Everyone froze and looked at the newcomer. Before anyone else could move, Elita had already drawn her sword and was flying towards the old woman. Shea tried to intervene but was too slow, and Elita’s strike raced for the old woman’s throat. The old woman didn’t move a muscle or even change her expression. She was a statue of calm. Light had enveloped her as Elita’s attack bounced harmlessly away off of the magic shield. Before Elita could strike again, Shea caught her arm. The Automata turned to glare at the girl with eyes of burning blue coals. Shea gripped the other’s cloak instead but was firm in her resolve.

“That’s... Um... that’s the landlord, Jada,” Shea said meekly.

Elita turned her unblinking glare to the landlord, who only smiled knowingly at her. “I’m going to watch from the roof to make sure we don’t have any other surprises,” Elita said coldly before leaving the room.

“Is she okay?” Shea asked.

“Elita’s a warrior. Let her do her thing,” I replied.

The landlord hobbled over to me; she couldn’t have been more than four feet tall and was stocky with small rounded ears and a cane. Dwarf, maybe? I could feel the eyes of an expert evaluating me, looking me up and down and determining my worth. “Eh, I’ve seen worse, looks like a mass production model,” she determined. Then she looked at the workbench and got her face down close to see what I had been working on. “What is this Automata? I’ve never seen this sort of design before. A puppet?”

“Not quite. Just an idea that popped into my head.”

“Interesting, interesting... well, what are you waiting for? Finish it up and show me what it is!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I continued to craft the different parts I’d need; having magic was really quite amazing. In my old world, I’d design the parts on the computer and have to 3D print them, but with these magic craft skills, I was essentially forming the materials directly by my will as easily as I could have designed the parts in CAD. I didn’t know how mass production would work here, but I was sure I’d figure it out if I got the chance. With the last parts assembled, I set the completed body onto the bench. It looked like a cat, or at least an Automata version of a cat, with black armor plating. I didn’t know why I felt the need to make this, but when I had seen the materials I couldn’t help but feel like this was what was waiting to be made. Right now the body was a lifeless puppet, lying limply on the table like a cut marionette.

“[Console]”.

“What’s that? I’ve never heard that spell before,” asked Jada in an accusatory tone.

I chose to ignore her. The screen came up, but unlike the other things I’d inspected, this was pretty blank. I was sure that I could do something here, but all I got was an inspection into the materials used and design schematics. I noticed that there was a file menu, so I tapped on that to see what it gave me. I’d have to explore that in more detail later, but what caught my eye was a command called Developer Mode. This sounded pretty promising, so I tapped it and a new set of screens opened up. That Beam was something else—this clearly looked like the code development environment I was used to but with magic-related terminology. Very handy indeed. It looked like there were even some pre-installed code frameworks I could use and a plugin repository to add new features. I tried cracking my knuckles, but apparently that’s not something that Automata can do, so I just felt weird and got some strange looks.

I loaded a code framework called spiritFrame.ms into the code editor, and it installed a bunch of folders and files for me to edit and customize. I wondered about that extension, “ms”—maybe it stood for “mana script”? Or maybe “Magic script”? I added some plugins from the repository to the framework install that looked like they might be useful, and everything looked to be coming together pretty easily. I couldn’t tell you how much I would have loved to play with something like this in my old world. It looked like others could see my screens; I had assumed that only I could see them, but I guess not. When I glanced at Jada, she was staring at my screens with an intensity that might have lit them on fire if they had been combustible.

I was nearly done and ready to install the code into the puppet body, but there was one last thing missing. It seemed that I needed a detached soul to embed the code into before installing it into the puppet. This fact made me pause and look up from my work. So like ghosts? Were all Automata on this world powered by dead people? Was I considered an undead? Before I could think more on it, on the deploy screen there was a “loading” window that was looking for nearby souls that would be compatible, and it got a hit. It reminded me of a wifi ping, and I could connect to the soul and submit an embed request. The window told me a little about the soul as well. I guess you wouldn’t want to use the soul of some evil count or something. This one appeared to be the soul of a cat. Maybe that’s why I felt such a strong compulsion to make this form. Well, I was glad that I wasn’t enslaving some poor soul during this process. I submitted the request and got a confirmation response, so it was good to proceed with the installation.

As soon as I hit the execute command to begin code installation and deployment, a magic circle of light opened up on the table around the cat body, lifting it into the air. I could see fragments of light transferring back and forth between the magic circle and the body, and there seemed to be some sort of status bar at the edges of the circle. In my console, I could see the deploy logs as they went through each of the installation steps and output their status. I closed up the console for now and turned to Jada.

“Looks like this is going to take a while, there’s a lot of code to compile.”

“Just what are you, Mr. Automata?”