Three hours later, I’d finally finished checking every single piece of decorative armor I could find. The good news was that none of the ones I was planning to steal were secure in any way. The bad news was that there were only three of them, and of those three, one was missing the bottom half. That one actually wasn’t on display, but was in some workshop attached to the library. Someone had made copies of all the runes they could see and was apparently in the midst of trying to decipher their meaning.

I kind of felt bad about disrupting their research. Maybe I’d find out who it was and give them some help later. For the moment, however, I had a greater need for these pieces than anyone else. Or rather, Querit did. I wasn’t going to give him any of them until I determined what their capabilities were, but I was hoping that at least one would be his research frame. I was having a hard time picturing what it would even look like, as I couldn’t imagine working in a seven-foot-tall suit of armor would be easy.

Once I’d successfully extracted my ill-gotten gains from the clutches of Derro’s royalty, I teleported myself back to my demesne and got to work on getting a look inside. The busted one was easy enough. It was basically a metal jacket with attached gloves at this point, but I suspected it wouldn’t work at all. It had been sheared at the waist, cutting the runes there apart and breaking the structure. It was possible that I could repair it with Querit’s help, but I was going to go over the rest of it before I let him anywhere near it.

The other two were more of a challenge. I already knew I could cut them open with a mysteel saw, but getting them unlocked without damaging them might just be impossible. Querit had confirmed that there was no way to manually open one of his combat frames from the outside, especially not if there was no mana on the interior. Giving an enemy a way to eject him from his frame was obviously a terrible idea, so it hadn’t been built that way. His other frames, things like research, alchemy, metal shaping, and travel, those could be opened from the outside.

Of course, I was making an assumption that these suits of armor were combat frames. It made sense to me; they were suits of armor, after all. Why else make them that way? There had to be a way to open them from the outside if no one was inside though. Otherwise, these were sealed closed and worthless, and I couldn’t see someone spending a thousand hours engraving runes all over the inside of them only to fail to add a way to actually let Querit inside.

After a bit of tinkering, I found it. The mana intake was exactly the same as the one he’d been wearing, except this time when I ran mana through it, it actually had a reaction. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the reaction I’d hoped for. I pulled out my scrying mirror and reached out to the one I’d mounted in the golem’s workshop. A moment later, his face appeared.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I recovered a few of your frames from Derro,” I said.

“You did? Amazing. I was starting to suspect it was a lost cause. Which ones did you find?”

“Suits of armor. They were set up around the palace as decorations on stands,” I said. “I’m trying to open them, but the mana intake is rejecting me. I’m thinking there’s a trick to key it in.”

“Oh, yes. It’s designed to accept mana that’s been passed through my core. I can come over and unlock them for you if you’d like.”

“That’s okay. I thought it would be something like that. I just wanted to confirm it before I wasted time duplicating the wrong key.”

“You… You’re going to duplicate my mana signature?”

“Sure. Why not?” It was artificial, anyway. If he’d been a human, it would have been a challenge, but I’d already done a full workup on his golem core. I just needed to fabricate the specific rune construct in his core that was responsible for molding his outgoing mana.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if I just…?”

I waved away his question. “It’s fine. I’m sorry for interrupting your work. Thanks for the help.”

Querit wasn’t convinced of my sincerity, which was good. He shouldn’t be. He knew why I was keeping him away from these frames, but if he was hurt by my lack of trust, he didn’t show it. “If you’re sure,” he said slowly. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

Then the mirror went blank again and I stowed it back in my phantom space. It took me a moment to locate a chunk of metal and transmute its shape. Slowly, the runes resolved themselves out of the steel, raised up instead of carved. It was more difficult to shape that way, but that was how the golem core had done this particular section, so that’s how I duplicated it.

When it was finished, I gave it a once over before channeling my mana through it. The runes started glowing softly for a moment, and the mana that came back out was distinctly different from mine. These kinds of devices only altered the shape for a short period of time, but that was all I needed.

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The intake accepted the altered mana and, with a soft scraping sound, previously invisible seams appeared all over. The whole thing unfolded, still upright and somehow staying balanced. I followed the mana as it circulated through the metal and noted the runes on the feet drawing a bit more power than I would have expected. No doubt they were some sort of balancing magic, useful for fighting and for getting dressed.

Now we were getting somewhere. The interior of this frame was just as densely packed as the one I’d cut Querit out of, but I quickly determined the magic was completely different. That frame had focused on strength, containment, and defense. It was a brawler, big and brawny, made to take a hit and dish one back out.

This was different. It was a skirmisher, light and fast, with flight and scouting capabilities. I could easily picture Querit buzzing an enemy camp, raking lines of tents with fire beams before disappearing into the sky behind a cloak of invisibility. I could also see him getting hold of this suit and fleeing the valley, leaving me with nothing for my troubles and out a great deal of mana.

Of course, if he did that, he’d almost certainly shut back down within a few days. No matter how much extra mana his core was stockpiling, there was no way he’d last a week. As long as that was true, I held a strong measure of leverage over him. The irony that I had him working on a way to solve his own mana issues was not lost on me.

The second full suit of armor was similar to the skirmisher, but even more heavily devoted to scouting and hiding. It also had magic designed to do extremely high amounts of damage to soft targets without drawing a lot of attention. In short, it was an assassin’s kit. That was kind of hard to square with Querit’s personality, and it forced me to consider again that I knew very, very little about the golem.

Finally, the partial suit of armor was too mangled to get a clear picture of its purpose. The chest piece was most of what was intact, and those were the same across all the different frames. The runes there were what allowed Querit to interface with the magic to begin with, to move the frames as extensions of his own body, and to draw mana both in and out of the suit. What little was left in the arms and head made me suspect that its primary purpose might be some sort of spell defense, possible for a small area, but I could only speculate with over half the frame gone.

None of these were tools I wanted to give my reluctant new ally right now. However, they did give me enough examples of how the frames were set up that I just might be able to make one of my own, something with no combat capabilities but which could nonetheless help him to help me. I did still need someone to help me control the eight bombing golems I was going to build to sabotage Ammun’s project.

I started drafting my preliminary plans. The interface part of the rune structure was practically flawless, so there was very little to change there, but since Querit wouldn’t actually be fighting, it didn’t need to be an overly large suit of armor. Perhaps some sort of vest or coat would be sufficient. It wasn’t like the golem actually needed his arms or legs to control the frames. Those were nothing but morphic simulated flesh anyway.

I grabbed another slab of metal out of my phantom space and started reshaping it. I wanted it thin enough to be flexible, which required a bit of alloying, but not so thin that it would distort the runes once I’d added them.

Once I was satisfied with my base material, I took it over to my crucible and got to work. I had plenty of room and a few thousand runes to add.

* * *

Querit looked blankly at the vest I’d presented him. “What is it?” he finally asked.

“Let’s call it a controller frame,” I said. “I made it myself.”

His expression brightened and he reached out to take it. “You made this?”

The golem studied the rune structures intently. “Linkage runes are properly aligned. Mana capacity is a bit lower than usual, but it’s a lot smaller, so it should work. Lots of divination constructs… Huh, mostly based around mind linking. This…”

He stopped and looked back at me, surprised. “I just said it was a controller frame,” I told him.

“I’m… not really comfortable with something like this,” he said, offering it back to me.

“I think you’ve got the wrong idea. It’s not for using on people. It’s to control other golems – non-sapient ones, of course.”

“Oh! Yes, I see it now. That’s very clever. I guess my question would have to be why you made this. What purpose does it serve?”

“You remember how I told you about my former apprentice causing the cataclysm that broke the world core?”

“Yes, the lich. Quite irresponsible of him.”

“And how he’s awake and active again?”

“Ah, I see now. You’re recruiting me to fight against him.”

“Something like that. He’s building something. I haven’t had a chance to figure out what it is, yet, but I’m reasonably confident that destroying it would be a good idea. I’m going to build some golems to infiltrate the various facilities he’s constructing. Their job will be to perform a simultaneous strike on all eight locations so that none of them can warn the others or get reinforcements.”

“But surely you don’t need my help to control them,” Querit objected.

“Well, there are two problems. First, the facilities are so far apart that I don’t think I could keep all the golems in range of the control connection without being in the very center, which would put me in Ammun’s demesne. Second, the facilities I personally investigated are very, very well defended. An extra mind helping me control the golems will drastically increase my chances of getting them in undetected.”

Querit was silent for a long moment. Then his expression firmed and he nodded. “I owe you my life. Every day, the only reason I can still walk around is because of you. And I think I have no moral objections to stopping an archmage whose actions resulted in indirectly destroying my entire world from further compounding his errors. I will help you.”

“Good to hear,” I said, not that I’d ever doubted. Still, I was glad I hadn’t had to coerce him into cooperating. “Now, let’s talk golem designs.”