Chapter 29 – The Lab

I wasn’t sure what bothered me more. The fact that there was a portal to super hell just a few miles from Windfall that could have disgorged unholy abominations that could destroy the world at any time, or the fact that it never had.

“I lived in terror of this place,” I said, remember the palpable energy of terror that flowed from the cave.

“That was the point,” said Bashara walking past me and looking at the various contraptions.

I put Jarra down on the softest thing I could find, which was unfortunately the stone floor.  She was coughing so badly that I’d been forced to use Treatment on her in an effort to just let her breathe.

“For someone with her advanced age, adapting back over to unpolluted mana is going to be rough,” said Shart.

Just another thing, I thought then brought up my admin menus as I searched around.  I found the one for checking Radiant mana right away.

· <system check> Jim: Radiant Mana 98.9/100, increasing at a rate of 1.2 per day.

· <system check> Jarra: Radiant Mana 1.1/4, increasing at the rate of .1 per day.

We were in Windfall province now, so bringing up the town was easy enough.  I checked on EsterSasha, the old but pretty active woman and discovered she had five out of twenty points left.  MaGetty, who was ancient, still had three points out of 10.

Sorting the town by radiant mana was even more depressing, Jarra was on the very bottom of a list that included multiple people I knew were dying of old age.  I shut down the menu.

I saved her, and she was still going to die.

“The resurrection ritual?” I asked.

“You’d have to kill her, or turn her into an undead, first,” said Shart.  “Then you’d need to gather up an obscene amount of life mana.  Grebthar’s fortress took decades to finish and required the place to be overloaded to work.”

If it did, I was just glad that no matter what they were out of my hair.  Either Sukar and Phil had died, or they had been reborn and would be so happy with me that they’d stop trying to hunt me down.

“Chamber of souls?” I asked.

“She doesn’t have enough life force left to survive being put into stasis,” said Shart.

We discussed the situation for a few more minutes, but the system was not fond of letting people de-age.  Everyone who’d managed to make themselves young again had only managed it by doing absolutely insane stuff decades in the making.

I didn’t have decades.

I didn’t have weeks.

Regeneration and Treatment had blown the rust off of all of Jarra’s worst points.  With that much healing dumped into her, she was basically a spry geriatric, and we were in a magical lab.

“What’s this,” she asked.

I looked at the contraption and was puzzled for a moment.  The device was covered in obvious magical symbols, including several I recognized from my portal magic though they were in highly advanced forms.  There was another tap into the Shadow Ley Line sitting here but it didn’t appear to be connected.  Beyond that there were a lot of additional focal devices for controlling power.

“I’m not sure, it looks similar to the tap in my basement but lots of parts are missing” I said looking at where some parts had been removed.  There was a large space there for putting something, but I had no idea what.  “Do you recognize this?”

Shart materialized on my shoulder and examined the device before pressing a tile causing the portal to shut, “Looks mostly progenitor built, but there are a handful of human modifications and even some demonic components attached.  It looks like someone was trying to connect everything together but I don’t see how with the bits missing.”

My Engineering wasn’t up to the task.  Maybe Hansa or Beakatrix could figure it out.  Beakatrix was certainly a better engineer, but she tended to be more of a challenge to talk to than Hansa.  Plus, Hansa was just cuter, and if I had a choice I’d ask the cute redhead over a massive raven with tea saucer sized eyeballs.

I sniffed several times, “Was a demon in here?”

Shart looked around, “I can’t tell, Badgelor might be able to when he wakes up.”  I was about to ask why not when I activated my arcane sight and promptly realized the issue.  Shart used his magical senses far more than his conventional ones and the room was a chaotic mass of magic.

It was times like this when you appreciated the good old mark one eyeball and the tried and true nose.  They were not nearly as specific as magical sight but they tended to work in more circumstances than the more specialized organs.

Magical sight was usually more trouble than it was worth, so I typically kept it off.  Even with two worlds, there were so many magical fields, auras, and effects flowing around that unless you needed to figure something out all the extra information did was confuse you.  Plus Pumas only showed up in my normal vision and I wasn’t going to get caught unaware.  That was just insane.

I did a quick puma check, angry with myself that I hadn’t searched the room since we’d appeared a minute ago.

“He’s still doing that?” asked Bashara.

“Worse now, actually,” said Shart.

“I expected this place to be dustier,” I said ignoring the fools, they could be anywhere! I glanced around at the rest of the equipment.  While the not-dungeon core was large and impressive, it just was the centerpiece in a magical lab.

“Daddy always had enchantments to keep everything clean,” said Bashara with just enough of a sneer on daddy to make her point.

“I might have to copy that, the ones in Windfall manor aren’t nearly this good,” I said though that made sense I supposed.  You would spend extra effort to make your lab spotless and just hire a maid for your home.

The ones in the manor were cleverly applied, and mainly served to take the edge off of dust forming anywhere.  I hadn’t even seen them originally, and they were just a minor thing built into the house.

It didn’t take me long to find a string of the cleaning runes, so I focused on them.  That automatically copied them into my Formulas tab so I could process them later.

I looked over at one of the other devices and recognized it a bit, “I think I saw one of those in one of those garages in Jersey.”

Shart looked through my eyes and whistled, “A Slurper.  That is a demonic device for removing and installing souls between bodies.” There was a diagram of how it was assembled next to it and it looked different than any magical formula I’d seen before.

“Is that science or magic,” I said, attempting to copy the plan. I got several weird prompts as my Crafting skill struggled, but eventually I managed to make a copy.

“Bit of both, I guess,” said Shart. “We just had crafting, so our equipment is largely hybrid versions that used whatever was most effective.”

“And it could switch your souls between bodies?” I asked.

“Any demon, who’s not locked into their body,” said Shart, “But thanks for thinking of me.”

“Does that mean a demon has to be… installed into a body?” I asked.

“Not anymore, we go wireless.  That’s old pre-war stuff,” said Shart.  He reached over and ran a claw down the side, “I’m actually surprised even Grebthar found one of those.  I thought they were all destroyed.”

“Maybe he built it,” I said.

“Possibly, I haven’t seen one for ages,” said Shart, examining it more thoroughly this time using his magical senses.  I looked at the device and wondered what I could do to make it work, but no skill prompts came. Either I already had the skill or there was no way to gain it.

Minutes ticked by while I smashed every skill I had against the device uselessly.

“Are you stalling,” asked Bashara, cutting me out of my funk. I was, it was just all the alternatives were terrible. What was I going to do here? How could I Jim this up? I could improve my ritual skill and perhaps buy Jarra a few months, but it was going to take a miracle to fix her.

You can do anything you put your mind to.

That sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it before, it sounded familiar though. Like something someone told me whenever I needed to hear it. She wouldn’t let me stand around wasting time like this.

I looked at withered Jarra and nodded, “we need to get back.”

“You didn’t fail, you brought her back,” said Bashara, looking at me curiously.

“She disagrees,” I smiled walking over to Jarra.  She was looking at her withered hand like it was the first time she’d ever seen it.  I remembered those hands, strong confident hands that could be surprisingly gentle when the need arose.  Now they were an old woman’s hands.

“I’m not going,” she said, “It's not fair to them.”

“How is that?” I asked, sitting next to her.

“Jim, they already mourned my death,” said Jarra.  “Now I’m just going to return and die a few weeks later so they have to mourn me all over again.  I don’t want to put anyone through that twice.”

“They are your friends,” I began but she cut me off.

“And the pity,” she said, squeezing her hands together.  “I could handle just showing back up, I don’t know if I can handle the pity I see from people.  Like you.”

I went to say something, but realized it was pointless.  I did pity her.  I was going to try to fix this, but I didn’t know how to do that, yet.  Jarra smiled sadly.

“I’ll fix this,” I said.

She smiled, “You’ve already saved me.  I can die on Ordinal; my soul is saved.  That’s more than I hoped for.”

I considered my options for a moment then glanced over at Badgleor, “He’s really banged up.  Could you look at him?”

Jarra smiled, “I think you are a better healer than I ever was.”

“Yet it is not working on him,” I said. “He always preferred your healing skill.”

Jarra stood uncomfortably and walked over to the war badger.  She held up her hand unsteadily for a moment and prayed to the goddess of healing causing Badgelor’s body to light up.  She then whispered a few more prayers and more healing magic flowed into him.

“He’s pretty banged up, and his mana network is strained,” said Jarra, casting a few more spells.  “I’m going to need some reagents.”

“There is all you could want in Windfall,” I said.

She hesitated, but only for a moment, “Yeah, my old garden should have enough.”

It certainly would.  After the last fight in the city had destroyed one of the buildings next to the garden I’d more than doubled the size of the plot, again.  The Falconians had nearly picked it clean, so I’d expanded it again afterwards.  I also renamed the garden Jarra's Garden, in her memory.

I was going to have to tear down that plaque.

“Well, then let's go,” I began throwing a portal up against the wall.  “You coming Bashara?”

“I think I’ll stay here for a bit, Father always built apartments for his labs,” said Bashara.  I nodded, she was going to bolt and I was going to let her.

“I’m not,” she replied.

“Didn’t think you could read my mind,” I replied.

“Mind no,” said Bashara, “Face, yes.  I’m still not sure what I’m doing yet, but I can stay here for some time.”

“Your father is coming,” I said.

“I’m not sure how much use I’ll be, but I’ll assist however I can,” said Bashara.

“Good enough,” I said, focusing on my office which was thankfully empty at the moment.  The trick with portals was that I could open them wherever I could see and technically I could see my office from here.  The counterpoint was that I had to pay the mana cost and that was directly proportional to distance.

Fortunately, I had enough and a sparkling blue portal shimmered into existence.  Jarra had Badgelor in her arms and walked purposefully through the portal before I could even say anything.  I followed stepping into my office.

And my UI started popping up all the notifications I’d blocked because I was out of town.

“There are over 9000,” I groaned.