Refos and Ucria had acquired quite a few items on their shopping trip, and it took Pellex longer than he expected to help them get everything put away, even with Monn and Puev's enthusiastic assistance. Once finished, Pellex nodded sharply and tapped the storage rod at his side.

"I'm off to do some training, and Iote wanted to watch, so we'll be on the third floor if you need anything."

Refos nodded, but Ucria looked over, seemingly interested.

"Iote wanted to watch?"

"Yeah, when I mentioned that I would be training, it asked to observe."

"Could I, uh, also watch? Watch it watch you, I, uh, suppose."

"Sure, follow me."

Heading to the stairs, Pellex went down to the third floor. Passing the family bedrooms, he made a quick stop in his own room to pick up a few constructs from his room. Some of them were made by him directly, but others were constructed by his parents, or even purchased from other stores. Having gathered his training materials, he led Ucria into an unadorned box of a room, lined with bronze netting, and with glowing seals carved into the center of each wall. Training rooms like this weren't uncommon among the middle class in the Peacejoined States, though this one wasn't very high-end, given the Audenry penchant for artifice and generally less destructive skills. Pellex knew the twins used it a lot, but obviously not too recently, given that the room was actually clean.

Sitting down, he took Iote out and set him in one of the corners. The link was easier to make this time, and Pellex felt like he could hear a few of Iote’s thoughts, though they were at the edge of his mental hearing, maddeningly close to being understood, but still unintelligible. Shutting that out, he took a deep breath.

“I’m not sure how interesting this will be, [Cogsight] is pretty internal, and very expensive in thi. I’m not able to do it for long, though I have other things to practice.

: it will be more interesting to observe with limitations than without :

: continue :

"Alright, then."

Pellex placed a hand on the first item he had selected, an early prototype of the flashlight he had designed, one he had built himself, and used personally for quite some time. The world faded away, and he stood in that strange other world. The massive gears churned in the sky, seemingly aimlessly, but powerful. None were anywhere near him, all sitting far beyond him, as if he was in the lone empty space in a solid world of machines. He tried to look at his immediate surroundings, but found himself to be floating in midair. He couldn't move his legs, no matter how hard he tried, but he felt as if he was standing on solid ground.

He was curious as to his thi consumption, but his attempt to open his status screens failed. Instinctively, he tried to push some into the space around him, but it stayed locked in his body. Pellex looked around again, trying to catch a glimpse of anything that could be seen as related to Fate, the realm that the other diviners saw. It was just gears, grinding, spinning. They groaned at the edges of his hearing, gigantic beyond belief, and powered with incredible force. Pellex resolved to ask Ploris about ways he could attempt to move around. Pellex wasn't truly here, after all, and such a presence could usually sidestep a few laws of reality.

With no further testing to do, Pellex turned to the flashlight, and saw the ghostly gears, translucent and white, spinning off of the unmoving, physical cogs within the machine. They extended in every direction, and when Pellex brought his hand near them, he felt something shift and warp around his skin, as if he was reaching through reality itself. He stopped just short of actually touching one, and concentrated, trying to feel something from it. He couldn't sense anything.

The gears seemed to be sized based upon the importance of the event they represented, at least in Pellex's experience, so, from among the flashlight's gears, he chose the smallest one he could find. Darkness consumed his vision, and when it cleared he was standing in the workshop, hovering slightly above the ground, and watching the flashlight sit on a table. Ollei was working on something at the table, and only moments after Pellex started watching, knocked her elbow into the flashlight, sending it on to the floor. Surprised by the sound, she looked over and saw the flashlight, then picked it up and put it back.

Pellex came to in reality, Iote whirring away in the corner and Ucria in the middle of pulling a notebook out of her pack. He checked the system, ignoring a notification for now, and was surprised to see his thi sitting at 423. He hadn't been at maximum, of course, given his recent reading session, and this was far more thi left than he had expected. The time in the gear world had felt like a minute or two, at least, though the cog vision had been only three or four seconds long.

"How long was I in [Cogsight]?"

"Uh, maybe half a minute?"

: twenty-three seconds :

"Interesting. It felt longer."

"Time dilation, uh, is not uncommon in other planes, especially if, um, present mentally."

"Yeah, I read about that. I didn't notice it the other times I used [Cogsight], but I wasn't paying much attention then. Iote, did you notice anything?"

: you connected to something :

: i felt the link extend from your mind :

: and there was data :

: transferring beneath the surface level :

"Where was the data coming from?"

: the extraplanar link :

: a short burst was received from the construct initially :

: and then transmitted to the other plane :

: but after that all information was extraplanar in origin :

"Not unsurprising, but good to have confirmation, thank you." Opening his notification, Pellex received a welcome surprise.

Class Skill [Cogsight] has advanced!

It is now Bronze Grade III!

That was far easier than he had expected, but his complete lack of practice would probably explain the growth. He didn’t allow it to change his plans, though. There was another skill he had picked up and had no opportunities to use – [Construct Activation].

[Construct Activation]:

Bypass a construct’s usual activation method with a burst of thi. This skill becomes harder to defend against upon upgrading.

Cost: 20 thi

(30 – skill level/2 thi)

Owned: Bronze Grade I

Without hesitation, he picked up his flashlight and, instead of hitting the button, sent a pulse of thi into the machine, turning it on with only the faintest hint of resistance. A good test run, but training required hardship. So, picking a centrex module, one of the newer ones, and far more secure than the last generations, out of his pile of constructs, he set to work.

Class Skill [Construct Activation] has advanced!

It is now Bronze Grade IV!

Thi cost reduced to 18!

Pellex had been training for only a few minutes, but was already spent, both in thi and mentally. His First Echelon skills were actually capable of utilizing his thi pool, and his family didn’t keep potions on hand. A trip to an automat would have been fine, but Pellex decided to go over what he had been testing.

“[Cogsight] has something going on with it that I cannot decipher. The cog world isn’t mentioned in any literature I know, and it can alter my subjective flow of time without altering the System time used to calculate thi costs.”

: it is a powerful tool :

: but those can cut both ways :

: the other skill is more interesting :

: i am a construct :

: what would happen if you attempted to activate me :

“Something bad, no doubt. We’ll wait until we can get a more secure lab to test this in, but for now, it’s probably best not to try.”

: unfortunate :

“I do need some more thi, though, so I’ll go purchase some from the automat down at the corner.

“I’ll uh, come, I want to see the city more.”

“It’s just a short walk, but sure thing.”

Walking down to the automat, Pellex pointed out the features of the street he had grown up on, from shops, to houses, even to a small museum. Ucria seemed interested, and would occasionally scribble something in her notebook while looking at the buildings, all the while talking to Pellex about relatively minor problems.

Pellex hadn’t been lying when he said it was close, and they reached the automat fairly easily. This was an Inimitable Corporation medium automat, one with just a few small capacitors for power, and, as of a few years ago, it took power trades. Scanning the box up and down, Pellex checked the current power ratios, and placed his hand on a soulbronze plate inset in the machine. He felt his sci and phi dwindling, the same time as his thi rocketed upwards. Taking his hand off with enough phi to spare and a nearly full thi pool, he walked back to Closeworks and back into the training room, where he settled in for the long, slow grind of skill training.