The Sky Above pt. 2

[Olga Barber]

2nd of Ash, 124th Year of the Age of Steel

Olga Barber was firm in her convictions. Stubborn, sure, but she knew where things stood. Not everyone had figured it out, but she saw the order in the mess of this world. There was a hierarchy to existence. Engineers, the inflexible little shits, were very close to the bottom. As close as you could get to the stinky cultists, defectors, and party magicians without actually being one.

And below them? Well, that was a special seat at the very bottom of her hierarchy dedicated specifically for one Private John Bacchas.
“No, Private. I just need a review of your training module. I don’t need anything more,” Olga said, trying her best to seem calm and easygoing, because she really didn’t need another complaint lodged against her. “So, if you -.”

“Sorry, ma’am! I am trying, ma’am. It’s only -,” and Olga noticed he was shivering. Private Bacchas towered over her, all muscles and suspiciously wide shoulders. He couldn’t look her in the eye. Pathetic. She knew a number of the younger recruits hadn’t yet learned to understand their biases were really only deserved by those special kinds of idiots who branded their souls with runes. He hadn’t any real reason to worry about her, or any other proper mage.

“Do you have a copy of the module?” She interrupted his blabbering. She really couldn’t stand cowardice. That, and she wondered at how he’d even managed to get this placement. The military shouldn’t be training anyone to drive her tanks if they couldn’t stand a simple conversation with a magecraft technician. Another thing to add to her next report to the commanding office.

He shook his head. And then again. Slowly, ever so, she watched as he began to string his words into some weave of a sentence. “We did and -,” Olga wondered if he knew that a nod meant yes, and that the gesture he had been doing, meant no. “- then we destroyed them. Standard procedure, ma’am. Everything I need is up here,” he said, tapping his forehead. Not that it meant anything. She’d been working to get any detail out of him for the last thirty minutes, and so far, she only learned they’d destroyed the training manual.

She’d never say it out loud but she sometimes suspected the Imperium wasn’t exactly run by geniuses.

“Alright. Well -,” she sighed, desperately trying to purge her frustration and rage and murderous desire all in a single breath. Life was hard, she remembered. Nothing was easy. Everyone did things they didn’t want to. That was, in so many words, society. Yes. Olga looked at the massive chihuahua of a man and told herself that she needed him. She could be patient. She could lie to herself.

“If you know how to drive this -,” she gestured at the tank behind her, parked and in disarray. Olga would need to have them put it together once she’d completed the Core. “- you will have to explain it to me. Carefully. Can you do that, Private?”

He shook his head, again. This time, Olga knew that meant yes.

[Olga Barber]

“Tolfar! Tol -.”

“I’m here, ma’am,” and there he was, not-yet titled Jarek Tolfar. Behind her. Olga wondered, not for the first - or last - time, if Tolfar wasn’t in the wrong line of training. He hadn’t shown much skill for any sort of magic, or even so much of an idling curiosity, but he’d proven time and time again to be as stealthy as any assassin.

“Oh. I didn’t see you..”

“No, ma’am, you didn’t,” Tolfar echoed.

Short and thin, and young enough that Olga wondered if Tolfar still had growing left to do. He was two years from graduating from the Academy, and reportedly showed an interest in bureaucracy and government strategy. That, and because he’d been personally recommended by Windrow, Olga had been happy to hire him on as her laboratory assistant.

But Tolfar was strange. He behaved in a way that perplexed Olga. That he was so quiet, and his tendency to echo her own thoughts back at her were only the beginning of a very long list. Still, he was very good at his job. Or the details of Artifice. He was an excellent planner, designer, and did excellent reviews. She’d never seen him actually practice the brand of world magic she herself was so known for.

They both walked together towards the massive tank - now finished. And around that, a Scrivening diagram had been lacquered into the ground. Olga wasn’t exactly sure of the process. Originally she’d suspected once she put in the formalized request for the ritual, with the finished plans, some other sort of researcher came in to create a more permanent design - or lasting, anyway. Alchemy, perhaps. Her designs shimmered with a power that wasn’t familiar to her, and her designs would work all the better for it.

““Professor Windrow has already come through to double-confirm the designs?”

“Yes, ma’am. She would like a full report once completed. The professor is confident, however, that the designs should function as expected.”

“Very good,”

she says, walking around. She hadn’t any reason to doubt things wouldn’t work as needed. She had the designs annotated, now, too. The tank should be as well known to her as possible. Although she had the actual engineers in tow, well, that made the whole thing all the better.

“I imagine this will go in phases. I will need time to create the core. I will need specific time with the head engineer, and then the driver, neither of which have participated in such an experiment in the past. Hopefully though, things will go on without much issue.”

“As you say, ma’am.”

[Olga Barber]

“I thought lures were usually dragonstone, ma’am.”

“Usually?” Olga echoed, playing her turn at Tolfar’s strange little game. “Dragonstones are hardly cheap, Tolfar. That, and they can be unpredictable and - ,” she paused, turning the rubber wheel in her hand this way and that. “- no, no. Let me amend that. They’re expensive and in the wrong hands, can ruin more than they add to an Artificer’s design.”

The wheel was an easy sort of choice for this project. The tank was, obviously, clearly protected and the outside would suffer the damage first. It wasn’t exactly a shock of genius that led her to selecting something inside, as the lure, but it wouldn’t have been shockingly stupid to try and do otherwise.

“And, of course, some lesser Artifice’s never learn to manage Dragonstone. A shame. Even here, you understand, it isn’t a required part of the curriculum. The Imperium understands the risk, as do I, but a shame all the same.”

Olga sighed, placing the steering wheel between two steel grips. She tested it, turning it this way and that, up and down, ensuring she would be able to do the work required.

“But isn’t it to their benefit to instruct us, to create better Artifice enchantments?”

Olga nodded. “Not everyone has the talent, Tolfar. I do, but even then, it’s a waste to spend it on every project. A lure can be of anything, so long as -,” she pulled out a large bucket beneath her desk, a plop of red falling out to the floor. “- blood. It doesn’t even need to be human. Nothing so primitive as sacrificing a life for creation in the Imperium. Here, help me with this.”

And they both groaned, neither of them especially built for the more hands-on work at the laboratory, as they lifted the bucket on to the desk. And, not for the first time, Olga wondered if she was stupid for not yet having created a golem to help with the more laborious parts of her work. But, that would take time, and it wouldn’t be funded by the Imperium, and so it was just something else she put on the back burner. Yes. Until later.

“Anyway, this sort of work?” She said, pointing at the tank. “What is interesting here, Tolfar, is the design. Or interesting enough to make it worth it. Scrivening provides an opportunity, and if we can make the whole of Artifice more efficient, then ideally we can push this work -,” she pointed again at the tank. “To the lesser idiots, and we can do more things with dragonstone and really push the boundaries of Artifice.”

She smiled at him.

“- oh, where is my dragonstone foci?” She said, frowning at the workstation. She hummed to herself before turning to Tolfar. “Actually, Tolfar, do you mind doing a rough sketch of the pictographs you think I should use, or what you think might work, or however, while I look? I could’ve sworn I left it here.”

“Of course, ma’am. But are you sure? I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Nonsense - of course you would! Why don’t you try your hand at this, and I will come back from -,” she shuffled her papers around, looking around for the foci. Damn. That would have been the third one this academic calendar. “- Hm. Maybe I left it back at the engineering when speaking to that engineer. Perhaps it’s there.”