As far as Damon could tell, the village, if one could actually call it that, was crumbling. The buildings, all twenty of them, were worn out, the paint was flaked, the wood of the beams had looked damp, more roof-tiles were cracked than not, each window muddied and a few missing glass, empty holes covered by boards. The only parts that appeared well kept or relatively new were the wooden walls that circled around the hamlet, the well located smack in the middle of the conglomeration of buildings, and the singular largest building furthest away from the entrance.

It looked like the place was one bad year away from being abandoned. And that came from just a quick glance. Damon was sure he’d spot more things that were in need of repair if he weren’t near a panic attack.

The conversation with Sybil had not been pleasant to his stomach. Replacing limbs with prosthetics your children could inherit? It was all kinds of wrong, and the imagery that came to mind was not tender either. His uncle lived next to a man who’d lost an arm in a hunting accident, and it had always been a subject he’d never felt comfortable bringing up.

The thoughts assaulted him like a storm of ice. As soon as Damon had stepped outside, he leaned against the wall and took in long deep breaths of crisp morning air. His eyes closed as he focused on the feeling of cold dirt against the soles of his feet, of the scratchy clothes he wore, of the ache from clenching his hands too tightly, of the rhythmic sound of metal hammering metal somewhere within the village.

He pushed through with controlled breaths, grounding himself as best he could.

“Do you need shoes? You asked for them, but I am not sure how much you actually need them.” Sybil stood next to him, clearly trying to get him something else to focus on.

Damon glanced down, sighing. His feet were already a bit numb from the chill. It reminded him of running through his family’s garden when he was only a kid. An early memory, it helped. “Yeah, I’m going to want them. And socks. What about you?”

“I would rather have shoes myself, but it’s more of a liability and an expense. I only use them on special occasions.”

Damon couldn’t imagine the sort of apparel she’d wear when her ‘feet’ were shaped like prosthetic spoons, but he wasn’t about to fall down that rabbit-hole. The sensation of diving into the craziness too much too quickly had gotten to him harder than he’d expected. Or maybe he just hadn’t predicted the impact of his new circumstances to be quite like that. Or maybe it was the monsters, the robots, the fighting, the running, and the fact that he’d been somehow abducted into this planet all coming at him at the same time in a nauseating rush.

With slow breaths, Damon pushed his focus to the tiny village. There was exactly one old silver-eared villager sitting in front of their dwelling smoking from a long pipe. The rest felt empty, though there were a couple of faces peeking their way from the windows. Ones that would hide as soon as they realized he had spotted them.

“What’s up with the fancy house?”

Damon made a gesture towards the only building that didn’t look partially dilapidated.

“That is sir knight’s abode.”

“Does he have a name?”

“No.” Sybil replied with a slight shake of her head. “Squires that are deemed prepared enough go to the thalaring temple. The Goddesses bless them with a powerful graft. In exchange for this, they forgo their spoken names. It is part of the edict of knights.”

“So if a knight is rude and someone has to report it…”

“You’d recognize them by their hymn, of course.” Sybil nodded quickly, stopping half-way, glancing at him through her cowl. “Oh.”

“Awesome. These edicts… What are they? Han only talked about the edict of peace.”

“The edicts are the laws the gods put upon those who live within the world. The first and most commonly known is the edict of peace. Non-users are forbidden to act if they know it will directly cause harm to another.”

“That seems to imply that there are edicts that affect users.”

“There is one. Only graft smiths can alter the gifts of the gods. This limitation applies to users as well.”

“Not exactly sure what that means.”

She paused a second before raising her pants to show her robotic legs. “See this?” She tapped on her right thigh. There was an inscription there, of a flower of some kind. “To do this, you would need the services of a graft smith. But if they became a user, they could not do that sort of work anymore.”

“That’s… uh, a weird rule.”

“It applies to things more complex than mere decorative etchings. Graft smiths are the only ones that can give maintenance to the thalaring temples, for example, as repairs are a form of modification.”

“What about painting over it?” Damon chuckled.

“Doesn’t count.” Sybil leaned slightly forward, showing her prosthetic legs. There was a smirk hidden somewhere behind the cloth that covered the lower half of her face. “You are welcome to try, though.”

“Not touching.”

With a shrug, she dropped her pants back down.

“What happens if I just swing a stick at you and break your graft?”

“Harm is not the same as modification in this case.” Sybil said. “So long as you are alive, your grafts heal. If you scratch someone’s grafts, the graft will just restore itself.” She paused for a second. “Though you could not make an attempt to swing the stick at something like a thalaring temple’s hearth.”

“I’ll be honest. I don’t like the idea of people having some sort of rulebook inside their head they are literally unable to go against. Choice should matter.”

“Many would agree with you.” Sybil spoke with a strange inflection to her words he couldn’t quite interpret.

Damon snorted. “I think I’ve taken enough air to clear my thoughts a bit. Does this village have anyone who makes shoes?”

“There is a cobbler, yes. Though she is currently helping the smith repair the exo-suit of sir knight’s familiar.”

He perked up. “This I have to see.”

The smith’s house was a singular workshop on the ground floor, and the living quarters placed directly on top. The lower area was something that looked closer to a garage than anything Damon would’ve imagined being a smithy. A large open space with several pieces of machinery hanging from chains from the ceiling. One wall had oil soaked tools, most of which he couldn’t recognize. On the far wall was the forge, with the fires from the oven licking at the air in ravenous hunger.

Next to the kiln was a thin man with thick arms, using tongs with one hand and a hammer in the other. His back was turned to the entrance, sparks flying every time the tool came down to the anvil. At the opposite side, sitting on the workbench, was a woman wearing some sort of helmet, fiddling with a fan blade. The artifact on her head was like a welder’s cap, that was made of bronze and dark green glass. Both of them had the silver ears of sasins.

Damon realized the woman was likely working on one of the rotor blades that allowed the ‘familiar’ to fly around. He turned his attention towards the fragments of machinery that hung from the chains on the ceiling. Though he was sure it was likely it all belonged to the one murder-cube, it took him a moment to put the pieces together inside his mind. The robot had been split into five sections, each one looking like a miniaturized car engine of parts that could be further dismantled, but that were contained within irregular shaped boxes made of transparent resin.

The first thing that stood out to Damon was how every hole, tube, or port for things that came in or out of those resin boxes was color coded. He could immediately figure out that the yellow square tube from the box on the right connected to the yellow square tube from the box piece on the left. The components within the resin box looked similarly color coded, at least at a glance, though none of the boxes had been opened, so it was hard to tell.

“There’s a missing piece.” He muttered after a moment of observation. The part of the robot that contained the lens, which was housed on something near its center. The piece was missing from the smithy.

“The familiar itself, its core. It is the part that is actually alive. Sir knight likely has it on his person.” Sybil commented with a slight nod, her focus remaining on Damon. “Do you have anything like this in your world?”

“Similar, but not like it. This feels… more advanced. What happens if the resin breaks?”

“The connectors snap apart more easily than the mucilage. Hit it hard enough and the whole thing breaks down into the nubs rather than splinter into a thousand pieces.” The woman with the visor commented from her seat, not lifting her gaze from the blade as she was checking its form, her hands moved in a hurry. The speed of her hands was hard to keep track of. “Which is good. Repairing the nubs is a pain, and expensive.”

It took her a quiet minute with the blade before she raised her gaze from her work and to Damon. The visor was opaque, but the surprise was transparent. She practically jumped as she noticed his existence. Clearly she had not expected there to be two people there. She raised the visor and looked at him from head to toe, halting at his naked feet and then working her way up to his face, the expression had a hint of apprehension to it, though it warmed over.

“Where did they dig you out of?”

Her face appeared to be in her early forties, crows feet adorned the edges of her eyes, but Damon found a definite appeal to her sharp mature features. Now that he returned the once-over to her, it was easy to tell there were hints of curves under the thick leather apron she wore.

“A cave.” He replied with a wry smile. “I heard about the repairs to, erm, sir knight’s familiar.” Damon quickly added. “Since I’m looking to get some shoes, I was hoping I would pay them off with some work, at least partially.”

The cobbler gave him another long look, standing up from the bench. The woman was a little over four feet tall, but her body wasn’t lithe. “We don’t have a watchtower, but we could probably make you stand in the center of the village as a lookout for monsters.” She chuckled, returning the grin.

“If just being tall is how I can help… I guess?”

“If you want to help, chop some wood.” The smith spoke, keeping to his work, still hammering at the anvil. His hand gestured at the door on the rear absently.

The cobbler let out a sigh of mock disappointment and shrugged. “Or that. There’s a shed out back.”

“Sure thing!” Damon turned to head to the back, feeling the woman’s gaze for only a moment before he noticed Sybil’s surprise expression. “What?”

“Since when do you know Halteros?” Sybil asked.

“Excuse me?”

“That was Halteros you just spoke.” She pointed out. “It’s the language in this region. Han and I only know Oligian, which is the common tongue.”

“I… uh, I don’t notice any difference.” He muttered, scratching his chin. “I learned it back in the… cave, I think?”

With a long, quiet look, Sybil shook her head. “And the mysteries continue…” A sigh. “Back to what matters. You don’t need to work for the shoes, we can pay for that.” She made a dismissive gesture. “You can pay us back when you get the chance.”

“You and Han have been very helpful already. I’d rather do something for myself and not just sit down and wait.” He pointed over his shoulder. “And they agreed I could help by chopping some wood.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

With a shrug, Sybil led the way to the back of the house. There was a yard and a shed. It wasn’t very hard to find the blocks of wood meant to get chopped. There were several items there he couldn’t recognize, such as a vice that had blades in the middle… but the ax was easily spotted. Even if it was slightly smaller than what he was used to, Damon figured it would be usable anyway.

Sybil’s chuckle when he stepped out with the ax gave him pause, however.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She replied, sitting down on one of the tree stumps. “Have you ever chopped wood before?”

“A couple times. My uncle had a smoker, so he’d get me to cut timber for him from time to time.”

The amusement only grew. “Alright, then.”

Damon shot her a confused look, but opted to just focus on the job.

In the first swing he split the blue log in half. And that gave him pause, blinking in surprise. “Huh.”

Was the wood less dense due to the lowered gravity? Maybe it was rotten? Or maybe he was just that strong? Regardless, if the rest of the pile was this easy to cut, then this would be a lot easier than he thought it’d be.

After the second stump, he felt like he was getting the hang of it.

Behind him, Sybil’s eyes grew wider with every chop.

The aches and sores gnawed at Damon as he swung the ax, and his feet had long since gone numb from the cold ground, but the activity had given his mind a much needed outlet. He pushed himself to not think, just do. Chop, chop, chop, change side, chop, chop, chop, next. He’d removed his shirt half-way through as he started working up a sweat.

With the cloudy sky above, the only measure of time he had was the hammering from inside the forge. It would start up for ten minutes, stop, and start over again half an hour later. Damon fell into the rhythm and just counted. There’d been five breaks from the smith before he took his first.

Mostly because his arms were burning up and he was thirsty. It was a good sting though, familiar, real; it grounded him. Monsters, aliens, robots, or weird machines. Exercise was still exercise. His body hadn’t changed.

“Water?” Sybil offered.

“Yes, thank you.” He took the metal bottle and drank long gulps until it was empty. He splashed some on his head for good measure.

There were others present, two silver-eared sasins, children, barely fitting the shirts they wore. As soon as Sybil realized his attention had shifted from her to the onlookers, she chased them off with hurried words and urgent steps. The two kids giggled and laughed as they ran off as the hooded woman gave a brief chase.

Snorting loudly, she turned back to face him and paused, sharp eyes squinted as she gave him an indecipherable look from behind her cowl.

“What?”

“Are you hungry?” She asked, diverting the conversation.

An effective strategy, since his stomach growled in complaint. “Starving.” Drying the sweat from his brow, he chuckled. “Think this was enough lumber?”

Her gaze turned to the pile of chopped wood, stacked all the way to his hip. “I’d say it is a quantity of wood that… exceeds expectations.”

Damon frowned at the amused lilt in her voice. Not biting into curiosity, he pointed at the door leading to the smithy. “Shouldn’t we inform them?”

“I already told them.” She quickly moved closer.

“But you hadn’t…” Damon blinked, then slumped with a sigh. “Hymn?”

“Hymn.” She nodded in response, stepping closer. Her robotic foot tapped his ankle. “You need your feet looked at.”

“It’s a couple splinters. Just get some pliers and that’s that.”

Whatever she was about to say, she froze, head snapping in the smithy's direction. The hammering had come to a halt. There were voices, and one of them was increasing in volume until it roared out.

“What do you mean they’re here!?”

A familiar voice shouted, and clanging metal followed. Several things had been clearly thrown around. There were only a handful of seconds before the door burst open, and the knight with the incredible square jawline and hedge-like brows stepped through with a furious scowl.

“I told you not to leave the house until…!”

The man’s anger lasted until his gaze stopped on the pile of wood. And as he looked at the ax in Damon’s hands. There was a heartbeat of silence, the thick brows rose until Damon could see the whites in the man’s eyes. His focus turned from the pile of wood to him, then the ax, and back to the wood.

“You can ask the cobbler, I was here the whole time.” Sybil declared with a tone that had no small amount of amusement. Still, her hand was on the pommel of her sword. “We were on the way back, in fact. Damon had to stop since he got hungry.”

Again, the man looked at the ax, the wood, and at Damon. His expression grew paler.

“Let’s go.” Sybil urged, tugging at Damon before the knight could react.

Damon knew he’d best leave before the man got his wits back and could find something to complain about.

As they made their way back to the main square and towards the house near the gate, he noticed something in the shop that hadn’t been there before. An opaque light yellow blob with a large orange lens for an eye. The creature was moving as if it were sentient chunky slime, reaching out to the nubs, hanging from the chains and pulling them to itself with insistence. The smith and cobbler were helping, carefully connecting the parts one by one.

It was the most surreal way for anything to put on armor that Damon had ever seen.

“Don’t hurry so much!” The smith complained, and the blob wriggled, relaxing and allowing the two to continue their work. The two were nervous, however, eyes constantly moving over the blob and recoiling whenever it twitched.

“That’s the familiar.” Sybil hadn’t slowed down, tugging Damon along a bit more insistently with every step. “Be careful around it.”

“It moves around inside a robot with glowing knives. If I never see it again, I’ll count myself lucky.”

She said nothing else, but her grip on his hand tightened.

If there was one universal constant in regards to space travel, it was that no matter the situation, things getting hotter was a sign of something potentially going wrong. Perhaps runaway engine heat was not being cooled properly, or maybe the ship was getting too close to superheated plasma. Or maybe, an ever hotter amount of matter was compacting at the edge of a warp bubble and threatening to make it collapse as it increased in size and temperature.

The last one was the one that Emilie found herself most concerned about. She sat on the pilot chair, the controls of the ship at her disposal. Slowly, she chewed on the piece of dried V4 vegetable-based food substitute as her focus hovered over a singular number on the display.

5%

It represented the chances that the warp bubble could pop before it reached its destination. If it did, the ship would run nose-first directly into a wall of superheated matter. One with an energy density that would laugh at the ship’s shields as it turned the vessel into slag faster than she’d be able to realize things had gone badly.

The lights flickered again, and Emilie sighed. Plopping the rest of the dried meal into her mouth, she clicked her EVA helmet shut. Then, she turned off all systems that weren’t directly tied to the ship’s navigation. All lights went out save those on the screen. The onboard life support systems turned off, and all spare power was directed towards the warp drive.

4.5%

A grimace, she kept the finger on the emergency shut down, her focus split between that number and the ETA to reach the system’s heliosphere. Just minutes, she only had to wait a handful of minutes and she’d be able to start working on the engine, and once that was done, she’d go take a nice hot shower.

And she wouldn’t get vaporized by superheated space debris.

All would be good.

The ship shook, accompanied by the kind of screeching metal sound no pilot or mechanic ever wanted to hear. It sounded like it would take her longer to fix than what the schedule would allow.

6.1%

Her lips thinned, she moved her finger ever closer to the emergency stop button, feeling the smooth surface through her protective suit’s haptic feedback. Only a flick and the engine would go through a rushed wind-down sequence. But she had only to hold out, only a handful of seconds.

A slow low hum rumbled through the ship, the ETA marker reached [0].

“That was close.” Emilie sighed. The ship would begin reducing the space dilation and compression rates. It would allow the gathered up plasma to disperse harmlessly one bit at a time. Safely, securely.

Anyone looking at the section of space would see a trail of brilliant white light streaking through the void like a comet on solar winds.

One hour from now, she’d be able to fully shut down the main engine and start work on-.

7.5%

Emilie frowned.

8%

“That… can’t be right.” She began bringing up the ship’s diagnostics. A startling number of alarms were popping up. If this were any other circumstance, she’d fear her onboard computer had caught a virus of some sort.

8.4%

Emilie pressed the emergency shut-down sequence. But nothing happened, the warp was already winding down, it wasn’t meant to switch between shut-off modes! It wouldn’t make sense for it to do such a thing!

The threat of a burst should be going lower now that the engine could divert power away from space compression and towards bubble integrity. This didn’t make sense!

8.9%

Something was terribly terribly wrong.