Chapter 06

REGROUP

PART 2

“T’was bleak. I've never seen miasma so thick- Like black dough clawing through the dirt. I did not think twice once I seen it, I hopped on Fran here and we rode like wind, all the way back.”

Patting the fur of his new companion, Anvi grinned as he reminisced on the moment while Jackle and Kali exchanged concerned looks and turned to Mara, who, contrarily, almost seemed to be expecting such an event.

“Huh. I was wondering where it had all gotten off to, this was a big area to wipe out so quickly, so a bit of buildup is perfectly natural, though a bit extreme in this case. Thankfully this continent is uninhabited, and I don’t think it’s gunna chase down a Pynma, so we'll just stay out of its way for now, and all will be well. Anyways- You didn’t mention, when did you name her?”

Still stroking the soft fur of Fran, Anvi seemed to struggle with his words for a moment, and when he did speak, it was in a far softer tone than his usual bravado.

“After we got back o’course… Didn't feel right sitting here with her and she not havin’ a name… Fran was my gramy’s name… She used to look out for me too.”

Seeing her student soften up a bit, Kali placed a hand on his back, reminding him that he was surrounded by friends who loved him just as much.

“That's really sweet of you Anvi. I think I speak for everyone here when I say Fran is officially welcome in our crew, but you're on the hook to explain this to every guard and checkpoint we run into.”

Getting a chuckle out of the barbarian-ranger, Kali looked to her other two teammates, making sure they heard the ‘everyone’ in her statement.

Still scratching at Fran’s soft neck fur, Mara was more than happy to go along with the idea, a bit chaos was always welcome.

“Yeah of course! Though… Our food budget is likely gunna double, if not triple.”

Taking a hesitant step closer to the Pynma, Jackle had a moment where he debated if he really thought this was a good idea, but with all of his teammates already on board, he was just a sail in the wind.

“Ehhh… Fine, but I better not find it sleeping in my tent.”

Laughing at Jackle's comment, Anvi was quick to counter his retort.

“Nah lad, Fran's a girlie- That means she gets the gal's tent!”

Hearing this, both women immediately cried fowl in unison, which only sent Anvi further into a fit of laughter, setting such a scene that Jackle really couldn’t deny he’d found some interesting friends.

Seeing that everyone else had greeted it in their own way, the Pynma looked to black-robed monk, who, after ejecting a good bit of his sanity, tentatively reached his hand out and immediately found it plunged into the softest cloud he’d ever felt as Fran mutually leaned into his touch.

More than a little surprised, Jackle didn’t really know what to make of the thing. It was a little grotesque in appearance, but for all her dangerous, the creature in front of him just wanted to be loved, and that wasn't a crime worth the vitriol.

After soaking up enough petting to feel safe and satiated, Fran decided she'd had enough and shook herself loose of the attention like a typical house-cat, and went to sit back down near Anvi’s pack, now visibly pleased with her new surroundings.

Taking after Fran’s example, the rest of the group dispersed around the mid-day fire, and seeing the lull arise as everyone found their seats, Mara took the opportunity to speak up first.

“So… Obviously, Jackle and I have some news, and a bit of a surprise too, but I think it'll be rather… Distracting. Soo, Kali, if you don’t mind, can you fill us in on what you found first?”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Absolutely!”

Happily leaping up and dragging her rucksack near the fire for a better view, Kali wasted no time in unpacking the entire thing, explaining with the excitement of a kid unwrapping presents.

“Okay, so, as I told you earlier Mara, most of what I could find was scrap or slag, but both still had their gems. I managed to find two of what I think are the power cores, or hearts if we wanna use that term. They seem to contain some form of high-temperature combustion, as most that I found were ruptured from the inside out once they were damaged.”

Hefting up two softball-sized black orbs, Kali bounced them in her palms a couple of times to demonstrate their density before placing them on the sand near her feet and diving back into the burlap sack.

“Locomotion-wise, all models seemed to operate with tensile cables wound by servos, basically mechanical tendons, so there was plenty to pick through. In total, I managed to scrap together a dozen working motors and something like thirty meters of metal cord, split up in one to two meter segments- Should be mendable though.”

Tossing the rings of cable out of her bag without looking, followed by the aforementioned motors, Kali couldn’t hide her giddiness as she quickly moved on to the real treasure of her collection.

“However, all of this pales in comparison to what I found following me. I didn't get a great look at it, but I managed to snag a prize regardless.”

Carefully unwrapping several layers of cloth before cupping it with both hands, Kali presented her prized piece like a chef would his finest dish. In her hands was a large, intact, and unscratched lens, easily wider than her face was tall.

“I thought I was being tailed, and turns out my hunch was right. I managed to catch the thing off guard when I backflipped into the air mid sprint. Rather proud of that move myself- I couldn't see it at all, but I felt it when I landed on it, it was dense and metallic. We bobbed about for a sec, but the only thing I could grab onto felt like a dinner plate, so I just tugged and tugged until I heard snapping, and then off I fell with this in my hands. Pretty sure I think it came from this chrome ball that I watched zip off into the sky afterwards- If I wasn’t hallucinating it.”

Standing up and walking over, Mara motioned to examine the trophy.

“May I?”

“Mmhm!”

With Kali’s blessing, Mara took the hefty chunk of convex glass from her with both hands as she looked it over front to back. She wasn't going to mention it, but there was no mistake, she'd already seen her reflection in that very same lens.

“Huh. This is a good haul, even the wires are still attached on this end… You might be able to use this as-is with a bit of diagnostic work.”

Carefully handing it back to Kali, who immediately began rewrapped it, Mara crouched down to take a closer look at the rest of her haul.

Overall, it was rather commendable, especially for only a couple hours of work. The cables seemed quite strong, and the motors she'd brought back were in good shape, but the ‘power cores’… Well, those could be useful for research if nothing else.

Passing the items back to Kali as she looked them over, Mara helped her clean up while she organized her thoughts. If she was going to pull this off, she needed to sell the group on her idea.

She was fairly confident Kali would support her, as would Anvi, at least as long as the group was on board, but the problem, rather unsurprisingly, would inevitably be her own pupil. After all, she wouldn’t have taken one if they weren’t at least as stubborn as her.

As the student in question was fairly uninterested in mechanical scrap, Jackle had already turned back to the brain worm in his grimoire, the latest section of Mara’s lecture ironically discussing something known as ‘computing’- A mechanical way of representing ideas in a structured, almost mathematical, simulacrum.

It was times like this, as he looked towards his mentor, that Jackle truly felt the gravitas of her years. Where had she even found mechanical knowledge like this? What corners of the world had she upturned in her past just to learn such secrets?

For all he'd learned of her in their last few months together, the gray-haired woman remained a quarry of intrigue. Cursed or blessed, Mara held the perpetual appearance of a young girl, no more than early-twenties if she were human, yet her eyes would see a lich as no more than a child in the womb.

When she first met with him, he'd thought her a student until she invited him on an expedition, on her own dime, along with additional compensation for his ‘unexpected sabbatical’. Her wealth was subtle but readily apparent if one were to look beyond the surface- Even the ship she sailed on was her own, and its cargo hold contained a myriad of things that would only find a price in auctions.

Through the others, Jackle had managed to get a general idea of who Mara was, but she'd shown up in their lives just as mysteriously as she'd appeared in his. They had a few running theories on her background, and a betting pool they’d never tell her about, ranging from a daywalking-vampire to the literal embodiment of Somni herself, but to Jackle, both their theories were wrong. The way she saw magic, and the world at large, spoke of something else entirely, a competent outsider.

Perhaps not actually from ‘beyond’ their world in a literal sense, but to Jackle, he'd never seen another person ponder the things she questioned, nor delve as deep for answers that seemed irrelevant at face value. To him, Mara was a black sheep of black sheep, transient on the winds of life because ‘home’ had become a foreign concept in her own wake.