We stood at the base of the enormous machine for a long time, staring up at it.

  It did not stare back, which was probably for the best.

  Rust clung to the metal plates like old scars. Stone had grown around parts of the legs. One of the massive cables hung snapped and motionless like a dead vine. If the machine had once walked the world, it had not done so in a very long time.

  “So,” I said eventually, breaking the silence. “Where do you think we should start the repairs?”

  Master Duran rubbed his beard thoughtfully while examining a joint larger than the town well.

  “Honestly,” he said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

  “That’s reassuring.”

  He ignored me and continued studying the machine. After a moment he straightened.

  “Perhaps we should begin by seeing if we can power it.”

  I blinked. “Why jump straight to powering it if more than half of it is rust?”

  “Simple,” he said. “Something this large was not meant to be repaired by hand every time a bolt came loose. The builders would have designed systems to maintain it.”

  “You think it can fix itself?”

  “I think it might have been able to,” Duran said. “Self-repair systems, maintenance constructs, internal forges—something of that nature. If we restore power, we might be able to reactivate those systems.”

  I looked back up at the towering machine.

  “That’s… actually a very good idea.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “But,” I added, “what exactly are we going to power it with?”

  Duran paused.

  “That,” he admitted, “is the part I haven’t gotten to yet.”

  We both laughed at that for a moment, the sound echoing faintly through the cavern.

  Eventually I wiped a tear from my eye and said, “All right then. What are our options?”

  Duran began counting on his fingers.

  “Well, from cheapest to most expensive, we have manual power whi—”

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  “NOPE.”

  He scowled. “You didn’t even let me finish.”

  “I know exactly what you were going to say. We are not building a system where we spend the rest of our lives turning giant cranks.”

  “It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion.”

  “It was a terrible suggestion.”

  “Fine,” he grumbled. “What about steam?”

  I considered that. Steam engines were powerful, reliable, and used in a few larger towns for mills or pumps.

  “They’re huge,” I said. “And they need constant fuel. We’d have to haul coal up a mountain every day just to make it twitch.”

  Duran scratched his beard again.

  “You’re not wrong.”

  I stared up at the machine, thinking.

  “Maybe we need something smaller,” I said slowly. “Something compact but powerful.”

  “Such as?”

  “A mana battery.”

  Duran froze.

  For a moment he didn’t speak.

  Then he slowly turned toward me.

  “That,” he said carefully, “is the most expensive suggestion you have ever made.”

  “They’re powerful,” I said defensively.

  “They are also rare,” he replied. “To power a machine of this size, the battery alone might cost more than our entire town earns in a century.”

  “True,” I admitted.

  We both looked up again at the towering machine.

  “But,” I continued, “we both knew when we started this project that it would be obscenely expensive.”

  Duran sighed.

  “You’re not wrong about that either.”

  He folded his arms and stared up at the silent giant.

  “Well then,” he said after a moment. “If we’re going to do something ridiculous, we might as well do it properly.”

  I grinned.

  “So. Mana battery?”

  “Mana battery.”

  That left one small problem.

  “How exactly,” Duran said, “do two blacksmiths acquire something that valuable?”

  That took a little more thinking.

  Eventually Duran snapped his fingers.

  “The old quarry,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “They still have that lifting crane the miners used,” he explained. “The one powered by a small mana battery.”

  I remembered it. The quarry had shut down years ago when the stone veins ran dry. The equipment had simply been left behind.

  “That battery is tiny compared to what this thing probably needs,” I said.

  “Yes,” Duran agreed. “But we don’t need to power the whole machine. We just need enough energy to wake up whatever internal systems it has.”

  I thought about that.

  A small spark.

  Not a full fire.

  “That might actually work.”

  The next day we visited the quarry.

  The crane stood where it had been abandoned, half covered in vines. Its metal frame creaked in the wind, but the core housing for the battery was still intact.

  Duran inspected it carefully.

  “Well,” he said, knocking on the casing. “Good news.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “The battery is still here.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It means we have to carry it down the mountain.”

  We opened the housing together.

  Inside sat a crystal cylinder wrapped in copper coils, glowing faintly with a soft blue light. Even after years of neglect, the mana inside it still hummed quietly.

  I stared at it.

  “That little thing powers the whole crane?”

  “Magic is efficient,” Duran said.

  He lifted the battery carefully.

  Then he nearly dropped it.

  “By the gods,” he grunted. “Why is it so heavy?”

  “Because magic hates us.”

  It took both of us—and several rest breaks—to haul the battery up the mountain.

  By the time we reached the cave again, my arms felt like melted iron.

  We set the battery down near the machine’s massive foot and stared up at the silent giant.

  “Well,” I said between breaths, “moment of truth.”

  Duran wiped sweat from his forehead.

  “If this works,” he said, “we might wake something that hasn’t moved in centuries.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then,” he replied, “we carried a very expensive rock up a mountain for nothing.”

  I nodded thoughtfully.

  “That also sounds like something we would do.”

  Above us, the ancient machine remained silent.

  But not for long.