Bobby grinned the whole time as we worked our way out of Rosehill Mausoleum, wicked-looking, dull grey knuckles over his fists. Each of them had a tiny spike—not enough to impale an enemy, but enough to open up bloody, painful wounds with each swing. When we made it to the exit, he nodded amiably. “Hal, Tori, you two are lifesavers. I couldn’t have killed that thing solo. Do you need to talk to the Rat’s Nest folks? If not, I can meet up with them and let them know this place is clear.”

  I looked at Tori, and she looked back at me. Then she shrugged. “Sure. You can take the credit. We can’t cash in our reward until later, anyway. Just point them at us,” I said. “We need the friends in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, no, I won’t take the credit. Well, not all of it. And you got it. Hopefully, the guys out west will be interested in working with you, too.”

  Bobby walked away, heading back toward Andersonville. I let him go, waiting until he disappeared around a corner to head for the Ford Explorer. Then I stripped my armor off, redirecting its power and the drones’ Charge into the SUV. It revved quietly to life, and Tori pulled herself up into the passenger’s seat. Then we started riding back toward home.

  “Why didn’t you tell Bobby you wanted to talk to Theresa?” Tori asked after a couple of minutes.

  “Two reasons. First, he’s got a relationship with the Rat’s Nest. They probably trust him more than me, so he’s a better ambassador. And second, the Explorer’s a complication and a convenience. I hadn’t realized it, but we’re probably the most mobile delvers in the world right now. That’s a weapon I want to keep secret, and Bobby Richards is allied to more than just Museumtown.”

  “So you don’t trust him?”

  “No, I trust him,” I said. “But I trust him to take care of himself first and his allies second.”

  Tori sighed hard and sank into the seat. “Why did you want that Heart so much, anyway?”

  “Because,” I said. I took a deep breath. I trusted Tori. A lot more than I trusted Bobby, anyway. But I didn’t know what I’d felt, only that it seemed like the description of the Grovetender’s Heart might match with the resonant feeling I’d gotten. That wasn’t enough to go making conclusions out of. “Because I’ve got a thought about what it is and how it works, and if I’m right, it might give me an insight.”

  “Into what?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe into the system, or how dungeons or the graft work. There’s a connection there, somewhere.”

  Tori waited for me to clarify or say more, but I recognized her game. I’d pulled it myself. She was trying to let it be silent in the hopes that I’d say more, but I didn’t have more to say. I didn’t even know how I’d take apart the verdigris-covered copper sphere with the windows of emerald, much less what I’d find. I was hoping it’d point me toward something useful, but I had no clue.

  After a minute, she figured out that I wasn’t going to add anything. “So we’re going back to Museumtown?”

  “You are. I’m dropping you off, then heading to the lab. I want to start studying this thing.”

  A couple of hours later, Tori watched as the Explorer disappeared into the darkness. She was pissed, mostly at Hal for not letting her tag along, but also at Jessica—at her mom, rather. Hal was up to something cool, and she wanted to be part of it.

  It was like…it was like a public test realm. Sometimes, her guild would get in, and they’d get to take shots at bosses that hadn’t been released yet, much less tuned properly. Other times, they’d have bad luck. Hal had a pass to the PTR, and Tori wasn’t invited. And even if she had been, Jessica wouldn’t have let her. That woman was so protective, as if Tori wasn’t perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

  And worse, she hadn’t gotten the piece of loot she’d wanted—the upgrade to the Eye of Perfection. The Copper Goggles were…not bad. But they weren’t good. Not good enough. They weren’t what she’d wanted from Norse Town. She was almost tempted to throw them at Hal instead and see what he could do with them—but no. If he didn’t want her at Cindy’s Automotive, she didn’t want to give him more stuff to tinker with.

  At least Carol and Zane should be around. So that was one good thing.

  She headed for the fish statue fountain first. Her mom could wait; a chance to hang out with Carol was way more important.

  It was rare that I didn’t have a plan to build something.

  And it was even more rare that my plan didn’t even include putting something back together when I was done. Ever since the RC car I’d disassembled—and the time it had taken me to put it back together at my dad’s insistence—I’d been fairly systematic. If I took something apart, it was either to part it out, to fix something, or to upgrade it; never just because I wanted to, or ‘to see how it worked.’ Never again.

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  But the Grovetender’s Heart…

  As we’d driven home, I’d spent some time feeling it, and I’d found a half-dozen places where, if I hit it the right way, it’d pop open. But after that…I couldn’t guarantee I’d be able to take it apart and remember how it’d go together. For all I knew, it’d be like the inside of a watch—or even worse.

  So, as I slipped inside of Cindy’s Automotive and fired up the remaining bomb-manufacturing bots, I got ready to break my promise to Dad.

  [Hal Riley] [Class - Voltsmith] [Level - 66, Rank One]

  [Stats]

  ?Body - 38 (+5)

  ?Awareness - 47

  ?Charge - 5/96 (+15) (93 Used)

  Stat Points Available: 0

  [Class Skill - Decharge/Recharge - Drain the charge from magic items to power your own creations]

  [Class Skill - Remote Voltsmithing - Use your Voltsmithing to empower Creations even when others are using them—or when no one is.

  [Skill - Spellcoding - Transfer spells from Tomes to Spellscrolls, allowing weaker versions to be cast with Charge instead of Mana]

  Items

  ?Fabrication Engine (Epic): 1 Taser Rover, 1 Rail Gun Rover

  ?Voltsmith’s Grasp Upgrade One (19/30 Charge) - Rail Gun Module, Taser Launcher

  ?The Trip-Hammer, Tower’s Bane (25 Charge)

  ?Warrior’s Sheath (Bio-Electric Scanner) (7 Charge)

  I had a lot of work to do, and the seven Principles of Engineering were going to help me through it all. The ones I’d be relying on were the Principle of Technomancy and the newly-acquired Principle of Scale. The first would allow me—hopefully—to see how the Grovetender’s Heart really operated. I wanted to understand how it used its 25 Charge to create things, and what its relationship with Charge really was. And then, if I was right, I’d be able to apply what I’d learned to understand the resonance I’d experienced inside of Rosehill Mausoleum.

  This wasn’t a guarantee. I had no idea if the Grovetender’s Heart was the source of that resonance, or if opening it would even help in understanding it. But I did know that not trying wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted to start figuring out the system, and Charge, and working toward my class’s promise, and I couldn’t do any of that without cracking some eggs.

  The Grovetender’s Heart was one of those eggs, and my chosen tools for the job were a hammer and chisel.

  I tapped and tapped, moving the chisel back and forth across what I hoped was a seam. I didn’t drain the Heart’s Charge, even though it might be helpful; I didn’t have the space for it, and I didn’t want to compromise its function any more than I had to. And gradually, the copper-and-emerald casing opened. As it did, it revealed exactly the nightmare I’d been wanting to avoid—a mess of tiny gears, minuscule Lens Arrays, and batteries the size of my pinkie fingernail. But it also revealed something fascinating.

  Four chambers, each completely empty. Small copper tubes—not wire, but conduit—that connected them. And two similar tubes—but much larger, leading in one chamber and out of another.

  It wasn’t just a heart in name. As I watched, the array of gears clicked slowly, and all four chambers contracted and relaxed in sequence. A tiny puff of Charge traveled through the first two chambers before dissipating into the air; without the top half of the heart, it wasn’t Charge-tight.

  But that was fine. I didn’t need it to be Charge-tight. Here, in my Voltsmith’s Laboratory, I could simply feed Charge into it as it ran out.

  That had to be an oversight. I wasn’t using it to its full potential, and I made a note to take advantage of the Laboratory’s seemingly infinite Charge soon.

  Not now, though. The Grovetender’s Heart continued to beat on my worktable, and I played around with the different gears, trying to get it to do…something.

  After a minute, it did something. A massive, green bramble vine ripped across the room and slammed into the nearest bomb-building drone, smashing it into rubble, then disappeared as the pulse of Charge faded into the air.

  “Alright,” I said. “Time to ponder.”

  The Grovetender’s Heart didn’t operate like the Spellcoding I’d done. It was all mechanical, just like the punch-and-play spells I’d developed for the Spellcode Reader. But unlike that, it seemed like it only really had the single spell, built into a device designed to cast it, and only it. Why use a mechanical device built to cast only this single bit of magic? The flexibility of Spellcoding was right there. What advantage did the Heart have over that?

  I shut down the rest of my drones and pushed them into one corner, then painstakingly removed everything from around the roll-up garage doors. Then I opened them and set up some scrap metal targets. I needed to see this thing at work.

  The gears spun, and the four chambers pumped, and after a moment, another tendril of bramble slammed into the first target. This time, I didn’t watch the spell; I watched the device.

  And I realized my mistake.

  It wasn’t that the Grovetender’s Heart operated differently from Spellcoding. It was that the entire device was a power-amplifier; that was why it had been packed full of tiny Lens Arrays. All it was doing was refining and amplifying Charge, then forcing it into the ‘out’ conduit.

  And, even better, there was resonance.

  Not much. It didn’t feel like what I’d felt inside of Rosehill Mausoleum. That had been an almost…deep…feeling in the Charge around me. This felt more like a humming with a slight pulse in it, like when two radios were playing slightly different static, and an occasional burst of volume hit as both static sounds pulsed at the same time. I re-triggered the Heart, and this time, I focused on the two open conduits—the ones that, in a heart, would be ‘in’ and ‘out’ veins and arteries.

  And there it was. It was taking in Charge, then the Charge traveled through all four chambers as the gears, Lens Arrays, batteries, and emitters and refiners worked on it. By the time it made it through, the Charge was operating on a different frequency, just like the static on those radios.

  I set the Heart aside and took a deep breath. Something tickled at my mind; I was close to a breakthrough.

  But with every click of the gears and beat of the Heart’s chambers, the amount of Charge it processed lessened. If I kept pushing it, the Grovetender’s Heart would stop working altogether—and I wasn’t done building. Not yet.

  I wanted to take the Grovetender’s Heart’s design and upscale it.