StarfrostedFox
Scrawl Banditta
Lord Zee
SkyeOfStars
Vec
corneredbliss
LaserGunPewPew
EliteCommander<...Continued from the above post due to server errors not honouring the character limit>
Conata smiled and radiated polished bronze. "He heard!" She grabbed Kinesis' shoulder. "Can we talk back this way? I...I can go and pray again!"
"We should be able to reply via this interface. I haven't set up an acoustic transducer so he can't hear us, but we can send words," Kinesis said.
Kinesis pressed keys, making letters appear on the screen.
>Father, we hear you. How can we help you?
There was a wait of a few seconds, then letters appeared one by one.
>Body
Conata darted across the floor to Teknall's body. It was still a rotting corpse. She looked back over at Kinesis, who wrote more words into the machine.
>What about your body?
Slowly, painfully slowly, the response came.
>Me see?
"I don't get it," Conata slid to a stop by Kinesis' side. "The body hasn't changed, it doesn't-" She saw the words and her bronze skin dimmed. She hesitantly looked over her shoulder. The wire-tangled godheart had no eyes but Conata felt it watching. "Hold on father, I'll show you."
Conata turned and lifted her arms in a precise, flowing motion. The entire electronic apparatus lifted precariously into thin air. Conata twisted her upper body without taking her eyes off it as it rotated on a horizontal axis. A deep step forward from Conata caused the godheart to protrude forward, gently tugging the components behind it until the device hovered over the corpse.
She didn't stop to wonder if it made any sense to do what she did. "Does he see it now?" Conata asked.
"It doesn't have eyes, but…" Kinesis said. She typed the question in anyway.
>Can you see it now?
A few seconds later and the answer came.
>No
Kinesis thought for a few moments. "Maybe if I attach a camera." Kinesis stood up to look for parts. As she was searching, more letters appeared on the screen.
>Connect
Conata looked over her shoulder again. "Connect it?" She stopped and huffed impatiently. "Whatever you say, father."
The entire device freefell half a metre and clanked to a stop. The godheart rested at the base of the dessicated body's chest. Kinesis spun around in surprise. "What did-" She looked at the screen and back to the body. "Ah, a physical connection. That could also work." She went up to the godheart and inserted some wires extending from the godheart into the body.
There were some seconds of quiet as Teknall's feeble essence slowly reached into his original body. Then came a single character.
>!
Conata tilted her head at the screen. "Kinesis, I don't know if we're doing this right-"
>Need to fix ce̶̪̅l̶͕̋͠l̵̞͗̏s̵̢̞̤͆͗̐͝ ̸̱͉̯̝̋̎̎̔ ̵̡̝͓͙͓̽ ̷̰͔͔͉̣̥̳̙̮̯̒̾̑̏̈́̚͝
Kinesis looked up from her work and her eyes widened when she saw the screen. "Oh no. Father, hold on!" Kinesis held the godheart. The essence within was fading. She hurriedly adjusted the power coils and pulled the switch, projecting the Workshop's power into Teknall. Kinesis touched the godheart again. The essence was stable for now. Still worried, Kinesis looked up to Ilunabar and asked, "What's happening to father?"
Ilunabar had been watching the situation carefully, in both awe and worry, as Kinesis talked to her, she moved forward, using her own power to contain Teknall away from his own body.
"His essence is flooding back to his body, trying to fight off the corruption, but he couldn't contain it in full strength. If he tries now he will burn the little that remains of him." she placed both hands on the godheart extending her aura to ease Teknall's mind.
"Piena." she told, looking back. Without words, the Diva nodded and prepared something for the duo; an image, a moving image, detailing that short moment in which Teknall fought for his body.
Conata pressed a knuckle to her lips again, looking on.
"Let's keep him isolated for now, it is too much stress for his essence." she sighed. "But these are my memories of the situation. I was focusing on perceiving everything, down to the most minute details. I noticed him fighting it back…Try to look into that."
Slowly, Conata's brow knitted and her mouth opened. "He's not winning. He's just fighting, he's got nothing."
All of a sudden, Conata looked around. There was no indication of what she was looking for. She paced around as if she did not exactly know herself. She stopped as she spotted some tools across the workshop.
She raised a hand to beckon a steel hammer towards her. It flew and hovered over her palm. Rearing back her other arm, she struck it in half with the side of her hand and let one half pound to the floor. Desperately baring her teeth, she struck the remaining half again into two more pieces. A quarter dropped and bounced off the concrete. She struck the remainder again. The piece left was smaller still.
Again and again, even as Kinesis spoke. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"He needs something small enough to use!" Conata shouted. She struck again. A tiny sixty-fourth of the original steel remained.
Kinesis opened her mouth then closed it again with a thoughtful look on her face. "I think you're on to something," she eventually said, "But maybe it will be more effective if we build really small tools rather than break a large tool into smaller pieces."
"What does it look like I'm doing?!" Conata snapped. Her hand struck again. The steel hovered still, smaller than a fingernail. "I've never made anything this small. I don't want to lose it before I'm done."
Kinesis went to look around the Workshop. "Father built ways to build really small machines, as there are some devices here with extremely fine detail in some components."
Conata did not stop. "I noticed. Those bits are smaller than troll hair but I don't think it's fine enough."
"The smallest independent units of living tissue are about ten times narrower than hair. The smallest units of the machine brains which the Workshop manufactures are a thousand times smaller than that. I think that's plenty fine," Kinesis said. She came up to an assembly line where silicon wafers had invisibly small patterns etched onto them using chemicals, metal vapours and delicate patterns of light. "The trick will be making a functional tool rather than a static pattern."
Conata approached Kinesis with small, careful steps, all the way staring intensely at a few barely perceptible flecks of steel hovering and turning above her outstretched palm.
"Try this," Conata whispered. "The pieces between what you can see. Try to make them move together like you make things move. Like a machine. I'll keep them from flying away."
Kinesis squinted at the specks of floating steel. Her eyes would not help her here. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She could feel the machinery throughout the Workshop. She narrowed her focus tighter and tighter until she was only concentrating on the region just above Conata's palm. And there, very faintly, were the microscopic pieces of steel Conata had fashioned. Kinesis pointed her fingers towards the pieces and, with the gentlest twitches of her fingers, rotated the pieces and brought them together.
"I did it," she breathed and opened her eyes. She then thought for a moment. "We need to design the tool we want to build, then we need to find a way to make millions of them." Kinesis clenched her fist. "Come on, we've got no time to lose!"
Conata nodded firmly. "Let's draw it."
The two had direction from there on. Step by step, they threw their thoughts onto paper. Conata transferred her perception of the metal Kinesis shifted in a crude form -- just a few nondescript dots with lines to indicate forces. Leaps of intuition and intellect narrowed the gap in their understanding. They played with the concepts, seeing how the forces interacted independently and how different elements behaved. From there they had patterns that served basic movements. From there they had components of machines. They conceived something new, but did so as if they were made for such a puzzle. Already, Kinesis drew up tools for propulsion, building, deconstructing, and even gathering and storing information.
More time went by uncounted. It went faster with such easy progress, especially with all there was to do. They were almost done designing, but with little time left. Teknall and his corpse still fought his silent battle.
As Kinesis drew up the finishing touches with all four hands, Conata leaned her elbows on the workbench and held her temples with her fingers, looking on. She wore a small frown on her tarnished copper face.
"We need to build these right now," Conata declared. "We don't have time to make another machine do it all. We can do it by hand if we work together."
"We'll need to build them thousands at a time, and even that might be too slow," Kinesis said. "There are too many to build by hand. We need some tools to speed up the process."
Conata let out a breath. "No, we've wasted enough time planning and testing already." She sat up and let her forearms rest on the table. "Let's just forge them. We know how -- we can do it."
Kinesis shifted uncomfortably. "But there are so many to make. How could we make them fast enough without help?"
A second passed. Conata hesitated, if only because expressing the obvious felt jarring. "Just like we did with the first try. I'll shape it, you make it move. We'll just have to make a few more than one at a time." Conata's left side tingled with magnesium. She glanced at the corpse a moment longer than she wanted to and saw a finger of black smoke emerge from its shrivelled mouth. Kinesis looked over and saw it too.
"Just like the first time…" Kinesis said slowly. "Alright, we can try. But first-" Kinesis grabbed two schematics from the table, those for Vestec's arm and herself, and handed them to a Promethean. It inspected the plans, then the Workshop got to work producing them. "We can make it easier for him by replacing the more damaged parts and organs."
"Got it." Conata stood up and made her way towards the siphon.
Kinesis rubbed her hands together nervously. "Now, let us begin."
Conata was not waiting for a signal. She drew her arms back and let several ports of the siphon swing open. She turned her arms to point up and down and slowly curled them towards herself, willing the various metals between her hands in a swirling cloud that grew finer and finer. When she turned around, slowly as could be, she had her eyes shut, focussing. She took a half-step forward and held out the sparkling mist as it extended forward like a ghostly ribbon.
"I think...enough are ready..." she strained to say. "At least for a first try."
"Okay…" Kinesis said hesitantly. Kinesis closed her eyes and stretched out a hand. She extended her focus, found a set of metal parts then with gentle twitches she assembled them into a nano-machine. "One…" She stretched out a second hand and assembled two at once. "Three…" She curled her fingers and wrinkled her brow as she focussed harder, trying to move multiple parts simultaneously. Yet her grip wavered in trying to focus on more parts at once. She fumbled with the parts and struggled to connect them properly. "There's too many," she despaired.
"You need to do more at once," Conata said. "Reach for a large amount. If it's difficult, just push it!"
"Right," Kinesis said. She reached out again and tried to focus on more. She tried to grip multiple parts at once then move them in the same way, yet she struggled to get them to all move together. "It's difficult…" Kinesis strained.
Conata peeked open one red eye. "It's not meant to be easy!" She said through her teeth. "Think back to the last time you held back nothing while making something. Just reach one, then ten, then one hundred! Somewhere along the way, you'll...I don't know the words, just...push it, like I said. Stop being afraid!"
"Push it…" Kinesis repeated. She took a deep breath and thought back as Conata had said, remembering how she had made things in the past. She reached out again. "Could you arrange them in a grid?"
Conata pushed her eyes shut again. As the fingers on one of her hands curled, her wire hair bristled and heated. As if raking her fingernails back across an invisible board, she slowly pulled her elbow back, and with it the near-invisible metallic ribbon contracted along unseen straight threads, tapering towards her hand. Her other hand went flat and pushed ever so slightly. The movement made her strain to a small groan as it willed the metal to smear in more tiny perpendicular lines, connecting the threads together. Small wafts of steam escaped her dress and between the strands of her hair.
"Your turn, sis," Conata quickly said.
Kinesis took a step forwards, held one palm facing upwards and another hand above it facing down. She held her two remaining hands out to the side, facing towards the gap between the first two. Kinesis closed her eyes and visualised, capturing the repeating array of parts in her mind. She slowly moved her left and right hands to twist the parts, although only a few moved.
"More, Kinesis!"
Kinesis grit her teeth and moved her hands back to try again. She twisted her hands again and more of the parts moved. She tried again, sweat forming on her brow, and this time all of the parts moved. "I did it!" Kinesis exhaled. She moved her fingers and another set of parts connected. As Kinesis tried another move, her arms trembled from exertion and her grip on the parts wavered.
The heat radiating from Conata did not assist, but she did. "Keep pushing!"
Kinesis' breathing quickened. Her fingers lifted and parts clicked together. "For father!" She closed her hands and the hundreds upon thousands of nano-machines finished assembling in a wave of bonding molecules.
It was done.
Kinesis opened her eyes and saw Conata tensed in her previous pose, made fully of dark iron glowing a soft red on every surface. Her nightgown was charred and blackened.
"You did it," Conata's shoulders slumped and the grid collapsed. The glow on her iron skin faded as she exhaled. With a deft wave of her arm, she gathered the completed machines and tossed them into a jar of saline water as they had planned. She opened her eyes to Kinesis and grinned. "Do it again."
Kinesis grinned back. "Prepare the next batch."
As Conata drew out more metal, Kinesis pressed two palms in front of her chest, held two arms outwards with thumb and forefinger pressed together, closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. She recollected her focus, and once Conata had the parts ready Kinesis closed her eyes and reached out her hands in the same pattern as before. The strain was almost painful. As her fingers twitched and moved a dim red glow shone from within her chest and between her ribs. She knew she could do it now. A few moves later and the next batch of nanomachines were assembled.
"Again," Kinesis said between breaths.
Conata whipped a finger back. More of the metallic mix flew from the siphon.
The third batch was done in yet a shorter span of time.
Each batch felt easier but put further strain on them both. Conata's metal skin glowed with cherry-red incandescence, progressively heating towards orange. The glow in Kinesis' chest intensified, a faint nimbus of light appeared behind her head and her eyes glowed green.
"Don't tire out yet," Conata goaded her sister on. "Another batch!" They had twenty more to go.
Kinesis' arms burned, her temples throbbed and her breathing was shallow, but every word from Conata gave her just enough energy for another batch.
Conata, on the other hand, settled into the now-familiar bull-headed feeling of fighting past her limits. Her hair splayed out and her steps left scorch-marks on the concrete.
They completed batch after batch without fear.
They had only three batches left before they realised their goal. Three more and they would have enough to guarantee the machines counteracting the curse.
Kinesis noticed Conata slowing down.
"Another batch," Conata said in a hoarse voice. She raked her fingers back to hold the grid again.
The batch succeeded.
Conata set the machines aside and drew out more metal. She stepped to regain her balance. Her arms trembled as she pulled the metal into another grid pattern.
"Another..."
More movements by Kinesis. Conata's face strained to the point of pain. She let out a tiny strained groan. Just as the batch succeeded, an abrupt snap started a hiss of superheated metal and a shriek from Conata. A flash of burnished golden liquid spilt from Conata's right forearm. She doubled over, falling to her knees and turning a purer white calcium complexion.
"Conata!" Kinesis cried out.
Conata clutched her arm as it spilt ichor in thick rivulets onto the concrete. Her chin tucked into her chest. Conata's knees had barely hit the ground when Goliath came up beside her and gripped her wound with two metal hands, putting pressure on it to stem the flow. "Your father sent me to protect you," Goliath said in Teknall's calm voice over Conata's sustained screaming.
"It hurts!" Her voice broke in the pain and fear. "Let go! Let go!"
Kinesis took a few quick steps towards Conata, but as her own divine glow faded so did her strength and her legs gave out underneath her. The low gravity of the Workshop saved her from striking the concrete with any force, but she stayed on her hands and knees for several seconds to catch her breath. Kinesis looked up and whispered between two breaths, "Workshop."
A Promethean Manipulator approached Conata with several copper bands, some silver alloy filaments and a blowtorch. "Wait! Don't!" Conata was too spent to resist. It applied the silver filaments onto the skin around the wound, then it bent and wrapped the copper bands tightly around Conata's wounded arm. The Manipulator applied the blowtorch to the bands such that the silver alloy melted and soldered the bands to Conata's skin. Every step drew a horrified scream from Conata. Tears poured from her cheeks by the time a spray of water cooled the bands, tightening and pulling Conata's wound shut.
With the bleeding halted, Goliath finally obeyed and let go. Conata drifted down and sobbed at the ground in heaving breaths.
Kinesis returned to her feet and walked forwards. "Conata. Are…are you alright?"
Conata didn't lift her face. She was barely able to make out words. "My...arm..."
Thankfully, whatever strange nature made up Conata's skin did not cause it further harm when the water sprayed on her panicked calcium complexion. The stray droplets fizzled and sparked around the edges of the pink metal wrapped and welded around the wound -- if it could be called that -- like a sickening brass scab. Some stray droplets of shining gold liquid mixed with the coolant. Not as rosy as Kinesis' ichor, but nevertheless derived of Teknall.
"I bled," Conata miserably added. She had never bled before.
"Conata, you-" Kinesis tried to place a reassuring hand on Conata's shoulder, but withdrew her arm with a hiss as soon as she touched Conata. "Conata, you've been working very, very hard. What you've done today is incredible. And you've pushed me to do something I never thought possible."
"No, not..."
Kinesis wiped the drying sweat off her brow, looked up and spoke to the Workshop. "Get us some water. And some sugar."
Conata didn't move save for her back pulsing up and down with her sad moans. "We have to finish the last batch." She sucked in a breath and her hand closed into clenched fists. "Ah! It hurts..."
A mechanical arm slid along a rail and offered a tray containing two glass flasks of water and two beakers filled with refined glucose. Kinesis took a flask, drank a long swig from it, then poured some of the water into a beaker and started scooping out and eating wet sugary lumps. She stopped when she noticed that Conata hadn't moved.
Kinesis picked up a flask and offered it to Conata. "You need to regain strength. Here, drink."
"Kinesis," Conata groaned. "Is father gone?"
Kinesis looked over to the body, then back to Conata. "Not yet. We've gone faster than I expected."
Conata pushed her good hand against the ground and rose to her arm and knees. The wrist of her dressed arm made a metallic scrape as it dragged across the concrete. She lifted herself up, revealing her face with her eyes half-closed and her mouth slightly open. She pulled her injured arm close to her chest.
"If I can't help make the last batch now, we won't have time later."
Thick stripes of shining iron cut into the calcium up Conata's brow and spread around to her neck and shoulders. She snatched the water flask from Kinesis, sucked its contents down her throat, and slowly stood back up, foot-by-foot. The iron stripes cut down her arms, her legs, and her core. She exhaled a cloud of steam like something enraged and, without prompt, bit into the rim of the flask and crunched into a mouthful of glass.
Conata's sudden burst of activity elicited fear from Kinesis. "Conata, look, if you can wait about a minute I can get a grid printed to make the last batch easier."
Conata sobbed twice through her mouthful before she could speak. "No need," As she chewed the glass, she tossed aside the remainder of the flask, letting it skitter across the floor, and lifted her good hand up. The Elemental Siphon opened one more time. "The grid's not the hard part. Just help me." Another pair of tears sizzled halfway down Conata's cheeks, but the glass was not the cause.
One last ribbon of near-invisible metal flecks took shape by Conata's will. Kinesis took a deep breath, folded her hands together and closed her eyes. She steadied herself and focussed on the microscopic metal particles Conata was shaping into the parts. "One last batch. We can do this, Conata," Kinesis said.
Conata let herself one more quip. "About time you started believing in us." She realised it came off more sarcastic than usual when moaned out through her tears.
Her one hand raked back and formed the lines. Just as heavy a task. She brought her shaking, wounded arm forward, every inch causing her more pain. She managed to force the last grid to shape without a whimper. Kinesis then stretched out her four hands and twisted her fingers, assembling the final batch of nanomachines. The first few moves ground the glass between Conata's teeth. Conata held her eyes shut and swallowed the glass down. The remaining moves caused her to let out a escalating, high-pitched shriek. The struggle and pain in the sound built with the iron in her skin growing quickly into a bright yellow. Kinesis' only mercy was not to hesitate. At the height of the struggle, Conata stomped her foot down. Reinforcing bars sprang out of the floor around them. Tools, benches, racks, and anything else not bolted down shuddered away from them.
The last pieces clicked into place. Conata was out of breath in her lungs. She didn't even look as she waved the batch into the jar with the rest. The heat faded from her skin. This time, she didn't scream further or collapse. She lowered herself into a seated position on the ground and laid down on her side, revealing bulging golden scars running out from under her wound dressings to reach over to her back and down to her elbow. They wept her ichor gently. She breathed jagged, tiny breaths.
"Oh, Connie," Kinesis said.
Goliath moved to stand over Conata, watching her. Kinesis also walked up and knelt down beside her. But then her eyes drifted over to the jars of metallic solution - the fruit of their labour - and to Teknall's corpse.
"Help father," Conata squeaked. Each breath made her wince. "He needs the machines."
"Right," Kinesis said. She rose to her feet. "Rest, sister. Join me when you are ready, no sooner."
Kinesis picked up the jar and strode over to Teknall's corpse. The Workshop had already prepared all the necessary equipment. Kinesis took a look through the viewing box to inspect Teknall's organs once more and grimaced as she realised the grisly task ahead of her. She had despised Jvan's engineering of flesh, yet now she would have to apply her own engineering skills to fixing flesh. But there was no time to dither.
She gave the jar a swirl, stirring up the sedimented nanomachines, and then poured the solution into a large suspended sack with a pump and tube running out the bottom. At the end of this tube was a hollow needle. She picked up the godheart in one hand and gave it a moment's contemplation -- Teknall's essence was still present. With another hand Kinesis picked up an electric hand saw and cut an incision straight down Teknall's chest. Moving aside ribs, she placed the mechanical godheart beside Teknall's fleshy heart and affixed the wires to his heart and spine. With a third hand Kinesis took the needle connected to the nanomachine solution and inserted it into Teknall's aorta, and with a fourth hand she turned on the pump to start filling Teknall's veins with nanomachine-infused fluids.
The nanomachine solution injected into Teknall lit up, turning gold as Teknall's essence began to reclaim his body.
There were more parts which required replacing. The nanomachines could fix damage at the cellular level, but repairing entire organs was beyond them. Teknall's left eye had to be removed with part of the left side of his skull. The eye was replaced with an elaborate glass one similar to Kinesis' own, and the bone was replaced with titanium. One of Teknall's lungs had atrophied so severely that it needed to be replaced with a synthetic analogue. A deep wound was present on the back of Teknall's right shoulder where Xos had pressed the Primordial Spark against him and the rest of his right arm was also terribly damaged. Kinesis had to cut off the arm and shoulder and replace it with an adamantine arm similar to the one Teknall had built for Vestec. His lower back had been struck by a ray from the Spark, resulting in damage there. Kinesis cut out damaged sections of intestines and sewed them back together. Teknall's lower spine was replaced with carbon nanotubes encased in titanium.
Kinesis kept labouring away, working on Teknall's body with the same finesse, speed and precision as she would with any normal machine. As Kinesis worked, fresh golden ichor laced with the tiny machines wrought by the craftsmaidens pumped through Teknall's body, and with these new tools Teknall's essence got to work reclaiming his body.
>Can you see it now?
The words, encoded as electrical oscillations, reached Teknall in his foggy mindscape.
No, Conata, this thing doesn't have eyes. She ̻̔ha̫̔rdl̘͘y͉͌ ú̺n͈͂d̠̈ers͈͒t̀͢an͈̆ds ̹̌w̮͌h̺͝a͇̒t she̫͊ ̊͜ȋ͢s̞̓ ̺̈d̛̘oi̮̿ñ̤g̹̀. She's resilient, though. She'll figure it out. Kinesis understands well enough.
Teknall's will tugged at the electric fields in the makeshift radio attached to the godheart -- the entirety of his physical self at this moment.
>No
Each letter sent was arduous, the imposition of what remained of his divine will upon something as feeble as a transistor stretching the limits of his power. But he had to push, for them, and this alone gave him the strength to keep going.
I need to investigate my body.
Teknall tugged more letters into the radio aether.
>Connect
A moment passed, then pain briefly shot through Teknall. By how wires on the godheart had been displaced, he figured that he had been dropped. Then more wires sprouted from the godheart and his real body came into view.
Or, rather, his corpse.
No!
In his exclamation, he managed to conjure a brief signal.
>!
It's̢̏ ̢͂not̡̂ jù̼st̟͒ w̙͗ounds̱̔,̻̀ ȉ͇ţ͛'''s̠̒ a̖̔ curse ̃ͅw̡̒hí̦ch̗̀ ĭ͇s ̿͢dec̑͜a̳̚ỹ͜ing the b͓̃ody.̨͐ X̙̍os ̦̋is ̜̓po͇͌ẇ̲e͔͞rfu̢͊l̼͠.̠͋ ̨̾I c͓̃an't̪̍ ͇̋b̥̓ea̟̓t h̪̅ĩ̹m. ̺͆M̛̙ỷ̝ ̲̕b̗̾ody̞͋ ̖̉is̼͐ l̋͢osť̞. Yet there must be some way. There must be a way to restore it.
Teknall reached out into his body, yet as he stretched his essence into it he realised in panic that he was too weak to reclaim it. Futilely he tried to restore his flesh and reconstitute his body, but Xos' curse overwhelmed his weak essence. In desperation Teknall tried to get a message to his daughters.
>Need to fix ce̶̪̅l̶͕̋͠l̵̞͗̏s̵̢̞̤͆͗̐͝ ̸̱͉̯̝̋̎̎̔ ̵̡̝͓͙͓̽ ̷̰͔͔͉̣̥̳̙̮̯̒̾̑̏̈́̚͝
Shadows grew around Teknall, in which tentacles and other appendages lurked. The limbs licked out at Teknall and his body, consuming it. Yet as the darkness was pressing in from all sides, there was a whine which climbed in pitch and intensity, followed by an intense flash of light which burned everything away.
As the light faded, Teknall found himself standing in a field of fragrant, colourful flowers. A soft and gentle melody drifted around the field, giving Teknall a sense of calm and tranquility. Teknall would have loved to have stayed for longer, yet although he had no sense of time it seemed to be only a short while before the peace was broken.
Smoke rose from the horizon and the blue sky was stained by scarlet blood. Teknall turned to run from the approaching wildfire, but the flowers turned into thorny vines and tangled around his legs. He pulled his legs free and tried to keep running, but the ground itself shifted beneath him, sliding towards the fire. He tripped on the vines and fell, and as he struggled the ground accelerated. In moments he was surrounded by flames, burning his skin and scorching his lungs. But through stinging eyes he could see an even greater terror - he was sliding towards a great pit, ringed with a wicked array of teeth and spouting mandible-like claws which shovelled the landscape into its hungry expanse. Teknall was spotted by the eyes on the joints of those limbs and one claw came down, grabbed him and tried to pull him in.
I have to keep fighting.
Teknall gripped at the ground and pulled against the tug of the Thing's claw. The Thing was strong, but Teknall thrust a hand through the dirt, found stone and held tight. The claw kept pulling and Teknall thought his grip was failing. With his other hand he pulled free a fist-sized rock and threw it at the limb, hitting it in one of its eyes. The Thing flinched in pain, its grip weakening enough for Teknall to tear himself free and dive head-first through the earth.
Teknall fell into a dimly lit cavern. Teknall stood up and took a moment to regain his bearings. He then saw Kinesis and Conata on the other side of the cavern. They tried to run to each other, but with every step the distance between them grew. Then a terrifyingly familiar shadowy figure rose behind his daughters. Teknall tried to shout a warning, but all he could do was wheeze.
The shade raised an armoured gauntlet and struck Kinesis in the head, throwing her across the cavern and smacking her forehead into the stone wall with a sickening crack. As Conata turned, the shade skewered her right forearm on an umbral spike. Conata screamed and screamed as her golden ichor spilt out from the wound. The shade grabbed Conata by the throat and kept twisting the spike in deeper. Scars radiated out from the wound and grew into deep cracks and furrows from which even more ichor flowed. Her complexion turned to pale white calcium and as the cracks spread across her body. Her body trembled, and as her lungs ran out of breath she fell limp. Teknall reached out. He could not even cry out to her.
The shade dropped Conata's body in a puddle of her own ichor and walked slowly over to Kinesis' unconscious form. Throughout all this Teknall had been trying to run closer, yet no matter how many steps he took the distance never got shorter. Around him crept chitinous limbs and tentacles, tugging at him. His heart was already broken. Teknall might have given up and let the eldritch limbs take him if it were not for Conata's imperative to keep fighting. He batted aside the limbs and kept running; although the efforts were in vain, he had to keep trying. He had t go against what his heart told him. As long as he kept trying, he would survive.
Kinesis began to stir just as the shade reached her. She opened her eyes and they widened in horror as the shade planted a foot on her chest. Teknall watched her struggle, shout and cry, yet no amount of thrashing and pushing from Kinesis could cause the shade to budge. The shade's corruption spread from its foot into her body, and her flesh unravelled in a gruesome reversal of her accidental birth. Although Teknall tried to cry out his own voice choked in his throat and nothing more than a suffocated breath came out of his mouth.
As the skin and muscle of Kinesis' flesh fell apart around the shade's foot, her chest cavity was revealed. The shade reached a hand under her mithral ribs, between her quivering lungs and gripped her bejewelled metal heart. Kinesis only had the strength to let out a mute scream as the shade tore the heart from Kinesis' chest, trailing cables and ichor.
At this moment Teknall stumbled, feeling a pain as if his own chest had been ripped open. He looked up from where he knelt, the shade meeting eyes with him as limbs closed in around Teknall. The shade's hand then clenched, crushing the heart, which exploded into a flood of dark liquid which filled the cavern and slammed into Teknall with enough force to send him tumbling.
Now Teknall floated in the darkness, surrounded by water. He was drowning, the slightly salty water overwhelming him. Eldritch appendages grabbed at Teknall and he felt chitin, scales, slime, sinew, hair, teeth, skin and other indescribable substances. As the Thing gnawed at Teknall and tried to drag him apart, Teknall felt another substance bump against him -- metal.
Teknall reached his left arm out towards the foreign object. A tentacle with scales like saws wrapped around his arm and tightened, trying to constrict the arm from moving, but Teknall kept fighting until his hand reached the object and his fingers closed around the metal.
He knew immediately what it was. Conata and Kinesis' creation. It was a tool or weapon. And he could use it.
A smile crept onto Teknall's lips in spite of the pain being inflicted upon him. A faint golden glow illuminated the darkness. The tool became an axe and with a mighty heave Teknall swung his arm around. The axehead sunk into the chitinous claw grabbing his right arm and crunched through. The Thing screeched and released the limb. Teknall let go of the tool with his left hand and gripped it with his right hand and it became a dagger, with which he slashed at the tentacles grabbing his left arm. An ungodly black ichor sprayed out from the severed tentacles and their grip loosened enough to shake his arm free.
Teknall swam out of the Thing's grip and took a moment to orient himself. He could feel the tools all around him, invisible in this mindscape but having a very real effect on his body. The cuts, scrapes and bruises on Teknall's skin slowly but visibly stitched themselves shut and healed, casting aside the weariness and powerlessness Teknall had felt before and casting a golden glow onto the world around him.
But as Teknall regained strength, the Thing mustered its efforts to make a final stand. Now it was before Teknall, not as pieces glimpsed from the peripherals but as an unfathomable whole which brought a searing pain into his mind. Reality warped around it, allowing only pieces to be seen at once -- an eye here, a tentacle there, a toothed claw, ever shifting and changing.
And it was getting closer.
Its soulless stare and psyche-shredding form was accompanied by a rising chitter and drone. Yet despite the pain, confusion and disorientation, Teknall had been here before. This eldritch abomination had been clawing at him ever since Xos had struck down his body and left him weak and dying in this nightmare realm within his own mind. Indeed, its subtle influence had started ever since he met it through the Orb of Darkness.
It was getting closer, but he had to keep fighting. Teknall pushed past the mental static and his maul manifested in his hand.
The Thing arrived.
A solid mass covered in spikes and thorns struck Teknall in the face, gouging out his left eye, shattering part of his skull and sending him spinning. But Teknall channelled the momentum of the blow through his maul and swung it around blindly. There was a crunch and a screech as the maul connected with flesh.
Teknall clutched his left hand to his bleeding eye socket and squinted out of his right eye to see a shadow moving. The weapon in his right hand became a firearm, which he pointed in the direction of the movement and fired the weapon once, twice, thrice, with each thunderous report followed by an otherworldly wail. The Thing receded momentarily, in which time Teknall's missing eye was replaced by an artificial one and metal replaced the broken parts of the skull.
The Thing lunged again, but this time Teknall brought around his maul to strike it as it charged. It was shifted sideways, but direction and position were meaningless for a creature born outside logic and geometry. The horrific being warped around Teknall and a wicked barb stabbed Teknall in the back and erupted through his chest. Swiftly Teknall brought around a sword and sliced the limb off from the beast before spinning around and cutting deep gouges into its indescribable flesh. Severed appendages were left drifting as the Thing pulled out of reach of the sword. Teknall reached up with his spare hand and yanked out the barb, releasing a spray of golden ichor. Teknall wheezed and coughed up some more ichor.
In this moment of distraction an utterly alien mouth closed around Teknall's right arm, engulfing it up to the shoulder. Teeth burrowed in and stripped flesh from bone as wicked mandibles sunk into his shoulder. And all around him the world closed in and darkened as if being swallowed by an even greater mouth. From every direction thousands of empty eyes bored into Teknall's soul.
It ͕̓is ͛͢s̲͋t͔͠r̀ͅó̡ǹ̰ger than̛̳ ͌͜m̰̽e̦̊.͘͢ Im͕̍poss͇͞ib̥́ly ̖̓s̯͑tr̦̀ong̫̽e̫͆r̯̋. ̡̀I ca̲͗n̖̊nŏ̘t defeat i̹̿t.̖̕ No. I have to go against what my heart says. I have to keep fighting!
With his left arm he conjured and swung his maul into the maw eating at his right arm. The adamantine head sunk into the eldritch flesh, but it did not yield. So Teknall hit it again and again until finally the maw pulled back, tearing off what remained of his right arm with a gristly snap. Ignoring the loss of an arm, Teknall released his maul and picked up a chain gun. With this weapon Teknall sprayed explosive shells into the encroaching darkness, blasting apart the soulless eyes and ripping through its ungodly flesh. A roar of pain rumbled through the world which was felt rather than heard and the darkness receded.
The chain gun was replaced by his rail gun, which he levelled towards the monstrosity and fired. A rod of adamantine traced a line of plasma and connected, sending ripples through the entity. Teknall fired more shots as it withdrew to a point at infinity. Teknall then touched his hand to his severed shoulder and a metallic arm assembled itself piece by piece in place of the missing arm.
Yet the moment of quiet was suspicious. Teknall turned his head in time to see that the creature was hurtling at him from the opposite direction it had fled. Teknall conjured up a shield and dived to the side, a horrific limb bouncing off the shield and batting Teknall back. As the Thing circled around Teknall blasted at it with his railgun. Then with impossible speed a claw lashed out and cut deep into Teknall's abdomen, while from behind a jagged talon sliced into his lower back.
Iẗ̫ ͔̉î̙s͇̋ im͕̿ḿ̢o͙̓rt͖͞al̗̒.̏͢ I caǹ̼not̞̅ k̙͌il͇͛l ̦̌i͔͝t͉̕.͎́ You are not my voice!
Teknall hefted his maul again then struck the Thing with a blow to level a mountain. Bone and chitin shattered, flesh tore and it was sent staggering back. Teknall's wounds slowly closed themselves, but Teknall did not wait to follow up his attack. He lunged forwards and struck again with his maul, shattering a limb the creature stretched out at him. In his other hand appeared his railgun, which he used to shoot at the monstrosity whenever it tried to flank him. Finally Teknall landed another direct blow with his hammer and pushed the Thing some distance away from him.
You should have stayed in the Gap.
In his hand Teknall manifested a long needle. The Thing tensed to leap, but the invisible weapons appeared as missiles mid-flight and the eldritch creature was bombarded by a continuous salvo of explosive warheads. A few moments later Teknall finished manifesting the needle, engraved with calligraphy and with a great diamond at its head -- the Tomb Weaver. It darted forwards, trailing a line of blue light behind it.
It̥̊ is͖͒- You stopped hiding in the dark recesses of my mind and now I've found you.
The explosive barrage continued as the needle pierced through the eldritch creature, threading the shimmering blue line through it.
I'm growing stronger by the minute. I don't need your lies.
The needle turned and weaved through the Thing again and again and again. It screeched and thrashed. It bit at the thread and cut it, but the Tomb Weaver weaved threads faster than they could be severed. Soon the Tomb Weaver had pinned down the monstrosity with its hyperdimensional threads. The rain of missiles stopped, and instead strange metal devices appeared encircling the Thing, like the parts of a spherical metal shell. The space inside the sphere grew darker.
Begone!
The sphere contracted suddenly. There was a screech which lasted but a brief moment before being cut off suddenly as the sphere closed around it and compressed down to a singularity. All that remained was a dark mote fading away.
Finally, there was silence. But more importantly there was clarity.
Teknall exhaled.
No longer assailed on all sides, Teknall's mind was free to think clearly. The mindscape around him started to fade as it was replaced by reality.
First Teknall became aware of his body. He could see the injuries upon it, the repairs which had been made, and the nanomachines swimming through his ichor. It was a sorry state for a god, but a vast improvement on the corpse he had beheld earlier.
The next sense to return was his Perception, gradually revealing the world around him. He saw Kinesis. He saw Conata. He saw Ilunabar and Piena and Goliath. He saw the Workshop.
The next sensation to hit him was pain, and that brought him crashing back into consciousness. Teknall's eyes opened, but the light dazzled him and he screwed them shut. He took in a sharp breath, but that too hurt and his diaphragm spasmed. His fingers twitched and tensed.
Kinesis, who had been standing closest to Teknall, exclaimed, "Father!"
Ilunabar moved in between the two, and with a sincere smile she jested "Welcome back to the world of the living, Teknall. You gave us quite a scare." as she finished her sentence, she raised a flask filled with a purple liquid and started to pour it down the god's mouth. "This should do the trick. You might feel a bit numb, but better that than what you would experience without this. Don't move too much, just rest, you are safe now."
Teknall got down one gulp of the liquid before he coughed and spluttered. He raised his right arm, the one now made of adamantine, and took hold of the flask with a gentle tink. He inspected the contents for a few moments then drank it himself. There was a few seconds of stillness as the potion took effect. Then, in a hoarse whisper and the faintest slither of a smile, he said, "I'll need to remember that recipe."
Goliath then stepped up and took the empty flask from Teknall's hand before stepping away. Teknall tilted his head slightly so that he could see his daughters. "Kinesis, Conata," he beckoned.
Conata limped into view from behind Goliath. She held her wounded arm to her chest and with her other hand clutched onto another of Goliath's arms for support. Her skin shone a brilliant silver despite her blackened nightgown and terrible, bulging wounds. Her teary grin similarly contrasted with her shallow, pained breathing.
"Good to see you again, father," she strained to say.
The attempt at levity ended as swiftly as it took for Conata to stumble onto Teknall's new arm and bury her weeping face into his shoulder.
Kinesis stepped forwards too and hugged Teknall's other side, her own eyes damp. "Father, you're back."
"My daughters, I…" Teknall began to say weakly, but then he was overwhelmed by the resolution of his grief and tears flooded out. As he cried, he kissed the tops of Kinesis' and Conata's heads. "I lost you." He closed his arms around them and hugged them tight.
"No you didn't," Conata's muffled voice said. "You're back. You didn't give up."
The relief of the moment swept over them all. For a while, they remained united as a family. It was the first time in years, earned through a harrowing day.
Eventually, the flow of tears slowed. Goliath wiped Teknall's face dry with a clean rag. Teknall looked up towards Ilunabar. "Sister, thank you." His face then crinkled into a worried frown. "But where's…?"
Teknall glanced over to Goliath and the two made eye contact for several long seconds. In this time Teknall read Goliath's memory from the present back to the point where the two had lost connection. After those seconds of silence, Teknall said in a hoarse whisper bearing a trace of disappointment, "Ah, that's where Toun went."
Conata stopped. "Who?"
Teknall looked back at his daughters with a glimmer of awe in his eyes. "My daughters, you-" he started to say in his weak voice, but was then interrupted by a fit of coughing. Goliath picked up Teknall's words when the coughing finished, the resounding voice emanating from the construct carrying hardly a trace of Teknall's weakness. "My daughters, you have been incredibly brave and remarkably inventive. What you have done was virtually impossible. You reversed Xos' decay! You resurrected a god! And you pulled off a feat of divine engineering greater than anything even I have done! Look!" One of the Workshop's arms brought the nanomachine schematics over to Goliath, who held them up. "The beauty of the design. The elegance of the interconnected parts. Every atom has its place, yet it is sufficiently robust to survive hostile conditions. Incredible! And you managed to create them in extremely stressful and difficult circumstances. And Conata, your prayer meant a lot. You have no idea how much I needed those words. I owe my life to both of you."
Conata blinked into a broad, tear-streaked smile.
Ilunabar sat near them and looked at the two. "I have never seen something quite like it, they stopped at nothing to save you. Many times I wanted to step in and stop them as they took their body to its limits. At moments, I feared they would break…But I knew they would not." This brought her mind back to the talk she had with Toun, over how divine children seemed to weaken their parents -- she had just seen the most thorough counterargument to that theory. "However, unbroken is not unhurt, your father is safe, so it is time for you two to look after yourselves. Especially your arm, Conata, though I have a full report of every scratch, courtesy of Piena, and we will look after each one of them. Hmm, also clothes, of course… I am going to need to find a middle ground between cute… and heat resistant."
Conata breathed out a laugh. "Thanks, mother. I'm mostly used to that happening by now. If you could make a shirt that stops my arm from exploding, I could make serious use out of that. But..." She flinched and paused at another wave of pain running up her shoulder. "...I suppose not burning everything I'm touching when I push myself would be nice. I really liked this night gown."
"A metallic microfibre weave could work," Teknall suggested, "It would survive the heat, although it wouldn't contain it. A flexible ceramic, maybe?"
Conata laughed painfully. "Maybe later." Her smile faded. "I couldn't do any of this without Kinesis. I think I was hard on you, sister, but you really deserve credit. You're so much smarter than me."
Kinesis looked down and blushed. "Oh, well. I couldn't have done any of this without you, Conata. Your determination really kept me going and pushed me further than I thought I could go."
Teknall stretched up and touched both their shoulders. "My daughters," he said with his own mouth with a wheeze, before letting Goliath continue. "You both did this. Together. On your own you are incredible, but together you can do the impossible." Teknall relaxed back down onto the bench. "But now, let me rest. I have some recovery to do."
Conata smiled and radiated polished bronze. "He heard!" She grabbed Kinesis' shoulder. "Can we talk back this way? I...I can go and pray again!"
"We should be able to reply via this interface. I haven't set up an acoustic transducer so he can't hear us, but we can send words," Kinesis said.
Kinesis pressed keys, making letters appear on the screen.
>Father, we hear you. How can we help you?
There was a wait of a few seconds, then letters appeared one by one.
>Body
Conata darted across the floor to Teknall's body. It was still a rotting corpse. She looked back over at Kinesis, who wrote more words into the machine.
>What about your body?
Slowly, painfully slowly, the response came.
>Me see?
"I don't get it," Conata slid to a stop by Kinesis' side. "The body hasn't changed, it doesn't-" She saw the words and her bronze skin dimmed. She hesitantly looked over her shoulder. The wire-tangled godheart had no eyes but Conata felt it watching. "Hold on father, I'll show you."
Conata turned and lifted her arms in a precise, flowing motion. The entire electronic apparatus lifted precariously into thin air. Conata twisted her upper body without taking her eyes off it as it rotated on a horizontal axis. A deep step forward from Conata caused the godheart to protrude forward, gently tugging the components behind it until the device hovered over the corpse.
She didn't stop to wonder if it made any sense to do what she did. "Does he see it now?" Conata asked.
"It doesn't have eyes, but…" Kinesis said. She typed the question in anyway.
>Can you see it now?
A few seconds later and the answer came.
>No
Kinesis thought for a few moments. "Maybe if I attach a camera." Kinesis stood up to look for parts. As she was searching, more letters appeared on the screen.
>Connect
Conata looked over her shoulder again. "Connect it?" She stopped and huffed impatiently. "Whatever you say, father."
The entire device freefell half a metre and clanked to a stop. The godheart rested at the base of the dessicated body's chest. Kinesis spun around in surprise. "What did-" She looked at the screen and back to the body. "Ah, a physical connection. That could also work." She went up to the godheart and inserted some wires extending from the godheart into the body.
There were some seconds of quiet as Teknall's feeble essence slowly reached into his original body. Then came a single character.
>!
Conata tilted her head at the screen. "Kinesis, I don't know if we're doing this right-"
>Need to fix ce̶̪̅l̶͕̋͠l̵̞͗̏s̵̢̞̤͆͗̐͝ ̸̱͉̯̝̋̎̎̔ ̵̡̝͓͙͓̽ ̷̰͔͔͉̣̥̳̙̮̯̒̾̑̏̈́̚͝
Kinesis looked up from her work and her eyes widened when she saw the screen. "Oh no. Father, hold on!" Kinesis held the godheart. The essence within was fading. She hurriedly adjusted the power coils and pulled the switch, projecting the Workshop's power into Teknall. Kinesis touched the godheart again. The essence was stable for now. Still worried, Kinesis looked up to Ilunabar and asked, "What's happening to father?"
Ilunabar had been watching the situation carefully, in both awe and worry, as Kinesis talked to her, she moved forward, using her own power to contain Teknall away from his own body.
"His essence is flooding back to his body, trying to fight off the corruption, but he couldn't contain it in full strength. If he tries now he will burn the little that remains of him." she placed both hands on the godheart extending her aura to ease Teknall's mind.
"Piena." she told, looking back. Without words, the Diva nodded and prepared something for the duo; an image, a moving image, detailing that short moment in which Teknall fought for his body.
Conata pressed a knuckle to her lips again, looking on.
"Let's keep him isolated for now, it is too much stress for his essence." she sighed. "But these are my memories of the situation. I was focusing on perceiving everything, down to the most minute details. I noticed him fighting it back…Try to look into that."
Slowly, Conata's brow knitted and her mouth opened. "He's not winning. He's just fighting, he's got nothing."
All of a sudden, Conata looked around. There was no indication of what she was looking for. She paced around as if she did not exactly know herself. She stopped as she spotted some tools across the workshop.
She raised a hand to beckon a steel hammer towards her. It flew and hovered over her palm. Rearing back her other arm, she struck it in half with the side of her hand and let one half pound to the floor. Desperately baring her teeth, she struck the remaining half again into two more pieces. A quarter dropped and bounced off the concrete. She struck the remainder again. The piece left was smaller still.
Again and again, even as Kinesis spoke. "What are you doing?" she asked.
"He needs something small enough to use!" Conata shouted. She struck again. A tiny sixty-fourth of the original steel remained.
Kinesis opened her mouth then closed it again with a thoughtful look on her face. "I think you're on to something," she eventually said, "But maybe it will be more effective if we build really small tools rather than break a large tool into smaller pieces."
"What does it look like I'm doing?!" Conata snapped. Her hand struck again. The steel hovered still, smaller than a fingernail. "I've never made anything this small. I don't want to lose it before I'm done."
Kinesis went to look around the Workshop. "Father built ways to build really small machines, as there are some devices here with extremely fine detail in some components."
Conata did not stop. "I noticed. Those bits are smaller than troll hair but I don't think it's fine enough."
"The smallest independent units of living tissue are about ten times narrower than hair. The smallest units of the machine brains which the Workshop manufactures are a thousand times smaller than that. I think that's plenty fine," Kinesis said. She came up to an assembly line where silicon wafers had invisibly small patterns etched onto them using chemicals, metal vapours and delicate patterns of light. "The trick will be making a functional tool rather than a static pattern."
Conata approached Kinesis with small, careful steps, all the way staring intensely at a few barely perceptible flecks of steel hovering and turning above her outstretched palm.
"Try this," Conata whispered. "The pieces between what you can see. Try to make them move together like you make things move. Like a machine. I'll keep them from flying away."
Kinesis squinted at the specks of floating steel. Her eyes would not help her here. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She could feel the machinery throughout the Workshop. She narrowed her focus tighter and tighter until she was only concentrating on the region just above Conata's palm. And there, very faintly, were the microscopic pieces of steel Conata had fashioned. Kinesis pointed her fingers towards the pieces and, with the gentlest twitches of her fingers, rotated the pieces and brought them together.
"I did it," she breathed and opened her eyes. She then thought for a moment. "We need to design the tool we want to build, then we need to find a way to make millions of them." Kinesis clenched her fist. "Come on, we've got no time to lose!"
Conata nodded firmly. "Let's draw it."
The two had direction from there on. Step by step, they threw their thoughts onto paper. Conata transferred her perception of the metal Kinesis shifted in a crude form -- just a few nondescript dots with lines to indicate forces. Leaps of intuition and intellect narrowed the gap in their understanding. They played with the concepts, seeing how the forces interacted independently and how different elements behaved. From there they had patterns that served basic movements. From there they had components of machines. They conceived something new, but did so as if they were made for such a puzzle. Already, Kinesis drew up tools for propulsion, building, deconstructing, and even gathering and storing information.
More time went by uncounted. It went faster with such easy progress, especially with all there was to do. They were almost done designing, but with little time left. Teknall and his corpse still fought his silent battle.
As Kinesis drew up the finishing touches with all four hands, Conata leaned her elbows on the workbench and held her temples with her fingers, looking on. She wore a small frown on her tarnished copper face.
"We need to build these right now," Conata declared. "We don't have time to make another machine do it all. We can do it by hand if we work together."
"We'll need to build them thousands at a time, and even that might be too slow," Kinesis said. "There are too many to build by hand. We need some tools to speed up the process."
Conata let out a breath. "No, we've wasted enough time planning and testing already." She sat up and let her forearms rest on the table. "Let's just forge them. We know how -- we can do it."
Kinesis shifted uncomfortably. "But there are so many to make. How could we make them fast enough without help?"
A second passed. Conata hesitated, if only because expressing the obvious felt jarring. "Just like we did with the first try. I'll shape it, you make it move. We'll just have to make a few more than one at a time." Conata's left side tingled with magnesium. She glanced at the corpse a moment longer than she wanted to and saw a finger of black smoke emerge from its shrivelled mouth. Kinesis looked over and saw it too.
"Just like the first time…" Kinesis said slowly. "Alright, we can try. But first-" Kinesis grabbed two schematics from the table, those for Vestec's arm and herself, and handed them to a Promethean. It inspected the plans, then the Workshop got to work producing them. "We can make it easier for him by replacing the more damaged parts and organs."
"Got it." Conata stood up and made her way towards the siphon.
Kinesis rubbed her hands together nervously. "Now, let us begin."
Conata was not waiting for a signal. She drew her arms back and let several ports of the siphon swing open. She turned her arms to point up and down and slowly curled them towards herself, willing the various metals between her hands in a swirling cloud that grew finer and finer. When she turned around, slowly as could be, she had her eyes shut, focussing. She took a half-step forward and held out the sparkling mist as it extended forward like a ghostly ribbon.
"I think...enough are ready..." she strained to say. "At least for a first try."
"Okay…" Kinesis said hesitantly. Kinesis closed her eyes and stretched out a hand. She extended her focus, found a set of metal parts then with gentle twitches she assembled them into a nano-machine. "One…" She stretched out a second hand and assembled two at once. "Three…" She curled her fingers and wrinkled her brow as she focussed harder, trying to move multiple parts simultaneously. Yet her grip wavered in trying to focus on more parts at once. She fumbled with the parts and struggled to connect them properly. "There's too many," she despaired.
"You need to do more at once," Conata said. "Reach for a large amount. If it's difficult, just push it!"
"Right," Kinesis said. She reached out again and tried to focus on more. She tried to grip multiple parts at once then move them in the same way, yet she struggled to get them to all move together. "It's difficult…" Kinesis strained.
Conata peeked open one red eye. "It's not meant to be easy!" She said through her teeth. "Think back to the last time you held back nothing while making something. Just reach one, then ten, then one hundred! Somewhere along the way, you'll...I don't know the words, just...push it, like I said. Stop being afraid!"
"Push it…" Kinesis repeated. She took a deep breath and thought back as Conata had said, remembering how she had made things in the past. She reached out again. "Could you arrange them in a grid?"
Conata pushed her eyes shut again. As the fingers on one of her hands curled, her wire hair bristled and heated. As if raking her fingernails back across an invisible board, she slowly pulled her elbow back, and with it the near-invisible metallic ribbon contracted along unseen straight threads, tapering towards her hand. Her other hand went flat and pushed ever so slightly. The movement made her strain to a small groan as it willed the metal to smear in more tiny perpendicular lines, connecting the threads together. Small wafts of steam escaped her dress and between the strands of her hair.
"Your turn, sis," Conata quickly said.
Kinesis took a step forwards, held one palm facing upwards and another hand above it facing down. She held her two remaining hands out to the side, facing towards the gap between the first two. Kinesis closed her eyes and visualised, capturing the repeating array of parts in her mind. She slowly moved her left and right hands to twist the parts, although only a few moved.
"More, Kinesis!"
Kinesis grit her teeth and moved her hands back to try again. She twisted her hands again and more of the parts moved. She tried again, sweat forming on her brow, and this time all of the parts moved. "I did it!" Kinesis exhaled. She moved her fingers and another set of parts connected. As Kinesis tried another move, her arms trembled from exertion and her grip on the parts wavered.
The heat radiating from Conata did not assist, but she did. "Keep pushing!"
Kinesis' breathing quickened. Her fingers lifted and parts clicked together. "For father!" She closed her hands and the hundreds upon thousands of nano-machines finished assembling in a wave of bonding molecules.
It was done.
Kinesis opened her eyes and saw Conata tensed in her previous pose, made fully of dark iron glowing a soft red on every surface. Her nightgown was charred and blackened.
"You did it," Conata's shoulders slumped and the grid collapsed. The glow on her iron skin faded as she exhaled. With a deft wave of her arm, she gathered the completed machines and tossed them into a jar of saline water as they had planned. She opened her eyes to Kinesis and grinned. "Do it again."
Kinesis grinned back. "Prepare the next batch."
As Conata drew out more metal, Kinesis pressed two palms in front of her chest, held two arms outwards with thumb and forefinger pressed together, closed her eyes and breathed slowly and deeply. She recollected her focus, and once Conata had the parts ready Kinesis closed her eyes and reached out her hands in the same pattern as before. The strain was almost painful. As her fingers twitched and moved a dim red glow shone from within her chest and between her ribs. She knew she could do it now. A few moves later and the next batch of nanomachines were assembled.
"Again," Kinesis said between breaths.
Conata whipped a finger back. More of the metallic mix flew from the siphon.
The third batch was done in yet a shorter span of time.
Each batch felt easier but put further strain on them both. Conata's metal skin glowed with cherry-red incandescence, progressively heating towards orange. The glow in Kinesis' chest intensified, a faint nimbus of light appeared behind her head and her eyes glowed green.
"Don't tire out yet," Conata goaded her sister on. "Another batch!" They had twenty more to go.
Kinesis' arms burned, her temples throbbed and her breathing was shallow, but every word from Conata gave her just enough energy for another batch.
Conata, on the other hand, settled into the now-familiar bull-headed feeling of fighting past her limits. Her hair splayed out and her steps left scorch-marks on the concrete.
They completed batch after batch without fear.
They had only three batches left before they realised their goal. Three more and they would have enough to guarantee the machines counteracting the curse.
Kinesis noticed Conata slowing down.
"Another batch," Conata said in a hoarse voice. She raked her fingers back to hold the grid again.
The batch succeeded.
Conata set the machines aside and drew out more metal. She stepped to regain her balance. Her arms trembled as she pulled the metal into another grid pattern.
"Another..."
More movements by Kinesis. Conata's face strained to the point of pain. She let out a tiny strained groan. Just as the batch succeeded, an abrupt snap started a hiss of superheated metal and a shriek from Conata. A flash of burnished golden liquid spilt from Conata's right forearm. She doubled over, falling to her knees and turning a purer white calcium complexion.
"Conata!" Kinesis cried out.
Conata clutched her arm as it spilt ichor in thick rivulets onto the concrete. Her chin tucked into her chest. Conata's knees had barely hit the ground when Goliath came up beside her and gripped her wound with two metal hands, putting pressure on it to stem the flow. "Your father sent me to protect you," Goliath said in Teknall's calm voice over Conata's sustained screaming.
"It hurts!" Her voice broke in the pain and fear. "Let go! Let go!"
Kinesis took a few quick steps towards Conata, but as her own divine glow faded so did her strength and her legs gave out underneath her. The low gravity of the Workshop saved her from striking the concrete with any force, but she stayed on her hands and knees for several seconds to catch her breath. Kinesis looked up and whispered between two breaths, "Workshop."
A Promethean Manipulator approached Conata with several copper bands, some silver alloy filaments and a blowtorch. "Wait! Don't!" Conata was too spent to resist. It applied the silver filaments onto the skin around the wound, then it bent and wrapped the copper bands tightly around Conata's wounded arm. The Manipulator applied the blowtorch to the bands such that the silver alloy melted and soldered the bands to Conata's skin. Every step drew a horrified scream from Conata. Tears poured from her cheeks by the time a spray of water cooled the bands, tightening and pulling Conata's wound shut.
With the bleeding halted, Goliath finally obeyed and let go. Conata drifted down and sobbed at the ground in heaving breaths.
Kinesis returned to her feet and walked forwards. "Conata. Are…are you alright?"
Conata didn't lift her face. She was barely able to make out words. "My...arm..."
Thankfully, whatever strange nature made up Conata's skin did not cause it further harm when the water sprayed on her panicked calcium complexion. The stray droplets fizzled and sparked around the edges of the pink metal wrapped and welded around the wound -- if it could be called that -- like a sickening brass scab. Some stray droplets of shining gold liquid mixed with the coolant. Not as rosy as Kinesis' ichor, but nevertheless derived of Teknall.
"I bled," Conata miserably added. She had never bled before.
"Conata, you-" Kinesis tried to place a reassuring hand on Conata's shoulder, but withdrew her arm with a hiss as soon as she touched Conata. "Conata, you've been working very, very hard. What you've done today is incredible. And you've pushed me to do something I never thought possible."
"No, not..."
Kinesis wiped the drying sweat off her brow, looked up and spoke to the Workshop. "Get us some water. And some sugar."
Conata didn't move save for her back pulsing up and down with her sad moans. "We have to finish the last batch." She sucked in a breath and her hand closed into clenched fists. "Ah! It hurts..."
A mechanical arm slid along a rail and offered a tray containing two glass flasks of water and two beakers filled with refined glucose. Kinesis took a flask, drank a long swig from it, then poured some of the water into a beaker and started scooping out and eating wet sugary lumps. She stopped when she noticed that Conata hadn't moved.
Kinesis picked up a flask and offered it to Conata. "You need to regain strength. Here, drink."
"Kinesis," Conata groaned. "Is father gone?"
Kinesis looked over to the body, then back to Conata. "Not yet. We've gone faster than I expected."
Conata pushed her good hand against the ground and rose to her arm and knees. The wrist of her dressed arm made a metallic scrape as it dragged across the concrete. She lifted herself up, revealing her face with her eyes half-closed and her mouth slightly open. She pulled her injured arm close to her chest.
"If I can't help make the last batch now, we won't have time later."
Thick stripes of shining iron cut into the calcium up Conata's brow and spread around to her neck and shoulders. She snatched the water flask from Kinesis, sucked its contents down her throat, and slowly stood back up, foot-by-foot. The iron stripes cut down her arms, her legs, and her core. She exhaled a cloud of steam like something enraged and, without prompt, bit into the rim of the flask and crunched into a mouthful of glass.
Conata's sudden burst of activity elicited fear from Kinesis. "Conata, look, if you can wait about a minute I can get a grid printed to make the last batch easier."
Conata sobbed twice through her mouthful before she could speak. "No need," As she chewed the glass, she tossed aside the remainder of the flask, letting it skitter across the floor, and lifted her good hand up. The Elemental Siphon opened one more time. "The grid's not the hard part. Just help me." Another pair of tears sizzled halfway down Conata's cheeks, but the glass was not the cause.
One last ribbon of near-invisible metal flecks took shape by Conata's will. Kinesis took a deep breath, folded her hands together and closed her eyes. She steadied herself and focussed on the microscopic metal particles Conata was shaping into the parts. "One last batch. We can do this, Conata," Kinesis said.
Conata let herself one more quip. "About time you started believing in us." She realised it came off more sarcastic than usual when moaned out through her tears.
Her one hand raked back and formed the lines. Just as heavy a task. She brought her shaking, wounded arm forward, every inch causing her more pain. She managed to force the last grid to shape without a whimper. Kinesis then stretched out her four hands and twisted her fingers, assembling the final batch of nanomachines. The first few moves ground the glass between Conata's teeth. Conata held her eyes shut and swallowed the glass down. The remaining moves caused her to let out a escalating, high-pitched shriek. The struggle and pain in the sound built with the iron in her skin growing quickly into a bright yellow. Kinesis' only mercy was not to hesitate. At the height of the struggle, Conata stomped her foot down. Reinforcing bars sprang out of the floor around them. Tools, benches, racks, and anything else not bolted down shuddered away from them.
The last pieces clicked into place. Conata was out of breath in her lungs. She didn't even look as she waved the batch into the jar with the rest. The heat faded from her skin. This time, she didn't scream further or collapse. She lowered herself into a seated position on the ground and laid down on her side, revealing bulging golden scars running out from under her wound dressings to reach over to her back and down to her elbow. They wept her ichor gently. She breathed jagged, tiny breaths.
"Oh, Connie," Kinesis said.
Goliath moved to stand over Conata, watching her. Kinesis also walked up and knelt down beside her. But then her eyes drifted over to the jars of metallic solution - the fruit of their labour - and to Teknall's corpse.
"Help father," Conata squeaked. Each breath made her wince. "He needs the machines."
"Right," Kinesis said. She rose to her feet. "Rest, sister. Join me when you are ready, no sooner."
Kinesis picked up the jar and strode over to Teknall's corpse. The Workshop had already prepared all the necessary equipment. Kinesis took a look through the viewing box to inspect Teknall's organs once more and grimaced as she realised the grisly task ahead of her. She had despised Jvan's engineering of flesh, yet now she would have to apply her own engineering skills to fixing flesh. But there was no time to dither.
She gave the jar a swirl, stirring up the sedimented nanomachines, and then poured the solution into a large suspended sack with a pump and tube running out the bottom. At the end of this tube was a hollow needle. She picked up the godheart in one hand and gave it a moment's contemplation -- Teknall's essence was still present. With another hand Kinesis picked up an electric hand saw and cut an incision straight down Teknall's chest. Moving aside ribs, she placed the mechanical godheart beside Teknall's fleshy heart and affixed the wires to his heart and spine. With a third hand Kinesis took the needle connected to the nanomachine solution and inserted it into Teknall's aorta, and with a fourth hand she turned on the pump to start filling Teknall's veins with nanomachine-infused fluids.
The nanomachine solution injected into Teknall lit up, turning gold as Teknall's essence began to reclaim his body.
There were more parts which required replacing. The nanomachines could fix damage at the cellular level, but repairing entire organs was beyond them. Teknall's left eye had to be removed with part of the left side of his skull. The eye was replaced with an elaborate glass one similar to Kinesis' own, and the bone was replaced with titanium. One of Teknall's lungs had atrophied so severely that it needed to be replaced with a synthetic analogue. A deep wound was present on the back of Teknall's right shoulder where Xos had pressed the Primordial Spark against him and the rest of his right arm was also terribly damaged. Kinesis had to cut off the arm and shoulder and replace it with an adamantine arm similar to the one Teknall had built for Vestec. His lower back had been struck by a ray from the Spark, resulting in damage there. Kinesis cut out damaged sections of intestines and sewed them back together. Teknall's lower spine was replaced with carbon nanotubes encased in titanium.
Kinesis kept labouring away, working on Teknall's body with the same finesse, speed and precision as she would with any normal machine. As Kinesis worked, fresh golden ichor laced with the tiny machines wrought by the craftsmaidens pumped through Teknall's body, and with these new tools Teknall's essence got to work reclaiming his body.
>Can you see it now?
The words, encoded as electrical oscillations, reached Teknall in his foggy mindscape.
No, Conata, this thing doesn't have eyes. She ̻̔ha̫̔rdl̘͘y͉͌ ú̺n͈͂d̠̈ers͈͒t̀͢an͈̆ds ̹̌w̮͌h̺͝a͇̒t she̫͊ ̊͜ȋ͢s̞̓ ̺̈d̛̘oi̮̿ñ̤g̹̀. She's resilient, though. She'll figure it out. Kinesis understands well enough.
Teknall's will tugged at the electric fields in the makeshift radio attached to the godheart -- the entirety of his physical self at this moment.
>No
Each letter sent was arduous, the imposition of what remained of his divine will upon something as feeble as a transistor stretching the limits of his power. But he had to push, for them, and this alone gave him the strength to keep going.
I need to investigate my body.
Teknall tugged more letters into the radio aether.
>Connect
A moment passed, then pain briefly shot through Teknall. By how wires on the godheart had been displaced, he figured that he had been dropped. Then more wires sprouted from the godheart and his real body came into view.
Or, rather, his corpse.
No!
In his exclamation, he managed to conjure a brief signal.
>!
It's̢̏ ̢͂not̡̂ jù̼st̟͒ w̙͗ounds̱̔,̻̀ ȉ͇ţ͛'''s̠̒ a̖̔ curse ̃ͅw̡̒hí̦ch̗̀ ĭ͇s ̿͢dec̑͜a̳̚ỹ͜ing the b͓̃ody.̨͐ X̙̍os ̦̋is ̜̓po͇͌ẇ̲e͔͞rfu̢͊l̼͠.̠͋ ̨̾I c͓̃an't̪̍ ͇̋b̥̓ea̟̓t h̪̅ĩ̹m. ̺͆M̛̙ỷ̝ ̲̕b̗̾ody̞͋ ̖̉is̼͐ l̋͢osť̞. Yet there must be some way. There must be a way to restore it.
Teknall reached out into his body, yet as he stretched his essence into it he realised in panic that he was too weak to reclaim it. Futilely he tried to restore his flesh and reconstitute his body, but Xos' curse overwhelmed his weak essence. In desperation Teknall tried to get a message to his daughters.
>Need to fix ce̶̪̅l̶͕̋͠l̵̞͗̏s̵̢̞̤͆͗̐͝ ̸̱͉̯̝̋̎̎̔ ̵̡̝͓͙͓̽ ̷̰͔͔͉̣̥̳̙̮̯̒̾̑̏̈́̚͝
Shadows grew around Teknall, in which tentacles and other appendages lurked. The limbs licked out at Teknall and his body, consuming it. Yet as the darkness was pressing in from all sides, there was a whine which climbed in pitch and intensity, followed by an intense flash of light which burned everything away.
As the light faded, Teknall found himself standing in a field of fragrant, colourful flowers. A soft and gentle melody drifted around the field, giving Teknall a sense of calm and tranquility. Teknall would have loved to have stayed for longer, yet although he had no sense of time it seemed to be only a short while before the peace was broken.
Smoke rose from the horizon and the blue sky was stained by scarlet blood. Teknall turned to run from the approaching wildfire, but the flowers turned into thorny vines and tangled around his legs. He pulled his legs free and tried to keep running, but the ground itself shifted beneath him, sliding towards the fire. He tripped on the vines and fell, and as he struggled the ground accelerated. In moments he was surrounded by flames, burning his skin and scorching his lungs. But through stinging eyes he could see an even greater terror - he was sliding towards a great pit, ringed with a wicked array of teeth and spouting mandible-like claws which shovelled the landscape into its hungry expanse. Teknall was spotted by the eyes on the joints of those limbs and one claw came down, grabbed him and tried to pull him in.
I have to keep fighting.
Teknall gripped at the ground and pulled against the tug of the Thing's claw. The Thing was strong, but Teknall thrust a hand through the dirt, found stone and held tight. The claw kept pulling and Teknall thought his grip was failing. With his other hand he pulled free a fist-sized rock and threw it at the limb, hitting it in one of its eyes. The Thing flinched in pain, its grip weakening enough for Teknall to tear himself free and dive head-first through the earth.
Teknall fell into a dimly lit cavern. Teknall stood up and took a moment to regain his bearings. He then saw Kinesis and Conata on the other side of the cavern. They tried to run to each other, but with every step the distance between them grew. Then a terrifyingly familiar shadowy figure rose behind his daughters. Teknall tried to shout a warning, but all he could do was wheeze.
The shade raised an armoured gauntlet and struck Kinesis in the head, throwing her across the cavern and smacking her forehead into the stone wall with a sickening crack. As Conata turned, the shade skewered her right forearm on an umbral spike. Conata screamed and screamed as her golden ichor spilt out from the wound. The shade grabbed Conata by the throat and kept twisting the spike in deeper. Scars radiated out from the wound and grew into deep cracks and furrows from which even more ichor flowed. Her complexion turned to pale white calcium and as the cracks spread across her body. Her body trembled, and as her lungs ran out of breath she fell limp. Teknall reached out. He could not even cry out to her.
The shade dropped Conata's body in a puddle of her own ichor and walked slowly over to Kinesis' unconscious form. Throughout all this Teknall had been trying to run closer, yet no matter how many steps he took the distance never got shorter. Around him crept chitinous limbs and tentacles, tugging at him. His heart was already broken. Teknall might have given up and let the eldritch limbs take him if it were not for Conata's imperative to keep fighting. He batted aside the limbs and kept running; although the efforts were in vain, he had to keep trying. He had t go against what his heart told him. As long as he kept trying, he would survive.
Kinesis began to stir just as the shade reached her. She opened her eyes and they widened in horror as the shade planted a foot on her chest. Teknall watched her struggle, shout and cry, yet no amount of thrashing and pushing from Kinesis could cause the shade to budge. The shade's corruption spread from its foot into her body, and her flesh unravelled in a gruesome reversal of her accidental birth. Although Teknall tried to cry out his own voice choked in his throat and nothing more than a suffocated breath came out of his mouth.
As the skin and muscle of Kinesis' flesh fell apart around the shade's foot, her chest cavity was revealed. The shade reached a hand under her mithral ribs, between her quivering lungs and gripped her bejewelled metal heart. Kinesis only had the strength to let out a mute scream as the shade tore the heart from Kinesis' chest, trailing cables and ichor.
At this moment Teknall stumbled, feeling a pain as if his own chest had been ripped open. He looked up from where he knelt, the shade meeting eyes with him as limbs closed in around Teknall. The shade's hand then clenched, crushing the heart, which exploded into a flood of dark liquid which filled the cavern and slammed into Teknall with enough force to send him tumbling.
Now Teknall floated in the darkness, surrounded by water. He was drowning, the slightly salty water overwhelming him. Eldritch appendages grabbed at Teknall and he felt chitin, scales, slime, sinew, hair, teeth, skin and other indescribable substances. As the Thing gnawed at Teknall and tried to drag him apart, Teknall felt another substance bump against him -- metal.
Teknall reached his left arm out towards the foreign object. A tentacle with scales like saws wrapped around his arm and tightened, trying to constrict the arm from moving, but Teknall kept fighting until his hand reached the object and his fingers closed around the metal.
He knew immediately what it was. Conata and Kinesis' creation. It was a tool or weapon. And he could use it.
A smile crept onto Teknall's lips in spite of the pain being inflicted upon him. A faint golden glow illuminated the darkness. The tool became an axe and with a mighty heave Teknall swung his arm around. The axehead sunk into the chitinous claw grabbing his right arm and crunched through. The Thing screeched and released the limb. Teknall let go of the tool with his left hand and gripped it with his right hand and it became a dagger, with which he slashed at the tentacles grabbing his left arm. An ungodly black ichor sprayed out from the severed tentacles and their grip loosened enough to shake his arm free.
Teknall swam out of the Thing's grip and took a moment to orient himself. He could feel the tools all around him, invisible in this mindscape but having a very real effect on his body. The cuts, scrapes and bruises on Teknall's skin slowly but visibly stitched themselves shut and healed, casting aside the weariness and powerlessness Teknall had felt before and casting a golden glow onto the world around him.
But as Teknall regained strength, the Thing mustered its efforts to make a final stand. Now it was before Teknall, not as pieces glimpsed from the peripherals but as an unfathomable whole which brought a searing pain into his mind. Reality warped around it, allowing only pieces to be seen at once -- an eye here, a tentacle there, a toothed claw, ever shifting and changing.
And it was getting closer.
Its soulless stare and psyche-shredding form was accompanied by a rising chitter and drone. Yet despite the pain, confusion and disorientation, Teknall had been here before. This eldritch abomination had been clawing at him ever since Xos had struck down his body and left him weak and dying in this nightmare realm within his own mind. Indeed, its subtle influence had started ever since he met it through the Orb of Darkness.
It was getting closer, but he had to keep fighting. Teknall pushed past the mental static and his maul manifested in his hand.
The Thing arrived.
A solid mass covered in spikes and thorns struck Teknall in the face, gouging out his left eye, shattering part of his skull and sending him spinning. But Teknall channelled the momentum of the blow through his maul and swung it around blindly. There was a crunch and a screech as the maul connected with flesh.
Teknall clutched his left hand to his bleeding eye socket and squinted out of his right eye to see a shadow moving. The weapon in his right hand became a firearm, which he pointed in the direction of the movement and fired the weapon once, twice, thrice, with each thunderous report followed by an otherworldly wail. The Thing receded momentarily, in which time Teknall's missing eye was replaced by an artificial one and metal replaced the broken parts of the skull.
The Thing lunged again, but this time Teknall brought around his maul to strike it as it charged. It was shifted sideways, but direction and position were meaningless for a creature born outside logic and geometry. The horrific being warped around Teknall and a wicked barb stabbed Teknall in the back and erupted through his chest. Swiftly Teknall brought around a sword and sliced the limb off from the beast before spinning around and cutting deep gouges into its indescribable flesh. Severed appendages were left drifting as the Thing pulled out of reach of the sword. Teknall reached up with his spare hand and yanked out the barb, releasing a spray of golden ichor. Teknall wheezed and coughed up some more ichor.
In this moment of distraction an utterly alien mouth closed around Teknall's right arm, engulfing it up to the shoulder. Teeth burrowed in and stripped flesh from bone as wicked mandibles sunk into his shoulder. And all around him the world closed in and darkened as if being swallowed by an even greater mouth. From every direction thousands of empty eyes bored into Teknall's soul.
It ͕̓is ͛͢s̲͋t͔͠r̀ͅó̡ǹ̰ger than̛̳ ͌͜m̰̽e̦̊.͘͢ Im͕̍poss͇͞ib̥́ly ̖̓s̯͑tr̦̀ong̫̽e̫͆r̯̋. ̡̀I ca̲͗n̖̊nŏ̘t defeat i̹̿t.̖̕ No. I have to go against what my heart says. I have to keep fighting!
With his left arm he conjured and swung his maul into the maw eating at his right arm. The adamantine head sunk into the eldritch flesh, but it did not yield. So Teknall hit it again and again until finally the maw pulled back, tearing off what remained of his right arm with a gristly snap. Ignoring the loss of an arm, Teknall released his maul and picked up a chain gun. With this weapon Teknall sprayed explosive shells into the encroaching darkness, blasting apart the soulless eyes and ripping through its ungodly flesh. A roar of pain rumbled through the world which was felt rather than heard and the darkness receded.
The chain gun was replaced by his rail gun, which he levelled towards the monstrosity and fired. A rod of adamantine traced a line of plasma and connected, sending ripples through the entity. Teknall fired more shots as it withdrew to a point at infinity. Teknall then touched his hand to his severed shoulder and a metallic arm assembled itself piece by piece in place of the missing arm.
Yet the moment of quiet was suspicious. Teknall turned his head in time to see that the creature was hurtling at him from the opposite direction it had fled. Teknall conjured up a shield and dived to the side, a horrific limb bouncing off the shield and batting Teknall back. As the Thing circled around Teknall blasted at it with his railgun. Then with impossible speed a claw lashed out and cut deep into Teknall's abdomen, while from behind a jagged talon sliced into his lower back.
Iẗ̫ ͔̉î̙s͇̋ im͕̿ḿ̢o͙̓rt͖͞al̗̒.̏͢ I caǹ̼not̞̅ k̙͌il͇͛l ̦̌i͔͝t͉̕.͎́ You are not my voice!
Teknall hefted his maul again then struck the Thing with a blow to level a mountain. Bone and chitin shattered, flesh tore and it was sent staggering back. Teknall's wounds slowly closed themselves, but Teknall did not wait to follow up his attack. He lunged forwards and struck again with his maul, shattering a limb the creature stretched out at him. In his other hand appeared his railgun, which he used to shoot at the monstrosity whenever it tried to flank him. Finally Teknall landed another direct blow with his hammer and pushed the Thing some distance away from him.
You should have stayed in the Gap.
In his hand Teknall manifested a long needle. The Thing tensed to leap, but the invisible weapons appeared as missiles mid-flight and the eldritch creature was bombarded by a continuous salvo of explosive warheads. A few moments later Teknall finished manifesting the needle, engraved with calligraphy and with a great diamond at its head -- the Tomb Weaver. It darted forwards, trailing a line of blue light behind it.
It̥̊ is͖͒- You stopped hiding in the dark recesses of my mind and now I've found you.
The explosive barrage continued as the needle pierced through the eldritch creature, threading the shimmering blue line through it.
I'm growing stronger by the minute. I don't need your lies.
The needle turned and weaved through the Thing again and again and again. It screeched and thrashed. It bit at the thread and cut it, but the Tomb Weaver weaved threads faster than they could be severed. Soon the Tomb Weaver had pinned down the monstrosity with its hyperdimensional threads. The rain of missiles stopped, and instead strange metal devices appeared encircling the Thing, like the parts of a spherical metal shell. The space inside the sphere grew darker.
Begone!
The sphere contracted suddenly. There was a screech which lasted but a brief moment before being cut off suddenly as the sphere closed around it and compressed down to a singularity. All that remained was a dark mote fading away.
Finally, there was silence. But more importantly there was clarity.
Teknall exhaled.
No longer assailed on all sides, Teknall's mind was free to think clearly. The mindscape around him started to fade as it was replaced by reality.
First Teknall became aware of his body. He could see the injuries upon it, the repairs which had been made, and the nanomachines swimming through his ichor. It was a sorry state for a god, but a vast improvement on the corpse he had beheld earlier.
The next sense to return was his Perception, gradually revealing the world around him. He saw Kinesis. He saw Conata. He saw Ilunabar and Piena and Goliath. He saw the Workshop.
The next sensation to hit him was pain, and that brought him crashing back into consciousness. Teknall's eyes opened, but the light dazzled him and he screwed them shut. He took in a sharp breath, but that too hurt and his diaphragm spasmed. His fingers twitched and tensed.
Kinesis, who had been standing closest to Teknall, exclaimed, "Father!"
Ilunabar moved in between the two, and with a sincere smile she jested "Welcome back to the world of the living, Teknall. You gave us quite a scare." as she finished her sentence, she raised a flask filled with a purple liquid and started to pour it down the god's mouth. "This should do the trick. You might feel a bit numb, but better that than what you would experience without this. Don't move too much, just rest, you are safe now."
Teknall got down one gulp of the liquid before he coughed and spluttered. He raised his right arm, the one now made of adamantine, and took hold of the flask with a gentle tink. He inspected the contents for a few moments then drank it himself. There was a few seconds of stillness as the potion took effect. Then, in a hoarse whisper and the faintest slither of a smile, he said, "I'll need to remember that recipe."
Goliath then stepped up and took the empty flask from Teknall's hand before stepping away. Teknall tilted his head slightly so that he could see his daughters. "Kinesis, Conata," he beckoned.
Conata limped into view from behind Goliath. She held her wounded arm to her chest and with her other hand clutched onto another of Goliath's arms for support. Her skin shone a brilliant silver despite her blackened nightgown and terrible, bulging wounds. Her teary grin similarly contrasted with her shallow, pained breathing.
"Good to see you again, father," she strained to say.
The attempt at levity ended as swiftly as it took for Conata to stumble onto Teknall's new arm and bury her weeping face into his shoulder.
Kinesis stepped forwards too and hugged Teknall's other side, her own eyes damp. "Father, you're back."
"My daughters, I…" Teknall began to say weakly, but then he was overwhelmed by the resolution of his grief and tears flooded out. As he cried, he kissed the tops of Kinesis' and Conata's heads. "I lost you." He closed his arms around them and hugged them tight.
"No you didn't," Conata's muffled voice said. "You're back. You didn't give up."
The relief of the moment swept over them all. For a while, they remained united as a family. It was the first time in years, earned through a harrowing day.
Eventually, the flow of tears slowed. Goliath wiped Teknall's face dry with a clean rag. Teknall looked up towards Ilunabar. "Sister, thank you." His face then crinkled into a worried frown. "But where's…?"
Teknall glanced over to Goliath and the two made eye contact for several long seconds. In this time Teknall read Goliath's memory from the present back to the point where the two had lost connection. After those seconds of silence, Teknall said in a hoarse whisper bearing a trace of disappointment, "Ah, that's where Toun went."
Conata stopped. "Who?"
Teknall looked back at his daughters with a glimmer of awe in his eyes. "My daughters, you-" he started to say in his weak voice, but was then interrupted by a fit of coughing. Goliath picked up Teknall's words when the coughing finished, the resounding voice emanating from the construct carrying hardly a trace of Teknall's weakness. "My daughters, you have been incredibly brave and remarkably inventive. What you have done was virtually impossible. You reversed Xos' decay! You resurrected a god! And you pulled off a feat of divine engineering greater than anything even I have done! Look!" One of the Workshop's arms brought the nanomachine schematics over to Goliath, who held them up. "The beauty of the design. The elegance of the interconnected parts. Every atom has its place, yet it is sufficiently robust to survive hostile conditions. Incredible! And you managed to create them in extremely stressful and difficult circumstances. And Conata, your prayer meant a lot. You have no idea how much I needed those words. I owe my life to both of you."
Conata blinked into a broad, tear-streaked smile.
Ilunabar sat near them and looked at the two. "I have never seen something quite like it, they stopped at nothing to save you. Many times I wanted to step in and stop them as they took their body to its limits. At moments, I feared they would break…But I knew they would not." This brought her mind back to the talk she had with Toun, over how divine children seemed to weaken their parents -- she had just seen the most thorough counterargument to that theory. "However, unbroken is not unhurt, your father is safe, so it is time for you two to look after yourselves. Especially your arm, Conata, though I have a full report of every scratch, courtesy of Piena, and we will look after each one of them. Hmm, also clothes, of course… I am going to need to find a middle ground between cute… and heat resistant."
Conata breathed out a laugh. "Thanks, mother. I'm mostly used to that happening by now. If you could make a shirt that stops my arm from exploding, I could make serious use out of that. But..." She flinched and paused at another wave of pain running up her shoulder. "...I suppose not burning everything I'm touching when I push myself would be nice. I really liked this night gown."
"A metallic microfibre weave could work," Teknall suggested, "It would survive the heat, although it wouldn't contain it. A flexible ceramic, maybe?"
Conata laughed painfully. "Maybe later." Her smile faded. "I couldn't do any of this without Kinesis. I think I was hard on you, sister, but you really deserve credit. You're so much smarter than me."
Kinesis looked down and blushed. "Oh, well. I couldn't have done any of this without you, Conata. Your determination really kept me going and pushed me further than I thought I could go."
Teknall stretched up and touched both their shoulders. "My daughters," he said with his own mouth with a wheeze, before letting Goliath continue. "You both did this. Together. On your own you are incredible, but together you can do the impossible." Teknall relaxed back down onto the bench. "But now, let me rest. I have some recovery to do."