Keron
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Chapter 165 - A Breath
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 18:00:06 +0000 UTCA week later, after returning from the East Woods and claiming over half their harvested crystals as payment, squad Cold separate on orders to wait for another contract. Emily returns to Earnie’s workshop, happy to take some time to work on her research.
“Hey,” she calls out as she barges through the front door, charging her voice with a touch of mana to be heard over a whirring metal grinder.
She leaps gracefully between a few metal gangways, landing on the main production platform and swinging the bag off her back, tucking it into the corner. Earnie offers her a dismissive wave over his shoulder, not breaking his focus, so she turns and steps off the platform, falling into the arena of scattered junk below.
Emily scans the waste, picking a bare spot and walking towards it with purpose. She waves a hand, calling several magic crystals from her belt.
Light and dark, fire and lightning, wind and metal, six elements burst around her, with arcing lines of mana forming a six-pointed star lacing them together. She claps her hands together, drawing mana from the crystalline wellsprings of power that are waiting to be used and carving runes into the air, weaving a temporary array into place.
With a final snap of her fingers, she releases a shimmering purple lustre into the air that seems to lock the array in place, sealing the space inside the glowing boundaries and isolating Emily from the outside world.
Satisfied, she pulls the Mensacus from her belt, gazing upon the morphing runic sequences tracing patterns across its housing.
“Work with me,” she whispers, flicking mana across her tongue and pouring her intentions into her words.
The sealed egg pulses weakly, so she tosses it into the air, raising her hands and casting Forgemaster, releasing delicate strings from her fingers.
Emily splits the metal ovoid open, letting it bleed liquid malice. She casts a spell through the blend of sand and metal particulate beneath her feet, raising a dais below the egg and cutting a deep bowl into it to gather the cursed tooth’s lifeblood.
Her fingers keep working as the dense mana gathers, peeling apart the fine metal shell encasing the cursed object. She shreds it into layers, holding the rune-touched outer sheets whole while carving thin veins through the rest, joining the originally isolated focal points into a dense, breathing network of connections while following the guiding touch of the Mensacus’ attempted erosion.
After remaking the internal structure, she presses the housing back into place around the cursed tooth, keeping the gathered malice outside. The moment the last broken edge is welded back into place, Emily reaches out, dipping her fingers into the basin of red and black sludge.
Darkness creeps up her digits, spreading with thin red veins. She lifts her hand before the corruption can spread past her knuckles, ignoring the feeling of weakness spreading from her arm, sapping her strength and scratching the back of her mind like nails on a chalkboard.
Emily taps the blackened fingers to the waiting Mensacus, closing her eyes and tracing lines across the distorted runes. The contamination is drawn from her fingers by the tooth, slowly absorbing back into the seal as it shifts into something new, alive even.
By the time her fingers have returned to their usual colour, the transformation is complete, and the patterns covering the egg of metal keep shifting on their own, glistening with only a faint hint of blue lingering among the dark red and black shades.
Emily waves her hand, lowering the Mensacus into the remaining pool of liquid mana, letting it hungrily drink the bubbling malice and draining the last warm light from its runework.
Without looking away, she steps toward the empty, metal-lined basin and reaches for the ominous grey orb sitting in the centre. Her hand closes around it, covering its writhing black and red runes.
She feels it try, weakly, to draw her mana in, but it doesn’t feel threatening. In fact, the draw is so faint she wouldn’t even notice it if she weren’t alert to it. It feels oddly intimate, as if the shaky connection would break the moment it was found by anyone but her, so she willingly pours her mana through it, releasing her strength in a slow trickle that barely drains her reserves.
Her surroundings fade away, and Emily lowers herself to the ground, settling into a meditative position with the Mensacus clasped in her lap and her head lowered.
She doesn’t move, lost in a trance for over two weeks. The only signs of life visible from outside the glistening barrier around her are a few faint twitches of her fingers that send more magic crystals from her belt to join the barrier, maintaining her isolation.
Finally, her eyes snap open as she feels one of her system skills, mother’s blessing, activate in full. The last of her strength slips through her fingers, seeping into the metal egg clasped in her grip that pulses in warm recognition before falling dormant as the abstract blessing takes hold.
“It’s done,” Emily mutters, collapsing flat on her back with her eyelids heavy. “He’s fallen asleep for now.”
A small frown creases her brow for a moment at the pronoun that slipped from her tongue, but the faint connection humming back at her as her thumb rolls over the smooth metal resting in her palm soothes her worries.
“I’ll feed you soon,” she whispers, tucking the Mensacus into her belt again and letting out a tired sigh, pushing herself upright while checking its system window for changes.
She finds it unchanged, except its intelligence debuff, which has increased to minus six, so she dismisses the window and dismantles the barrier around her, gathering in the spent crystals.
“I was wondering when you’d be coming out,” Earnie calls from high above.
Emily turns to face him as she disassembles the dais she formed, looking up and seeing him wiping grease onto his overalls.
“Folks came looking for you.”
“While I was here, or before?” Emily asks, kicking off the ground and launching herself up to land beside the disgruntled mechanic, ignoring the aching exhaustion pulling at her core.
“Both. I’m not your bloody secretary you know,” he grumbles in response.
“Then tell them to fuck off? If they don’t find me here, that’s not on you.”
Emily picks up her bag, walks over to a free workbench, and pulls at a stool.
“Hmph,” Earnie grumbles, grabbing his own seat and dropping down opposite her, sanding a small, machined piece in his hands. “Didn’t get a chance to. Little fella came asking for you while you were gone. Called himself Podlick or something. He got stopped by the guards outside and they told me about him. You know ‘im?”
“Oh, Pod?” Emily says, looking up with a hint of surprise, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “I didn’t expect him to look for me so soon. Yes, I know him. He’s a… student. We travelled over together from Modo.”
“I see,” Earnie hums in consideration. “I’ll tell them to let him through next time then.”
“Did he say what he was after?”
“Hell if I know! He left without much complaint and hasn’t been back since. Anyway, old man Silver sent for you two days ago. Didn’t want to bother you with all that, so I told ‘em to wait.”
“Thank you,” Emily says with an appreciative nod, sending half of her cores to sleep and slinging her bag over her shoulder as she stands up. “I’ll take a look at one of your production lines next time I’m back if you want. Other than for your X5s. I told you the barrel assembly was being done in the wrong order, and you chose to ignore me. That one’s on you.”
“Yeah yeah,” he responds with a scoff, waving his hands dismissively. “Hardly a fair trade. But maybe the new shotguns if they’re done by then. I want your advice on them anyway.”
***
“New mission,” Emily declares, leaning back comfortably and tapping one hand on the table.
Mana explodes, wrapping the table Squad Cold is gathered around, tucked into the corner of Silver Moon’s headquarters, in an isolating barrier.
Glowing light spreads from her hand, floating up to form the image of a glistening desert oasis, with a bright blue flower blooming in the centre of a clear pool of water.
“Our target is one of Denros’ Oasis outposts. It’s one of the few places aquacillis grows naturally, and its once-every-five-year growing cycle is coming to fruition soon. Our orders are to infiltrate their borders and snatch the plants' fruit.”
Ice Petal straightens abruptly in her chair, looking at Emily with wide eyes.
“Does our pay include…”
“Yes,” Emily responds with a calm nod. “Each aquacillis plant produces between two and six fruits, and this outpost has three plants. We’re expected to turn over six fruits at the end, and any excess can be shared between us.”
She twists the image above the table, showing the plant in closer detail, highlighting multiple flowers of featherlike petals, some empty, and some wrapped around a bundle of juicy-looking, oblong fruits. Everyone straightens with excitement, despite no one but Emily and Ice Petal having the affinities needed to gain benefits from the water-based natural treasures.
“I’ll buy any excess off you as well,” Emily continues before anyone else can speak up. “And I’m willing to pay in mana crystals of your chosen element, so you’re in for a good payday. We’re set to leave in two days, and we’ll meet here at zero six hundred, so be prepared for a long trek through the desert. We’ll be taking it slowly to avoid detection at the border, so make sure you have supplies for the long haul. Understood?”
“Yes!” her team replies in chorus as the magical image between them bursts into glittering dust.
***
A few days later, squad Cold alight a truck at a strikingly familiar desert outpost.
Emily leads them out into the open desert, scrambling across the sands on foot towards no-man’s-land. The first few days of their journey are boring, trekking across a bare expanse without any signs of life other than a few harmless lizards.
Every night they gather together under a magical light, with Emily sitting at the centre of their camp cross-legged, lost between the Spellweave and her mechanical designs.
It isn’t until their fourth day of exposure to the beating sun that they finally meet resistance.
Emily holds up a hand, signalling for their spread-out squad to gather on her, while staring at the horizon through the eyes of a bird positioned high above in the open skies.
“There’s a large herd of ellelites ahead. We’ll be getting close to Denros territory soon, so this will be our last chance to stretch our legs and gather meat until we hit our target,” she says, flexing her wrists in anticipation. “Stay sharp, we start hiding in earnest after this.”
Muttered assent spreads through the squad as they separate again, moving forward in a set formation with Emily at the head. Half an hour later, they scramble up to the top of a tall dune and come into view of a group of over a dozen beasts grazing on a small patch of dried-out herbs, barely surviving in the trough of two dunes.
The large quadrupeds are covered in leathery grey skin with dark, thickened plates covering their joints and vitals. Each of the heavy-set creatures stands past the height of a military truck, with a single thick horn protruding from the centre of their heads.
They spot the squad almost immediately, turning their beady eyes towards them and raising their dual trunks in a fierce chorus of trumpeted roars.
Emily lights up in an azure glow with mana pouring from her eyes, rolling across her body in rippling waves of plasma that charge her muscles with power. She springs forward as her squad sets up at the peak of the dune, beginning their chants while Emily slams knee-first into an ellelite’s cheek, rocking its head back and sending the beast tumbling to the floor.
She flies back from the collision and hits the ground with a crackling pop, shooting under another beast and raking two sizzling blades of plasma along its belly. The ellelite screams in pain before suddenly cutting off as Whistler fires a mana-charged pellet through its mouth and out the back of its skull.
Two jets of water shoot towards Emily from either side as she rises behind her fallen foe, but a wave of frost pours from Ice Petal’s wand, slowing the beams for Emily to step past unhindered.
The ground cracks beneath the remaining beasts, sending them all off balance as Emily condenses a ball of charge. After a few uninterrupted seconds, it’s formed into a dazzling orb of plasma, screaming to be released.
Emily slams both palms flat over the orb, sliding her palms up her forearms and moulding the energy quickly as it threatens to shred her flesh. Her hands keep moving into the open air, with her elbows touching and her palms curled towards her prey.
With a wide, sweeping motion, Emily drives a cutting blade of plasma towards the disoriented ellelites. The beam collides with the beasts and breaks apart in sync with their hollered screeches, erupting in scattered bolts.
Emily’s palms turn skyward, and the bolts freeze, her hands rise, and the bolts shatter, gathering around their targets in dazzling forms of weapons, from swords and axes to sickles and polearms. Her hands clench and fall, and the lightning armoury collapses, leaving silence after their whistling screech.
Emily lets out a satisfied breath before turning her eyes away from their quarry and back to her squad. They all lower their arms, moving down the dunes to get closer while staring at her with lingering awe at her masterful display of magical control. Pretty Boy is surprisingly quiet, hanging back with a conflicted expression as his eyes flicker over the damage to the corpses.
His expression melts into an encouraging smile as he meets Emily’s gaze, so she files away her doubts and addresses the group.
“You know the drill. Strip and bury,” she commands, reaching over her shoulder and pulling an orb of mixed metals from her bag. “I’ll get started on our anti-detection measures.”
