Chapter 33.3: The Essence

It was about three hours after Vaff and the siblings had left that Jinkke’s classmates did as well, for reasons they didn’t deign to share with the strangers. A rankled glance and a vague threat were all Onn offered: an effort Penny understood was meant to keep her and Wepp away from the cantankerous asura’s work. She only laughed at him as he left.

Wepp set to reading, seemingly anything he could get his hands on, and now that the pair of students was gone, there was little else in the room to hold Penny's interest. For a while, she just watched him grab one instructional tome after another off Jinkke’s shelves, flip it open, and immediately praise or critique its contents out loud, always out loud, as though he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. By what standard he judged each one, Penny had no idea, but for a while, it actually was entertaining.

Eventually, though, Wepp’s analyses grew more wearisome than amusing, and Penny’s attention wandered. His words blended into what seemed to be a single, constant sound; the same sort of background babble she knew too well from Hronnson’s. None of it had meaning, but at least it told her she wasn’t in the room alone. Still, though, Penny’s mind moved quickly from one horrible thing to the next: the shop, Skixx, the jade, Ventyr, the asura girl, her father—hell, even Eddie showed up for a lap around the inside of her brain. Her focus quickly spiraled from one to the next, each flickering on as the torment’s bled naturally into each other. Her jaw tightened, and her stomach twisted so that Penny didn’t even notice when her hands started grasping at things around her.

Gods, how long was it going to take those three to find that essence? Even if there was no essence, they had to come back eventually. Event that would be better than what she stared at now.

Penny shook herself free of the barrage and found both her hands gripped tightly on the smartpack’s canvas casing, already halfway through unbuttoning it and removing the framework and machinery inside. She exhaled deeply, suddenly aware of what she’d unconsciously already begun: some tinkering. Her racing thoughts settled as her attention shifted more fully to the project her hands were already revealing to her. This was something she could do, something she could control—and damn it, the pack was one thing she still owned. It took only a second for her to remember just how much there still was to do to make the pack a fully viable tool. One after another, the thoughts torrenting through her changed into ideas of invention, ideas she’d slowly stored away over the last season.

Most evidently, she’d long since decided the thing was far too heavy, and schlepping it halfway across the continent had been a terrible mistake, especially given the few opportunities she’d had to make any meaningful enhancements to it. She still believed the theory behind the device was useful, but it was probably best kept to the confines of a private shop or customer house-calls. Even in those settings, she’d concluded there were at least two improvements she could make that would notably reduce weight.

First, she needed a way to make its contents quickly interchangeable, replacing sets of tools in bulk instead of only on a tool-by-tool basis. Being able to switch out a full set of heavier tools for a set of lightweight fine-control tools would cut weight where possible without costing much time. Some sort of cartridge system was her current idea, where the inner workings of the pack could be built into premade cases of tools that could be clicked in or out of place, linking them to the intelligence core for sorting, dispensing, and receiving. That, though, would be a long-term project requiring a shop, something she didn’t know if she’d ever have, or want again.

Wincing, she shook that away, focusing instead on the second needed enhancement, something she may be able to act on here in this lab: she needed to lighten the frame.

Steel was the only viable option for holding the weight of her heavier tools; she’d known that from the outset and still stood by it. But Penny had intentionally used rods thicker than absolutely necessary, wrongly assuming that it wouldn’t add much weight in exchange for the added support. In fact, it had. The only question she’d been left with was how to shave notable mass without falling below the threshold of critical structural integrity. Her answer—annoying as it was—had been screaming itself at her from nearly everything she saw in Rata Sum: triangles. She could grind the bars of the frame from squared to triangular, reducing weight and adding comparative structural strength in one action. Maybe, she conceded to herself, the asura had something going with all these weird shapes after all.

Scanning the room for additional tools, Penny finished stripping the canvas shell off the pack and instructed it to dispense all its contents. It had been some time since she’d seen the bare skeleton of the smartpack, and it brought back memories from two seasons past: memories of Eddie and Minkus, the incident at their trial run of the pack, and the shape it had left her shop in.

She almost went down that path again, when movement drew her attention across the room. Wepp had looked up from his book and raised a hand to point to the door, to something he must have heard outside. Penny followed his gesture, and the door slid open. Vaff and Jinkke strode in virtually on top of each other, and Minkus came up behind them.

“...no, Professor,” Jinkke said, continuing whatever thought she’d begun in the hall. “Even though the Seer essence is clearly labeled, nothing in this scant information scroll says anything about its composition or origin.” She had her nose deep in the sheet of vellum she was reading. “Nothing at all. There isn’t even mention of Zinn.”

“Oh, I assure you that shelf was where all of the college’s Zinn holdings are found.”

The two, nearly ignoring Wepp, Penny, and all else in the room, stopped at the first workstation, where they’d gathered hours earlier. Leaning on a cane he now had, Vaff placed a small, wooden box on the table and turned to face Jinkke. He stuck out a finger, pointing to one of the corked, glass vials poking from the top of the lidless box. “You simply have to decide, progeny. Will you trust your brother’s transcript of Zinn or spend fortnights studying the contents of that vial and modeling its potential reactions with various magitechnical elements and alchemic substances?”

Penny looked at the smartpack, opened and with its contents strewn about the corner of the laboratory, and she grimaced. Why in Tyria had she thought she’d have enough time to do anything on the project? Twiddle your thumbs for three hours, and nothing happens. Work for five minutes, and everything is suddenly moving again.

Faces quickly flickered through her head again, though, culminating in the wide and deadened eyes of that asura girl, and Penny’s attention shifted wholly to the workstation. Her pack could wait; it was one of the few things she’d still have after all this had been dealt with.

At first, Minkus had hung back toward the door, taking everything in, but now he moved closer to his sister again, his eyes worried. “Jinkke, a fortnight is too long. Days are probably too long. We have to help—”

Jinkke raised her hands, cutting him short. “Yes, I know, Big Brother. I know.” She paused to look at the scroll again, then moved it aside and flipped through the Zinn transcriptions again, periodically looking down at the vial of sky-blue liquid that seemed to keep drawing everyone’s attention.

Jinkke sighed, looking back to her brother again. “Alright, we’ll attempt the project your way.”

“Zinn’s way,” Minkus corrected, pointing back to the sheets still clasped a little too tightly in his sister’s hand.

She nodded. “Yes. Zinn’s way.” It was less an agreement than a concession, but with a huff, she spun back around to the smooth, stonework table and began to reshuffle and rearrange the sheets again, this time with the box of vials at the center of it all. Wepp and Professor Vaff were instantly beside her, watching over either shoulder and both making comments and recommendations as to the placement, order, and detail of the nearest pages. Before she knew it, Penny was up and with them as well, dusting herself off as she moved to the opposite side of the table.

She leaned down into their lines of sight, making eye contact with each asura and then glancing at the blue vial. “So this is it, then?”

“Oh, yes,” the professor said with a start. “My apologies. Yes we have indeed secured what I, at least, conclude is the Seer essence. Wonder of wonders it may be, but of all the artifacts the college could have held, precisely the substance we needed was among the holdings. I genuinely was unaware prior to exploring the vault for myself.”

“You conclude?” Penny frowned, looking to Jinkke, who still seemed uncomfortable. “But you don’t?”

Jinkke shook her head. “I can’t say with certainty what this substance is, however likely our desired outcome may be. It matches our meager understanding of Seer essence, or so we presume, but there’s no definitive way to know, certainly not in the alotted time.” She looked quickly at Minkus, sighing. “I just retain some reservations.”

Penny’s frown deepened, and her eyebrow lifted, unbidden. “What are the odds it’s not our stuff?”

When Jinkke was slow to respond, Vaff spoke up. “That is unclear. Between us , we have nowhere near the knowledge of archaic alchemics to attempt the loosest of viable estimations.”

“But,” Wepp interjected, raising a finger as he bent forward over the vial, “whatever those odds may be, it’s incredibly difficult, even today, to get an energy-emission device of any type to generate a projection without resonance calibrations tailored to the specific magical source material.”

Vaff nodded. “He is correct.”

Penny winced, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I— what does that even mean?”

Jinkke pointed at the vial of liquid still under Wepp’s scrutinous gaze. “It means that if we put this substance into an operational version of Zinn’s golemantic design, and it is in actuality not Seer essence, we will not be inadvertently creating a deadly dome of unknown energy—at least the odds are overwhelmingly in our favor. Everything ultimately comes with some measure of risk.” Wepp shrugged at her, quickly returning to the handwritten sheets all over the table.

“OK. I actually understood that. But I’m not hearing any good reason to not build the damn thing.” Penny leaned forward, hands down on the cool surface of the table. She stared at Jinkke, waiting for a response. Everyone’s eyes now waited on the blonde asura, whose puckered face still held reticence.

Jinkke glanced around, her eyes darting from one person to the next. As she responded, she gently lifted the vial from the round cutout that held it in the box. “Does no one else see this?” She wiggled it in the air, and the liquid sloshed inside. “Whatever it may be, this is all there is: potentially the total remaining Seer essence in all of Tyria, assuming it’s not some other compound entirely. I don’t believe I’m being overwrought in acknowledging that fact, even if I will still proceed.” She glanced once more at Minkus, who sighed his measured relief.

Still leaning on his uncannily cane, Vaff put a hand on Jinkke’s shoulder. “Your concern over the limited quantity of the essence is valid, progeny, and it is something I have considered. However, in talking with the librarian, that Alena friend of yours, I discovered that the records indicate no one has even inquired after this particular artifact in over 70 years, drastically longer than even the other Zinn holdings. Wonder though it may be, it appears the bulk of the college has forgotten its existence.” He straightened, wrapping a soft hand around the vial and taking it from Jinkke’s hand. “If it puts your mind at ease, though, it’s worth noting that I always planned to limit your usage to just a third of its contents. Forgotten or not, it is a highly rare commodity—you are correct—and even I am not comfortable being responsible for its complete expenditure. We requisitioned the artifact through proper means, and I am not willing to be recorded as the last person to see a priceless scientific antiquity and never return it.” Just as intentionally, he lowered the vial back to the box, returning it to its cylindrical hole, and placed both hands back atop his cane. “Although,” he finished with a shrug, “if we happen to return an unrecordedly lesser amount of it than we borrowed, that I might be able to conscience.” with a grin touching the very edge of his big lips, the old asura winked at Jinkke.

“Wait,” Penny interjected. “Did you say Alena? The woman— female— that person from the peacemaker place?”

That was when Minkus peaked his head up over his sister's. “Yes, Penny. She was on duty today at the stacks.” His face fell as a subsequent thought came to him. “The colleges refused to grant her and the staff a grieving hiatus.”

Penny's mind flashed to Ippi, to the girl's large, saddened eyes, etched in her mind. “Did she say anything about the kid?”

“The kid?” Minkus questioned, scratching his head. Then it struck him. “Oh! Ippi.”

Penny nodded, leaning farther toward him across the table. “Yeah, Ippi. Did she mention the kid?”

“No.” Minkus drew out the word, looking at Penny with a quizzical sadness. His countenance uplifted again as his thoughts moved on. “But she did talk about Skixx.”

Penny scowled and snapped erect. “Skixx? Why in Grenth's green ass did he come up?”

She narrowed her eyes just as Jinkke slid in between them, standing on tiptoes to meet Penny's gaze in her brother's stead. “Skixx came up as a topic of discussion because what he stole had been stored directly adjacent to this essence; the conman pilfered another of the Zinn holdings.”

Penny blinked, Jinkke's words settling in as she shook her head. “What?! Are you saying he was after the same stuff we were? How in Torment did that happen?”

The elderly professor straightened and shook his head, drawing everyone's attention in his understated way. Unlike most others Penny had met now, this asura could be disarming when he wished it, not just aggravating.

“Not precisely the same stuff,”Vaff said, echoing Penny’s chosen words. “They were simply neighboring artifacts. Although, the two items do seem to have been closely related, and not simply by virtue of belonging to Zinn.”

“OK.” Penny crossed her arms, waiting a moment for the rest of his statement. The professor and Jinkke exchanged a knowing nod, and though the wrinkles on Wepp’s long forehead said he didn’t follow either, neither of them noticed it.

She put a hand to her forehead. It seemed this asura could frustrate Penny as well. “Care to share how they were related?” she huffed.

“Oh, indeed,” Vaff coughed. “My apologies.”

Before he could continue, Jinkke interjected, “Skixx’s objective was a set of schematics for… Well, the librarian said they were for constructing a magical essence projector.”

Penny froze, locking eyes with Jinkke for a moment, before moving on to also inspect Vaff. Each nodded in turn, and Penny’s eyes descended to the table between them, that smooth stonework scarred and gouged by hard service. Atop it, each page of Zinn’s designs and the individual sketches thereon—those she recognized at least—nearly glowed under her searching gaze.

“Domes? On golems?” she asked, more calmly than she felt.

“Judging by the librarian’s short record of the holding, yes to both.” The old professor nodded, closing his eyes momentarily and rubbing his eyes behind his glasses. 

Everyone else remained stationary, but Penny suddenly needed to move. Slipping a small, double-headed wrench from her hip pocket, the woman flipped it rapidly between her fingers, rolling it up to her thumb and back down again as she paced the length of the workstation. 

“Gods,” she moaned. “So you’re saying—”

Vaff cut in, nodding so that his topknot bobbed forward and back with the movement. “Yes. Probabilities suggest someone else is working in the same sector of study you progenies are.”

“And—”

“Yes.” It was Jinkke hijacking Penny’s train of thought this time. “The peacemakers never found it. Whoever confiscated it from Skixx still possesses it.”

“Great,” Penny muttered. “So these people have magical, crazy-making stones and schematics for projecting said crazy-making magic.” She pointed at the vial. “And they took no interest in the magical defense juice. Just great.” 

As Penny paced, wishing to be anywhere else (preferably with a drink in hand), Minkus edged forward to join the conversation. “But,” he said hesitiantly, “that means the schematics wouldn’t work for them, correct?” He looked to Wepp. “That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

Wepp looked up from the sheets he’d been silently collecting while everyone else spoke. It took a second for Minkus’ words to strike his ear. “Not technically,” he replied, waving the page still in his hand. “Many energy emitters use similar designs, even though they project entirely different fields. More than anything, the calibration challenges are converting the magic from one form to another and stabilizing its energy expulsion into the desired shape in light of its unique frequency signatures. In this case, given the polar natures of these two magics, applying either to one of Zinn’s designs could be as simple inverting all the calibrations.”

His ears drooping, Minkus shrunk back into himself, taking a silent and embarrassed step away from the people at it.

Wepp went on. “Subsequently—”

“Subsequently,” Penny finished, rubbing her face in both hands as she cut him off, “they could have everything they need to make mind-melting death bubbles.” She rolled her eyes so far, the world went dark for a second. Then she looked back at Wepp. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”

Raising his brow, Wepp shrugged. “Approximately, yes.”

Penny stuffed her wrench back in that pocket, but she had a hard time releasing it from her balled fist. “Well, shit,” she growled sardonically. “You people make this sound better every minute. When can we start?”

“First things first,” Vaff said coolly, “you’re going to need a golem.”

Penny snapped around to look at the old asura. She’d been so caught up listening to Wepp that she hadn’t even noticed when the gray-haired professor had returned his attention to the piles of notes and schematics around the table.  In fact, she hadn’t recognized Jinkke either, who’d slid everything aside from the wooden box except for a few select pages that Penny recognized as being related specifically to the Seer essence.

 Jinkke stopped, though, lifting her gaze from the table to the equipment around the room. A look of distress spread across her face. “Professor, we don’t have a golem here.”

Seemingly surprised by the statement, the old asura’s ears perked. He looked at his student and then followed her waved gesture around the room. Penny did too. She, of course didn’t know what half the things in the lab were, but from what she did recognize, nothing stood out as being related to golemancy.

“Drixxi, Onn, and I haven’t requisitioned one in over a year,” Jinkke said.

Vaff rubbed his chin. “Why, that is a problem, isn’t it? I suppose I’ve given you no reasons to requisition such materials.”

There was a moment’s silence as everyone scanned the room again. Then there was another moment, and another.

Finally Penny broke the unproductive silence. There was work to do, and even this bunch of geniuses wouldn’t get anything done if they just stood around ogling at their lack of resources. “So then,” she demanded, “let’s just go requisition one from whoever gives them out.”

Glaring openly, Jinkke brushed back her disheveled hair with both hands. “It’s not that simple,” she rebuffed. “Synergetics technology requisitions of that magnitude require a written declaration of intent, professorial sponsorship, and approval by the requisitions manager. At absolute best, a request is a three-day process—for most krewes.” She shot a sideways look at Vaff.

Penny blinked and waved a hand toward the door. “Three days? What are you talking about? I’ve seen golems all over this place. Kids run around with the damn things, for Grenth’s sake.”

“Be that as it may,” Jinkke said with a gleam of annoyance in her eye, “the college has its regulations regarding procurement of complex technology. It took us the better part of a season to gain approval for all our transmat equipment, and that is our primary field of study.”

Scowling, Penny crossed her arms. The only thing worse than an asuran rebuttal was a logical one, which they always were.

“Well, what about the professor?” Penny grunted, turning her attention to Vaff. “You managed to get us into the vault we weren’t supposed to see, right? You can get us one little golem.”

For the first time since he’d joined them that day, Vaff looked at her uncomfortably. His eyes flitted about, and his mouth pulled wide as he found his response. “Yes— well. While I would gladly offer my assistance further, I fear that any effort I made to procure something from the Resources Department may not yield as much success as my work with the dean.”

Penny raised an eyebrow, spotting Wepp’s similar expression behind the professor. “Oh, gods. What did you do?”

Vaff faltered then raised a finger. “Let’s— well, let’s just posit that my department has had a history of disagreements with Resources.” Penny glanced at Jinkke, who had a hand to her forehead. “We no longer have the simplest experience in our requisition process.”

“Gods,” Penny groaned. She swept back her hair and put a finger to her temple. “Of all the people in this whole, gods-damned city, none of the three of you have a golem or are capable of getting one?” Everyone in the room looked at each other, shrugging or shaking their heads.

Pressing her face into her hands, Penny took a deep breath. The knot in her stomach was as tight as it had been since the day before, cinching down on itself like it was trying to implode. The rest of these people did understand what was at stake here, right? There was a crazy, asshat-witch of an asura out there somewhere, playing people for fools, murdering librarians, and making orphans, all in an effort to take control of some kind of magic that drove people insane.

Penny grimaced behind her fingers. None of this would be her fight at all if it weren’t for her choice with...

She tried to force the thought away, but guilt flooded over her again before she could stop it. She opened her mouth, not caring what came out, just as long as it took her attention elsewhere. “Well,” she heard herself say, with anger bristling beneath her sarcasm, “get ready for a shitshow. I never put a whole lot of stock in this magic-shield idea, but it sure sounded better than getting our minds scrambled, which is what we have to look forward to now. So, hey, thanks for trying.”

 Neither her tone nor her smoldering glare went unnoticed. Jinkke’s mirrored expression made that evident. She straightened for an exchange, and Penny nearly smiled. Something inside her wanted it.

That was until Minkus spoke up.

Amid her rising tension, Penny hadn’t noticed when he stepped between them to approach the table. He glanced awkwardly at both Penny and his sister but quickly directed his attention to Wepp. He pointed generally at the sheets strewn out on the workstation. “Do we need a whole golem? I mean, I don’t see much of one in the drawings. Perhaps— well, perhaps we just need parts of one, for the emitter?” Minkus frowned, twiddling his ear as unsurely as ever.

Penny blinked, thrown off by the interjecting thought. She looked at the others, recognizing the thoughtfulness glimmering in Wepp’s eyes.

He scratched his head, exchanging curious glances with the other asura. They all seemed to be silently exchanging thoughts again. 

“In theory,” the bald asura said, looking back at Minkus, “no. Not if all we want is the emitter in isolation.” He paused, letting his eyes wander around the room: the shelves, the workstations, the storage bins and tool racks, everything.

“But,” he continued again, “it seems irrelevant if we indeed possess not a single golemantic component.” He turned to Jinkke for confirmation.

Jinkke now had that look of thoughtfulness too, no longer paying any attention to Penny. She studied her brother, suddenly puzzling something out that no one else had noticed. “What are you getting at, Big Brother?”

Now Minkus had Penny’s attention too. As much as she hated to admit it at the moment, the sister was on to something.

“Probably nothing,” Minkus stammered with a shrug. His shouldered seemed to curl in around him, and he nodded toward a particular page at the center of the table. “But, do you think— hypothetically of course— do you think we would need more than some parts of an intelligence core? All I see here— well, it looks like everything is about the intelligence core, or specific pieces of it.”

Eying him suspiciously, Jinkke stepped to her brother’s side. She quickly scanned the stacks of pages again, looking up at him again before replying. “Yes, mostly.” She pointed at another sheet. “There must also be one of these custom essence-manipulation units and some kind of a field emitter—though I suppose any standard emission system might suffice if properly jerryrigged. That’s not unlike the standard repulsor on a waypoint chassis.”

“It would need an energy generator with sufficient stabilization flow as well,” Wepp cut in.

“Of course there needs to be an energy generator,” Jinkke agreed coldly, snapping a glance over her shoulder. She addressed her brother once more. “But, yes, Big Brother. I suppose, at some stripped-down level, the critical elements of these designs are the basic logic matrices and energy distribution balancers of an intelligence core—or at least so I’ve induced. It would need to receive and obey instructions, calculate field variables that could affect the flow of magic, and regulate the field itself.” Jinkke still squinted at him, as though waiting for him to play a hand of cards. “But we have none of those things, because we still don’t have possession of an intelligence core.”

Arms crossed, Penny was staring curiously and openly at Minkus, along with everyone else. What was he getting at?

“Biggie,” Penny said, “she’s already said we don’t have any golem par…” Minkus met her gaze, and his big, sad eyes stopped her mid-sentence. 

No. Gods, no, she thought.

Without him speaking a word, she suddenly understood what he was angling at, and she looked past him, past them all, at the naked frame of her smartpack laying alone near the wall. Its leather case and contents strewn across the floor, she’d stripped it down all the way to its golemantic center: that modified casing she’d welded into the frame that held the heart of her creation. It was the only one of her inventions she had left, and at the center of it? Only the most essential constituent parts of what was a golem intelligence core.

She shook her head at Minkus vehemently, controlling her tongue with every fiber of her being. She had to keep her mouth shut. This was between him and her, and the moment she said anything to tip off the others, it was the end: of her work, her career, and her shop. If she lost that pack, it would all be gone, fully and finally gone. That she couldn’t take that.

As if reading her thoughts, Minkus’ expression softened—how in Torment did he do that? He strode the short gap between them, right in front of the others, and took her hand. All eyes were on them, but she barely noticed.

“I’m so sorry, Penny,” he pleaded. “I don’t— I think it’s the only way. Please? For Ventyr. For Ippi. For us.”

Another surge ran through her: guilt, rage, and terror in a single, coalesced shiver that rushed from her feet to the crown of her head. And the thought of those people, all those same people, pounded against the inside of her skull. It was the end of it all, and she knew—gods damn it, she knew—there was nothing else she could do.

“Fine,” she growled, letting his hand go. With a wild flip of her hand, she marched around the worktable and away from everyone still standing around it. “Take it, then. What the hell else am I going to do with it, anyway? Gods forbid I should get to keep anything of my life.”

With barely a glance at the device itself, she hefted the bare frame up in front of her and tramped back to the table, slamming it down atop the paperwork. She stood back and pointed. “There. You have an intelligence core.”