I watch the Lady-King depart and I go back to looking over the parts on the workbench. One bit enters my claws, its material so odd to the touch and not because it's unfamiliar. There's an angry feeling to it. Like it hates the fact I have magic at all.
"Mmmm... So, if doctors are people with magic. Who are witches? Does that make them witch doctors...? Well, I guess if we went back in time somehow to Tobaballe's unsmouldering ruins." I remark, getting out my most random of thoughts as I put the machine part down.
A huff fills out my throat.
"Books." I repeat, a slight snicker to the noise as it comes to me how used to reading and writing in stone tablets has become to me. Back in Tobaballe, it was paper. We wrote on paper and with it. The great forests around the confines of the Civil Mountains were our sources and the like. We had some distinctions based on wealth, but we all used the same thing. Then I came to this land, where, somehow, they decided to use rocks rather than the plentiful trees about.
Another piece of machinery enters my grip and I try to thread my innermost digit through what appears to be a screw port. It blocks my attempt, turning vampiric and magnetic at the same time. My eyes widen and I snap the limb away, almost dropping the item and slamming it onto the table. I flick away at the hurt hand, breathing steadily as it really settles in.
"Well... This will be an interesting time away from the others." I whistle, moving into and through some other rooms. All different parts and ways to the machine. Entire segments dedicated to single materials. There are vials and jars vibrating and blending soil-like stuff. Probably soil. Pumps and wire-like straws doing as they do to water.
All the stuff that gets brought in with magic. There's even a part to this machine that I can feel follow me. It's sucking up my magic ever so gently, like it's assessing if I'm a threat to its existence or the purpose of it. A curious thing that's almost enough to make me smile. It's like having a pet.
A very strange, mechanical pet with none of the usual trouble!
"Should I even bother getting started or should I wait for the book? I really should wait for the book... However." I go over, dipping in and out of my thoughts and my voice as I happen to come across a rather convenient spot. An entire room that's dedicated to information storage. A little work library and plenty of jars and other borderline alchemical equipment.
None of it has anything in them, nor is any of it in use. But, I'm more than happy to change that circumstance in no time at all. I just need to learn a few tricks of the trade and hope everything is safe. My closest claw takes up one jar and I slowly spin it about until its measuring side is in clear view.
"Mmm..." I go, looking through the glass as I suddenly pay more attention to the walls. I head towards the nearest one, form a fist, and knock on it. My head bobbles along, a new fact about it all. This place is reinforced with stone, similar to what the mountain is made of. I suppose all in the event the machine might fail and all that magic washes out?
A self-contained bunker of sorts within a palace that does not look the part at all. I guess there's some safety to my upcoming madness, then. Some risk I can take to both myself and this place as a whole. I can't really be blowing the place up, though I might if the magic differential is too much...
Like a candle casually burning away at its wick as an open gas line keeps hissing. I suppose it will be quite interesting to see, really. How this machine handles such a fiery outbreak. Provided it even has the capacity to handle a magical outburst so near to its systems.
Anything like that happening right on its doorstep and something has gone very wrong. Engines can manage fuel fine and well in the right pipes and all. But they will utterly fall apart if the process is excessively changed. Even a slightly wrong fuel can mess with some vehicles and machines.
"Hm," I mutter, looking at my claw as I hold it out before me. While my magic doesn't come out more than it normally does when it's at ease. It's not traditional wind magic by any metric. It simply can't be.
I was born of Sudden Induction, exposed to the gods directly. I came back from two separate other cases of Sudden Induction. The former of these two incidents needing me to feed on a power cable to a fire wyvern, of all things. My magic is wind-magic in only the loosest sense. I'm no aeromancer, as some people put it. No windy-witch.
"I'm me." I say, using my magic as I once did so many years ago on a trip I've almost entirely forgotten the details of. My magic is not whistling like the wind. It has formed a shape, an effectively solid one. Something with presence and place.
I move into another room and reach out, using my trusted friend of a grappling spell. It reels a random thing to me and I set it down right after. Dismissing my magic before it gets all too sucked up by this machine. More thoughtful noises leave me and I find myself in what appears to be a console room.
"Get that book and I'll be able to make use of this. Maybe." I say, confident at first until I lay my eyes upon the language of the console. Little tacky things are all over it, but it's hardly anything substantial. Whoever made this console is certainly not someone I can consult. I don't speak or read it, but I know what it is. The work of the so-called Ancients.
The people no one in this land can really separate themselves from. I am not a Jhermonikra, never was. I never even really adapted to being one, either. It all still feels so strange at my core, even if my outer layers have been shaved and stitched away.
"Well, let's get to work." I remark, leaning into the motion and onto the console. My eyes going over all the details that have been noted across the dials and more.