Steamforged Sorcery - B2 Ch8 (Patreon)

They traveled for several hours through the hot sands. When the sun started to dip below the horizon and the temperatures dipped beyond uncomfortable, the two found shelter at the top of a long valley. Both laid out their sleeping arrangements and sat down as the wind started to pick up around them.

“Let me have a look, then,” Angel said, yawning. He once again found himself thankful for the warmth that his mechanical arm put out as the camp continued to grow colder.

Lilian shrugged. She scooted closer to him, pulling up the side of her shirt and revealing a metal port a little less than a hand’s length beneath her armpit. It was about the size of a child’s fist and made of polished blueish gray metal. The port had been connected into her flesh so perfectly that Angel could have sworn it was meant to be there.

“How is this seal possible?” Angel asked, gently touching the seam with his left hand. “There’s no scarring at all. This shouldn’t be possible. How many relics do you have, Lilian? No artifact or accelerated healing could accomplish this.”

“My body has some unique properties,” Lilian said after a long pause. “Side effects from the relic I used to have. One of them is highly improved healing. My body recognized the relic as part of it, so it didn’t scar when healing.”

“Fascinating,” Angel said. “That relic must have been something else.”

“They all are,” Lilian said, sighing. “Just in different ways. Each relic is true Old World Magic, after all. Not the tiny fragments that artifacts are. These were treasures, even before the Great War.”

“I didn’t realize you were so interested in Old World Magic,” Angel observed as he carefully pressed on the hatch. It released with a hiss, sliding inwards and to the side. He lowered his eyepiece and the orange working light flicked on. Angel’s eyes widened.

Lilian hadn’t just been carrying a relic around inside her. She was easily as much machine as he was. Miniature gears the size of fingernails spun without a noise, connected to tiny pumping pistons. Tubes ran within her, connecting parts together and pumping either blood or blue liquid through them.

In the space approximately around where her heart should have been, there were three pronged cylinders arranged as if something were meant to sit above them. Angel squinted closer. The smallest runes he had ever seen adorned the cylinders, along with lines of Old World Magic so thin that they were barely visible.

“What is this?” Angel breathed. “It’s amazing. This intricacy – I didn’t think it was possible. How is it still running?”

“On fumes,” Lilian replied. “There’s an energy storage unit, but it’s running out. As soon as that runs dry, it’ll be as if my heart stopped.”

“So you really don’t have a heart, then?”

“That’s not the way I would have liked to put it, but I guess you aren’t wrong,” Lilian admitted. “More like I replaced it.”

“And then sold it,” Angel added. “Damn. Now I really need to fix this. My reputation would never recover if people heard that some poor girl sold her heart for me and I couldn’t even fill the void left behind.”

Lilian rolled her eyes. “We both know you’re half hoping I die so you get to take me apart. You’re eyeing me like I’m a tree that’s about to make you a fortune, and I don’t even get the comfort of knowing that it’s my good looks.”

“Are you saying you’d prefer if I was lecherous?”

Lilian let out a curt laugh. “Can you do anything about this or not?”

“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than I’d thought,” Angel said, dragging the last word out. “I’m going to have to really poke around in there. Anything that size can’t possibly be using the same runes and Old World Magic that I am. It just wouldn’t work at that scale.”

“That sounds like a really long way of telling me you can’t help.”

“No,” Angel corrected. “It’s a really long way of me asking just how much you’re going to let me poke around with that machinery. I’m confident in my abilities, Lilian. New Old World Magic is a challenge, not an obstacle.”

“Go ahead. My modesty is going to do me any good if I’m dead. Especially since you didn’t deny you’d be looking at it if I died.”

“It would be a shame to waste such a store of knowledge,” Angel replied, a grin tugging at his lips. “You might want to lie down. This won’t take too long, but you might as well be comfortable.”

Lilian nodded, then laid down on her side in front of Angel. He knelt before her, peering down into the machinery and squinting. It was hard, but he could just barely make out the runes. He started to memorize everything, starting with the closest miniature motor.

They remained like that for nearly an hour before Angel finally straightened back up. New information bounced around in his head like it was a trapped monkey, but he refused to offer it any route of escape. He carefully categorized everything he could, finding similarities to the magic he already knew to associate it.

Whoever had made the Magitech within Lilian clearly knew exactly what they were doing. He was far from understanding the bigger picture of how it all worked, but each individual piece was like a work of art.

This must have been the level of quality Reave was referring to when he said that Angel’s arm was crude. A small frown flickered across the Seeker’s face.

“What is it?” Lilian asked. “It’s not particularly comforting to have someone staring at your inner workings and then frown.”

“Just lost in my own thoughts,” Angel replied, closing the latch reluctantly. He took care to keep his right arm far away from her at all times. The last thing he needed was the Star Fragment deciding it was hungry and opting for a late night snack. “I can’t process any more information right now.”

“Did you learn anything useful, at least?”

“More than I could have imagined I would have learned today,” Angel said, giving her a slow nod. “For example, did you know that your parts all work at nearly ninety percent efficiency?”

“No,” Lilian admitted. “That sounds good.”

“It’s insanely good,” Angel said. “My arm barely runs at seventy, if I had to guess. Every single piece of Magitech has a frequency. The magic running through it makes it move in a certain way. When you put two pieces together, they aren’t in perfect sync. The farther off they are from each other, the more energy is lost in the process and the worse the whole system works.”

“That sounds like it would be a nightmare to build anything complex then.”

“It is,” Angel replied. “It’s like an increasingly difficult puzzle that will blow up if you put something in wrong. But whoever made the machinery inside you doesn’t seem to have made a single mistake. It’s amazing, and I’m going to steal every last bit of it. Lilian, who made that?”

She pulled her shirt down and sat up, pressing her lips together. “An old friend.”

“Where are they? With that level of ability, they could fix this in a day! You’re the most complicated piece of Magitech I’ve ever seen! Aside from a relic, I suppose. But I don’t understand how those work yet, so they don’t count.”

“Dead,” Lilian replied with a deep frown. “He’s been dead for a long time.”

“Well, shit,” Angel said. They sat in silence for a few moments. “Do you know where his grave is?”

“Angel!” Lilian snapped. “Really?”

“I just wanted to pay my respects,” Angel grumbled. “A talent like that must have been incredibly rare.”

“You were going to check if he had anything left to rob,” Lilian accused.

“Yup.”

Lilian smacked him in the left arm with a snort of laughter. Given their massive difference in strength, it actually hurt a little. “I’ve really got to wonder if that’s actually your real personality, or just a front. Why are you so obsessed with Old World Magic? Nobody in their right mind would ever joke about that.”

“Why’s it matter?” Angel asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m just curious.”

“Well, I suppose you did give me something very useful in the form of information,” Angel said, rubbing his chin. “Fine. If you really want to know, it’s because my Master instilled the importance of Old World Magic in me before he died. For a variety of reasons, restoring it has been my only real goal ever since I was a little kid.”

“Who was your master?” Lilian asked.

“A terrible man with good goals,” Angel replied. “The world is better off without him, but our dream was still the same.”