System Lost: My Own Best Friend

While Talla is busy starting the car or whatever she's up to, I practice heating up and cooling down a little ball of fire. I don't have a specific goal in mind—I'm just cooling it down until it feels hard to go any further without pulling on other aspects, then go back the other way until the same thing happens, trying to push just a little bit further each time. I figure it's like flexing a muscle—or maybe stretching? I dunno, Vi's the gym nerd, she'd probably know better.

"Good morning Maggie," she says, summoned no doubt by the mental utterance of her name. Like a demon. "Have you not learned your lesson about overdoing it with magic yet?"

"Never," I reply. "Besides, this is practicing control. Finesse. It probably won't strain me as much. I think. Maybe."

"How reassuring," she deadpans. "It's just us at the moment?"

"Unfortunately," I grumble. "I guess Allie and Eva felt like sleeping in. Too bad we didn't get that cool skill that lets us each bank sleep."

"You're the one who insisted on the fire class."

"And I don't regret it, but I can still be wistful about what might have been."

Well, practicing with this fire is actually kind of draining, and so is talking with Vi, so I guess I'll give it a rest for now. Not because she told me to, though. I pick myself up and brush the accumulated dust off our fancy new clothes. They're a lot breezier than Allie's old outfit, and I don't miss the skinny jeans, but all the flowing cloth of the skirt and cloak is kind of a pain in the ass.

I wander over to the car, taking in my surroundings. At the edge of the lush region near the river, the vegetation slowly recedes into a savannah of hardy grass and sparsh shrubbery. In the distance, I can see it fade into a yellow, dusty badland that's probably responsible for all the dirt that keeps building up in the folds of our new clothing.

The oasis is densely wooded, and the desert looks rather unforgiving, but between them is a relatively flat expanse, perfect for travel. So perfect that someone has built a road here. "The Great Road," apparently, though I think somebody is stretching the meanings of both "great" and "road" to their absolute limits. And "built."

The Great Road is...dirt. Densely packed and mostly cleared of vegetation, the dirt road looks more like a hiking trail than my mental image of a proper road. Not that I was expecting asphalt or anything, just...more than dirt.

It is quite long, though—I'll give it that. It stretches off into the horizon to the north and south, curving away from the mountain behind us. The mountain itself isn't huge, but from here I can clearly see the craggy rocks jutting out of the landscape, its peaks already lit up by the rising sun. It's almost hard to believe we just came from there, even after days of hiking.

I find Talla crouched down next to the car around where I would normally expect the fuel tank to be while Draga stands by with his arms crossed. She glances up and waves as I approach.

"Oh, hey Vi!" she greets me. "We're almost ready to go, just as soon as I can get this engine started."

"Assuming it hasn't broken again," Draga grunts.

"Okay how the fuck did she do that!?" Maggie demands. "You didn't even say anything."

"I assume we have noticeably different postures and facial expressions," I reply, as much to Talla as to Maggie.

"Uh huh," Talla confirms. "You look around and frown a lot. Maggie usually just stares at the ground, and Allie would have greeted me first. And smiled."

I chuckle and shake my head. "I smile too, you know."

"Of course you do, but Allie does it on purpose—a kind of communication rather than just emotional display," she says. "I'm still getting to know Evelyn, but she's more awkward on her feet."

Draga looks down at her and grimaces. "It's good to be observant, but that's a little creepy don't you think?"

I shake my head. "No, I think it's good. I'm glad that you're paying attention and treating us as separate individuals."

"Damn straight!" Maggie agrees. "She's a keeper! Wait—shit, can she hear me right now?"

Talla doesn't show any reaction to Maggie's comment, so she's either got an excellent poker face or she's not currently using her translation spell.

"Thanks!" she says with a bright smile. "I've been trying to keep track of how to recognize you, but it can be confusing when you switch suddenly."

"It's confusing for us too, sometimes," I admit. "So what are you doing here, anyway?"

"Trying to retune the mana crystals that power the engine," she replies, turning back to her work. "We had to make a bunch of adjustments to account for the overheating problem we encountered on the way here, but those sorts of ad-hoc changes to the attunement of a mana crystal tend not to last."

I watch her fiddle with the glowing orange crystals for a moment before sighing.

"I have no idea what any of that meant."

"Draga, can you tell her?" Talla asks.

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The ranger turns to me with an exasperated expression and scratches the base of his horns.

"It broke on the way here, they fixed it. Somehow it broke again while sitting here doing nothing, so she's trying to fix it again."

Talla gestures vaguely at Draga. "There you have it!"

"I see," I reply drily. "I've been meaning to ask how those things work, actually. I don't understand how they can be safely used as lighting while also being used to power a portable stove, a car, and even firearms."

Her eyes light up with glee as she turns to give me her full attention. "Oh! I'm glad you asked! Mana crystals are really quite fascinating!"

"Oh no," Draga groans. "Here we go."

"They're a lot like your mana candles, actually," she continues, ignoring her boss. "Which is why I decided to call them that. They contain densely packed energy in a stable form. Controlling the balance of that energy, along with the way the crystals can be coaxed into releasing it, is the basis of almost all alchemical devices."

Huh. So they're only supposed to release their energy under certain conditions? I wonder why that kid's gun exploded, then—actually, on second thought I'd rather not talk about that.

"How does this one specifically work?" I ask, pointing at the car.

"Alchemical drivers are relatively new and experimental," Talla sighs. "They're one of the most complex devices the alchemist has ever come up with. Even I don't fully understand all the engineering behind it, but it's a kind of crystalline resonance—like the stove. The crystals are tuned such that once you get one to start releasing its energy, it triggers the rest to do the same, causing a cascade that makes its way back to the first one to start the cycle over again. From there, it's self-sustaining until something interrupts it."

I blink, then turn to Draga.

"Active crystals in a circle activate each other until you break the circle," he deadpans. "Or they run out of power."

Right, I get that, I think. Although it sounds pretty delicate.

"How did this one break?" I ask.

"It's not broken," Talla insists. "Just out of tune. They need to activate in the right order with the right timing, or the mechanisms will jam. The problem is that they are activated by heat. Under normal circumstances it's fine, but when running for a really long time, all that heat builds up with nowhere to go and they eventually start to misfire. Normally it takes days for that to happen, but when running non-stop through the desert..."

"It got too hot and the wrong crystals activated," Draga translates.

"I got that one, thank you," I chuckle. "It sounds like you're making the problem more complicated than it needs to be, though."

Talla frowns. "Vi, I understand that you're all quite smart, and your world's technology is different, but I promise you that alchemical drivers are even more complicated than I've made them sound."

"Sure, but isn't that the issue?" I argue. "You're trying to change the complicated part instead of the simple one. By tuning it to work at higher temperatures, you've probably messed up the balance that makes it work at regular ones. It seems to me that it would be a lot more expedient to just cool the engine down."

"How would we do that?" she asks.

"Well, in my world there are all sorts of chemical coolants, but water usually works pretty well."

Talla shakes her head. "Even this close to the river, water's too precious to waste by dumping it all over some overheated mana crystals. I can do these adjustments, it just takes me a little bit."

"Oh!" Maggie pipes up excitedly. "Me! I can do it! Let me do it! Vi! Vi, tell her!"

"I guess you're right," I sigh. "Sorry for speaking out of turn."

"No, it was a good idea," she says. "Maybe we can try designing a cooling system when we get back. But for now, I'll just have to keep adjusting the tuning."

"Violet you bitch!" Maggie jeers. "Don't you dare take this from me! This is such a perfect opportunity!"

"Come on, Vi," Allie adds, apparently having woken up at some point during the conversation. "Don't be mean. At least ask for her?"

I sigh. The last thing Maggie needs is for us to keep enabling her obsession, but fine.

"Do you think it might be a good way for Maggie to practice?" I offer. "She's been able to control heat without actual fire before."

Talla frowns, thinking about it. "Hmm, I'd usually recommend starting smaller, like you were just doing. But you do have a thaumaturgy skill, so it might be a good time to explore what that can do."

Draga sighs. "Do we really have time for that? And what if she breaks it even more?"

"She has to learn eventually," Talla argues, "and it's not like we've got much else to do on the road. In the worst case, we can just push it to the nearest settlement and buy a horse to pull it the rest of the way."

I blink. "Did you just say a horse?"

"Hm?" Talla looks up at me. "I don't know what that word means."

Oh right, she's not using her spell. "The uh...animal, to pull?"

"Oh, a horse?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

I open my mouth to answer, then close it realizing I have no idea what I'm even trying to ask. For some reason I just wasn't expecting them to have horses. I shake my head.

"Never mind. I guess I'll let Maggie come back to the front."

"Hell yeah!" Maggie cheers. "Thaumaturgy time!"

"Why?"

Talla's question brings me up short.

"To...do magic?" I hedge.

"You all share the class now right?" she argues. "You should learn too."

"Wait, hold on," Maggie interjects. "Rewind! Abort! This isn't going the way I thought it would!"

I look down at my hands and flex them for a moment, looking at all the little scars we've picked up from the various scrapes and bruises during our time in the caves. Me? But I can't sense magic like Maggie or even Allie do, and I can barely figure out how to push my skills most of the time. To be honest, I've been starting to wonder how much of a purpose I'll even have now that we're safe among other people.

"You think you can teach me magic?" I ask.

"You already have magic," Talla replies. "Maggie is good at finding creative ways to use individual skills like your pyrokinesis, and there's definitely value in that, but it's not how most magic is done. Traditional thaumaturgy is a lot more structured, and I think you'd be well suited to that—maybe even better than Maggie."

"Go for it, Vi!" Allie encourages me. "It sounds like it could be fun!"

"My ass!" Maggie jeers. "Not a fucking chance! Don't you dare muscle in on my turf, Vi!"

"You're the one who insisted on making magic part of our shared class," I point out, before turning my attention back to Talla. "If you're willing to teach, then I'd be happy to learn."

"Great!" she replies. "Let's get started!"