Though the afternoon, everyone had kept busy with whatever they felt best suited their efforts for their new goals. Khaexyn would leave them alone for now, but it seemed like he was simply instead focusing on his bigger goals.
Thanrie had her own ambitions to look into. She felt a bit of irony and rage at the tech-fearing rebellion deciding to invite them back, just because they've started looking really handy. If she was going to accept this, they would have to get their heads out of their arses and actually start making use of the stuff sitting on their doorsteps. To make a show of this, she wanted to refit all of the power armor salvage they recovered and get their own forces geared up with some of the best things they've ever seen. Mostly, she had a particular person in mind who most needed the stuff, him being the heir to the leader of the entire rebellion being only a small part of the reason why.
Zyuixqs would even be driving the entire facility to make the distance. As is though, the building wasn't ready for the trip. Qheria was herself working with Rhyde to make sure this was addressed. She was even taking account of the abilities for all four of the girls, looking for ways that their setup could be improved in such a short time. Most things would require more time then they had, but she was certain she could come up with some smaller things. Makeshift platforms for her shields, an area Lwyn could shoot from, certain sections made more accessible for Thanrie's boosting... She just had no idea what to do to help Mhyl. Mhyl could do so many things, the only thing she could think of was giving her more places to rest.
The need for rest was exactly what Mhyl was trying to avoid. Mhyl was treating the entire thing as a three-day workout routine. She had gone to the smith, attempting to communicate without a translator, and started working on tasks under poor lighting conditions, with herself as the light source. It meant she needed to concentrate on light the entire time while also focusing on the difficult jobs on hand, mostly related to the tasks Thanrie and Qheria were working on. She avoided the compulsion to use her gift on the work directly, the chances of making a mistake was too high.
Lwyn however was busy with Ehryinae. Ehryinae wanted to know what Lwyn knew about her mother. "Mostly, all I know is the story she also told you. Other than that and her ability to.. uh.. predict the future, I guess? Something like that. Anyway, yeah, it's mostly that. I don't actually remember my own youth very well, mostly buried behind unhappy memories." Lwyn took a moment to consider the implications of such, forgetting unhappy memories. Maybe that's why she forgot so much about her time on earth? Maybe her own self was just a bog of unhappy memories? There was no way she could be sure anymore, but she wasn't exactly going to let that slow her down anymore.
"Ah, so her gift helps her to see into the future? That's pretty nice, actually." "Uh, actually, that's not really a gift thing and is more.. I don't know, an elven secret?" "Oh, well, wonder when she will be willing to show us some of her gift then. She's almost made it a secret or something." Ehryinae's reflection still started to get Lwyn curious. She couldn't remember her mother using the gift, true, but why? Was it so much a secret? She considered what she knew, realizing that her mother would have a lot of gift to work with, even her training made her understanding very personal.. but why hide it?
Lwyn's curiosity had spiked. She brought Ehryinae over to Sxeiva to get some answers. "Mom, we were talking about our gift lessons, and wondered if you would be willing to demonstrate some of your own gift. Just.. getting to see you in action might give me a few more ideas, you know." "Oh, uh, except your own gift is based far too much upon your memories, you wouldn't get any ideas from.." "Please? I mean, I know I'll need to use my own ideas to make things work, that's obvious already. I just want to see what you can do, that's all." Lwyn noticed Sxeiva starting to get nervous at the rationality behind her request. There were things she was being kept from...
"Sorry.. I wish I could.. really, I do. But I can't, not anymore. Having access to the gift requires someone to have still enough of.. who they are.. to work at all. I've lost far too much of that to be capable of anything anymore. Father used to say I had the prettiest gift he had ever seen. With my ability over the flame, I probably would have been put in charge of the Embers, if all of this hadn't happened. I'm glad at least that the Embers have done so well otherwise in my absence. Ehryinae has been a very good disciple of her pillar." Sxeiva was finally willing to admit a ghost of her past, concerns that have haunted her for years now.
Lwyn froze, realizing what she had just done. Her mother's loss of organics was haunting her akin to an even worse version of her half-elf fears. The worst part was that they were well founded, her mother had found her own branch of awesome in her life, had made a path for her to achieve some great things, even being a half-elf.. and then had everything taken from her. She had thus forced her mother to recount and admit to her own dark past, her own lack of ability... and Lwyn knew exactly how it felt to do that.
Ehryinae meanwhile was shocked herself. Sxeiva wasn't only the daughter of the arch-magus, but would have been in charge of her Embers if things had gone better, one day possibly succeeding the Arch-Magus to the honor of the Embers. She had effectively taken the position from Sxeiva as a result of Sxeiva's disappearance. It started to make even more sense why her pillar was on the Arch-Magus' mind when it came to matters of his family. This itself, above everything, might have been why she was initially chosen for this task, way back in the beginning. This fact, maybe alone. It gave her an even greater respect for her.. superior, honestly.
Having gotten the news from Sxeiva, Lwyn tried to back off, but Ehryinae asked for more. She herself wanted to learn how to better use her flame, how that might help. Being the one who fired the cannon with her flame, anything more she could learn would only help them out going forwards. Lwyn eventually decided to help out with this topic, just to lighten the load on her mother. They discussed some of the principles of the process, and how Ehryinae was working with everything. Lwyn had been innocent to a few of the details, especially with how much was decided only after she had left for the Fortress.
"Considering everything runs on steam, I'm surprised you aren't using flame as a water heater. We saw how good your fire is at boiling water, couldn't we just capitalize on that to really get some power into the system?" Lwyn's idea caught the other two by surprise. No one had thought of anything like that, especially considering how fire is supposed to be weak to water. Lwyn knew the truth though, as would Mhyl, if the goal was steam, fire played an incredible role in the entire process.
It wasn't long for her ideas to start working along side Qheria's own, leading to a chain of improvements upon the original design for even greater output. Some mock tests proved that the resulting heat could increase their overall power yield immensely, more than any wind generation she was doing. Considering the power behind Lwyn's own shots at this point, she could fairly reasonably replace their main weapon anyway. The whole system was left in place regardless, as a backup weapon when they didn't need as much steam in the system.
Mhyl had initially gotten excited about the improvements, only to realize that it still wouldn't be enough for her own vision. Getting the place to fly, it seems it was as complicated as the piano idea she had earlier, the one that they had also given up on already. She clearly dreamed big, spanning visions of ideas that were the epitome of complexity. It was possibly how come her gift always had such dramatic effects as well, but in about the same way, it was too taxing to try such complex ideas when simpler solutions would have far fewer requirements and might actually work. It was a lesson she would have to consider for herself as well.
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Thanrie meanwhile had been proud to finally revitalize one of the power armors, the one that Zyuixqs had been using previously. She also gave it back to him, considering he had adjusted to it so well. "Okay, so lets take this out in the field. You're a big target with this, so this is going to be hard, but lets see how well you can do. I'm going to lash out at you with my weapon. Don't worry, if I connect, I'll just follow through with my gift, generally doing nothing. You won't be hurt, the armor won't even take damage, but I want you to dodge anyway." Thanrie wanted to test him with it.
She lashed out towards him with a simple horizontal sweep, and he guided the machine easily out of the way. She turned around with a series of vertical drops, moving a lot faster. Nothing. She swung out a boosted horizontal sweep then, three of different heights, one in the reverse direction. Hop, dash, dash. He was good, he was very good. She needed something more challenging. She made use of her gift to cause a flux in time, making it seem like she threw three blades together, slightly behind the other, while advancing rapidly with her boots. The third one connected. That was still really good, all things considered.
She also considered her own trick, clearly her gift had a lot of potential if she could mess with time itself. Well, maybe she wasn't exactly messing with time, it's not like she could outright manipulate the past and future, not the same way Sxeiva seemed to be able to. She had a feeling that Sxeiva had quite a trick of her own, being able to do something like that. Having the flow of the world at her disposal like that was giving them a lot of lucky opportunities.
Regardless, the whole power armor idea was going remarkably well. The entire device broke the whole steampunk vibe though by having a lot of electrical current. Harnessing "lightning" like that was a lot more advanced. She recalled for a moment that Khaexyn was actually getting all of his inspiration from the internet. Just what kind of sites was he looking up? Worse, how was he getting everything translated, she was pretty sure Earth had no web software that could translate to Izhaethyx. That might be something they would need to keep in mind, but it could just be the gift handling it for him. Moving a lot of this data to Celese would require changes, its natural form was just computer bits. The gift was reliant on ideas, so maybe the gift was presenting the ideas itself, automatically understood.
She would have to consider and apply her own ideas to this 'gift' Khaexyn had left them. Hacking their enemy, using their enemy's tech against them, that was actually a wonderful idea. Actually, she could picture how this works in principle, maybe she should really try a connection with these AI enemies in the future, and then hack them through it. A bit of technological mind control, now that would be valuable. In fact, as she recalled from her earth days, the internet was well known for being lax in matters of cyber security, if she was lucky Khaexyn had learned such bad examples for himself.
With what they had, however, getting access to electrical weapons was really good, such energy weapons would be capable of a lot more than would be expected. Most likely, Khaexyn was expecting the gift, the Celesi version. That meant a lot of stuff that was almost primitive in its elemental structure. Weapons that were far more scientific would be much harder to account for. Zyuixqs should keep using the lightning spear.. as they were taking to call it.. more like a Tesla-Coil. They should also see if they could make more of them, maybe some.. uh.. lightning rifles? Rifles themselves might be good, from sub-machine guns to sniper rifles. She could still remember all of her favourites from first person shooters, maybe she could figure out how to make them, with all of their records.. and maybe some help from Mhyl.
Mhyl herself had to take a break early, her stamina training had drained her. She practically started just meditating with a floating ball of light, trying to both rest and recover while focusing on her gift in the process. She even went through dinner sitting in a lit room with her sphere of light following her. No one wanted to ask questions, Mhyl looked like she was strained enough as is. She didn't practice with anything else, just getting her light going the entire time was good enough. If she could build up her own stamina, she was already capable of impressive feats, she just needed to have the stamina to keep using them.
After dinner, Qheria had her turn to take a break. She went to the training room, practicing her gift in it's simplicity. She had struggled with the idea of having all her attacks generate from herself, usually to blow her enemies away. Having more advantage as enemies were stuck in a closer area simply made a lot of the process harder, she had to jump around to get more things done. Her enemies were being blown away from her, the wrong direction. However, if the idea was formed as such within her head, then why not simply take the principle with the most obvious solution. Have the entire wave pulse in the reverse direction, a force wave that dragged everything towards her.
She tried it with a few boxes, making sure her wave was as harmless as possible. They all flung at her, leaving her in a heap. Well, that didn't work as well as planned. She considered the process and made another attempt. This time, she lashed out at the ground, having the momentum propel her upwards along with her usual jumping technique. Meanwhile, she had the same wave rushing inwards, and all the boxes tumbled in a heap below her. Picturing her obvious follow up, her gift accidentally committed to it, sending her in a downward plummet with a rush of force, crushing all the boxes below her. It wasn't the lack of force she was expecting of herself, but it was the kind of results she was hoping to apply in the future. She could even consider other ways to spruce up the same combo.. later.
For now, she returned to her work. She was insistent to make sure that the pumps in the facility would be able to endure a greater pressure, especially after all the improvements possible for them. Increasing heat, maybe even boosting the entire system, it would have a lot of dramatic effects.. especially if something went wrong. She had already suffered as the victim of something going wrong in such a situation, she wasn't going to let the same mistake happen twice. Being able to use her gift to artificially strengthen everything helped, but she was only going to depend on it in the event of an error during their reconstruction. She didn't want to have the entire system depend on her always being there to not break.
All four of them worked hard on their self-assigned chores well into the evening, and made their way into the night. They even had plans for how things would proceed the next day. Rhyde was starting to get alarmed by everyone's eagerness, and was considering ways he could lighten the tension at one point before they all just headed off into danger. Giving everyone a good morale boost was part of being a leader. In that though, he had some doubts. He walked passed the unused instruments that were still stored away.. clearly the best ones at building morale was the four girls. He considered making the request of Qheria, maybe holding another grand performance before they left. In fact, that game from before.. Footsphere.. maybe that would be some good practice too. They would have to make time for both, maybe on their final day before leaving.
Rhyde worked out the details with Yuxzn, who took everything into account. It certainly looked like it was a plan that could work, and it had some considerable advantages. He would have to make sure everyone was aware of the plan though, so that they could aim to have everything done before the final event. Perhaps having a day exactly as before, Footsphere after a good lunch, ending with a musical performance to bring everything into dinner. However, that would also mean there would need to be time to prepare for such, he did recall that it was the musical event that had been the last step in Lwyn's spiral of despair. For the whole thing to bring good morale, it had to be a success.
Sxeiva also settled into bed, after putting her mechanical parts through some maintenance. Several of her parts were already starting to malfunction from neglect, but that was something she knew to expect. She had tried to make use of some of the equipment found at the facility to make better repairs, but absolutely nothing compared to the equipment she had in the basement of her spire. She took a deep breath in, returning to her original resolve. Just a bit more, and she wouldn't need to worry any longer.
All of them continued working further on their projects over the next day, making their visions become more of a reality. By morning the next day, the last day before their departure by the dawn that would follow, there was very little they had left to prepare before it was time to depart.