Rallindin Peregaust’s first ambitions were simply: avoid getting burned as a witch against the ways of Technomancy, and to more effectively help her aging parents. Once, she invented a spell to give her father phantom legs…

  He had a heart attack from the shock and horror of the matter and almost died. She quickly abandoned the effort and managed to avoid scrutiny thanks to the assumption of her father’s growing dementia. He was suspicious of her for a year or two, though.

  Instead, Ralli began finding ways to connive for wealth to let her parents live the remainder of their years in peace and comfort. The easiest and quickest way to avoid too much sapping of time on her studies was gambling. Gambling and cheating at it with magic. So that’s precisely what she did. Several times it took her far from home to find high rollers to leverage, but she returned rich, on the lie of gold prospecting so her parents wouldn’t balk. Her mother probably knew, but never once brought it up.

  Her first goal was a success, as she was able to hire a caretaker for her deteriorating father and totally unburden her mother from any necessity to work. It wasn’t easy watching Dad effectively lose his mind to age. She understood within herself that the world wasn’t right. Something was broken that needed fixing. Perhaps everything was broken.

  What good was death, as it stood? Too often, very little could persist beyond it. Suffering extracted without the payoff it deserved. Consciousness was trapped by time in the moment to agonize over it, yet there was far more unknown and untapped beyond it, backward and forward.

  Her father passed, and a month later, her mother did, too. She buried them with her own hands near the house they’d lived in so long and raised her. It was a sad ending, but a relief from their aggregate sufferings. It was also a new beginning. Hers.

  She left the house to the caretaker and left home to begin wandering, adventuring, and learning more about the ancient world. Through it, she hoped to forge a better future than what the endless wars of the empires offered.

  ??············???···········??

  There was an interim blurry state Sammy was aware of, allowing her to ponder the vision while disembodied, as the intro was undoubtedly fast-forwarding to something more challenge-centric.

  Early. Very early. It feels like… the first. But is that the first of the game itself or the first after a reset cycle? Incredible, either way. Wow. Hmm. If true. I’m not certain, it just feels like it. How did Ozra even access this? It seems unthinkably difficult to find.

  She had little time for more, though, as the blurring only lasted for moments. The simulation unraveled and placed her in a body once more.

  The Grand Artificer laughed at her from across the dark chasm, his great throne like a giant armored claw around him encased in a typical forcefield. He shrugged with a hand. “I have no idea how an assassin among that pathetic raid group got this far, but you’ve committed suicide to enter this chamber, witch. Do you have any idea what protects me?”

  Archmage Rallindin Peregaust, The Endless Font, stood proud and confident across the chasm as hot air of many kinds blew, wind whipping her glittering blue robes, her crystalline staff Jammer in hand. “I know what protects you. I’m not here to kill you, Spanzurat. I’m here to make a wager for your allegiance against the greater threat to Talspora.”

  Scoffing, Spanzurat nonetheless remained amused. His glowing eyes flared red. “A small fry like you? What could you possibly have to offer me? Do tell.”

  Rallindin flashed a smile. “Much! For one, insight you could not dream possible. Care for a taste? You secretly desire independence for a land you’ve grown to love. You loathe your operating orders and laws of governance.”

  The Grand Artificer’s humor died. His eyes seemed on fire as he glared down at her. “You will not leave here alive spitting such foul words.” Despite the faux fierceness, under the surface he was shaken, damning the words as truth.

  Rallindin was unmoved by his words. “Secondly, I no longer hope for mere disruption or destruction of technology with my arts. In studying each of them, I realize there is a greater power in their synthesis. In the orchestration of all of them together.”

  “Heresy! It’s already known how much chaos you’ve sown in Alineres by corrupting the Alchemical Society. I knew it was one step from witchcraft and you pushed that lecher right over the edge, didn’t you? She just had to have the last living pearl. I suppose you should be thanked for weakening a rival, but you won’t repeat that success here. She couldn’t even be bothered to come and help you? How sad. Regardless, I reject your wager and-”

  “Spare me your false religiosity! I know better. And I haven’t specified the wager yet. So here it is: I destroy your overgrown mechanical dragon toy, you refrain from fighting me to the death or other such nonsense, and you let me show you what we can accomplish together. Including” — and she waggled her eyebrows — “improving your faulty design! Deal?”

  Spanzurat surged out of his seat to point at her in fury. “You’ll see how faulty it is when you are squashed like a rotten fig!”

  Wait, an overgrown mechanical drag-...?

  A colossal metal construct — a mechanical dragon claw — came up from the chasm, casting a shadow over Rallindin before dropping downward, indeed with an intent to quite simply smush her.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  At that very moment, Sammy suddenly had control of the body.

  What?! Come on-!

  Sammy dashed to the side as quickly as she could, and, thankfully, Rallindin had some sort of three-dimensional movement already baked in, assisting her speed. She felt the wind pressure of a giant metal pinky claw before it slammed into and cracked the floor. She breathed in acrid, oily, metallic air as she sped away.

  Phew! Eugh- need to stay away. That smell makes me gag. Damn you, Ancient Tashome Iteration!

  The dragon’s massive metal head was coming up, too, already tracking her diligently with swelteringly hot, glowing red eyes. She took a moment to simply fly away and create some distance in the enormous stone chamber, seemingly designed to be a dragon death trap.

  The great, steely-toothed maw of the construct opened wide and a spray of boiling hot oil exploded out in a cone, billowing black smoke cascading at the far edges.

  No fucking way.

  She couldn’t hope to dodge it. Sensing to some degree Rallindin’s great casting speed, Sammy threw up a defense, praying it would work. Her enemy had protected himself with some sort of technomancy forcefield — perhaps Rallindin would have developed a mimicry of this?

  The spell came forth as she gestured and a runic sign appeared before her, even as she felt the heatwave of the oil — and smelled its hideous scent. Somehow, though, her instincts were that it wouldn’t be enough. She needed an edge against that powerful breath attack. She needed Extra.

  My wheelhouse. But what? What counters oil? Well, oil and water don’t mix. Worth a shot.

  Utilizing [Tweak Spell], she modified the protective bubble at the last second, making it aspected to the element of water.

  A bubble of water enshrouded her just in time for the wave of boiling oil to crash into it. Sammy closed her eyes and turned her head in a flinch response, as the tiniest mist managed to make it through before it was sealed away, burning her something to the severity of a sunburn. And it smelled and felt oily and metallic, like grease reused over and over for a century.

  Agghhhhhh!

  Despite this, the bubble otherwise shielded her. She felt an impact force and the necessity to push back against it levitationally to avoid being tossed, but the oil was parted in its great cascade. The water bubbled and steamed from the heat but held, the oil slipping around it.

  The power of water. Innogen would be proud.

  Deciding she might as well channel her disgust usefully, Sammy screamed hideously, in order to fake out her enemies, who almost certainly couldn’t see through the massive oil spray and massive smoke screen. Rallindin ‘died a horrible death.’ Sammy even added some final gurgling sounds.

  The Grand Artificer was cackling, obviously thinking differently about what was happening beneath. “I must admit, I expected more. No matter. I poured my soul into you for a reason, Gangremach. This victory is only the beginning. Ornithopters! Bring me whatever remains are left of her.”

  When the smoke cleared, though, a watery bubble still floated strong. Sammy dropped it as it required concentration to hold. She flashed a smile and laughed at Spanzurat, staring past three mechanical giant insect things that had paused in the air. “Is a steam bath all this hunk of junk has in the tank? Don’t get me wrong — I appreciate it.”

  “What?! Inconceivable!”

  “That word doesn’t mean what you think it means!” Sammy aimed to take advantage of the opening. It seemed likely that Rallindin’s trusty staff — with a name like Jammer — was designed for technological disruption in a world of rampant machine use. So she pointed it at the magitech dragon and activated it.

  A mass of glowing wires shot across the distance at the dragon, who swatted at it dismissively with a claw that dwarfed the attack. But the wires shot in all directions, unaffected by that parry. They went around, they wrapped around, they went through and inside of the arm. They quickly went inside the dragon’s torso, too, and found other things to grasp. Then they tightened and jerked.

  A gut-twisting sound erupted as the dragon screamed, spasmed, and collapsed. It writhed, twisted, and rolled as if to shake off pests, but these pests were internal. The wires continued spooling out of the staff — they went into the internal structure of the dragon or wrapped around, jerking continuously.

  Spanzurat looked on in horror. He threw his hand at Rallindin. “Attack her!”

  Five insectoid ornithopters charged, brandishing wicked, blade-like appendages ready to slice and dice. Sammy laboriously dodged them in the air, one after the other. She worried about the staff, but it continued to give slack… and shrink. It was gradually unraveling itself through the attack.

  She took a tiny cut on her forehead, and a deeper one on her leg, feeling blood spew. Not enough to stop her by any means.

  One of the ornithopters slipped within her guard to grasp the staff between pincher-like manipulators-

  No — scissors!

  They closed and tried to snap it in half, shaking with the effort.

  Sammy blasted it in the face with a Forcebolt directed from her free hand. It smashed the insectoid head and crushed it inward. This then burst into energetic flames and the creature was knocked away, quickly falling from the air to crash into the stone floor, inoperable and twitching.

  A few wires of the staff were frayed, but none had snapped. She’d thrown it off in time.

  The other Ornithopters tried to swoop upon her, but Rallindin was moving backward with speed and momentum on her side. Meanwhile, the dragon writhed and bucked and screamed violently from the ground. Cracking sounds could be heard from within and it smoked and leaked reddish oil from multiple vectors as the ongoing attack kept it completely disabled. Its master watched on with a horrified yet mesmerized grimace, apparently held spellbound in disbelief, perhaps sharing some of its pain.

  And that all let Sammy do the age-old MMO tactic in regards to the flying machine insects, just as she’d done against the onslaught of some fiery specters once upon a time — she kited them.

  Good thing they didn't think to include an emulsifier in the mechadragon breath.

  Next Chapter...

  Fighting continues!

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