No sooner than he got back and started to open the door did Alison sprint down the hallway carrying a small barrel with both arms. She skidded to a stop, nearly tripping and falling flat on her face before Angel caught her.

“I got the oil,” Alison said through gasps for air, holding it out with trembling arms. Angel bit back a laugh and took it from her.

“I didn’t think you’d get it that fast.”

“Oh, I – I’m sorry,” Alison stammered, her face falling. “I thought –”

“I was surprised, not scolding you,” Angel said, holding his free hand up. He propped the door open with his back and gestured with his chin for Alison to walk inside the workshop. “Go on, then. I’m about to work.”

Her eyes lit up and she darted inside. Angel followed after her. He set the barrel down beside the desk and sat down. There weren’t any other chairs in the workshop.

“Sorry,” Angel said. “I need to sit while I work, and it doesn’t look like Daliah included a chair for anyone else. I’ll ask someone to get one.”

“No, it’s okay!” Alison held her hands up as if he would banish her from the room if she didn’t have a seat. “I can stand and watch.”

Angel shrugged. He bent over and pressed his metal fingers into the lip of the oil barrel, prying the top open with a clean motion. Brilliant blue liquid greeted him. It was more viscous than water, and faint blue smoke rose up from it.

“That’s the good stuff,” Angel said, then glanced at the System artifact floating over his shoulder. “Right, Blue?”

The orb scanned the barrel and Alison bit back a yelp.

“It is high quality oil,” Blue said. “It should be adequate for your purposes.”

“Perfect,” Angel said. His arm melted open, revealing the empty canister near his shoulder. He popped it open, then frowned. “Alison, could you grab me something I could use as a cup from the shelf over there?”

Alison nodded so fast that Angel thought her head might fly off. She scampered over to the shelf, scanning it and choosing a broken endcap.

“This’ll work. Thank you,” he said, taking it from her. He scooped the oil into the canister, taking care not to accidentally spill it on himself. He didn’t want to know what made it glow bright blue, but something told him it probably wouldn’t be coming out of his clothes or skin anytime soon.

He managed to complete the surgery without redecorating himself. The arm melted back shut and he gave it a test wiggle. The entire new system wasn’t particularly heavy, and it didn’t seem to throw his balance off at all.

“That handles the cooling,” Angel muttered to himself. “I think some better vents would be good as well, so I’ll do those next.”

He thought for a few moments, then paused as a thought struck him. He sent a command to his arm, telling it to use Liquid Metal to modify the runes he’d made for the vents. Something at the back of his shoulder rippled.

Angel craned his neck trying to see if it had worked, but he couldn’t get a good look at it. He frowned and rubbed his chin. “Is there a mirror anywhere?”

“I’ve got one in my room,” Alison volunteered, staring at his arm in awe. “I could go get it for you, Master Angel.”

“Just Angel, please,” Angel said. “I’m no master. But a mirror would be apprecia–”

She was out the door before he could finish. It swung shut behind her with a dull thud and Angel chuckled.

“Well, at least she’s excited,” Angel said.

“Or terrified,” Blue put in.

“Do you even know what terrified means?”

There was no response to that. Angel decided that someday soon, once his arm was back up and working, he’d figure out exactly just how much intelligence his System artifact had.

Alison showed up a few minutes later, a small hand mirror clutched in her hand. Angel took it from her with a word of thanks and held it behind himself, twisting so he could get a better look.

“This is incredible,” Angel muttered. The runes around the vents had completely changed according to what he’d pictured in his head. There were a few mistakes that he fixed as soon as he saw them, but the Liquid Metal ability was far more precise than he’d thought.

“Star Fragments are concentrated magic,” Blue chimed merrily. “It is only logical for their effects to be profound.”

“Yeah, that makes sen – wait, what?” Angel sputtered, realizing what the artifact had said. “You know what a Star Fragment is?”

“Yes.”

Angel glanced at Alison. She was watching them in rapt attention, taking in every word. Blue had already spilled the beans, so it was probably too late to hide it from her. Then again, it wasn’t like she knew exactly what it was either.

“You have a Star Fragment?” Alison asked, her eyes going wide.

Scratch that. She knew what it was.

“Ah… yes?” Angel said, watching her carefully.

“I won’t tell anyone, I swear,” Alison said, holding her hands up. “I’ll forget it was ever mentioned.”

“Do you know what it does?” Angel asked.

Alison swallowed nervously. “No specifics. There isn’t much information left about them, but Vanessa got me interested in the Great War and there were mentions of them in some of the Academy’s books. They’re basically one or set of Old World Magic spells that get stored into a stone. Some of them apparently had some intelligence as well, but the information on them is really scarce.”

“I see,” Angel said. “I’m going to have to ask that you keep this very silent. It would be very annoying if someone found out about this. I trust you understand me?”

“I didn’t see anything and I have no clue what you’re talking about,” Alison promised.

Angel studied her closely. As far as he could tell, she meant her words. “Good. Now, let’s get back to the interesting stuff.”

With the vents fixed, the next task to tackle was stabilization. Angel searched through the cabinets until he found two identical bronze rods about the length of his forearm. He took them back to his desk along with a few pieces of scrap metal, thinking out loud the entire time.

“How much do you know about runes?” Angel asked.

It took Alison a moment to realize he was talking to her. “Some. I know the theory that everyone else does in my year, but every time I actually try to do something, it blows up.”

“When does it blow up?” Angel asked as he used his scribe to carve some plates out of the scrap metal. “After you finish the entire circle? Or while you’re in the middle of it?”

“After, when I add power to it.”

Angel connected the plates to the leg and set it aside, rubbing his chin in thought. “Show me.”

“What?” Alison stammered. She evidently hadn’t been expecting him to actually do anything other than let her watch.

“Make a light rune circle,” Angel said, standing up and patting the back of his chair. “You can use a scribe, right?”

“I – yeah,” Alison said, slowly sitting down and picking his scribe up. He pushed a piece of scrap metal in front of her and she chewed her lower lip. “But it’ll explode.”

“Make the circle without a power inlet,” Angel instructed. “Just leave that bit blank.”

Alison nodded and got to work, powering the scribe and drawing the runes on the blank slate. A light rune circle was one of the simplest ones, only requiring power and a single activation rune. Without even having to include the power, Alison finished within a few minutes.

The circle wasn’t the best he’d ever seen. The lines had slight imperfections that came from a shaky hand and the runes weren’t as sharp as they could have been. Still, they were mostly correct. Nothing about the runework was nearly bad enough to explode on accident.

“Add the power source,” Angel said, handing it back to her. “Just don’t activate it.”

Alison gave him a worried nod and followed his instructions, adding the last runes in. When she finished, he examined it again. Once more, her work was below his standards but still acceptable. There wasn’t anything clearly wrong with it.

“These look fine,” Angel said. “Your hand isn’t very steady, which is making some of your lines wobbly and badly formed. That will cause trouble when you start dealing with more complex systems or higher power, but for something as weak as a light rune, this should work fine.”

“Really?” Alison asked, her eyes lighting up.

Angel nodded. “Put power into it. I don’t see any way for that to go wrong.”

Alison raised her finger to the metal and closed her eyes. It lit up as magic started to flow from her body into the metal. The runes blinked to life, shining a warm cherry red. Then they grew brighter.

The glow turned to a searing burn. Angel’s snatched the piece and a bolt of purple lightning coursed down his arm, devouring the light as he ripped it from Alison’s hands.

“You stopped it!” Alison exclaimed, but her face fell. “But it was going to blow up, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Angel said, thoroughly baffled. The runes on the plate had melted into slag. “I don’t understand this at all. Those runes should have been more than capable of functioning properly for more than a second or two.”

“Maybe the instructors are right,” she said, her face crumpling. “I’m just forsaken by magic. It doesn’t work for me.”

“Your instructors are idiots,” Angel said promptly, turning the plate over in his hand and trying to find where it had gone wrong. “Magic isn’t a being. It doesn’t think on its own, and it certainly doesn’t blow up runes that should work properly.”

“That wasn’t an explosion,” Blue chimed. “It was the rapid breakdown of the rune structure causing a buildup of pressure in the magical energy.”

“And what would happen right after said buildup?” Angel asked.

“An explosion.”

Angel rubbed his forehead. “Thank you, Blue. That was very helpful.”

“I live to serve,” Blue said cheerfully.