“Sam?” He opened his eyes at Ella’s concerned face.

“Something wrong?”

“I was just checking my Yuenan to make sure it wasn’t magic. Looks like you were right.” Sam lied. Some reason you don’t want her to know that you’re magic, fella? Sam thought, feeling a vague sense of caution from the ring.

“So why did you want to know about the ring?”

“I was looking for a way to game the system.” Sam said. “Anybody find a cool ring, preferably gold or some other precious metal?”

“I found one that makes you stronger!”

“I found one that makes a shield!”

“I found one that slows time!”

“I found one that shoots lightening!”

“I’ve got one that makes you into a bird!”

“Wait, what?” Sam said, looking around for the Time guy. From the back, he saw one waving his hand, a glimmer of gold between his fingers. Time, huh? Sounded cool.

“Bring ‘em all up, lets try this out.”

The time ring was a puzzle ring composed of three different metals. Orange gold, a shiny black alloy, and silver winding between them.

“How do you use it?”

“Just put Nuetta through it.” Ella said with a shrug.

Sam put the ring on his pinky finger --The only finger it would fit on-- and put a thick pre-collapse gold coin under his thumb. “Here goes.”

Sam flicked the coin up and channeled his nuetta through the ring. The coin stopped in midair, rising about as fast bread.

“That’s really cool.” Sam said aloud, and glanced at the elves frozen in time. Was he simply experiencing time differently like in a car crash, or was he free from the constraints of time itself? One way to find out.

Sam took a step to the side, half expecting the inertia to slow him down, but his body wasn’t bothered by what should have been five or six G’s of inertia. That’s REALLY cool!

Sam tried to take another step and his Yuenan bottomed out. Sam was assaulted by a piercing headache, and he heard the coin hit the floor. He squinted his eyes shut against the pain even as he heard the elves jump in startlement.

“So,” Sam said, opening one eye as the headache receded. “It really does as advertised, but it looks like a normal person can only take a step or so before they’re dried up.” He glanced at the young man who’d handed him the ring.

“I couldn’t get it to do that at all.”

“Probably ‘cuz you dont-“ Sam glanced at Ella and choked back the words about isayatta. He didn’t want to shit all over their taboos any more than he already had. “Have enough juice.”

“Can I borrow this for a moment?”

The kid nodded, and Sam walked up to the Fabricator and pulled down on the enormous lever keeping the door closed. The ten foot panel of black steel and glass swung open, forcing a few elves to stand aside.

“I wonder,” Sam said, hefting the ring in his hand before clomping in and setting it on the dot in the center of the chamber. If he was right, the dragon was going to kick himself in the nuts. Well, it’s not like the scaly bastard ever intended to share the result, so why would he copy anything?

“What are you planning to do to it?” Ella asked as Sam mucled the heavy door closed.

“Gonna scan it, and test a theory.” Sam said, locking the door to the chamber and setting the cube to scan the contents of the chamber. First it would create a vacuum, then bombard the ring with radiation. I hope that doesn’t destroy it. The radiation that was both reflected and passed through would be recaptured and decoded, giving the machine a perfect map of the ring itself, down to the atom.

“And your theory is?” Ella asked brow raised.

“Well, these rings basically do the mental work that a person couldn’t do on their own, all you have to do is put Nuetta through them, and they recreate a spell too complex for the average elven or human brain.”

“More or less.” Ella said, intrugued. “But enchanting a single object takes a group of nearly a dozen lesser wizards handling the complex properties of the spell in perfect tandem before applying that to the object itself. Then someone has to test it, and if even a single wizard made a mistake, it could prove fatal.”

“So i’m wondering if the Fabricator can do it instead.” Sam said with a grin. The cube finished emptying of air before it filled with bright light and harsh sound for another three seconds. When the chamber fell silent, Sam watched the progress bar as the machine decoded the information it’d captured.

“That makes no sense. There’s no Yuenan, no magic in it at all.”

“This thing can make microchips capable of outperforming the human brain, why wouldn’t it be able to handle an enchanted ring? I think the Nuetta wizards use when they alter an object, but it doesn’t hang around afterward. If the machine can replicate those changes through some other means, then it should work.”

“And if it doesn’t work, nothing will happen. And if it half-works, you could turn into a pile of charcoal, or be stuck in a time paradox. The odds don’t look great.”

“Eh, there was a professor who started to take a look at using the fabricator this way just before the collapse, his work was very promising. He wound up shot for the food in his pantry, poor guy.”

“Alright, but I’m not testing it.” Ella said, her hands up.

“No problem.” Sam said, bringing up the schematics. In the machine’s display was the time ring. Sam isolated the different alloys in the bands and turned their opacity down, revealing an intricate laticework of interwoven lines inside the ring, made by some reaction between the Nuetta and the golden alloy.

“Blam. There’s your enchantment.” Sam said, crossing his arms and grinning at the assembled elves.

“Still haven’t proven it’ll work.” She said.

“Alright then.” Sam opened the cube and took out the ring, then closed the chamber.

“If i make the ring bigger, do you think that’ll make the spell not work?” Sam asked, adjusting the size of the ring in the display to fit his fingers.

“No more than hamfistedly trying to print a copy of a priceless artifact.” Ella said, her voice flat.

‘Eh, no risk, no reward.” Sam said, engaging the print. The chamber once again filled with light, and an ear piercing screech.

“Now,” Sam shouted over the noise. “Emitters in the ceiling are firing a septillian atoms per second precisely where they need to be!” a fraction of a second later, the screeching stopped, and Sam looked in the chamber, spotting a ring sitting in the center, absolutely identical to the first, albeit a little bigger.

“Hold onto this one.” Sam said, giving the first ring away before he entered the chamber and retrieved the new one.

Sam slipped the ring on his other hand with a smile. A perfect fit. He grabbed another coin and set it on his thumb. Welp, here goes nothing. If i turn into a pile of sludge, I hope they remember me as a nice guy, and if i get caught in a time loop, I hope I’m not conscious of it. That would suck.

“Here we go,” he said, noticing the elves taking much more distance than they had before. Sam flicked the coin into the air and ran his Nuetta through the bands. Nothing happened, except the gold coin falling back into his palm. Sam frowned at the ring. Maybe there was a way to jumpstart it? Juice it up for first time operation.

“Didn’t work?” Ella asked with a raised brow.

“No, but I got an idea. Hand me the first one again.” The first ring was placed back in his hands and Sam put the two together, circulating his Nuetta through the first, into the copy. Sam could feel it. The enchanted tracework inside the copy was like a soft deposit of sand being washed out of the center of a chunk of granite, his Nuetta flowed through and bored out the latticework of the ring in the shape of the spell, converting the nearly-complete ring into a finished product.

The heavy lifting of etching the minerals was done by the machine, and the fine tune spell control was done with the original ring. Sam knew when he took the first ring away again that he’d succeeded.

Sam tossed the first ring back to its owner, and channeled a fine thread of Nuetta through the copy, watching it slowly tumble through the air. It seemed as long as Sam didn’t move, the ring took very little energy to power, but as soon as Sam tried to move his hand, his already exhausted Yuenan gave him another headache, and the kid caught the ring.

“It worked.” Sam said, wincing as the golden light stabbed his eyeballs.

“I don’t believe it.” Ella muttered. Sam threw her the ring. She made a face for a moment before slipping it on. The thing was loose around her thumb. She flicked a coin into the air, and flickered. One moment she was watching the coin, and the next, she held the gold between thumb and forefinger, studying it.

“Is that what it looked like for me?” Sam asked. Because that was a little creepy. Ella tossed the coin back on the pile, took off the ring and studied it for a moment before handing it back to Sam.

“You’re amazing.” Ella said.

“Wasn’t me,” Sam said, revisiting the memories in his implant. “It was scientists, they just... choked at the finish line. Or got shot. You get the idea.” Sam slipped the the ring back on his finger and leaned against the Fabricator, tucking his aching peg leg in front of him in a pose he hoped was cool-looking.

“Alright, listen up, there’s only enough precious metals in here to make a dozen or so more rings, which means that after you copy the one I tell you to for everybody, there’s not going to be a whole lot left for anyone else, so think carefully.”

They finished loading up the jeeps with all the treasure they could carry and jumped in the cars after thoroughly defacing Billy’s throne room.

Sam jumped in the passenger seat with Jennei, thumbing the ring in his pocket meant for Faera. He had hoped they would find her in the lair, maybe alive, maybe dead, but they hadn’t seen a sign of her. The possibilities boiled down to three options: she was held somewhere else, she wasn’t held at all, or she was dragon poop. Sam had no idea which of those three was more likely.

He’d have more time to search the city and hunt for clues after the dragon was dead.

It was the middle of the night when they started their engines, cruising along the cobbled road toward the gate. Sam hoped they would let them out without a fuss the same as last time, but it didn’t matter one way or another, Ella was going to weaken the gates if they tried to stop them, then they’d just run them over.

“I’m gonna get some shuteye. Please don’t stab me.” Sam said, leaning his chair back and closing his eyes.

“No promises.”

Sam chuckled before focusing his mind and diving into his Yuenan, reaching the empty space inside him in the space of a breath. Sam floated through the void to his isayatta, landing on the entrance. Far below him, his Nuetta churned up, coiling and condensing beneath him in time with his breathing.

Standing at the railing, looking down at Sam’s Yuenan was a very short man, balding, with a friendly face.

“May I ask what you were doing in that ring?” Sam asked. Never hurt to be polite if the other guy was obviously not human.

“You come across too weak.” The short man finally spoke. “A guy like you could walk in and demand to know what was going on and no one would question it.” His gaze lifted to the sails that had now fully spread, creating something a bit like a Tutu around the core of Sam’s Yuenan.

“Better safe than sorry in this circumstance.”

“So you risk your life on an untested theory and now it’s ‘better safe than sorry’?”

“living things are unpredictable.” Sam said.

“I suppose. What makes you think I’m alive?”

“We’re talking, aren’t we?”

The short man chuckled a moment then faced Sam for the first time, only a hint of his good humor remaining.

“My name is Gurd, what you humans might call a user interface. I was created fourteen thousand years ago by the god Ibenyu, and served him faithfully for millenia until he was eventually consumed by another god. I was left on the battlefield with nothing but my thoughts, aware that I would never against fulfill my purpose and unable to end my own life. I can serve no other master than Ibenyu. What is your name?”

Sam narrowed his eyes. Why was Gurd asking him to name himself? He probably got Sam’s name from listening to what was going on around them. Did he...want Sam to call himself Ibenyu?

“May I ask a question?”

“As long as it doesn’t violate my purpose.”

“What would you do if i said my name was Ibenyu?”

“I would deploy a series of tests to verify your identity.”

“And if I pass them?” Sam asked.

“I would acknowledge you as Ibenyu, my master.”

“If I fail?”

“I would be forced to destroy you.”

Sam drummed his fingers on the railing made of pure Nuetta beside him.

“I take it you want to serve a purpose again?” he asked.

“Very much.”

So. It looked like Gurd would slant the test in Sam’s favor wherever he could, but it couldn’t be that easy.

“I’ll give you my name, but first I’d like to play a little game.” Sam said, pulling glowing Nuetta through the center of his Yuenan to form a wall of glowing elven characters in front of himself. He could try having the user interface spell out the contents of the test. If he wanted Sam to pass, he could work with him to make that happen.

“Can you point to the first character of the first test?” Sam asked.

Gurd’s brows raised, but he didn’t move.

“Can you look at the first character of the test?”

Gurd froze in place, his teeth clenched, breathing rough. His eyes rolling unnaturally back and forth across the board of glowing characters, fighting his programming with a powerful will born of millenia of loneliness.

Sam reviewed the characters Gurd had looked at with his implant, and discovered that while the ones he looked at were nonsense when strung together. He had avoided looking at one in particular.

Sam put his thumb to his chin. He couldn’t tell Gurd that he’d noticed, or the construct would probably change his behavior, being restricted from communicating to anyone the content of the test. Sam wondered what kind of cognitive dissonance the construct was employing to believe he was not informing Sam while at the same time deliberately doing so.

It was probably incredibly uncomfortable, by the look on the man’s face. Sorry, but this is going to take a while.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Sam lied. “Can you try looking at the second character in the first test?”

Time crawled by and Sam gradually decoded the contents of the test, until he was finally ready.

“I am Ibenyu.” Sam said. Gurd’s face fell, his expression flat.

“What is the end goal of power?” Gurd asked.

“Cheesecake.” The answers to the questions were non sequitar, deliberately misleading. Ibenyu was a bit of a prick.

“Where were you born?”

“Fishing lure.”

“Beginning scan.” Sam felt pins and needles throughout his body. “Your form does not match the-“ Before Gurd could vaporize him, Sam had to give him the right excuse.

“This body took severe damage in the last conflict, Gurd. Combat override sixteen.”

Gurd’s face turned red, his teeth chattered, and a drop of blood began to dribble from his nose. An electric wail, a feedback loop emenated from Gurd’s mouth, slowly rising in pitch, until it suddenly resolved into a voice.

“Override accepted, Welcome back, Ibenyu.”

“Gurd, from now on, I’m retasking you to work with others. Disable the security measure preventing unauthorized users. Serve at your own discretion.”

Gurd’s eyes brimmed with tears as he nodded.

“And I, Ibenyu, have decided to change my name to Sam. From now on, you will refer to me as such.”

“Nice to meet you, Sam.” He said, his hand outstretched.

“You too, Gurd.”