Riana Maren
The Dream's End
Sufficient time had passed such that Riana was now feeling confident about how she wished to proceed with the construction of the next phase of her grand, sweeping plan to visit the cosmos. For many people, such thoughts were idle fits of fancy, where the unfocused dreamer could simply want to be out amongst the stars in a way that meant that they'd only ever see them as distant, glittering gems that could never truly be attained under the auspice of mortal power. For those with the means and the will, the stars were little more than a stepping stone to bigger, greater things. This was an inevitability for the Pergrandian scientist, if truth be told. Ever since the day her lacrima had simply fallen from the heavens themselves, she had always known that the firmament of the heavens would be her ultimate goal and the one driving truth that meant she would evermore be able to reach her dreams. She would attain the power of the stars for herself. Would she be the only one from Earthland to reach such lofty heights? Likely not. She harbored no illusion that there would only be one space-travelling mage, manipulating the ethernano of the universe. Rumours were afoot that more than one of Fiore's guilds were employing extraterrestrial technologies of some sort, and she was loath to consider that she would be the first. However, with all things being equal, she planned on joining them in their interstellar conquests or travels, though in her own way - she wished not the powers of whole guilds, merely to be able to master her own abilities and knowledge and see places both near and far, removed from the mortal coil that held back so many of her kin.
However, to make such preparations, there was an infinite amount of work that was required to be completed, given that this was a task of such magnitude that most mortal minds simply could not comprehend the vastness of its scale. She would need three things to complete this task, all of which she now had - in theory. First, she would need a vessel suitable for bearing her across the universe, where its ability to travel great distances would make visiting distant stars a reality. Secondly, such a vessel would need a method of conveying itself those great distances, for modern Earthland technology did not have the ability to move at such high speeds - speeds that, realistically, exceeded the known speed of light. Thirdly, she would need somewhere to go. Some sort of reference point, a place in deep space where she knew precisely the location and could move to it without the interference of other stellar bodies in the way. This was the hardest thing, for she had never left Earthland in order to locate such a point in the depths of the aether. With that being the case, she was going to have to work even harder in order to prepare herself for the great journey that was about to commence. It was going to be arduous work, of that there was no doubt, for acquiring all three of these things were a necessity in order for Riana to complete her lifelong goal.
Except for the fact that she already had all three of these things, of course.
The idea of completing her life's work was something that Riana relished with every fibre of her being. Over the last few months she had toiled, strained and struggled to complete something that, when finished, would change the entire trajectory her life had been travelling on up until this point - this was a scientific marvel that her hands would be responsible for. Or, to put it entirely more accurately, that the mechanical hands she had built would be responsible for. There was no denying the fact that she could have never begun to do this with the drawbacks and limitations of the frail physical form that she had been gifted with - but with a mind that keen, it was all too simple to have the mechanical monstrosities at her command complete the task that she bade them do. As such, somewhat recently, she had sliced herself open in order to access all of the data held within the lacrima of the primordial mechanical monstrosity that had gifted her the power to manipulate metal and electricity. In that had been all three of those pieces of the puzzle. First, the vessel - or at least an outlay of the vessels his people had used before all of them had perished under his failed rule, which gave her the blueprints she needed in order to craft a spacefaring ship of her own design.
Secondly, the ability to cross great distances had been under her nose the entire time. It was a strange, twisted reflection of the ability of requip magic - and what was highly advanced technology other than magic that was finally understood? Quantum entanglement and displacement had been the key, after all. Requip magic allowed an item to be held elsewhere in a separate storage dimension and summoned to the user - and when quantum entanglement dictated that an item could be in one of two states until it was observed, forcing that observation allowed an item to exist and not exist. Controlling that reaction was the harder thing, but with a little push and some magically-charged energy to allow for the modification of requip magic types, then the device itself had been devised. Such was its essence was that the device was huge - in theory, provided Riana had sufficient power to shunt into the quantum displacement device, then she could have transported an item whose limits approached infinity. In this case, with her magical power, she could displace an item kilometres large. It would be exhausting, certainly, but as long as she found a way to power the banks of her magic, she would be sufficiently happy to do so.
Finally, the last piece had been the key within the lacrima itself. The long-dead mechanical king had left the location of his homeworld in the lacrima, as a last will and testament for those who wished to come searching, and see for themselves the repercussions of the power they were now wielding. Riana knew that she would, inevitably, need to travel to this world and learn what secrets it held. While it would likely be one of the first non-Earthland locations she visited at this point, the sheer fact that tshe now knew that this was a planet overrun by technology only to the detriment of its ruler made it an interesting relic. Perhaps there was something worth salvaging, or even long-lost knowledge that she might have been able to pluck from the depths of dead cores, if the millennia had not aged them too horrifically. Ideally, in a perfect world, even a single scrap of advanced knowledge would propel her studies forward in ways that none of the Pergrandian scholars that she was about to eclipse could even begin to dream of.
Thus, the task began in earnest. First, the vessel needed to be constructed in secret. While it would be simple to move herself to space and commence the oepration, it wouldbe far easier and less taxing on her magical reserves to do it here under gravity, in a purpose-built docking bay. First, a room of sufficient size needed to be carved away, meaning that it would have to be underground. Such being the task, Riana spent the very first day of this gargantuan build creating not a mechanical part of the starship she dreamed, but an excavation robot - one that could be crafted in a room under the castle of her own creation. Shifting herself a few hundred metres under the mountain, Riana created the excavation robot and gave it simple instructions: one room, five hundred metres long and wide, and two hundred metres tall. This would give her sufficient room to create the starship imagined in her dreams. Once done, she could turn the reins over to SOFI, so that it could excavate in peace. A second robot would need to be created, of course, to remove the dirt carved, but even that was a simple thing. After all, she was a master of constructs, and could create them at will. Two robots of such type were child's play at this point. And, while they worked, she planned and prepared for the great build that was about to be upon her. Diagrams and schematics were drawn up in software, such that she could understand innately exactly what it was that she would craft with her own hands. She built something to help her with this - a larger, portable data core for SOFI to interact with, as a temporary device to allow her to alleviate some of the work.
A week passed before the stone chamber was ready for her. Once the ship was built, she would offer it as a secret bunker to the guild, presumably. However, as she could teleport to and from it with impunity now that the chasm had been crafted, she prepared herself for what was to come. The difficulty of this task was the sheer fact that while she could create constructs at will, they still required sufficient magical reserves correlating to the size of the task - and this was not a small construct. This was beyond the size and scope of what most mages would have considered reasonable. This was a small city she was creating. Therefore, the task would need to be split into multiple parts. Construction drones would be taking some of the labour away - two of which were the other robots reassembled and repurposed to this task, of course - all controlled from the portable data core, doing work on the vessel as she rested and rejuvenated her aether.
So began the tiring work of building a mighty starship. The first day was simple: build the structural frame of the vessel. The second was when the work began in earnest; her ability to control metal meant that she could faithfully re-create entire armour plates made of starsteel, which had been used in the construction of the primordial master's own designs. This was as tough as it came, and she simply created plate, after plate, after plate, for the drones to put into place and weld correctly so that the vessel found its skin. She could create some plates, then take a short nap, and create a few more, ad infinitum. While she was powerful, she was no god. However, by the middle of the third day, she had created all of the armour of the beast for the drones to weld into place - meaning that she could commence creating the gadgets and machinery of the internal structure. However, napping between piles of metal meant that her sleep schedule was shattered - she was simply taking rest where she could and eating morsels so that her body would sufficiently function, but it was the only thing that needed to be done. This was where time would be required. All the while, SOFI was preparing the software that would be used to operate the ship. And, rightly so, for Riana's first priority was to install the artificial intelligence's new data cores that could process a literal million times more data than current. Once that was in place, more drones could be created to continue the work as she rested, able to be controlled all the time - and thus the burden of command would be lifted from Riana's shoulders so that her masterpiece could be completed.
With the databanks in place, Riana slept for the first time in three days.
The remaining seven days were a flurry of activity. Drones constructed hallways and rooms, placing cabling under deck plates. Riana filled the ship with devices that she would need - a full research laboratory, a stellar cartography laboratory, a self-aware and self-powered engineering bay, the gigantic forward-mounted hangar that would store her constructed assistants, and the quantum displacement device mounted in the forward prongs of the ship. Finally, the viewing bridge, where she could observe the stars from the comfort of her seat and watch the universe move in the sanctity of what was now her new home.
Ten days passed - and there she was. The mighty vessel stood, supported by gantries and cabling, waiting for its master to take its helm and move it out of this rock. SOFI had already sorted stellar coordinates very high over Mount Hakobe, so that the ship's first quantum translation was directly upwards, ready for its maiden voyage. So saying, the ship's captain boarded her vessel through the forward hangar and walked the entire way to the bridge. The gleaming plates of the vessel were shiny and new, and as she walked her way through, almost humanoid robots designed to perform simple janitorial and maintenance task formed the crew of the ship and gave background noise to the ship as if to give it some form of life. This meant that Riana could focus solely on living, ensuring that she had sufficient supplies to stock an interstellar journey, and live comfortably. All of the core functions were near enough to the bridge that they were accessible by the portable quantum teleporter - she selected a location and was brought to it immediately, as was the drive of the vessel.
And now, seated in the command seat of the bridge of the ship, Riana looked at the stone holding her ship and decided it was time to leave.
"SOFI. Prepare for quantum translation."
"Acknowledged. Invicta now entering quantum translation mode." Truthfully, it was strange, but now that SOFI was enshrined in the ship, she now had a physical voice, and not simply one that was available as a distant natter in the back of her mind. It was a positive change. Her feet rested in a specially-designed bracket, that could amplify and channel her magic directly into the magitech conduits of the ship. It was the same technology that was used in her battlesuits and magitech drones, but on a gigantic scale - and now it would be used to teleport a construct kilometres away. Before her, in the front prongs of her ship, mechanisms whirred and came to life, the quantum entanglement machine preparing to undergo its first real test.
"Three."
The red-haired scientist was given a moment of pause, to reflect. Everything she had done with this technology was leading to this moment. This was the moment of truth.
"Two."
She waited with bated breath. Of course she was confident in this technology. She had perfected the ability to translate the lacrima's knowledge, and this was wholly faithful to that understanding. Nothing would go wrong.
"One."
The time was now. The dream would end, and become the greatest reality. Riana shut her eyes, and willed her magic into the heart of her monster.
"Quantum translation."
Her eyes fluttered open. All around her, through the transparisteel viewport of the Invicta-class star battlecruiser, were the glimmering lights of distant stars. Below them, Earthland floated, little more than a distant memory at this range. The sun, beautiful and shining, was visible in the viewport to the rear, and smaller stellar bodies like the moon or the rest of the solar system were closer than ever before, shining with their respective colours.
The dream had ended, and a small smile formed on her lips, barely able to contain her excitement, void of emotion as she usually was. This was her first step to claiming the stars, and she had taken it with pride.
MEL @ WW
