Taking Charge

This story is about Kall. It is dated to September 2010.
==Part 1: Construction==
"Nuh, I don't think that'll work."The Gnomish syllables were barely audible over the sounds of the North chill whipping past the cave entrance, let alone the whirring that occupied the entire space where the machinery producing it did not. There were cogs, pistons, cams, wires, light bulbs, tiny flashing LEDs and even some mysterious metal boxes with fans at the ends that ticked and spat and were for no discernable purpose. It was messy, disorganised, loud, inefficient, warm, busy, big, and all leading forwards to one point: a platform, on which sat its engineer.
Four feet tall and wearing nothing but a pair of overalls and an oil-spattered t-shirt, the bespectacled gnome female had one of the metal boxes sat in her lap, a soldering iron – plugged in to another part of the extravagant mechanism – in her left hand and some spun solder in her right. By her side there was a notebook, with frenzied Gnomish runes and almost nonsensical diagrams scribed out in illegible graphite. Even though the bitter North wind was shouting spiteful slurs against the entrance of the snow-bound cave, the inside was warm enough that she was even sweating a little, her masterpiece providing an inherent heating system. She seemed to be contemplating something.
"Could wire the central transmutation processor straight up to the input circuits, but that wouldn't allow for the intermediate processes."
She pondered this, looking from the contents of the little metal box to her notebook and back.
"But if I try and do it any other way, I need to rewire the whole unit to accommodate the new components..."
She pouted, looking at the book through her thick glasses. Putting down the box and setting the soldering iron back into its brace, she took her glasses off, rubbed them on her t-shirt, then put them back on.
"...shit."
She took the glasses off and stood up.
A few moments later, she woke up, facing the ceiling.
"Shit! Now why did I go pass out like that?"
She looked down at herself. As if in answer to her question, her stomach growled. She sighed heavily.
"Alright alright, I'll go get something to eat. But only if you don't bother me about sleep tonight, you hear? I need to get this finished!"
Setting her entirely oil-smudged glasses down on the ground, she groped blindly towards a work-counter. This work-counter seemed to be the point of origin for the whole machine – it had a number of industrial-sized and seemingly salvaged switches underneath it, and a large hulk of clearly Titan machinery just behind it. More importantly, on top of the desk itself, there were several sets of goggles. Four-digit hands fumbled to get them fitted over her curled, unkempt hair.
"Ah, better. Now everything's in focus again. Alright, alright, so... clothes. Right. Outside: cold. Clothes."
==Part 2: Destruction==
Kall couldn't pretend to understand the plight of the wind, really. She was no druid or shaman – she didn't talk with the land. She didn't understand nature in the slightest. She just knew that the weather could be a bit of a nuisance sometimes – a deadly nuisance, yes, but a nuisance nonetheless.
Her winter outfit rendered her barely able to move. A thick fur hood muffled her ears and cheeks against the cold, with a mask protecting her mouth and nose, goggles shielding her eyes from the hail; many layers of woollen and fur jackets and vests and tunics stifled her arm movement to the point where she could barely touch her hands above her head, and chunky gloves meant she fumbled the ignition key on her mechanostrider several times. This particular model had been modified profusely – perhaps, one might say, almost gratuitously – so that it would still give the most basic of functions in the bitter conditions of the Storm Peaks. The bulky robe guarding her legs which, in turn, were covered by several layers of trouser and legging, made mounting the thing a challenge, but one which was achievable. The only part of her outfit which provided little inhibition to her normal movement was the warm, comfortable boots, stuffed with fur from something which, Kall had no doubt, had been adorable in life as well as cosy in death.
This mechanostrider, with its modified piston mechanism and adapted snow-suitable feet, made light work of gliding across the icy prairie through the hurtful storm. Such possessions spoke of the sheer amount of time that Kall had to spend on all of this. Most of the new parts were salvaged from the nearby Titan-run encampments, but her excursions there had grown progressively less routine as her comparatively small workshop had established itself into the otherwise empty cave in the mountainside.
She wasn't heading to Titan encampments this time, though. She was heading in the other direction today – there was a field, and in this field resided some usually peaceful mammoths. Whilst she could hardly tranquillise them, she could draw one away from the herd with relative ease in order to take it on one-on-one. With a grin, she patted the sword sheathed across her back.
The sword wasn't her primary weapon, though. Far from it. Turning her strider off, she dismounted with a soft sfthh sound as she landed in the snow on her side. Standing up slowly and dusting herself off, she looked around for a suitable target.
At the back, there was a calf with a limp. That would do nicely.
Her initial advance was quiet, and the method by which she initiated the combat was subtle. With a flick of the hand, a small, purple-coloured sigil appeared on the calf's head. It took a few moments, but it began to show signs of discomfort and, eventually, began looking around for the source.
This was the point at which Kall presented herself, stepping out almost casually from behind a rocky outcrop. The calf began to trundle slowly, wonkily but inexorably towards her – its mother ignored it, probably, Kall mused, due to the fact it was injured anyway. Her mother would have done the same, she thought.
She refocused her attention on the calf and began to summon another spell. It was an odd spell, this one. It didn’t seem to have any discernable colour of its own, but instead drew colour and flavour and heat and power from its surroundings as she coalesced it out of her hands – before thrusting it at the calf. It struck the calf on the chest and spread, as though fire, through its fur. It cried out in pain.
Kall bit back the urge to laugh. It was those urges that were out to get her. The day she laughed was the day she had lost. Instead, she focussed on the next poisonous spell, clapping her mitted hands together and pulling shadows out of the air before thrusting it at the calf. That finished it – the magic struck the calf perfectly in the head, killing its brain outright. The creature fell over.
"Brief," she said, muffled by her mask and furs and other warm things, "but worth it."
She unsheathed her long, sharp weapon (a kind of sword, "gifted" by Ethereals) from her back, and began starting to butcher the beast. It was difficult – she was small and her weapon was impractical – but eventually, she had a good amount of meat. What made her stop was the appearance, over the hill, of two figures: a tall, hooded figure with a bow, and a large, hulking, black, four-legged thing beside it.
"Ahh, that elf's back. She probably wants the rest of this."
Kall grinned, then raised her voice, still in Gnomish:
"Hey! The rest of this is yours if you want it!"
She wrapped her haul of meat up in a piece of cloth and loaded it onto the modified mechstrider before mounting and returning to her cave.
Category:Story