Steamforged Sorcery - B2 Ch1 (Patreon)

Angel sat on a tall metal stool and contemplatively sipped his drink. He watched the steam rise out of the vents in the street through the window. A waitress approached him, laying out a platter of steaming meat and rice before zipping back off.

He tore his gaze away from the window and grabbed the utensils, picking at his meal. It was delicious, but it didn’t fill the pit in his stomach in the slightest.

“I don’t think I’ve seen someone look so unhappy to be eating before,” Lilian said from the stool across from him.

“I’m being melodramatic,” Angel replied.

“Wishing you took Vanessa’s mom up on her offer to become a bodyguard?” Lilian asked.

“No,” Angel said, shaking his head. “I miss her company, but that was not my path. I suppose I miss Silver as well, but he’ll only be there a month or two. Something tells me he’ll find me in the Barren before long.”

“If you don’t regret it, why are you still here?” Lilian asked, downing the rest of her drink. “It’s been a week.”

“Why are you here?” Angel countered. “You only traveled with us for safety, didn’t you? It shouldn’t be that hard to find a caravan heading back to wherever you were originally headed. You must have had some sort of life there.”

“My answer is the same as yours.”

“Lazy?”

Lilian rolled her eyes. “Is that really why you haven’t left?”

“No,” Angel said, the small smirk fading from his lips. “I don’t know, Lilian. I’ve got no leads. I’ve been working on figuring out how an artifact I found works for the last week, but that’s it. No real progress of relevance, and there isn’t a single rumor about the catacombs in the area.”

“Can’t you just go wander around until you run into something?”

“That just seems like the wrong course. The Reawakening is bringing back the buried gods while I’m running around digging through scraps. I can’t just rely on getting lucky and running into some key piece of Old World magic.”

“So you sit in the town and do nothing instead?” Lilian asked, making a face at him.

“Hardly nothing,” Angel said. “I’ve been scouring the libraries – or the ones available to the public, at least. I’ve found out a lot about the Reawakening and their members.”

“Oh?” Lilian asked, cocking an eyebrow. “And what might that be?”

“Well, there are five leaders. The Blade, the Mask, the Heart, the Shield, and the Mind.”

“That’s it?” Lilian asked. “A whole week of work for that? Doesn’t seem that relevant. Why does it matter what their names or roles are?”

“Because the more I know about them, the more I’ll be able to figure out their strategies,” Angel replied. “There’s no good information on Old World magic here that I can find, so my best bet is getting my hands on their data instead.”

“That’s a bit of a leap,” Lilian said, stealing a piece of meat off the side of Angel’s plate. “I see what you’re getting at, but are you really going to be able to find any information just from knowing their roles?”

A small smirk flickered across Angel’s face. “Already did. This isn’t the first time the Reawakening has surfaced. They popped up about one hundred years ago and had a base in the center of the Barren. They were defeated, but their base was deemed too dangerous to clear and abandoned.”

Lilian paused mid-chew. She swallowed after another moment. “You’re going to go root around an old Reawakening base hoping to find something they left behind? What if they’ve moved back into it now that they returned?”

“Reave didn’t strike me as stupid,” Angel said, batting Lilian’s fork away before she could snatch another piece of meat. “He’s got to know that bringing back a buried god will garner attention. The first place anyone will check is their old hideout. No, it’s well and truly abandoned. I’m quite certain. The only question is if there’s anything there that’s worth my time.”

“Doesn’t seem like you think there is,” Lilian pointed out. “You’re still here.”

“I’m not exactly sure where in the center of the Barren their hideout is,” Angel admitted. “The records aren’t very specific. I’ve got a general area, but I can’t just root around the desert for days on end trying to stumble across it. I’d get slaughtered.”

“So you’re looking for a dangerous abandoned base that may or may not even exist,” Lilian said.

“Yup, that about sums it up,” Angel said. He stacked several coins on the counter and slipped down from the stool. Lilian hopped down as well and followed him up the stairs to his room on the second floor of the tavern.

It wasn’t the nicest room Angel had ever stayed in, but it was bigger than his home in Fence’s shop. Of course, that really wasn’t saying much. Angel much preferred his walls of artifacts to the drab black metal of the tavern, but there was nothing he could do about that at the moment.

“What about you?” Angel asked, slipping his travel pack off his shoulder and setting it down on the bed before opening it to pull out one of the disks that Vanessa had given him.

“What about me?” Lilian asked as she sat down in the chair before a small table on the other side of the room.

“You’ve been doing less than I have, unless you’ve been hitting the library as well,” Angel said. “I’ve seen you hovering around the tavern, but you barely ever even order anything to eat.”

“I suppose I just don’t have anything better to do,” Lilian said, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Don’t you want to get back to your life before that barge?” Angel asked, tracing the runes on the disk.

“Not particularly,” Lilian admitted. “Almost everyone worth knowing that I knew is dead. I don’t have all that much time left anyways, so I don’t really want to waste it.”

Angel paused his work. “Don’t have much time left?”

Lilian grimaced. “Next topic.”

“You can’t just say something like that and pretend you didn’t,” Angel said. “What do you mean by not having much time?”

“I guess you could say I’m sick,” Lilian said, shrugging. “Have been for a long time. I’ve long since accepted it, so it doesn’t matter. I’m just reaching the end of my rope.”

“Sick with what? You’re like level ninety. There shouldn’t be anything that can affect your body that badly,” Angel said, frowning. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“Too many,” Lilian said with a dry smile. “And this isn’t a normal sickness. It’s really more like my body rejecting my magical energy than anything else. I lose it at an accelerated rate, and my body doesn’t replenish it naturally.”

“Interesting,” Angel said, setting the disk down and rubbing his chin.

“My imminent cause of death is interesting?”

“Yeah. I figured you wanted me to come up with a solution, not offer pity. I can do pity, if you want.”

“A solution?” Lilina let out a laugh. “I don’t think that’s possible, Angel. I had hopes for something like that at one point, but even the best solution was just a temporary stay of health. If Old World magic were to come back completely, I might have a chance. But unless that’s happening within the next few weeks, it’ll be too late.”

“You’ve only got a few weeks?” Angel asked, eyeing her doubtfully. “You don’t look that sick. How do you know it’s just a few weeks?”

“My artifact lets me know the current amount of magical energy in my body and the rate at which it’s depleting,” Lilian replied, rolling her eyes. She was remarkably blasé about her upcoming death. “I calculated how long it would be. I’ve got five weeks so long as I don’t use any magic.”

“Well, that’s a good bit of time,” Angel said. “How long has this been a problem? You said you had a temporary stay of health.”

“I used to absorb artifacts,” Lilian replied after a short pause. “I could draw the energy out of them, and that bought me time.”

“Well, just do that,” Angel said. “Artifacts aren’t the cheapest, but it’s not like they’re relics.”

“That’s no longer an option.”

“Why not? What ch…” Angel trailed off mid-sentence. “You used some form of relic to drain the energy out of the artifacts, didn’t you?”

Lilian didn’t answer him.

“Is that why Reave let me go? You gave him the relic that was keeping you alive?” Angel demanded.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Lilan said with a shrug. “What’s done is done. I was on a ticking time bomb anyways, so I realized I had a chance to actually do something worthwhile with what I had left of my life. Either way, you’re a good Tinkerer, and your arm is incredibly impressive, but I don’t think you can build a relic.”

“You’d be surprised what I can do with the right materials,” Angel said. He picked up the disk and sent a pulse of energy into it. A shimmering green image of Angel’s finger appeared in the air above it. It looked like it had been magnified several times.

“You figured out how to turn it on?” Lilian asked.

“I figured that out on day one,” Angel replied, setting the disk aside. “It’s a magnifying scope. Zooms in on whatever you hold it above.”

He pulled a second disk out from his pack and set it down beside the first. The new disk was a good bit larger and made out of cheaper bronze. Its outside was completely plain.

Angel sent a pulse of energy into the artifact. It lit up, floating into the air before him. A wave of green light shot out from beneath it, scanning over his metal hand. It let out a beep and a detailed diagram of one of his metal fingers appeared in the air above it.

“Is that the other artifact Vanessa gave you?”

“No,” Angel said. “I made this myself using what I learned from the microscope. It gives me a detailed analysis of most basic materials and machinery in addition to zooming in. It also floats.”

“I could tell,” Vanessa said dryly. “It’s impressive, but a big leap from solving my problem. There are a lot of Tinkerers that could do the same thing.”

Angel cocked an eyebrow as he twisted the top half of his creation off, revealing lines of Old World magic running throughout its inside. Lilian’s eyes widened.

“You didn’t use New World magic? This is all Old World?”

“All of it,” Angel confirmed. “I could pass this off as a legitimate artifact. How many Tinkerers do you know that could do that?”

Lilian swallowed. “None. Copy one, maybe. But you added your own work to it?”

“Most of it is my own,” Angel said, snapping the top back onto the device. “So, do you still think I can’t fix your problem?”

“I’m slightly more optimistic,” Lilian admitted. “That’s incredible, but I don’t know if you understand the magnitude of how difficult this will be. The disk is impressive, but it’s still at the level of an artifact.”

“Then it’s decided,” Angel said, ignoring her argument completely. “I believe that artifact of yours has a detailed map of the Barren, doesn’t it? Is there any chance it’s got some long forgotten ruins on there?”

Lilian blinked, then let out a laugh. “Was this all really just a plan to get to the ruins of that Reawakening base?”

“Sure was,” Angel admitted. “But it’ll work for both of us. You’re right – I might not be able to make something that keeps your energy inside your body right now. But, if I’m right about there being Old World magic there, it isn’t unreasonable for me to find something I can use to save you.”

“What makes you think they’ve got anything to help with my problem?” Lilian asked.

“They don’t need to. Every scrap of information I learn can help. It might be some fancy refrigerator that ends up saving you.”

Lilian pressed her lips together. Then she let out a sigh. “Fine. I suppose it’s better than sitting around and doing nothing. There aren’t any ruins on my map, but the Reawakening was known to operate near Stormpoint, a city to our east. Their base is probably in that area.”

“Wonderful,” Angel said, standing up. “Then there’s no time to waste. Let’s get moving.”