“Go to the coast, I can never stress this enough! Its the richest steaming pot of culture and for a good reason too. Down there, you’re bound to meet a few exotic folks, like the minotaurs and various saurian races like Naga from the tropical islands of Cetes, and Tronesia; their food is to die for―no I know a hot Naga dish that will literally melt your throat . A few ever make their way to these sides and some like the warm Ossyrian climate. Also, if you thought the dwarves live alone, think again; there are Murid that live in and around their cities; handy little people, good with their hands and the like and most will take a job a dwarf might scoff at. If you need runecraft done for cheap I know a Murid though he’s a rather mousy fellow.”Excerpt from Saelethil Greatstrider’s Wanderlusts: Peoples and Places.

Ask a dwarven [Enchanter] the best thing that ever happened to dwarves since distilled spirits and they would point you towards automation. Magical automation. Sure magic and skills made things easier, but one dwarf could only do one thing so long until it became monotonous.

Same for the skills were rare—It took years to train one crafter to the level of a master. How about if you didn't do that and instead, made it so something else could serve as a stand in. Or better yet do something one would consider boring without the mental fatigue of skill and spell overuse?

Of course you could say golems were there for such tasks. However, it had been centuries since the last sentient class golem crawled from the old battlefields―to the current times, the art of what made them tick had not yet been understood. Away from the myth of the God of Crafts, Eog imbuing them with his essence to make them sentient, it was considered a craft lost to time.

Nonetheless it did not stop them from trying to replicate the same thing. It is then that they found the uses of telepsychic crystals—memory, communication, and sound. That—was the difference between a mindless golem and a sentient one that could work autonomously.

Still, they could not replicate it right away. There was a difference between making a discovering of a certain arcanry and putting it to use— They did however, not come out of it empty handed. It is said that the birth of magitech began there—they bridged spellcraft, runecraft and artifacts using telepsychic crystals as the core.

It was through memory crystals, a specialized form of telepsychic crystal that unique magic was preserved from the grasp of time. Artifacts that had one too many functions and runecraft such that it became infeasible because they had a single use before they recharged, again memory crystals came in. The need for multiple conduits was reduced greatly. One telepsychic crystal could hold several matrices using the same conduits and the magical workings could be employed at the call of a spell's name.

Even then, it was superfluous to have too many runes in small artifacts, —the material could only hold so much magic before magical saturation caused runes and conduits to degrade.There was such a thing—it was the same as, mages casting one too many spells and tiring out their thaumovascular system. Beyond that, it would become too painful—one could easily fall ill and lose their ability to cast spells.

Anyway, memory crystals are what made craft like Holly's drachenflieger possible. The more complex an artifact, the more runecraft would have been needed to dictate magical workings and therefore the use of memory crystals. If the Aertherite and Tertherite crystals powering Holly's arcane driver were the mana well then the telepsychic crystal was the mind and heart of the craft.

And that is how Holly was casting several spells simultaneously. One was listening for [Message] spell echoes and another scrying for the location of the Sturmjäger while she concurrently recorded her mission logs. The telepsychic crystal was a very versatile thing and Holly was grateful for it.

“Seeker Holly mission log; updating mission subject. Search for and contact with subject Arthur Sturmdrache has been relegated to secondary mission objective. Primary mission objective updated to investigation of and capture of suspected Void Syndicate targets. Presence of vespertine from necromancer’s testimony under truth crystals confirms without a doubt that a Void Syndicate incident is currently underway. Attempts to reach the Sturmjäger have so far been unsuccessful and therefore use of [Scry] has been employed. Contact with the Sturmjäger—” Holly paused, moistening her lips. ” and potentially the Stormbreaker, are crucial to the new primary mission objective. ”

Holly frowned as she mulled at what it meant for her new mission. A potential run in with the Void Syndicate would be perilous even if she was a Seeker armed to the teeth with relic type artifacts. So far, the Void Syndicate incidents had left no one behind to tell the tale―it was like people just disappeared into the aether.

Fortunately, there was an open bounty on the capture or barring that, annihilation of suspected Void Syndicate cells with the mercenary corps. Hence, she was trying to reach the Sturmjäger.

If the mission briefs she'd heard back at the Citadel were to be believed then, the Void Syndicate might have captured people too. What they wanted with captives was unknown; there had been no ransom in gold or other valuables—which led her to believe that they'd had more sinister motives.

As for the necromancer, well, she'd left them back at the village of Dorn knocked out with Pixie's breath and the Draught of Mnemosyne—they'd have no recollection of meeting her when they came around. However, it was much to her consternation that she had to call off the pursuit of Arthur Sturmdrache; the Void Syndicate came first.

Holly did not find it hard to believe that the human was risking limb and neck to investigate the incident of the disappeared villagers. What she didn't get was why they'd split up and left their ship. If again, her guess was right, he had to have some powerful artifacts or someone high leveled with him otherwise he was putting himself in needless peril.

Holly had been less than half a league away when she saw everything there was to see. Her craft scried the position of the Sturmjäger and manifested the images against the left side of the drachenfliegr's canopy like a head’s up display. The Sturmjäger had tried to obfuscate its position but the repeating echoes of an indiscernible [Message] spell revealed the Stormbreaker's position thus the other ship as well.

“[Doladraen]; Bah, found us out, have ya?” Was the response she'd gotten. Holly felt as if she'd swallowed something irrefutably bitter have had to confirm the hunch in her gut. Doladraen had gone rogue and as a Seeker, Holly had failed to catch it from the get-go.

“[Doladraen]: Arm those carronades, I want that arcane engine even if I have to pull it from the ship’s smoking husk!” the dwarven man continued to bellow.

It was impunity; of late the mercenary corps had doubtless grown a bigger head and were doubtless trying to show up the Triad. Holly dispelled the connection to the Sturmjager and resignedly logged the situation. Then something caught her eye on the ongoing [Scry] spell and she cursed. The gauntlet had been tossed as it were.

“ [Priority Message]; Seeker Holly mission log supplemental,” Holly prepped herself for confrontation. Double checking her craft’s instruments, mana source capacity and arcane weapons. If she had to, she would go in hot. “ The Sturmjager under Doladraen Blackbeard has moved with their own designs on the subject’s aership. Please have it on record such actions were not sanctioned. As per Triad protocol, I am moving in to intercept and commandeer the vessel.”

And Holly had that log dispatched via encrypted [Message] spell just in case. Her [Scry] spell caught something else unimaginable; the other dwarven Ex-Triad woman Holly had been briefly acquainted with was facing off against Arthur’s daughter.

She wanted to retrieve the information on her abilities because what she was doing was unbelievable. The girl was holding her own; holding her own and against a seasoned [Mage-Hunter], even if the woman was not taking her seriously no less. She even recognized the footwork of the Aldmoorian guard’s hand to hand combat katas. All seemed to be going well for her, and then, things changed abruptly.

Holly gasped in shock as the girl was ragdolled by a haymaker, punched in the chin and throat, thrown into the air and then. When she'd been about to have the weight of an axe kick dropped on her, she used unknown artifact―it was just as well because the Seeker was too far to intervene.

Holly had seen enough―dispelling [Scry], buckled down and engaged [Cloak] her vessel’s quasi camouflage bound spell―she was going to put a stop to it. There was some way she could get there faster, even as she counted down the quints. Sure enough she picked up the craft’s documentation and searched for a movement magic; She was still getting used to the drachenflieger.

The Seeker found the spell’s name and then watching the rolling hills, she saw the terrain was favourable and moved the drachenflieger down.

She called out the magic, another bound spell that worked on the drachenflieger. A male dwarf’s voice recorded on the craft’s memory crystal read out all the risks inherent in what she was about to do and other nonsensical garble about the absolving liability and so forth. She cut out the narration and did it anyway.

As soon as she called out the spell's name —[Slingshot], she felt a rumble shudder through the drachenflieger’s frame as the bound magic took hold. The aertherite propelled quad-wings retracted and lay flush with the main body―then the arcane driver switched from the Aertherite mana source to Tertherite.

Using the same principles as the Ground Anchoring spell, the small vessel latched on to the canyon walls. Not surprisingly, it expended almost half of the mana source's capacity. Holly didn’t even have a moment to second guess herself before she was slapped into the seat with a grunt. The drachenflieger took off like a missile from a slingshot―

A couple of pars before Holly’s [Slingshot] maneuver.

There was an Alkerdian saying about bringing a wand to a sword fight; but when you were facing a Mage-Hunter like a certain synth then that point was moot.

At first everything had tilted in their favour, Arcis got her other rune wand back―after returning Orb of Waymarking to the Magehunter―to her face. It stalled her just enough that Arcis could recenter herself as the bow pitched back in elevation. That aside, they were leaving the pursuit behind―pitted against a dwarven ship, the Stormbreaker was fast.

Then just as easily as it had happened, it all went to the Pits. The Sturmjager employed movement skills. Lighter than the larger Hammerkopv class, it kept a stubborn lead behind the Stormbreaker’s tail. Whoever was helming it decided they’d had enough waiting and started firing off warning shots, shaking the air around the Stormbreaker and rocking it with explosive turbulence.

The back blast threatened to send Arcis careening over the railing. However, the Mage-Hunter had no such issues ; with her Ground Anchoring magic she was as stable as a sailor on the high seas. And she wasn’t very happy about taking an orb to the face.

Were it not for her [Spellslinger] class buoying her aim, she might as well have been a drunk firing a kalashnikov. She did land her shots but with whatever weapon skills the Mage-Hunter was using, she was tanking the spells with her svartanite swords ,slashing them out of the air while dodging some.

The larger than average armacus that she wore on both arms just prevented her from having her arm bones broken. Even for a dwarf with thick bones, the air bullets from the Luftkaster rune wands was enough to jar their teeth.

“ Ugh, enough!” the Mage-Hunter screamed as one of Arcis’ shots almost blasted her legs off the deck. Her Ground Anchoring kept her from slipping. The dwarven woman promptly dispelled the grounding magic and decided to go on the offensive with [Aspiro] and swords!

And this time, she wasn’t playing with kid gloves. Arcis had to use her acute spatial awareness and her class skills to stay one step ahead, else she’d have had her hands and head divested from her body.

At the back of her mind, she trusted her own skin to protect her, but the Mage-Hunter’s blades gave a feeling of foreboding she could not describe. The sword arts she’d gleaned from the Aldmoorian guard were also ill-suited to countering svartanite blades with rune wands as they were only the length of an italian long flintlock pistol.

No guard on them, she was also in danger of losing her fingers as the blades came in like a thresher. The clash of a magillium runewands and svartanite blades was a harsh retort of sparks both arcane and mundane as the two diametrically opposed magic metals screeched.

Their natures were canceling each other out, but the magillium seemed like it would lose out in the end as magic was continually leached with every hit. The Mage-Hunter noticed this and capitalized on it as her attacks were committed in earnest . Engaged in melee, Arcis’s ranged advantage with the runewands was taken from her .

With the weight of a mountain behind the woman’s blows, more than once, Arcis found herself brought to her knees— Her Ter augmentation strained to tank and parry the attacks coming for her with unrelenting fury. Attacks that would have already done her in were she an ordinary teenager.

Nevertheless, took a slip from overextending her footwork to know that there was actually something that could break her skin. The slash felt cold as one of the blades slashed across her wrist. She shrieked in pain as jumped back, letting off a salvo of shots to keep the Mage-Hunter at bay.

Gritting her teeth, the synth put more distance between them to nurse her wound. She was waiting for the Mage-Hunter to exploit the opening but they didn’t come. No, they’d actually also jumped back, eyes wide as they eyed the ichor, cobalt-blue sublimating off the deck floor.

“ I knew you were a monster,” the Mage-Hunter said, breathing heavily. At least the synth had endurance in buckets. “ But I didn’t mean it literally,” she added, eyeing the edge of her blade where the blue ichor was dissipating. It was liquid mana.

Arcis was clutching her arm as she grimaced in pain. Her thoughts swam around her head telling her just how outmatched she was in terms of experience.

“ Arcis!” Elena cried out over her telecry. The synth started, realizing that it had been seen from the bridge. The Sturmjager was still firing, explosions lighting up the vicinity like fireworks, yet the sylvani was more concerned about her. It was a departure from their squabble. Arcis felt a feeling bloom in her breast from being acknowledged somewhat.

“ I’m fine,” Arcis winced. The wound was closing up like clay molding into shape. All said, she was deadlocked, stalemated. Was there really nothing she could do?

“ [Numen]; Dear Sister.”

Arcis twitched.

‘ Numen?’ almost she cried out, stopping short when she realized it was all in her head . She couldn't take her eyes away from the Mage-Hunter, not even for a casion. The same Mage-Hunter was watching her warily as if she would start spitting out her alien blood.

“ [Numen]; Haaah, this is pathetic. I can’t bear to watch you floundering around.”

“ What do you mean?” Arcis mumbled under her breath, gingerly touching the cut. It had completely closed over, leaving nary a scar. The dwarven woman looked at her strangely. It seemed as if they were competing to see who would blink first as they stared down one another from opposite ends of the deck.

“ [Numen]; time is running out. Soon, I predict that they might commit to a direct artillery attack and blow my Stormbreaker out of the sky. I do not like playing the prey…end this or I will―and brutally.”

Arcis blanched and hesitated upon hearing the venom in her soul-twin’s voice. She looked like she would make good her claim―if the rune wands were any indication, she was capable of more even without a body. What if she had one? She shuddered.

“ [Numen]; ah, here it comes. “

‘ What do yo―’ Arcis drew her head back in shock when a [Message] appeared in her mind. She couldn’t even ask who, or how Numen had gotten hold of it.

“[Doladraen]: Arm those carronades, I want that arcane driver even if I have to pull it from the ship’s smoking husk!”

Then she caught the dwarven woman sneer at her before she teleported out of the deck . No sooner had her adversary disappeared than two arcane missiles streaked through the distance in a parabolic trajectory screaming destruction.

Arcis could only bare her eyes wide as she shouted into Elena’s telecry in warning. The ship banked to the starboard side too late, and one of them clipped the bow in a burst of arcane explosion. The other came straight for the deck―heading straight for her!

“ [Line of Evasion]; [Vector Lock On]; [Affinity Augmentation: T―]”

One moment she was there, augmenting her body the next, she was being knocked off her feet with a blast of magic that punched her center mass. It was so sudden, that she didn’t even feel how she’d been punched with the might of an anti-tank round .

Arcis, had been the most magically dense entity on board and had attracted one of the Mana Seekers. That explained why the other had been thrown off its trajectory.

Inadvertently, Arcis had saved the ship― not that two of them were enough to down it. The force of the mana seeking missile failing, to pierce through her, knocked her senseless and carried her overboard. The last thing she heard was Elena screaming in her head.

Unconsciousness felt like drowning―that was a synth’s point of view. A synth whose body housed two consciousnesses. Actually, the drowning was just a way her mind made sense of it. It was her worst fear; even the spirit could not, for whatever reason, forget everything about its previous life.

[Conditions Met: Heritage Skill Instigated!]

[ Arcis Numen Protocol!]

Outside, eyes fluttered open. Her irises were amber, with motes of blue―the inverse of her sisters’. She crinkled her lips in distaste as a myriad of injuries and sensations in their body made themselves known.

Her clothes had been completely scorched off, leaving her devoid of anything but the barest scrap to cover her dignity. There was a blue welt on her navel-less torso, ringed with soot where the Mana Seeker had punched her like a forging hammer.

Some of the mana from the spell however, seemed to have seeped into her body as soon as she’d taken over, fixing the areas of broken skin that were bleeding blue. The screams of a sylvani ringing in her telepsychic link brought her awareness to the fore.

The synth promptly shut that off to take stock― they realized that, one, they were not falling through the air and two, they were inside a vessel that was definitely not either of those that had been in the vicinity.

“…the Triad will not stand for this you hear me―”

Still in a daze, she looked around. Someone was talking and their voice seemed so far away. However, It was the two seater craft with a 360 degree canopy all round that caught her attention first. The view outside, well…it was a pell mell of arcane artillery and aerial maneuvers, as the sky, ships and the stars blurred into one another in a run of colors like the world was spinning too fast. The view was constantly shifting as the vessel flitted through the air nimbler than anything she’d ever known so far.

In a way the small craft was reminiscent of a bubble ship from a dystopian film about a barren wasteland and clones― a smile almost broke on her face as she drew the parallel with her own situation. She was her sister’s clone and the situation seemed fitting.

‘ This form is so limiting,’ she snorted, wanting to stretch. Only to encounter resistance as she was strapped to her seat. The harnesses were buckled tight enough that, were a human she would have bruised. She scowled in indignation.

“ I demand you cease hostilities at once or I’ll be forced to engage―”

Numen suddenly turned her head to the side then she saw another dwarf― and fury bloomed on her breast. She realized why the harnesses had been wound so tight to restrict her from drawing her rune wands, which the woman might have failed to retrieve.

Her cold grip had been no more tenacious than the mythical rock trapping a mythical sword. She couldn’t aim them as feeling and mana had yet to return to her limbs; unlike her sister, she hadn’t used an actual body outside of their mindscape.

‘ Infuriating―’ she fumed internally. She couldn’t fathom how her sister used the thing called a mouth to communicate.

Her frantic and limp wiggle caught the pilots attention―

“Ah ― there you are. I was worried I’d lost you. Whatever artifact protected you from an arcane missile must have gotten done in by the explosion. I am sorry. Was it a relic?”

The woman continued spouting, not taking her attention from the ensuing aerial combat. Batteries of [Cryo Lance] and [ Pyro Bolt] shot in tandem, harrying the larger Sturmjager as they passed below its keel. The larger vessel failed to bring up its Aegis shields in time, scoring them pockmarks against the hull.

It was clear however, that she’d put it in a non-lethal setting as she shot at the ship. Staying out of the reach of the other ship’s cannon’s they were virtually undetectable as they used [Cloak].

Numen’s eyes were drawn to the T-shaped instrument panel that separated her seat from that of the dwarf. It was a strange amalgamation of runes and gems that were stand-ins for dials and indicators. Readings pulsed all over the console as she parsed them at the speed of thought and at a glance she was able to tell what did what.

Stranger still, were some of the instruments, like the orb shaped crystal recessed in the middle. It was pearlescent white like an opal and silver conduits traced away from it into other parts. The other gems just as she thought were just foci for input, in place of buttons.

There was also a thingamajig like an arcane armillary constantly shifting around a replica of the drachenflieger as it wove around, harassing the larger ship. And a scrying slate also sat unused, slotted into a carrying compartment. Unfortunately, even that was out of reach.

“ What in the Pits were you thinking fighting a Mage-Hunter? Are you out of your mind?” the dwarf yelled. Whether it was out of the dizzying effort of banking their vessel out of the way of cannon shots or plain incredulity she wasn’t sure.

Numen let out another derisive snort and paid attention to yoke sticks; there were two rods floating on either side of the pilot’s chair and then levers and a set of pedal shifters on the floor. Curious, she peered over the back and saw another smaller hatch leading to the back of what she guessed were one person quarters.

“ Not one to talk to, are you? Either audacity runs in the family or―you sure inherited it from your father…who is your mother? hnrgh!” her query was interrupted as she jerked the sticks to the side, performing a roll.

Two ballistas, ostensibly runeheads, hammered her shields in a fiery explosion and rocked the small craft turbulently. The bound spell [Cloak] was promptly dispelled by the attack, leaving the craft exposed . Several runes and gems on the instrument panel winked out. The dwarven woman gasped and screamed in fury.

“ Rusting Slags!” she swore. “ Doladraen Blackbeard; Are you trying to kill me?!”

Numen whirled head back to the Seeker who was preoccupied with dodging another salvo of Mana Seekers; she pulled away from the assault cursing again as a couple tracked her through the air.

Whatever those runes and gems signified , they had to have been indicators for her aegis shield and the other spell that failed. The dwarf was a decent pilot no doubt; but she underutilized her craft― that or she was new to it.

She seemed awkward at the controls despite her prowess pitting the small thing barely half the size of the Stormbreaker against a dwarven ship the equivalent of a light cruiser.

The synth consciousness that was Numen glowered at the other ship; it had caused damage to her Stormbreaker! Even this far out, she could feel her ARACHNE go on a frenzy to fix the damage but there was hardly enough material.

Feeling had yet to come to her fingers. If she could just get the use of her hands, she would show the Sturmjager just who was queen of the skies. Perhaps, her skills would find better use? She cracked a sinister grin as she reached for [Gestalt]―