Lux Locus

Killigan Ghor, weighed down by heat and his backpack full of supplies, moved through the thin trees behind his home. A strange amalgamation of dried pillars sticking out from the ground, the spindly husks denoted the failed attempts at trying to install trees on this new world. The dry, dusty fields devoid of life and water remained strong, baking all that stood upon it with help from the sun’s wrathful gaze far above. The boy covered his face whena gust of wind kicked up some dust, though he still got some of the particles in his eyes and nose.

Killigan was a young teenager, barely fifteen years old, and quite scrawny for his age. His hair, reaching the tips of his shoulders, was a pale, shiny blonde caked in dirt and sweat from his trek across the desert. His extremely pale skin didn’t do him any favors in this environment, making every second under the sun like standing in a fire.

With a smithing hammer in his hand for defense, the boy surveyed his surroundings diligently, almost jumping at any perceived movement. This was the first time he ever went so far from his village before, and his heart thrummed in his chest, agreeing with his brain that he should turn back. However, Killigan ignored their insistence. He trusted he wouldn’t regret it, but doubt lingered in his mind.

The further he went into the wasteland, the stranger it became. Plant life became more common, its alien appearance slithering around like bubbling amber veins along the ground. Purple vines with spiky leaves hung from the rocks and dead trees and jittered whenever Killigan came near. The various dead shrubs and skeletal trees made way for sludge-like bushes and tall, dry trees with foul-smelling leaves. All of this new, emerging life also changed the surrounding air, making everything hotter and more humid. Wading through it felt like walking through jam.

When he pushed away some leaves and branches, the blacksmith cursed aloud, disgusted by the slime coating them and tangling into his hair and clothing. He tried to reason with himself that it was to better chart the area for the Aelfyce cartographers, but that didn’t help his mood much.

The trees grew fatter and stronger with the humidity, their forms starting to melt into the stagnant water that engulfed their roots. The first time he ever set out to explore, Killigan did not go any further than this and returned to his home to plan for his little excursions into unknown territory. This time, he defied common sense and made his way through the forest and into lands unknown, where the air became even heavier and denser.

After a while of walking, Killigan came upon something entirely new and unknown to him. Bugs buzzed around the strange, mucus-green plants growing out of the murky water, complimenting the decayed appearance of what he believed was a swamp. The teen was startled more than once by an inhabitant of the murky depths that would track his movements then aggressively soak him in the stagnant liquid when he got too close.

Even the forge wasn’t this suffocating, but still he wrote down what he could in his notebook, detailing everything he saw and how far it was from his house. Of course, without the proper tools, let alone the knowledge to use them, he couldn’t get the necessary information regarding the position, such as latitude and longitude. At least the cartographers valued any information so long as they were given a general location, and new colonies always had those few famished for adventure and money that would use landmarks as a way to track their steps.

Killigan found himself swatting away bugs, smashing his hammer against a plant because he was startled by the rustling leaves, and getting stuck in thick mud. Rethinking his decision to continue forward, he noticed something further away from him. It was an odd shape compared to the rest of the terrain, sticking up like a plant begging for sunlight, doing its best to pierce the muddy veil and drink in the non-existent illumination from beyond the misty air and cloudy skies. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t be of any interest seeing as it blended with the rest of the terrain and its features, but a color reflected the bit of sunlight that still pierced the gray clouds above. The item contrasted with the drab shades of mucus and rotting brown of the swamp, although Killigan couldn’t properly identify the colors.

“What is that?” he thought to himself.

He walked towards the mass, hammer held up in both hands, taking in his surroundings. Upon closer inspection, the teen figured it to be some form of mutant plant, something the Imperator Bulentse would adore if he brought it back with him… provided they didn’t know about it already.

Killigan crouched, grabbed the body, expecting to sink into the mud, but his fingers instantly met with a hard surface. A surface so wide that even with his two hands, he would never be able to wrap his hands around it. Looking at himself, he shrugged off the fact he was caked in mud. What was a little more mud? Hugging the item after prodding it with his hammer to test for any threats, he pulled harder and harder until the ‘plant’ gave in, releasing its grasp to the swamp with a loud ‘pop’, sending him flying backward with his charge.

He huffed from exhaustion and decided to use a towel he had taken with him to at least attempt to wipe the plant off. However, cleaning revealed that what he had found was not, in fact, a botanical discovery, but a pair of golden gauntlets enclosed upon each other, bleached from the sun and its accompanying elements. Some pieces of indeterminate pain still hung on, but as the mud was removed, it took the remnants with it, forever lost to the swamp.

The young teen didn’t know what he was looking at, but his inner blacksmith was jumping for joy. Though he was upset he wouldn’t get a bonus reward for a plant, this discovery was more than anything he could have wanted. Letting his curiosity get the best of him, Killigan reached out and touched the gauntlets and felt a horrific charge go through his body, making him flinch away almost instantly.

Grimacing from the pain, Killigan scavenged large pieces of wood from his surroundings and used them as a lever to push against the gauntlets. After some struggling and falling in the mud several times, he managed to use leverage to get the metal constructs onto a sled of wood. They were so much heavier than he could have possibly imagined, and the time it took to drag the sled through the goop allowed the sun above to start setting.

“So heavy,” the teen wheezed. He wiped his forehead and slumped onto the ground, gasping for air, his muscles burning.

When he let his arms hang loosely at his sides, he realized that the gauntlets were significantly bigger than initially thought. After all, all that mad should have added size, but they did nothing but hide what was already there. The gauntlets were five times the size of his actual hands, and they were grasped with each other, clinging to an object between them. Try as he might, he couldn’t free them, even when he hit them with his hammer. If anything, his tool almost broke on contact with the bleached metal.

Struggling just to drag the gauntlets along the ground, the young blacksmith reinforced his sled with a large plank of tree bark he recovered from a dead tree sinking into the brackish water, allowing him to go back home with more confidence in his ability to protect his discovery.

Killigan slid into his village early the next day, having slept under a pile of dead trees the night prior, avoiding as many eyes as he could. He thought he could sneak past everyone so early, when the light was still relatively dim. His dirty clothes did nothing to hide his haul due to the size disparity, so it was necessary.

Despite being a recent expansion of the planet, his village still possessed separate houses made from metal and brick, resembling sturdy huts more than proper homes for people of the Terran Expanse. The duty of a blacksmith was to help newly established villages to set up the basics for every colonist, and as Killigan snuck around, he realized that they would need to repair the pipes sticking out of the dry soil. They were already starting to wear down from the wind and sand. He hated working on the pipes.

Unfortunately for him, a neighbor decided to rise early and caught the young teen in the act. “Hey, Killigan. Went where you weren’t supposed to again, hm?” he asked.

The young smith froze in place. “N-no! I was...looking for...wood.”

The villager raised an eyebrow. “In a muddy place when water is nowhere around here? For two days?”

The boy cleared his throat nervously. “We still have water from the well there,” Killigan pointed to a metallic column jutting out of the ground in the middle of the village.

The villager raised a brow. “Yes, except it’s all pumped from the Spire Conglomerate in the distance.” He leaned in a smirk on his face and displaying the wrinkles of age. “You didn’t explain why you were gone for so long.”

Killigan tapped his fingers together nervously. “Don’t say anything to my father,” he begged.

The villager chuckled. “I don’t have to. He’s going to turn you into a thumbtack, not that there’s much material to work with.” The man’s eyes rolled over to the teen’s makeshift sled and what was on it. “You dragged that all the way here?” He snickered. “Don’t know what you found, but I’d rather not know.” His jovial nature flipped itself on its head. “Go home, or I’m liable to kick you in the tush myself.”

Killigan nodded and hurried away as best he could, and when he reached his home, he could already hear the loud, rhythmic banging of metal-on-metal. His father was already working. With some luck, the teen would be able to sneak back into the smithy storage warehouse without his father noticing and hide his discovery. However, the moment he set a foot in front of the workshop’s open doors, the banging stopped.

“Where were you?! What were you doing?” Killigan’s father bellowed from deeper within.

The young boy coughed nervously and walked through the dark smithy to take his apron off a wall hook. There was no point in lying to his father. “Uhhh, I was exploring the wasteland and mapping everything for the Aelfyce Cartographers,” he explained sheepishly.

“You what?!” Killigan’s father bellowed. “Again?!” he yelled even louder.

Killigan’s father, Barlatan, demonstrated his impressive physique by pushing the anvil he was using away with both arms. He stomped towards his son and, being significantly taller, glared down at him.

“It would get us more money!” the boy explained. “Help us out a little more, so we don’t have to worry in the future.” He looked to his side and tapped a massive clamp holding a large metal beam, all connected by a chain on a rail attached to the ceiling. “Let us get newer equipment and make better things. We’re technically all still new to the Calaghi System, so...”

Barlatan took a knee and grabbed Killigan by the shoulders. “Son, those wastelands are dangerous! I’ve told you this several times before. There’s a reason why there are armed expeditions that do this task themselves, and I have no idea how you manage to come back relatively unharmed every time.” He paused a moment to stare his son in the eyes. “You didn’t go beyond the dry plains, did you?”

Killigan smiled weakly and opened his backpack, revealing several maps and notes of what he had made, hoping that their sight would muffle his father’s rage.

Barlatan grabbed them and looked them over. His anger and worry slowly transformed into gentle intrigue. “You’ve at least been taken notes, modestly detailed as they are.” Killigan smiled in response to his father’s approval. “But, that’s just from the perspective of a smith. It doesn’t excuse your blatant disobedience.”

“But—” Killigan started but was interrupted by his father.

“You got lucky.” Barlatan put the notes back in the bag aggressively. “There’s nothing left for you out there. We’ll submit this to the cartographers after we’re done with the pistol our special customer ordered, and then we talk about your punishment for disobeying me. Just because we aren’t afforded the high-tech luxuries of the spire doesn’t mean there aren’t ways of keeping you from doing anything but your job." He grabbed a chisel, block of stone, a laser cutter, and markers. “Now help me with the mold. I want to create a few basic prototypes first to test out the new machine and the hull."

Killigan wrapped his own apron around his waist, his extremely thick, burnt gloves, and looked over the new addition to the smithy. “So our client sent us that giant, sharp looking block of metal with those glowing blue veins all over it?”

Barlatan pulled the object open, multiple section pivoting outward and revealing several boxes for material holding; an open, circular section in the middle to keep molds firmly in place, and several transparent pipes flowing through the machine and linked to large canisters behind the whole workstation.

“Yes. This shaper isn’t a lease, either.” He grabbed a box sitting near the base of the station and pulled out several small vials within filled with glowing, colorful powder. “They said we could keep this thing if we make a satisfactory product.” He checked the contents of the vials, squinting and grunting at the ideas forming in his head. “Otherwise we don’t keep it, and we have to pay for the lease,” he stated somberly. “And I can guarantee you the lease is expensive. Only Mana Magis would be able to guide us out of such debt.”

The day was spent toiling away, drawing, calculating, carving, and smithing, finding every little imperfection or place of improvement that they wrote down extensively. Killigan, however, wasn’t pleased that his hard work was scorned by his father, and he no longer felt interested in sharing his discovery with the man. The next day, his father left for a delivery station set a few miles away at an intersection, grabbing their large, cubical truck to recover all the materials and new tools ordered for their smithy, giving the teen the perfect opportunity to grab his gauntlets out of the stash he placed them in during the first break the day prior.

He pulled the gauntlets away into the workshop, cleared a beat-up table of bits of metal and several broken tools, and, with the help of some chains and a mobile pulley, placed the constructs atop it. Even with the tool, it was still exhausting to lift them, and the table creaked in protest at the gargantuan weight they were suffering from. Killigan slammed his palms together, eager to see what was hidden in the clasped hands of the massive gauntlets. After leaving a trail of broken crowbars, hammers, and even a few chisels, he used a mechanical plier to somehow successfully pry the hands apart. The machine’s engine, however, was smoking. That was another broken tool… The mud, most of it dried out from the dry environment, poured onto the table and the floor, revealing a misshapen mass of metal glowing baby-blue. It was a fragment of a fragment, judging by the uneven, broken edges, but though Killigan was not privy to much history, he knew from his mother and her stories that this was a piece of soul hyrst: A gift given to only the highest, most esteemed, most legendary of people, as they contained a piece of the creator of all things: Mana Magis, or so the legend goes. An object of indescribable holiness.

The young blacksmith was in awe. “How is this here? How did it break?!” Killigan whispered to himself. His joy almost instantly led to terror. “If I’m found holding one of these...”

If the Magus Imperators caught him with such a thing in his possession... His father and he would be taken away and their forge destroyed, and that was the best case scenario. Who knew what would happen next? The terror gripped his heart, and the young smith quickly rushed to a corner stuffed with all his personal ideas and failed projects and grabbed a strongbox he had made for himself. It was lumpy and uneven, and his father needed to make the lock, but it was perfect for hiding the soul hyrst within. No one would expect something with such value to be hidden within.

Killigan wiped his forehead and leaned against the table to stare at his other discovery. “I’ll never be able to wield these things.” He took a deep breath and started thinking up different plans. “I’ll have to use the pulleys every time I try to move them, too.”

An idea came after thinking of the soul hyrst again: Pillar Scieldan, the legendary warriors his mom often spoke of. They wore suits of armor, though Killigan had never seen them. Killigan could make a very simplified version of one, albeit his idea of what they would be like. He could never make a true suit of pillar armor, but he could at least forge one just good enough to move the gauntlets.

The teen slowly paced about the room as he began listing things to himself. He would need material strong enough to support the weight of the gauntlets without shattering under the strain created just from holding them up, let alone moving them. Killigan started fumbling through the surprisingly well organized rotating shelf built into the wall. It held samples of all the metals his father used in almost every project along with where they were stored, and one had content that was immediately useful: Telimun.

It was the perfect metal for the teen’s soon-to-be project. Heavier than titanium and with the density to match, but easier to forge when properly and fully heated, it wouldn’t let itself be shattered so easily. Taking his inspiration to heart, the young smith pulled out several thin sheets of paper from another shelf, chased off the ash and soot from their surface, and used them to start designing and calculating everything he would need for his project.

Killigan paused when he set his pen to paper, trying to remember the pros and cons of the metal. He needed to be sure it was perfect for his project beyond its durability. If it had no flexibility, then what was the point? The master craefts all used that metal for spaceships. Why not a suit? With some luck and smart expense, he would be able to test his theories in practice, but he didn’t fully trust his skills.

Barlatan witnessed his son cleaning up the mess he had created after testing a few of his ideas and snuck up behind him. “What are you doing there, son?” he asked.

Killigan froze from the surprise, gripping his broomstick tightly. He wanted his project to be a secret, but it was too late to hide the gauntlets now. “I’m cleaning these gauntlets I found in the swamps before you told me not to go. Before!” he insisted.

“Before…” Barlatan leaned forward to see the massive objects on the table. “Gauntlets, you say?” He paused, his eyelids narrowing. “We have swamps? I didn’t see that in the notes.”

Killigan pulled a high-pressure hose dangling above him and sprayed his findings. “Yes,” he answered meekly. “You didn’t read all the pages.”

Barlatan tapped his chin pensively. “I suppose I didn’t.”

His father inched around to get a better look at the gauntlets and tried to lift the freshly cleaned one, water and leftover dirt sliding off its cold surface. He found himself struggling to move them with as much difficulty as Killigan had despite his much greater size and muscle mass.

He gave up and nearly fell backwards on letting go, letting his muscles relax gradually from the effort. “What even are these things? They’re--”

“Super heavy? I know. It was horrifyingly difficult to bring them back.” Killigan dragged a hand across his face, stopping when he realized he smeared a bunch of water all over it. “I think I lost half my body weight just doing that.”

Barlatan cocked an eyebrow. “You already weigh as much as a flea,” he teased. “Lose any more weight and I might as well hold you down with a single nail in your hands.” The man smiled and gestured to the gauntlets. “So, what are you trying to do with those huge things, renovate them?”

“And use them, preferably,” Killigan added.

“Use them? Now how would you go and do that?” Barlatan asked.

Killigan stepped towards an adjustable wire frame mannequin and held it in front of himself. “I’m going to make an exoskeleton!”

His father tapped him on the back. “I’m proud of you! Undertaking such an extensive project on your own!” He took another look at the behemoths of metal. “Although I’m not sure how you’ll manage such a feat.”

“I don’t know either,” Killigan lamented. “But I’ll figure it out, no matter how long it takes me.”

“Don’t be discouraged then. The first attempts are always the most difficult.” Barlatan dropped onto a nearby stool and took his shoes off, sighing in relief. “And if you need help, I’m right here. Just don’t hurt yourself, alright?”

The young boy used a small wireframe doll, no bigger than his hand, after a few weeks of experimentation on paper, to test the first iteration of the exoskeleton armor. Just like before, he used a block of metal that he considered proportionate to the weight of the gauntlets, and was glad to see that the doll could lift one arm with the ‘suit’ on. Killigan was a bit too quick and eager after such a mediocre success that he immediately placed a gauntlet on the right arm of his full model dummy after he added some tensor cables. He had barely released the lines holding the gauntlet up by the pulley that the whole, one-to-one sized wireframe collapsed and dented the floor. The stone floor. Made to handle literal tons of weight in one spot.

Killigan was dumbfounded, his mouth agape at the sight and wiped his forehead. “At least I had the foresight to use a frame instead of myself, but how did they break the floor?”

The boy spent a further three months trying to perfect the exoskeleton and iron out its problems, and it was extremely frustrating. Having nothing to go off of to determine your mistakes was aggravating and was affecting his normal work. Barlatan had already finished his special order and was waiting to finish the decorations of the weapon’s body, as per the client’s specifications. As he was studying the designs, he noticed his son slamming his head against the table several times in a row and rolled his eyes.

The man dropped the instructions and caught his son’s forehead in one, gloved hand. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s this stupid thing!” Killigan presented the device. “I can’t get it to carry weights properly. It keeps breaking when I apply the mass of the gauntlets.”

Barlatan looked over the metallic frame and flexed the joints several times. “I see the problem,” he started. “You see these?” he pointed to the arms. “This is your issue. It’s common with the rest of this frame.” He picked up a nearby barrel and held it over his head. “You’ve got the joints and the material for the frame, but unlike my arm, you have nothing to support the main body while it carries weights. You have no ‘tendons’, so to speak.” He lifted and lowered the barrel multiple times, displaying his tendons and more developed areas of muscle. “Essentially, while you have the weight support right, you didn’t account for weight distribution.”

Killigan facepalmed. “I knew I was forgetting something.” He looked back at his exoskeleton and sighed in defeat. “It’s going to take so much longer to finish...”

Barlatan nodded. “That’s the price of experimentation.” He put the barrel back down and grinned. “But when you do something once, it becomes easier afterward. You’ll already have all the information no one else had. What was hard for you becomes easier for others with your guidance.”

After several more months of trial and error, and with the continued insight of his father, Killigan finally finished his exosuit. After a bit of cleaning and polishing, he would be able to wear it and finally enjoy the fruits of his labor.

The young boy took his exosuit off a wooden mannequin at the entrance of the workshop and put his creation on. It encompassed his whole body, resembling a metallic skeleton of metallic tubes, rotating and shifting metal plates, wrapped cables, and many exposed wires. Flexing and moving let Killigan know if the ‘tendons’ and ‘muscles’ of the frame functioned properly and didn’t lock up. The coils and wrapped wiring compressed and relaxed with every action, although they felt a bit stiff to the wearer.

The young blacksmith took a deep breath and clenched his fists. This was the moment. The one, precise moment that would reveal if he succeeded at his self-imposed task or failed miserably. Killigan slid his hands into the golden, sun-bleached gauntlets hanging by cables in front of him and, after a minute of mentally preparing himself, lifted them up with relative ease, although the sudden increase of weight caused him to stumble forward.

Thanks to a nearby anvil, the teenager was able to used it to catch himself before he fell, but the tool had been completely caved in around his fingers, the metal cracking apart like an egg. What even were these things to have such immense size and strength? It already required extensive wiring and frames for him to be able to even use the fingers when his arms barely even reached the wrist, so who could wear these without an exosuit for that extra reach? Was it an alien construct?

The thick, stubby fingers slowly flexed, the weight and strength required to move them still egregious even with the help of the exo suit. Energy distribution meant nothing for something this huge, and movement was sluggish and tiring.

Barlatan had returned from the delivery of his gun a rich man, eager to tell his son the good news when he caught Killigan throwing the shattered anvil outside. The teenager turned around too quickly and obliterated several old crates and barrels into mere splinters. The weight and strange power the gauntlets possessed took Killigan with them and threw the boy onto his side, scraping the metal loudly and trapping him on his back.

Barlatan thought deeply. "No no no. It couldn’t be. That kind of impact force. That raw, destructive power. Weapons of the Pillar Scieldans?! It fits the stories my wife used to tell us...” Realizing his mistake as a father, the man quickly hurried over to his son and sighed in relief when he realized the boy was unharmed, albeit stuck on his back. He spoke to his son in a calm and relieved manner. “Time for some rest,” he suggested to him. “We both need it.” Barlatan insisted.