“Sure. I’ll let the giant glowing tubes and flashy lights do that for you,” Silver said, leaning against the chopper and peering down at Angel as he worked. “So, how’s it look?”

“I just started,” Angel replied. Needles emerged from his fingertips and tapped them against the strange ports at the back of the ship. Using a small orb of magic for light, Angel examined the faint lines of Old World magic that lined the inside of the holes. He ignored Silver’s inquisitive gaze, and several minutes passed by in relative silence.

Angel rocked back with an annoyed huff. “There’s no power source. You’re right. The box is a battery, and I’m certain it charges through these two ports. The problem is that I understand most of the runes here, and none of them convert energy.”

“Which is a problem because…” Silver cocked an eyebrow.

“The box doesn’t charge on any magic that I recognize,” Angel replied. “The power source can’t be electricity. It’s far too inefficient – the chopper would never take off. It doesn’t take canisters and I didn’t see a spot to charge it with Old World magic either.”

“Well, it’s got to take something,” Vanessa said.

“I never would have guessed,” Angel said, rolling his eyes with a small laugh. “But I don’t know what that something might be. I could probably modify it to run on an alternate source of energy.”

“Seriously? The only people that know how to mess with choppers are high ranking Tinkerers, and this one isn’t even a modern model,” Silver said. “You know enough to modify it?”

“It’s not a question of if I can do it, but how long it’ll take,” Angel replied, standing back up with a huff. “We’ll need to find an alternate power source and the parts I need. Once we get those, it could take a week for me to implement everything in a way that’s completely safe.”

“That’s too long,” Lilian said, shaking her head. “Word of the buried god has already started to spread. If you want to get Vanessa anywhere safely, you can count your days of safe travel on one hand.”

“Hold on,” Silver said. “The Seeker said ‘completely safe’. Let’s just say the chopper was… oh, fifty percent safe?”

A small grin tugged at Angel’s lips. “How does tonight sound?”

“Much more to my tastes,” Silver said. “I don’t care to meet my former employer anytime soon. It’ll remind me of all the money I’ve lost helping you.”

“That was the bandit’s fault,” Angel said with a shrug. “But I still need components. Luckily, we’re in an airship graveyard, so a lot of what I’ll need should be here. Even so, I doubt there’s a power source. Something tells me all these ships are built the same.”

“So you need an artifact?” Vanessa asked. “What about that orb that you found in the catacomb?”

“Why do I have to keep sacrificing my toys?” Angel complained. “Don’t any of you have something? I haven’t even gotten a chance to figure out what the orb does!”

“You’ll find a new one later,” Silver said. “Besides, there’s no guarantee the orb blows up. Maybe the chopper will get us safely to our destination without draining it completely and you can mess with it then.”

Angel pierced Silver with an unimpressed glare. “We’ll be lucky if this chopper makes it halfway to Molten Ridges before dropping out of the sky. Go be useful and get some parachutes from the choppers in the city’s hangar. I’m sure they won’t mind giving us a few.”

Silver shrugged and spun on his heel, heading back into the city. After a moment, Lilian followed after him. Angel made his way over to another chopper with Vanessa at his heels. It sat at an angle and the landing gear was completely ruined, but the hull seemed to be in decent shape. He reared back and thrust his hand into the back of the ship, peeling a plate of metal away and revealing its innards.

Angel pulled apart portions of the ship, saving any parts that weren’t rusted or damaged and tossing the rest in a pile to his side. Most of what he found wasn’t of much use, but he was able to find a few plates with lines of Old World magic that hadn’t been completely ruined.

After repeating the process again on several other choppers, Angel returned to their original one lugging a small mound of metal, glass, and tubes. He set it down in the sand and got to work, carefully twisting the metal into shape with the enhanced power of his arm.

“What are you doing?” Vanessa asked.

“Building a power converter,” Angel replied, sealing two pieces of metal together with the scribe functionality of his right arm. “A very rushed one.”

“How? The same way you make a canister?”

“Pretty similar, actually,” Angel said. “Just a lot less reactive. I don’t want this going boom from a small impact. I’m doing something similar to what I’ve got in my arm. I know those runes well enough to trust that they’ll function after I mix them up. For a little, at least.”

Angel assembled several other parts, creating a box about the size of his head. He connected a tube to the front of it, carefully drawing runes along its side with a fingertip. The glimmered against the dull bronze and a droplet of sweat trickled down Angel’s forehead.

“Do you have the orb?”

Vanessa pulled it out of her bag. Angel took it with his left hand, then placed the artifact inside the box. He examined the runes again, then drew the inverse on the backside of the airship around the charging port.

“Is that really going to work?” Vanessa asked.

“Of course it will,” Angel said, sealing a plate over the orb and drawing several new runes along the outside of the box. They wrapped around, spiraling down to the tube that led out of it. “The question is how long it’ll last.”

“That really isn’t reassuring,” Vanessa said. Despite the doubt in her words, Angel could feel her gaze tracking every rune he made. He knew enough about her impressive memory to know that she’d probably gotten a reasonably solid grasp of what he’d done, even if she didn’t know why he was doing it.

“You’ll thank me when I save us a week of travel through the center of the Barren,” Angel said, fitting the tube against the port on the airship. The size was mismatched, so he held it in place with his knees while he sealed the metal together with his hand. “We’re lucky to have seen so few monsters, but don’t count on that luck lasting.”

Angel slowly scooted back. The connection held. Vanessa leaned down, examining it with a critical eye. “You only connected one side.”

“It’s not ready to make a full circuit. I need to make sure it’s all put together close enough to work before I commit, or I risk blowing the artifact up and getting nothing in return.”

Angel pressed a small spark of magic against the back of the box. It let out a low hum. The runes he’d drawn on it started to light up one by one, traveling down the tube and into the back of the ship.

Several moments passed. One of the runes on the box flickered. A frown crossed Angel’s face and he let the magic fade before examining the box. He made a small change to the rune, then repeated the process.

This time, three runes flickered and one nearly went out completely. He muttered under his breath as he looked over all the runes again, trying to find the problem. The more he focused on the box, the more the outside world faded away.

Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Angel jolted, ripped from his contemplative stupor. Lilian and Silver had rejoined them, and they both had two tarp bags in their hands.

“How’s it going?” Silver asked.

“It was going great until you interrupted me,” Angel grumbled. “This is harder than it looks.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Silver said. “It doesn’t look very hard.”

Angel turned his nose up at the man and glanced back at the box. He blinked. With a groan, he drew an extra line on an incorrectly drawn rune, completing it. When he raised the orb of magic to the box once again, it lit up with a hum once more. This time, all of the runes remained at the same intensity without fluctuation.