The party ate a late dinner that night, choosing to receive the last servings so Autumn could join them for dinner -- she would still have to go clean up afterwards, but for now she didn't complain. It was soup again, though she had adjusted the ratios of miscellaneous meats and used different spices so it would at least seem like a different meal. Eli and Victoria were continuing to behave as if they hadn't had a blowout argument that morning, and Iris guessed the two had known each other and adventured together long enough that they were practiced at setting aside conflict between them when it wouldn't be productive.

The party was joined by a few extra faces, as well. Cameron sat beside Eli, his bowl of soup growing cold on the ground beside him as he looked through a stack of papers which had seen much better days. Adan and Grell were there, too, though Grell had already eaten his portions by the time he joined the circle of adventurers, and Adan never seemed to eat at all. Despite Grell's disdain for the audience, Adan had convinced his father to allow his friends to watch as the glow stones were added to his hands.

It began with Grell unfolding a wrapped cloth filled with small tools, which seemed to be an eclectic mixture of watchmaker's tools, pieces from a lockpicking kit, and a few crudely made and oddly shaped tiny metal scraps of metal with indiscernible purpose. Adan sat on an upturned bucket with an outstretched palm, and the others watched with intrigue as Grell crouched before him and began to prod at his hand with the tools.

It only took a moment for the first piece to pop off -- a molded sheet of metal which covered the bottom of Adan's palm. The upper piece soon followed, and the innards of Adan's hand were fully revealed. In place of veins and flesh were tiny mechanical mechanisms and a series of thin cables, which seemed to pass through the palm and into each of his fingers.

"I don't know son," Grell said, "I gotta move a lot of stuff around in here to make it fit. We'll need to route the cables around the stone, for starters."

"Is it feasible?" Adan asked.

"Of course it's feasible!" Grell said, "I made the damn hand, I can fit a rock into it." A shadow was cast over Grell, and his twisted his head to give a disdainful look at Autumn as she leaned over him for a view at Adan's hand, "what do you want?"

"Uh--" she hesitated, "what the hell is that?" she pointed at Adan's hand.

"It is my hand," Adan seemed confused.

"Why is it like that? Where's all the blood?"

Iris blipped over to Grell's other side and leaned in for a better look, "whoa, it's like a clock in there."

"My son is not a clock!" Grell shouted, "he is a supreme creation born of unparalleled skill and knowledge. Now let me work!"

"Please provide my father some space," Adan asked politely.

"Right, sorry," Iris said sheepishly after blipping back to her seat.

"Sorry," Autumn grumbled as she sulked away.

A loud grunt of frustration came from Cameron as he shoved the papers from his lap to scatter on the ground in front of him. He placed his head in his hands and sighed deeply, "I can't read any of this shit."

Iris curiously picked up one of the papers. It was a crude charcoal drawing on a brown, rough-edged sheet of parchment. It looked like schematics, based on the ones she had seen in Milo's workshop and during her duties working for the boatswain, but this one was incredibly poorly drawn and lacked critical details such as measurements and angles. It looked familiar, though she couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to depict.

"What's this for?"

Cameron looked up from his hands with the expression of a man who had given up, "it's supposed to be schematics for a 'spinning machine,' but it looks like it was drawn by children."

Iris and Autumn exchanged a worried glance.

"Did you get these from a guy named Cronur?"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Yeah, he and his partners have figured out how to turn glow stone into an explosive. I thought it might have some valuable applications, but I can't work with this stuff. I mean, look at this," he picked up a piece of paper and held it up for the others to see. It was a page filled with words from edge to edge, with no punctuation or paragraph breaks, "this is supposed to be research data. There's not even numbers on here!"

“Yeeaah,” Iris said as she placed the paper back on the ground, “those guys aren’t exactly experts.”

"I may be able to help you decipher those," Adan said, "I find it easy to interpret a wide variety written language."

"He's been to the best schools," Grell said while delicately pulling aside one of the cables in Adan's palm and placing a small piece of brass to divert it away from the center of the palm, "only a few days at each, but my boy learns fast. I didn't even mean to make him that way, he’s just that good."

"What exactly do you mean when you say things like that?" Autumn asked, "that you made him?"

Grell sighed, but continued working and didn't turn to look at her, "you see all this?" he briefly motioned to Adan's entire body.

"Yeah," Autumn answered.

"I made that."

"O-kaaay," she said, still obviously confused.

"He's a construct?" Cameron asked.

Grell scoffed, "as if a construct could be this magnificent. No, my boy has a soul. He's as alive as you and me."

"It is fair to assume I am construct," Adan said, "I was built in much the same fashion as one, though with much greater care and detail. As my father says, however, I have a soul, and thus am alive."

"I've never heard of a construct with a soul before," Titus said, "how's that work?"

“And where did you get it?” Victoria added.

"Enough questions!" Grell shouted over his shoulder before looking up at Adan, "I told you letting them watch was a bad idea."

"They are simply curious, father. That is exactly why I wanted them to watch."

Grell grumbled a few unintelligible words, and then held up a glow stone to Adan's palm. He frowned when he discerned it was much too large for even the largest cavity he was able to create in the palm.

"You!" he pointed at Autumn with one hand and tossed her the glow stone with the other, "make that smaller for me."

"Uh," Autumn stammered, "why me?"

"You do the thing with rocks," Grell pointed at the glow stone, "that's a rock. I need it half that size."

Autumn frowned, "I never thought about messing with glow stone. It's actually a crystal, you know, but I guess crystals are kind of rocks."

Curiously, she held the crystal in both hands and imagined pulling it apart like she might a regular stone. Instead of smoothly molding in a clay-like manner as a regular stone would have, the crystal fractured in half down the middle, leaving a rough and even surface on the new face of either piece.

"Huh," she said in surprised acknowledgement.

"That'll work, gimme," Grell held out a hand and made a repeated grabbing motion with his fingers until Autumn leaned forward and gave him one half of the stone.

He placed it in the center of Adan's palm, and then placed a ring of brass around it which clicked into place with other components within Adan's hand. The ring held the stone in place as Adan raised his hand and flexed his fingers.

"Digital dexterity is slightly reduced," he observed, "it is manageable."

"Well go on, give it a try," Grell encouraged.

Adan pointed his outstretched palm at the ground, and a second later the glow stone flickered a few times before settling into a bright, constant glow.

"Ahah!" Grell shouted, "the mechanical mastermind succeeds again!"

Adan turned his hand around to inspect the new installation in his palm, "this will do nicely, thank you father."

"Yeah, yeah," Grell grumbled, "gimme your other hand, we'll put the plates on once they're both working."

Expressions around the circle ranged from bewildered amazement in the case of Autumn and Iris, to the casual curiosity of Eli and Cameron, and untrusting glances from Victoria and Titus.

______

In the captain's cabin of the Gaping Maw, a pair of gargoyles were desperately attempting to pull a steel chain through a too-small gap in the floor. The Shark Titan ignored them as they griped over whether or not they should cut the whole larger, instead staring proudly at the newly installed prison for Gerald. It was another glass tank, much like the last, though the difference this time was the overlapping metal bars that covered all sides of the tank. They were thin but rigid, and the square gaps between them were far too small for Gerald to ever fit through.

"Break the glass if you want," the captain said to the fish floating within the cage, "you'll only suffocate in your cage."

The fish stared back with an apparently blank expression, which the Shark Titan knew was in fact conveying unbridled rage.

"You do it," a gargoyle just outside of the open door said to another.

"No you," another gargoyle said, just before shoving his coworker into the room and slamming the door.

"Can I help you?" the captain said casually, turning to look down at the cowering gargoyle."

"Y-yes sir-- your honor-- captain!" the gargoyle stammered with a fear-filled gaze.

"Spit it out," the captain ordered.

"Yes, I mean-- aye. R-repairs are on schedule, sir. Ship w-will be ready in days."

The captain looked down on the gargoyle with curious amusement -- which, on the face of a shark, wasn't all that discernible from wrathful ire, "why were you afraid to give me good news?"

"I-I don't know, sir," the gargoyle looked away sheepishly, "m-maybe you're hungry."

The captain's booming laugh startled the other two gargoyles in the room, causing them to drop the chain which was promptly pulled back through the hole in the floor by an unseen weight.

"I don't eat gargoyles," the captain said as he stepped past him and approached the door, "way too brittle."