Tunnel Rat-Chapter 388: The Eyes have it.
Chapter 388: The Eyes have it.
Milo had been tired and injured when he'd first seen the eyes. He didn't know what they were, but he knew they were more than magical items or parts of a corrupted copperhead.
The snake had been composed of the original copper body with added mechanical parts, all of which were rotting away under the effects of the corruption. The scarabs and other creatures were similar. If it had only been snakes and scarabs, he might not have seen that two different things were going on. The first was the addition of mechanical parts and metal shells to existing creatures. The murderous squirrels and the badger made that obvious. The corruption was a secondary effect, corroding and degrading both the mechanical and biological aspects. If the uncorrupted scarab eggs hatched and showed no signs of decay, it would lend credence to his theory.
The parts that fell off the snake, including the eyes, had come from various machines or parts of them. But the eyes were several levels above the rest. They were intact, and he could feel the old runes within them. He'd put them away immediately, as much to keep them from the girls as to keep himself from examining them when he was already injured. Playing with ancient magic tech and runic items could be near-fatal. That had been a painful lesson to learn.
He carefully removed the green eyes from his Smugglers' Stash. Emerald Orbs of Illumination sounded less deadly than Ruby Orb of Focused Destruction, and he hadn't seen any damage come from the emerald eyes, just a bright light that seemed to pinpoint him for the snake. The orbs weren't perfectly round. There were seams where the iris opened, small round pits where wires may have connected, and a circular seam that may or may not let him remove the outer casing. Carefully examining each part, he could see dust or dirt in all of the small connection areas except for one directly behind the iris. If he was wiring up an eye in a movable socket, that was where he'd put the connection as well. He found that the diameter of the hole would exactly hold a piece of 14-gauge wire. The question was, what type of wire?
Copper or Deep Copper wire would be excellent for normal electricity or Storm mana, but other types of mana would need mana-conducive alloys. He set up a small electrical generator and battery from his workbench. They were small things that he and Arlothe had used to test the magi-tech circuits he used in his contraptions. After cranking for five minutes to generate some power, he connected the eye, for no visible result, and no power loss in the battery. He'd doubted the eyes could be powered by regular electricity, but it was the easiest power source to test. Mana was next.
Substituting a mana-conducting cable for the Deep Copper wire was the next step. The simplest way to charge a magic item was to try to instill his own mana, the same way apprentices were taught to charge their staffs. It was sluggish at first, but the eye accepted his mana, and from inside, something started to happen. He pushed harder, and the process accelerated. Somewhere inside the eye, something was storing his mana, and he felt the change when that was full. Mana flowed into a second storage area, and then a third. Each time, he lost a hundred mana points. He pushed further, and the iris opened, revealing the eye. The three batteries inside the eye unloaded their mana into a complex runic formation that appeared, more runes appeared, creating a spherical formation with several layers. The formation contracted, condensing the mana. Somewhere in the mass of swirling, condensed mana, a spark ignited, and brilliant light shone from the eye for several seconds.
Seeing the light from this angle was interesting. Every detail on the cavern wall was illuminated and showed fine details that hadn't been visible to Milo before. Then the light winked out, plunging the tunnel back into darkness. He repeated the process, with the same result, and then began to construct a mana storage device using a crystal he and Georgie had stolen from the Gneiss-Lurker nest. They were ideal mana storage devices, and he needed to get more of them. And a better way to do so. He'd turned the bulk of them over to the Engineers, but he still had the largest crystal from the top of the mound and several small ones. His next test involved using Storm mana, which he produced using a small prototype of Arlothe's generator. His electrical storage battery was used to turn an iron rod into an electrical magnet, which produced electricity as he spun it within a copper coil. Around the coil, small crystal chips collected the Storm mana and stored it in the large crystal. When he had several thousand mana stored, he connected the eye.
Everything worked as before, but instead of stopping, the light was continuous. Better, Milo was able to study the Runic Array. It wasn't composed of all pre-system runes, but the complexity was beyond anything he'd seen before. Dozens of Runes of Illumination, Runes of Radiance, layered with dozens of unique Engineering runes that controlled the entire device. He sat and studied the interlocking runes for minutes until the system ran out of power, then recharged the battery and repeated the process three more times.
In the middle of the fourth recharge, he stopped and looked at his stash. There were two eyes...
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An hour later, he'd created a framework that would let him manually adjust the direction of the eyes. He was sure that eventually, he could learn to do it with the runes inside of them, but for now, that was beyond him. A larger copper coil was converting electricity to storm mana, and he'd bribed Georgie to run in a circle to power the apparatus while he continued building. When everything was ready, he turned to his watch lizard, "I'm ready to test this out." Georgie rolled his eyes once, then moved a few feet out of the way, prepared to drag Milo back to Gendifur if he blew himself up.
This time, both eyes opened at once, throwing the large tunnel into daylight. He could tell the focus was off, but before he could adjust his makeshift frame, the two runic arrays forged a connection, and the eyes turned a fraction of an inch. The change was immediate. Where details were sharp before, now they were shown starkly, even the smallest crack in the rocks standing out. Over the next seven seconds, the light even penetrated the wall and revealed a row of two-foot by two-foot openings, cleverly disguised to blend in with the wall. Two feet of solid stone separated the long, narrow cavities from the corridor, and in each one, Milo could see bones, armor, weapons, or tools. He rotated his framework, and each time the eyes would focus, the light would penetrate, and more tombs were revealed. He could only focus the light for a hundred feet in either direction, but reversing the direction of the frame showed him the same thing on the other side of the corridor. Two feet separated the tombs, showing him the resting places of over a hundred dwarves. How far did the line of tombs extend? He was certain that the answer lay further ahead.
Excited at the thought of exploring further, he looked at the obstruction in the tunnel, and then his eyes turned to the red eye sitting in his stash. He had a way to aim it and a good idea of how to power it. Removing the green eyes, placed the red eye into the framework. It had the same exact structure as the green eyes, including the unblocked aperture on the back. Georgie got back to work charging the crystal while Milo tried to sense any runic activity in the eye, but it seemed totally inert when not connected to a power source. A half-hour later, Milo was ready to feed two thousand Storm mana to the eye. Georgie backed off to the hundred-foot mark. As the eye was connected and mana flowed, Milo could feel the eye come to life. It was pointed at a spot four feet above the floor, in the center of the blocked hallway. Seventy-five feet separated Milo from the cave-in. As the mana flowed into the device, he could feel it pooling in one spot, yet not quite filling it. Then the crystal was drained, and nothing at all happened.
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It was frustrating, but it made sense. The illuminating light took less power than a destructive magical laser. Curious, he touched the connection to the back of the eye, intending to push some of his mana into the device. He didn't have to. As soon as the connection was made between his finger and the Ruby Orb of Focused Destruction, his mana started draining into the eye like a raging river. Over 4,000 mana drained out of him in a second, followed by three rapid clicks as the storage batteries filled, and then a runic array blossomed. It was more complex than the Illumination array, with hundreds of engineering runes surrounding Runes of Brilliance and a set of pre-system Runes of Destruction that circled a rune he was unfamiliar with. It was just a fraction of a second, but the details were burned into his memory as the array flared and a blast of ruby energy flashed outward, burning through the obstruction in the passage before leaving a long gouge in the rock floor.
Milo sat down, seeing nothing but spots before his eyes, thankful he was wearing his goggles, and feeling drained from losing most of his mana so quickly. Georgie had dragged him a half-mile down the tunnel before he came to his senses and his vision cleared. It took some convincing and several treats to convince his pet that everything was ok. Wobbly, but unhurt, he walked back to take a look. The eye was the same, and not even warm. He carefully disconnected it and placed it back into his stash with a pair of tongs. Then he packed up everything else into his workshop, dismissed both storage areas, and sat down to have something to eat. He and Georgie shared a meal, and Milo poured two expensive mana potions down his throat, bringing him back to a little over a third of his mana. Then they went to examine what the blast had done.
The beam widened as it went, that was clear, but even at seventy-five feet, it was still only three feet wide. The edges of the melted hole were still hot, and smoking rocks were scattered into the next corridor. The statue sat where he had seen it before, a pick in one hand and holding a lantern in the other as if lighting the way. Beyond it was a large open area of worked stone with more dwarven statues.
"What do you think? Explore further, or get some friends to come along with us?" It was a silly question to ask the lizard whose job it was to keep you out of trouble. Georgie barked three times, then started trotting back down the tunnel. Milo sighed and followed, looking backward once more at the new mystery.
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