Chapter 219: The Strange Machine
Aveline stepped off the last stone stair and into the underground chamber.
The basement had been carved directly into the bedrock beneath the Arcanum. Rough stone walls stretched into the shadows, lined with shelves overflowing with books, rolled parchments, glass vessels, curious minerals, coils of copper wire, gears, polished rods, and countless metal pieces whose purpose she could not begin to guess.
Every workbench was cluttered with half-finished contraptions, as though their creator had simply abandoned one idea to chase another before either could be completed.
Her gaze drifted to the center of the chamber.
There, mounted upon a heavy stone platform, stood the largest creation of them all.
A framework of dark metal rose in overlapping rings around a thick cylindrical core. Interlocking wheels meshed with finely crafted cogs, while polished rods connected one section to another in ways that suggested movement, though the entire construct stood perfectly still. Thick pipes disappeared into its base, and delicate coils of engraved metal wound around its frame like vines embracing an ancient tree.
It looked neither like a magical artifact nor any forge she had ever seen.
It was simply... Strange.
Aveline slowly walked around it, her eyes drinking in every detail.
"...What is this?" she asked softly.
Behind her, Lucien folded his arms across his chest.
For perhaps the first time since she’d met him, he looked less like an eccentric old scholar and more like a craftsman standing before the work of his lifetime.
A quiet pride settled across his weathered face.
"I’ve been building it," he said, unable to hide the satisfaction in his voice, "for ages."
Aveline circled the strange contraption slowly, her fingertips hovering just above the cold metal without quite touching it.
The longer she looked... The stranger it became. Some of its parts felt...
Familiar.
Her brows slowly knitted together.
No... Not familiar. They felt remembered.
A dull ache bloomed behind her temples.
She frowned and leaned a little closer, studying one of the engraved metal rings.
The ache sharpened. She pressed her fingers on her temples and squinted her eyes.
Then... she saw...
A wall of stone slid open with a deep, grinding rumble.
A narrow tunnel stretched into darkness, lit only by flickering torches fixed to its walls. The air smelled of warm metal, soot, and oil.
*Clang*
A heavy hammer struck steel.
*Clang*
Again.
Again.
The rhythmic sound echoed through the corridor.
Her breathing caught.
The chamber around her seemed to dissolve, replaced by another workshop—larger, warmer, alive with the glow of fire.
There was a machine.
Not identical to this one... But unmistakably born from the same idea.
Someone was bent over its open frame, his hands disappearing into its intricate heart as he adjusted something hidden within.
"...Almost..."
The man chuckled softly to himself.
Then, as though sensing her presence, he turned.
Warm eyes... A gentle smile...
"...Aveline?"
His face brightened.
"How did my baby get here?"
***Gah***
A sharp gasp tore from her lips.
The vision shattered. Aveline stumbled backward, her knees nearly giving way beneath her. Her heart hammered against her ribs.
The underground chamber returned all at once.
The cold stone.
The shelves.
Lucien.
The strange machine.
Her ears rang until she could barely hear herself breathe.
She clutched at her head, staring at the contraption before her with wide, trembling eyes.
"...What..."
Her voice barely escaped her lips.
"What... were those memories?"
Lucien never noticed the color draining from Aveline’s face. His entire attention remained fixed upon the machine.
"It still isn’t finished," he murmured, almost to himself as he circled the towering contraption. "Everything else is there... every gear, every axle, every calculation."
He rested a weathered hand against the cool metal.
"It needs only one thing." His fingers lingered on the engraved frame. "A source powerful enough to awaken it."
A wistful smile crossed his face.
"The day I find it..." His eyes gleamed with a youthful excitement that made him look decades younger.
"...it will finally breathe."
Aveline swallowed, forcing herself to tear her gaze away from the lingering image of her father’s smile.
Her throat felt unbearably dry.
"...What will it do?" she asked.
Lucien laughed. "What won’t it do?"
He spread his arms toward the machine as though introducing an old friend. "Imagine wagons crossing the kingdom without a single horse, ships sailing even when the wind refuses to cooperate, without air and water bending... Water lifted to farms that drought has forgotten, Mines reaching deeper without exhausting hundreds of earth-bending laborers, mills turning day and night without depending upon rivers..."
His voice grew steadier with each possibility.
"Imagine ordinary craftsmen building what only powerful benders can accomplish today."
He looked back at her, his eyes shining.
"With this...the distance between benders and non-benders begins to disappear."
Aveline stared at him. The idea itself felt almost impossible. Greenvale had always taught that magic determined one’s worth. The strong ruled. The weak served. That was simply how the world worked.
Yet this old man... He wanted to change the world itself.
"...Why?" she asked quietly. "You’re one of the strongest fire-benders alive. You’re a high noble. You have nothing to gain and lot to lose."
Lucien fell silent.
For a long moment, only the faint crackle of torches filled the chamber.
Then he smiled.
A small smile.
A nostalgic one.
"Because... I once knew someone who dreamed of exactly the same thing."
Aveline’s heart lurched. "...Someone?"
Lucien nodded. "Years ago, I traveled to Aurelmont. I went looking for my Leveret."
He chuckled softly.
"Back then, everything I’d ever heard about Aurelmont painted it as a land of savages. They said its people lived little better than beasts. They claimed the lack of bending was divine punishment. I believed every word."
His smile faded.
"Until I met him."
Aveline’s heartbeat echoed loudly in her ears.
"He was young. Far younger than I was. He worked harder than anyone I’d ever met. He was impossibly kind; the sort of man who couldn’t pass a stranger in need without stopping."
Lucien’s eyes drifted to the machine.
"He looked at the world...and refused to accept that it had to remain this way. He believed kingdoms could stand beside one another instead of above one another. He believed people should be judged by the lives they touched...not by the magic they were born with."
Aveline’s chest tightened.
Every word... Felt familiar. Almost painfully so.
It had to be her father.
She knew the kind of man he had been.
He had brought home an orphaned little boy and loved him as though he was his own. That alone was enough to set him apart from every noble she had ever known.
The man Lucien described... It sounded exactly like him.
Aveline slowly lifted her head. "...What’s his—"
The words died on her tongue.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t ask his name.
Her chest tightened until it hurt to breathe.
That vision... The warmth in his smile... The workshop... The machine...
If those had truly been memories...
Then what had happened?
Her father had never spoken of inventions like these.
Had someone erased those memories? Or had she simply forgotten them?
A chill crept down her spine.
If her father had been trying to build something capable of changing the world... Was that why he had been killed?
Her gaze drifted back to the machine standing silently in the middle of the chamber.
What had become of his work after his death?
Why did Lucien possess something so similar?
Questions rose one after another, refusing to leave her in peace.
Did Lucien know her father?
How well?
Had he been his friend... Or something else?
She had believed Lucien kept her close because she was related to his Leveret.
But now...
Was it because of her father?
Was that why he had opened the doors to this hidden laboratory?
Or was there another reason entirely?
For the first time since arriving at the Arcanum, uncertainty settled heavily in her heart. She no longer knew what the truth looked like. Nor whom she should trust.
Across the chamber, Lucien watched her patiently, still waiting for her to finish the question she’d almost asked.
Aveline drew a slow breath.
She wasn’t ready.
Not yet.
"...Did you ever find your Leveret?" she asked instead.