by Andrew Rowe
As an Arbiter, do I have the authority to do that sort of thing? And, if so, how would I go about exercising that authority?
I knew precious little about what an Arbiter’s role was supposed to be in relationship to the towers. I wished Katashi had actually explained anything, but in the absence of that, I really needed to find another Arbiter to talk to — or at least someone with the knowledge of one.
Warren Constantine was the clearest example, but maybe someone else at Farren Labs could help me. I’d resolved to ask about it as soon as I got a better idea of what Farren’s motives were.
I did go visit Researcher in the other hotel room to ask some questions, but sadly, Researcher didn’t have any more information than what she’d already given me back in Valia. I hoped that now that Researcher didn’t have to worry about conflicting with her Summoner’s goals, she’d be able to tell me more — but she really didn’t seem to know anything else on the subject.
I worked through my feelings of powerlessness and frustration by practicing with my mana threads. By conjuring threads of mana and connecting them to my items, I hoped that I’d eventually be able to create effects that no single item could accomplish.
I didn’t make any breakthroughs that night, but it was good to have a task to set my mind to. Getting stronger was the only way I could fight off the feeling that I had, once again, lost someone I cared about to the depths of a Soaring Spire.
***
In the morning, I ate breakfast, practiced some more, and then sat for a bit and waited for Sera to come to my hotel room.
She didn’t. Hours passed, and my nervousness grew.
Sera almost always woke up and got started before I did. I’d expected her to knock on my door first thing in the morning, waking me up to take me to the lab.
When that didn’t happen, I hoped that she’d just been up late out of worry, much like I had...but as the morning pressed on, I knew it had to be something more.
I went and found her room and knocked.
No response.
I waited, then knocked again, louder.
Finally, I heard a groan and the sound of movement.
“...Coming...”
I felt myself start to breathe again in relief.
The door swung open, revealing my severely disheveled sister. “Get in if you’re getting in, or let me sleep.”
I raised an eyebrow, then stepped inside. Sera closed the door behind her.
“You okay? It’s not like you to be...” I made a nonspecific gesture at her whole body.
“Completely exhausted and somewhat irritated?” She asked.
“More like ‘dressed up as a medusa for a costume party’. You look like your hair got in a fight with the rest of your head and lost.”
“Thanks, Corin. You really know how to make your sister feel confident about her appearance.”
I rolled my eyes. “It’s my pleasure. Now, are you okay?”
“Well, aside from having my self-confidence utterly shattered by your callous words, I suppose I’m intact. If you’ll give me about an hour to throw myself in the shower to hide my tears, I’ll fill you in.”
“Wait. Before you go...is Cecily back?”
Sera shook her head. “No sign of her yet. I’m worried, but we knew it could take a while.”
“We did...I just still don’t like it.” I sighed and sat down. “Make the shower quick. We have business today.”
“You’re really enjoying being the early one today, aren’t you?”
I smirked. “It’s a rare occasion, I’m celebrating.”
She groaned and stomped off to the showers.
I suspect she took longer than necessary just to spite me.
When Sera finally emerged, I passed her a cup of hot tea.
“How uncharacteristically thoughtful of you.” Sera smirked. “Feeling guilty for earlier?”
“Please. Not in the slightest. I’m just being efficient.”
Sera rolled her eyes and accepted the tea. “Well, I accept your tribute, regardless.”
“So, it’s not like you to be up this late.”
“Observant as always, brother. It’s almost like you know me.”
I took a sip of my own tea. “What happened?”
Sera smiled sweetly. “I paid a trip to Miss Farren last night.”
I very nearly spat out my tea, and not just because I’d made it a little bit hotter than expected. “What? When?”
“Middle of the night. She said to surprise her. I failed.” Sera shook her head. “I was correct that she was still at her office, at least. But she seemed to know when I was coming. She had food waiting for me, and it had been freshly prepared.”
I gave a grunt. “That’s one more point in the favor of future sight, or something like it, then.”
“Perhaps, or she simply had someone at the door inform her before I made it to her office, and she had a way of getting hot food in the time it took for me to make it through the halls. It wouldn’t be impossible.” Sera sighed. “But her preparation wasn’t the most concerning part.”
I frowned. “What should I be worried about now?”
“She wants Ceris.”
My eyes narrowed. “That’s...concerning. Did she say why?”
Sera nodded, taking another drink of her tea before replying. Her throat was clearly still sore, in spite of her surgeries and all the recovery time. “Magical storage like what Ceris is capable of would be useful for her research, apparently. I think she wants to figure out how to duplicate it in order to make a new type of battery.”
I took a moment to ponder that. The claim made a degree of sense; Ceris seemed to be able to store a single spell effect, regardless of the mana cost. If it had any sort of capacity limit, it was tremendously high; it had been able to work on spells like Elora’s Sapphire-level attack against Saffron, after all.
But Ceris was the symbol of a visage, and a potent weapon against the Children of the Tyrant. Simply using it as a foundation for research was practical, but I couldn’t possibly trust that it was her only motivation for wanting the sword.
“What is she offering?” I asked.
“Fixing my scarring entirely. She thinks her facility can do things that Sheridan couldn’t, due to their advanced knowledge of how attunements actually work.”
I gave a nod. “That would certainly be useful, but not necessarily ‘trade for an item of incalculable power and cultural significance’ kind of useful. And I’m not really confident that she could do better than Sheridan, anyway.”
“We’re in agreement, and I said ‘no’ for the time being, but I’m considering a counter offer.”
“You want an artificial attunement?”
Sera snorted. “Please, brother. Don’t deride my ambitions like you would my poor hair. I want five artificial attunements.”
I frowned at her. “There are several problems with that. I don’t know if I trust these things in general, and what about interference if they’re too close to each other?”
“Putting aside whether or not they work, the advantage of these artificial ones is that we can choose where they’re placed. I asked about that already. I could have one attunement on each body location, of a type chosen for compounding effects, like how your transference attunements work.”
I gave a slow nod. “I like the theory behind it, but if it’s that simple, we’d be seeing multiple people running around with six artificial attunements already.”
“Expense is likely an issue. I did some research on the market value of an artificial attunement — they go for hundreds of thousands of silver.”
I stared blankly. “Hundreds of thousands? You could buy a small city for that.”
“That’s an exaggeration, but you could buy an apartment complex, or a few hotels like this one. You could not, however, buy Ceris, the Song of Harmony. This sword is priceless — and five attunements is frankly a cheap price to pay for it. I wouldn’t be considering it at all, but Ceris isn’t all t
hat useful with my particular attunement.”
“I’m...not sure Katashi would be happy if you sold it.”
Sera shrugged. “Perhaps not, but I also sincerely doubt he would take any steps against me for it. And I’m not worried about him simply being disappointed.”
“Can...we do some research on these artificial attunements first? I feel like there’s a lot they’re not telling us.”
“Clearly. But I want you to know that, barring anything we find to disqualify the attunements, I am leaning toward offering that trade.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay. I suppose we need to get started with some research then, don’t we?”
“We certainly do. Just as soon as I completely change my hair style, since you’ve destroyed my confidence forever.”
***
Sera did not, in fact, completely change her hair style. She did comb it and brush it for a while, though, and then pulled it back into a single tail. I though it looked pretty good that way, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell her that.
It was close to mid-day by the time we reached Farren Labs. Not an optimal start, but we weren’t exactly employees with a set start time, so I didn’t have to worry about it too much.
There was no attendant at the desk when we arrived. Instead, two figures were standing right behind the door waiting for us.
One of them was Nakht. His expression was completely neutral as we walked in, but from the way he had his arms folded, I got the impression he was a little irritated.
The other was an older dark-skinned woman wearing a dark blue suit. She wore some of the largest earrings that I’d ever seen; they looked like the fangs of a great tiger, and they were inscribed with dozens of tiny runes. I found myself briefly staring at them, wondering how she could fit so many enchantments into something made out of a fang. Was the material artificial?
The woman spoke as we walked in, smiling brightly in a stark contrast to Nakht’s demeanor. “Good afternoon, Miss and Mister Cadence, and welcome to Farren Labs. We’ll be your guides today. I’m Kahi Zephyr. I believe you’ve already met Nakht.”
Nakht gave a curt nod.
“Yes, we’ve had the pleasure.” Sera smiled. “Thank you both. Can I ask what we’ll be doing today?”
Kahi turned to Sera. “You’ll be going with Nakht to our Applied Summoning division. We have a number of uses for Summoners here, especially ones with some of the...unusual monsters that you have, Miss Cadence. And I believe you have a non-standard Summoner attunement?”
Sera gave a hesitant nod. “Something like that.”
“That’s quite exciting. Attunement variants are relatively rare, and we’re quite interested in cataloguing and studying them here.”
“I’m certain you are.” Sera gave a strained smile. “I’ll be interested to see what your facility has to offer.”
“I’m confident you’ll be satisfied by what you find. Before we begin, you’ll need to sign some initial paperwork. Some basic non-disclosure agreements, liability waivers, that sort of thing.”
We got to work on the stack of paperwork she handed us. I was rubbing my eyes by the end and hoping I hadn’t accidentally signed away my soul by missing a line or two.
“I’m surprised you’re letting us see much of anything if you’re working on secret projects here,” Sera noted.
“Oh, you won’t be seeing anything terribly secret today. All of the military projects are at another facility. The non-disclosure agreement is there mostly to make sure you don’t talk about any details of projects that haven’t been announced to the public yet, but you won’t get to see the really impressive stuff unless you’re actually hired — at which point you’d have to do a lot more than signing documents. We have magically binding contracts for that level of secrecy.”
I blinked. “Can you tell us how those magically binding contracts work?”
“If you reach that stage of the process, we can have someone explain that to you, yes.”
I nodded to her. “Okay, thank you.”
I suppose that means that things like the god beast attunements are probably at a different facility, but that’s okay. I don’t need to start with those. Getting some foundation for how artificial attunements in general work first would be wise, anyway.
Kahi smiled brightly as we handed in our papers. “Excellent, thank you. Now, before I forget, let me give you guest badges.”
She slipped two silvery cards out of a coat pocket, each attached to a lanyard, and handed them to us. “You’ll need to wear them at all times in the facility.”
I lifted mine, examining it. There wasn’t a name on it like one might have expected from a work badge; instead, it simply had a series of runes written across it.
That’s an information storage rune, similar to what I used on the mana watch, but for text rather than number values. And that one is something related to...an alarm, maybe? Oh, maybe some kind of authentication function for entering restricted areas...?
Sera elbowed me. “Talk now, stare at enchantments later.”
“Right, sorry.” I took a breath, slipping the badge on. “When can we speak to Miss Farren again?”
Kahi gave us a very professional smile. “While you are both honored guests, Miss Farren’s time is limited, and she will be unavailable for much of the week. I’m confident we’ll have plenty to show you in the meantime, and hopefully you’ll know enough by that point to accept an offer of employment.”
I didn’t like the idea of waiting that long. I had a number of questions for Farren, but I also understood that she ran a company and couldn’t be available at our every whim. “Thank you. Can I ask where I’ll be going?”
“You’re coming with me, Master Cadence.” Kahi pointed down the hallway. “You’re going to see where new attunements are born.”
***
Sera and I split off with our respective guides.
In spite of my nervousness about Cecily’s absence and splitting up from Sera, I could barely contain my excitement.
Ever since I’d heard about artificial attunements, I’d wanted to know more about them. The potential to distribute magical power without having to go through a potentially deadly climb would undoubtedly have a tremendous impact on the world...if they were ever allowed to spread.
Given what had happened with Echion, I had serious doubts that the visages would allow this sort of research to continue to the point that they became widespread in society. Unless, of course, the visages were removed from the equation entirely like the Godslayers faction wanted...or one or more visages decided to support the process.
I had a strong suspicion that one or more visages were already backing Farren Labs. They had been around long enough that I didn’t see how they could be functioning without a visage’s direct or indirect approval, especially given how active Ferras was supposed to be in Caelford’s society.
Wydd was very possibly involved, too, given both my brother and Sheridan’s connections with them. I wished I knew more about Wydd’s motives, but they were notoriously secretive, even to the other visages.
Finding Ferras and asking her directly about both artificial attunements — and helping Sera with her condition — was one of my agenda items for my visit to Caelford, but it needed to wait. Finding out more about Warren Constantine was a more immediate concern.
“Farren Labs is one of the largest employers of Enchanters on the entire continent,” Kahi explained. “This particular building houses branches of three of our divisions.”
As we walked down the hall, she waved toward a window I’d seen during our last visit. Within it, I could see people working on assembling and enchanting tremendous limbs of metal and stone. “This is one section of our Advanced Armor Division.”
“Advanced Armor?” I frowned. “Those look like golems to me.”
“Ah, they are. But look a little closer.” Kahi pointed at a corner of the room, where I saw a small team lifting up limbs of one of the golems to compare them agai
nst the limbs on an athletic woman wearing a heavily padded suit.
My eyes widened. “Wait. Hold on. You’re making wearable golems?”
“That is an excellent way of summarizing our Advanced Armor. We create golem shells that are custom fitted to a wearer, much like traditional plate armor would be. Advanced Armor has all of the functionality of a traditional golem, and work independently, but the area where it truly excels is when worn by an attuned. When someone wears a suit of Advanced Armor, it moves when they do — meaning that an ordinary human can have the strength and physical resilience of a golem while they wear it. It provides an unparalleled level of physical power and protection.”
A good amount of that sounded like marketing speech, but I had to admit, I was still pretty sold on it. “But...how can you make it move along with a person? Is it connected to their mind somehow, or does it simply react to your motions?”
Kahi smiled. “You’ll be able to get answers to those sorts of questions if you end up choosing to work here. For the moment, I’m afraid your tour will only include information that is available to the public.”
I nodded. I knew there had to be a catch.
I gave the Advanced Armor Division one last look as we passed by, wondering exactly how difficult it would be for me to duplicate that sort of enchanting on my own. There were several elements of it that I could sort through how to build, but I could understand why Kahi was being secretive about the techniques necessary to make the golem move. That was, in my early assessment, probably the greatest challenge.
As I pondered, Kahi continued explaining. “Beyond obvious combat applications, our Advanced Armor Division is on the forefront of research into fully articulated prosthetics. In cases when healing magic is insufficient to restore a missing limb — a common problem here in Caelford, where we do not have many Menders — our Advanced Armor Division is capable of making a replacement limb that moves naturally with the rest of the body.”
That strongly implied that some sort of mental integration was being used, rather than simply physical motion copying. “Are these available for sale?”
“Not to the general public, at least not yet. Most of our current developments are for military contracts. A handful of prosthetics are in the early testing phases outside of that, mostly for people who work for the lab or their family members.”