Brad

"How did you replicate the SI standards?" Brad asked.

He and Candy were taking another break from pooling their findings about Rhofhir and the Grand Tapestry for Candy to give a tour of her [Physics Lab] level. The idea that Lena had the ability to create things from essentially nothing boggled his brain, and even more baffling that she could share that gift through her contracts.

"I've been going over the info from Earth that the System acquired from the mages doing their version of astrophysics, and I've been flagging anything that the mages have obviously misidentified, confirming what I can, and leaving unconfirmed what I don't know jack smack about. The Tapestry System already had the concepts of a meter and a gram, temperature gradients, and all that before, but at the human scale, not as universal constants.

"When it came to the metrics, the biggest problem was finding a way to communicate what I wanted with the System, but once I was able to demonstrate the kind of measurements I wanted to use, that unlocked a skill advancement of [Precise Measurement] called [Universal Measurement]. Programming it into the computer golems I'm using to collect and analyze data was pretty simple after that, and I got a 2% advance on my Champion of Order design. Having active mana in this universe has changed some of the constants we're used to — and discovering just how is going to be fun! But, I didn't want to change too much of the human scale concepts of the metrics, so I'm still 164 cm tall and 60 kg.

"What kind of sucks is that I have to rely on the golems to get the small scale stuff just right, like the bolts for the plasma rifle. The calipers and weight scales and all that are easy enough to make on the human scale. I love the mental interface with the Tapestry, but the golems aren't anywhere near as … coherent? I guess that's the word I want. They're a different kind of fiddly than the circuitry I'm used to working with.

"And then there's all the ways that mana makes things complicated. I mean, I built the original plasma hand cannon on a whim, just to see what I could do with the exportables Lena's got unlocked. Having the blast do actual damage on its own instead of just leaving a hot spot against the wall was a shocker. I'm working on getting some kind of slow-motion recording set up so I can examine the reaction, see where the results deviated from when I built the plasma cannon for my high school science fair."

Brad nodded, then asked, "What kind of plasma cannon were you building on Earth?"

Candy shrugged. "The basic kind. They're flashy, look really cool at night or in the dark, but without a projectile, essentially useless. Even with lightning, the fatalities come about with the disruption of the heart's electromagnetic pulse. The burns suck, yeah, but on their own they aren't enough to guarantee taking someone out of a fight, and it's pretty damn easy to come up with anti-shock armor."

Brad opened his mouth to say something, realized he had nothing to say, and changed gears. "You said the results are different here. How so?"

"Let me show you," Candy said, jumping up from behind her desk and taking off down the hall. They passed by several rooms with dedicated instrument set ups, easily seen through the glass walls. Brad had to ask as they passed one room in particular, "Is that a perpetual motion machine?"

"Nope," Candy flashed a grin back over her shoulder. "It's a generator fueled by Lena's circulate technique. I'm gathering data in most of these rooms to see if I can find the similarity that leads to a universal constant for aetherial force."

"You said you got some help from an elven mage. Not enough, I take it?" Brad slowed down to look at more of the experiments, not sure what about them felt so odd.

Candy slowed her steps, too. "Sha'lanadi." She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she said the name. "Callous bastard, and he understood enough of the 'how' side of magic that we were able to come up with a mana analog for the Faraday cage. I've got a room where I'm testing out the runescript he was partial to, but that's been, um, explosive so it's pretty isolated from the rest of the lab."

Brad perked up. "Runescript? Dibbs wanted me to finish mastering the texts I've got now before starting on that topic."

Candy paused, her thinking face on. "Do you like Dibbs?"

That was a tough question. "I think so, but I don't know how much I'm influenced by being in this golem and the constraints, the bonds that are intertwined with my being. On the rational side of things, I do understand the safety measures their Arcane Asylum requires when dealing with alien species, demons as they call us. Travelers. We are not invested in their societies so we're complete wild cards. They have to observe the hell out of us to get an idea of what to expect from us. Just letting us loose on the world would be highly irresponsible, especially when they're the ones summoning us."

"Our clones," Candy interjected.

Brad nodded. They had gone over this before. "Our clones. 'Wild' Travelers like you guys, I'm guessing most have hidden in plain sight, or been monsters or nonsapient animals or plants that couldn't hide. So most people in Rhofhir think of demons as something between rabbits in Australia to the monsters in our horror films."

"I do not understand this reference to rabbits in Australia," Candy said.

"That's a classic example of an invasive species wrecking local ecologies! How as a college educated adult do you *not* know about rabbits in Australia?" Brad felt aghast.

Candy shrugged. She started to turn around to resume leading the way, he presumed, but she stilled. Her head tipped to the side and then she turned her analytic gaze his way.

Brad hadn't been the focus of Candy's blatant assessment before, and he found it a rather uncomfortable position to be in now. Without really thinking about it, he fluffed his wings and sank back onto his coiled tail, sinking into stillness to deal with his awkwardness.

"Brad," Candy began. "Do you have to remain in that golem body?"

"I'm quite nervous to find out the answer the hard way," he responded.

She nodded, then looked up. A moment of silence crept by, then Lena's holograph faded into view.

"Why?" she asked Candy.

"Because they made his body. I want to know what they know about golems."

Brad looked between the cousins. "What now?" he asked.

Lena's lips thinned. "Dibbs hasn't convinced Feltz yet that being an asshole is more hindrance than help in figuring us out, and Feltz is the golemancer."

"So?" Candy asked.

Lena shook her head and sighed. "If he so much as lifts a finger in your direction, he's dead. You still want to talk with him?"

The strangest look came over Candy's face at Lena's words. It was almost as if she believed that her cousin would follow through on that threat. "Faraday cage rooms?" Candy asked.

Lena sighed. "I'll set it up in the [Prison]. You'll get a temporary portal to your side, and he'll have to choose to walk into his side. I'm not forcing him to talk with you."

Candy nodded. "That works."

Brad meditated while he waited for Candy to return from her consultation with Feltz. She had created a flat for him that was luxurious in its spaciousness, and Lena had stopped by to help him set up his furniture. His favorite part of the whole was the garden installation that acted as the centerpiece of his foyer. He had two trees growing in the center of his flat like some hippy millionaire. It was brill! The best part, though, was the water feature.

It mimicked a small waterfall along a stream falling into a pond. Mosses served as the ground cover and fragrant flowers brought color and warmth to the scene. In the center of the pond sat a flat stone just the right size for Brad to ball up his tail and contemplate the world around him, the trickling of the water a pleasant distraction for his ears.

Lena and Candy had given him a computer golem, which he wore like a medallion around his neck, that provided him some of the features of their Guardian Communication channel, as well as let him get used to working with the computer golems. He found using his little C.G. made his note taking go much, much easier, and he found himself naming it Larry in honor of one of his mechanics professors.

Larry had taken to being named with the calm indifference one might expect from an unthinking being. However, Brad could almost swear that his little helper golem was developing a personality of its own.

Probably wishful thinking on Brad's part.

In fact, Brad was using the meditative trance to consider what differentiated Larry from himself. Both were golems, but why did Brad have personality to an extent Larry did not? Why did Brad possess self determination — even if it was being thwarted by the ensorcellment — and Larry seemed not to?

An idea wafted by the edges of his consciousness. Brad knew better by now than to rush after it. The concept needed more pondering to form.

Larry was a single whole. There was no part of Larry that could be sliced off without slicing away a piece of what made Larry himself. Itself.

Brad, on the other hand, was pretty sure that so long as he protected the sapphire at the center of his golem body, his golem core so to speak, losing a wing, an arm, even his head wouldn't be the death of him or even a detriment to his mental faculties. Yet, Brad felt no separation, no sense of piloting his body. The lack of pain was strange, but he still had a tactile sense, still had hearing and vision and scent. Taste was an odd one, a combination of tactile and scent with a bit of a different slant, but he wasn't eating anything, not like a human did at least. His nutrients came from mana crystals infused into his body which leeched ambient mana.

The sum entirety of Larry came down to his— its pattern storage and computation faculties, its *mental* faculties. Brad had been human; his mind was more than pattern storage and computation. Sensory input, recognition, differentiation, and determination. Larry was a proto-sapient golem; he just needed some help bridging the sensory handling gap.

*** *** ***

Theory of Magic +1

*** *** ***

*What if he made a golem body for himself and transferred his golem core?* The idea wasn't new to him, but Brad had shied away from the idea because he hadn't really stopped to consider what part of the golem was him. Now, though, he had Candy and Lena to help him make prototype golem bodies that would use the computer golems as their cores. If they could socket and switch the computer golems, what would keep them from doing the same for Brad?

Brad slipped out of his meditation and headed into the lab proper, to his work bench to start drafting ideas.

Candy

Feltz was incredibly intelligent, but he was also a certifiable grade AAA bastard of an asshat. Even Candy understood that, and with Lena's warning, Candy had gone in with her social expectations turned off and her inner observer fully roused. Being able to leave her note pad behind and use her link to her computer golems to record her in-the-moment observations, as well as store her perceptions of the meeting, had freed her inner analyst to focus on getting him to reveal what he knew about golems.

Her inner observer warned Candy that she was starting to have rather negative emotions due to this contact, and her inner analyst took a moment to decide that it was time to stop poking the bear and go calm her emotions before she had to deal with crappy feelings, so she got up and walked out in the middle of Feltz's belligerent explanation that Candy was a runty little girl lacking the discipline to successfully weld pathways for the mana to flow through a golem's body.

As she stepped back into her [Physics Lab], a familiar feeling of disturbed space poked her, and she had to exercise a lot of self control not to snap and growl over that disturbance. Then she saw Brad, leaning over the desk she had installed for him, pieces of mana shards arranged on the work bench next to his desk. He looked up and grinned at her.

"I think there might be a safe way to try getting me out of Feltz's trap!"

Candy took a step back and held up a hand. Brad's grin gentled to a sympathetic smile. "Sorry. I got so caught up I lost track of the fact you were dealing with *him*."

She nodded, went over to her desk and plopped down into the seat. She bent until her head was between her knees and then just focused on breathing, letting her energy calm down. That was all emotions were, right? Just energy in motion; e-motion. Feelings were when you recognized and gave a name to a particular type of emotion. Candy did better when she didn't have to name her emotions, because that level of awareness tended to pull her into an analytic examination that did little for her happiness.

Being near Feltz, even with the doubled up Faraday cages enclosing the both of them and a wall built of layers of strengthened glass between them, his voice coming through the speaker golem had twisted at her energy with a viciousness that felt very deliberate. Worse, he had struck at the part of her energy she could not fully calm, the part that had been sensitized by teachers, classmates, family members, and friends all pointing out that she was some kind of "other".

At least for her friends, it was a reason to shrug and say, "Why should we want that to change? It's part of you." Lena had that touch of "otherness", too, but not to the same degree as Candy. It was why her cousin could say things, talk about things, that no one else could without disturbing that reactive part of Candy's energy. Lena felt it, too.

Whatever. That was Lena's line when she wanted to ignore something. Candy would try it now. Whatever.

She straightened up, and found herself looking at something she hadn't ever seen in Brad's gaze before. Empathy.

"Feltz has a way of provoking the worst parts of us. I don't like the person I am around him."

Candy nodded. That was all that needed saying, right?

"So, you have some ideas on getting yourself free of them?" she asked.

He nodded, his smile slowly returning. "I think studying the difference between Larry and myself will help us figure out why I can move and Larry can't."

"Okay. I've already scanned what I can from the patterns of computer golems." She pulled up the hologram display of the internal workings of a computer golem, and they went through each part together. Then they started running the same scans on Brad.

Lena

*** *** ***

Congratulations! Research Special Action has unlocked the following creatures:

Golem Core, Enstoned Golem, Crystal Golem

The same Research Special Action has unlocked the following Exportables:

Memory Stones, Soul Gems, Golem Constructs (Stone) and (Crystal)

New Research into Exportables unlocked for:

Golem Constructs (Metal), (Wood), (Ice), (Flesh) and (Plant)

New Research into Class Designs unlocked for:

Golemancer, Scientist

*** *** ***

The notice took Lena by surprise. Sure, she was aware of everything in the dungeon, but it was much like being aware of her body: she could selectively ignore a headache by focusing on the flex and contraction of her muscles. It wasn't always perfect, but it was a skill honed with practise. And determination. Lena did not want to intrude too hard on her friend's privacy. The follow up notice was pleasant.

*** *** ***

Due to unlocking Soul Gems, you may now provide your Guardians with Soul Gems that will be linked to their contract pattern. This will allow retrieval of all the Guardian's memories even if their physical form is destroyed outside of your zone at any distance within the Grand Tapestry of Rhofhir.

*** *** ***

Doing a quick scan of her dungeon self (Lena was starting to think of her life on Earth as "when she was human"), she found Candy and Brad playing with Candy's data collectors while Aaron was getting brotherly advice from Rob and Jason on how to make his move with Candy. Dibbs was actually tearing at his hair while shouting at Feltz, his fear for the old bastard about the only testimony keeping Lena from shoving him in an airless room stuck in his own special mana-tuned Faraday cage. She might even go so far as to fill it with carbon monoxide, but she wasn't sure if the archmage would be able to transmute that to breathable air.

The man really knew how to be obnoxious.

The boys had just glanced up at the notice and gone right back to passing along pearls of masculine wisdom like, "be confident" (and what did that even mean?), "take the lead", and "be funny". Neither of the mages guesting in her [Prison] got the notice, but Candy and Brad were high-fiving each other and grinning with accomplishment. My oh my, who could have possibly been responsible?

Out of consideration for Brad, Lena made her toon fade in before speaking.

"What the what-what, guys?" she asked.

Brad waved at Candy, encouraging her to take the lead. Candy did a victory shuffle-dance as she said, "We got Larry to advance into a golem core!"

Lena blinked. It was more of a mental reaction, but she valued that link to her humanity. "Who the what?"

Candy reached over to the work bench and lifted a spherical chunk of beryl finely veined with electrum, bronze, and an alloy that showed on her [Inspect] as "hiduminium(?)". "The computer golem that we gave Brad to keep him looped in until he can formally join the crew, Brad named it Larry. And we just got Larry to include his own sensory input ports, which advanced him from a computer golem to a golem core. We used one of the research cores to run a thorough [Analyze] and [Inspect] of Brad, identified the mana channels that Feltz was being a blowhard about, and we've duplicated Brad's golem body as precisely as the structure cores can. We were just about to put Larry into the new golem construct, I guess the Tapestry calls them."

Lena nodded. "Okay. Where's the body double?"

Candy and Brad looked from her to the empty bench. Their grins turned into panicked searching.

"Ohmygod! Where did it go!?" Brad asked.

Lena let the sound of comedic snerky snorting laughter sound in the lab. Then she dropped the illusion she had put up over the duplicate Brad-body.

Brad, unfamiliar with Lena's light bending powers, gaped while Candy cradled her face in one hand, letting the facepalm movement turn into covering her nose and mouth in thought. "Lena, make it yellow, please."

"What's that?" Lena asked.

"Make the second golem yellow with your Coloring skill. That'll make differentiating Larry and Brad a lot easier."

Lena shrugged and complied, choosing a yellow-oxide color, a mustard color that was both earthy and vibrant at the same time without the artificial brightness of the cheaper mustards. She studied the inert golem construct, feeling something off after changing the pigmentation, and followed an instinct to draw more of the crystalline and metallic threading up to the surface of the construct's stoney form. She traced the feathers with gold, then used pale greens and faint oranges to add depth to the colors. It was still off, and Lena realized that the yellow was a good start, but the golem stood out too much.

Brad's body had been made to draw the eye, to grab attention and show case the artistry of the sculptor. His body was made to make it impossible for him to hide. If they could hook up Larry to this construct, Lena didn't want to make him as much of a target as Feltz had made Brad. She thought of the steppes outside her Lotrot entrance and the jungle that surrounded Priesley's Folly, and enhanced the greens, muting the vibrancy of the golem construct with brown and tans, removing the gold, and tarnishing the metal back to an ore-like dullness. It would not blend perfectly in either environment, but it wasn't the worst coloration for either of them, either.

"Okay," she said when she was done.

Brad carefully removed a back panel on the construct. Candy gave Larry to Brad, and he carefully socketted the golem core into the compartment.

Nothing happened. Lena reached through her contract core, found Larry's contract, updated his name, and pushed a little poke of extra mana through the link. An error message popped into her mind and she said, "Close the hatch, please."

Brad did, giving her toon a contemplative look.

"Okay, the contract core says he's working. Candy, I updated his name in the core, so you can do your linking easier."