The Golemancers Pet Project : The Repurposed Lava Elemental.

Edda sighed quietly as she eased herself back into her chair, looking over the mess that constituted her desk, and her work for the day. There wasn’t much “official” work for her, so she had resigned herself to passing the time writing in her notebook, and preparing possible upgrades for MINI. Before her lay a large diagram of her sentient golemite, showing every detail of it with meticulous care. There were a few minor changes she had planned for MINI, but nothing that would change its basic structure, at least for the moment that is. Edda couldn’t help but smile proudly at the drawing, then turned to glance over her shoulder, preparing to speak to her creation, and friend, but would be disappointed with a reality check. There was no ever-present MINI next to her, no reassuring golemite to approve or disapprove of what she had planned for it. No, all that greeted her was empty space, and the grim reminder that MINI was somewhere else, for its own safety, and for hers.Edda’s crystal-white eyes lowered, and she leant back in her chair, staring into the distance with a grim, saddened look as she thought over recent events. A pallid melancholy descended on the office as she simply sat there, deep in thought. She sighed once more, her shoulders and ears sagging as she looked down to stare at her hands, and remained in this position for so long that one would have been forgiven for thinking she had suddenly turned to stone. When she finally did move, it was merely to curl her hands up into fists, then to look over to a small plaque that was placed on her wall. It was a simple thing, showing a boat, as well as, at least for most, a cryptic message. Edda, however, knew exactly what was on there, and who it was meant for. After looking at this, she got a new sparkle in her eyes, and she hopped on to her feet with new energy. She gave the office one more look-over, before taking long strides to walk into the already online Asura Gate behind her.Her whole face went from it’s concerned, stress-ridden visage, to a look of calm and relaxation when she felt the chilly, musty air of her lab replace the humid heat of Maguuma, causing her to smile even more as she looked over it. Her ears perked up a little as she slowly walked down the steps towards the center, her eyes easily adjusting to the stark, bright blue light from her many holographic screens and interfaces.“S-190, stop all incoming calls and messages for the remainder of the night...make that the remainder of the week. Give the formal excuse if need be.” She stated calmly, with a new, more sure tone of voice than anyone inside or outside of the Krewe would have heard her speak. From out of nowhere, a Feminine voice replied with a prompt “Affirmative”, then a low hum resonated through the windowless room. Various consoles that had previously been offline, started up, bathing the lab in their light, and giving Edda a blue-tinge to her stark white features. She didn’t seem bothered by this really, as she went over to the one interface, and began to type on it. After a while, this typing morphed into drawing, and a shape, much like a wolf or jackal, began to take shape on the screen. She gave a satisfied nod when she finished with this, and went over to the side of her enormous machinery, where a primitive elevator stood. As she got on it, the elevator groaned from months of disuse, and began its ascent to the top of the machinery. Edda didn’t stop moving though, as her true destination was a box that stood to the side, filled to the brim with diamond shaped blocks. She knelt beside it carefully, then began to unpack them, handling each of them with such care that one would think they were made of the most fragile glass in existence. The elevator shuddered to a stop once it got to the top, causing her to get up, and turn to face a large stasis pod of some kind. It’s kinetic barrier slowly faded away, revealing what looked like an enormous lava-elemental, which was thankfully not active. In it’s dormant state, it was merely a large, shapeless mass of blackened rock the size and shape of half of the stasis pod, to which it had molded itself to.Edda looked this over, narrowing her eyes for a moment before getting a smile, and glancing to her holographic arm console. She turned it on slowly, feeling no need to rush as she began to put in various commands, turning to face the many blocks on the ground as she did so.“Alright kids...you know what to do.” She murmured softly, an excited look on her face as she put in the last of the commands. At first, there was absolutely no change in the blocks. Then, they all began to glow, and in a sluggish manner, started to rise up into the air. They formed a loose cloud, floating gracefully as they slowly began to circle her, but not in any way or form as if to try and scare her. Rather, it was like they were trying to comfort her in some way. Edda got a whimsical smile as she cautiously held out her hand, and one of them slowed down enough that it rested on her hand. It’s intricate flight system warmed her hand a little as it hovered over it, and the cube spun a little in place. She merely smirked at it, then very slowly raised her hand up into the air, signaling for it to join the others. It heeded her unspoken command, and flew off her hand to join the rest of it’s brethren.The moment it had disappeared into the cloud of probes, the whole cloud rose up a little, then flew over to the Massive cylinder of rock, settling over it like flies. Thin, almost unperceivable pinpricks of light appeared over the surfaces facing the rock, then pencil-thin, blue lasers shot out of the probes, cutting into the rock with both patience and precision that most, if not all, would have struggled to achieve. Once they had cut out the desired shape, a small stasis field surrounded them and the object they had cut out, and the probes in question would rise into the air with their quarry in tow, allowing the other probes that had hung back to go in and do their own duties.While all of this was happening, Edda went back down to the ground floor, mentally gathering a list of items she would need. Her movements while gathering the items was fluid, and unhindered, as if she had finally entered a place that she truly felt at ease in. She dragged enormous rolls of wire-with heat resistant insulation covering them-to the elevator with great difficulty, before going over to the one table. Before her lay many cores, all of them with different shapes and sizes, but they all possessed one characteristic in common. All of them glowed with an unearthly, almost volcanic red light emanating from deep inside of them. She merely looked them over, then strode over to the one box in a corner, taking out incredibly thick gloves, and donning them, before making her way back to the same table. She moved these cores from the table, to a thin slab of rock, before pulling it on to the elevator as well, making sure that none of them rolled off and got on to it by accident. She paused for a moment after all this hard work, breathing heavily as she tried to catch her breathe. It took merely a moment for her to do so, before she stood up straight, and pressed the button that would make the elevator go up once more.Once up there, she was greeted by a seemingly hopeless sight. The Probes had cut out the chunks in a seemingly haphazard manner, various chunks having been ripped out of the original elemental, all of them being held in the air by multiple probes, giving the impression that an explosion had been frozen in time. From a distance, some more probes joined these, holding aloft chunks that had odd niches carved into them at regular intervals. Edda seemed unfazed by this seemingly hopeless mess. In fact, she seemed excited by it as she walked into the mass of rocks slowly.“What do you even see in these...useless piles of junk?” She heard a familiar voice in her ear. No, not someone in her lab, more a memory, so crystal clear, so firmly imprinted in her mind that she heard the voice resonate against the walls. She merely smiled to herself as she remembered her answer to this question.
“I don’t see what they are right now. I see what they could be.”With these words echoing through her very being, like the rejuvenating Mantra of a Guardian, she set to work.Minutes turned to hours as she worked with otherworldly patience, placing cores into the carefully hewn niches, and with great care running wiring between various chunks of rock, or even through them. Every so often she would stop, and step out from the mass of rock, either to order the probes in question to slowly come together to see if she had received the result she was looking for, or, it was simply to stop for the day and get some much needed rest. In turn, the day rolled past with great velocity. She seemed unphased by this, as she went from working on the construct, to working on a thin circlet, installing a bright yellow crystal in the center of it. Finally, the end of the week-long project arrived, and she stepped away from the circlet with a satisfied look. It was not very eye-catching. Merely a simple gold circlet, with a bright topaz crystal in the center, and two even larger orbs flanking it. She picked these up carefully, and made her way to the elevator slowly, hoping that this will be the last “needed” trip that she would have to make up to the construct. The elemental had finally taken shape, looking like a shattered Elonian statue, held aloft merely by the help of the probes and their stasis field. She walked over to what would have constituted as its head, and carefully placed the orbs into the “eyes”, it being the only color that broke the monotony of black that made up the creature. Her eyes lingered over these crystals, staring into them with both fascination and intensity, before she looked away. The probes holding it up slowly back up, until the “head” was placed in its correct position.Edda paused as she looked down at the circlet in her hands, as if merely looking at them had paralyzed her. Finally, she broke herself out of her daze with a soft smile, and carefully put it on. Her eyes instantaneously glazed over as the familiar feeling of sharing her own consciousness with another hit her, like a nauseating wave as she fought to make herself stay “herself”, and look through her own eyes. Finally, the connection to the construct was complete, and the yellow orbs glowed with an ominous light. At first, absolutely nothing happened as the elemental was kept aloft by the tight stasis field. Then, thin strands of red light emanates from in between the cracks. This grew in intensity until finally, bright molten rock split from within it, slowly circulating throughout the entire creatures body. Thin plates of blackened, cooled rock signified where the cores had been installed, in particular, a thin, saddle-like ridge extended all the way down it’s back. Even with the stasis field keeping it in place, heat radiated off of it in dangerous amounts, blackening the top of the stone slab underneath it. She swore that she could feel the “eyes” of the elemental watching her with it’s own, malicious light as lava flowed all over its face, yet stayed away from where it’s eyes were.“Now...the moment of truth” She said quietly to herself, and looked down at her console. She slowly put in a set of commands, then looked up to once more resume her staring contest with the creature. One by one, the probes began to shut down their stasis fields, and floated away, only to shut themselves off properly. The creature remained unmoving, but a wave of heat hit Edda with force. She grimaced slightly at the sudden wave of heat, but remained where she was.After a moment, however, the elemental seemed to sag a little, causing Edda to gain a look of concern. Was the heat within this creature simply too much for it's shape to bear? She winced a little, anticipating it to just lose it's form all together. Instead, she would be shocked to see it's sagging to redouble on itself, and the construct merely went back to how it looked. It took watching this happen a few times for Edda to realize exactly what was going on.The elemental was breathing.Edda looked at it with a slow smile of triumph, then, very cautiously took off the circlet. Her vision instantly swam as the connection was lost, and the elemental, now starved of it’s control, sat down, and bowed its head. After just a moment, the construct was once more a slab of solid rock, looking like an elegantly carved Elonian statue. Edda merely looked it over with satisfaction, then gave a soft, hoarse laugh.“S-190...new data log.” She spoke quietly as she went up to the construct, and rested her head against its head. “New Lava-Elemental construct, dubbed Facemauler Alpha is a success….what a success it is!” She grinned at it with triumph, but turned it into a soft smile, before turning away from the Construct to make her way out of her lab, and back to the world outside.