“Don’t you want to say goodbye to Vanessa or Silver?” Lilian asked as she hurried to follow Angel out of his room.

“No,” Angel replied. “Drawn out goodbyes are horrible. I’m more than satisfied with the one we had after arriving here. She’s in good hands now, and Silver is probably having the time of his life getting paid to beat her up. If we’re meant to meet again, then we will.”

They stepped out onto the burnished red and black streets and started towards the entrance of the city. Angel peered into shop windows as they passed, mentally cataloguing any artifacts or machinery he spotted.

He’d already given the city a quick tour to check if there was anything of particular interest, but he hadn’t found anything that wasn’t present in the other cities. From what he’d gathered talking to people, anything worthwhile was stored within the academy.

“If I recall correctly, Stormpoint is about a week’s travel,” Angel said.

“Eight days,” Lilian confirmed. “So long as it’s a straight trip without any difficulties.”

“Now that you’ve said that, we’re going to have difficulties,” Angel grumbled. “I’ve already got us covered on supplies, though.”

He pulled out a bag packed full of jerky and hardtack, tossing it to Lilian before handing her a water skin. She stuffed them into her own travel pack with a small frown.

“Before you even asked if I wanted to come?”

“You’d hung around the city so long doing nothing that I figured you’d show up one way or another,” Angel said. “And if you hadn’t, I’d just feed it to my new system artifact.”

“It can eat?”

“Well, not yet,” Angel said. “I’ve got some plans of an energy converter that look promising. I’m missing a few key patterns of Old World magic to make it work exactly how I want it to, so I don’t know exactly how long it’ll take. Luckily, I’m pretty sure this jerky will outlive the both of us combined if nobody eats it.”

He pulled out a strip, rapping it against his wrist for effect. It made a dull, unappetizing thud. Lilian curled a lip in distaste. “I suppose so. How much energy can you really harvest from food, though?”

“Never said it was exclusively for food,” Angel said, removing a monster core from his bag.

“You’re going to feed it cores?”

“Why not?” Angel said. “Better a converter than me. I get all the benefits of Cowl’s power without actually eating cores myself. Once was more than enough for me.”

“It won’t be permanent unless you somehow make it an implant that directly connects to your body’s magical energy,” Lilian said, shaking her head. “And that’s just as hard as repairing my sickness. You can’t make a relic level tool to, what, feed your system artifact beef jerky?”

“Sure I can,” Angel said. “That’s the fun part of not being an official Tinkerer. I can do whatever I damn well please, because I don’t follow half the worthless rules they made up in the first place.”

Lilian harrumphed. “It’s worked for the last few hundred years.”

“Which is why most of the world is still a deadly wasteland,” Angel said with a sarcastic eye roll. “There have been improvements in magic, but they haven’t been what they could be. There’s so much more, just waiting to be discovered.”

“Please don’t give me an Old World magic speech,” Lilian begged. “You’ll sound like Reave.”

Angel’s eyebrow rose slightly. Then he chuckled and gave her a shrug. “I suppose it’s best to not sound like him.”

They passed through the city gates, giving the guards a small nod before activating their artifacts and speeding off into the desert. Wind whipped past Angel’s face, cooling him as the merciless sun bore down overhead.

Impassive, the desert watched on as the two traveled. They didn’t stop until the sun finally started to dip below the horizon. The two took solace in the lengthening shadow of a tall rock outcropping, setting out their gear.

Angel flopped down and pulled out a metal orb – one of the three artifacts Vanessa had gotten from the bandit barge, not the system artifact. He hadn’t given this particular artifact much attention yet, but now that he’d figured out the first disk, he had some extra mind space.

He turned it over in his left hand, mentally matching the Old World magic with his own knowledge. To his disappointment, he already knew just about everything it did. The artifact was little more than a fancy toy.

Angel sent a spark of magic into the orb, which lit up with a faint green light. Lilian raised an eyebrow.

“Already had that one figured out?”

“No. It’s just nothing particularly interesting,” Angel replied. “If I hadn’t been so distracted, I would have given this a look earlier. I just got caught up with things and honestly ended up forgetting.”

“It’s just a light. Might be worth a few Vex I suppose.” He tossed the orb to Lilian. “Your mental map is a lot more effective than what I’ve memorized and can deduce from the stars. What direction are we headed in?”

Lilian nodded over her shoulder. “That way. We might be able to make it in a bit less than a week if we really push it.”

“Do we need to?” Angel asked. “I thought you had three left.”

“Are you that confident you can completely cure me within two weeks?” Lilian asked.

“For a woman that was waiting around to die a day ago, you’re surprisingly worried about surviving,” Angel said, grinning. “If the knowledge I need is in the Reawakening’s old haunt, then it won’t take me more than a week. If it isn’t, then there’s nothing I can do.”

“Most people would be a little less blunt about it.”

“Would you prefer I lied?” Angel asked, catching the orb as Lilian tossed it back to him. “I put on my suave face when I’m interacting with merchants and liars. I prefer to speak to my friends honestly.”

Lilian blinked. Then she gave him a small nod. “Honesty is better.”

“Don’t worry,” Angel said. “Given how obsessed the Reawakening is with Old World magic, it’s highly likely that they’ll have something. Again, I’m just missing a few key pieces. But, just in case it isn’t…”

He pulled out a strip of leather and unfurled it on the sand, revealing a roughly drawn map. It was covered with rough dots that marked the position of the stars, and a circle had been etched into a location near the bottom of a sand dune with several rock outcroppings surrounding it.

“What’s that?” Lilian asked.

“I stopped by a cartographer shop before leaving Molten Ridges,” Angel grinned, pressing his finger to the circle. “This is a catacomb. Recently discovered and directly in our way to the Reawakening’s old headquarters.”

“You want to go delving in a catacomb?” Lilian asked. “That seems like a waste of time, given the current situation.”

“Who knows,” Angel replied with a shrug. “But it’s on the way, and it cost me a good amount of coin to get this. It only went up on the market yesterday after a merchant watched it swallow half of his caravan. Nice and fresh.”

Lilian frowned. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Do you happen to know what his caravan was carrying?”

A grin stretched across Angel’s face. “Canisters prepped to power a blimp. Expensive and rare enough to warrant a retrieval crew. Unfortunately, I believe they’ll be making it there a day behind us, so long as the cartographer keeps his promise. I sure paid him enough to.”

“You think you can use those canisters to keep me alive longer?” Lilian asked.

“Almost certainly,” Angel said. “It’ll be incredibly inefficient, but those things have enough energy in them to blow up a small town if you harnessed it right. It’ll be a good failsafe.”

“Right,” Lilian agreed. “We’ll do it, then. And… thank you.”

“Of course,” Angel said. “I’ll do what I can to keep you alive. Just expect my bill in the telegram once I’ve saved you. My work doesn’t come cheap.”

They both laughed. After a few more minutes of conversation, he wrapped himself up in his blanket, letting Lilian take first watch as he drifted off to sleep.