Len accepted a bowl of food from one of the engineers who had been put on dinner duty. One troop was up on the side of the tender keeping watch, having already eaten.

  "Its going to be a right pain fixing all of those pipes, it'll probably take up the most amount of time," Christina said. "Looks like they broke in several places all at once, right mess in there."

  "Pipes?" Rick asked.

  "Pipes run from the firebox, taking the heated gasses through the water, to boil it and create the steam that moves the engine," Christina said. "They got mangled in the explosion. I'm piecing back together what I can and then I'll put them back into the engine."

  Len frowned. "That steam then goes into a series of pistons and valves that push on the elbow and crank system of the wheels."

  "Uhh huh," Christina nodded.

  "If we were to do away with the crank system we could use a lightning enchantment to spin the shaft between the wheels and do away with the crank system altogether, wouldn't need the steam engine at all."

  "Hmm?" Joe was the one to make the noise now as he leaned forward.

  "Though that's a big modification," Len looked at one of the flatbed carts. "I can try it on something simpler to see if it works and go from there."

  "He's in thinking mode," Rick said.

  "Need a smaller modification to work on the train," Len stood up, eating absently as he moved towards the engine.

  Joe and Christina scooped up more of their food, following him with full mouths.

  "I was thinking of just making an enchantment that increases the heat in the firebox, then you could regulate the temperature more. Then add in some water condensing enchantment to fill the tanks, wouldn't have to keep them topped up all the time, reduce the weight." Len spooned in more food looking at the damage to the train.

  "Whole boiler is shot, if we can bypass that, we're at the pistons and valves," He looked at the mechanisms secured in their riveted steel boxes.

  "What system are they using?" He pointed at the box with his spoon.

  "They're using a double acting engine, so they have the piston that moves back and forth with a sliding valve pushing in high pressure steam or releasing it on either side of the piston," Christina said.

  Len laughed to himself. "Well I was experimenting with gravity and high pressure today for enchantments to decrease the weight of the train. Fun coincidence, if I was to enchant the inlet to draw in air and force it into the system we wouldn't need all the rest of the system. No need for water, no need for steam and coal and heat, just air pressure shoving the piston back and forth."

  He turned to the Xinta's with a smile.

  The two of them were looking at one another with frowns. "I guess it could work, though you'd need a lot of pressure," Christina said.

  "The longer the piping from the boiler into the engine the better. Well do we even need it?" Len spooned more food into his mouth.

  "Could you explain just what you mean? Joe asked.

  "What I mean is that using the pipe that directs pressure into the inlet valve of the piston engine I can carve an enchantment into it which will create pressure this will allow it to run without needing coal, water, steam—any of that."

  Christina and Joe looked at one another at the engine and then Len as he finished off his dinner.

  "Now, how much pressure is needed to move the piston? If I can have that information I can optimize the enchantment to work with that," Len said.

  "We really wouldn't need the boiler or anything? We don't need all of this," Christina waved to everything that was part of the train above the wheels back to the cabin.

  "Probably not, though again depends on the pressure you need, what might make sense is having one enchantment that draws in air, fills the boiler area with pre-pressurized air, then that is dragged through the piston inlet pipe enchantment and that increases the pressure more. You know what, adding in a heating enchantment wouldn't be a bad idea. It is steel after all so it will take two enchantments and with the extra heat that will increase the energy potential of the air." Len nodded to himself.

  "That is going to change engines completely, the whole boiler and steam component of a train is the largest part, it takes the most amount of steel and labor," Joe said.

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  "If we can make the lightning engines that will change things even more. They'll need a big mana power source, and to make them more effective you really need to have wiring around them, otherwise you're dealing with four enchantments having to activate in just the right sequence to turn the damn wheel."

  "Enchanter unleashed, verbal diarrhea," Rick waved his hand as if explaining a vista. "Keep it simple stupid!"

  Len worked his jaw, Rick was right. Damn he keeps doing that, is the world upside down? Len kept looking at the engine, trying to figure out the best way to explain everything to them.

  "How much do you know about enchantments?" He asked.

  "You carve some things into a material and it creates an effect," Joe said. Christina nodded along.

  "That's right. Any spells that you can cast you can create an enchantment to do the same thing. Enchantments allow you to alter the effects of the world."

  "Okay," Joe nodded, Christina following too.

  "Most enchanters—were—are," Len frowned and shook his head. "They're purists. That means that they use enchantments by themselves to do things. The true genius of enchantments is using them in combination with other things. Use them together with engineering concepts. You can create an enchantment that decreases the weight of something, that's great. They'd stop there, instead of adding in a lever to the system, to make it even easier."

  "Okay," Joe said.

  "The engine that we have here works, now I can add in enchantments for the water, or the heat, great—or I can add in one to draw in air, another to pressurize and direct it into the right pipes. We circumvent the system that's already in place and create a greater efficiency. That will allow us to move for right now. Though the true power will come in seeing what enchantments and engineering concepts working together will create the biggest output, following?"

  "Yeah," Christina said and Joe nodded.

  "Okay, so we don't have pipes through the boiler so we can do a direct pressure system and we can be up and running in a bit.

  "What about those lightning engines you were talking about?"

  "So it was figured out that if you have electricity running through wires that you can spin an axle between them. You can also make an axle turn if you have enchantments set up in series that create magnetic forces upon it, as long as you get it spinning to start." Len waved away his words. All of that is more for later, right now we just have to fcous on getting this engine moving.

  "If we can do without the boiler and the firebox we can reduce the amount of work requires to make our own engines a lot. There is a lot of work that goes into making the boiler to keep all that pressure in. How thick do the pipes need to be?" Christina asked, her words tumbling out after one another.

  "The thicker the better probably, that way I can put in stronger enchantments. I will be carving into the metal so we'll need to make sure that they can handle the weaknesses of the enchantment."

  "If we know the exact pressure that is going to be moving through the pipe we can figure out the gauge of the material and make sure that it will never explode. We would be removing the variables that come with the current designs!" Christina looked at her father.

  "I feel like we're going to have to learn more about these enchantments going forward. Seems like another tool in an engineer's belt," Joe said.

  "Ah, yes I'm going ot be trying to teach more people about it going forward," Len smiled.

  "Come on, I'll show you the piping and where it goes into the engine, It might be more efficient if I just cut out all of the piping and then—well could you put and enchantment throughout the boiler to draw in air?"

  "I guess that I could," Len agreed, Christina led the trio to the hole in the side of the boiler and climbed up, pulling out a light crystal that had been put into a polished metal housing.

  Len put his bowl and spoon to the side and climbed up, looking into the pipe filled boiler that ran from the firebox infront of the control cabin to the smoke stack.

  "You see there?" Christina used her light to point out a pipe running along the top of the boiler that curved down to the engine.

  "That is the pipe that takes in the high pressure steam and runs the engine.

  "Oh that would be perfect, its thick and got some good length to it,"

  Rick snorted from the camp, causing a few of the other engineers to cough and pay attention to their meal closely.

  I probably would have done the same in their shoes.

  "That will give us more material to work with. We can cut it up into sections, each section pressurizing it a bit more, add in collars to keep the air in the pipes," Len said.

  "Having greater zones of pressure through the pipe is going to create a negative pressure at the mouth of the pipe drawing more air from the boiler up and into the piping and through it into the engine," Joe said.

  "Right," Len nodded. "And since its steel we can increase the heat too. Now power."

  "It won't run off of ambient mana?"

  "It might, but its going to be working a lot and if we can give it a dedicated power source then we have more room for increasing the effects. We could connect the pipe and the boiler to the firebox, but enchant it to drain mana from what's thrown in and connect it to the train's body, can carve a mana gathering enchantment into the tender, maybe the other cars and have them feed that mana forward?" Len rubbed his face. "Complicated for now. Okay, mana stones and cores, or people pushing mana into the fire box to support the whole thing to start. It'll passively start charging up. We turn the whole train into a mana battery."

  "You can do that?" Joe asked.

  "Yeah, that's what we're doing with all of the stone we're extruding for Goran, then we can store a truly massive amount of mana that can power some great big enchantments for defense," Len said.

  "Didn't know they were doing that," Joe said.

  "So we will put mana into the firebox that will get everything working?" Christina asked.

  "I'll add in a way to turn it on and off, the brakes will still work too. Having the train as a mana battery will give us some good charge to start up, but on the way back we're going to need people to donate mana into the system to keep us going, not too bad." Len smiled.