Starscream really wanted to kill something, but he would settle for having a nice night out. Ogumo had been game, but the warded brick was a problem. The spider couldn’t go more than five hundred feet from the scripted block of stone Sunwhisper had broken out of its den in the Azai compound without serious inconvenience and possibly death. Sunwhisper had left the brick with Karasu when he went for his dip in the lake, and it had worked out fine, but it was a logistical complication no one needed. Ogumo wasn’t going to run away, he was tied to Sunwhisper by the Hand of the Gentle Sage, and in any case, the spider had a good attitude about the whole party dynamic in general.
Each student of the heavenly school had their own little room within the branch dedicated to their color. There wasn’t much to them, a washbasin and a cot and a window that was really just a hole in the wall. But it gave them privacy, so Starscream had been in the habit of coming out of his confinement whenever Sunwhisper retired for the evening. Karasu and Janna were in their own cell on the other side of the school, so it was a boy’s only situation.
Starscream had been experimenting with new ward construction since they arrived, and by the night after old whisker’s lecture on the elements, he was ready to try breaking the brick. He was sure it wouldn’t kill Ogumo. Mostly sure.
The ward was powered by red mana, specifically Ogumo’s own spirit energy. If Ogumo got too far away, the ward snapped and triggered a signal to the script tattooed on the spider’s belly that would, as far as Starscream could tell, cause it to explode. That was a mess no one wanted to clean up.
Just breaking the ward would end the same way, so the whole process was essentially the magical equivalent of defusing a bomb. Starscream knew how to do that too, and though there was no physical red-wire blue-wire dynamic here, the way mana was channeled by the ward scripts was kind of a wiring of its own.
Whoever had done the original design was pretty advanced, but not the most advanced possible. The Azai either had someone on staff or had hired someone to do the job for them, and the best person for the job in Silk Flower Town would have been the Starfox Inkmaster, but this wasn’t his work. Inkmasters had very distinctive styles, and they worked their scripts invisibly into their tattoos. Starscream could look at the stars on Sunwhisper’s arm and immediately tell that the artist who had applied them was not the same one who had done the spider’s wards.
It was a good thing, too. If it had been Inkmaster Omi’s work, Starscream couldn’t have beaten it. As it stood, it was still touch and go. Rather than cutting wires, he needed to insert a new strand of code that would redirect the kill switch so that when the ward was triggered, its pulse would be redirected to anywhere other than Ogumo’s belly.
Starscream used webbing to weave a decoy script, one nearly identical to the spider’s tattoo, and hung it in the open window. Then it was a matter of figuring out which part of the ward was responsible for linking it to Ogumo and looping that instruction around to the new target.
Sunwhisper watched him work.He wasn’t as skilled as Starscream, but it was much easier to learn by watching a master than by trying to work things out on first principles. Rather than carving scripts into the rock, he was overlaying the entire ward with webbing.
(Stay away from the window.)
Sunwhisper heeded the warning just as Starscream made a final connection. He couldn’t charge the scripts himself because he channeled the wrong color of mana, but he was plugging the new framework into the old one, so Ogumo was powering the whole thing. The ward had a very faint glow, but the webbing visibly tightened as it was infused with mana.
“Feels…the same,” Ogumo rasped. He was crouching on Sunwhisper’s cot, a genuine nightmare come alive, only the tips of his steel sheathed forelegs peeking out from under the edge of the mattress.
(It’s supposed to feel the same. We won’t know if this works until we trigger it.) Sunwhisper relayed what Starscream had said to the spider, who shivered in anticipation. It was times like these that not having a real body really ground Starscream's gears. Not that Sunwhisper couldn’t be a scintillating conversationalist, but only being able to actually talk to one person was a drag.
{How confident are you in success? I don’t want to risk Ogumo’s life when we could just continue on as we are.}
(No worries, kid. Nothing in life is a sure thing, but this is pretty close. The problem is, my overlay is going to degrade over time, so if we leave it on the brick as a just in case measure, it probably will fail. The best shot we have is doing this in a controlled setting while the overlay is still fresh.)
{Even so, won’t your skills continue to improve? Perhaps we should delay another week, or until after we’ve had a better look through the library. There are doubtlessly numerous texts that would better prepare us for what you are trying to do.}
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Starscream liked Sunwhisper. They were basically brothers, the only two mechanoborgs alive in this world, and depending on what had happened on Earth after he left it, maybe the only mechanoborgs in existence anywhere. He was increasingly aware that they had very different perspectives on life. Initially, Starscream had assumed that the other mechanoborg had merely spent too much time with humans, and it had made him soft. That hypothesis had to be discarded, however, given that the cultivators of the Blessed Lands were all basically power obsessed sociopaths. They could be friendly, charming even, but they would stab you in the back if they thought it would put them one step further down the path of advancement.
Sunwhisper had all these ideas about mercy and the inherent value of intelligent life, and Starscream felt like he was going to have to get over it at some point.
The script overlay hadn't been designed as a wait and see failsafe. Starscream had had the idea, the genius idea, that could potentially fix the spider’s ward problem, and he had implemented it as soon as he had the kinks worked out. The script was just warming up, and removing it now would lead to certain failure. Telling them to stay away from the window was as much warning as they were going to get.
The brick flared red, and Ogumo made a shrill sound by scraping his mandibles together. If Karasu was there, she could have followed the final transmission with her eyes, but Starscream had to make do with being able to sense the faint electrostatic disturbance that resulted from a sudden discharge of mana.
The overlay triggered the ward, looped the script, and redirected the resulting signal to the web lattice hanging in the window. The explosion that followed wasn’t powerful enough to shatter the wall, but it left scorch marks, and a few cracks in the window. It was also loud enough to have been heard all the way on the other side of the lake.
Ogumo pulled his legs completely under the cot, a tight ball of arachnid anxiety, startled by the noise but otherwise unharmed. Sunwhisper hadn’t even flinched.
{You were going to trigger it no matter what I said.} His disapproval was plain enough through their mental link without him having to say anything.
(Yes, indeedily.)
{I think I’ve made it clear that you are not to kill or unduly endanger the lives of our companions.}
(Listen, you wanted a job done, and I did it. You don’t advance the cause of science without risking a few giant spiders. Hell, I like Ogumo. He’s a chad. But if I popped him, big whoop. You can get yourself another bug in time for your four-star ceremony. You’ve got the raven as a backup anyway.)
Sunwhisper hit him with the puppy dog eyes. The expression said ‘I love you, but this is not okay.’ The effect was lessened since Starscream didn’t have eyes of his own. He viewed the world through Sunwhisper’s eyes, or else his own electrosensors and ultrasonics, which gave him a much lower resolution picture to work with.
{You should value our friends more. This isn’t an issue of empathy. Your sense of risk and reward is disturbingly unbalanced.}
(Whatever, mom. Me and eight legs are going to check on the restricted section of the library. You’re welcome.)
Someone knocked on Sunwhisper’s door, and Starscream scrambled up into his companion’s chest compartment, reeling their connection cable in behind him in a matter of seconds. Sunwhisper adjusted his robes and rose to answer the door.
It was Hinata, First Initiate of the gold branch. She was close to graduating the academy, and one of her duties was keeping track of the other students in her branch and ensuring they didn’t kill themselves or each other in unsanctioned ways. Her hair was a purple bob, and she had a kind, quiet demeanor that hid an iron heart.
“Jin Sunwa,” she said. “What was that?”
“You mean the sound?” Sunwhisper said. “I heard it as well.”
Hinata smiled at him, unflaggingly patient. “Do you mean to say that you had nothing to do with it? It sounded like it came from this room.”
“From your perspective, it may have seemed that way,” Sunwhisper said, “but for me, it seemed to come from outside. I didn’t see anything there, however.”
Hinata pushed past him into the room, ignoring the giant spider, and honing in on the window.
“These scorch marks seem fresh.”
“I will make sure to clean the windowsill, Mistress Hinata,”
She sighed. “You are very new to the academy, Jin Sunwa. So I will give you this piece of advice. Often, the beast with the brightest pelt is skinned first. Do you understand me?”
“I believe that I do.”
(Do you think she dyes her hair like that? It doesn’t seem natural. Most everyone else is stuck in shades of brown.)
“I don’t want to visit you again tonight.” She touched his shoulder on her way out. “Rest well,” she said, “there will be plenty of time to try new things in the daylight, under the eyes of the instructors.”
(You heard her, no more shenanigans tonight,)
{Does that mean you won’t be visiting the library?}
(Hey, the rules only apply to students. Me and the spider are going to have some fun.)