5.5 Back Down

Grabbing my sister's hand as we neared the closest sign of gray in what seemed like forever, I sighed in relief as the heat slowly dissipated back down to manageable levels. Using my shirt as a makeshift face towel, I managed to make my face somewhat dry again as my vision cleared, revealing some kind of giant cylindrical vat filled with water.

"Woah..." Lise, having recovered her breath, marveled at the behemoth of a vat in front of us. "I never knew there was this much water inside here."

"Yeah..."

I couldn't help but wonder such a thing myself. Why was this here? Was it some kind of cooling system? God forbid this was where all of our old drinking water came from.

"Young Rouge.... Little Lise...." an elderly voice greeted, an old man stepping out from behind the vat with a hammer hefted behind his shoulders. "You're back."

"Yes..." I absently addressed as I failed to keep my eyes away from the gigantic vat behind him.

"Ahhh... I see you're interested in this thing?" the older man asked us in a grandfatherly way. "It's an... invention of mine."

I glanced back down to the old man in amazement. How in the world did he manage to do this? And- wait, hold up... "Where are the rest of the elders?"

That was weird. I faintly recalled there being more than one of them, and as of right now, there was only this one old guy in front of us.

"Dead."

....

.....

.......

What?

"Wh-What'd you mean?" Lise hesitantly asked, stepping up beside me as she looked at him in confusion.

The old man sighed. "Exactly that, little Lise."

He walked towards us, his muscles betraying his advanced age before stopped in front of us. He looked at Lise in a way that only my grandfather used to do: caring, and apologetic.

"A few months after you two left, the ones above wanted to reduce the amount of water they were sending down to the Furnace," the elder explained, one hand ruffling Lise's hair. "We didn't want to let the younger Nenners die of thirst, not when they still had so much life left in them. So instead, we decided to give away our portions to those that needed them."

Damn... I remember doing that for Lise. Thirst wasn't a new experience for me even back in my first life, but I knew firsthand just how bad it felt whenever I did it. The lack of energy was sure to keep one from functioning properly, much less someone of advanced age as the elders. Combined with the perpetual heat, I'd reckon nobody would even last two days without a single sip.

"They all fell, one by one. By the time the rations normalized, I was the only one left," he lamented as he stood straight back up, now staring at me in the eye. "I hated every day that passed by, wishing that we'd have some way of collecting water for ourselves."

"Which explains this..." I stated as my eyes went back to the massive vat of water behind him. "So that nobody has to go thirsty again."

Water was the most important resource after all. The human body was made up of over seventy percent water. Any lesser than that and they'd already have one foot on their grave. But while this was magnificent in its construction, I still had a lot of questions forming on my mind. One such thing was-

"How did you build this?" Lise beat me to the punch as she sauntered over to the water tower. "Didn't the guards take away any stuff that was left over?"

"The heat is more than enough for them to never stray this deep into the Furnace, Lise," the elder chuckled as he tapped the vat, a resounding gong echoing as it shuddered under its own contents. "We Nenners have an innate immunity to heat. Beyond any fire-based Zahlers, if it's sweltering hot for us, it'll be cripplingly blazing for the rest."

I raised an eyebrow as I joined the pair near the tower. It did make sense. Forges were purposefully hot to melt metal, and the Nenner Furnace was filled to the brim with them.

"This way, they can never get their hands on it," the old man smirked as he looked up towards the top of his creation. "It's a thing of beauty. I reckon there's nothing else quite like it across the Empire."

"How does it work?" I asked in equal parts bafflement and curiosity. The heat of the Furnace would surely evaporate anything before any kind of condensate can form. And something cold couldn't possibly retain its temperature in the blistering heat of the Furnace.

"One thing I've learned in the years of armor making was that our Seigels can do things that even we cannot possibly imagine."

*GONG!*

With a hefty thud, the old man struck the water tower with his hammer, its metal head glowing with Seigel Wesen before it diffused into the metal of the vat. The resulting blue glow that spread through the metal revealed the countless Seigels inscribed onto the vat. Instantly, I noticed a pattern forming in between the basic lines:

Coils. Lots and lots of coils.

"I've made armor for countless Zahlers in the past," the elder scoffed. "Some request for this, others request for that. But the one thing I noticed was that they all wanted one thing whenever the summer arrived; a particular way of drawing a circle, all going to the right and making as many curves inwards as possible."

So clockwise coils. The summer... The abundance of it in rows upon rows. It's familiar somehow.

"Through some experimentation, I then learned that it was a Seigel to keep the warmth out of armor; to prevent one from succumbing to the heat of the summer," the old man regaled us as he ran a hand against the metal plates of his vat. "So if I etched it in a gigantic container-"

"It would prevent the water from evaporating..." That was genius.

"I don't know what evaporating means, Rouge. But judging from your expression, you seem to get what I'm talking about, yes?"

"That's so cool!" Lise exclaimed as she looked at the tower like it was a magical device. "I didn't even know a Seigel like that existed!"

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