The neighbors are going to be a problem.

Atius had ended the meeting with us going over what he had originally come to settle: The raider threat. The update was short and to the point. He’d dispatched scouts to get early reports on movements from the Othersiders. The scale of the attack would need to be massive to overcome the defenses of the clan and the reputation of a Deathless. That sort of industry can’t be hidden.

The clan lord was going ahead with shoring up the defenses and getting maintenance crews to start bringing the wider turrets out of their mothballed states. If it turns out to be a hoax, he’d lose a few months of resources that could have been put to living conditions which was a price he was willing to pay.

The price he wasn’t willing to pay was panic and terror. After debating with his war council, they had come to the conclusion to keep the attack hidden from the public for now. When the announcements come, they’ll come paired with all the solutions. The last thing the clan lord wants is fear spreading through his clan in the middle of preparations for it.

The airspeeder’s crew had already been sworn to secrecy as a baseline, this was just confirmation that these orders were now permanent until Atius was ready to deliver the news himself.

Regardless, time was not in our favor and the clock was counting down until the threat came to our doorsteps. We had to get prepared.

“Got a moment to talk?” I asked Kidra as we watched the clan lord pass by the gates of our estate, bodyguards in tow.

“I have fifteen minutes at most before I need to return to my duties.” Kidra said.

“The feast I’m guessing?” I’d heard about it from the gossip vine. Kidra was putting together a feast to celebrate the rise of house Winterscar. As should be expected. We recently gained a new armor and we have a new head of house. Both would have earned their own separate feasts, so Kidra couldn’t skimp out on this one. Winterscar was rising as a brand new house in all but name, a whole new culture would emerge from the new members working together. It was our duty to make sure that culture wouldn’t become the petty political power grabs of the old. Kidra wanted something functional, streamlined and powerful. And I just wanted to eat fish and tinker on projects without having to worry about words like ‘budget’ and ‘responsibility’ so I’d say our goals were perfectly aligned.

She probably had a few more tasks for me to do. And the recent news Atius had dropped on us paired with his direct orders had probably put her plans on the wayside. “Don’t think I can help out with that, given the priorities to the clan.” I didn’t mention the Occult since we were now outside the saferoom, but the idea was implied. Between helping her with the feast and working on the tasks given that could possibly swing the fight to our favor, the priority was obvious.

“I’ll need to compensate. Thankfully, I have a myriad of tools at my disposal besides sending you to stare people down in armor.” She said, already calculating in her head.

“Got a few more minutes while I have your ear? I did discover something recently and we haven’t had much time to talk.”

“I’m assuming it’s good.”

I chuckled ominously at that. Cathida certainly fit a lot of adjectives. “I wanted to introduce someone I met. Since you’re always nose deep in paperwork these days, I haven’t been able to introduce you yet. You know, I’m going to miss the days when I didn’t need to schedule an appointment just to talk scrapshit with you.”

“Somehow I question that. Knowing you, dear brother, you’ll already have figured out how to bribe my secretary within the day.”

“Please, I would rather call it charitable contributions. And it’s chocolate, by the way. Just for your information.” Admittedly, this was just food court gossip about Kidra’s new Logi accountant keeping a small reserve of personal funds specifically for chocolate. I can’t vouch for the accuracy.

“Well, have you already sent for this person?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I tapped the side of my helmet a few times.

Nothing came out. Kidra glanced around the emptying gateyard. “I’m waiting for this bit of yours.” She said dryly.

I coughed, knocking my head again. “Cathida, that was your cue.”

“Hmm, what? You stopped talking about boring things now? Finally, should have told me earlier. All this tea drinking and talking about raiders, you couldn’t have brought out anything more fun to talk about?”

Kidra’s eyebrows shot up, boring a hole into me. “What.” She said delicately, “Did you do to your armor?”

“I had Journey overwrite it’s language to mimic the previous owner of this armor. It was an old crusader named Cathida, who died in her twilight years doing one last mission.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised you managed to make an armor, of all things, go mad.”

Cathida cackled in. “The only thing I’m mad about is that your little brother here doesn’t know the proper ways to fight! Back in my day, no squire I train would ever be this held back. Too much backtalking. I have to beat it out of the little git somehow.”

Kidra nodded slowly, then turned and walked to a bench, sitting down as if nothing was wrong. She tapped the side of her ear, activating the comms chip. “Edgar. I’ll be held up for another half hour. Please move my schedule accordingly.” She turned back to me, a wide smile. “Now, you’re going to sit down and tell me every little detail about what you’ve been doing with that armor while I haven't been looking.”

So long as it wasn’t sensitive information of course. That went unsaid. I made my way over and sat down by the bench. “Remember last time when we were opening up Winterscar?”

“I remember you panicked and ran. I decided to let you take the time you needed.”

I nodded at that, leaning back on the bench. People were passing by, handling errands and items. Pointedly, they didn’t stop to gawk or stare, keeping their heads focused on the tasks at hand. “That was the right call. I needed some time to think or just do anything else to keep my mind busy while I calmed down. Journey had video logs of Cathida.”

“Ah. So you started viewing the memories left behind? How long did you spend?”

Cathida chimed in on that. “The little voyeur spent about three hours in total watching random videos suggested by Journey. Not that I mind, all those videos showed me in a great light and I have an ego to maintain.”

Kidra fumbled slightly. “It’s… odd to hear an armor speak like this.”

“What, timid all of a sudden just from little old me? Ha! Even dead my presence is still keeping people on their toes.” The old grandmother said, the harsh tone at an odd conflict with the whispy breath that colored the edges of her voice. "If it makes you feel any better deary, I'm not truly Cathida, only an echo of the old bat. Keith here described it as being a 'figment of journey's imagination.' Accurate enough I suppose."

“How do I even refer to you? As the armor, or the woman?” Kidra asked, curious at the engram.

“Cathida works fine, though Journey is more technically correct. Like I told the brat here, I don’t care myself.”

“What do you care about, exactly? I don’t often get the privilege of speaking to armor like this, I admit it’s peeked my curiosity.” Kidra said.

Cathida cackled like a witch. “Oh, the only thing Journey here cares about is keeping little Keith safe. Me on the other hand, I want to whip him into shape, and then beat him a few more times for good measure. Also feed him more. Have you seen how skinny he is? Poor dear would keel over if a strong wind blew the wrong way.”

Kidra smiled at that, stopping my interjection. “He does, doesn’t he? I’ve never been able to get him to eat all his vegetables when he was a child, a habit that followed somewhat to this day. I’m glad there’s someone else who’s interested in his general well being, that puts me more at ease.”

“Peh.” Cathida scoffed. “Anyone who’s going to inherit my legacy had better be just as good as I was. And that’s what I intend to do, even if I need to drag the little monster kicking and screaming every morning to the training yards.”

Kidra nodded quickly at that. “He has been rather... lax about his combat training. What kind of training are you planning? Do you need any additional resources? I would be more than happy to assist.”

“You know, I’m right here and listening in.” I said dryly. “I’d appreciate having a say in all this.”

“Quiet brat, the adults are speaking.” Cathida cut in.

“Keith, you need to listen to your elders.” Kidra added, with a slight grin that betrayed she was having fun with all this.

Great. Now my armor was teaming up with my sister within the first few minutes of meeting up. I regret this already.

And while my sister might be only entertaining the armor’s requests, Cathida was dead serious about dragging me each morning for training. That, I knew implicitly.

Things only got weirder once the Iron-body technique started to be discussed between the two. Before I knew it, I was now booked each morning for the courtyard, with Kidra as my sparring partner. She wasn’t going to miss a possible chance to gain an advantage, and what Cathida relayed on my breakthroughs with the iron body technique had her attention.

I sighed in defeat, watching my lazy mornings vanish into a soft memory behind me.

For me, I had a good amount of work on my hands. First of which was staring back at me:

A cobbled together Occult heater - untested as requested.

I’d never turned it on once and I had no idea if it would work. However, all the components besides the occult had been tested in isolation so in theory things should be fine.

It had been a bit of a head scratcher to get this working. The first idea was to simply boil water and have the steam rotate a turbine which would then power the fractal for perpetual energy.

Easy right?

Except that this heater would be left in a dark place away from the world for months. And the fatal flaw to this early concept was that eventually either water would leak out of the system or the moving parts would wear out over time. I needed something that didn’t have any moving parts, nor required anyone else to come by every few days to refill something.

That significantly cut down on the options I had.

However, I did have a trick up my sleeve - thermocouples. Tech as old as time. Taking two wires of printed metal, one copper and one iron, I connected the two and had the joint hovering over the expected fire source. The other two ends joined together and were left out in the open where they’d be exposed to the cold air. In between, the metal wires would connect to the metal block that should house the occult fractal, and the temperature difference would cause a current to go through. That’s basically the whole core of the ‘heater’. I’d added a lot of other tweaks to the model, including an environmental shield and casing with a nice handle to make the whole thing more portable.

So long as someone jump started the thing, it should in theory keep going almost indefinitely. The metal would eventually wear out, but not for years I expect, which was plenty of time for the experiment.

I packed up the heater into a canvas bag and put it to the side. That would be destined to go straight to the clan lord with written instructions.

The next thing to do was to reconsider Talen’s book. All of the fractals inside that book were basic ones that could be used for general purpose engineering. That’s the pattern behind these. With exception to the soul fractal, that one tied everything together.

Given that the armors all used that fractal, I was pretty sure Atius was right when he said it was worth a gamble to use. If it’s somehow something machines can pick up on, that airspeeder has already flown the hangar a long time ago. I’d already made up my mind to continue using the soul fractal inside my helmet to enable the iron body technique, and soon my sister would be joining in on this too. She had been extremely interested when Cathida had started to blab about how her lessons with me had been going so far.

“Well? You gonna figure out the hocus pokus that’s making my sword a good one?” The old crusader in question chimed in. “Or are you going to stare at that box and drool all day?”

“I’ll get to that when I get to that. See, I can’t even brag about this box to anyone.” I reached out and grabbed one of the folding sections. “Look at this craftsmanship! It folds up perfectly and can still insulate itself. Everything connects flush to the surface, it looks like absolutely nothing from the outside!”

“Why yes, you’re right. All I see is a box.” She said, deadpan. “And I’m not going to read through Journey’s scans. Don’t bore me to death young man, I’ve already done that once.”

“All right, fine. I’m done.” I said, tightening the ropes to seal the bag shut. “See? Not going to spend more time looking at it. Even if it is a masterpiece of this era.”

Complying with her request, I brought out the sheathed longsword. It really puts some snow into my boots here, considering how beautiful the sword was. My little box had welding scars all over the edges, and while everything was mechanically sound I hadn’t put a lot of flair to making it pretty.

I’ll say it’s for practicality reasons and not mention my complete lack of artistic skills. This heater is supposed to remain nondescript in a dark gloomy trap-filled place for months, if not years.

Cathida’s sword on the other hand was a work of actual art. Like most imperial items, it was all about the presentation - and the gold. Can’t ever forget the gold. It had been recently polished up by the servants, so compared to the otherwise drab dust filled appearance it held when I first untombed it, now it looked every bit the part.

Of course, I had no idea how it worked.

That ends today! The mystery of these chunks of metal were going to be revealed. I brought out my toolkit and set it down next to my knife, putting the occult longsword away to the side.

There was no way I was going to take apart such an intricate weapon. The knife was a lot more simple and a lot less valuable. That one I could mess up without feeling too bad over it.

Of course, even the knife ended up being another small work of art. “The things I do for science.”

I went slowly. Journey gave me a visual display of where I needed to tackle the weapon and I kept the workspace clean around me. Every part was removed bit by bit. There was a possibility of putting it back together after, so long as everything was organized well enough.

The valuable part of Occult blades weren’t their hilts. A lot of blades have been disassembled and reassembled in different ways. A knife could become a spear and then turn back into a knife over a few generations depending on the owner’s whims. I didn’t feel too nervous dismantling a blade, since the important part wasn’t something that could be dismantled.

Eventually, all that I was left with was a chunk of metal with a blade and my knowledge of fractals. It had the shape of a blade, but no sharp edges. Instead, it looked fat, and uniform in volume at all ends. Occult weapons cut in a way that no one could explain. No edge needed to be honed, and rather that would actually reduce the effectiveness of the blade. The glowing edge was where the cut happened, after which the blade would follow through. From experience, cuts were fat things and everything in the way of the blade wasn’t shoved to the side - it was outright gone.

That meant there wasn’t a huge amount of forces that would push back against the blade when they cut. Thus, the hilts of these blades weren’t extremely solid. This was something the blades took advantage of.

I took a vice and suspended the blade there, using the flat planes as the anchor points and leaving the edges out in the open. With the preparations done, I brought out the voltmeter.

Previously, it wasn’t understood how these things worked. I put the two sides of the voltmeter right by where the vice grip held and powered it on. The blade remained cold and lifeless as expected.

We knew very little about the blades, but some deductions had previously been done. The first was that voltage had to be applied where the hilt connected to the blade. I brought the two prongs down to the small section where the hilt would have connected.

On turning that on, the entire edge of the blade lit up occult blue. Again, as expected. The edge ran all around the blade, including the section by the hilt. This was where the lack of resistance during swings was an advantage. Every Occult weapon was held firm on the grip the same way that the vice clamps held the flat planes. It was screwed in, with a small gap where the hilt blade edge could do its thing without breaking the hilt.

As far as the clans went, that was where the end of our budding Occult research had ended. There was a rumor one clan had cut into the Occult blade’s hilt but found nothing other than the same metal, and the weapon had stopped working as a result. Scans of it showed the same as well - it was a hunk of metal through and through. Such rumors made most people leery of losing an occult blade. These were expensive after all.

My studies with the Occult made the mystery behind these blades obvious in hindsight - inside the metal, the warlocks must have somehow hidden a fractal. No one needed to see the inscription after all. So long as reality recognized the symbol somewhere, it would work.

How exactly the warlocks had managed that, this was what I set out to figure out.

I dove into my soul fractal, activated the blade and stared down at the metal. There was no glow, no signs of a fractal that I could see. Which made no sense, because if there was a fractal inside that metal, then Journey’s soul fractal should have equally been hidden.

Maybe it was a proximity thing? I brought my hand closed to the blade hilt - and got results almost instantly. My hunch was right on this one, the small pale ‘glow’ of a fractal hummed inside the hilt all at once.

I couldn’t tell what shape it was, only that the concept of a fractal was somehow buried inside the metal.

Withdrawing from the soul-sight I pondered the issue. “Say, Cathida. If you were a warlock and needed to sneak a fractal inside metal, how would you do it?”

“Pay someone to do it for me.” She answered back without hesitation. “That’s what money’s for young man - you spend it. I’ve got things to do, places to be. Well, I had things to do.”

I groaned. “I need serious suggestions. Best way I can think of is to inscribe the fractal on a plate, and then weld another plate on top. But there’d be signs of some kind leftover on the edge.”

The edge looked pristine at least. Turning the knife over in my hand showed no signs of anything odd.

The timer on the side of my HUD showed only a half hour left before I was due back home. The chances that I’d figure out exactly how they’d hidden their fractal today was slim. However, they weren’t going to keep that secret from me for long. I knew where to look, and I was already hot on their heels.

Cracking my knuckles, I opened up my full bag of tools and got to work.

By the three gods in heaven, I was going to be forging occult weapons soon enough and no amount of clever hiding would stop me for long. And I certainly would not find myself regret saying that, no sir.

Next chapter - Interlude - Kidra, part 1