In the Universe created by the Architects, everything had an influence on something else. Something that the Architects of Cause and Effect made sure of.
With the present leaving an indelible mark on the past, every step that Ester took was one that would probably be buried by hundreds of tons of trash.
But with the thing that he had taken from the drop ship, those steps might not suddenly end underneath the trash.
It was a couple hours since he had returned from his Scav'ing, and since then he was engrossed with his pet project of finding a way off this Architect forsaken garbage bin.
Hunched over the desk, both hands slowly and delicately merged metal together with the Aether Welder flickering with a weak blue light.
The Driller had stopped boring through plastic, soil and rock a while ago so there weren't any sudden jolts he had to account for while tinkering with this horribly delicate piece of Magitech.
The only thing that he had to account for besides this Magitech piece blowing up in his face is the rare hissing bouts of steam escaping from the Engines as water cooled down the wildly overheated Machine.
Last time it was left wildly overheated, it blew up, and Ester was barely able to salvage the engine with Eva's help with what little glyphical knowledge they had.
Eva's legs however, nearest to the engine they were, didn't survive.
Recalling the flashing memories ingrained in his head, the scent and sight of charred flesh, Ester shook his head.
Moving on.
Soldering a few more parts together then pulling out the glyph scribe, disconnecting the welder and connecting the scribe, Ester frowned when the blue light failed to appear at its tip.
'Already? Damn, we'll have to do a Rift Run soon.'
Opening the case of the transformer and removing a glass battery, the glass tube held a grey crystal devoid of Aetherlight within it, removing the crystal from the tube with deft fingers, he tossed it into a drawer where it joined several other grey crystals devoid of the bright Aetherlight.
Pushing the drawer in and twisting the nob, when he pulled the drawer back it revealed a set of keys hidden away in the Drawer's personal little hidden compartment.
He took the copper colored one marked with a blue crystal.
Moving to a wall, Ester's eyes crawled along the wall with familiarity before spotting a small carved out section of wall which hid in between two fridge magnets.
Then he placed the key flat on a section of wall marked by four fridge magnets.
*Beep Chunk
Hearing the sounds of a scanned key and opening door, it revealed twenty of small Aether batteries, each with varying levels of brightness in their crystalline cases.
Taking the nineteenth brightest one and closing the door, Ester glanced at the small hole in the wall where a trap had been laid for anyone unwise enough to put the key there.
"Hey Eva?" He called.
[Yeah-eah?] Eva's glitched voice echoed from within the engine room which doubled as a water leeching room which tripled as the medical bay which quadrupled as the kitchen which pentupled as the Power plex.
"What happens if someone puts the key in the slot?" Ester paused before elaborating. "The one besides the place where the Aether crystals are kept?"
[Spring loaded serrated arrow at the crotch.]
"Thanks!"
[Sh-shut it-t and help me with the Leeching?]
"Nah, you got that"
Muffled and crackled curses echoed from within the engine room as she cycled the leeched water through the convoluted set up bound together by soda cans, hopes and dreams, plastic wrapping, duct tape and metal pipes.
It was a wonder to even the Architects how such a shoddy thing hadn't broken down yet.
The transformer lit up with life as he shut its shell around the new Aether Battery, the tip of the Scribe now gleaming with a blue light.
Flexing all ten of his fingers, Ester pondered as he raised the small device to the light.
Of the multitude of things required for them to escape this place, a compass that always points towards celestial bodies was a crucial item to not get lost in the Deep dark void of space once they make their eventual escape.
Now, it was technically viable to just leave the compass as is for spatial navigation, but if Ester was satisfied with what he had, then he wouldn't have begun the plan to leave this bloody place.
And in the words of an Old man now long gone from this world. "Everything in this universe has a unique astral signature that the Architects use to distinguish the idiots from the rocks."
"But, just because the idiots all have unique astral signatures doesn't mean that the idiots don't have similarities that we can't identify using the right tools for the job."
"So now that I answered your idiotic question, get the Void out of my way before I clock your idiotic head with my hammer."
Looking back at it now, Ester didn't know why he found the past so nostalgic.
Tilting his head at the slight question, Ester shook his head and returned to the task at hand.
Modifying the compass to take in Astral Signatures other than just Celestial bodies.
'Now what the Void was the scheme for that Ward again?'
Holding up the round bead the size of his head, the flickering lamp light cast shadows on the roughly hewn surface dotted with portions where force was used to tear it away from where it was welded.
He was careful with its extraction, but there was only so much he could do when it was made from disgustingly cheap metal forged with similarly cheap methods.
Void below, now that he was looking at it properly, it was rife with inefficiency everywhere he looked.
Furrowing his brows, he tapped the turned off Glyph scribe against the table, pondering the best way to perform the warding.
With how poorly made it was, it seemed better to just extract the core of the compass and move it to something better, he really only needed the core after all.
He paused.
'I actually can do that, can't I? Moving the core.'
When he was practicing ward schemes using scrap metal and oil pencils to the point of Warding even in his dreams, things like this shell would sometimes appear when he desired to do some more complicated warding.
Practice shells so to speak.
And since the only thing that the shell needed to do was read the data being transmitted by the core, he only needed to make a few modifications.
His right arm hissed with pneumatics as he instinctively flexed both of his hands, the modifications well on the way as he used the multitude of tools around him.
And when that was done, all he needed to do now was to transfer the compass's core from the old shell to the new one.
A task that was most dangerous due to the material the core was made from.
'Hooo...' Ester let out a long calm and controlled breath, his rapidly beating heart slowing down to a more manageable pace.
Tapping at the shell, the access port gave way to locks which gave way to the actual core contained on the inside of the machine.
A gravitator rock.
Found in the accretion disks of blackholes, these small black rocks were attuned to the nearest non blackhole celestial body, and was the key material for the creation of space capable compasses.
It had the downside of pulling in the Aether of its surroundings and inducing Aether sickness in people, but the downsides could be removed as evidenced by the numerous Glyph based protections surrounding the core.
Protections that Ester would have to remove if he wanted to modify the compass to start locking onto other things besides planets.
Even Eva who was currently in the Engines purifying their water supply wouldn't be spared by the resulting pull if he removed the protections.
'I really wish I just had to use a normal bloody compass instead of this thing.'
Ester felt the sound of his heartbeat sharpen in his ears as he grimaced and forcefully pushed down all the horrible thoughts that would happen if he failed in this endeavor.
*Slap!
He slapped the sides of his neck, a sharpness that wasn't present before appearing in his eyes as he glared at the Gravitator.
'Fuck it, the best we can hope for is not dying right now and the worst we can pray against is the loss of our mortal lives after an agonizing death. No pressure'
No pressure.
'No. Pressure.'
Ester took in a deep breath and felt his raging heartbeat slow its rampage within his chest, his shaking hands stabilizing as he tapped on the table one last time.
Then he began.
Tearing the hole wider and wider so that he would have free reign, his left hand reached into the shell and pulled back just as quickly as the protections flickered with warning.
Opting to use his right hand, the metal limb grasped at the protections as they flickered angrily, sparks incessantly striking at his hand which lit up with the same protective glyphs on its surface.
Bringing it out, Ester grinned as he his left hand made of flesh and bone grasped the scribe and confidently drew in broad sharp strokes against the surface of the Gravitator.
Too fast and the flow of Aether was prone to waste, too slow and the entire thing would unravel.
The key was finding just the right speed, something that Ester was confident in doing as he drew out the Ward zones
Although raw Glyphs would work fine in doing what their shapes desired, ward zones were ways to focus the energy in the ways and areas that he desired. And what Ester desired was to form the perfect cage to do his work.
Ester clicked the Glyph scribe to conserve what little Aether they had only to unlock it a moment later as he formed more and more glyphs within the much larger one he had initially drawn.
*Click Click
Glyphs as a whole were cyclical in nature, requiring at least one cycle for it to function, if it had no Cycles but remained a spanning tree, it wouldn't be a Glyph but an Astra
*Click Click
And since Astra would only be able to work in relatively pure environments, the heavily polluted environment of this trash planet prevented Astra from any sort from working.
*Click Click
And since Astra just don't work here, Warding was the path that Ester took.
'That Old man is only useful for his knowledge.' Thinking that as he established all of the Ward zones, he began to work on the sub zones.
Sub zones, similar in function to ward zones, were designated areas where Glyphs could extend their influence.
*Click Thump
A difference from Ward zones however, is that Sub zones were always placed inside ward zones.
*Thump Click
As an additional zone inside the Ward zone, it affects the main glyph. If Restraint is the main with a sub Enhance, the Restraint is enhanced and vice versa.
*Click Thump
Ester felt his heart beat loudly in his chest as his mind raced with thoughts on how to best manage the effects of the numerous glyphs falling into the Ward scheme
*Thump Thump
When a Ward zone sets, the only ways to break it were threefold.
Cutting off the power supply, creating a Reverse Ward and Breaking it apart forcefully.
*Click Click
The first had already been taken thanks to the poor quality of the Ambient Aether, and currently Ester was taking the second path. Which reminded him.
'Need to adapt the Reverse Ward to low Aether conditions.'
With the Reverse ward being a reversed copy of the Protection Ward, he needed to make sure that the reverse ward didn't guzzle down the surrounding Aether as inefficiently as its cousin.
*Thump Thump
His mechanical right hand shivered as Runic warnings of low power reached his mind. 'It seems that the protections are already failing.' Ester thought as a drop of cold sweat rolled down the side of his head.
Abandoning the Reverse scheme he was drawing, the numerous curved lines dissipated into the atmosphere, subtly brightening his surroundings.
Not much point in countering something that was slowly being destroyed by the Gravitator eating more Aether than the protections can take from the atmosphere.
*Click Click
Briefly brightening as the dissipating Aether was pulled in, Ester formed brand new protections around the Gravitator, using the few moments he had before it finally broke down.
Twisting the Gravitator around, he moved to make the final touches.
Then blood spurted out of his hands like sweat.
*Thump Thump
'Now I know what it feels like to have your internal Aether forcefully taken away from you.'
Steadying his shaking hands now slick with blood sweat, Ester grimaced at how in the smallest moment when the old protections broke apart and his own was just setting in, the Gravitator reached out and pulled at the surrounding Aether.
It just was that his Aether was included in all of that surrounding Aether.
Watching the lights of the glyphs flicker as the Aether powering them were sapped clean every time the Gravity core undulated, Ester wiped the blood off of his palms.
'Now it's crunch time.'
With little time to waste, Ester grabbed the scribe and clicked its end, lighting up the crystal bit with blue light.
*Click Click
+++
Tree that wants to prune their leaves without the threat of decapitation