Master Inventor Celia's workshop at dawn was an area of well-regulated chaos. Clockwork minions scurried about, putting the finishing touches on what appeared to be a suit of armor designed by an individual who had never actually seen armor but had heard someone describe it to them in vivid detail by an extremely imaginative child.
"It's not glamorous," Celia produced, displaying her handiwork with the smug look of a parent showing off her particularly hideous offspring, "but it should see you through."
The suit itself was not appealing. It looked like medieval armor and a Victorian diving suit having crashed into one another, then been reassembled by zealous steampunk fans with access to mystical resources. The helmet itself featured at least six crystal filters, two magical air pumps, and what appeared to be a periscope.
"Please tell me that Periscope is functioning and not merely for appearance," Mia said, trying to lift the helmet."Functional. You can look around corners without exposing yourself to instant magical corruption. Very useful for sneaking."
Mia worked with her new gear for the remainder of the hour, under the supervision of a team of palace guards whose expressions ranged from awe to barely concealed disgust. The suit was heavier than she had expected but beautifully well-balanced. The air filter was constantly hissing a low rumble that was comforting.
"Magical charge will run about eight hours," Celia replied, checking many gauges and crystals. "The secondary emergency will give you two additional hours, but only if you transition to it before the main system completely fails."
"And if I'm too late?"
"Then you'll personally experience magical corruption to unprotected humans."
"Which is?
"Nothing necessarily fatal immediate, but you'll probably start growing extra limbs in a couple of days."
"Extra limbs?"
"Don't worry—they're always negotiable."
Mia declined to push for details regarding that particular topic.
By noon, she was on a horse specifically trained to support riders in heavy magical equipment, at the front of a small caravan into the Blighted Wastes. The escort consisted of Kael, Captain Reis, two Royal Guardsmen, and a supply wagon driven by a guy whose title was patently "Emergency Magical Evacuation Specialist."
"Happy title," Mia replied when she learned about their driver's role."We would sooner be prepared for anything," said Captain Reis diplomatically.
The landscape slowly changed as they traveled south. The impossible prettiness and impossible colors of central Eldoria gave way to blander colors, then to regions where the grass itself seemed fatigued. Late afternoon saw them traveling through a region that looked like someone had gradually sucked the life out of everything.
"The corruption starts subtle," Kael rode beside her. "You don't notice it at first, but then you realize nothing quite looks right. Colors are slanted, shadows fall the wrong way, and the air tastes of."
"Stale disappointment," Mia filled in, smelling the air through the filter of her suit.
"That is extremely accurate."
They camped at the last settlement before where the Blighted Wastes proper began—a heavily defended outpost called Haven's End, which Mia thought was either very hopeful or very ironic. The outpost had volunteers who took rotation duty every few months in order to keep themselves from being exposed to magical corruption for extended periods of time."We have a lot of heroes pass through," the outpost commander, Captain Thorne, a grizzled woman, said at dinner. "Most of them are quite cocky on the way in."
"And on the way out?"
"We don't see so many of them on the way out."
"That's reassuring."
Captain Thorne inspected Mia's mechanical armor, which she'd worn throughout dinner, both to test its stamina for prolonged wear and since taking it off and putting it back on was a twenty-minute process. "This is certainly. one-of-a-kind. I've never heard of anything like it."
"It's a prototype. It hasn't been tested at all."
"Even better. At least if it does fail, it'll be a learning experience."
That evening, while Mia was performing final checks on her equipment, Kael approached her with a small package of oiled substance.
"From Elena," he said. "She would not let me give it to you until you were getting ready to enter the Wastes."
Inside the package was a compass that seemed to have been made from crystallized starlight and a note in Elena's script.
"This compass doesn't read north," Mia read aloud. "It reads towards whatever you most need. Don't use it to navigate, but pay attention to it when everything else is confusing. And don't skip meals. Heroes who neglect their blood sugar make poor decisions. -Elena"
"She's so practical for a mystical healer," Mia said.
"It's one of her virtues."
The needle of the compass was now spinning slowly, having difficulty deciding between many different directions. Mia stored it safely in one of several pockets in her suit."You know," she said, watching the sun drop below the corrupted landscape in front of them, "six months ago, if someone'd told me I'd be in steampunk magic armor and preparing to sneak into an evil fortress, I'd have called them crazy."
"Now?"
"Now I'm wondering why it took so long to get work this intriguing."Dawn came too soon, releasing a pewter-streaked sky and a rust-scented air full of broken dreams. The true Blighted Wastes stretched out before them as a feverland of dreams—twisted trees that once were oaks, pools of water reflecting colors that didn't exist, and in the distance, the dark spires of Shadowhold rising from the corrupted ground like blasphemies against the sky.
"Last chance to reconsider," Captain Reis told Mia while she double-checked her equipment.
"I've been reminding myself that for the past week," Mia replied, checking the seal on her helmet again. "Amazingly, it still hasn't worked.""The support team will remain here for three days," Kael said. "If you fail to return by then."
"Then you'll assume I've either done something wonderfully well, or something wildly wrong in an instructional kind of way.""More or less."Mia revved up her suit's navigation console, watched as the disparate gauges settled to acceptable levels, and took a lungful of filtered, magically cleaned recycled air. Behind her helmet's faceplate, the Blighted Wastes looked like a challenge rather than likely death.
"Right about then," she muttered to herself rather than to anyone in particular. "Time to ride on and crash an evil fortress with the power of customer service know-how and brazen trouble-shooting."
She started walking towards the black spires that stretched into the distance, her metallic armor humming contentedly in the poisonous air. Behind her, the support crew cried out their final words of encouragement and best wishes.
Ahead of her lay two days' riding through a landscape that would be the death of her, and then an infiltration attack into a fortress which was partially outside the realm of reality, in which she would attempt to hack a magical control system using only instinct and stubbornness.
The Jeweled Blade pulsed against her hip, its rhythm matching that of her heart, and Elena's compass spun once, then settled, its needle pointing determinedly towards the dark fortress.
For the first time since Mia had departed from Willowbrook, she was certain that she was exactly where she was supposed to be.
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