A year ago, it would have sounded absurd to Finn: I’m out of town, but I can meet up with you if it’s in outer space. What a ridiculous premise! But then he’d seen it in action, with Virgo and with Olympus and with Bifrost and now - now he was seriously sending Anabel signet messages that she should go to her wonder and wait for him, for real, he’d be right over.
The fact that he arrived on Mercury in the middle of a blizzard, well, that should have made him reconsider the plan - but it didn’t. The hike down into the valley - usually an easy half hour if he had Anabel with him, twenty if he didn’t - took nearly twice as long as it should have, walking against the wind, but he finally made it.
The security system recognized his touch upon the front door, and a jarringly friendly sounding AI chimed, “Welcome back, Knight Babylon,” as he tromped down the stairs. He shook snow from his cape, and glanced around the lobby, towards the glowing thicket of flowers. “Mistral?” he called. “I made it over. Weather’s nasty.”
Although, he supposed, looking up, she must know that - the skylight over the flowers was cleared of snow and open to the angry sky. “I’ve got something that I think you might be interested in helping with.”
Shibrogane
Mistral looked up from the tiny trinket in her hands at Babylon’s approach. “Yeah?” With the rings and the upgrade she’d provided, his ‘text’ messages were mostly an annoyance--she had to hide them at work when she received them, after all. Still, it was sometimes hard to remember you now had a boon you hadn’t. Probably it was a bad habit he would overcome eventually.
In a small space that had been painstakingly cleared of flowers, there was a small chest--the sort one might use for jewelry--surrounded by small fat candles and earth just barely beginning to grow grass again. It wasn’t hard to determine that those holes were the final resting places of those who died at Mistral, or why Mistral was waiting for him there.
She returned Degrasse’s hat ornament to the chest and locked it.
“I’m glad you made it alright,” she told him. “What’s up?” A few yards away, Mendel snuffled through the grass.
In a small space that had been painstakingly cleared of flowers, there was a small chest--the sort one might use for jewelry--surrounded by small fat candles and earth just barely beginning to grow grass again. It wasn’t hard to determine that those holes were the final resting places of those who died at Mistral, or why Mistral was waiting for him there.
She returned Degrasse’s hat ornament to the chest and locked it.
“I’m glad you made it alright,” she told him. “What’s up?” A few yards away, Mendel snuffled through the grass.
Babylon took an awkward breath as he moved to join her in the cleared part of the garden. This, thought the knight, was hallowed ground. “A memorial?” he asked, watching her return the hat ornament to the box. “That’s…” He wasn’t sure what he ought to say to her - a lot of people had died here for their hard-won convenience, and no one carried that heavier on their shoulders than Mistral did. It was her wonder, after all. Her ancestor had set the traps.
“That’s really good of you,” he said, glancing to the graves. Had she brought all the remains up here herself? Dug all the graves alone? It must have taken… gods, it must have taken ages, especially given the kind of shape Anabel was in.
“I’ve, um,” he said, jarred by the sudden emotion the newly-founded cemetery brought on. “I’ve got an idea for something I want to build. I have a design sketched, I know what the form factor and basic methodology should be - but I haven’t got the slightest idea how to build the thing.” He reached into his coat for the folded pieces of notebook paper, and held them out for her.
“Here,” said Babylon. “It’s meant to be a device for telling what kind of knight a Negaverser would be. What planet they’d be aligned with.”
Quote:
“I’ve been working on it since July,” she said. She wasn’t going to go into the gory details. She wasn’t going to talk about the smell, or the hours and days each one had taken. That was part of her punishment--she deserved that. All of it.
Her hands still felt sticky with their blood. She scraped them over her skirt, and took his hand to pull herself to her feet. As she led the way to the stairwell, she flipped through his sketches and notes. “This doesn’t look too terribly difficult,” she said. “There’s fabrication units on the thirteenth floor that I can let you into. I wouldn’t go to level six yet. Parts of it aren’t disengaged yet, and I’m still looking for… for the doll.” Her past-self’s voice rang in her head: It’s okay, Ana. I love you. “You’d need a battery. Probably could use a little bit of the Light for it, if you wanted. If not, I’m sure I can dig up the configuration for pulling from ambient magic, like the one I used to make the rings.”
Mistral leaned a fist on the wall, and it slid open slowly. “Knight’s Quarters, please,” she said, stepping into the elevator. Mendel barked at the levels as the glass-walled elevator slid past them, as they ground their way past the empty reservoir of level four and the machine hellroom of level six and the empty containment chambers of level eight. “I wish I’d asked Menachem to translate the journal Asimov left behind,” she said, leaning against the wall. “Sometimes I get memories of what things say, but it’s not reliable.”
Her hands still felt sticky with their blood. She scraped them over her skirt, and took his hand to pull herself to her feet. As she led the way to the stairwell, she flipped through his sketches and notes. “This doesn’t look too terribly difficult,” she said. “There’s fabrication units on the thirteenth floor that I can let you into. I wouldn’t go to level six yet. Parts of it aren’t disengaged yet, and I’m still looking for… for the doll.” Her past-self’s voice rang in her head: It’s okay, Ana. I love you. “You’d need a battery. Probably could use a little bit of the Light for it, if you wanted. If not, I’m sure I can dig up the configuration for pulling from ambient magic, like the one I used to make the rings.”
Mistral leaned a fist on the wall, and it slid open slowly. “Knight’s Quarters, please,” she said, stepping into the elevator. Mendel barked at the levels as the glass-walled elevator slid past them, as they ground their way past the empty reservoir of level four and the machine hellroom of level six and the empty containment chambers of level eight. “I wish I’d asked Menachem to translate the journal Asimov left behind,” she said, leaning against the wall. “Sometimes I get memories of what things say, but it’s not reliable.”
Babylon nodded. The setup was pretty extensive, as had been the carnage, and it made sense to him that even coming to her wonder as often as she could, it would have taken Mistral a long time to finish this all by herself. He almost told her that she could have asked for help, that he would have gladly lent a hand… but stopped himself. This was probably penance for Mistral, he thought, and he had no right to intrude on her healing process.
“I think I’d like to use the Light for this,” he said, following her across the library. It was for almost entirely selfish reasons. First, he knew that the Light was a power source - it powered the barrier and the entire city, after all, but he wanted to prove to himself that new things could be hooked into it, that their ancestral magic wasn’t nearly as immutable as people treated it as. Second, if it was built on the same base as the rings and drew energy from ambient magic, then everyone would want one, and Babylon… Babylon had thought of this all on his own, and he sort of wanted to keep it just to himself.
There was nothing wrong with wanting to be a special snowflake every once in a while, right?
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” he sighed, with regards to his ancestor. “I could have… I could have held off in taking him to the cauldron, but it was sort of…” He’d waited long enough, he thought, and whether they needed Menachem’s counsel now was irrelevant to the fact that the man had stood his vigil for a thousand years and had deserved his rest for most of it. “I couldn’t ask him to stay longer,” he said. “He’d already gone above and beyond what he should have had to do for Babylon.”
“What is it so far?” he asked. “The journal, I mean. If that’s not prying?” It was probably prying, he thought. “I - I get memories now,” Babylon volunteered, awkwardly changing the subject, trying to steer away from his faux pas. “At my wonder. From Menachem.” Raziele never thought that the knights of Mistral would return.
Quote:
“You were sort of dying,” she said. “Nick mentioned it.” She settled herself at the workbench and held her hands out in the air, expectantly. A pale purple keyboard coalesced beneath her fingers, and she tapped a few keys before announcing, “I am Anabel, Squire of Mistral.” The system greeted you, and she leaned over the keyboard. “I don’t know what any of these symbols mean, but I know what they do,” she said, hitting three of them in quick succession.
A document slid open on the holographic screen before her. “It’s magic,” she said. “It’s about how Mistral works. How they created their magitech and channeled the power around them.” It was fascinating, really. She didn’t understand most of it, was just hacking together pieces Asimov had left behind, but she knew enough to create some few simple things. “Magic-conducting metals,” she said, picking up a small square of odd black metal, a blue sheen that was somehow more than just the color of the light deep inside its surface. Like a light. “This is the weakest stuff. But it’s what I’ve been able to… find.” She’d made the rings out of the strongest. It had seemed only fair.
“There’s symbols that, near as I can tell, mean things. I’ve got a sheet around here somewhere, but--if you have a Negaverser who would be willing to be a guinea pig… I’d be able to figure something out, I’m sure?” She smiled crookedly at him, offering him the square of steel. “You want it to look like a compass, right?”
A document slid open on the holographic screen before her. “It’s magic,” she said. “It’s about how Mistral works. How they created their magitech and channeled the power around them.” It was fascinating, really. She didn’t understand most of it, was just hacking together pieces Asimov had left behind, but she knew enough to create some few simple things. “Magic-conducting metals,” she said, picking up a small square of odd black metal, a blue sheen that was somehow more than just the color of the light deep inside its surface. Like a light. “This is the weakest stuff. But it’s what I’ve been able to… find.” She’d made the rings out of the strongest. It had seemed only fair.
“There’s symbols that, near as I can tell, mean things. I’ve got a sheet around here somewhere, but--if you have a Negaverser who would be willing to be a guinea pig… I’d be able to figure something out, I’m sure?” She smiled crookedly at him, offering him the square of steel. “You want it to look like a compass, right?”
Babylon took the square of steel and turned it over in his hands, examining the sheen on its dark surface. Even the most cursory of glances suggested its magical nature, but if this stuff was weak, then he wasn’t sure that it would serve for what he wanted it to do. It was better to overpower the device than underpower it, he figured, and it probably would take a lot of magic to read a Negaverser the way he wanted to.
“Could you use my help in looking for more?” Babylon volunteered. He didn’t know the labyrinth the way she did, didn’t have her visions of its ancient history - but it was keyed to him now, its deadly traps rendered inert against his power signature. “I can - I can cover more ground than you can,” he explained. “No offense.” He hoped she wouldn’t take any - it wasn’t like Anabel’s limitations were an elephant in the room.
Quote:
“I’d rather practice on the weak materials,” she said. “I don’t know where this came from or how to get more. As far as I can tell, it’s not mined here in Mistral.” If it was even mined at all. “I’ll make the completed prototype out of something better, but I can’t use it up casually.” She gave Babylon an apologetic look. “I have to chain together the carvings, and make sure I can inscribe them… it’s a lot of work.” She’d been very busy, and had taken a lot of days off work.
She shrugged, and said, “If you want to look through the twelfth level… I won’t stop you? But the doll that killed the people on level six is still out and about, and it’s not bound by the main security protocol, as far as I can tell. Even the Code can’t tell where it is.”
She shrugged, and said, “If you want to look through the twelfth level… I won’t stop you? But the doll that killed the people on level six is still out and about, and it’s not bound by the main security protocol, as far as I can tell. Even the Code can’t tell where it is.”
“Well,” said Babylon. “That’s spooky.” He hadn’t seen the quote-unquote doll in action, but it was his understanding that most of the carnage on level six had been exclusively its fault. He didn’t want to find it, and he wasn’t even sure he wanted Mistral to find it - if it was operating separately from the security system, would it even recognize her as its master? It was a project for another day, even if it did have to be dealt with eventually…
She was doing him a really big favor, Babylon realized, handing the chunk of metal back. “I’ll stay here with you, in that case,” he said. Wouldn’t want to tempt fate when there was an omnicidal robot on the loose. “We can talk design. You can show me what you’re doing.”
Backtracking, he considered the topic of a willing guinea pig. “I actually know exactly the guy?” said Babylon, slipping onto the workbench beside her. “This whole project - it’s a bit of a long story, but, that huge captain we helped out the other night after his fight with Kairatos? He’s the one who started the whole thing, because he asked if it was possible to tell? So then I asked Camelot, because if anyone was going to know, he was, but survey said no? So now I’m just sort of trying to do some wild wild west magi-science just to prove that we can totally create new spells.”
“Which,” he admitted, “You sort of already proved with these hecka sweet rings.”
Quote:
“Which is why you kept sending me letters instead of calling, which would have been lots easier to explain than why I had stationary from your research station at my desk,” Mistral said, flipping through the holographic screens until she found the scan she was looking for. Seriously, he had her phone number, and she was fairly sure that the rings would work across planetary divides… There was no excuse. She stuck her tongue out at him, and turned back to the scan of the journal page.
What she was thinking was, if she could ping a bit of energy off the person’s starseed--imbued with a little bit of Chaos, maybe--it might return a helpful result. Like a multi-way circuit, or a centrifuge, the Chaos would balance out the Chaos in the starseed, instead reflecting the Order signature back to the mass of the spell? Theoretically? She grimaced and started copying a few symbols from the scan and onto a sheet of scrap paper nearby.
“Who the ******** is Camelot,” she asked, but… like, he obviously had to be a knight. Probably not anyone she knew, though. Eh. “So, uh, we’re basically spellcrafting?” She shrugged, and tapped her pencil next to one chain of the ‘code’. “You said a compass?”
What she was thinking was, if she could ping a bit of energy off the person’s starseed--imbued with a little bit of Chaos, maybe--it might return a helpful result. Like a multi-way circuit, or a centrifuge, the Chaos would balance out the Chaos in the starseed, instead reflecting the Order signature back to the mass of the spell? Theoretically? She grimaced and started copying a few symbols from the scan and onto a sheet of scrap paper nearby.
“Who the ******** is Camelot,” she asked, but… like, he obviously had to be a knight. Probably not anyone she knew, though. Eh. “So, uh, we’re basically spellcrafting?” She shrugged, and tapped her pencil next to one chain of the ‘code’. “You said a compass?”
“It’s like, really cool stationery, though?” asked Babylon. Old habits died hard. Even with the new ring, and just because he could do holographic calls a-la help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope, that didn’t mean that the old pen and paper method was going to go anywhere any time soon. “Anyway, I was working on, like, other stuff? And there’s no international calling plan on my phone.” Not that there was very good cell coverage in most of the places he worked.
“But while we’re on the topic,” he added, “Do you think I could get one of those rings for Avalon?” Even if she wasn’t in a position where she was anywhere near ready for knighthood shenanigans, it couldn’t hurt to keep her up-to-date on the latest technology. It might even come in handy one of these days - and even if not, he thought she might like a present.
Camelot. How to explain Camelot? “Camelot’s, uh,” said Babylon. “He’s a dude? Like, of the Earth Knight variety. He’s been a knight at least as long as I have, considering how long ago I met him. Um, he’s got a rank up on me? Like, hecka powerful. Powerful as s**t. Um.” What else did one have to express about Camelot? “He’s got, like, this aura that just exudes dad. Like, dude’s old as balls.” And, he wasn’t about to say so to Mistral, but in a pinch, Camelot was a good shoulder to cry on. A vaguely stern, heavily-armored shoulder, but a shoulder.
But that was totally irrelevant to the task at hand. Babylon leaned over, watching her move her pencil. “Yeah, my thought was to put the planetary symbols on the dial, and have it rotate until the right answer’s in the top position?” he said. “It seemed easier than trying to enchant, like, a screen or something.”
Quote:
She rolled her eyes and ignored him. There was an interplanetary calling plan on his right hand--what was he complaining about? “Yeah,” she said, “The box is over there on the countertop.” Mistral gestured, and hunched over her papers again. The ‘hecka powerful’ thing did sound familiar, but she wasn’t going to make any assumptions. Making assumptions before, about the deadliness of her wonder and the morality of her past self’s mother, had cost lives. That was a game she wasn’t going to play ever again. “Don’t you mean a ‘daura’,” she said, a little wryly, smiling at her own pun.
What he was describing didn’t really sound complex at all. Once she had the casing built--or scavenged it from somewhere--all she’d have to do is cut a piece of the metal, install a power source, and let it go. “Okay,” she said, “So… I don’t suppose there’s anywhere in the Galapagos that you could find an older-style pocketwatch or compass? No harm if you can’t, I’m just not particularly joyful about having to fabricate something this fiddly on my own.” Mistral arched her eyebrows at him, and took her sheet of arcane scribblings over to a different worktop. “On the other hand, custom-making it would ensure I had all the room I needed for battery containment…”
She frowned. “Whatever. I’d need some of the Light to see if it would even power something like this. It should, but I want to check its… potency. You know?”
What he was describing didn’t really sound complex at all. Once she had the casing built--or scavenged it from somewhere--all she’d have to do is cut a piece of the metal, install a power source, and let it go. “Okay,” she said, “So… I don’t suppose there’s anywhere in the Galapagos that you could find an older-style pocketwatch or compass? No harm if you can’t, I’m just not particularly joyful about having to fabricate something this fiddly on my own.” Mistral arched her eyebrows at him, and took her sheet of arcane scribblings over to a different worktop. “On the other hand, custom-making it would ensure I had all the room I needed for battery containment…”
She frowned. “Whatever. I’d need some of the Light to see if it would even power something like this. It should, but I want to check its… potency. You know?”
Babylon nodded. He’d seen at least a couple of antique shops in Puerto Ayora, and being an island community, it didn’t seem like too much to expect to find a compass in one of them. “Yeah,” he said, laughing just a bit at her joke. A daura. Maybe he’d have to run that one by Camelot next time he saw him. “I can find one of those, easy. Probably on the cheap, too.” Though she was right, he thought. There were some considerations to be made for the advantages of making such a device from scratch.
“We could try it both ways?” he suggested. “I’ll get you an old compass, and if it doesn’t work, then we can go back to square one and make a casing of our own.” He didn’t think that they were wasting any resources that way - at least, none that he could think of. Mistral might have other things in mind.
Honestly, he was super-impressed with how quickly Anabel had taken to all this magical space engineer-slash-inventor business. There wasn’t a whole lot of overlap between majoring in environmental sciences and finishing ancient magitech puzzles, but she’d taken to it like a duck in water. It only made sense, of course… after all, she was Asimov, teen genius.
He called the lantern into his hands and skimmed his hand over the surface, coming up empty. That trick apparently only worked at Babylon. “I’ll have to hike back up to my wonder in order to get you a sample,” he said. “It’ll take like an hour, an hour and a half?” At least, he considered, remembering the blizzard, he’d be walking with his back to the wind on the way uphill. “How does that work for you?”
Quote:
“That works fine,” she said. “It’d be less embarrassing for me, anyway, the first couple of times I run this it is not going to work.” As if to emphasize that, she ran a finger over one line of computations and… nothing happened. Nor had she expected it to. Her life would be so much easier if she could just read all this s**t, she thought. It was like a logic puzzle with no clues, and also the logic puzzle was in a different language. She’d always been good at those, but…
She worried at her lip with her teeth. “I’ll have tea when you get back,” she said. “There’s a hot water boiler in the kitchen.” Not much else worked, though. Probably, anyway.
She worried at her lip with her teeth. “I’ll have tea when you get back,” she said. “There’s a hot water boiler in the kitchen.” Not much else worked, though. Probably, anyway.
Babylon vanished his lantern and got up from the bench. “Alright,” he said, glancing around the room. This was like, a proper apartment, almost, thirteen stories beneath the surface of Mercury. “Tea?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Considering the weather outside, tea sounded incredible now - but he supposed he’d wait until later to get it. It would be just as good then.
“Keep this up,” he said, “and I’ll make sure that you’re known for your hospitality.” And not, like, accidentally killing eight people. “I’ll see myself out,” added Babylon, giving Mendel a thorough scratching behind the ears as he passed. Dogs in space. What would they think of next.
Quote:
“I’ve been here a lot,” she said. Almost every time she’d felt up to it, actually. She scowled at him, a little blackly, and then hunched over her papers again. “Thanks, Babylon.”
