Awakening

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——

When I awoke, I felt… alive.

For the first time in ages, I could… move. I could… feel. The fabric against my skin, the coolness of the air. Everything. And not in the way that the blessings made me sense the devices in my chair. I could… feel more, better, further than I could ever feel even before.

I could taste and smell the cleanliness in the air. And I could move! My arms! I could move them! Although they felt different compared to my torso, I could move them. And that in itself was enough to make me weep in bed, if only so that I could wipe my face with my own hands.

And though I did, I soon looked down to see a body that appeared to be made of skin and in fact, still was skin. But mutable skin, made ready to change to adopt whatever properties I fancied, so long as the energy and materials were available.

It was different, but it looked the same. I felt the same. Both inside and out. At least my torso did.

My arms and legs felt different. They looked different.

What was left of them at least.

Though I wiped my eyes, my arms ended just below my shoulders and my legs ended midway down my thighs. The nubs of both were capped in thick rings of silvery-blue metal infused with deep blue markings that appeared both like veins and lines of circuitry that mixed with something on the head of the cap to make a deep-purple color.

"How do you feel?"

Turning, I saw Amun resting his head on the edge of my bed, looking up at me with eyes that poured a million emotions through my heart. "I. I- I."

I wailed. I fell into Amun- my Dad's embrace and cried and wept and babbled and thanked him for what felt like hours on end. And with the patience of one who'd done this a hundred times, he spoke calmly and soothingly in my ear, telling me everything would be alright.

Eventually, I regained my composure, permitting my Dad to tell me of the many changes to my new body.

"Before we start with the things you're most curious about, we need to go over what your new body is made of and what it now contains."

My eyes burst alight with his words, displaying an image of a blue skeleton on the wall in bright light, next to smaller pictures of metal creatures that looked like spiders.

"The Arcanites used to reconstruct your body did so with materials born from the engineering world of Ilium, in my divine realm. Your birthright." He smiled, booping my snoot. "With their ability to infuse magic into materials, they gave you a skeleton of ordinary mithral infused with energy from my mana and engineering domains. As well as a few other affinities. But more on that later.

"In your marrow, however, are different machines." Father continued as the holographic skeleton disappeared. "They come from bio-mechanical factories within your marrow, infused with my blood and upgraded to produce new Arcanites infused with my divine mana and Biogold, Demowood, and a few other divine materials.

"Since these new nanites don't have names yet, who better to name them than you?"

"Really?" My eyes went wide. Then I felt warm and fuzzy when he smiled and reached to pat my head. "Of course." He said. So I thought long and hard about what to name them and noticed his face seemed to unfreeze once I turned back to them.

"I'll call the metal in my skeleton Irite. And the little robots Amunites!" I beamed.

"Very well!" He beamed back. "Now go on and learn about your new body. After, I'll tell you about your abilities. All you have to do is think about it."

"Okay." I nodded, finding that the digital augmentations to my vision returned with hardly a thought.

I found that the Amunites reformed my brain with Data Crystals and Biogold, then connected it to a nervous system made from Attosilk. Which was probably why his face seemed to freeze whenever was thinking earlier. Regardless, I could store a near-endless amount of information in my head. And that was after the 556 Zettabytes of the Noctis Archives finished downloading.

My stomach was made of Demowood and Dimensionite, allowing me to eat anything and reprocess it into anything else and even store the materials in my upper intestine for later use. Some of them, of course, would have to pass through my lower intestine to be refined into Vehsipane, which would then be sent through some fuel lines grown through my body.

Those were like a third set of veins that looped through my lower intestines and heart, which was now an engine and a battery combined in one thanks to it being reconstructed with Volterum. To distribute the energy from my heart, my real veins had been remade with Tiscer, the Temperature-Independent Superconductive Copper. And to cool my internal systems, my arteries were filled with hyper-coolant and looped through my lungs.

I could sweat a bit of the stuff too, if I ever needed to. But I doubted I ever would. Anyway, I got more types of nanites as well. Some were artificial red blood cells Dad called Respirocytes. They swam within my now-divine blood and even had a home between my lungs, which were fabricated to refine Vac-Gas out of ordinary air. It was a magical gas that mimicked a vacuum no matter how much or little the gas was contained within. With it, I could hold vast quantities of air in my lungs. Even while they felt empty.

The other nanites came from my kidneys and liver, which were both made of a type of marble that seemed dusty at a glance. The dust, however, was composed of cleaning nanites that normally sanitized whatever area the stone was found in. Only, these were altered to perform maintenance on my internal systems.

All of them, no matter how big or small, were synchronized with my enhanced senses and connected to my eyes, which were cameras that could sense virtually everything, made out of Biogold and Screen Silver so they could cast holograms or projections at will.

Finally, all of that was encased in a body of synthetic flesh made of carbon nanotube fibers and then wrapped in a skin of Noxweave. Offsetting the strength, agility, and speed I lost while giving me the ability to control and share energy with machines or the three networks freely. Not to mention, it made all of this a part of my soul and connected me to the three networks.

"Woah!" I swooned, overwhelmed by the many things I could now do. But of course, my Dad helped me regain my bearings. And when he did, he finished telling me about my arms and the space they lived in.

"Are you alright?"

I couldn't help hugging him. He felt so cold. Like I needed to share my warmth with him. "Yeah." I nodded. Feeling the slow beat of his heart.

"Here." He held out his hand for a few moments, inviting me to grab it.

I felt silly doing it. But I did it anyways and gasped once I felt my fingers wrap around his even though there was nothing but a faint blue line seen woven between his fingers.

"You still have your original arms and legs. They deteriorated due to you sitting in that chair for so long. So the core of your body was given new muscles to make you as strong as you otherwise would be. Meanwhile, your arms and legs were amputated and then remade into biomechanical limbs that could reattach to these rings." He tapped at the nub on my arm.

"They lock in place magnetically using locks made with Vicesteel. As will any other limbs you create in the future. Right now, they're in another dimension. Your personal pocket realm. I made it myself. All for you." He squeezed me tighter. "You can use them from here to tinker with whatever you keep in there. Or, you can use them from there to touch things here.

"So that's how I wiped my eyes?" I gasped.

"It's from a spell I developed from my knives." He nodded. "Dimensional Splitter. But that's only the beginning. These are the amazing parts."

My eyes followed his gaze to the nubs on my arms and legs. Things I forgot about completely after learning about everything else. Something I swore he did on purpose. Making me get excited before he finally explained the nubs. 'Cause he knew how amazing they were.

His grin proved it.

"One of the powers in your bones makes you beloved by mana. Like a Drow!" he beamed. "You're resistant to magic. You can sense and see mana. You can even cast with it. And through this." He pointed to the deep blue core of the nubs. "You can create arms and legs made of mana to use when your other limbs are too busy.

"These are enchantments," he continued, pointing to concentric rings of purple, white, gray, and red lights. Then began giggling once the bed began tilting forward to roll me off. But I didn't fall. I just… floated on my hands and knees.

"That's the purple one." He explained, giggling more as I struggled to get my balance. "It's a gravity enchantment that will allow you to become weightless or change the direction you fall, allowing you to walk on walls or ceilings. The white one Toril's weight magic. It'll allow you to make your body heavier or lighter to account for whatever you build on or in your body.

"Woah!" I gasped, wondering about the possibilities. Only to be rewarded with embarrassment once I fell headfirst into the ground. But… it didn't hurt. At all. And so, I laughed.

Still, though, Dad asked if I was alright and guided me to float upright before bringing my eyes to a wooden table in the corner. "Think about lifting that. But not with your hands. With your mind."

Again, I felt silly. But that went out the window once I felt something envelop the table wholly. With a mental command, I pulled and the table ripped itself from the ground. But Dad only laughed when the table shattered into splinters. And so, I did too.

"That's from an enchantment imbued with Ed's Force Magic. The white one." He told me once we wound down. "It gives you telekinesis. Whatever you do, however." He suddenly grew serious as he tapped at the red circle. "Don't use this one indoors until I say otherwise. It is imbued with Ed's Torch Magic so you can take advantage of your ability to change weight and fly at great speeds. Though you would survive, I'd prefer not to see you fly through the ceiling."

I refused even to think about that, as he said, and so I hurriedly nodded so he'd move along.

"Now for the interesting part." He smiled like he had a great secret. "Your blessings. And the conditions of the Pact that made you an Arcane Augmented Human.

"It comes in three parts." He held up his fingers just as my vision lit up with schematics of the Amunites. "The first is your abilities. The mutability part comes from the Amunites and your digestive system. Space-Time mana allows them to work with haste while you sleep. They're powered by the infusion of Nuclear Magic instead of your heart. So they'll continue working even if your systems go offline.

"They can make whatever you can design. But they'll need materials. So you've been given a new digestive system, including indestructible teeth that could chew through and swallow anything from metal and stones to venomous spines. Even poop water!" he beamed.

"Eww!" I pushed away from him. "That's gross! I'm not drinking poop water!"

"Hahaha! Well, no matter what you eat or drink, your Dimensionite stomach will change shape to accommodate it while the Demowood within breaks down the contents to the atomic level. Then they'd be stored in your gut until you design an upgrade, wherein they'll get to work using the Dimensionite within to reach different parts of your body.

"Your powers aside, the effect of your pact and your status as my daughter makes you a Goddess. That is made doubly true by the traditions of my family, the House of Cole. That is to share our blood with those who take on our name. My blood flows within you, Iris." He said with a squeeze. "That means your blood is not only divine but beloved by darkness as well.

"All combined, this gives you the means to meld into darkness and command the dead just as I do. I have even given you enough power to raise the dead. But because of your divinity, everything you do will, in some way, be related to technology. And, you are, of course, immortal. Although not in the way you would think." He teased and subsequently distracted me with a video of fantastic animals of synthetic furs and metallic hides.

"This is the second part. These creatures who are like you. The materials you're made of were created by them. As such, they see you as one of them. More, because of your divinity, they see you as their Goddess- their Divine Mother. You hold the domain of Technology, Iris, and whatever you later claim." He told me with gleaming eyes. "They are your children as you are mine. So you must cherish them and guide them and protect them once we bring them to the Mortal Plane."

"I will." I squeezed him back.

"Finally, the last part is related to your pocket dimension," he said. "You can think of it like a house. You can do whatever you like with it and can peer inside with your augmented eyes. But if you go outside, you'll see two more houses. One of them is for one of our future companions. But the other one is a place me and Mr. Ed will often travel to.

"In there, lives Simion Lumbarde. The biomechanical undying head that is NoxNet."

Father didn't even need to tell me what my job was. I could take one look inside the room of blue and see the huge skull all decorated and tell immediately that he needed a lot more than maintenance and care.

He needed a body. And friends.

"Don't worry, Daddy. I'll take care of Sim-Sim."

"I know you will." He smiled. "But being the prime administrator of VoidNet is not the end all be all. There are certain things I require of my troupe, including you. Being highly educated and trained for martial combat is foremost among them. Aside from that, however, I require everyone to, one: start a business or create an industry. Two: build a self-sufficient kingdom. Three: learn the ways of artificing and witchcraft. And four: have a specialized role in the Legio Noctis.

"I will guide you along the way. And the Lessons tab in VoidNet will teach you all you need to know. Okay?" He gave me a warm smile as he held out his hand.

"Okay."

"Now let's go meet the others."

I hardly nodded, for my mind was consumed with a dozen windows and folders spawned from the aforementioned tab of things I was interested in and things I needed to learn. And at the center was a checklist of twenty things I needed to do as I grew older. In return, Dad would grant me more abilities. Starting with something that made me both worried and eager to start.

Physical therapy.

But there was a lot more beneath it that made me a lot more excited. Lessons on science, technology, research, engineering, art, alchemy, math, and enchanting. As well as lessons on survival, nature, ballistics, magic, tactics, military science, communications, and music. Wizardry. Witchcraft.

And the Bardic College of Generals.