“Is there a way you could remove it, Auria?”

She shook her head. “It has overgrown right through his spine. I… No. I don’t think so. This is beyond my skills.”

“What about triarch?” Harian asked. Auria just shook her hand. “Useless. He’s a paper man, politician. Does he keep the hospitals well stocked and supplied? Yes. Can he make surgical incisions? As well as you can, probably. No offense.”

“None taken, medic. How’s the arm?”

“Broken to fuck. I’m sorry to be rude, it just hurts like hell...” Harian just shrugged, with a corner of his mouth raised slightly in a hidden smile.

“What hurts more, the burned skin or broken bone?” Naira asked her, curiously. Auria just braked a painful laugh.. “The skin is gone to fuck. Nerves burned out, I can’t feel it really. That means that the burn is serious. On the other hand… well, I suppose on the same hand, the broken bone hurts like fuck. That means that it is… well, as serious as a broken arm can fucking be. And once again, soldier, I am sorry to be rude and to swear so much in front of you, I am usually not this… ill mannered.“

Harian smiled openly. “It is okay, medic. Do you want me to get you some painkillers?” The moment he said it, he regretted it. He asked a medic, if he should get her a painkiller, inside the hospital where she worked. Harian, you are really dumb sometimes.

Auria did not mind the question, and she tried to smile at him warmly. “Thank you, I’ll live. Now, you two, think. Talk among yourselves. You were there, soldier, you have seen what happened. And you, Naira, you live your whole life tinkering and creating and breaking down things like this.” Naira started to open her mouth, but Auria wasn’t finished yet. “Or other things, I really don’t fucking care right now. Just do something until I fix myself.”

***

“So that’s your great plan, to leave him here. With me. With a broken bone and burned skin. While you two go lurking into the repository where he fell on the device, hoping to find something that will help you.”

Naira nodded slowly, and Harian shrugged. “That seems… reasonable. Where it happened, there are plenty other things that could.. I dunno, reverse it.”

Auria nodded. “Great idea. I can’t, for the love of myself, think of any reason why that plan would not work. It’s not like he could wake up any moment and burn me down with a thought, or the whole building. And there surely was just one potentially lethal item in that repository, so you probably don't need a medic with you.“

Naira rolled her eyes. “We know it’s not ideal, Auria. Do we have other options? You can’t cut him off of it. Can anybody, really? In the Citadel?”

“Not in the Citadel. Not right now.”

“You think your father could do it?”

She shook her head. “No. And, a small detail you might’ve missed - how would you get into the artifact repository? It’s not like anybody can just dance inside, uninvited, shuffle through ancient - and one might add that potentially deadly - artifacts, and leave.”

Harian coughed. “A guard owes me a favor… or seven.”

Auria sighed, irritated. “ Allright. Go. Go to the repository for fucks sake. Your plan is stupid, but it’s the only one I can think of until the pain dissipates.”

They left her alone with the historian. The throbbing pain in her arm subsided, and she put out the used pipe.

“How long have you been awake?” She asked Lakar. Historian opened his eyes. his heart started to beat faster, and the metal arm twitched.

“Calm down now.” Auria raised her hands in defense. “I won’t do a thing to you. Anything I could do, at least anything I can think of, would kill you.” The arm twitched more violently this time. “Calm down.”

“You drugged me…” He said with a weak voice.

“And you burned and broke my fucking arm, thank you very much.”

Panic could be heard from his voice. “I did… how?”

“Doesn’t matter. Does it hurt?”

“Yes… I mean, no, it doesn’t hurt me, but the projector hurts…”

She froze with a pipe close to her mouth. “The what?”

“Projector. It was called a projector by its creators…”

“You read it somewhere? Harian didn’t mention…”

He shook his head. “I just.. Know it. It told me. In my mind.”

“The arm speaks to you.” She spoke calmly, but inside, she was shivering. ‘He might be in shock after the trauma…’

“It… No, just… Bah!” He jumped down from the bed, his limbs stretching in the small room. He looked around. “I did this? I burned… it?”

“Your projector did.” She nodded. “Can you control it?”

He looked at the farthest wall. ‘Now how would I control it… I feel the projector, maybe if I reach out with…’

The projector sticking out of Lakar’s back shone brightly, and the wall directly opposite of him started to deteriorate. There wasn’t a fire, there wasn’t a smoke, it just… burned. Wood turned charcoal beneath the burnt paint, and the blackness was slowly spreading wherever Lakar looked, until…

He fell on his knees, panting heavily. “I… It is... Tiring.” Looking at the ground, he saw his hands, covered in brown spots… She knelt beside him. checking his vital signs, observing his changing body.

“You have aged. Rapidly. Your hair is… gray. Skin wrinkled, and paper-thin. Fat disappeared from your body by the looks of it, and there aren’t many muscles left. It’s draining you.”

“I… hunger. It needs… to feed.”

“Feed on what?”

He lunged at her, pinning her to the ground. Through his grinding teeth, he growled. “Life. New life. We’ll make a new life. I’ll make a new life inside you. And I will feed it… “

“Get the fuck away from me!” She screamed, her scream filled with pain of her pinned down, broken arm, and with white hot rage. She threw him off of her, but he leapt right back at her, trying to pull down her breeches with weak arms.

“Feed…” he growled, senseless, mindless.

She punched and kicked, rolled out of his reach. He was slow, and so was the arm. Auria kicked him down, stood on his back, pinning him to the ground. She took hold of the metallic arm.

“Do not fucking move.” She growled while breathing rapidly.

“Feed ME!” He screams, thrashing his limbs weakly. “I… I…” The arm started to shine again, and Auria pulled on it, trying to rip it out of his back, or to somehow rip it apart…

With a loud squelching sound, she ripped the projector out of his back, tearing his skin, spine and ribcage apart. The arm acted on it’s own and long, still bloody tendrils wrapped around her body, tearing her white blouse and apron apart, burying themselves deeply inside her back…

She felt the tendrils burying themselves into her skin right where the scars on her back were. The sensation was painful, but it was also… familiar. Something uncertain jolted through her mind, and she suddenly felt like she was barely a child from her dream, having large, metal nails driven through her back…

She fell on her knees and screamed helplessly as the projector nestled itself in her body.

***

“They all share some similar characteristics. Precise angles, similar material they are made of, design. Overcomplicated for my taste.” Naira muttered as she dug through the heaps of artifacts.

“You understand them? You know what they are for?” Harian asked with raised eyebrows. She nodded slowly. “Most of them, by the looks of it.” Impressive… he thought.

Stolen novel; please report.

“For example, this is obviously a weapon.” She grabbed a short, angular device made of blackest metal. To Harian, it looked like a large, black L. She held it as if she had held the same thing a thousand times before. “Not very different from my own… Hm. Where do you put the ammunition… Aha! Soldier, help me find something…”

He closed his eyes in a pained memory. “Hexagonal? No. That’s what we inserted into the arm-thing.”

Naira put the weapon away. “They all share the same characteristics, as I said before. Most of the things around us have a hexagonal shaped hole in them. Those…” She thought of the correct word to use.

“Prisms?”

“Yes, that. They are probably used as a power source in this technology.”

“A power source. Are you talking about magic?” Harian barked out a laugh. He stopped when he saw that Naira did not even smile.

“Maybe.” she muttered. Just as she said it, she shook her hand. “No. Magic is just a phenomenon that we haven’t explained with science and observation yet. A power source… Perhaps like a steam engine, but smaller. Much smaller.” Something to make the devices… work.”

“So these power sources I found right now, they should be harmless?” he asked, looking into a box filled with soft-blue glowing prisms.

“Not necessarily. That these overcomplicated devices can harness the power of prisms doesn't necessarily mean that the human body can too.” She grabbed a bulky looking gauntlet from the pile of artifacts, turning it around in her hands. “Now what do you do…”

“Why do historians and archaeologists catalog these things, instead of mechanics?”

Naira walked to him, donning the gauntlet on her left hand. “We’re curious. We want to test things. Not catalog them.” She said excitedly. Her heart was beating fast. The rush of curiosity, of discovery, filled her to the brim. Her usual bleak mood disappeared, the everpresent misery, sadness and heart throbbing pain gone for a minute there. She pushed Harian aside gently to grab a power prism out of the box.

“You shouldn’t touch it with bare hands…” he muttered.

“I know.” She nodded. “And I also shouldn’t do this.” She muttered as she inserted the power prism into the gauntlet.

***

She didn’t pass out. During the whole painful process, she stayed awake, feeling every metallic tendril of the arm running through her body, twisting, tearing and digging their way right to her spine. She felt the tendrils merge with her spinal cord in a sharp, stabbing sensation and then…

The pain was gone.

All the pain was gone.

Her broken hand didn’t hurt anymore, as much as tingle and itch. The everpresent pain in her head, usually blocked to a degree by the pain-killing smoke, was gone. But there was something different there.

Until now, she felt the void in her head from which the pain usually came. Now, the void was filled by something. A being, a consciousness perhaps, the projector filled the void inside her head. It fit there perfectly, like a brick fits into the wall.

She moved the arm as if it was her own. She looked at it, examined it. Somehow, Auria had a feeling that the projector knew her.

It wasn’t evil. Dangerous, yes, but not evil. She felt as if she understood it, as if she knew that the projector is just an extension of her will, a tool devised to guide and amplify her inner strength, her inner power… that she could project her will right through the metal.

The sensation was familiar, and she was sure that she already felt it, at least once before. That the metallic tendrils of the projector entered her body right through the scars on her back, the scars she woke up with the first day she could remember, it was no coincidence. She knew that. She understood it.

Auria stood up, stretching her three upper limbs. She touched the ceiling of the surgical suite with the projector, and she felt it. She brushed the projector against the wet, blood-soaked remains of the historian lying on the ground, and she felt the wet.

Auria laughed. At first, she laughed like a child, giggling at a silly joke, but the laugh crescendoed into a fully fledged mirth of a maniac.

Sudden realization hit her. She stood in the middle of a surgical suite - her surgical suite - covered in blood, and there was a mangled corpse of a historian on the ground. A strange device was attached to her body. Projector tore her clothes to shreds as it tried and attached itself to her body. The room was destroyed, walls were burnt, tables overturned, vials of various medical and sterilizing agents broken, slowly steaming puddles formed on the ground.

“This is bad.” She told herself loudly. If anybody saw her in this state… she couldn’t even think of how she would explain herself. And the projector… How the hell would she explain that?

She couldn’t leave. This was a crime scene, a murder scene. If anybody saw this, they would blame her. She would be hunted, tried, and in the best case - imprisoned.

A knock on the door disturbed her thinking. Her heart in her throat, she looked at the door.

“Medic, is everything alright?” Familiar voice came to her through the door. One of the students. He must have heard the commotion. An idea sprouted in her mind.

“No.” Auria shouted loudly. “Whatever you do, do not enter. Listen to me carefully. I’ve had a patient here. His body… he was infected with a new disease. We fought, we struggled. Everything in the room is contaminated. The patient is dead. The room needs to be sterilized, parts of it need to be burned down. Now, listen carefully, and get someone to bring me what I need. But, most importantly, do not enter the room, and forbid anyone to enter the room. Got it?”

Student’s voice became panicked, but Auria almost saw through the door how he nodded. “Y-yes, medic. Wh-what do you need?”

Auria exhaled slowly. So far so good…she thought.

***

Nothing happened. Naira inserted the prism into the gauntlet, and nothing happened.

“Might be broken.” She muttered.

“Not what we came in here for, anyways.” Harian sighed. “We should find… something. Notes, books, whatever that would have any description of that arm-thing inside.

“Or another arm thing…” Naira pulled a long device from another artifact pile. It was almost the exact copy of the metallic arm that was sticking out of Lakar, but it was broken in half.

As she pulled it out, the pile with artifacts shifted and fell to the ground. Loud ringing and clanging noise filled their ears.

“Good job.” Harian laughed.

Naira growled. “Not my fault that whoever brought these things in here just piled them atop one another like old scrap metal. Hey, a second gauntlet…” She grabbed another - left - gauntlet from the pile that formed on the ground, and put it on. “Maybe they work in pairs…”

“Forget about the gauntlets, mechanic!” Harian’s voice was dangerously sharp. “We came here for something else. You said that you had an idea about what most of these things are for.”

“They are weapons.” She said nonchalantly. “At least, most of them. All of them, probably. The archaeologists must have opened a long forgotten armory.”

“Why would you think so?”

“Look at them all. There are either blades on those things, or hooks, teeth, claws, whatever you would call it. Objects that would easily pierce the body, skin, leather, metal, armor.” She reached for an “L” shaped device close to her and threw it at Harian. “A pistol, obviously. Here, a trigger, a barrel. And behind you, on the table, those small things shaped like a pear? My guess? Thrown bombs. And these?” She raised her hands and looked at the gauntlets. Multitude of small tubes and wires ran down the black, leather fingers, up to her metal encased wrists. “No idea. But they don’t seem to be made for surgery, gardening, or even metal forging. But most importantly? There is nothing in here that would give us a lead on that… metal arm. No writing, no manuals, nothing. And do you know why, soldier?”

“I’m not dumb, mechanic.” Salt in his voice could almost be tasted in the air. “If it was armory, it was meant for people that would know how to handle these things. Description of what they are, and how they are used, would be unnecessary.”

Naira nodded. “Imagine if these artifacts would fall into the wrong… hands.” Her lip twitched as she still examined the gauntlets. I should put them down maybe…

“You want to help the historian, soldier? Grab some of these things in here. Help me, take them to my workshop. I will analyze them, find out how they work. Then, and only then, when I understand these things completely, only then will we be able to help your friend.”

“Steal from here? Are you insane, mechanic?” Harian exclaimed.

“Possibly.” She nodded. “Steal from who? To whom does this belong to? A long dead, long forgotten soldier that died long ago in some distant war?” She spread her arms wide. “Look at it all! Do you think that this room is the only room in the Citadel filled with ancient technology? This repository is designated what, 17-2? Building seventeen, room two? Out of how many?”

She came close to him and pushed her gloved finger against the soldier’s chest. “You’ve got a choice. Leave this all here. Send another historian in here, make another historian die needlessly because he will fiddle with things he doesn’t even begin to understand, just for it to be written down in a log book, and that logbook will be put away to be covered in dust and eaten by papermites. Or grab something, help me study it, and we might be able to save your friend.”

***

Bright white hood covered her head and her long, now blood-stained hair was tucked underneath her clothes. It was impossible to walk unnoticed, not through the crowded streets of Citadel market, but nobody paid her any attention - she was one of hundreds.

Tall, broad shouldered bearded man bumped into her. “Watch your step, hag.” He growled. She glared at his back from underneath her hood. Rot from the inside you rude rat… she thought.

Through side streets and alleys, she neared the workshop. Barely anybody knew of this place - even she wasn’t supposed to know of it - and therefore, it made for a perfect hiding place. She tried to open the door, but the lock was too strong. A few drops of oily, black substance melted the metal away, and she entered.

She sat on the ground, underneath the window so that she wouldn’t be seen from the outside, and waited.

***

Gon bumped into an old, half-bent hag. His irritated mood did not need to be pushed more for him to bark out at her to watch her step. He was supposed to leave Citadel rich, with bags full of gold - instead, his cargo was confiscated as potentially dangerous, and h e had to wait for at least a week before it could be returned to him.

“Thefuck is dangerous about silk…” He muttered and spat on the ground. He saw his spit, green as a marsh algae, leave his mouth and splash on the ground. “What the…” he shouted, and a wave of nausea hit him. Gon fell on his knees, and streams of green-and-black bile started to spray out of his mouth.