"Leave us." I order my knights, giving me the freedom to speak in a normal tone. They go through the motions and the doors close behind us. Locking up mechanically beyond their actions for the secrets of this wing are beyond them. Everything within this area of my palace is the magic management system.
"Mm, this is certainly is a good spot to be," Nin remarks, strolling ahead without me. I catch up to him, struggling to match his easy strides as my dress and armour get in the way.
"WAIT FOR ME!" I snap, my royal posture keeping its height as I do so. A slight tension coming about my grip on the dress.
"Oh, right. Sorry." he goes, turning and looking down on me.
"I-If you'll follow me." I say, calming down with a heavy breath as I get ahead of him. My grip eases up on on my dress and I click the following doors open. We spread out, quickly parting ways as the chug of machinery fills the air. I look over what is familiar to me and he loses himself in it.
"This doesn't look right." he lets out quite quickly, and I look towards him, then to the machine. I can't quite be sure what he means by that, but he's certainly right about having an iffy gut feeling. This entire piece of kit is a salvaged piece of Ancient Jhermonikra technology. Slightly adapted instead to handle wind-magic rather than water.
Out of everything in this mountain, this machine and all its intricacies are the most expensive thing here. I do not recall what Daddy spoke about when he was initially having my kingdom built. But, I can only hope for the sake of our family that it was expensive in the cheapest way possible. A lone machine that needed buying, not something that needed whole industries built around it just to remake what our forefathers came about with.
Am I even in the right letting Nin near this machine...? No, no. With the Crack in the Sky present and a lack of response from Daddy, this is a necessary risk. Daddy had this machine built once, he can have it built again. Repaired, whatever the right word is.
"This here machine and all the rooms apart of its function are your best way to get your magic back." I explain, throwing an arm over it as I gesture for us to go through another door. Nin takes the long way around, keeping his arms to himself as he noses about the various parts. Even with my familiarity with it, so much is alien and unknowable to me.
I always consult the book Daddy gave me in order to look after it. I hardly do anything else with it. Besides, what is a festival outside to the 'Lord,' Daddy. It's all just maintenance checks by the family staff. They do most of the careful looking for me.
Luckily, the last inspection was not long before the earthquakes, so I can be sure nothing is wrong. Everything is 'green' as the men who work for Daddy like to say. Still, I cannot be too sure. This is not some chair I can apply glue or tape to. Not some robe I can throw over a tailor's head and then come back to.
This is one of the rarest pieces of technology on the entire continent, the world, perhaps. It's from a time of no magic in Jherikra, before the Emerald Awakening. When the people of the land were like the people in my kingdom. No magic at all. What must've been incredibly plentiful is now just one.
And it's mine.
"So... Where exactly am I supposed to integrate and get my magic...?" Nin asks, his jaw shifting as he struggles to choose words. I catch up and join him in the next room, bathing in the water-like light with him. My eyes flash over the room, letting the pale lines dance across the dimly lit stone.
"The next room over involves a form of storage canister. But, I've never touched or made use of the machine in the slightest like that. Many of the functions are not designed with a... Starving man in mind." I explain, looking my mysterious guest one more time.
A thought flashes across my head: What is he?
"Mm. I see." he lets out, a weird click to his words that just keeps ongoing. Something he's all too aware is present in this quiet room. The machine might be chugging away, gears shifting and pistons and whatnot pumping. But it's incredibly efficient, as Daddy's men say. So much of its energy is just to do its job, not wasted on noise and heat like other machines.
The strain of magic is not something it understands despite it all being of the natural world. Mortal men, of no power at all, so vulnerable to the powers of the arcane that they... Mastered the world without ever holding on to the truest gift of the gods and goddesses beyond our lives themselves. Magic through ingenuity and science, not through spell crafting.
Ancient lore we barely understand because it's not for us to understand. We can only get so much when to us, the Ancient Jhermonikra were pure of our beautiful taint. They saw the world in a way we can never truly get. Even with this machine, magic still touches my kingdom, and I had to make a whole load of nonsense world-building just to keep the peasants from questioning things.
'Doctors' my royal backside, they're just safety measures to make sure they don't die. That my entire kingdom doesn't flop over dead from magic starvation or whatever. Though, it is certainly something interesting. To see how a stranger from beyond my kingdom, never once associated with it... He's coming here to save us, like the noble doctors actual.
"Do you have anything I can read to get the basics down about this machine?" Nin asks, looking up from some laid out parts Daddy's men must've left behind.
"There's a book on it, yes. A few." I explain and this no doubt makes his brow rise.
"Books, eh? Right, right. Rich man's daughter." he remarks, and I puff my well-endowed chest up.
"Yes, Daddy is quite wealthy. And all of this is mine!" I boast, throwing my arms up with a fluttery spin.