The Gift

A harsh clang, followed up by two or three inevitable smaller impacts filled the air. It was the sound of iron crashing hard into glowing hot steel. Folding and forming the borderline molten metal into a blade. Clang, tap tap, then it was flipped and another impact, three taps, as the heavy hammer that fell on it bounced up and back down. Grimward would be at this all day, turn, hit, tap, turn, hit, tap tap.

When Kei had set up her little shop across the cobblestone lane from the blacksmith she figured it would be a good synergy. They would both need high quality metal of varying kinds, so perhaps they could source them together. Kei would need any number of small, well-made parts and components for her inventions and Grimward’s Blade smithy, she was told, made the best. For the most part, she was correct.

Grimward was kind enough, while still remaining his gruff Dwarven self, to provide her with a small discount and the parts she needed for her craft. After a few weeks of her sweet talking him he no longer scrunched up his brow when he saw her striding towards him from across the lane. Once he had caught wind of what she was doing in her little shop he always furrowed a brow at her approach and wondered what small inconvenience she would ask for today.

Some days it was a request for a bag full of threaded bolts made from a specific material with a gem embedded in the head. She was always far too sweet about the request, and she did pay up front. Maybe she wasn’t so bad, not to him at least.

As Kei slipped into her little shop, the tapping and hammering became the background soundtrack for her. Much like Grimward, at first it had been an irritant. She distinctly recalled those first weeks, sitting in the back of her shop in the early hours with a set of precision calipers in hand and her magnifying goggles on. Then, clang!

She had jolted at that first strike and as a result gouged a deep scuff into the somewhat softer metal casing on an arcane prosthetic she had been working on. Once her heart settled and she sorted out what had made the sound, she had settled back down into the seat, only to hear the ringing sound again and again. It occurred to Kei that the grumpy old dwarf might have been intentionally starting work early in the morning to not disturb others who might be starting their day once the sun peeked over the horizon, but as the day passed on, it turned out he was always hammering on something.

Now, though, a year later, the hammering was just noise. It was more disturbing in those moments when he stopped and the silence settled over the lane. He was off quenching something in oil or maybe moving to sit down at his grinding wheel, or in some cases haggling with some wayward party of adventurers.

Today Kei was waiting for an enchantment she had set in motion to fully infuse itself into a crystal. A crystal was set on a little clockwork motor that would keep the pendulum spinning round and round while the magical essences coalesced into the crystal itself. The fundamental forces of momentum being drawn in and captured. To pass the time she leaned against the open door jamb of her shop and simply surveyed the small village bazaar.

It wasn’t much, but it was home. Grimward was animatedly talking with a group that looked to be passing through. Some grumpy warlock type, judging by the grey skin and markings. He seemed only to grunt in response to Grimward. Someone else who looked to be a knight or lord of some kind, and a sweet looking woman. Kei smirked at her, detecting the faint presence of some kind of magical energy flowing through her. Kei caught her eye and nodded to her kindly.

The smile Kei put forth caused wrinkles to form next to her dark almond shaped eyes. She remained leaning back against the door, feeling the tight knot at the back of her hair that held the long black strands together. It was better to keep those out of the way while she worked with her little mechanisms and tinkers.

Soon the party left Grimward’s, Kei gave a half-hearted wave and a smile as they left. Her full lips stretched wide again and wrinkling up around her eyes again.

“Give yerself crows feet you keep smilin’ like that at every passerby.” Grimward chuffed at her.

“You’d prefer I scowled at everyone?”

Grimward scowled at her, but only for a few seconds before both broke out into a rolling laughter. A moment later something chimed in Kei’s ear. A small silvery earring with a golden tube that ran into her ear. It was tuned to her work and it had just let her know that it was time to get back to her shop. Grimward was already back at his forge, hammering and tapping.

Kei’s shop smelled of oily rags and ozone in the best kind of way. It was the smell of machines and magic. To Kei, it smelled like passion and knowledge. She stepped around the wooden front counter and passed a little statue there. A feminine hand lifted out of nothing and gingerly cradling a cog, cast in bronze though the upper portion of the cog seemed to shine more, polished by Kei’s continued ritual of letting her hand drift over it every time she passed it.

“Goddess bless” she murmured and tossed aside the curtain that separated the front of the shop from her work.

Fully twice the size of her storefront, the workshop was where Kei was at home. She liked people well enough, she loved her village and the people in it, even Grimward, but here among her tinkers was where she was at home.

Dangling from thin silvery chains were a number of fist sized crystals, each glowing in a soft color. Blues and purples dominated them, but a wayward green or orange could be seen. All of it swirled together into a distinct color, bright enough to see what she was doing while remaining soft enough that she could doze off in the hammock she had strung up in the corner. Each crystal had been enchanted by her, channeling the grace of her goddess into them to help her see in the relative darkness of her workshop.

Kei slipped on a pair of overly thick leather gloves with several layers of insulation in them. The charred leather outer layer, while blackened, still provided plenty of protection. She plucked the faintly glowing blue crystal from the pendulum where she had set it in motion. As soon as the gloves touched the surface there was a subtle hissing as the leather began to burn and immediately her nostrils were filled with the scent of cooking leather. She worked fast, but precise, as she placed the crystal into a receptacle inside the prosthetic arm she had been working on.

A dozen copper wires, finely crafted and laid expertly along the length of the arm began to pulse, faintly, with the energy provided by the newly inserted crystal. A moment later the fingers on the end of the slender, and obvious feminine arm twitched slightly as power coursed through them for the first time. Kei’s growing smile was indication enough that she had been successful, but there was still plenty of work to do. She breathed a small thanks to the goddess of the arcane, and began to gingerly close polished metal panels over the cage that now held the crystal. The small amount of residual leather cooked onto its surface would soon burn off and leave everything perfectly intact. Kei stood and let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for the entire process and looked around.

There was always something else to be working on while she waited. An artificer of her talents was a rarity in any town, meaning there was always more work to be done. Kei liked it that way, an idle mind led to an idle body and in turn an idle soul. Or so she believed.

She was just walking through the inverted forest of glowing crystals when something at the very edge of her senses prickled. Something was wrong. She froze and tried to focus on what, exactly, was wrong. It wasn’t the arm, but something hung in the air. It was all at once too still, and yet filled with some other noise that didn’t belong. She felt it in the soles of her boots, a rumbling that shouldn’t be there, rhythmic in all the wrong ways. Something was approaching that didn’t belong. There was no hammering and tapping either. Grimward had stopped and Kei waited. And waited. And waited. It didn’t start back up. Maybe he was haggling with a customer, maybe he had moved away to quench something particularly big. Maybe Kei should go check.

The curtain between her workshop and her store front muffled much, but as she threw it aside the distant screams became clear. Even before she stepped around the counter she could see that Grimward wasn’t at his forge, but rather in the middle of the street, hammer in one hand and a freshly made short blade in the other. He was gritting his teeth as people ran past him. Once there was enough of a clearing he sprinted forward, wailing in defiance at something Kei couldn’t see, but she heard. The hammering sound of heavy boots thumping against hard-packed soil and cobblestone, bestial grunts and snarls mixed in with, what she only assumed, was language of some kind filled the air. Worse, the rising cloud of dust and shouts from the far end of the bazaar told Kei everything she needed to know.

While their town was no sprawling metropolis it wasn’t exactly a frontier settlement either. There were still raiding warbands of creatures that were barely intelligent enough to slap together a wooden handle on a jagged piece of metal. They left ugly scars on society wherever they went. It was the reason why Grimward was always so busy, and in turn, why Kei was making a prosthetic arm for a woman across town. Brutality and death followed in their wake and the people were learning to stand up against it.

Kei darted back into her shop. Grimward hadn’t been willing to part with a sword that could net him a profit, but he had been neighborly enough to cobble together a mace. A heavy head made of whatever leftover ore he had that wasn’t quite viable enough to forge into a blade or proper weapon. It was little more than a club with a nicely crafted, but ultimately crude head. She had turned it into one of her tinker projects, she was pretty sure it worked too. She had been meaning to test it, but it looked like that was going to be a field test rather than a controlled experiment.

Scooping up the weapon she ran back out to the street in time to see Grimward engaged with three of the creatures. Ashy lips and pig-like snouts gave way to wicked looking tusks. Most of them sported some kind of markings on them as well. Carved into the skin directly and painted with some kind of pigment that was definitely not blood. She hoped.

Grimward was parrying one of the hefty crude blades and let it fall to the cobblestone before he spun back and slammed the thing in the side with his hammer. It wailed in pain but it wasn’t nearly enough to take the thing out of combat. The other two were closing in on him as well. Once ready to skewer him from behind with what looked like a tree branch, stripped of bark, and a wicked looking piece of jagged metal lashed to the end.

Kei was running, even before she remembered telling herself to do so. She held the mace with two hands and swung it hard at the back of the closest beast's knee. The gems she had set into the wooden handle flared to life, one after the other, sending a pulse of magical energy from the base up to the head in a crackling instant. The moment of contact caused an eruption of magical energy. Kei was happy that the runewords and gem configuration for force amplification had worked as intended.

The thing she hit screamed in pain and its whole weight crumpled to the ground. Kei couldn’t help but smile at that, though it only lasted for a second. Whatever it was on the ground began pushing itself back up, the shattered knee seemed to prove only to be an inconvenience. Worse, the force amplifier configuration had done its job a little too well as Kei pulled up for another swing, she found only a smoldering and shattered length of wood in her hand. The metal head piece was nowhere to be found, at least one in one piece.

“Fuck. Grimward…what now?” Kei asked in a panic.

“Keep swingin’ lass.”

Kei took a few steps back as the creature pulled itself up and began hobbling towards her with murderous intent. She swung the broken weapon in her hand at it once, but it didn’t even flinch. Meanwhile the sound of metal rang from Grimward and screams from the town beyond as the sounds of dozens of impromptu battles rose around her.

Kei continued to back away, never turning her back to the thing that stalked after her until she felt her back bump against the door jamb in her shop.

“Grimward!”

She didn’t even see the meaty fist wind up to hit her, but she surely felt it. She was flying through the air, crashing across her own countertop and tumbling into her own workshop. Doubled over in pain and clutching at her belly, Kei found herself unable to breathe. She told her lungs to expand, to pull in air, she needed it so badly, but her body refused to comply. Her jaw moved, opening her mouth, desperate for even the smallest breath of air.

Something was coming. She could hear it, the scrape and thump of a booted foot and another with a shattered knee. It was in her shop. It was at her counter. It was coming for her.

She scrambled, pulling and clutching at the dirt floor, pulling herself along with whatever strength she had. It wasn’t going to be enough, she knew that much for certain. She reached out, fingers digging into whatever she could find to pull herself along and found herself grabbing a feminine hand holding a cog. It too was broken. The delicate metalwork broken and warped. It was dirty now and she gathered that she must have slammed into it when that thing tossed her into the shop.

“Puh- please…” Kei whispered, it was her last breath.

Searing pain drove through her back, into her burning lungs and out through her chest. That wasn’t enough though, there was a twist then something pulled back. She felt flesh ripping and then blood flowing. Her eyes remained open, looking at the symbol of her goddess in her hands. No. Please. I can help. I need to help…please…

Her world faded to darkness and the sound of boots thumping away from her were the last things she heard as a human.

Divinity worked in odd ways that humans or even the longer lived mortal races couldn’t understand. There was simply no way to understand. No amount of research or insight or enlightenment could tell a mortal how the gods worked or what their whims were. But Kei’s desperate prayer had reached the ear of her mistress.

An electricity filled the air, it was energizing and foreign, like something was ripping through from one reality to the next. Kei was only just barely aware of it, her lungs were filling with fluids and she was losing consciousness rapidly. Her tunneling vision didn’t afford her the luxury of seeing who, or rather, what it was that stepped through that tear. She was only vaguely aware of something delicately plucking the holy icon from her hands. Then her form was changing.

The workshop around her came alive, almost literally. The multitude of arcane gems and crystals wavered and leapt from the benches and containers they had been resting in and swirled into a lazy orbit around Kei. Likewise many of her projects joined in the dance around her body. The mechanisms she had put in so much work to craft with love and devotion began to vibrate and shake apart, each individual thread of magical wiring extracted itself, cogs and gears spun on invisible axis’ next to metal plating and complex tablets etched with divine symbology.

“This is not your end.”

Kei couldn’t tell if the voice had been spoken, or if it was just the last moments of her mind slipping away, but she heard something in the moment before everything went dark around her. Despite the darkness though, she did not pass from this world. There were sensations across her body. Some were, admittedly, painful, others were a gentle coolness or a tingling sensation. As each one washed over her she felt more and more revitalized, more and more alive and yet somehow not alive. Something different. Something stronger.

What she could not see, was the goddess herself, or at least an avatar of her, standing over Kei. The mechanisms she had created had a kind of magic to them that wasn’t created from the energy stored in a gem or from intricately carved symbols. It was a part of Kei herself that she had unknowingly poured into them. Each and every tinker and project she had in her shop had a little piece of her soul embedded in it. It was time for that fragment of her soul to return to her.

Glowing threads that once carried magical energy through the prosthetic arm unraveled themselves and then darted towards Kei’s arm. They slithered inside of her and began to replace muscle and tissue. Cogs and whirling gears launched themselves at her and embedded themselves in her flesh before the divine magic around her parted her flesh and allowed them entry. Metal plates descended towards her and flattened themselves against her skin before twisting and morphing to fit her body.

Not just fit her body, but fully consume it. As each plate rested against her flesh, it compressed, thinning itself and spreading the material over her body. As it did, it became her flesh, blending with it until she was fully encased in the very material she had worked with her hands. Segmented sections overlapped along her abdomen and back. Her arms gleamed slightly in the riot of colors from the hanging crystals and a moment later, she stirred.

Kei opened her eyes, but these weren’t her eyes. They clicked open with a mechanical kind of precision that she had never experienced when she was a human. That very thought and experience registered with her. She knew, on some level, that she was no longer a human, she was as much a machine as the tinker projects she had created. Yet she was still herself. She wasn’t some spinning gear that only did as the turning wheels and magical energies bid her to do. Though she knew now that she was made up of those mechanisms, she herself was still alive, still thinking, still aware. Shoving herself to her feet was easy, far too easy in fact and in a moment of awe, terror, and confusion she looked down at herself.

Polished metal covered her body. The clothes she had been wearing had been augmented into part of her body. Copper tones touched her joints and between the seams in her body she could see the glow of magical crystals meshed together with thin filaments of arcane energy and clockwork internals. She held her hand up in front of her, flexing and moving her fingers. She could hear the subtle click and whirr of internal components, more than that between the joints she could see them.

Her nails, once chipped and short from picking at metal pieces and scuffing away material, were now pristine and polished bronze. Sharp and ready. She ran her hands over her hips, now covered in a similar bronzed material that looked like it might have been her tight leather breeches. She felt the material, felt her body, but she also understood it on a new level. Whatever arcane material had replaced her brain was registering what her hands were running over, what was inside of it, and how it worked. It sent a thrill through her that she didn’t expect.

Her hands flew to her face, running over it and taking it in. Smooth metal met her hands but there was more than that. Her lips were still soft, though a little more on the rubbery side than before and she suspected that she knew why. She moved her mouth, feeling her jaw hinge open and move some elastic material around her lower face. Her eyes blinked when she told them to, but she also realized that she didn’t fully need to. She understood that her eyes were glass now, orbs covering some kind of device to take in and register light and movement.

The entirety of her body was like that. Sleek, segmented plates that overlapped one another. Arranged perfectly in the shape of the body she used to inhabit, but she was somehow better now. She was a tinker like the rest of her work. Her soul was now every bit as much tied to her work as her mind and her hands had been. She had become the tool. Cast in chrome and metal and bronze. She was the very whirling cogs and arcane energies she had tapped into for other people.

A fresh shout came from beyond the walls of her shop, and it reminded her that there were still things that needed to be fixed in this little village.

Just moving her body was a joy that Kei never knew she wanted. Coiled and anxious muscle movements and frenzied movements were replaced with smooth and comfortable motions. Her body was precise and she found it incredibly easy to keep a running list of tasks that needed to be done. Get to the door, assess the situation, take action. All of it flowed as easily as water through a pipe. Flowing but controlled.

Kei burst onto the street and spied Grimward. He was bleeding from a gash just above his left eye. The brackish blood flowed over his eye, forcing him to shut it and robbing him of an advantage. Kei wouldn’t stand for that, nor would she allow the three monsters that harried him to remain alive. She sprinted forward. She expected some level of exhaustion or at very least strain to be there, but none of it came. Instead she felt the exhilarating thrill of precision. She knew where every step would land and what motion would come next and how long it would take to get into position. She stomped one foot and simply stopped, right where she needed to be, nothing more and nothing less. She also understood that there was momentum to be spent. She knew right where to put that.

Her arm was back and she stopped, but all that motion could be poured into her mechanical arm and forced into the lower spine of the closest creature. She actually felt the precise moment that the spinal column shattered where it met the pelvis. It was the only sensation she would feel from that one as the motion sent it sailing past Grimward, a tumbling, rolling, messy mass of skin and shrieks of pain. Once it stopped, it didn’t get back up. It never would.

Grimward was more than a little surprised, not by Kei, he hadn’t even turned to see her, rather the look on the faces of the two monstrosities he had been battling shook him. These things showed little more than hunger and rage and on occasion glee when a particularly messy kill was earned. Fear was something new.

Kei wished she had some form of projectile, but she had never practiced throwing weapons or even archery. The best she had ever accomplished was a somewhat competent handhold on a small crossbow. Without really thinking about it, though, she found herself raising her arm and pointing it at the face of the nearest monster. She wasn’t sure why until she saw the top of her wrist split open, and from it sprang a set of curved metal limbs, stretching a crackling line of pure and raw arcane energy between them. The limbs bent back and a thick bolt formed between them. All she had to do was close her fist and it launched itself forward.

Her aim was still hers. She had wanted to embed the magical bolt between the thing’s eyes, but all she managed to do from a few steps away was send it streaking into the creature’s already ripped and torn ear. It still earned a new yelp, though it was of pain not fear, and it didn’t send the beast scampering away as she had hoped. Grimward had ventured a glance at his saviors form before turning back to his attackers.

The one Kei had hit rushed past him to engage this new target while its companion stayed to Kill the dwarf.

What a fool.

Kei’s eyes clicked and whirred in their sockets and saw the incoming aggressor. She changed her stance and readied herself. She had no blade, no mace or axe, she only had her hands. That would be enough, she knew.

A rusty and ragged blade came singing at her, aimed expertly for her throat. It would have done a commendable job separating her head from her neck, had she not dipped back, just enough, to make the polearm swing wide. Clearly the creature had been depending on a solid strike as his balance was now completely thrown off. He stumbled to the side and quickstepped to try and regain his balance. While he did, his entire side was exposed and Kei figured the piecemeal leather armor he wore wasn’t going to be nearly enough to protect his ribs from what she was about to do to them.

Realigning herself to be upright her arm snapped back and her fingers balled up into a fist. She moved so much faster than she ever had before, her mind knew that that meant that when she slammed her fist into the presented ribs that she would be hitting with a force many times more powerful than she could have produced as a human. She engaged her core, twisted at the waist and plowed a metal fist directly into the side of the beast.

It wailed and crumpled, clutching its side and writhing in pain, kicking its feet and gasping for air. Kei left it there for now, she needed to get back to work. Grimward was parrying a fresh swing from a jagged and wicked looking thing in the last monster’s hand. It might have generously been called a sword, but it was roughly sharpened scrap metal on a handle. It was what had left a wicked gash across Grimward’s brow.

As she squared off next to Grimward the monster now had two targets to consider. This one wasn’t nearly as stupid as the other two companions she had taken out. It took a step back and raised its blade defensively.

“Nice suit ye got there Kei, ye’ve been hiding the goods from me?” She looked down at him. She wasn’t sure how or if she could ever explain what had happened to her. She was all new, but for the moment a new suit of armor was a good enough explanation.

“I can’t let all my secrets out.”

Her mouth moved, but the sound came from something else. It was in sync with her movement, as everything in her body was, but it was a system made of machines that was creating the image of humanity. Kei knew that her voice was little more than the vibrations of a series of magical threads in her neck. It was more akin to a musical instrument than her actual voice. It sounded sweeter, melodic almost, and wholly artificial. Everything about her was artificial now.

Grimward took the opportunity to catch a much needed breath. Kei took up a somewhat defensive stance in front of him. That made things easier for the creature, Grimward was off the table at the moment, all he needed to do was get through this new target. It grunted once, flourished the blade and charged forward.

Kei still didn’t have a sword of her own and she was beginning to wonder if she should just snatch Grimward’s from his hand. There would be time for that later, for now she simply tries to parry or outright dodge the incoming attacks, a task that seemed almost childishly simple to her newly modified mind. She did worry about her ongoing source of power though, she was a machine now and those didn’t just run on their own, she was very familiar with that concept. Efficiency became the name of her game now.

An incoming overhead slice provided her with the perfect opportunity to dispatch her foe. It was fast and well timed in a routine that looked almost too practiced to her. Still, she side stepped the final slice and let the blade clang into the cobblestone street. She had only a brief moment to kick up her leg and then slam the bronzed sole of her booted foot into the length of the blade. The thing shattered and went scattering across the street, turning this into purely hand to hand combat. And she had everything she needed to win at that.

The surprise on the creature's ugly face was palpable and delicious. Kei moved fast, reeled back and made another fist. She wished for the kind of momentum she had when she first entered the fray, sending another one flying would be a welcome sight. She only barely registered the small screech of metal as a panel in the back of her elbow flipped open and spewed a jet of searing hot blue arcane flames from it. Grimward was lucky enough to be short enough that it only singed the top of his bushy red hair.

The extra thrust was everything Kei needed to plow her fist into the ugly mug on the creature in front of her. It didn’t exactly send it flying as she had hoped, but it was enough to shatter its teeth and topple it backwards. She assumed it was out cold from the impact, and the blood oozing from its swollen and disgusting lips was more than enough to know that it would be down for a good amount of time. At least long enough to allow Grimward time to dispatch it correctly.

There were more screams and cries from the town beyond. The market was central to any well established village, and this one was no different. Kei was only a little surprised at how confident she was and more than that, how excited she was to get back into a fight. Grimward was panting behind her, seeing that he had a proper moment to actually catch his breath.

“Deal with these. I have more work to do.” Kei said, her voice flat with determination.

She didn’t turn to see the hammer fall onto the head of one of the creatures, but she heard the porcine squeal of its death. She was about to take her first of many strong and swift strides into town when she heard Grimward again.

“Lass.”

She turned to see the thick, roughed and scarred hands holding out the shortsword he had been holding. He hefted the smithy hammer in his hand and nodded at her.

“This’ll be enough for me. You look like you could use this more than I.”

She smiled, grateful both for the weapon and that her new mechanical face was capable of smiling. She took the sword with a nod and turned back to the village.

“We’ll talk about your situation later. Come back in one piece, lass.”

Kei didn’t turn back to see Grimward, she wasn’t sure she could face him and the look on his face. How had he figured it out? Later, she reminded herself.

Focus returned and she ran. Her sprint was less of a run and more like a series of fast flying leaps that took her across the cobblestone road. Her body was practically flying as she made it to the square at the end of the lane. She was met with chaos.

The locals had established something of a makeshift militia. Armed with hoes, pickaxes, pitchforks and the occasional dagger. The remaining crowd of fighters was backed against the Town Hall, creating a small semi-circle and jabbing at any raider who got within range. They were, however, surrounded. Most of the commoners had barred themselves in their house or were presently fleeing, leaving the town ripe for looting.

Unacceptable.

Kei darted forward, one step, then another, then a mighty leap. Her legs tucked under her as she soared through the air, Grimward's blade in hand, ready for combat. It wouldn’t be until much later that she fully accepted how exhilarating and almost sensual she felt. There was something wholly intoxicating about her conversion. She was something new, something better, faster, unstoppable. She had no desire to use this new power to do anything but help those in need.

Her feet slammed into the ground with a metallic clang and she moved into action. The blade was singing through the knotted hides of the raiders. They weren’t exactly expecting her, and it caused a chaos of its own. The circle broke as the locals saw their opportunity and surged forward. Wood-splitting axes swung at distracted necks and pitchforks thrust into the guts of those whose heads were turned at the new threat.

Kei did her part too, shrieking in defiance of the attackers and drawing as much attention to herself as possible and it wasn’t long before she was utilizing the new speed and agility she had been granted by her new mechanical body to parry and fend off a flurry of blows. Soon it was taking all of her concentration to simply ward off the attacks coming her way. They were beginning to dogpile on her. Her mechanical mind allowed her to take in each of the threats one at a time, prioritize it, and then make a plan of action, but it left no opening for her to counter attack.

She did notice that the local rabble were making headway on the creatures they were fighting and making their way towards her. She only hoped she could fend them off long enough and hold their attention to allow for backup to arrive.

Kei felt the grip of something strong and far too big to be a human hand grab her forearm. It spun her around and tried to drive her to the ground. She wasn’t about to let that happen, but there was another problem, the thing that had grabbed her was orders of magnitude larger than the others. Big, and ugly, and gripping her firmly. Even as she raised her new metallic and clockwork arm to smash into the wrist and break the grip, she was unsuccessful. She saw the wince of pain on its face, but the hand held tight.

She was in trouble, real trouble.

The surrounding militia was doing their level best to contain and drive off the raiders, and this last one was likely going to end up being Kei’s whole problem for the foreseeable future. No matter how she struggled against its grip she was held tight, though the two wrestled back and forth with an almost equal amount of strength. Kei was surprised that her new clockwork mouth could contort into a snarl, and the monster that held her was clearly angered that something so small and strange looking could put up as much of a fight as Kei was.

Kei was too busy locking eyes with the creature and letting her analytical arcane powered mind run through every possibility for escape and counter attack that she didn’t see its other hand flash to its belt and draw a wicked looking dagger. She only barely saw it as it came streaking towards her belly, though the sudden squeal and shriek of resisting metal certainly alerted her to it.

Her vision flickered and wobbled in a way that was far too disorienting. She didn’t see words so much as she just innately understood that she had been damaged in some way. She knew it was minor, for now. The superficial plating had popped loose and she knew it, even before she heard the clatter of the loosened plate hit the cobblestone street. She hated how exposed it made her feel to her enemies, and worse, she knew that it was a breach in her armor plating. The horror of thinking about what might happen if that same dagger sunk into the mechanisms inside of her. What would that do to her? What if he, instead, decided to reach in and tear something out of her?

Repairs and worries about her internal makeup would have to come later, for now she had a job to do and a monster to put down. The metal plating had been enough of a surprise to both her and her foe that it left an opening. The meaty hand clutching the blade was pulling back for another stab, this time at something more crucial, but Kei was expecting it now. She saw it, saw the hand pull back and the creature's eyes darted down her sleek body to her exposed internals. It wasn’t looking at her. The fool.

Something flipped open on the side of Kei’s head. A new panel that was living just at the meeting of her solid metal hairpiece and her face. It was small too, perhaps a little larger than a gold coin and right where her temple was. It flopped open and Kei knew to turn her head so the side faced the creature as a gust of super heated air and steam spewed out of her head. There was an angry hiss as the compressed steam washed over the thing's face and sent it reeling back.

The hand with the dagger moved to cover its face, but in its blind panic the stupid thing forgot to let go of Kei’s arm. The monstrously strong hand twisted hard and Kei heard more than felt her arm crack and snap just above her wrist. She ventured a small look down to see that halfway up her forearm there was, indeed, a break. The metal plates on her arm had reached a breaking point fairly quickly and had snapped in half, leaving a jagged and ruined edge along both halves of her arm. Her fingers were twitching and spasming as they dangled from silvery arcane threads and the remnants of whatever machinery had been forced into her arm.

Kei was never one to let an opportunity slip away unutilized. She grabbed her own half-severed arm and yanked down hard, tearing it free of whatever still held it in place before letting it freely fall to the ground where it sparked and snapped as the last remnants of energy arced from its exposed mechanisms, then it fell silent.

By the time she had the creature had regained a little composure and glared back at Kei. A quick glance told him that the raiders he had brought with him were in retreat, dead, or actively clashing with some small group of defenders. It seemed to take that personally and glared murder back at Kei. The creature charged forward, the knife in its hand pulled back and ready to drive through anything Kei would throw at him. She responded by bringing up the short sword Grimward had given her and locking the knife in place against its edge.

Kei might have only had one hand, but that didn’t mean she was out of options, far from it in fact. She moved her damaged and exposed arm back and rammed the shredded end of it into her attacker's thick neck. Her teeth were gritted even as the monster smirked at her in a defiant grin. She could practically hear it asking if that was the best she had. She knew that the rough edges of her metal chassis would do little more than leave superficial cuts and draw a little blood, but that wasn’t her gambit.

The sheer volume of arcane energy she had rerouted from the core in her chest specifically to her arm should do the trick.

The sound of sizzling and cooking flesh lasted for only a fraction of a second, even Kei barely heard it, but it was present. The smell too, but she was able to keenly ignore that. The steady but potent stream of high energy arcane lightning produced from her arm flowed directly into the monster, through its body, through its heart, down its swordarm to the metal blade in hand. From there it was a closed loop, flowing from the knife to Kei’s shortsword and back into her core. But why let one round be enough?

Round and round the electrical current flowed, seizing the monster’s muscles and cooking the thing where it stood until not even the arcane lightning could keep the muscles in its legs locked. It collapsed into a heap, a charred hole in the neck and the remnants of its cooked fingers smoking as it fell. It was dead, and seeing their leader cooked on the spot did little to encourage the remaining raiders. Everyone not immediately engaged turned on foot and fled. Minutes later, there was an eerie calm in the town square.

Kei retrieved her severed hand and looked it over. There was plenty of damage, but she had repaired worse in her time. Though she had had two hands in those instances. This would be a challenge for certain, but she liked challenges.

The remaining villagers looked to her in awe and a bit of terror, rightly so. She smiled, waved, and assured them that she was there to help and that they should all likely organize into smaller parties to help the wounded, bury the dead, and burn the raiders. Sound logic in a time of crisis went a long way, particularly when spoken by some kind of divine metallic automaton. Kei volunteered herself to collect the bodies of the raisers and quickly bring them to a pyre just beyond the borders of their little city. It was long work, but it gave her ample time to dwell on her condition.

There had been a part of her that wondered and even hoped that once the conflict was over that her goddess might return her to flesh and blood. The more she thought about it though, the less likely that seemed. The goddess of the forge and tinkering hands would never rob a perfect creation like her of the divine pleasures of being a machine. Kei quickly resigned herself to living her new life like this. She was a tinker now, a creation made of the melding of metal, magic, and soul. Something more than the sum of its parts, and never any one thing. A being of constant change and yet perfect precision.

She would be lying, to herself mostly, if she didn’t admit that she took an odd amount of pleasure in her new form. Not just the feeling of power, but there was something else too. Something a little more primal that she had not expected. Something she would need to dwell on a bit more, in a more private setting.

At some point Grimward found her, lugging the corpse of one of the ugly monsters on his shoulders. The pile was tall enough that his little dwarven form would have struggled to huck the thing up on it. Kei dipped down and hoisted it up by her one remaining arm and easily lobbed the body onto the pile.

“Do ye want t’ talk abou’ this?” Grimward asked.

“Yes.” Kei whispered. “And no.”

“Aye.”

There was a moment of silence as the two neighbors looked over the burning pile in the twilight of the evening. The light it produced reflected off of Kei’s new body and sent scattering shadows and waves of light in an odd dance around her.

“When ye’re ready then.” Grimward said at last, turned to walk away before looking over at Kei’s form. “Keep the sword. It did ye good today. Ye’ve earned it lass.” Kei smiled at that.

She remained there for a while longer, grappling with her own thoughts and feelings and who and what she was now. It spoke volumes to her that as time went on that she wasn’t mentally exploring options for returning to human form, but rather what she could do to maintain this form. What upgrades, ad ons, augmentations and changes to enhance herself would she make? The casual stride back to her shop was lit by the fading sunlight and glowing embers of the pyre.

The shop was a mess, more so that Kei remembered. Then again, she had been in a hurry. Her mind told her to suck in a breath and sigh, but she wasn’t sure she needed to, or even could. It would be an experiment for another time, so too would cleaning up the mess in her workshop. Surely no one would be demanding a project be completed for some time, given the raid. So instead she pulled up the heavy old creaky trap door in the corner of her shop and descended the ladder to her living apartment.

Her usual routine would be to stoke up a fire and get the cool subterranean space warm, but she found that with her new mechanical body, there was no real need. The cold didn’t appear to be bothering her one bit. She felt the cool air, but it wasn’t sending shivers running up her spine like it normally would. A smile crossed her face at that, it was another tick in the growing list of boons this new body gave her.

The first stop was her writing desk. Messy with schematics and drawings for her tinker projects but that was how she liked it, no matter where she looked there was something interesting to look at. Now, though, she needed some space to work on something personal. Minutes passed as she collected the pages and drawings into a pile and neatly tucked it onto a short bookshelf next to her desk, leaving her with plenty of empty space to fill.

The first order of business was her arm. She laid the broken piece, her hand and a portion of forearm just above the wrist, onto the desk. Accompanying it was a fresh sheet of parchment, ink and quill. Turning it over in her one good hand to examine it, propping it up against the wall and peering deep inside of her own severed limb devoured the next twenty or so minutes. It only left her one good hand so that she could sketch out something she observed or made notes on the design.

It mimicked what she understood about human anatomy and muscle arrangement. Instead of bones there were sturdy tubes of metal, etched with bronze and iron runes that she only barely recognized, let alone understood. Silvery bundles of arcane threads were woven around some parts and fueled misunderstood gearboxes that were too small for her to see without a magnifying glass. Slates carved with scripts in a divine language she had no hope of deciphering were inlaid with copper stencils and designs, clearly meant to conduct current from one place to another, but how?

Hours melted past her as the night crawled on. The air became cooler and it didn’t bother her at all, she registered the change and used it only to tell her of the passing of time. She was beginning to run out of parchment as well and she hadn’t even begun to try and fix herself, though that was coming to a head now.

The mysteries of what had happened and how, while fascinating, were still heavy on her mind. She wanted so badly to return to her normal life, but the more she studied her severed limb the more she understood that it would never happen. There were more than a few moments where she let the part sit on the desk while she slumped back, the stillness of the apartment punctuating the faint whirr and whine of gearwork inside of her. More so because of her exposed belly. In the quiet of her room she heard herself and knew there was no going back.

Whispered pleas to her goddess broke those silent moments. She wasn’t begging to be undone or revived, but she wanted understanding. Why her? Why this? There must have been dozens of other answers to a hastily cried prayer, why had she been chosen? The answers would never come, deities rarely answered for their actions.

Acceptance washed over her. Maybe that was answer enough. While she didn’t have to like the outcome, it was what had happened, and there was no point in pouting about it. Instead she began to think of her new body as a gift. Something to untangle and understand, slowly but steadily. A constant project that she could pour herself into. Her thoughts turned to the raiders. She was something more now, she could do more, she could protect them.

It would be another two hours before Kei made any kind of progress of reattaching her severed forearm to her body. Even once she was able to reconnect it, the connections were rough and she struggled a little to move her fingers the way she wanted. Sensations came in hefty bursts or not at all. A number of times required her to pull apart the work she had so diligently done and redo something, or make progress on a different part of her arm before returning to what she had undone. It was an annoyance, but the kind of annoyance that only served to spur her on to do better.

Eventually she had her arm working again. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do. There was, however, an ugly gash where her arm had been torn apart. She worked off the scuffed metal plating around her wrist and up her arm, exposing the entirety of the inner workings of her forearm. Once done, there was more sketching and more notes to be taken. She was beginning to understand that in order to catalog her entire body, she was going to need a few things. Time, a full length mirror, and a lot more paper and ink.

Whatever stood in for her eyes clicked to the shredded pieces of metal on her desk. She would also need some new plating and she was fairly sure she knew the right dwarf for the job. Later though. Her exposed belly was a different story from her arm. The plating that had been popped free by the stab of a knife wasn’t actually damaged, at least not to an unusable state. There was a deep nick in the side where the tip of the crude dagger had dug into it, but the plate itself had popped free as if it were intended to do so. She could clearly see latches and hinges on the side of her torso where it could clip back in place, and after a moment or two of experimentation she was able to latch it in place.

Not that it stayed in place.

Once she knew how to attach, and in turn detach it, why leave it in place? More than that, what else could be detached like this? Was it only the plating or were there other parts of her that could be disconnected with the same mechanisms? Kei wasn’t sure how smart it would be to experiment on herself, but that had also never stopped her before either.

The bed seemed like a better place for this kind of thing. Settling down onto the mattress and making herself as comfortable as her new metallic body would allow, she sucked in a deep breath, an act that seemed silly now that she was mechanical instead of flesh and blood. It took a few moments to pry open the series of panels on her belly up to her sternum. A coppery bodice-like plate covered her chest. It had been something she was wearing when her transformation happened and it looked as if it were a simple plate covering, not a part of her body. Something akin to armor over her actual body. The snaps to release it were easy to find, and soon she had it off of her. Under it she found that she still had breasts, or at least something equating to them. Sleek polished metal mounds capped with bronzed nipples met her vision. She allowed a finger to drift up and over the curvature of her breast and over the metallic nipple. Her fingers registered the smoothness and perfection of the metal, her chest registered pleasure. It felt almost the same as when she had been human, but amplified. No, that wasn’t the right word, it was intense. The same sensations just precise and focused. She felt every single small motion.

As her hand moved she heard the sprockets inside of her exposed abdomen whirl faster. The faint glow of blue arcane life flared and enveloped her before dying down as her hand moved away from her chest. She let the breath she was holding out, freeing it into the world around her and she softly sighed.

“Fascinating.”

As with most things Kei found fascinating, she needed to know more. Not just one, but both hands moved up and cupped her metallic chest plate. Her palms glided over the rounded mounds and earned soft whispers of pleasure. As expected, her internals flared to life once again and a wash of dizzying lust flooded Kei’s mind. So strong was it that she began to forget what her original intention was. Touching herself like this brought a sense of connection to herself, to her soul, to her new body and to her goddess. It was praise lavished upon a creation that was both mortal and divine all in one place.

Kei made a mental note to actually do some research into herself and try to unlock more of the secrets of how she worked, but for now, there was worship to be done. A thanks for making her into what she was.

Her hands drifted down her chassis from her chest to the copper plates around her hips and legs. She suspected that, like her bodice, they were merely bolted onto her actual body, and they needed to be removed. She needed to get off the bed and actually stand in order to fully remove the plates, there were several that interconnected to one another. It offered plenty of protection and flexibility, but she wanted them off.

Fully exposed now, nude might be a better word for it but there was no flesh to display. There was only sleek metal, rounded curves that were crafted to perfection. Her body was better than it was when she was a human, and it showed. Wider hips, thighs that looked toned despite being cast in metal, and between her legs, where her womanly fold might have been before, now housed a purely mechanical component.

Some kind of rubbery material began just below where her navel might have been, and stretched downward. It stopped just before the opening where her legs met her hips. It was intricate too and back lit by a subtle pink glow. A subtle seam line traced around her sexual mechanisms, letting the light seep out around her. It mixed and swirled into the faint blue glow from her open abdomen and bathed her and the room beyond in a purple hue.

Her fingers had no troubles sliding inside of herself, there was already some kind of lubrication there, and it only piqued her curiosity a little. Would she need to refill that? A problem for a different time. For now she felt and heard her back grinding into an arch as she let out a sound from her throat. A soft, strangled, but pleasurable twang from the arcane threads in her throat. She let it roll out and fill the space, not caring one bit who heard it. She knew it was for her goddess, no other opinion mattered.

Her worship continued, her fingers growing slick with whatever juices her body was producing. She made little to no effort to hush her voice. Instead she let a long stream of praise roll out and into the ear of her goddess. The light inside of her burning bright and pulsating with an ever increasing rate. It was like a heartbeat for her pleasure.

At a certain point she craned her neck to look down at herself as two fingers slipped inside of herself. She had never felt such rapturous joys before and she never wanted it to stop, though she knew logically that at some point she needed to get to work. Real work. Still, for now she felt the divine lustful pleasures rolling through her whole body with the same focused intensity that she had when she was first toying with her breasts.

Her eyes beheld her body, exposed and open, glowing and filled with whirring cogs, clockwork pieces set in an impossibly precise manner, and the pulse of magical energies beyond life itself. She was a creation now that was so much more than she had been before. She was made with the craft and care of a being with unfathomable wisdom. She saw and accepted that she was now every bit as much a machine as anything she had put together in her shop. She was a being of wires, metal, and magic. That alone was enough to make a new pulse of light erupt from inside of her, more pink than blue and she squealed in pleasure.

Something new surprised her too. She could see words behind her closed eyes that indicated her status. She was close to a climax, it was almost like her body, no, the mechanical components inside of her, were asking permission to proceed. She denied it for now, she wanted more. Her goddess deserved more. She drove her fingers harder and deeper into her slick folds and arched her back again. Her cries of delight echoing off the stony walls around her.

Her one free hand pawed and slipped over the smooth and rounded contours of her chest, hungry to play with her new mechanical body and feel its every surface and texture. Each movement brought fresh pleasure to her and summoned new bursts of light from within her. She soon let her hand slip down to her exposed belly and then inside of it. She felt her internal workings, how warm they were, how they pulsed with energy beyond her comprehension. Each subtle vibration, each gently turning gear brought nothing but abject delight to her mind. A mind that she knew was crystal and arcane now. That thought no longer bothered her or brought her any kind of dread, instead the imagined image of it only served to intensify her lust.

She wanted to see more of herself, wanted to experience herself in a way that only a machine could. She remembered her hand, how it had been cut and yet still seemed to work, at least a little, while it was severed. There was still a small tether to her, that much was true, but she wondered. Was there a way to remain connected while not being fully attached. She remembered what she had seen inside of her arm when she was working on it. The metal plating was still missing from it and she held it up before her. She could see now, some of the wiring and magical components that gave the impression of life there. They could be stretched, they could be extended.

Glossy porcelain teeth chewed into her metallic lips. She had an idea but doubted it was a good one. That had never really stopped her before though and certainly not today, not like this. She had done so much that she had never dreamed with this newly converted body, and she wanted to see how far that extended.

It meant extracting her fingers from between her legs, an act that took a sheer force of will on her part, and even then she whimpered, though she was sure it would be worth the effort. Her activities there would resume soon enough. With both hands free she brought them to her throat where her hands began to paw and feel around for something, she wasn’t sure what, but anything to indicate where a- Ah-ha! A small latch on the back, then another on the front left and right. Just about where her arteries had been when she was still in a lesser human form. The other nestled right over her spine. She worked to undo them, gingerly working the clips she had found. Once they were undone, her hands moved to the sides of her head, thumbs just under her hinged jaw and her fingers spreading up around her hard hairpiece. She wanted to take a deep and steadying breath, but there was no point, there was no need, she was built for this kind of thing.

Pulling her head away from her neck was easy enough, though she was unused to the movement. It took a bit of wiggling to free it from the aligning rails that were built into her neck. She was free though, and more than that she could still see, still make noises from her throat and still perceive the world around her. Most importantly, she could still move and control her body. With gentle control she rotated her head around so she could see herself in all her glory.

A thick strand of magical thread ran from her neck up to her head. No, it wasn’t a single thick strand, but a multitude of strands, all woven together. She could see that jutting up from her neck there were other mechanisms too. Robbed of their connecting ports, but always ready to receive them, to receive her head back onto its place. Her open neck plummeted into her body and allowed her to see more of the intricate workings of her insides. The raw beauty of seeing herself as a machine now was overwhelming her and the riot of blues and pinks around her was evidence of that fact.

Remembering what she had started in the first place, she turned her own head again and moved it down her body. She was distracted once again by how close she was, and how easy it would be to let her tongue fall from her lips and run along the sleek curves of her breasts. There was no point in not doing exactly that, and the praise that lavished on her deity when she did so was truly holy. Her mechanical tongue, seemingly made of the same rubbery material as her sexual opening, found a new home curling and wrapping around the bronze nipple on her breasts.

It took more effort than she would have liked to tear herself away from that. She whimpered again as her body settled her detached head against the cool stone wall. Wedged between her exposed metal thighs and the wall, she found she had the perfect view. Her eyes clicked to the exposed abdomen, and deep inside of it the intricate designs and mechanisms within. All of it was beyond her understanding but the pulses of magical life and the subtle glow of crystals infused with her soul lit the way. Sprockets and gears glimmered with polish as they spun inside of her. She saw more of those thin, etched panels that studded her insides, all of which were threaded together into a collection that was both messy and chaotic, but beautiful in its complexity.

A new flash of pink energy issued from her hips and, seemingly without even thinking about it, she noticed her body squirm and buck a little. She might have been fascinated by the internal workings of such a divine machine, but there was still something primal there that wanted to be released. There was still a craving for the pleasures her goddess had instilled inside of her.

One hand remained on top of Kei’s detached head, simply to stabilize it in the coming minutes. The other resumed its place deep inside of her mechanical sex. Pushing and thrusting, finding its way deep inside of her to toy with whatever it was that collected those sensations and fed them to her mind. She found her eyes fluttering and her optics rolling up into her head as the moments passed. The pleasure of seeing herself as a machine, her head disconnected and her internals exposed, in and of itself, was almost enough to send her tipping over the edge into climax. She was happy enough that it seemed like she had some measure of control over that though, and she once again denied herself. It was more of a challenge this time though. It was like the orders she gave to her body were spoken through a thick layer of sludge. They made it there in time, but she felt like she almost had to force them through.

Hips bucking in an effort to feel every last millimeter of her metal fingers as they slipped in and out of her slit became the new routine. Kei’s mouth fell open and her eyes closed, letting the pleasure and praise roll out of her with no thoughts at all. She felt a detached drifting as her mind wandered off into a dense tangle of pleasure, both carnal and divine. She lost all track of time as she pleasured herself on and on. Again there seemed to be a request for release, but kei didn’t want this to end, not yet, not while she could keep feeling this. She denied it and shoved hard through the wall between her commands and her body. She was fighting it now.

She found herself panting hard as the moments rolled past. What had once been fully formed adoration and praises devolved into whimpers and lustful whispers that were more sound that spoken. Need and desperation welled up inside of her and soon she found hands on her head once again. She moved herself down and spread her legs. She was far too mentally distant to know what had come over her, but her mouth was open and her tongue deep inside of her slit.

When she reflected on this encounter later, she was fairly sure that there was no way for her to actually taste herself, or if there was no flavor there to speak of. It didn’t matter, her mind was wrapped wholly in pleasure and she seemed to be operating on a more base level. There must have been some form of programming or some kind of command structure that had simply taken over her. She moved without really thinking, much like she had while fighting the raiders earlier in the day. Her movements were both her own doing and at the same time, automatic.

She flicked her tongue over her sex, toying with it and lapping wildly at it. A fresh wash of lust cascaded across her and once again she was prompted in her own way to let the release happen. There was still a small, distant part of her mind that wanted to deny it, to let this pleasure roll on and on for the rest of the night. She tried, genuinely, to stop it. But that heavy wall of sludge she had to push her will through had solidified into a wall of hard steel. There was no way she would win this round.

Try though she might, her first mechanical orgasm began. Her mouth was still clamped over the rubbery rim of her slit and her tongue deep inside. She twisted and rolled it around, hoping to find just a little more pleasure to feed her programmed mind. And find it she did. Her hips thrust forward once more and her back arched. The sound of her strained and pleasured cry warbled from her exposed throat and into the room beyond. For long seconds, the sound bounced and echoed in the room and in her ears. Then she collapsed into the soft mattress below her.

There was no telling how long she remained in that state. At some point some mental faculties returned and she plucked her head from between her legs. With mechanically steady hands she reoriented her head against her neck and pushed it into place. She was filled with the sensation of floating and then suddenly plummeting back to earth. If she still had biological organs she might have felt that strange thrill when the ground suddenly dropped out from under you, but like everything this was far more intense. Then all at once she was firmly in place, whole and complete. Hands moving to the latches on her neck and clipping them back in place.

She lay still in the bed, just feeling herself and the world around her. Enjoying the gentle transition from the bright pinks and purples from inside of her to a more subdued blue pulse with a small hint of pink to it. Her hands rest delicately at her sides with her fingers resting easily on the very rim of her open belly. From time to time she would simply move or wiggle them, just enough to remind her that she was still open, that she was still a machine.

In time the plates were returned to her abdomen and sealed again. She would need more equipment to fully examine herself, but with the knowledge that she could remove her own head to look into herself would make that particular process a little easier. Though she doubted that if she did detach her head again that it would be for strictly academic reasons. Or at least it would end up like that eventually.

After scrawling a small list of things to pick up from the market in the weeks to come, she settled back into bed. She was unsure if she needed to revitalize whatever powered her, but she also noted that any fatigue she had from defending the town was gone. She was bristling with energy now and she suspected that her evening time activities had restored all the energy she would need for a while. If she was powered by the forces of her happy soul and arcane might, then she might just have discovered the perfect source of power. Of course, she couldn’t be sure of that until she did some more testing...