Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

Emily puts all of the plates through a series of tests, checking everything from their resistance to bullets and magic to their density in order to select the perfect choice. She settles on a blend of steel containing a touch of black iron, the best option for balanced strength while using up as little of her magical resources as possible.

After coming to a decision, Emily gives Podrick the scrap testing plates and gets him to engrave identifying markers into each so she can use them again next time she needs to pick a specialised material for something. While he completes his monotonous task in the corner, Emily sets about cutting and shaping new panelling for Calypso.

They work through the night without issues, and the ship continues on its planned path the entire time as Emily follows Angela’s instructions. In the morning, they take a short break to grab breakfast when Angela and Tony take control once again. Afterwards, Podrick heads to his room to sleep for a while, unable to keep up with Emily as she returns to work on the armour.

She works alone until he returns, her body moving under the command of her secondary cores, carefully following her new blueprint for the ship while her primary consciousness focuses on refining her design for some defensive arrays to engrave on it.

In the early evening, after Podrick has returned from his rest full of vigour, Emily pauses in the middle of bending a large sheet of dark grey metal, releasing her foot from the pedal of the machine she’s using as she turns her head to stare at the wall with a frown.

“What’s the matter?” Podrick asks as the hiss of steam stops, and he looks over to see her staring into the distance.

Emily doesn’t respond, barely even hearing the question as her attention remains on the image coming into her mind across her connection with her bird on the ship’s balloon. On the horizon, along with the beautiful golden glow of the setting sun, is a creeping yellow haze, quickly approaching the ship.

“Get to your room and hunker down,” she says, quickly pulling the armour panel she was working on into her belt and turning to rush out. “There’s a sandstorm coming.”

She bolts out of the door and rushes towards the bridge, hearing hurried footfall in the corridor behind her as Podrick heeds her instructions. A loud horn sounds as Emily turns the corner to the bridge and enters the ship’s command centre to see it starting to lower towards the dunes below.

“I take it you’ve spotted it?” Emily asks, walking over and leaning on the back of Anton’s chair.

“Of course we did,” Angela responds indignantly, frantically adjusting her controls to help bring the ship down smoothly. “We’re professionals you know. I’m no worse than your little birdy.”

She taps her periscope as she speaks, reinforcing her point.

“Fair play,” Emily responds with a shrug, realising her haste to warn them was pointless. “Anyway, what’s your normal protocol for sandstorms?”

“We set down and deploy our anchors,” Anton answers. “Then we sit and pray that nothing attacks us until the storm has passed and we can take off again. Though with you and the guns you gave us, I’m hoping we’ll be fine even in the worst case.”

“Of course, nothing will bother us,” Emily responds, pushing off his chair and turning to leave, patting the pistol on her thigh.

She heads out of the bridge and calmly makes her way to the drone’s deployment room. Once there, she pops open the hatch and steps out, dropping from the ship and falling rapidly towards the sandy ground below. A green magic circle wraps around her legs as she uses air walk to create a few footholds on the way down to arrest her momentum.

Emily lands on the sand softly and quickly pulls out the barrier disc as the ship follows close on her heels. She sets the disc off and tosses it up into the air, letting the anchors that mark its borders spread out to full extension before dropping to the ground along with the disc.

A one-way sound barrier soon wraps around the ship’s landing zone, so Emily quickly moves out of the barrier and waits for Calypso to come down while pulling her scarf to cover her face and protect her from the sand being kicked up by the rapidly increasing wind. After a few minutes, the ship drops into the barrier, and all sounds of its engine vanish as it silently touches down.

Hopefully, nothing big below the sand will know we’re here now.

With her first concern dealt with, Emily quickly approaches the ship again, moving to collect her barrier disc as Calypso shoots four sturdy cables into the ground, one on each side. The corkscrew-shaped anchors on the end of each cable hit the ground outside the barrier and dig in a little, with over half their mass still above the sand. The ship’s stairs lower as Emily picks up the barrier disc, checking the crystals mounted to it and frowning.

I knew setting it to full size would be bad, but I didn’t realise it would fully drain a lesser crystal within a few minutes. If I want to use this for large groups, I’ll need to either work on the array, upgrade the crystals, or both.

She puts the disc away and approaches the three, armed crew members coming down the steps to meet her with an assortment of goggles and fabrics protecting their faces from the elements.

“Emily? Why a-” Anton says in muffled confusion through the cloth wrapping his mouth before cutting himself off and shaking his head. “Never mind. Please help us set up the anchors.”

Emily nods her agreement, and they all split off to each deal with a different cable. Emily heads to the cable furthest from the steps and grabs the two handles on either side of the hefty metal post. She turns it in place, digging it deeper and deeper into the sand until only the cable and its mounting are left above the surface. The sands around them grow more and more unstable as she works and, by the time she’s finished burying her anchor into the ground, Emily can’t see more than a few metres around her on each side.

She pushes against the howling winds as they flow between the ship’s landing gears, approaching the steps again and ignoring the harsh scratchings of sand battering the metal surrounding her. She climbs to the top and finds Anton and Ash waiting for her.

“Where’s Angela?” Emily shouts over the wind as the ship shudders.

“Not back yet,” Anton shouts back, anxiously glancing up at the almost fully deflated balloon above them as it starts to move about in the rough wind. “Shit.”

Emily follows his gaze up and frowns. She quickly checks on the bird she left up there, finding it safely tucked into the folds of the heavy fabric, before glancing back out into the storm.

“You guys get that tied down,” she shouts, turning towards the cable anchor Angela was dealing with. “I’ll get Angela.”

She steps off the edge of the stairs, falling through the dusty winds onto the ground below. She lands with a light thud and breaks out into a sprint towards Angela’s last known position. She channels earthen detection as she runs, trying to use the spell to locate the missing pilot and struggling with the overload of information from the tumultuous sands.

She arrives at the anchor, finding it completely dug into the ground, fully set up but with no sign of Angela. Clicking her tongue in frustration, Emily turns her focus on a cluster of heavy movement a little distance from the ship, praying it really is her target as she charges ahead, away from the protection of the ship.

The visibility around her drops more and more, the worst of the storm finally reaching her, bringing with it the familiar weight of dense mana and powerful winds that buffet her forcefully, making each step harder than the last. Ignoring the surprisingly-magical storm, she keeps moving towards the cluster of motion. Before she sees what’s going on, Emily hears a distorted gunshot nearby and feels a bullet whiz past her arm. Locking her eyes to where it came from, she lowers herself to reduce the wind’s impact and makes a break in a straight line, running knee-first into a skulking, khaki predator.

Her leg slams into the large, dog-sized beast, with the same colouration as the swirling sand-filled wind around them, breaking her stride. Despite her surprise, Emily doesn’t lose her balance and instead drives her knee forward with more purpose, forcing the beast to the floor before she quickly slashes a blade down its stomach.

Sand stalkers.

Glancing up after confirming her opponents, Emily spots another, larger figure a few metres ahead of her through the sand. Without wasting a beat, she springs over the newly created corpse and approaches the figure before they can vanish into the storm.

“Angela!” she calls in warning while reaching out and clasping a hand onto the distorted form.

Luckily, her judgement is correct and Angela comes into view, lowering the rifle that was pointed at Emily.

“Thank Goddess,” Angela shouts, making no effort to shake Emily’s hand from her arm and frantically looking around. “I think I’m surrounded.”

Emily glances down at the gashes in the woman’s clothes and the blood dripping from her wounds, noticing how she’s leaning to one side and struggling to stand on one leg.

Shit. How many of them are there?

Holding Angela firmly to help her keep her balance, Emily looks around, searching for any signs of motion within the twisting sands. She sees several flickers of movement, but none of the beasts approach them.

“Did you kill them?” Angela asks, her panic reducing as nothing happens for a few seconds. “I thought they were everywhere.”

Are they scared of me?

With an evil smirk, a flood of sky-blue runes flows from Emily to form a glistening magic circle above her head.

“I haven’t yet, but I think they can tell I’m stronger than them. They’re scared of this,” Emily says as the crackling orb of uncontained violence that is arc forms above her.

Instantly, a streak of plasma shoots off, locking onto a moving beast nearby and striking it. The moment the magical mark is applied, and the beast pauses from the shock, Emily grabs the Spitter from her thigh and fires a shot at the blistering target. Six more tendrils of power find targets nearby, and Emily kills them all while calmly pulling Angela back towards the ship’s entrance with the spell floating above them for protection.

Emily tucks herself under Angela’s arm and pulls her up the stairs as quickly as the woman’s injuries allow, a particularly unpleasant-looking gash on her thigh slowing her down. As they step into the safety of the ship, the hatch shuts behind them and Anton breathes a sigh of relief.

“Thank Goddess you’re alright,” he sighs, moving over to take a look at Angela.

His eyes go wide when he sees the blood still pouring down her leg, creating a pool below her.

“That looks bad,” Anton says with concern. “What happened?”

“I got attacked by a group of sand stalkers when I tried to return,” Angela explains, wincing as Emily sets her down on the cold metal floor, and pulling her face covering off to breathe properly. “They surrounded me and pushed me away from the ship. I wasn’t sure I would make it back until Emily here showed up. She used some freaky ball of lightning to find them while she dragged me back.”

“It’s a spell called arc,” Emily explains as she pulls out a vial of healing potion and pulls off the cork, staring at an exposed artery calmly and hoping Angela will continue to focus on her words instead of the pain to come. “It attacks any nearby living things when activated, so I excluded us from the targeting and then set it off. Makes it easier to fight things you can’t see. I designed it for an expedition into The Glade.”

Angela and Anton listen intently, the former still wincing and grinding her teeth, holding in a scream as Emily pours the glistening red liquid onto the fresh gash on her leg.

“Fuck,” she chokes out between tears as Emily finally moves the half-empty vial away from the injury and hands it to her.

“Drink the rest of this. It will help with the pain,” Emily says, watching her leg slowly knit itself back together.

She’ll live, but she’ll definitely be left with scars from this… maybe this is a chance to get the scans I wanted?

“Thanks,” Angela says after gulping down the rest of the potion, letting out a relieved sigh as her pain eases.

“Anytime. That potion should close the rest of your wounds slowly, but that one’s probably going to scar,” Emily explains, gesturing to the already scabbed-over gash. “I can try to help if you want, but you’ll need to let me run an invasive scan for that.”

“What does that mean?” Angela asks, leaning back against the wall and making no effort to get up.

“I’ll send some of my energy into your body to draw a blueprint of things like your organ placements, skeletal structure, and musculature. I won’t hurt you, but I’m not the best at healing magic and I think it’s because I don’t understand the human body well enough yet.”

Angela pauses to consider her request, looking up at her with a twisted expression.

“You want to see inside my body?”

“Yes,” Emily answers calmly.

“And it won’t hurt?”

“Not at all. If you’re worried you can ask Pod. I’ve done them on him before.”

“No, it’s fine,” Angela says, moving to push herself up and gladly accepting an offered hand from Anton. “Let’s do it. You already saved my life, what’s a little bodily intrusion between friends.”