Chapter 149: Chapter 123- Brooding

Mori sighed as she watched her children fly away into the midday desert. She watched as they flew further and further from ATHENA’s body. She only turned away when she could barely make them out from the sky beyond. 

Out in the sand, she could really appreciate the size of ATHENA’s body, especially compared to the Kharon-- which they had gotten from the dwarven cavern with the help of the seven dragons Mori was the mistress of.

Said skiff was, at that moment, being lifted onto the ATHENA’s body, using a large crane that had been grown over the course of a night. She saw Fara near the top of the crane, doing… something with a console. The crane jerked up, nearly slamming the skiff into the side of the metal island; which had been slowly flattened at the bottom, so no one was walking at an angle to the floor. The crane then jerked back the opposite way, sending the skiff away from the wall of the island.

Mori turned away, making her way to the large entrance at the base of the island. It had a large ramp and an even larger shutter door put in the place of the hangar bay, which had been turned into a sort of staging area. Mori walked through the dozens-feet long shutter door and was met by a massive, empty room. There were a few places to sit and relax-- the effect of which was lost on most of Mori’s non-sapient undead-- but they were few and far between. Not to mention quite barren. There were only a few benches set up around each other, and that was it.

Mori consoled herself that the staging area was not the recreation room and moved on through the hallways. Unlike before, when the hallways were simply winding routes to nowhere, the hallways actually had a purpose, which was to provide access to the various storage areas, bunks, and other barebones amenities that, once again, were lost on Mori’s less intelligent undead.

She eventually made her way to a room that was slightly more lively than the others. Within, she found her seven death dragons, one death knight, and one human passenger all sitting around a table. They were completely focused on a piece of paper in their hands, which Mori could tell were copies of the same thing. Mori could not remember asking ATHENA to make a printer of any sort, but she decided to put it out of her mind; she did not need to keep tabs on every little thing that ever happened in her group nor did she want such a thing. 

“What’cha guys looking at?” she asked as she sauntered into the room. The nine people seated around the table looked up at her, then returned to their papers after acknowledging her presence. Avar, who had appeared in their current base of operations at some point-- Mori could not remember when, since he prefered to stay out of the limelight-- moved his chair over and leaned to the side to let her peek at the paper he held.

Mori scanned through it quickly, and was immediately interested in the idea put onto the page. One of her death knights, likely Crave or Aerolat, had come up with aerial formations they could use when escorting ATHENA’s body. The one that caught Mori’s attention was the one where they planned to have ATHENA play a major part in the battle. There were many parts and aspects to the plan, but Mori was able to easily see that they wanted ATHENA to play as a large-scale artillery piece, breaking charges and suppressing infantry. 

She thought that the planning was a bit extensive considering the fact that seven dragons were being used in the plans, but she could not complain about her death knights being too competent. After she skimmed the plans, she nodded and turned to leave. Waving, she left the room while the others were focused on their plans. 

Walking through the halls of the island, or whatever ATHENA was making herself into with the extra mana from the dynamos, Mori came to an uncomfortable realization. She did not have a direct goal for the immediate present. For her entire life, she had some sort of goal that she could work on, be it creating undead, studying mana types, helping Fara or VII, or just slaughtering killer bots, she always knew what to do with her time. In that moment, however, she realized that anything she could help with would lead to her getting in the way of the people she wanted to help.

The death knights could plan well enough without her breathing down their necks. Fara and ATHENA could build things without her input. VII had taken the small group of Clockwork undead Mori kept in the Kharon to be used to create the assistant units Mori had talked with VII about. The dwarves were… doing their own thing, and likely did not want Mori to continue to intrude on their peaceful life. There was no one to help, nothing she could think to do that needed doing, and she did not have any projects on her back burner that jumped out to her.

She eventually shook her head and found a small stool in the hallway-- one of the features ATHENA found important for her interior-- and sat down, propping up her head with her arm on her knee. A thousand different little projects shot through her mind at once and most of them simply did not appeal to her. One of the ones that drew some interest was the idea of experimenting with mana densities as a method of propulsion. It was a project that, while not very important, was just stimulating enough to her mind that it drew some interest.

She almost immediately discarded the idea. There was no point in doing something like that, since runes would likely produce better results. Likely. She threw it into a corner of her mind, saving it for later. She tried to think of another project, even one that she could test with her own body. She toyed with the idea of becoming human-ish for a half-second, then discarded the idea; she was a skeleton born of a stubborn will to live. She was not going to seek mortality like a child seeking their favorite stuffed animal.

Another idea that came to her was experimenting on her body to understand it more deeply, but the grimaces of Fara and VII suddenly appeared in her mind, followed by her death knights and other acquaintances. None of them would likely want her to potentially mutilate herself in pursuit of something to learn.

You are reading story Boneclock at novel35.com

She thought for a moment, then thought of what a lich was according to earth’s pop culture. “One, shrouded in black cloaks.” She turned to her black cloak that somehow did not become assimilated to her soul, “Check. Next, undead. Check.” She sighed, thinking harder. The only thing she could remember about liches in popular culture was evil, hordes of undead, and generic bad guys. None of those fit Mori’s personality, nor were they ideas for her to work on.

She could look into the other kinds of undead she had not even scratched the surface of. She had already created a hermit crab-like undead that parasitised a metal shell, so making something more familiar would not be too hard. She thought again for a while. She immediately came up with a list of undead that came to mind.  Zombies, which she could easily create, skeletons, which were not difficult in the slightest to create, ghosts, which she could classify Aerolat as if she squinted hard, vampires, which was a subject she did not even have the most basic of knowledge to play with. 

After she thought of the basic ones, she thought about some less-common undead in fiction. Wraiths, banshees, and wights were all, to Mori, variations on ghosts. She was a lich herself, specifically and archlich, and she would have to do a lot more than some casual study to create a lich below herself. The dullahan was an interesting one, but she would have to experiment to find the benefit to removing the head from her undead. She thought about ghouls for a moment, but discarded it; those were less than mindless beasts in her eyes.

There were plenty of interesting sounding ideas, but nothing that would alleviate the feeling that she was wasting time. “Dammit,” she grumbled, “I’m not a teenager! To hell with the brooding!” Standing, and with nothing else to do, she sought out her friends.

Since Fara was quite busy the last time Mori saw her, she went to visit VII first, who was, as expected, in the dynamo room. The woman held a lump of clocksteel, holding it down-- since the light came from the floor-- against the light as if it were a piece of paper. “Hey VII,” Mori greeted, “I have a problem.”

VII turned and smiled at Mori, “Hey, Mori. What’s your problem?” she asked, placing the lump of clocksteel onto the table in front of her.

Mori explained her problem, long windedly, as she went through every idea she had come up with and discarded. After a few minutes of speaking, Mori sighed, “VII, I don’t know what to do with my time anymore. I’m only waiting on the Talonecs being made, and then we can get going, but… I don’t know, what do you think I should do to be productive?”

VII hummed for a moment, rubbing her chin, “Mori, when was the last time you took a break? Before you and I met; I know you barely took a break since then. But when was the last time you just sat down and relaxed? Not directing construction or something like that, not working on a project, not networking, not going to a place, just sitting down and relaxing?”

Mori rubbed her own chin and thought. The last time she could remember where she was not rushing around was in Green Oasis, but she was still studying then as well. Before that were battles, learning mechanical knowledge from Fara, or making undead. In her entire life, she did not think that she had a single afternoon where she just… did nothing.

VII seemed to notice Mori’s look and smiled, “A long time, if ever, then? In that case,” she began, walking over to the wall, “I want to recommend a book to you.” ATHENA took the hint and gave VII her ring, letting it slip into the woman’s hand. VII then put the ring on and a book immediately appeared in her hand, “This is ‘Heated Hatred,’ a not-so-little revenge tale that I read when I need to unwind. I think I’ve read it over a dozen times by now.” She put the book in Mori’s hands, “Read it. Maybe you’ll find something to inspire you.”

Mori looked at the book with a questioning glance. The novel-- more a tome with how thick it was-- was easily over two thousand pages long, “Are you sure that this is the best use of my time?” she asked.

“Yes!” VII wholeheartedly replied, beaming with a smile, “That is a masterpiece. Something I would give up a limb and a good amount of my sentient energy to keep. Read it. Please.” At VII’s insistence, Mori nodded and went to her desk, sitting herself down and opening the first page. She began reading and was quickly absorbed by the tale. As VII left to get her luggage from the Kharon, Mori thanked VII. The woman simply smiled, nodded, and left Mori to her reading.