And then she had to actually code a cure, a way to clean up what it had done to her Wonder’s archival system - to unscramble the inputs and the outputs and actually return it to doing what it was supposed to do, which was, she gathered, bring up and unlock the locations of various documents or whatever the hell else was stored in her Wonder’s vast library.
She had barely been eating or sleeping since she’d gotten this. The only reason she had left the house was to go to work, until winter break happened, and then she didn’t leave the house at all. Mimisbrunnr of Mercury had not been on patrol since she had gotten it, because there was nothing else worth worrying about except the problem in front of her and the problem was all-consuming because if she couldn’t fix this, she couldn’t even begin to probe the rest of her Wonder’s secrets.
Marie was worried, and she knew it, and she felt bad for worrying her. Her girlfriend roused her for food and sleep, occasionally, but probably not as often as she should be doing either because she was very difficult to rouse.
But finally, finally it was coming together, clicking in place. She had nearly the entire code written, and it felt incredibly good to know that she had done it. She had put together a program that should scoop the bad code out of her system and repair the damage it had done.
So for the first time in months, she called upon the power of her Wonder, USB-to-Mercurian-input device in hand and a usb stick with her precious program (she could get a doctorate for this s**t, if she could just actually reveal it to the world, she was pretty sure) on it.
“I pledge my life and loyalty to Mimisbrunnr, and to Mercury. I humbly request your aid, so that I may give you mine.”
And in a moment, she was back on Mimisbrunnr, in the server room.
“There you are!” Aishe said, and she let out a dramatic huff.
“I did it,” Tali replied. “I did it, I made a program to overwrite the virus.” She held up the whole contraption, and Aishe lit up.
“That’s amazing! Let’s see if it works!” She said, and Tali nodded, walking past her and to the console. It glowed, like it always did, and the scrambled, broken HUD appeared. Almost triumphantly, Tali shoved in her strange input device. Aishe bumped her out of the way and tapped a few of the strange, Mercurian keys, and green light began to flow out from the box, slowly turning the whole console the bright, successful-download color.
And then her program went to work, and practically before her eyes the HUD’s display began to clear up, sorting itself from nonsense into what was definitely, recognizably, an alphabet.
Right as it looked almost done, the whole thing, very suddenly, shut completely down.
“What the hell?” Tali asked, surprised.
“Rebooting,” Aishe said. “Whatever you did, it’s working, so I flipped the reboot switch.”
“...Oh. That, uh, that makes sense,” Tali said, feeling suddenly very embarrassed. As quickly as it had gone off, the system flicked back on, lighting up the whole complex. And this time, whent the HUD popped up, it was perfectly clear.
“You did it!” Aishe said, delightedly, practically throwing herself onto her descendant for a very excited hug. “You fixed it, you fixed my virus and you fixed the archival system!”
“Yeah,” Tali said, every inch of her expressing delight as she squeezed her ancestor (surprisingly solid, for a ghost). “Yeah! I did it!”
She had accomplished something, something real, something that didn’t involve her taking an injury for someone else and ending up in the hospital for weeks, for the first time since she became a Knight. Sure, it was nothing next to Hvergelmir’s efforts to convert Chaos, or anything like that, but it was something. A step towards maybe accessing whatever was here.
Aishe wiggled out of the hug first, grinning widely behind her scarf. “Come with me,” she beckoned, and then she ran off. Tali followed her, and they stopped, standing at the edge of the well that gave the Wonder its name.
“I think,” Aishe said, “that you have successfully proved yourself worthy of becoming a Squire of Mercury. Now, when I was a Page, the Well was still magic, and I gave it back my weapon to receive my new one. I don’t know if that will still work, but you should be able to call it back to your hand anyway, even if it doesn’t, right?”
“I should, yes,” Tali said. “So, uh, what do I do?” She asked.
“Just...drop it in the well,” Aishe replied. Tali swallowed, held her hand over the well and called her vial, and then dropped it.
As soon as it hit the water, for the first time in a thousand years, the Well of Knowledge glowed bright blue. The glow got brighter and brighter, until Tali had to bring up her arm and cover her eyes to protect her vision. There was a final bright, blinding flash, and the light winked out - and when Tali could see again, hovering over the Well was a bow, transparent and filled with the same strange blue liquid as her vial.
She reached out and took it, and just like when she had first taken her vial, she felt a surge of power.
Mimisbrunnr Squire of Mercury took a breath, and felt for the first time like she might just do something in this war.
