Enthusiasm of a child

"Dad! Dad! Look what mom showed me!" A young Belk shouted in excitement, holding up a piece of amber as he rushed into the chief's hut, rubbing the amber together with a piece of his fabric until his hair started to stand laughing all the while. The chief watched on with a soft smile of endearment towards his son watching as the boy soon stopped and looked at him with a short gasp escaping his lips.

"Father! Did you know something called space existed?" The child pondered with an innocent grin, clearly proud of the knowledge he held. "There's stars that stretch on for miles and miles!"

"Apparently, there's other planets like ours out there! Don't you think that's neat?" He stated, waiting for his father to respond but only a soft chuckle escaped his lips.

"Did your mother tell you that?" He pondered, his expression almost a weary smile.

His son stopped, his expression sombers for a bit at his fathers weary tone before smiling softly back at him.

"Yeah…"

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"Where did I go wrong…" The chief muttered to himself in his lonesome, sitting in his hut with a soft groan of frustration, his large hands carding through his hair as if to push back the stress.

"I thought this would've been just a phase…but—" His thoughts were interrupted, an urgent boisterous cry right outside his confines. Rushing in, Vagnis bursted in unannounced, panting heavily all the while.

"She has arrived !" He cried, his face contorted to panic at the news he had just witnessed with his very perspective eye.

"Arrived?" the chief mused, urging for more context.

"The creature! It reached mt.Hidai! I have no idea what this black powder thing is but she surely is able to make it now!" There was a soft pause between the both of them, the chief's eyes only looking behind Vagnis, worry now clouding his thoughts.

"Where's Belk…" He pondered.

"Oh, he said he needed to work on something in his hut, so I just went ahead," the scout explained, a bit confused as to the sudden shift in topic and urgency.

"I see…"

"As long as he's safe…" A sigh of relief escaped the chief's lips, "For now we should bring our hunter's back and protect the city, go inform everyone!"

"Yes sir!"

"Fascinating!" Belk exclaimed within his hut hunched over his workbench, he was surrounded by the chaos of his own failed creations of wooden bolts and cogs along with gemstones that glimmered from their containers, his eyes held a shimmer way brighter than those gems and diamonds with excitement and fascination with what he was holding.

"Technology from another world… it's so advanced—" His eyes scanned Astra's device, a specific piece left, his eyes stared at it, more and more, wondering what could possibly go there.

"It doesn't seem to have a power source…" He noted, taking a deeper look at the object. "So maybe that's what's missing?" 

"No that can't be it– there's nothing for the power to go through, it all leads somewhere else,"

It was a beautifully crafted thing—sleek and alien, unlike anything he'd ever seen before. No power source, no gears to turn, no fuel chamber. Nothing about it aligned with the mechanical principles he understood. Yet it was clearly designed to harness something.

"This is impossible…" Belk muttered, pacing back and forth in his cluttered hut. His eyes darted between Astra's strange device and the pieces of failed prototypes scattered across the floor—wooden bolts, shattered lenses, and fragments of copper wire.

He held the device in his hands, turning it over and inspecting its smooth surface. The strange grooves and symbols etched along its side seemed more decorative than functional. There were no power chambers or conduits for energy transfer, yet something about its design told him it was missing one final piece.

His eyes caught the faint shimmer of amber resting just outside of it's container, seemingly about to fall out. A beam of sunlight filtering through the hut's window struck the crystal at just the right angle, causing it to glow and cast a soft, golden light across the table. The light reflected onto the device, illuminating a faint pattern across its surface—symbols that had been invisible moments before.

Belk froze.

"That's new…" he whispered, inching closer. He moved the amber slightly, watching the glowing symbols brighten and shift. His heart skipped a beat as he realized the symbols weren't just decorative—they were pathways, channels for energy.

He grabbed the amber once more, holding it firmly within his fingers as he watched the concentrated light shine within, the mechanism pulsing to life.

"It's light," he muttered in awe. "It's powered by refracted light!"

A wild grin spread across his face. He couldn't keep his stupid grin off it, his hands reaching up to hold his blushing cheeks.

 "Oh man, this is so cool! Having something being powered by just light?! It's unheard of! Who thought of this!" He exclaimed, his hands wrapping around the handle of the device.

"Wait no, of course not, It's not just a power source—it's a lens. The crystal focuses the light into pure energy!"

He pressed the amber into place, holding his breath. The device hummed, energy building… until it shot out a blazing beam of red light, a heat so concentrated it left no embers behind, burning a perfect hole in the wall of his hut but he didnt care.

 Instead he laughed, holding the device in his trembling hands. "This… this is incredible!"