later, but it didn’t help Hero out all that much. Still, he stood and began to walk around, nearly slapping his face into one of the walls when he tried to walk in a straight line, only for the wheel to send him walking face-first into a stone wall.
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Over the course of half an hour, Hero was able to find his way, blind as a bat, to the end of the relatively small room. To Will, it was a short journey, but to Hero, it had been more challenging than any of his opponents before.
Hero zapped back to the treasury room with Theodore and Will, “Okay, that was crazy.”
“True, but some may have better balance and night vision. Still, I highly expect many groups to be stuck in this room for anywhere between twenty minutes and an hour” Theodore brightly said.
“My exact thoughts. I don’t want to send my adventurers straight into a fight, they might think that violence solves everything that way and I don’t want them at a disadvantage.” Will explained as their thread slowly pulled out of the lantern. Phasing through the ground itself Will brought their body near the new second room. Up above, Hero was in charge of Room 2, however, this time should be a little different.
After the sizing runes were in place Will was staring at a forking tunnel. On the left, it fanned out into a massive dance floor. Ahead of the floor Will carved a wall perfectly flat, that took a bit of time. Afterward, they silvered it, giving it a gentle shine. On top of that Will added the peace-de-resistance.
Over the silvered wall, Will placed a screen similar to those they would use in the treasury for remote viewing. But instead of connecting it to any form of vision, they tinkered around. Slowly they encased the magical screen with an old television case design with an off-brand symbol over it. Then, they got to work determining the things it would show.
Will connected the screen to the silvered wall behind it with a thread of pure mana and began engraving in the metal. On the metal, Will drew the swooping and curving lines of the mental acquisition rune they had found in the books Zippy had brought. It was designed with the sole purpose of seeking a keyed thought pattern out of someone’s head and transferring it normally to your own.
After that, they drew the boxy, almost three-dimensional design of the projection rune so it would connect whatever the first rune got out of the person’s mind, to the screen. Then, there needed to be the keying rune. To which Will needed some assistance, Will caved the beginning into the rune and then isolated the entire room. Connecting the isolated room only to the treasury they asked a pointed question.
“Theodore, what is your favorite song?” Will asked as innocently as possible.
“Joelene, why do you ask Majesty?” Theodore responded, wiping off their monocle and taking a break from playing poker with animated green army-men in drag.
Before Will could respond, the screen flashed to light, playing the song straight out of the Oppossum’s memory, causing Theodore to jump in surprise. Will laughed as Theodore looked confused but grateful, he had been on a losing streak to Deborah Taunt, and this was his jam, his losing streak would turn around, he just knew it.
Will then runed each individual floor tile and linked them to the screen runes, it was wasteful, and they felt pretty drained after it, but it was worth it. The final runes would alternate the colors on the tiles every fifteen seconds. The screen itself would change which tile it displayed in a small pane under an explanation.
Memory Maximization Room.
Dance to the beat of the song, your favorite or most remembered song will play over the screen. In time to it, you must alternate stepping on the appropriate tile colors to the beat of the song. Be prepared, your memory of the song will determine how it is played, thus a keen mind is needed to predict the changes.
And with that, the path of the mind was finished, at least, for this room. And to the right stood, well…
Will brought up a snapshot in the treasury, a screen expanding on the wall.
“An empty suit of armor?” Theodore asked, rubbing his chin as he leaned in to examine the hologram. His stack of tokens had grown to near double its meager size from before
Will shook their thread, “Nope, guess again.”
“Some sort of… mech?” Hero asked, just having gotten to the old shows still on tape in the back.
“Closer.” responded Will, “Hero, you’re an artificial soul, made by me, as opposed to having been created the usual way. This is an idea that’s been bouncing around my lamp for a day or so. It’s created to look mechanical, so that our adventurers think it is, however…”
On the armor and screenshot, Will connected two circular metal devices with frilled out barrels at the end to both of the shoulders, then spread the cannons wide at the tip. In full view of the two of them, Will began scribing three runes inside of the cannon. A trigger rune, a propulsion rune to shoot whatever was created out of the end, and a lightning rune to make a small condensed ball of electricity.
The runework however was lost on the audience, Theodore asking, “So, what does it do?”
Will, tapping the cannons to return to the normal shape, lightly sent a jolt of mana to activate the trigger. Into the hallway, the armor fired a single cannonball propelled at an okay speed, a paltry 10 miles an hour. Being an energy attack, even Will expected it to go far faster, however, the ball of lightning could almost be going in slow-mo, mere inches a second.
“Okay, I have some readjusting to do on the strength of the launcher, but you get the idea, right?” Will asked their captive audience.
“I think I understand,” Theodore said after waiting a few seconds.
“Nope, still lost.” Hero replied unashamedly.
“I got the idea from one of those old books Jamie let us borrow,” Will explained. “I think it’s called artifice, and if I understand it right, It’s exactly what we will need to protect ourselves from another invasion.”
The dark, villain-esq laughter begins again, however, the other two joined in, if only for a moment. “MWUAHAHAHAA, Ehhh *Cough, Hack, Wheeze*,” Theodore needed a moment after that, this villain laugh would take some time.
Will returned to working on their artificed armor, and Hero’s new improved body. Metal tendons and bones were easy enough, however, getting certain fluids where they needed to go became an issue. Working through the problem of the slow projectile, Will discovered a breakthrough.
The propulsion rune was entropy-based, meaning that it could age or accelerate many things. By adding some cleaning alcohol as well as a few other stabilizers into a slurry and then funneling it to the back of the rune, the cannons fired much faster. The damage didn’t increase, due to the lightning rune being a different element and gaining no boost from the slurry, but it was now much harder to dodge. A power test revealed each ball to be about a quarter of the usual setting of a taser, enough to cause a muscle spasm but not enough to cause any permanent damage, not that even that was a problem for the genie to fix.
Similar issues came up with the movement of joints, there was a delay in the mental activation. When Will tried to make a leg kick, it did so… a full ten seconds late. Movement, being another entropy type rune required the same alcohol slurry be added to the joints of the automaton. Soon, veins carrying the yellowish liquid could be seen circulating through the entire creation, visible as long as you had mana-vision that is.
A bit more reinforcing on the torso and an added plate over the joints to cover up any obvious weak points and the basics of a combat automaton were made. Although it had two stunner cannons on its shoulders the body was created to do primarily close combat. The stunners were to handle the long-ranged members that would obviously be in the party or to be fired off for advantages in close combat.
Will focused on the face. Currently, it was entirely blank, a smoothed curved surface was in the place a face would normally be. Will focused, pouring a bit more pure creation mana into this effort as it literally drew in place two glowing red eyes.
With that, the basic form of the combat automaton looked remarkably like an ancient set of plate armor with a pair of seven-inch long gun-barrels peeking out from behind its shoulders. The face was smoothed and polished silver, completely unreadable save for the two glowing eyes that were movable and could change emotions, however, right now its face was completely emotionless.
Will took a moment to blink, Through the vision of their goblin out front, they could see the sun already rising. The magi-mechanics taking nearly all night, and the…
Will paused, and then asked, “Hey, Hero, what do you think your new body's name should be?”
Hero, still enamored with the picture, thought it over for a moment, “I think I’ll go with Plated Powerhouse.”
***
Jamie had a pleasant dream. Their inner vault was being mined by several tiny scalie things. At first, it was worrying, however, in the dream, every time they would finish digging through a section, a new one would crash down in its place and the scalie things would return to mining. Every time, their hoard would grow larger, gems, gold, silver, everything was piled up behind the tiny forms in an ever-growing stash.
Jamie awoke, the idea of profit in their mind. They crawled out of bed and made their way to the bathroom, where their toothbrush and toothpaste were handed to them. Then, still half awake they made their way to their hotplate and skillet. Cooking up a pair of eggs with some spinach, fetta, and mushrooms they ate their omelet while the small skillet got cleaned.
As they stepped down the stairs to their shop they realized something, “Wait… who handed me my toothbrush? And… wait who was at the sink?”
As they began to turn around on the stairs they could hear the tell-tale sign of the shop's door-bell as a customer left. “Thank you, young fellow.” An elderly woman called back, a small paper bag in her hand.
Following her focus, Jamie saw who she was talking to. A short, near 4-foot lizard person was behind the counter. Wearing a burlap sack for clothes, the metallic blue lizard looked up and waved at Jamie.
“Good morning Horde-Maker.” The metallic Kobald smiled at Jamie, whose mouth fell agape in response.