The Vermillion Troupe had settled in well.
Children chased each other between wagons on woven mats. Fires crackled, ringed by cast-iron kettles and scavenged stools. The twenty-three vardos and three Conestoga wagons now stood in firm half-circle formation, shielded by lashings, tarp walls, and watch crystals carved into wind-chimes.
And in the center of it all — standing like a cairn in the middle of the slow, patient storm — was Lyra.
She turned the instant Prolix’s steps crunched over gravel.
He met her gaze, golden to golden.
“You’re back later than expected,” she said, voice dry but not unkind.
“There was more to find than expected,” he replied.
He stepped closer and unfastened the reinforced side-pouch from his hip, withdrawing the folded schematic he had recovered from the fourth Lost Workbench. Its surface shimmered faintly with soul-thread and kinetic glyphs, tinged still by the breath of old magic.
Lyra took it with care, her claws brushing the edge. She tilted it slightly to catch the firelight and trace the shimmering lines.
“The real thing,” she murmured.
He nodded. “Gauntlets. Adaptive. Meant to thread directly into a Tinkerer’s construct interface. They’ll scale with me once I reach the required level.”
She ran a thumb over the center sigil — the half-sun-and-wrench mark.
“I remember this symbol,” she whispered, so softly only he could hear. “An old trader once carried it. Long before you joined us. Said it belonged to ‘someone who built gods and broke kings.’”
Prolix said nothing, but his grip tightened around his satchel.
After a moment, Lyra looked back up at him, her expression sharp again.
“And the ruin?”
“It was a dungeon,” he said. “Dormant. Tied to something older — a palace that remembered Dedisco.”
Her eyes narrowed, but not with fear. With calculation.
“And PillowHorror?”
“I met them there. They were… waiting.” He hesitated, then added, “They guided me deeper, helped me survive. Their knowledge of the Lunar Empire is firsthand.”
Lyra’s brow rose, but she didn't interrupt.
“They didn’t threaten us. But they also didn’t promise anything,” Prolix continued. “Only that this land was never meant to stay quiet. That Dedisco stirs here — not to destroy, but to see who still dares to build.”
Lyra studied him in the firelight.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
“You’ve changed,” she said simply.
“Am I harder to trust?” he asked.
Her lips twitched in a rare smile. “No. Just… harder to stop.”
Behind them, Ralyria sparked a camp lantern. Kaelthari polished her bardiche with quiet purpose. Marx passed, giving Prolix a short, approving nod. The camp pulsed with life — but beneath it, Prolix felt the threads he'd begun to gather: the blueprints, the god, the buried cycle humming just beneath the stone.
He had a fragment of the Pale Mandala tucked into his inner pocket.
And Dedisco was no longer just a name whispered in ruins.
He was listening.
“You’ve done well,” Lyra said, folding the blueprint carefully. “Rest. Eat. The rest can wait for morning.”
“Do we move soon?”
“Soon,” she said. “But not yet. The land is still tasting us.”
He nodded, though part of him already longed for the silence of blueprint-work, for the soft rattle of tools, the hum of mana through stone and wire. But rest — real rest — was rare. And Lyra had spoken.
So Prolix turned toward the wagons, toward warmth and storylight.
But in his mind’s eye, the altar still watched.
And somewhere out there, PillowHorror smiled in the dark, watching the threads begin to tighten.
Later that night, beneath the quiet breath of canvas and the soft crackle of a brazier, ProlixalParagon sat alone in one of the Conestoga wagons, cross-legged on a thick mat of scavenged pelts and folded canvas.
Outside, the camp murmured — the low music of the troupe winding down: the occasional snatch of lullaby, the murmur of coals, the soft creak of wagon wheels settling with the cooling of the night.
Inside, only the warm blue glow of a mana-lantern and the quiet scratch of parchment shifting beneath his fingers.
He’d laid the blueprints out before him in a fan, each one fitted into a rune-wrapped binding sleeve to protect its enchanted material. Soul-thread and tracing foil shimmered in the lanternlight, and across their surfaces, strange geometric glyphs flickered faintly — like language buried in light.
He had four now.
And they were more than just instructions.
They were a conversation.
One held between maker and future, between intention and necessity.
He studied each in turn:
Heavy support armor for the lower body. Fused kinetic stabilizers reduce environmental knockback and grant brief bursts of acceleration when powered with metal or wind-aspected mana. Protective plating adapts to ambient elemental hazards.
Level Requirement: 40+
Core Materials: Spiral Alloy, Reinforced Mana Mesh, Flux-Wrapped Chain
Affinity Scaling: Metal, Air, Kinetic
Soulbound: Yes>
A weapon design whose inner chamber is clearly meant to hold a mana battery or resonant crystal. Multi-form interface suggests a modular construct — possibly shifting between blade, whip, or conduit form. Runes suggest arcane-reactive parrying functionality.
Level Requirement: 40+
Core Materials: Unknown
Requires: Mana Crystal of Prismatic Purity (Unacquired)
Affinity Scaling: Mana, Metal, Soul
Soulbound: Yes>
This one still baffles him. A dense blueprint formed of overlapping geometric constructs. There’s no clear use case. No chassis design. Only glyphs marking internal resonance threading, memory plates, and an interface module unlike anything else.
Level Requirement: 40+
Function: Unknown
Core Materials: Soul-thread Alloy, Aether-reactive Glass, ???
Affinity Scaling: All
Soulbound: Yes>
Notes in margins (from original creator):
“This one listens. Do not speak into it lightly.”
“It needs a heart.”
Gauntlets threaded with soul-reinforced filament. Designed to enhance fine-motor tool control and deliver kinetic feedback to constructs via direct motion translation. Can interface with custom gadgets and adjust to shifting mana loads mid-combat.
Level Requirement: 40+
Core Materials: Bound Alloy, Soul-Carved Splints, Kinetic Lattice Wiring
Affinity Scaling: Metal, Soul, Kinetic
Soulbound: Yes>
Prolix leaned back, one paw running through the marbled whorls of his fur between his ears.
Four of seven.
Each one tuned for a Tinkerer. Each one soulbound.
Each one shaped like it had been waiting for him.
But they weren’t just pieces of armor or tools. Together, they felt like a set — a full ensemble designed for a master of motion, invention, and choice. A class archetype that didn’t exist in the Compendium.
Not yet.
He tapped the edge of the third blueprint, the strange one.
The one with no chassis. No label.
Just that haunting margin note:
It needs a heart.
He frowned. “A heart like mine? Or a real one?”
The blueprint shimmered faintly, its soul-thread twitching once like a living nerve.
Prolix set the rest aside, fingers drifting to his journal. He opened to a blank page, scratched out the day’s events in shorthand — dungeon depth, mirror trials, altar resonance, Dedisco — then beneath it, drew a gear.
Not a normal one. A broken one, split along its curve but still turning.
Underneath it, he wrote:
“To destroy is not failure. To abandon the cycle is.”
And beneath that:
I’m starting to think the Master Tinkerer wasn’t just building tools. They were building a successor.