It didn't take long for Kistaria to figure out basic mechanics after that, twisting and contorting shapes into gears or springs or pulleys, whatever the job required on a quick and rational basis.
Now instead of bulky bags of tools and parts she carried around a few bars of various metals: Copper, iron, and steel. The basics. That way she didn't mix part makeup and cause undue damage to any gearworks she had to come across in repairing and updating.
A lot of replacement door levers, several well pumps, and then one of the main boilers found her always with something to do and kept her out of the mechanical shop.
But something was never there or out of the shop, just out of the reach of obvious thinking and rational minds.
Finally, after retrofitting the Counsel's personal buffet with a portable blowtorch-turned-food cooker she realized... where were the weapons?
The guardsmen were all equipped with the typical spear and sword. The occasional hatchet or shield. But not so much as a glimpse of any sort of projectile weapon. No sort of automaton, although she'd seen more than her fair share of 'thinking' machines.
Ovens that told you when they had reached optimal temperature, time limit, even one of the latest: A recording memory bank that copied down a voice for spoken recipes.
This sort of thinking began to plague Kistaria, who in all honesty had begun to grow tired of this charade. She was a -noble-, damnit! Not a mere mechanic.
So in secret she began to experiment. Repeating crossbow? Winch system was too bulky and cumbersome.
Flame projector? Needed a giant fuel tank to keep it going for even a while.
However, she had to keep up appearances, and about a week and a half of coming in with new bandages.. mostly on her 'real' fingers and they passed it off as commonplace.
Then began the dreams. The first couple were just darkness, with nothing but a whisper to guide her through the shadowy realm.
But the voices grew more insistent, as did a curious phosphorescence. A pale lavender hue began to twist itself into her black dreams, before it eventually flared out into a familiar shape.
The Heart.. the very dome she'd nearly been condemned to death in. By herself.
But it wasn't as empty as the last time she'd been in it, as now dozens of specters floated within the chamber. They were all familiar to her, lieutenants and soldiers that had fallen against the army that Traitor StillLeaf had raised to subdue and try and slay her with.
The voices were all as one though, and rather aggressive on their reasoning.
We have traveled across the stars and time with you Kissasha... The very name.. her true name sent shivers down her spine.
Bound no more in flesh, but forever bonded into the purple stone you see before you.
And then a grin on a dozen faces mirrored their true purpose. There is a storehouse two floors down from the workshop, locked and secured behind a door hidden with a small bit of brickwork.
Down there you will find what you seek, down there you will find...
The voices quickly faded, the bloom of periwinkle glow began to dim and dull.
- - -
Kistaria woke up, captive in cold sweat upon her fur and skin beneath. With the word curling her lips into a sneer most vile.
“Revenge.”
- - -
It took some work, but she finally discovered it. The door just looked like a little alcove the two floors below the workshop.
But said door was bricked off indeed, and looked like it had been that way for quite some time. At first she had hoped it was only some sort of secret catch. But going over it sliver by sliver just came up drawing blanks.
It took her a week of covert side-work, but a gas stove dispenser nozzle on a sealed can of brick coloured paint let her craft an otherwise perfect likeness on some copper sheeting.
A couple of hinges, some chisels, and a haphazardly repurposed shovel to seperate stone from stone found her retrieving the hardest piece to secure: A broom that wouldn't be missed for a day or two.
On extremely slow days, mostly to get out from under Caldeus' thumb, the apprentices would volunteer to help out the understaffed Hall Housekeeping crew. Today however... Kista cheerfully opted in.
Setting aside her project for the day (an upgrade prototype for private residences' showerheads), she even whistled a little and swished her bandaged tail to head down the hall.
When the coast was clear however, she quickly made her way down and beelined for the alcove. Where she'd actually leaned the false wall over her satchel of supplies. Off of her tail came the strips of cloth to bind around her hands, to keep any errant brick dust off them. And she got to work.
It was slow and grueling labour as she proceeded slowly, as at least twice while she started she had to stop and pretend to be sweeping while passerby greeted her and conversed a little.
Inside her head however the warning and nagging voice of reason was screaming. Move faster, scrape more quietly, and finally got so tired of this inner chastizing that she dropped the tools and started pushing bricks inward.
Then a pair of voices coming down the hall cut in to these thoughts. A pair of familiar voices that made her blood suddenly run cold. Caldeus... and one she hadn't spoken to since she got off of bedrest.
Eryss.
Hells.. She thought to herself. Now she had no time to be nice to the wall. Being stopped by these two would be the entire plan's undoing.
So with a growl in her throat she began to hurriedly push bricks in with her mechane arms. The grout didn't hold up to the force at all. But the voices were getting far too close for comfort.
A scrape found her abandoned trowel, pushing her half-emptied pack and tools in. She then butted the false wall bottom as close as she could to the remaining bricks. Before she clambered over into the hole and snagged the top of the copper plate. Which found a grunt as she lifted up the surprizingly heavy plate upwards as near up as she could manage.
The panel had gained this new weight no thanks in part to the real gravel or the layers upon layers of paint she had arduously applied and laquiered on to simulate the brick as best as she could while it dried.
The voices came to rest directly outside of the sealed doorway, and Kista found more mental curses flying their way at this damnable luck. Given they were close enough for her to hear -everything- disaster would befall her if the panel slipped even a fraction of an inch.
“Nah yer sure of this, lass?” Intoned Caldeus, a bit of concern in his voice. “She's been nothin' but a charm tah me 'n the boys.”
“That is what concerns me.” Chastized the portalmancer. “She has not asked anything of us, not even a possible scrying to see why someone buried her in that prison to let her die of electrocution, starvation, or just good old-fashioned suicide.”
The panel started slipping, so claws extended... and she clutched the door with all of her might. Her shuffling was fortunately muffled, but she was on a hair trigger at this point.
“Nah lass, maybeh she's just thankful to be alive. J'evah think of that? A fresh staht in a new place... maybeh she's jus' tryin' tah live her new life ta th' fullest.”
At this point, Kistaria was inwardly screaming profanities. They'd worn out their welcome. Now they just needed to go.
But... she held fast, kept her grip up despite the weakening resolve of her fingerpads and claws dug in to the top of the false wall. Her grip seemed mostly secure... at least until the brick came down.
In her haste, she had halfway dislodged some of the middle-tier bricks, and one of those had decided to greet her left toes.
She sucked in her breath to keep from hissing, clenched her eyes shut amidst sudden welling of tears... and focused on listening to keep her focus off the throbbing lancets of pain in the front of her boot.
The voices were shifting away, so she could at least let out a soft hiss of pain. Now that the coast was slowly clearing, she was able to start pulling the rest of the bricks backwards. But left the lowest tier in place so it didn't have a gap underneath and arouse any suspicions.
Then a critical juncture, with the hinges she had inset on the back panel with a little bolt and footplate. She had to chip out a pair of bolt holes, one for the latch at the top. The other for the footplate's side-latch.
This was only a small wrinkle, but by the time she had shifted the bricks to either side of the door completely and made sure that both latches engaged and disengaged properly, found her absolutely exhausted.
In the dim lantern light she finally sat down and pulled off her boot to look at the damage. The flesh was tender, but otherwise she would be able to walk it off if she took it easy.
After a few moments, she decided she might as well see what the slightly deranged crystal 'soulstone chamber' had pointed her to. And down she went, gingerly on the left side.
What she found was a lot of stairs, at least a good story or two far away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life in the citadel.
Finally, a second flight down and she finally came into contact with a door. A massive, band-studded and padlocked door. The door was intimidating of course, but the padlock clearly wasn't going to easily come off. Not with the half-ring easily being an inch thick.
Sure, she could try to mold a proper key, but that could take hours if not days. Days she didn't have to waste. So she unfolded her metal arms, clasped the glittering digits on the letch of the door instead.. and waited.
But her back arms only clamped down, not even doing so much as denting it in pressure. Having come so far, only to be defeated by a giant lock was humiliating.
Angry, she doubled up a fist and banged on the door once, figuring her weak and fleshy arms wouldn't budge it an inch. Which was true, it didn't even creak.
But a little spark of purple arcing electricity came to life, dancing in between her fingertips as she pulled her hand away. Which was rather odd, she hadn't felt any power of the sort since she woke up in the...
“The Pit!” She almost shouted, before clapping hands over her mouth. It was all starting to make sense now. The metal of her armor and the pulse of power that had hurtled them through time and space had somehow spiritually bonded its abilities to her person.
How the arms didn't respond to direct thought but instead reacted to feeling and emotion. She now realized they weren't just a tool, as her magic had been. It was part of her now.
Another experiment was in order, she mused. And with a twist of her fingers tried to push her magic into the lock, to force it open.
A sharp hiss was then escaping her lips as a twitch and crackle of lavender energy leapt back from the lock to her fingers. That -was- definitely new, maybe some sort of enchantment?
She tried again, but instead of just forcing it she let the feeling flow. She didn't know when her metal limbs came into contact with the beast of a bolted door-lock, but it sent an electric shiver through her body.
And then the lock mechanism became a physical extension of sorts with her body. Pins, tumblers, wheels and bearings all came alive to her as if they were her own flesh and blood.
A little twist of her mind found the solution to her problem: Without a key to push the tumblers in and engage the spindle, the lock had no 'power supply'.
One last little surprize was in store, as she could picture the exact 'key' that would unbind it. Then a strange quiver in her fingers... her -real- fingers found her pulling them away from the lock.
A cascade of purple sparks materialized in between her sets of fingerpads, and to her mingled feelings of horror and wonder a suspended in air bright purple crystal began to form.
A purple crystal key. It fit the lock like a glove, pressed the tumblers smoothly, and with a loud clank the lock now lay upon the floor at her feet. The gaping maw of the door now stood open...
Open for Her.
