{Alex}

  I was soon sitting in a tacky room full of crap from God only knew where, talking with an old bat babbling about her kids. I wished she would get on with it and tell me about the house and where it was. I just sat there sipping lukewarm tea that tasted like soggy garbage. I hope this world has coffee or even soda. Hell, at this time I would even take a tasteful whiskey. It took far too long for us to get to the point of talking about the cabin and far longer to actually walk there.

  It was a small two-room one bath on the edge of town. It was slightly run down and would need some work. It only cost me fifteen gold, but it was mine and I could afford it. That being said it would cost me twelve silver a year in taxes. That would be easy enough. That would still leave me with a nice nest egg to live on. I went to the local general store and bought a bed, blankets, basic food, and a few other nice items for a single gold. It would be delivered tonight so I just had to wait. I looked over my things and found I had four iron bars one pebble of zinc, seven gold, thirty- five silver, and a handful of copper. Every empire has to start from scraps. I went home and started playing with the iron shaping it into a Knight. It was the red one I had gotten to know over the last month. Sadly, it had taken most of my magic just to make this little figure.

  It stood roughly the same size as a 1/144 scale Gundam, twelve inches tall. Placing it lovingly on a bookshelf in the wall, I stepped back to admire my work. Tomorrow I would have to work on building another to make my vision come true. Paint, I would need to invest in small jars of paint. God, I was such a nerd. With a smile on my face, my new bed in place, and using my bedroll as a sheet and blanket, I lay down for the night. The house was dark, and I lay there for a while. The only sound was a low annoying ringing in my ears. I tried to breathe but felt truly lonely for the first time in my life. I had gotten used to Yen sleeping by my side and now I was really alone. No upstairs neighbors stomping around. No dogs howling in the night, no emergency sirens going off. The only sound in the house was my own far too loud breathing and crickets outside. I focused on them; I calmed my mind. I was safe here. I was okay. “Fuck this.” I growled and reached out to a scrap of metal and started rapidly shaping it until my mana hit zero. I thankfully passed out in my bed.

  I slept peacefully through the night and went to work. I should have had breakfast, but I was eager to get going. The shop was empty, and I waited to get going. And waited and waited. No one was here and the sun was up, and the shop was empty. I looked around at the other Knights. McDonalds Knight was gone so I assume the caravan was gone. Yen was gone. I was alone. With a sigh, I moved to one of the Knights in an alcove. It was a large green one and I touched it letting my mana run through it. A strange metal ran in place of the muscles, it sounded sweet to my ears and made me smile. I searched every inch and tried to memorize everything. The door opened and I jumped back fearing that I had done something wrong. A fat man walked in with a broad expression.

  “You must be the new guy?” He asked as though not really caring. “My name is Jordean and I am your master.” He said blankly. I frowned, not liking his attitude. He was fat bald and wearing a badly stained brown robe. “What do you know?” He asked as he rolled his eyes at me.

  “Fire rune.” I said, crossing my arms. He sighed and looked me over.

  “Let’s start from the beginning.” He growled. “Grab a pen and paper.” I nodded and held up the notebook I kept on me with a charcoal pen. He looked at me mildly impressed. “Good now copy these runes down.” He said, passing me a sheet of paper. I looked closely at the sheet and saw writing that I couldn’t read.

  “I need you to tell me what each one means. I can’t read any of this.” I said passing it back. He sighed and moved to one of the Knight’s feet. He sat down and placed the paper on the other. “This is water.” He said pointing at the first. I copied it.

  “What does it do?” I asked, focusing on it closely. This was the start of a huge key.

  “It’s water. What the hell do you think it does?” He said, rubbing his face.

  “Water can do anything from filling a bucket to flooding a room.” I said not sure if I was getting it right.

  “You are close. The mana you put into an element rune will grant you an appropriate amount of that element. That being said, filling a tub would be more mana than you could draw from a large core.” He said sitting forward a little.

  “Interesting. I assume the same for fire and so on. How many elements are there?”

  “Six major elements. Fire, you know, water, I hope you now know. Earth, this one.” He said pointing at the page. I wrote that one down. “Air.” He pointed at the next. “Light, dark.” He said pointing at the other two. There were about sixty more and I took my time to learn every one of them. On top of the six main elements, there were minor runes for other things, linking runes, runes that helped with sound, runes that made the air smell better. There were runes for almost everything and he went on to explain how they could be linked with not only linking runes, but also with Silversteel. The strange metal I heard inside the Knight.

  At some point others showed up, but I didn’t care. A huge musclehead of a man walked up to us and tried to talk to me, but I waved him away. This was far more interesting. After hours, Jordean got up with a sigh and smile. “You are a fast learner, um what was your name?” He asked.

  “Runt. Alex if you rather, but I don’t care either way.” I said focusing on my notes.

  “Well, welcome to the team.” He said leaving the bay. I moved over to a scrap of metal and started working on runes seeing what worked and what didn’t.

  One month seemed to pass in the blink of an eye. Turns out it was early spring; the winters here would be rough and most of the people stuck to themselves. Sadly, no beast women here, but a lot of them did come in the caravans that came through once a month. Monsters don’t come near towns because of an artifact that has to be placed on a ley line under our feet. Large cities are built where these ley-lines crossed. There are exceptions to the barrier, this being the larger monsters and the thinking races of this world. Battery, the enchanter who started teaching me, was a good tool. Boss was very happy with me as it only took a day for me to fix something that would take weeks, that is with the mana of the enchanter. I was a quick study, so Battery was unofficially demoted to my mana battery. I demoted him and most days, I would work until he passed out and then sketched until he recovered. I had so many ideas to play with. This world was full of things for me to play with and do. I was heading to Boss’s office and heard him talking with Battery or rather Battery whining to him. I moved closer and smiled at his discomfort.

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  “I just don’t like the way he uses me as a tool.” Battery shouted.

  “Then do something about it.” Boss shouted back. Don’t piss off Boss he could break you in half or worse, fire you.

  “Like what?” Battery scoffed.

  “You want his respect, earn it. You want to be seen as more than a tool, work for it. If you step up, I'm sure he will let you do more.” Boss said and I crossed my arms with a happy nod.

  “You don’t understand though, he won’t even use my name. He just calls me battery. He only sees me as a mana battery. I’m not even a person to him.” Battery sulked and I laughed softly. Boss demanding, I drop my act was leaking into my life. I used to keep track of people’s names and details about them. Here though I didn’t have to pretend. I could be who I was without being called out. Here I could be myself and didn’t have to put on an act. I shrugged and smiled feeling free in a new way.

  “Then prove to him you are one. You have been lazy for a long time, now he is making you work. You don’t want to work.” Boss growled and I had to question if that was really the case.

  “That’s not true.” Battery sighed. “Yes, I was lazy, but I don’t deserve to be treated like that. If this keeps up, I’ll quit.” The room went quiet for a while, and I smiled knowing where this was going. “Okay, I won’t quit. I now see my place. I’ll try harder. Don’t fire me, please.” Battery begged.

  “I can’t fire you; he needs a battery.” Boss laughed and I quickly hid behind the door as it opened. The last thing I needed was to argue with my tool. Battery ran out of the office, and I walked in a short while later. I hoped it wasn’t too obvious that I was snooping. “Runt, I take it you heard all that?” I nodded, my face blank. “Try to be nicer to Battery. I mean Jordean. Damn you and your fucking names. You know Thomdab has started calling some of the worker's Grunt one, two, and three.” Boss said rubbing his face.

  “Thomdab that would be...” I tilted my head pretending to care about whoever that was.

  “My brother. Meathead. He is coming in and he has something to show you.” Ha Meathead is an idiot pilot who is all muscle and no brain. I wonder what the fool wants to talk about. This should be entertaining at the least. He looked a lot like Boss, but he kept his hair short and was almost twice the size around the chest. Meathead walked in and beamed at us. As he towered over the desk.

  “Boss, Runt, how are you guys today?” Boss grunted and told us both to sit.

  “Runt, Thomdab knows so you don’t have to wear a mask around him.” My fake smile dropped, and I just looked at him blankly. Meathead just kept on smiling like an idiot as he pulled out a badly wrinkled and stained sheet of paper.

  “I want a new weapon for my Knight,” he said, slapping it on the table. I looked over and frowned. A shitty over complicated ax was crudely drawn with what I knew would be crayon on my world. It looked ornate, had a long knife on the bottom and the blade of the ax had a huge spike coming off the back. The head of the ax was far too narrow and came out in two long points. It would look nice on the wall, but actually fighting with something like that would be more likely to hurt the user over the target. It was fucking ugly and stupid.

  “No,” I said flatly. He blinked at me like the moron he was.

  “What do you mean no?” His smile faded and he started scowling at me. It was like I had just said I was going to kick his puppy. Do they have real dogs and cats in this world?

  “I’m not going to build that thing for a Knight. I will not make a weapon that could damage my babies due to the stupidity of an idiot.” I said, crossing my arms. He gave me a strange look and started laughing. When he stopped, he pointed outside.

  “But you can fix any damage done to a Knight,” He tried and badly failed to argue. I growled at him in outrage.

  “Tell you what, you pay me five gold and I’ll make that abomination for you scaled down so you can test it.” I pleaded. “I will also make something that will work. Try both out for a week and then I want an apology. Deal?” I asked, holding out my hand. He beamed and took my hand.

  “Deal. I will show you my ax is a work of art.” He said, as he paid me and left. Boss just looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

  “He is a Meathead. I see that now. What are you going to give him?” Boss asked and I scratched my chin. A fair bit of stubble was growing, and I missed my raiser.

  “I don’t know. I was thinking of a halberd, but he has a lot of mana. I know he doesn’t like using spells, but if I could just.” I froze and clawed for my notebook. I started sketching madly as Boss just stood there watching me closely. My mind was racing over the new idea, the new key that had just been dropped in my lap.

  “You do know I’m your boss, right?” Boss asked and I nodded.

  “Yes, yes. You pay my bills and I do whatever you say.” I said dismissing him as I stood there and kept drawing.

  “Do you want to be the boss?” His tone was a bit worried, and I froze. I looked up at him horrified.

  “Fuck no. You deal with the idiots. Why the hell would I want that?” I asked praying he didn’t offer me that headache. He laughed as I made my way to the door.

  “Where are you going?” Boss asked with a chuckle.

  “I need to get Battery. I have to do some tests on things.” I said as I stormed out.

  Three days later, Meathead and I were in the main room. A cloth tarp lay on the table covering two lumpy shapes. The others were gathered around wondering what was going on. Boss had his arms crossed as he looked at us. “Well, show us what you have.” Boss said with a frown. I pulled back the tarp and showed them the two weapons. The ax looked even worse in real life. I had done a Damascus pattern on it in my spare time just to add more to the ornate look of the monster blade. Beside it was my work of art. It stood around seven feet long with a simple ax head wrapping around the shaft. Where there should have been a spear was a crystal. The shaft was mostly smooth, but a two-foot area was wrapped in leather to make gripping easier. On the ass of the weapon was a spear. I beamed as Meathead looked at my weapon scoffing. He was an idiot, and I knew he would soon be eating his words.

  “It looks ugly.” He said fingering my weapon. “Like it belongs to a cheap guard.” I frowned at him, annoyed at his outburst.

  “Pick up mine and push the button.” I growled. He picked it up looking at it as though it was a turd. One day I would slap him silly if I thought I could get away with it.

  “The balance is nice. I like the spear on the other end, but what is a button?” He asked as I pointed to a raised bit of metal poking through the leather. He reached for it, and I shouted.

  “Not at the roof you idiot. If you blow a hole in it, Boss might make me pay for it.” He frowned and pointed it at a Knight’s shield I had been working on. That should be fine. He pushed the button and whooped as a strong fire bolt flew out of the end and slammed into the oversized hunk of iron.

  “Okay. You win. I still want to play with the ax, but this is badass.” Meathead said, eyeing my weapon with interest. He beamed at me, and I just crossed my arms and smiled.

  “How the hell did you pull that off?” Boss asked, smirking at me. “I don’t see any runes.”

  “Simple. They are on the inside of the shaft.” I said with pride. He froze as he looked at me and Battery.

  “What the fuck?” Everyone was looking at me in amazement and it made me really uncomfortable. Meathead looked at the weapon in his hand as though it was a new wonder of this world.

  “It doesn’t feel hollow.” Meathead said hefting the weapon. I was just delighted by their puzzled looks.

  “It’s not hollow. There is a small space near the top where the wand is melded with the ax head. The runes are engraved into the wand. The ax head acts like a shield. From there I ran a thin bit of mana wire down to the button.” I laid it all out showing them my true greatness.

  “You have to do this to my ax.” Meathead demanded. I frowned at him.

  “The fuck I will. I am not touching that thing again. Making it was bad enough.” I said, waving my hand dismissively. Boss put his hands on his hips and smiled.

  “Alright, everyone back to work. Runt, my office now.” Boss pointed his thumb at his office.

  He asked me to make a full-size one for a market next spring. There is something of a convention where the newest Knights are on display in hopes of getting extra gold coming in. This could be interesting. If that is the case I wonder if I could make my move and start to make some real changes in this world. I started sketching again as we talked. He agreed to see some of my improvements tomorrow. This was going to be fun. I was still having trouble sleeping and had to drain my mana every night just to pass out. My mind would drift to Yen, and I would often forget to eat, but that was nothing new for me.