Jace stood over the remains of the three automatons, chest heaving, but otherwise unharmed.

  Still, he thought. Shame I couldn’t do any more with the card.

  He was getting closer to figuring out the auxiliary effect it had. Seeing what his targets were about to do was nice, but that didn’t seem exactly in-line with what a Vault Core was. It was supposed to send an echo of him across the galaxy to fight and train against monsters. Sure, it probably had a good database of certain monsters, and knew a great deal about the creatures of the galaxy, but it only seemed capable of seeing into the future when combined with the Questforger card.

  A bit of precognition, he supposed. But only a second in advance, and it had made the card’s runes glow way hotter than they should’ve from a regular use.

  He mustered the card and manifested above the palm of hand. The runes on its face were still glowing bright red, and the longer he stared at it, a new message appeared above it: [Warning: Technique cooldown too low. Suggested cooldown: twenty-four (24) hours.]

  He sighed and blew a puff of air out his nose. He could ask Lessa to manually increase it, but he didn’t have to use it for a burst of precognition, and if he wanted to track something, he couldn’t wait an entire day between uses.

  He’d just have to be careful, then.

  By now, though, the others were waking up. Kinfild was the first to step out into the hallway. He looked upon the scene and gave a simple nod. Then came Lessa, who stepped out with a yawn and stretched, then rubbed her eyes. Probably hadn’t fully processed what she’d seen yet.

  Then came Perril and Ash, who, when in the main hallway, shifted away from each other uncomfortably.

  “New scrap?” Jace said, motioning at the pile.

  “I’ll take a look,” said Perril. She walked over and bent over the heaps. “You chopped them up pretty good. Ash wouldn’t’ve cut so many times, but…”

  “It was my left hand…” Jace muttered, but he accepted it. Ash had a lot more combat experience under his belt.

  “And I think we have enough material here to fix that,” said Perril. She bent over the pile and picked up a length of metal, then held it up to the flickering light of Lessa’s tail. “As long as we can find a sufficient power source, that is. But if you get a welding setup ready, we can get started.”

  “Power source?” Jace asked. “For the welder, or the hand?”

  “Aye…uh, both, I suppose,” Perril muttered. “But I was thinking for the hand.”

  “What power source would you need? A battery? Or…Aes cell?”

  “For a mortal, we’d use Aes cells.” She crossed her arms. “Though you aren’t exactly a mortal. In its place, we’d need some sort of purification crystal. So power source was the wrong term.”

  Jace shrugged, still confused.

  “A crystal that shifts the aspect of the Aes. We can fuel the hand with the Aes of your body, trigger the Aes motors of the automatons and all, but they are designed to function with pure Aes. Which most Wielders don’t have an abundance of.” She paused. “Unless, of course, you want to go the same way as that general fellow you were talking about, in which case, be my guest, and we’ll try to fit a starcoal furnace-boiler setup in your hand.”

  Might fit in a robot’s chest, but definitely wouldn’t work in his hand. He’d never seen one that small yet.

  And the smoke and steam would be the worst part of it all.

  “Yeah, sounds reasonable,” Jace said. “If we can get the crystals.”

  “From the automatons?” Lessa suggested. “Find one that uses a light-aspect, then reverse it.”

  “So we’re not there yet,” Jace muttered.

  “We’re close.” Perril accepted the storage ring from Lessa and opened it, then rummaged around inside. “If I design it correctly, we’ll be able to slot the crystal in right at the end.”

  Excellent.

  “Now, we should get going as quickly as we can,” Ash commented. Meanwhile, he was taking machinery out of his own storage ring—possibly the equipment they needed to set up a welder. “If we take too long on this, any lead we had on Rallemnon will be gone.”

  “As a team effort, it should go quickly,” Perril said. “But…one more thing. Jace, that soldering wire in your backpack—”

  “I don’t even want to know how you know I have that,” Jace muttered. She’d probably looked through his bag while he was sleeping.

  “—would be very helpful for some of the finer connections within the hand. Maybe an eighth of the spool.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  He glanced at Lessa. “How much do you need to finish enhancing the hyperdash card?”

  “Maybe a sliver of the wire at the end,” she said. “Not a ton.”

  “Then we can use the rest of the wire for the hand and Lessa’s enhancements,” Jace said. “There should be enough.” That is, seeing as they had about half the spool left.

  So, for the next few hours, they got to work. Ash set up a power bank of empty Aes cells, which he, Jace, and Kinfild filled with Aes transfers—just like when Jace was fuelling the Vault Core. It fed through a tube and filled another box with flashing, analog controls, before feeding into what looked like a larger version of Lessa’s engraving needle, but with a bank to feed in scrap metal.

  Perril arranged the components of the hand into the correct positions, making the perfect bone structure that only a life-long healer could know. She named the parts of the hands and identified anatomy with words Jace really didn’t understand. Lessa wired up rune-lines, while Ash and Jace welded exactly where Perril asked them to. They fixed lengths of metal together and added in scavenged Aes motors.

  Once they’d completed the inner structure of the hand and wrist, they added wire tendons and tested the function, making sure it opened and closed properly.

  Jace had a little bit of pure Aes left from killing the automatons, which he hadn’t passed through his core yet and bent to a hyperspace aspect. He deliberately kept it away from the hypercore while he worked, and instead, fed the Aes-motors with it, testing how they functioned.

  It was fast, but it’d take coordination and practice. Still, with all that he’d accomplished, controlling the hand would be the least of his concern. With practice, he could manipulate parts of the hand just like his own, and like summoning technique cards, it’d become second nature soon enough.

  With the internals of the hand functioning properly, they added on exterior plating. They took coppery Luminian steel from the husk of an automaton and pounded it into shape, or cut it with Whistling Blades, then affixed it atop the hand. It wouldn’t hide the internal mechanisms perfectly, but a spare strike also wouldn’t disable the hand.

  Once everyone was satisfied with it, Jace held it up and asked, “So…how are we gonna attach it?”

  There were a few stubs of metal rods, presumably where it’d attach to the bones inside him. He added, “This is human anatomy, right?”

  “It’s the anatomy of your kind, aye,” Perril said. “The race of men.”

  “Right. So…I can’t just stick it on.”

  “You’re alright with swapping out that numbed and disabled hunk of flesh, aye?” Perril asked, motioning at his right hand, still damaged beyond repair, despite its open wounds having nearly sealed up. “Won’t do you much good just hanging there.”

  Jace sighed. “Yes, I’m okay with getting rid of it.” The callus phrasing didn’t feel right for his hand, which he was about to replace with a machine, but there wasn’t much of a choice. He couldn’t just walk around until the tourniquet rotted it off.

  “None of you happen to have any painkillers or anesthetics, do you?” Perril asked.

  “If they did, I would’ve hoped they’d have shared some with me, too,” Lessa muttered.

  Neither Kinfild nor Ash replied, and Jace shook his head.

  “Then…” Perril said, glancing nervously at Ash. “Do what we talked about in the room. He’s alright with it, aye, and—”

  Jace held up his hands. “Wait, wait…”

  But Ash was already circling behind him. Before Jace could register what had happened, he sensed Ash crunching a fortification card. A weight struck down on the top of his head, and his legs collapsed beneath him.

  Everything went dark. Knowing what was about to happen, it was probably for the best.

  ~ ~ ~

  When Jace woke up, the first thing he noticed was that his wrist was heavy. Really heavy.

  As soon as he tried to move it, a sudden burst of pain rolled through his arm. He gasped, clenched his teeth, and blinked to clear his eyes of the instinctive tears.

  “Well, no one said he’d feel nothing when he woke up,” Perril said. “Bones still need to adjust to melding with metal, and there’s only so much my arts can accomplish.”

  “A little warning would’ve been nice,” Jace hissed.

  “Nah, then it wouldn’t’ve worked.” Perril spread her arms and shrugged. “Sorry, kid, but now you’ve got a new hand.”

  “Where’d you get the…power to draw from?” Jace asked. The sleepiness was already fading from his mind.

  “A little Vitality from Kinfild did the trick. He let me, of course.”

  “That is indeed true,” the older Wielder intoned. “I won’t say it was comfortable, but there were no other creatures worth taking the attributes from.”

  Lessa raised a finger. “For the record, I got plenty mad at them. Just…in case you were wondering. I wasn’t in on it.”

  “Of course not,” Kinfild said. “Otherwise, I know you would’ve taken his side.”

  She looked away quickly, but, being a portable light source, it was nearly impossible for her to hide her blush.

  Jace held up his new arm. Though it felt heavier than his regular hand, with his Strength rating, he managed it with ease. It looked about the same as it had when they’d just made the hand, except now it joined with his body. With a perfect stump halfway up his forearm. He supposed that was where Perril’s abilities came in—she’d healed up his wrist once they’d attached the arm.

  To smooth out the transition between his body and the mechanical hand, the’d added a few extra panels to bulk it up.

  But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make it move.

  All the pure Aes he’d had before had turned into hyperspace Aes while he was unconscious, and the motors weren’t responding. When he extended his senses, he could still detect the wires that Lessa had soldered, and when he tried to push Aes through them, the special material still conducted it. They lit up bright blue, making the hand glow.

  But when they reached the motors, nothing happened. The hand just flopped limply.

  Kinfild tapped the top of Jace’s mechanical wrist with his staff, though, and a panel flipped open, revealing an open compartment filled with wires and a few other components that Perril said were necessary, but he wasn’t necessarily sure what they did.

  “That is for the purification crystal,” Kinfild said. “If we can steal an intact one from an automaton.”

  “Well, then,” Jace said, pushing up to his feet. He nearly vomited, but he held it together. “I suppose we need to get moving. We still have a dungeon to raid, and now, we need a fancy crystal.”