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[Drayek]

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Quickly, she worked on the complex machinery in front of her. The haphazard construction sat without a casing, components strewn out connected together in a thicket of wires, gems, and delicate metal mechanisms. Letting go of her most recent attachment, she looked each connection over, mentally comparing it to her schematic. Satisfied, she picked up an arm brace with several metal barbs pointing inwards and attached it to her arm, pushing each barb into her flesh and reconfiguring her muscle and nerves against it before strapping it in place. Pressing a button on the control board, a series of arcane gems lit up as the power crystal sent a burst of energy through the machinery, causing it to hum and whine. The energy sent a shock of pain through her as it coursed her forearm, the exact amount of pain she had anticipated based on her schematic and the amount of arcanage the power crystal modulator should be transferring. This was good, the device passed the first test-- The gems each were doing their job. She looked over to the large glass tube lined with a metal mesh, a sample of dirt sitting in a thin glass dish in the centre of it. The cage was hastily constructed, but should be able to endure the energy burst currently being stored after passing through her arm. Looking towards the read orb resting next to the control board, she observed it until it lit up, highlighting its surroundings in a yellow hue. She pulled a lever on the control board, bridging the connection between the energy burst containment crystal and the glass tube. The energy quickly into the glass tubing, spiraling up and down the tube as the mesh lining directed its movement.

There had to be a way to imbue dirt, any dirt, with one's essence.

She had modified the machine several times already, figuring out the methods to use with arcane gems to have the arcanage flow grasp a sample of her essence as it passed through her. While not the simplest task, there was no reason why basic arcana wouldn't be able to interact with an organic arcana to trap a sample. It was easy enough to see when it finally worked, a pale purple and green glow surrounding the wire leaving the bracer attached to her arm. The colour slowly faded from the energy in the storage crystal, but the pale glow remained. It had worked, surely.

But was it enough to simply imbue essence and soil? There had to be some form of reagent she could derive from herself that could be applied to soil to mimic the bond with her birthplace. It was magic in origin, the bond. There had to be a way. She disconnected the bracer from her arm and watched the energy continue to circle in the tube. She remembered being young and not being able to sleep. Her thoughts distracted, her attention turned to the nearby table where two stone bones sat. Condensed from the dry powdery dirt on the surface nearby and shaped to replace her middle metacarpals, quite possibly her most useful transmution. Even now, she felt intense unease having them outside of her body. This was the longest they had been out of her body in quite a long time. The bones were safe, only metres away, but deeply she desired to absorb them into her once more. Safety, it was a feeling of safety they gave. At the very least, these experiments showed her a weakness she did not realize she had. It would make it that much easier to tell if the imbuing worked.


The energy within the tube finally lost its imbued glow. She pulled another lever to send the charge back into the original power crystal and unlatched the hatch on the tube, pulling out the glass dish the sample rested in. Looking at it intently, it did have a pale glow to it, but didn't seem to carry the same presence at all. Grasping a handful of it, she caressed it in between her fingers. Gritty, clumpy, the Britannian soil was different, not right at all. Clenching her teeth, she brushed the remaining soil off her hand back into the dish, catching her aura turn from purple to red-- then to faint light blue as she caught herself observing herself. She took the dish and poured the dirt into a leather pouch. It felt like nothing to her, but that wasn't her experiment. It didn't matter if an innate connection could be made with it or not, the objective was to find a substitutive method so her student would be able to sleep. And sleeping with the sample was still untested.

She had no idea how much time had passed, she came back home to try and work out a quick solution but that was obviously not happening. She wasn't about to give up and lose another student. It hadn't occurred to her the last one's underachieving performance and listlessness could have been a sleeping issue. He was such a brilliant technomancer, such a waste. Her aura turned red once more, mottled with brown bitterness as she thought about her past carelessness. She unhooked several components from her makeshift machine and prepared it for travel, taking several other loose tools and mechanisms with her as she did so. She didn't have infinite time to spend finding a solution, she couldn't neglect her student. Not when he was in such a state of transition. At the very least she could absorb him and attempt to allow him rest by passing her own rest through to him. She grasped her stone bones and re-absorbed them into her hands, then attached the packaged machinery onto her back and flipped through her runebook to recall. She would find a way to fix the problem, it was simply a new challenge.