The eldritch artisan fat.., p.7
The Eldritch Artisan: Father of Constructs: Book 3 (LitRPG), page 7
It may not have been the best logic, but Reacher’s appearance more than made up for the difference. Several people standing nearby drew away, giving Harvey a few spare feet of access to the pipe.
The man looked up and shuddered, saying, “Go on, then. Just don’t hurt nothing, please. No one wants to die tonight, not from the cold and not from a daemon.”
“Thankee,” Harvey said, walking over.
In Mid and High Court, the heating tubes ran along roads or beside buildings. Low Court lacked the same infrastructure. As a result, their tube was just free-standing, braced on metal support beams placed every ten feet or so along what passed for a street.
Stepping up to the tube, Harvey felt the ground soften as the cobblestones ended. Melted ice slush wrapped around his feet. The cold was painful, but the radiant heat of the tube was just enough to prevent hit point loss.
Harvey looked back over his shoulder at Reacher, who was no longer bothering to conceal himself. “We’re going to make life better for these folks.”
Thumbs-up.
Leaning to the side, Harvey looked back along the path the construct traveled. Only Reacher’s latest handprints showed in the snow. Behind them was blank, white.
“How are you masking your steps?” he asked.
Snort. The popping sound came from a furnace hatch. Extending an arm behind himself, Reacher casually brushed snow into place over his handprints.
“Oh. Obviously.” Shaking his head in bemusement, Harvey said, “You’re amazing, you know that?”
Embarrassed shrug.
Harvey turned to the metal tube. Opening his Pocket, he pulled out a length of copper wire and a diamond-tipped knife covered in esoteric symbols. It had an Esoteric Battery, like a little marble of metal, at the tip of the handle. Passing the wire back to Reacher, he positioned the blade against the steel.
Adjusting without prompting, Reacher put one of his hands on Harvey’s back to provide support. Harvey could have changed his posture to take advantage of his Mechanical Strength, but Reacher’s assistance made it effortless.
Harvey began carving elaborate symbols into the metal. Since reaching level five had fully cured him of the lingering effects of the Havoc Plague, his hand no longer shook. That meant he didn’t need to rely on Tabitha for this.
As he cut, Harvey murmured to himself, “You know, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately.”
Question mark?
“According to the information on your display,” he turned long enough to tap at the screen attached to the bottom of Reacher’s Esoteric Processor, “you are, or were, legendary grade.”
Thumbs-up.
“You’ve been showing signs of picking things up pretty fast lately. Like maybe you’re learning faster than before. Do you have any idea of why that is?”
The construct adjusted until his screen was pointing at Harvey’s face. A line of text appeared.
Reacher is currently unbound. It can be bound to a qualifying artisan, such as a Father of Constructs, provided the artisan is at least equal to Reacher’s level and has an available automaton slot.
A thick finger pointed at Harvey, then Reacher, followed by a flurry of thought.
“You’re saying the bond between us will be big magic?” Harvey said, trying to follow the mental hand gestures.
Thumbs-up. More gestures followed. Reacher kept waving a hand back and forth, then tapping the tattoo on the side of Harvey’s head.
“You’re saying the bond will connect the two of us like the telepathy does, but deeper?”
Thumbs way up.
“But I’m only level five. Why are we already seeing the effects?”
Reacher bobbed his head in a nod. Then, with effort, forced his furnace hatches to produce a squealing series of sounds. “Alreaddyyyy Chooooose Youuuuu, Faaaathhher.”
Something in Harvey’s chest tightened as he understood what Reacher was saying. Because Reacher had already decided to form a bond with him, the esoteric was responding. In essence, Reacher’s devotion to Harvey was magically changing the construct.
“What will happen at level six? When we make it official?” Harvey asked.
Reacher lifted two hands, miming that whatever changes were happening would only increase.
Finishing the carving of an elaborate whorl, Harvey cut radiating lines away from the core symbol, then offered his hand to Reacher. The construct unspooled the copper wire, then used his fingertips to pinch the wire apart. He handed the length to Harvey, who began the inlay process.
It took five minutes to craft the symbol. With steady hands, the final bits should only take another three or four.
“This really is the simplest thing we do,” Harvey muttered before returning to the subject at hand. “I have something to confess.”
Reacher waved. Go ahead.
“The only reason I didn’t have us detour to the Oasis was out of worry. I don’t want you to feel like you have to obey me. You’re my friend. I don’t want that to change. Not ever.”
Several of Reacher’s hatches grated open simultaneously. Sounds like laughter, disbelief, and even a little pain filled the air. The people who huddled nearby, and who had been watching the exchange in mute, awed silence, flinched and drew away.
Harvey glanced around. “He’s just laugh-crying. It’s perfectly normal.” Pausing his work, he put a hand on one of Reacher’s arms. “Just think of him as a big, incredibly smart, strong puppy. He’s innocent, really.”
His words did not mollify the crowd.
“Ah, oh well.” He started to return to his work, but Reacher’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.
Reacher pointed at himself, then Harvey. His scraping voice growled out. “Choooose. Youuuuuu. Beee with Fatherrr.”
Harvey didn’t know whether Reacher was addressing him by his title or his role. Either way, the result was the same. Relief and joy in equal parts did more than ease his concerns. The idea that Reacher might benefit from their bond in some meaningful way was incredibly exciting. “Okay then. Let’s finish this up. As soon as we’re done helping these folks, we’ll go visit the Oasis.”
Enthusiastic Thumbs-Up!
He finished placing the copper wire but didn’t activate the effect. “If I turn this on now, the esoterica and konovium gas will interact. We’ll turn this into a bomb.”
Reacher pointed back toward the engine.
“Ayup. We’re going to have to turn the engine off, or at least stop the konovium input.” Turning to one of the huddled, fearful people, Harvey lifted his voice. “If you see this tube start to glow white, just come over here and push this little bump of copper into place, okay?” He pointed at the spot he’d left the wire out. “I’m going to carve four or five more of these. Just remember, don’t push the wire in until the tube is glowing white, okay? Otherwise, it could explode.”
“Explode?” A woman with three children huddled around her legs looked at him fearfully.
“Um. Maybe not you.” Scouring the crowd, Harvey saw the man with the eye patch. “Hey, you.” He repeated his instructions. “If the tube doesn’t turn white tonight for any reason, pull the copper wire out. It’ll keep people safe. Would you mind repeating all that back to me?”
The man scowled, but glanced at Reacher and did as asked. “Mister, I don’t know ye, or what ye intend, but if ye hurt our folks with yer messin’ around, you’ll have made enemies forever.”
Harvey regarded the man seriously. “When ye see the white light and pop the copper in, draw back. It could warm up a wee quick.” Scratching his chin, he considered the black sky. “Should last ye a year, then need maintenance. Not a lot mind. Just a replacement panel.” He tapped a piece of metal where he’d drawn a single carved line. “I’ll make sure tae arrange for that. Not a problem.”
“Oy, ifin ye say so.”
“Good deal.” Beaming, Harvey led Reacher up the line. People made room, allowing him to complete the symbols four more times. He didn’t make the heating array within sight of the guard towers, mostly to help keep the Low Court folk safe from reprisals. Suspicious guards could cause all sorts of problems.
When he looked back down the length of his effort, he was disturbed to see few people willing to approach his designs. “Maybe I ought not to have told them they might blow up,” he mused.
Thumbs-up.
“That’s not very helpful.”
Gentle shrug.
“I made the designs as simple as I could. Smart people should be able to replicate them when the time comes.”
Reacher pointed up the heating line, then gestured toward the distance and made a curious gesture.
“You’re asking about the other folks?”
Thumbs-up.
“I’m gonna try something with the engine. If I can introduce a little friction to the magic, I’ll be able to send heat down the entire thing without an exothermic reaction. It should replace what the konovium was doing, just by virtue of being active.”
Reacher gave him an accusatorial glare, then opened, and closed his furnace flaps a few times.
“You’re accusing me of weaponizing my speech again, aren’t you?”
Point. Thumbs-up.
Waving his friend away, Harvey began toward the nearest of the walled engines. Reacher once again vanished into the shadows.
Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Harvey mused, “You know, now that I’m feeling less torn by our whole bond thing, it occurs to me that we’ve seen something similar to this before.”
Mental question mark.
“Lyssandra and Okadin. It’s the esoteric familiar bond. I know a bit about it, in theory. I guess something similar is possible between an intelligent construct and its maker, but I’m not high enough level to know for sure. It makes sense that a familiar bond is a magical, spiritual thing, though. Okadin and Lyssandra kind of share a mind and maybe even a bit of their magic or spirits. Maybe.” Esoteric Analysis and Esoteric Application could only get him so far, even with his Legendary class.
Reacher sent a mental image of Felodin.
“Ayup. We’ll ask the mage or Lyssandra once we find them.”
They arrived at the tall concrete wall surrounding the engine. Looking around, Harvey saw no signs of anyone out in the open. There was a guard station nearby, with a hint of flame in the interior, but the soldiers weren’t eager to patrol any more than the locals wanted to wander the streets.
Rainbow dragonfly wings appeared on Harvey’s back. With a giddy, child-like grin, he lifted into the air and went over the wall.
Flexing his legs, Reacher bounced up. Extending an arm, he caught the lip of the wall, and flexed. His other arms shot upward simultaneously, giving him spinning momentum. He flipped over the wall like a giant, demonic top.
Both landed on the snowy interior without incident.
“Now, isn’t this neat?” Harvey said in a dark, sardonic tone as he looked the contraption over. It looked almost precisely like the konovium hopper they’d operated on in Sorghum, just much bigger. “And a little more complex,” he allowed.
The konovic engine was a series of large metal boxes. Basic esoteric symbols, the kind Harvey would have found trivial to craft even at level one, glowed on the machinery. Heavy hoppers were welded on one box, and rectangular structures ran from it to the others along the ground. Above the rectangles were tubes that ran away from the engines.
“Light, please,” Harvey said, pulling his shades down.
Reacher leaned forward, igniting his Processor with just enough material to trigger Harvey’s light sensitivity.
It allowed him to see esoteric patterns with his eyes more clearly. It also hurt.
Turning back to the box, he saw waves of magic emanating from the rectangle. To the Father of Constructs, the purpose of the magic inside the box was as clear as if it had been spelled out. “Remember what we saw in Burnt, with the conveyor belts?”
Thumbs-up.
“I reckon that big hopper is full of konovium Saito imports from places like that. It extracts the magic in the main chamber, then passes the material down to the next chamber, and the one after it, and so on.” He pointed to tubes leading away from each of the big boxes. This close to the engine, they were massive, easily eight or ten feet across. They branched out, passing through gaps in the walls and into the city. “High Court gets the pure stuff. Mid Court gets the less pure stuff, in a variety of concentrations. Low Court gets the runoff.”
Reacher made a stacking motion with three hands.
“Right. They process the konovium, then pass it back into the engine so much that it’s basically plague smoke, with very little magic, by the time it gets to those poor folks.”
Anger flared in the construct, transmitted through their bond. It wasn’t the first time Harvey had sensed Reacher’s emotions, but it was the first time he’d been looking for it.
Putting thoughts of the esoteric bond aside, Harvey rolled his sleeves up. “Okay. Let’s get to work. First, we need to carve multiple Esoteric Conductors on each engine. When we’re ready, we’ll disconnect the konovium hopper. After that we’ll need to vent the conveyor belt tubes so any gas is released before we turn the whole thing back on.”
Boom! Bringing three hands together, and spreading them rapidly, Reacher conveyed the idea of an explosion.
“Yeah. Big one. We need to be careful. Timing will be important. We need to do all of this seamlessly, otherwise we’ll cause more problems than we’ll solve.”
Question-mark. Reacher pointed at the sky.
“Eh. We’ve got plenty of time. Don’t worry.”
Thumbs-up.
“You got your machetes ready?”
The construct smugly withdrew four machetes from his Esoteric Processor.
“I reckon about three hours, tops? The hard part is going to be frictionalizing the magic, so it produces an innate warming effect. I’m not worried about that part, though. If all else fails, we can just cut one of the engines open and I can line it with heating symbols. That could delay us another couple of hours, I guess. Other than the Oasis, I don’t have anywhere better to be. Do you?”
Thumbs-down.
In the freezing cold, just a couple hours after dark, Harvey and Reacher went to work on fixing the city.
Interlude: The Oasis at Saito
“How are you doing?” Tabitha asked Patrick as he led her through the snowy streets. It was getting cold enough to make her teeth chatter, so she drew yet another coat from her Monroe’s Pocket.
Patrick shook his head weakly. “Not well. I work for the Saito Train Authority. It’s not my job to deal with boss monsters or corrupted spawners. I wasn’t ready for what we saw at Crystal Bay.”
Bright lights shone on one side of the street. She looked over and saw a mass of stacked buildings, some of which were cut into the very surface of the mountain. It was hard to make out many details in the snowy dark, but she got the feeling that some of those structures were bigger than the train station.
“I’m sorry you had to go through things you weren’t ready for,” she said.
“Eh. A little salt on the bread just makes it last longer, or something. Right?”
“I’ve never heard that saying before.” She pointed. “How many people live up there?”
“That’s for Saito’s elite. Maybe a couple thousand, if you include assistants and security.” Tugging a pair of bright white gloves on, he pointed to the heating pipe running along the street. Every twenty or thirty feet was a person wearing a winter uniform. “You’ll notice we keep security here, too.”
“I thought this area was all run by the Transit Authority?”
“It is. The Transit Authority handles most of High Court, and the infrastructure for the rest of the city. There are a few wealthy families outside it, but they are few and far between.”
As the temperature dropped, the two moved to the side of the street with the heating pipe. It radiated clean warmth in a six- or seven-foot radius. They passed a cluster of people. In the middle of the group was a swarthy, tanned woman with a halo of fire orbiting above her head. Her eyes blazed, and she grinned when she saw Tabitha looking. The woman’s screen appeared next to her head. It was outlined in fire.
“Are her teeth filed to points?” Tabitha asked as Patrick gently tugged her along. She hadn’t even realized she’d slowed to stare.
Pitching his voice low, he said, “That’s the Fire Princess. She’s the daughter of one of the Transit Authority councilors. She runs one of the adventuring gangs.”
“Gangs?”
“Yeah. They go into Low Court and recruit people to do stupid stuff. From what I understand, she’s been leading teams of newbies into the Delve.”
“She has? Newbies? Why?”
“They help clear out the traps.”
She winced, imagining poor, starving people given the promise of earning class levels if only they’d take the lead in some nightmarish underground dungeon. “Why does anyone allow that?”
“Transit Authority Royalty. They live by different rules. Thankfully, she’s not as bad as her sister.”
“What’s her sister like?”
“They call her the Winter Witch. She’s due to inherit a lot of her father’s resources and connections once he passes. Word is she and her gang actively hunt anyone in Low Court who gets a class.”
Tabitha did the math. “If one sister gets them experience, the other kills them for it?”
“Yeah.”
“I officially don’t like Saito.”
“Don’t be like that. There’s a lot of good, too. You’re just passing through a tough section of town.”
She eyed him. “But you said this was where the Transit Authority held all its power?”
“Yeah. That.” He looked away, slouching as if she’d just hit him. “Anyway, this is where you’ll be staying, just in case you’re curious.”
They stopped in front of a tall, boxy building with lots of lights in many of the windowed rooms. The main entrance was two glass doors, ornately etched with train outlines. A wide stone fountain sat just in front of the building, near the heating pipes. A statue of a wizened old man stood above the fountain, his hands spread. In one hand he held a scroll, and in the other a screen. Several glowing yellow fish bobbed in the water, flipping into the air, and performing acrobatics around the statue’s feet and legs.
