I opened up Cyclone and climbed out, then had him sit down and lean against the fountain, and shut down. He would need to be repaired before we could continue on so we’d need some more time. I moved over to the barrier device to feed it a bit more mana and Matty shrieked and backed away. Really? After all that? Why was he so terrified of me, but not of Cyclone? I’m like, the size of a dwarf, barely bigger than a Metroplex figure. I didn’t have the luxury to think about that right then, so I pushed a bit more mana into the barrier; enough to keep it going for another hour or so.

I grabbed the first token that I’d tried in the device off the ground and tossed it to Elita. “See if she can get in with this”

Elita gave me a nod and walked through the gate without any problems. She squatted down to see how Shea was doing and handed her the token. I, on the other hand, felt like I was forgetting something. Then it dawned on me that Carnivac was offline. Ah crap, sorry buddy! I ran around the fountain and found Carnivac partially embedded into the wyvern he’d been fighting, who was in turn, embedded into the side of a house. I was thankful that the wyvern was able to provide a bit of a cushion for my wolfy shell. I would need Carnivac back up and running since he was the one technically on this quest. Instead of risking further damage to him trying to pull him free, I just put the crushed wyvern into my [Inventory], removing it from around him. I tried rebooting him but it seemed like he had a fair amount of internal damage that would need fixing first. This time I came prepared and had put an extra workbench and tool set into my [Inventory] already, along with plenty of materials. I just needed a place to set up.

“FWAAA! Oh by gowbs, ib weewe steenbs!” Shea said through a pinched nose and covered mouth. “Oh.. Ugh.. Ibs in by mouff.”

Then all of her breakfast was back up to say hello. I stopped and thought about it. Do I have a sense of smell? I don’t have a nose. I kind of listened with a sense that wasn’t sight or hearing and became aware of different chemical compounds in the air. I didn’t get any sense of good or bad though, it was like seeing a read-out of the things in your basket at the grocery instead of experiencing the food. Well no sense keeping that running all the time.

The smithy shop with the kiln would likely be a good place to work, I remember seeing a foundry and forge as well, though my [Craft] skills made up for a lot of that. I tried asking Matty if he would mind if I used the place but he just curled up and kept crying. I was starting to get a really bad feeling about what had done this to this village and what Matty saw. I turned to ask Shea to help out but she was still busy puking her guts out while Elita was holding her hair back with Sparky at her side looking concerned. Both my shells were heavily damaged so I didn’t have anyone that could reach Matty... I needed to get to work but I’d feel bad leaving the kid alone, so I pulled Shrapnel from storage.

I powered Shrapnel up and set him on the ground. He walked, slowly, over to Matty. Matty stopped cowering and watched Shrapnel make his way over, kids in my old world love beetles and I suppose it’s the same here. Matty picked Shrapnel up and started examining him, no doubt this was the first automata beetle he’d ever seen. I’d keep an eye on Matty this way via Shrapnel and gathered up my shells to head over to the smithy.

It took me longer than I’d care to admit to get Carnivac and Cyclone fixed back up again. Shea and Elita had left the village and taken Matty with them, there was really no reason for them to hang around. The plan was to meet up with them at the nearby village of Willow Park when I was done. I’d had to feed the barrier device twice to keep it going, but I kept giving it only enough to power for a couple of hours at a time. No point in fully charging it if no one was going to be here.

It was already well into the night when I got my shells fully repaired. Thinking to pack proper tools and materials as well as a work space helped a lot this time, but I still felt like I’d have to come up with something better for the next time. What I really needed was a repair bot. Rom and Ram could do a fair amount of repair work but I kept them working on producing sellable products for the shop to honor our deal with Jada. I’d have to move the ideas to a background process and get to it later. I connected to Carnivac but when I tried to connect to Cyclone I got an error message.

Maximum Proxy limit reached: 5/5

Please disconnect from another proxy unit to connect to unit: Cyclone

It didn’t even occur to me that I had a limit to the number of proxies I could connect to given my mana limit. I shut down Alfred for the night since the shop was closed anyway and was able to connect to Cyclone again. So far I only had six proxies and I kept Shrapnel powered down most of the time, which is probably why I never noticed before.

Before I left the village, I gathered up all of the bodies I could find and moved them to a pile in the fountain after draining it. There was plenty of oil to be found as people had held off on ransacking the place due to the barrier being up before so I soaked the bodies and lit them up. I’m not a religious person, and I know these are nothing more than rotting meat at this point, but I felt these people deserved better than to be food for beasts. I gathered up all the dead wyverns I could find along with any supplies that looked like they might be useful and headed out in Cyclone with Carnivac riding my motorcycle form.

As the pyre burned high into the sky, the barrier winked out. I felt like I had a pretty good idea what had happened to these people, but I lacked any proof. If I was right, then Willow Park wouldn’t be safe for very long, assuming it hadn’t already fallen. I poured on the speed, suddenly feeling very nervous for my friends. Thanks to Shrapnel, I knew that nothing had happened yet, but it was only a matter of time.