Steel Trim
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Engineering, Magic, and Kitsune: Ch. 1
🕑 Added 2024-11-19 16:39:56 +0000 UTCToday marked five years since John Hall had found himself in this world, the realization etching a frown on his face as he withdrew a pencil-thin file from the shard of gray crystal he was working on. Five years of being shunned by the locals. Five years of lingering on the edge of society like a spectre. Five years since he was stolen away, a week after he finally got his dream job as an industrial engineer.
Well, that ruined his mood fast. It was probably best to stop for now lest he ruin the last day of work and have to start from scratch. Sighing, he carefully laid a cloth doused in magically null sap over the crystal to prevent the work-in-progress focus from being contaminated by outside influences. Memories from the boiling summer when his first cooling focus sputtered like a dying AC unit after a long, hard week of prototyping and refining it came to mind, and he shuddered at the mere idea of a repeat. Were he so inclined, he could have probably cooked eggs on the stones outside that summer.
Perhaps he'd treat himself to some of the booze he "liberated" from that overturned cart a few months back and forget everything for a while. John supposed he should be sad that the owners got snagged by the forest monsters or bandits, well, likely not the latter since they left booze behind, but he shrugged it off after a moment.
A faint smile flickered onto his face at the thought of not worrying about tomorrow for a while. It'd be nice… but he had something else he could do while he still had daylight.
John grabbed a gauntlet of thick, dark wood and brass from the workbench and slipped it over his left hand before running a quick set of flexibility tests to ensure that nothing had gone wrong with the sensitive device's joints. Satisfied, he opened a case sitting on the table, grabbed the arcane focus Heat E08, and placed it in the socket on the top of the gauntlet, locking it in with a twist.
He took a moment to appreciate the borderline miracle of this small but well-built outpost. Why was it abandoned despite having a good half-stock of supplies? Perhaps it was bad luck, or maybe it would give him cancer in another twenty years. In any case, he would likely have starved or gotten eaten by something without it years back, so he'd deal with that if it came.
After leaving the armoury he'd repurposed into his workshop, John walked through the courtyard under the late afternoon light, noting his surroundings as he did so. He'd probably have to push cleaning this area up in the schedule; the plants were starting to push through between the stones again, and he'd yet to figure out how to replicate concrete to patch it properly. At least the fields were doing well this cycle, so he'd have plenty of winter stock, especially now that he had a proper cold room dug out under the barracks he’d converted into a secondary warehouse.
The primary warehouse stood right by the converted one, holding reasonable amounts of wood, various metals, and sealed ceramic jars of what seemed to be medicine. He had never been brave enough to try and identify it after the first sniff sent him retching when he got here. He really should throw that stuff out. If it hadn't gone bad when he showed up, it definitely was now. Still, for all he knew, unsealing it to clean out the containers would release a smell that the local wildlife would find irresistible, and he'd be up to his chest in gnashing teeth and razor claws. A project for another day.
The main administrative building he used as his house was the same as ever: a three-floored, white-painted wood building sitting on a stone foundation and looming over everything like a giant. Well, it was the same as ever, aside from a few spots that John just now noticed where the paint chipped away along the west side—likely from last night's storm. He'd have to get up there and reseal it sooner or later, lest rot set in on the unprotected wood.
The fields were still doing fine; his impromptu arcane sun lamps seemed to be plenty to the liking of the strangely fast-growing local crops, a mixture of staples and herbs that he had found seeds for in storage and which had become the backbone of his diet. John was lucky that his harebrained idea with the magic lamps had worked, with how cloudy it had been for the last month and a half. He had never seen anything like it; if this kept up, he'd have to keep them running going forward.
Heh. Magic. Sometimes, despite being well and truly familiar by this point, there was still a thrill to it that randomly hit him.
It was probably the only genuinely positive aspect of his situation. If you had told John five years ago that he would be a wizard or artificer or however you'd classify him now, well, he would have laughed at you and called you high. However, if you had been able to convince him, he would have been positively ecstatic. Sure, he didn't have the innate abilities some locals seemed to have, but he still wielded magic, even if it was through items, most even crafted by his hand!
In any case, it should have bugged John more that he was in another world or another universe or whatever the hell happened to him, yet there were still somehow potatoes. That was without even mentioning how vaguely Japanese the architecture and writing looked, and that potatoes are a New World crop on top of being from another universe, but he honestly couldn't bring himself to care. Maybe one day, he'd find some answers. John knew how to write in the local language… kind of, at least, even if he didn't speak it. It opened doors if he found someone who wouldn't run screaming, reach for their weapons, or call upon their magic. Assholes.
The locals were more or less human themselves, just barring some superficial animalistic features like a tail or ears, yet his lack was enough to set them into a tizzy. Hell, once he watched a caravan from the bushes and saw a man with nothing visible other than some faint scales that were almost entirely hidden under his shirt anyhow, and that guy had no issues with the rest of the people there. Maybe he smelled funny.
Regardless, the books on maintaining the few magical tools he didn't make here were helpful for learning the local vertically written script and how to do basic artifice-y things. Really, once you had the basic principles of magic down, the whole thing wasn't too rough to understand… if you were willing to spend a year or two of evenings experimenting and crunching numbers with university-level math at least, but it was one hundred percent worth it to have magic.
He climbed onto the top of the thick, sixteen-foot-tall earthen walls, skittering up the outer layer of grey stone. He really should replace that old, rotten ladder or make proper steps. The walls themselves were intelligently designed; he reckoned they could soak up cannon fire that would shatter a pure stone wall, but they had their own issues. John glanced down over the outside edge, sighing at the mess of vines creeping up over them, and he raised his gauntlet.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Pointer finger to aim. Reposition pinkie finger to set mode. Bend ring finger to set intensity. Use the thumb to disengage the safety.
Fire.
Scorching, flameless heat sped from his finger in a ray, scything through the creeping vines like an invisible blade. They fell away, stems vaguely smoking, into a heap below. He lost himself in thought as he walked around the exterior and purged the creeping vines with brutal efficiency. Sweeping the ray back and forth over the slope a few times before moving on to the next section made it light work, with plenty of time to think. Still, he hardly had time to get in the groove before he had to stop for the focus to cool down, or for the capacitor in the base of the gauntlet to refill when the simple gauge on the side read low on flame-aspected mana. John really should have brought his cold focus so he could rotate them, but that was back inside on the second floor, and he didn't feel like heading all the way back in.
Perhaps he could add a battery port to the next version of the gauntlet to speed this type of thing up. The only significant design issue was that he'd have to find a way to ensure the mana didn't leak out the internal channels or outside stuff didn't end up inside and contaminate it, but some simple valve work could deal with that…
He lost himself in work, dreaming up new tweaks and ideas. Burning the quickly growing vines away always felt weirdly tiring, even if it was hardly any work. He'd be almost tempted to leave them be and do his brainstorming inside, but seeing one of the things in the forest try to climb inside using untended vines for grip late at night a few years back made it clear that he should never neglect that particular chore.
A dull vibration came from his pocket, and he froze.
He hurriedly pulled a small tablet out, freezing once he registered that the crystalline light for the north-side motion detector 3C was flashing, fading a few seconds later. That was the one closest to the road. Was it one of the locals? It could be a kid looking to explore the old spooky outpost on a dare. But he had never seen someone nearby approach. Perhaps some of the local wildlife? Unlikely, something about the place seemed to repulse them. Maybe another monster?
John dropped down into a low crouch so that he couldn't be seen over the battlements, scurrying over as quietly as possible while maintaining a decent pace. Theories and worries flooded him, going over each possibility and coming up with a way to deal with it, only to immediately follow up with a nagging question of what if the plan didn't work. The device shook again, and the light for the second layer, 3B, went off. He chewed the inside of his cheek, the thought of some small army outside coming to mind, looking to reclaim their outpost. They certainly weren't moving quickly, whoever they were. Running would have likely tripped the second within half the time, so they were likely walking, and if they were creeping in, it wouldn't have gone off yet. Perhaps he could flee out the back before they arrived?
He banished that thought before he could send himself into a fit. No. It almost certainly wasn't that dire. Taking a deep breath, he arrived at the north gate. He paused, holding his breath and hearing naught but the wind and the rush of blood roaring in his ears. Fishing a freshly maintained knife from its sheath, he held it up over the wall, staring at the reflection in its blade as he swept it over the area, the cloudy skies dodging any issue with reflective glare giving him away.
A while later, 3A finally triggered, the last line of surveillance breached… It felt like the world held its breath with him, silence reigning as the breeze itself stilled. Then, the crunching of gravel shattered its rule, barely audible despite the dead silence. Whatever it was only had one set of legs, and they were using the path, so it was likely not a monster, then.
Not some sort of army scout, either, as they'd try to make their presence less noticeable. Some lone local, perhaps? No, if this was some juvenile dare, there'd be others to make sure they went into the "haunted" outpost or whatever nonsense they’d thought of. Who, then?
A tense minute later, he got his answer as a vulpine-faced figure cast in black and white strode from around a bend in the road. The tall, snow-white figure was unmistakably female in shape and wore a jet-black kimono, trimmed and embroidered with what looked to be gold thread. Nine long, fluffy tails fanned out from behind the fox, tipped in black as if they were used as brushes for some grand contract or treaty, with matching marks upon her paws and hands.
Perhaps he should be more shocked that something he vaguely recognized from mythology was here, but he only felt a nameless, gnawing dread deep in his core. What was the significance of nine-tailed foxes again? He had never seen a fox on two legs in this land before now, and what little he remembered of Japanese culture and mythology was that nine tails was a big deal. What were they called, again? Kit-something? He tensed.
Was she some sort of divine messenger or envoy? Maybe a punisher? She might have been sent by someone or something due to his trespass here, but he couldn’t fathom why it would have taken so many years. He breathed deep, centring himself and burying his paranoia before he could start to spiral.
His visitor's golden eyes scanned the walls and the gates with a slight frown, but if she noticed his spying, she gave no sign of it and walked forward with an unearthly, effortless poise.
Now that he was looking at her more carefully, some of the golden patterning on her kimono was discoloured around her left thigh, darker than the rest, and every step with the matching leg was a bit shorter. An injury, perhaps? She moved with purpose toward this mostly hollow shell, but surely the village nearby would be a better place to seek refuge than this long-abandoned fort? It had been vacant for over half a decade at the bare minimum.
John fought down the urge to curse as a realization struck him. If her info was outdated, she could have easily mistaken his maintenance as the owners still being here. There had to be a way to salvage this. Those didn’t look too fancy to be travelling clothes and weren’t terribly worn down by long-term use, neither did she appear to have supplies on her, so she probably came from reasonably close by. Additionally, she would have likely not used stained clothes, so whatever happened to her must have been since she left.
Was she just someone who was lost and alone, perhaps even—
She rapped her knuckles thrice upon the gate below, having wandered out of his view while he was busy wildly speculating. Panic flooded him before he clamped back down, slowly withdrawing the blade in silence and slipping into deep thought.
He could just wait until she left to be safe.
But then he'd just be abandoning someone, and could he claim to be much better than those who cast him out on sight?
He had no way to talk to her.
But he knew how to read and write in their language, at least to a degree, and if she was important, she was likely literate.
She'd probably just run away.
She was rather unlike the average locals in appearance, so she might not have the innate terror they seemed to hold of regular humans. Little looked human of her aside from a two-legged stance, and even then, they ended in paws rather than feet, so perhaps he wouldn't be as uncanny to her as he was to them. Besides, so what if she did? It'd just be one more person taking a look at his ugly mug and sprinting away, and then he could go back to his work.
She could attack him.
He was armed and didn't see any weapons on her, and the locals’ magic seemed to have quite a bit of windup to it, unlike his.
He was really going to do this, wasn't he?
John sighed and stood, leaning over to look down at her. "Hey there," he rasped out, a third of a decade of misuse making his voice rough and weak, less like gravel and more like coarse sand.
His visitor didn't jump nor run, no; her ears perked up, and her gaze shot up toward him, a flash of surprise crossing her eyes before she looked him up and down like a specimen on display. Not a moment later, a small torrent of speech in her language spilled forth from her, although he could make neither heads nor tails of it. Her voice was low and smooth as honey, borderline melodic, with a playful lilt that would have felt almost teasing coming out of another person.
Hope rose in his chest at the idea of someone willingly speaking to him before it was crushed alongside the equally unhelpful fear. She was still an enigma. "Sorry," he responded, shaking his head, "I'm afraid I don't speak your language."
A frown crossed her face before fading away, followed by the vulpine woman repeating a phrase in another language, then another, then a third, and he shook his head and muttered an apology to each in turn. John held up his finger to indicate that he'd be a second, although he had no idea whether she understood him as he hurried away.
From his workshop, he grabbed a few sheets of paper, an ink pot, and a brush that he liberated from the same cart as the booze. Usually, he'd prefer his homemade pen for writing, but it was ill-suited for being intelligible when a thinner line could seemingly change the meaning of a character, even if you knew which ones were supposed to represent whole concepts and which were meant to be individual letters or sounds like English had.
In large characters, he wrote, "Hello. I only understand some writing. I am self-taught." At least, that's what he hoped he was writing. This would be much simpler to explain if he knew what the character for language was. Carefully dialling Heat E08 down so as not to incinerate his work, he dried the ink in a flash and rushed back to the entryway. Below, the fox tranquilly stood precisely where he left her, eyes locking onto his as soon as he climbed back up to the ramparts.
He fought down an involuntary shiver; something about her set him ill at ease, even if she had done nothing to cause him distress beyond showing up. She was dangerous. Even if she harboured no special abilities, she was a complete unknown.
John held the sheet out for her to read regardless.
She studied it quizzically, eyes narrowing before flicking back to him, setting his instincts once more screaming about hidden danger. She turned, and for a second, he feared she would walk away, but she merely grabbed a stick and used it as a stylus to write in the gravel below.
"I am," she wrote, followed by a character he suspected was her name. However, it could just as easily have been what type of creature she was or a formal title, "I will keep my writing as simple as I can. I would like," what followed was a character he didn't understand, although he had seen it used in conjunction with a record of troops being rotated out of the front lines in a long, grinding conflict. Perhaps it meant some form of short-term sanctuary? "I need a place to rest and heal." That confirmed his suspicions about her limp, at least.
He frowned, sinking out of sight before scribbling more on the paper, drying it quickly but importantly out of sight so as not to reveal his magical capabilities quite yet. It was a matter of safety, of course; it'd be a lot easier to defend himself if she didn't know John could ignite her from thirty paces. How fast it dried so he could hang it without dripping might be a bit suspect, but there was a world of difference between knowing he could dry ink quickly and that he could specifically shoot heat toward where he was pointing with his gauntleted left hand.
Of course, odds were his gauntlet had been invented elsewhere, so this was almost certainly futile.
"I am John," read the message he hung over the side, using English characters for his name, "I am human." Again, going back to English rather than this pseudo-Japanese—he assumed it wasn’t outright Japanese since he hadn’t seen suffixes being added to names, even in personal documents—"Multiple of my kind are humans. How long would you need to stay?" The character he used for kind was from a battlefield report speaking of multiple different types of units. It probably had a more martial meaning, but he hoped it was close enough.
The fox studied the paper before looking back up at him, a curious tilt to her head as she drank in every detail of his form, leaving him feeling like a zoo animal in a cage. "John," he said, pointing to his name and tapping his chest. "Human." At that, he tapped on the word and then circled himself. "Humans." He circled a larger area around himself to imply a group.
Comprehension lit in the fox's eyes, and she casually flashed a smile with too many pearly, sharp teeth for his liking before pointing to the unfamiliar character. "Yuki," she chimed in an almost sing-song voice, tapping her chest. "Kitsune," she continued, drawing a character in the ground, then drawing it again, mimicking the same circling motions he made the whole way, "Kitsune." Next, she wrote on the ground, "I would need two weeks." And at that, she hiked the leg of her kimono up.
He fought down a heave at the sight; her upper leg looked like someone had taken an axe to it. Deep gouges were hewn into her, looking as if much of her flesh was almost scooped out, and the afflicted area was stuffed with soaked-through gauze and haphazardly bandaged over. On top of all that, whoever did the work didn't even bother to clean the area, leaving dried crimson streaking down her leg. She shouldn't be walking with such ease. Hell, she should be dead! An infection should have set in by now, especially if she stayed out last night in the storm with no tent! He instinctively went to rush down to let her in before freezing.
This "Yuki" should be dead. Why wasn't she? That wound could have easily led to her bleeding out, never mind the smell attracting unwelcome visitors or touching on the near certainty of infection. He glanced back down toward her, frowning. She wasn't in any of the books about local forest monsters. Was she some sort of shapeshifter that could only enter if you let her? For all he knew, the limb would heal the second she stepped inside, and he would get his throat torn out with a single swipe.
The safe thing to do would be to send her away.
He dipped behind the walls and wrote, "Only two weeks. I will provide you with fresh bandages, food, and medicine from my garden," before hanging it over the wall. Just because the wound hadn't become obviously infected yet didn't mean it wouldn't at all. Thankfully, he had read up on a herb or two with medicinal uses and managed to grow them and isolate the active ingredients.
A smile flickered onto Yuki's muzzle as she clasped her hands together and gave him a stately bow. Rather than musing on the implications, he flew down the slope, striding hurriedly over to the gate before slowing. Doubts crept up on him again, visions of everything that could go wrong as he neared the entrance. Images of him finally dying alone in the woods just because something finally decided to attack with a modicum of guile flashed through his mind, bleeding out as she tore through his still-living flesh with razor-sharp fangs.
He took a deep breath, removed the plank blocking the door, and swung the gate open to whatever fate may hold in store.
