Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

“Whereabouts are you heading off to then?” Earnie asks as Emily sweeps the last of her scattered tools into her belt, leaving the workshop work surfaces empty for the first time in weeks.

“The shores north of Valum,” she responds, glancing over to check on Pod as he adjusts the straps of the sleek new bag that she made him with integrated spatial storage.

“That’s an odd choice. Why the shores? One of my best iron suppliers is situated just south of Valum, surely that’s better?”

“Your iron supplier won’t have what I need to set up my factory. Though, if you’re willing to put me in contact with your suppliers, I would be interested in placing a bulk order for some materials.”

“It can be easily done. Will you be able to receive messages sent to Valum?”

“No need,” Emily says, reaching into her belt and producing a palm-sized rectangle of metal and glass.

The centre of the rectangle is a blank glass panel etched with faint, glowing purple lines, wrapped within a polished silver metal casing. The edges of the panel are lit by a soft light deep within the metal casing, and Earnie turns it in his hands when Emily gives it to him, trying to peer through the glass into the light.

“This is a new communicator,” she explains, tapping the panel in his hand with a spark of mana and causing her name to appear at the top of the glass pane in glowing purple lettering. “It will allow you to call anyone in your contacts list by tapping on their name. It only works within the borders of New Denntimo for now.”

“I-“

“Can’t use magic to add people like that,” Emily cuts him off. “I know. You can do what I just did by simply tapping your communicator to another matching piece. I’ve given Old Man Silver one already, so you can go add him when we’re gone.”

“Thank you,” Earnie says with a grateful nod, holding the tablet out for Pod to tap with his own. “You’ll have to let me know when you’re set up. I want to get a look at what you can do with a little more space before I keel over.”

Concern flickers across Pod’s face, but Emily doesn’t bat an eye at the old man’s comment.

“Of course. I’ll give you a tour sometime,” she says, leading Pod towards the door. “Just don’t die before I call. The experience may change your life.”

***

On a train humming along beneath the city towards the docks, Pod looks over at Emily sitting motionless with her eyes shut.

“Yes?” she asks without opening them, sensing the curiosity burning in the boy’s gaze.

He hesitates for a moment, not surprised he was noticed but questioning his own judgment.

“Are you planning on awakening Earnie?”

“What makes you think that?” Emily asks in turn, opening her single blue eye to stare back at him.

“What you said before we left. That a tour may change his life.”

“Why?” she urges, watching the cogs tick in the boy’s mind as he grows more confident in his deduction.

“He was talking about his life ending soon, and you only said survive till then, as if the visit was the answer,” he continues, rocking back and forth in his seat. “The only way I can think you could increase his lifespan would be magic or an awakening, but Old Man Silver likes him too much to not already have tried the magical solutions. Therefore, you must be considering awakening him, right?”

“Very good,” Emily praises with a nod. “However, while you got the correct answer, your logic was flawed. Just because Old Man Silver can’t save him with magic, doesn’t mean it would be out of my ability.”

“But you’re still planning on awakening him?”

“Yes. For… certain reasons, I believe it’s in my best interests to leave an awakened mechanic behind on this planet when I leave. And, since you plan on following me now, I need to choose someone else for that.”

“Oh,” Pod says, blinking in surprise and scratching his head awkwardly. “Sorry?”

“Don’t be.” Emily waves off his concern, shutting her eye again to focus on the twisting Spellweave where she’s trying to weaponize the spatial destabilisation runes from Blink. “It will give me a chance to gather some data on awakenings in older subjects.”

Sensing the conversation is over, Pod settles into meditation beside Emily and the rest of the ride passes in comfortable silence. They both rise from their seats like clockwork the moment the hum of the vehicle’s engine dies out at their stop, where they leave the underground to skim through the open-air hangars being loaded and unloaded with goods and people.

“Which bay?” Emily asks Pod, having left the transport arrangements to him to handle.

“C-5,” he responds, looking down the long, packed corridor towards a large doorway with the letter C marked above it.

They slip through the crowd with ease, entering a narrower hallway lined with bays starting from zero. It’s quieter than the passage behind them, with only a few people hanging around watching the main entry, waiting for people.

Emily’s gaze quickly locks onto bay five, where she spots a familiar figure leaning against the doorframe, smoking from a small pipe.

“I didn’t think you’d pick up bad habits when I brought you here,” she calls out after glancing at the smug boy beside her.

“I couldn’t help myself,” Anton says back, grinning as they approach. “They have such high-quality leaves here.”

Emily rolls her eyes and accepts a handshake from the man, catching the scent of magical herbs mixed into his pipe. His eyes drift towards her mechanical limb in the process, but he doesn’t comment despite the concern flashing across his face.

“It smells like you’re spending good money on it.”

“Bah, it’s not that bad,” Anton waves off her comment, looking up and turning to lead her into the hangar. “You’ll pay for my smoking for weeks with this short trip, and you’re barely paying better than our normal trading would.”

“Yes, I hear business has been good,” Emily replies, following him in and casting her gaze over Calypso’s familiar contours.

“In no small part thanks to your upgrades. She’s the fastest of her size in the game!”

They pass Ash and an unfamiliar man adjusting one of the ship’s landing gears and move to the steps up. Anton calls out to inform everyone outside the ship of their coming departure before vanishing inside with Emily and Pod.

“So, what are you heading towards Valum for? Mercenary work?”

“No. I’m looking to set up a factory,” Emily corrects.

“Are you going to start selling your creations?” Anton asks with an interested smile.

“Some of them, yes. Speaking of, I’m going to need help delivering my goods if you’d be interested in a contract.”

***

Late at night the next day, after a relatively uneventful flight with only a short break to wait out a swathe of unstable winds, Calypso floats through the chilling evening breeze above a sprawling city below.

Unlike Liberte, where all structures are formed from sand and stone, Valum’s buildings are mostly wooden, with only a few stone warehouses lining the border of the desert. The majority of the settlement sits opposite the storage and open-air docks over rolling grassland, and the densely packed civilisation breaks apart the further the city spreads from the stark border between biomes, splitting up into dozens of sprawling fields filled with crops.

Pod knocks on the door to Emily’s room as the ship starts to float down towards an empty landing bay, pulling her attention away from the view of the landscape visible through the eyes of a new scout latched to the ship’s hull.

“Yes?” she calls, disabling the floating ward behind the door.

“We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes,” Pod responds, opening the door and slipping in. “Are we setting out straight away?”

“It should take us a few hours moving at a moderate pace to reach the coast. We leave now and arrive at daybreak.”

Emily rises from her meditative pose, pulling her protective ward into her belt with a wave of mana and glancing at her status with a fleeting, dissatisfied scowl.

¯¯¯¯¯

[Attributes:] Strength 20 (28), Dexterity 67 (73), Agility 56 (59), Vitality 17 (20), Intelligence 141>142

_____

My cultivation has slowed considerably. It took almost a month to gain a single point this time, and it only feels like it’s getting harder. I’ll refine my remaining aquacillis fruits soon, but I’ll have to remember to integrate a mana-gathering array in my main working area to aid my passive improvement, or else I’m looking at a few more years at third circle.

They head towards the ship’s main exit and find a few crew members waiting to depart, most of them the unfamiliar newbies hired after Emily separated from the ship. Pod starts a conversation with some of them, but Emily waits in silence until Anton’s steps echo down the corridor.

“You’re eager to leave,” he says as he spots Emily leaning against the wall beside the door. “What should we do about-“

Emily produces a communication tablet and tosses it to him, giving him the same brief explanation she gave Earnie.

“Only within New Denntimo’s borders, for now?” Anton asks with a raised brow.

“I plan on setting up a relay using the mana vein where I’m planning to put my factory,” Emily explains as the ship’s landing gears touch down, and a shudder passes through it. “The enchantment on these communicators will allow them to bounce their signals through larger relay nodes. I’ll set up another node when I return to Modo to extend their range over the sea.”

“Incredible,” he mutters in response, staring at the magical device in his hands. “I don’t think I’ll ever really understand it, but magic sure is handy.”

Anton flips the exit lever and the door swings open as the steps fold out. Emily summons a small bundle of gold coins from her belt to pay him as she and Pod step out first.

A small, midnight-black bird detaches from the bottom of Calypso and flutters over to land on Emily’s shoulder.

“Call me when you know what you need taken where,” Anton calls after them before they can step onto the dimly lit path leading towards the main city. “And good luck!”

Emily waves back over her shoulder as Pod spins beside her to walk backwards, waving goodbye to his crew with a beaming grin.

***

After reaching the edge of the docks and passing through a small checkpoint to enter the city proper, Emily pulls Pod into a dark alley just off the main street.

The boy doesn’t question her, watching with intrigue as she pauses to pull several objects from her belt.

Emily takes out a wind crystal, a thick chunk of bloody meat from a wind-attribute amerax, and a delicate black and silver engraving knife.

A buzz of machina sticks the knife to her left forearm, leaving her hands free to manipulate her ingredients. She uses the left to crush the crystal between her fingers, gathering the resulting dust with a wave of mana, and the right to guide the disassembly of the meat.

First, several fine blades of wind split the hunk into smaller pieces, exposing the bones running through it. Then, streams of water shoot from her fingers, clinging to the bones and forcibly working their way through the meat, breaking the flesh holding the bones in place.

The watery whips retract, pulling out over a dozen white shards which Emily places into her left palm to crush into a powder. As her mechanical hand crunches effortlessly through bone, she releases another wave of mana from her right hand, twisting it into a matrix of sea-blue runes wrapped around the remaining flesh.

The spell pulses, and within a few seconds all of the blood in the meat is pulled out into the open air before gathering in a small orb above her waiting palm.

She sends the stripped meat back into her belt and mixes the powdered crystal, bone, and blood together. They combine into a thick, pale pink paste which Emily separates into two equal chunks before forming them into the shape of a horseshoe with an inverted cross between the prongs.

Next, she casts Forgemaster and wraps the soft forms in cocoons of pressure and heat, glancing over at Pod and noticing his curiosity as she waits for the mix to set.

“This is an alchemical method I read about being used by mages on the Lerus Isles,” she explains. “By using the blood, bone, and magic of a beast, they create destructible charms to temporarily give themselves attributes of their chosen animal. It’s fascinating, but I’m less interested in the physical mutations, so I’m going to carve a stabilising array to try to control it.”

“Cool. What are you trying to do with them now?”

“Increase our speed. The buff given by these should last around six hours if I’ve made them right.”

Emily unwinds the tightly bound magical threads, exposing the two off-white bone charms emitting a faint green glow.

She grabs them both and rolls the engraving knife down her arm into her palm before deftly cutting away the excess material and tracing the surfaces of the odd shapes with esoteric lettering.

After a few minutes, she puts the knife away and holds out one of the completed charms to Pod. She throws hers into the ground, smashing it at her feet, and he copies.

They’re both wrapped in chaotic gales released by the charms, and, after a moment, the twisting winds shrink down to surround their legs.

“Woah,” Pod exclaims, bouncing from side to side and looking down, marvelling at how light he feels as he practically floats with each hop.

“Perfect,” Emily murmurs in satisfaction, feeling not a single unwanted change occurring within her body. “Follow me.”

She turns towards the wall and kicks off the ground, rising halfway to the roof in a single bound and kicking off the bare wall to clear the rest of the gap. Pod runs sideways instead, gaining a little speed before he leaps into the wall and kicks off several times to scale his way to the roof.

Emily doesn’t watch, leaping to the next roof with a calm stride and landing without a sound before she pauses to look back. As her eyes land on the edge of the roof where she climbed up, Pod shoots past her, not even sparing her a glance as he races to gain some ground.

She smirks, turning to watch him go as he glances over his shoulder three roofs down, grinning with triumph.

“I don’t think you want to compete with me for speed,” Emily hums with machina, watching Pod’s shoulders flinch as her words tickle the back of his neck despite the distance separating them.

Without a single extra spell, Emily vanishes from the spot, leaving a few small cracks in the wooden frame of the building she was standing on as she shoots past Pod, appearing five buildings ahead of him while looking completely stationary, her hands held behind her back as she stares back at him.

“Keep up.”

She vanishes again, leaving only a needle-thin, buzzing trail of lightning in her wake for her apprentice to follow.