Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21: Movement

Kresha came back after a few minutes to the maintenance rooms and told Arkyn that the shutdown of the mining and golem crafting process started today. Surprisingly, nothing else seemed to happen immediately afterward.

Seeing more golems coming into the maintenance rooms like nothing changed for two more weeks made Arkyn search for a more detailed explanation about what his job meant now.

Interestingly enough, he found Kresha mutating more bog bloaters into blood bloaters like nothing had indeed changed. Despite the last part of her conversation with Diven, she was still making more fangbell.

"I was wondering if you would start asking questions." She said while energy rippled from her wand and into the light-brown surface of the bloater. "Ask them now, cause pretty soon I won't be all that cooperative in explaining."

Arkyn contemplated several questions, but when looking over his thoughts from the last few weeks, he narrowed it down to two that popped up the most.

"What function does the Ash Keep have now that it is no longer functioning amongst the Afflicted? And why did you tell Diven you are not drinking Fangbell anymore?"

A red vein emerged underneath the skin of the bloater, darkening the surrounding sections and swelling a few inches into an odd oval shape.

"This place collects metals and crafts parts that eventually get moved to the other Keeps. By shutting down the keep, I am no longer expanding the mines and crucibles, but still providing centuries worth of material. Someone in the Afflicted will have found a substitute to take back over long before the storage caverns run out."

Looking back, Arkyn didn't hear anything about closing the location forever, just her research and her projects in particular.

"Understood, the Keep will be going to a form of stasis then, not shutdown permanently."

"Exactly. Now as for the Fangbell, I am making just enough to suppress dynamic changes due to cravings of processable iron in blood. I am not stopping the consumption completely, as we both know what happens when I don't."

She made a little clawing motion with her free hand, parodying her feral form.

"The only difference is I won't be drinking enough to keep my body in a constant state of regeneration, I will actually start aging again."

Kresha said such things in a rather simple manner, making it seem like the loss of immortality so casual to Arkyn. He wanted to discuss more about what that meant for his future considering the change.

Does that mean he was going to remain here awaiting the new member of the Afflicted or be decommissioned? Instead she waved him off telling him that she'll worry about that in future.

He continued working, uncertain what else he could do. Three months went by and the only change Arkyn truly felt was internally.

During a moment of respite from work, he was surprised to find Kresha in the library, sitting amongst a pile of books.

"You know, I was curious as to why you read not only novels but the bestiaries and monster codexes laying around." She said while putting a worn, yellow tome of aerial based monsters back onto the shelf.

Her words seemed strangely slurred and Arkyn found the source. A decanter from her bedroom had made its way to the library and was sitting uncorked on the floor.

"Now I kinda see the appeal." She blinked a few times, trying to get her eyes to focus. "They have all these stories and experiences about how dumb biologists tried studying them, only to piss the beasts off and die. Then someone else finds the bodies and studies those instead."

She laughed and let out a snort like it was the most comical thing she had ever heard.

"I mean just imagine that, most of our knowledge on how animals in the wild operate are based on rumored appearances and the aftermath of humans getting ripped to shreds, never having actually met them."

"Yes, it seems rather unfortunate that results only come to those that survive, not those bold enough to invest themselves." Arkyn said while putting several books back and the cork onto the glass jar of liquor.

"Yeah well . . . someone should've told me that before I decided to research golems." Kresha's head drooped as decided she was done with the book and her hysterics.

"All my years trying to build better machines and preserving a mind inside them, only to be the same as the guy that gets shit out of a serpopard cause he looked at it funny."

"I think you might just be evaluating the achievements of your life at too high of a standard." Arkyn interrupted with a surprisingly different tone.

You dedicated years of your life into Ash Keep and made it a self-sustaining network of expansion. You researched countless ways to integrate magic with machinery, and while speaking as a result of your work, I would say you're not the trial and error.

I am a fully functional human mind preserved in a body of magically infused metals with artificial sensory and capable of replicating my original form. Are you saying that is all the aftermath of failure?"

Hearing Kresha say her life was wasted being the starting point of runesmithing complex machines had hurt a part of Arkyn, in a way he never expected.

Especially since he was given a semblance of life, despite no recollection of his past life, deeds, and sins. She gave him a clean life to live, protecting his creator and learning from the massive Keep of knowledge, inventing, and researching.

"Oh Arkyn, you're not the same as before. You're just a fragmentation of the original." She finished with a yawn and decided the chair would be the best place to nap.

Arkyn let her rest while he tidied the library and eventually helped her to the upper floors of the keep.

On the way back, he put the decanter somewhere that Kresha would not think to look for a while. Something in the back of his crystallized brain did not like the mention of Arkyn, triggering several more flashes of what he could only assume were distant memories.