4

No Light In My Veins

Calista

I was heading to Noel's store as promised. In the time since the dinner I'd been able to arrange supplies; due to my history the stores in Puldark don’t trust me but long story short my lack of an arm and by extension magic seemed to convince them I wasn’t a threat. I had to sell a few of my past spoils to afford it all _{grumble grumble}, and said spoils aren’t exactly things you can sell in the usual places.

I’d bought a crossbow, a hatchet, and inscribed a basic fire tattoo onto my right shoulder—boring survival-type junk I’d’ve never needed before sob-sob.

Speaking of suffering, on the road I won’t have my luscious home-tattoo-setup so I’ll be using a time consuming and painful travel kit for future tattoos. My oh my, I haven’t had to use that thing since I was a wee lass.

Well dear reader I’d made it to the store—recap over. I was punctual this time, hopefully Noelzie will notice. I brought the gun, I figured flashing it would be a good bit of motivation.

I entered the store and saw Noel up the back. Her glare shifted to me from the knife she was wiping down, It’s lovely how ominous that girl can be.

“I’ll speak with you in a moment. Calista.”

Hehe~, who’s late now?

I shuffled around the store like a gran at a fruit market—inspecting the various weapons and mechanical thingies. Noel occasionally glanced at me; perhaps employee instinct or perhaps she still didn't trust me. Little did she know I was a changed woman! I'd seen the light and turned from the darkness! I now loved law following—especially since I can’t get away with it now.

Noel began putting away her things so I drifted towards her. I reached her as she closed a drawer; she looked to me and spoke:

“I'll go.”

“w-e-h? really!?!”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I thought about it. And decided.”

“Yeah sure mate but you must have a pretty good reason if you’re going along with my nonsense.”

“I don’t trust you enough to tell you further.”

Ouch (oof). I guess that’s locked up tight...

Noel told me what she had planned for my prosthetic: it would start simple, constructed from a light metal, tongs at the end for picking things up, and to move the arm and tongs I would channel magic into the prosthetic.

The crusty books reckon that one's magic originates from somewhere in the torso—perhaps the heart. Magic can be channelled out of any part of the body but when emitted closer to the chest it is spread out, chaotic. but as it is channelled away from the chest it becomes concentrated and potent—a running jump will take you further than a standing jump so to speak, as a result casting tends to be done with external limbs like arms, legs, tails, tentacles—even the head/mouth if your neck is long enough. As a matter of culture and pride demons rely on their bodies for magic and cast from arms, tails, etc. whereas humans like channelling through crap like wands and staffs to increase the distance from the torso (they have casting sources on the end that let them channel out of them like a body part). That she-devil (my ex) had spoken of massive artillery units in The Capital that took that principal to an extreme.

Noel continued to explain her plans: the tongs will be able to be replaced by a blade, then later a casting source, which would allow the prosthetic to be used as a staff with mechanisms to lengthen the prosthetic. UGH. I really don’t wanna cast like a human but I’ll suffer if I really really have to. The revenge’ll be worth it. Also, the plan is that the prosthetic will be built up in stages using scrap metal found, bought, or acquired along the way.

Noel disappeared into a backroom and came back with something like a metal lid with leather straps hanging off it.

"This is the base it’ll attach to. Can I put it on?" She said.

“Sure.”

She held the metal part against my arm and tightened the straps, it was a weird sensation—the original bandages were still on by the way—not sure if that’s a bad thing...

“I’ll get the prosthetic.”

She left and came back with a metal rod that had tongs attached to the end, it really didn’t look like much. Noel lifted my arm with one hand and aligned the rod with the other before screwing it in, then twisted and clicked some bits and bobs to secure it (having two arms seems pretty convenient eh? _sob-sob). With the rod added the total arm still only reached up to where the middle of the forearm would’ve been—no articulation at the elbow either...

“Channel some magic through it to close the tongs.”

Oh wow I haven’t channelled magic since I lost my arm have I? I still remember how of course, after all I was quite the mage.

I channelled magic through the prosthetic, I could feel it flow through and into the tongs.

“...”

I was staring at the tongs. Noel too.

“...”

I think I saw them wiggle, might just be dodgy construction...

“...”

Ok this is kind of very bigly embarrassing, there’s magic going into those tongs but wow, what a piss-all amount. It must be restated: very bigly embarrassing, it’s like forgetting how to walk, Noel knew I’d lost my magic but figured I’d at least be able to close the tongs—and so did I by the way! I must be sure to schedule a cry later.

“_he^hae… I don’t think I can close them... “

“Oh. Wow.”

I know ok!! uaa^aaaaaaaaaa_aaaaaaaaaaaa_aaaaUGH!

“^he_heu… I think if I add a uh mana tattoo then I should be able to close the tongs.” I said

“Yes. Do that. If you can’t even close the tongs then nothing else has a chance of working.”

I knoww_ww I’m ^sorryy Noelzie～

“I’ll be working hard on my mana Noel! I won’t let you down!”

“Ok.”

awawa~ this is the _worst. This means I can’t even use the fire tattoo I already got! UGH!

Noel was saying something but I was too focused on sulking to reply. What a mess! hopefully this’ll work out somehow _sob-sob.