We kept going for a little while, hashing out the details of what and how we would be taking action. The goblins were interested in a diverse diet, or rather, Chef was, so I planned to set up their farm for multiple crops. That would mean fewer mushrooms for Roguk but with the poisonous ones he wanted to plant I had to get him a separate place anyway. That would be the old cave he used back when I was here the first time. I just had to make sure I could move the node clogging the hallway.

I decided to test if I could reach it. My excavation focus was still in my metal body and I had to shift to that form to use it. For a moment, I got confused, because my vision was normal but then I felt the focus sit deep in my chest. I only had to will it out and it replaced my eye. I found it would not stay in place if I put it somewhere else on the surface of my body. The metal pushed it back inside quickly.

Digging through the magically created stone was just as easy as normal stone. The material piled up in my storage. It took a few minutes but at some point, I saw the soft glow of the node through the hole I dug. It was pure earth, as I expected, and a major node. When I uncovered it, I saw the energies flowing through the crack in reality and trying to quickly form new stone. I had an idea and threaded a tendril of darkness to it. It was just barely able to reach the two-and-a-half metres. As soon as I touched the node, I pulled on its mana. The energy entered my body and within a few minutes, the node dimmed to what one would expect from a medium one. No longer was it trying to create new stone, the vis coming in from the other side simply trying to restore the node to its former glory.

I decided that was good enough to let me get to it once I had my silverwood wand and was able to move it. With that settled, I bid farewell to the goblins and made to collect all the material I needed.

First, an infusion altar. I knew what it looked like, I had already seen two of them, after all. And one was not far from the goblin village. I made my way south and reached the ork town a few minutes later. Close to the centre was the largest building with a courtyard in the middle. In there, I had observed infusion for the very first time as well as seen the first eldritch guardian. Now that I thought of it, did they have any relation to node guardians? Were they their counterpart from the Empty?

That question had to be looked into on another day. I had an infusion altar to steal. The pedestals stood there in a circle around the central structure. Another pedestal, surrounded by four conic pillars of arcane stone pointing above it. In the air between the floated the runic matrix. The cube made up of smaller cubes was the core of every thaumaturge’s advanced creations. It channelled energy from the surrounding pedestals as well as essence filled into nearby jars to infuse a central item. That was the best way to create powerful artefacts. Not the dwarven brass kind, but actual magical items.

I landed on the roof, carefully looking around and listening for any noise coming from the building. Someone was awake in the early morning, an ork, judging from the voice. He was berating someone or complaining about something. I did not hear his words all that clearly. He might have had a speech impediment. Somewhere else in the building someone was walking. Neither of the individuals was close to windows I could look into so I decided it was a good time for my heist.

I dropped into the courtyard, a little disappointed there was no alchemical furnace outside. My first target was the runic matrix. I could make everything else easily but the cube required some very peculiar items. Two earth and air crystals respectively as well as a bunch of stone. That much was easy. The engravings on the stone and cutting it into the proper shape was much more difficult but I could have asked Vivi for help with that. What I could not get my talons on was the core. An object called eldritch pearl or empty sphere in the Thaumonomicon. There was no hint where one could find something like it and even the libraries of the dwarves had revealed no hints. That was why I was even bothering with upsetting the orks.

I approached the floating cube and jumped up on top of a pillar. Tendrils of darkness reached out from underneath my wings and around the object of desire. I opened my storage right underneath it and pushed down on the runic matrix. It bobbed in the air, resisting the displacement. Once more I pushed. After a few more tries, I found a rhythm resonating with the bounce-back. Some-twenty bobs later, the cube ripped out of its place and the soft glow emanating from its runes vanished. A cracking sound whipped through the courtyard as the runic matrix dropped into my storage and vanished from this reality. The pillars bent backwards until they stood upright. A moment of consideration and I collected them as well. A simple storage portal just where they met the earth did the trick, though I had to push a little against the natural magic of the earth.

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Then, a window slammed open, an ork staring at me, wide-eyed. I hooted and took off. His eyes followed me but he never attacked. I did not know if he had no ranged weaponry or magic or if he was just too dumbstruck to use it but I decided to take my fortune and run with it.

With an infusion altar ready to be built, only missing the pedestals, I only needed the materials for my wand. Two vis large vis crystals from every primal aspect. Another three each to make the balanced shards and some more salis mundus. And all that three times to make the ones for my friends. The shards were not too difficult to find but it still took a week to locate proper nodes close to my budding workshop. I took a piece of paper and made a rudimentary map, noting elevation and location as well as the aspects of every interesting one.

I crafted another six bars of thaumium in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Those would become the wand caps and ease the channelling of vis as well as form a place to hold foci. I would only make one wand at first and figure out how to move a node. That was the most important thing right now. I needed one to power the goblins’ fields, after all.

It took me another two weeks to dig out my workshop to the dimensions I needed. In between, I made some arcane stone to turn into pedestals by dropping it into essence enriched water bubbling in my crucible. I found it quite easy to shape the material after it had just been transformed. My earth mana was able to join into the enriched material and my will decided its form. After an hour or so, it would settle and I could no longer easily change it.

I also found some time to work on my balanced shards, salis mundus and primal cores. The process was not very difficult as I had done most of it already. The primal core was very similar to the excavation focus as in, fusing aspected crystals with each other. Only, the core was a balanced shard and for the process, it was held together with golden wires. The gold turned black for some reason but since that was described in the Thaumonomicon, I was not surprised. Maybe the interactions of all six primal aspects simply had that effect on the material.

Now all I needed was an alchemical furnace with a set of arcane alembics. And some jars to store the essentia for crafting. I could try the same ork town once more but I expected the thaumaturge there to be on high alert still. I would rather return to the idiot’s mansion and hope nobody had managed to get past the security system. Or I could make my own. That would require vis filters, though, which needed silverwood. I did not have a lot of it. Mansion it was.

I made my way to the goblin village’s mountain once more and followed the valley south. Reaching the orks primary land, I looked for the mansion and quickly found it still abandoned. Getting close, I noticed the barrier was not active and soon realized the lightning wards were inert as well. Then it hit me. Of course. They had to have been powered by the node I had destroyed. There was probably a battery of some sort as well to let the thaumaturges use the node without compromising security but by now it had run out. The garden around the mansion was overgrown and unkempt. I saw a pile of snow still at the sides of the path leading up to the door. Someone had come here and cleared the way after snowfall.

Carefully, I walked up to the door. There was no noise coming from the inside. Not even a rodent. With it being the middle of the day, they might simply be sleeping but if this place was actually abandoned, I would have expected them to be active all the time.

The door was opened a little bit, the former magical lock having run out of power and no longer able to keep it in place. I pushed it open and looked inside. The hallway sat empty and dusty, shelves empty of books safe for a few ripped pages here and there. Pantry, kitchen and all the other rooms were undisturbed, food rotting away, gnawed off in places. I stopped at the door to the workshop library and listened. Once again, not a single noise reached my supreme ears. The door opened with a slight push, someone had broken the lock.

The inside was a mess. What was formerly two workbenches next to the door laid in pieces on the ground. The pedestals and runic matrix were missing, as were most of the jars and the alchemical furnace. On alembic still laid on the ground but its wooden shell was broken. The pipes once responsible for moving the essentia from the alembics to the jars had been dismantled and only damaged pieces remained. Upstairs, no book remained. The shelves were empty and many of the broken. I regretted a little bit that I never came back for more books. Only a little, though. The dwarven libraries were more than satisfactory for my reading pleasure and any information I might need.

I looked over everything another two times before I was convinced there was no danger in the room. Then I made my way over to the broken alembic. Pulling the wood aside revealed an intact vis filter, a small block of silverwood encased in gold and emanating water and order mana. Jackpot! At least something useful. I could make a new alembic with this after getting myself some greatwood for a new casing. Only having one would slow down my crafting but not so much to worry me for the time being. Just having a few more vis filters to make flux scrubbers with would make my workshop that much safer.

As I turned around to leave, I spotted a figure in the doorway. It was something I knew and it made my heartbeat triple. Foggy, grey limbs covered in dark plate armour and two yellow eyes staring through the slit of a helmet that otherwise fully covered whatever its head was. The fog making up its form slightly undulated as if filling and emptying from taking a breath.

What had I gotten myself into now?