Chapter 6: The Forge of Progress
Weeks bled into months at the Glimmerstone Refinery. The rhythmic thunder of stamping mills and the constant hiss of steam became the backdrop to Kael's new existence. The assay office, once a dusty tomb for gemstones, was transformed.
Borim had been true to his word. The wards on the room were strong, old dwarven work that dampened magical signatures and prevented external scrying. Kael had reinforced them with his own harmonic dampeners, creating a bubble of perfect privacy. Within, organized chaos reigned. Workbenches were laden with tools both mundane and arcane: precision lathes powered by miniature steam cores, crystal-growing tanks bubbling with luminous solutions, and a central drafting table covered in schematics that would look like madness to any other eye.
His deal with Borim proved mutually beneficial. Kael's improvements to the forge—a Recuperative Heat-Exchange System that captured waste energy to pre-heat ingots, and an Automated Rune-Stamping Press driven by punch-card-like memory crystals—increased output and quality dramatically. Borim's reputation, and profits, soared. In return, Kael had a steady, untraceable income and access to materials through Borim's suppliers. He never asked where the sky-iron or the rare earth magnets came from; Borim never asked what Kael was building with them.
Project Aegis took priority. His existing gear was makeshift, a collection of desperate solutions. He needed a unified system. The core was the Gravitic Manipulation Core. After three failed prototypes that resulted in dangerously localized gravity wells (one nearly crushing his own hand), he succeeded on the fourth. The final core was a sphere of dark, non-reflective alloy, housing a spinning ring of calibrated orichalcum inside a vacuum chamber. When powered, it could generate a variable gravitational field in a three-foot radius around him. It could lighten his steps for enhanced mobility, increase local gravity to slow incoming projectiles, or, at maximum output, create a brief, crushing barrier.
He built the Aegis Suit around it. The underlayer was a mesh of synthetic spider-silk woven with mana-conductive filaments. Over that went articulated plates of Cerametal—a ceramic-metal composite he developed that was lighter than steel but could disperse kinetic and thermal energy. Each major plate housed a smaller kinetic barrier emitter, all networked to the central core. The helmet was a masterpiece of integration: his multi-spectral lenses, now with Tactical Analysis Overlay that could highlight weak points, track multiple targets, and display vital signs; audio enhancers and dampeners; and a rebreather system for toxic environments.
When he donned the full suit for the first time and powered the systems, a low, resonant hum filled the workshop. Status runes glowed softly on the inside of his visor. Physique Augmentation: +15%. Barrier Integrity: 100%. Gravitic Core: Stable. He felt… formidable. Not invincible, but no longer fragile.
Project Fulcrum, the Arc-Reactor, was a greater challenge. His current reactor was reliable but weak. To power the Aegis Suit and future weapons, he needed a leap in energy density. The principle was simple: forced atomic decay in a controlled magic field to release immense energy. The execution was fraught with peril.
He used a shard of refined Glimmerstone—a crystal that naturally absorbed and slowly released ambient mana—as the catalyst. He encased it in a lattice of spell-suppressing lead-bismuth alloy, then surrounded it with a spiral of mana acceleration coils. The trick was initiating the decay in a stable, self-sustaining reaction, not a runaway explosion.
After a week of calculations and two terrifying test runs that filled the workshop with ozone and left his hair standing on end, he achieved ignition. The Fulcrum Core flared to life between the containment prongs, a tiny, captive sun the size of an apple, spinning silently and emitting a deep, blue-white light. The power output was staggering. It could run the entire refinery for an hour. And it was now strapped to the back of his Aegis Suit.
With power and defense secured, he turned to Project Wayfarer. The trauma of the Slip-Drive was fresh, but mobility was survival. He wouldn't make the same mistake. Stability was key. He based it on the same spatial anchor circuitry, but instead of a single, cracked gem, he used a symmetrical array of four smaller, flawless resonance crystals, constantly cross-calibrating each other. The calculation engine was a Mechanical Logic Loom—a device of interlocking gears and sliding rods that could compute complex spatial coordinates based on celestial alignment and local mana topography. It was slow to calculate a jump, but it was immune to magical interference and wildly more accurate.
He was integrating the Wayfarer's primary crystal array when Borim entered the workshop, his usual gruffness replaced by a somber tension. He carried a rolled-up newsscroll.
"Trouble," the dwarf said, slapping the scroll on Kael's desk.
It was the Aethelgard Herald, now the mouthpiece of King Valerius. The headline was bold: "KING SUMMONS HEROES TO HEAL A WOUNDED WORLD." Below was a grand proclamation. Due to the increasing "unnatural rifts" plaguing the land—implied again to be the legacy of the "Mad Prince's" experiments—King Valerius, in his wisdom and mercy, was enacting an ancient, costly ritual. He would summon champions from other worlds, heroes of great virtue and power, to aid Aethelgard in its time of need.
"They're doing it next week," Borim said, tapping a paragraph. "At the Sunstone Spire. Every lord and guildmaster is commanded to attend, to witness the 'divine intervention.' Costs a fortune in mana crystals, they say. Taxes are bleeding the land white."
Kael read, his blood turning to ice. The "rifts." He'd seen reports. Spatial tears, spewing unstable magic and monsters. Valerius was blaming him for them. And now he was using the crisis to legitimize his rule, to bring in outside powers beholden to him. It was a brilliant, terrifying political move.
And then he saw the artist's renditions of the expected heroes, based on "divine visions." One was a figure in sleek, form-fitting armor that glowed with soft internal lights, holding a device that projected a hard-light shield. The Technologist. Another was a knight in shining plate, a blazing sword in one hand, a book in the other, a nimbus of light around her head. The Virtue-Speaker.
A rival technologist. A zealot. Summoned to hunt him.
"This changes nothing for us," Borim grunted, misunderstanding Kael's silence for fear of increased scrutiny. "Refinery's independent. But mark me, lad, when kings start calling on otherworlders, the world's gears are coming loose. Bad for business."
After Borim left, Kael stared at the schematic for the Wayfarer. His plan to quietly build his strength was collapsing. The board was being reset with new, unknown pieces. He couldn't wait.
He worked for 72 hours straight, fueled by focus and the Fulcrum core's energy. He finished the Wayfarer Bracelet, a heavy band of metal housing the crystal array and logic loom. He then turned to a new, urgent project. Not a tool for escape. A tool for intelligence.
Using a spare multi-spectral lens and a miniaturized scrying orb, he built the Oculus Drone. It was a small, disc-shaped device with silent anti-grav impellers, invisible to normal sight, and shielded against magical detection. Its purpose: to fly to the Sunstone Spire, witness the summoning, and return with data.
The day of the summoning, Kael stood on the roof of the assay office, the Oculus Drone humming in his palm. He input the coordinates for the capital, hundreds of miles away. The drone's logic loom clicked and whirred for a full minute, calculating the path. Then, with a faint ripple in the air, it vanished.
Now, he could only wait and work. He began a new schematic. He didn't name it, but its purpose was clear in the aggressive lines. It was a weapon designed not for monsters or guards, but for other machines, and for the sanctimonious. A Null-Pulse Cannon. A weapon to silence the lights of the Technologist and unravel the magic of the Virtue-Speaker.
The hunter was preparing his den. And he would not be hunted by proxies from other worlds.