The workshop was silent, save for the rhythmic clinking of metal and the steady hum of the Indomitus Core, a low thrumming that resonated through the walls like a mechanical heartbeat. The air smelled of scorched steel, engine oil, and arcane residue—the comforting perfume of invention. Callista sat at her workbench, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hands steady as they moved over the delicate internals of Aetherheart. In the dim light, her eyes burned with an intensity that had been absent for too long. Not broken, not hollow—focused.

Before her, the little automaton lay open, its inner workings exposed in delicate strands of copper and silver, gears interlocked like a complex puzzle only she could decipher. It wasn’t often that Aetherheart was silent. Even when idle, there was always something—a whirring, a soft click of adjustment, the sound of tiny servos aligning themselves. But tonight, Aether was still. Watching. Waiting. Understanding. Between them, an unspoken language passed. Aether didn’t need words. Machines never did.

She ran her fingers over the small, scorched gear that had started it all. This was the first piece. The catalyst. The spark. The same gear she had pulled from the wreckage of her family’s greatest failure—the one that had cost her everything. A dozen memories flickered through her mind, sharp and clear.

The Foundry of Frost had once been a marvel of engineering, an ambitious dream brought to life by the Gearwrights—a place where cold-fueled turbines turned ceaselessly, where froststeel and enchanted alloys were tested under the watchful eyes of gnomish ingenuity. It should have been their legacy. Until the accident...

She could still hear the deafening crack of the unstable energy core as it ruptured, the agonized shriek of metal tearing itself apart. She remembered the blinding light that turned night into day, the sudden weightlessness before she was hurled into the snowdrift outside. And when she staggered to her feet, the foundry was gone—swallowed in fire, reduced to ruin. Her parents survived, but their dreams didn’t. They left Duskwatch behind, their reputation in shambles. She left too, but not because of shame. Because she needed to prove something. That the dream hadn’t died. That something could still be salvaged.

And in the wreckage, she had found this gear. The first piece of Aetherheart. Callista tightened her grip around it, pressing the cool metal into her palm. This machine had been with her since the beginning. She had built Aether to be her hands in places too dangerous, too delicate for her own. She had given it form, but it had given her purpose.

She glanced at the open chassis, the soft blue of Aether’s lens flickering faintly. Still watching. Still waiting. “I love you,” she whispered, as if it needed to be said aloud. Aether didn’t respond, but it didn’t have to. It trusted her.

Her tools moved with methodical precision, detaching plates, shifting components. Aether’s core pulsed beneath her fingers—a small power source, functional, efficient. But not enough. Not for what came next.

She wasn’t just making improvements. She was making something new. Callista reached for a fresh sheet of blueprint paper, setting it beside Aether she glanced at the ink scratched title. HOWLER

The name had come to her in a flash, and now the design was unfolding in her mind faster than she could scribble. A physical embodiment of who they were meant to be. Strong, Agile, the one constant that held her back was-her. She would never be like the others and she didn't have to. She was brilliant...

The foundation was there—the heart of her first creation, the one piece she had never replaced. It had lasted this long. It could last longer. She felt Aether’s lens shift, its faint mechanical whir returning as if sensing the shift in her intent. Not apprehensive. Not questioning. Accepting.

It would follow where she led. It always had. Callista exhaled slowly and reached for her tools, this wasn’t just about invention anymore. This was evolution. And she was going to make damn sure Aetherheart was at the center of it.

a shadow appeared at the door, but, hearing the clanking and tinkering going on inside, does not knock. After a few moments, a parchment was slid under the door, of a nearly childish drawing of a cat wearing a bib eating from a pan, and a huge arrow pointing insistently at the door. Should said door be opened, a fur lined pouch is defiantly trying to keep a pan of blueberry cobbler warm

The sound of metal on metal filled the workshop, punctuated by the occasional spark as Callista worked tirelessly, her fingers moving with a speed and precision that only came with obsession. She was in the middle of adjusting a calibration on Aether’s exposed frame when the faintest whisper of movement caught her attention.

Her head snapped toward the door, brow furrowing as she caught sight of something being slid beneath it. A message? A blueprint? A request for work? She reached for the nearest wrench—just in case—and leaned over, snatching up the parchment with a flick of her wrist.

Her expression darkened as she took in the crude, almost childish drawing. A cat. A cat. Wearing a bib. Eating out of a pan. A large, ridiculous arrow jabbed insistently toward the door.

For a moment, she stared at it, unblinking, her tired brain struggling to process this blatant act of artistic terrorism.

Then, she scowled. “I don’t want to buy pastries,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. "Whatever poor sod is out there, I am not in the market for—” Her words died in her throat as recognition dawned.

The cat. It was Ilyra. A groan scraped its way up her throat as she pinched the bridge of her nose. Of course. Of course, that fuzzy menace had weaponized baked goods against her, why were they all trying to make her fat? Callista opened the door to look up at the warden. "Yes?"

she was already tiptoeing away, but squeaked as she was "caught", having not expected there to be an answer from the tunnel-visioned Gnome

"Oh, Callista, hiiii!" she picked up the pouch, and opened it to show the cobber, as the steam and aroma wafted out from the pouch

"Um, I thought you were busy so I didnt want to interrupt. But I thought with everything going on, some cobbler would be a nice pick-me-up to make you feel better. I'm....ummmm....not really good at that, or gestures, but good food and milk make me happy, so I thought... she pressed her index fingers together, somewhat abashed at her own simplicity "...maybe you'd enjoy it too, and it would let you be happy too...for a little bit. I cant enchant it with funny flavors like Jaeson can, but it stands on its own pretty well." she realizes she's been rambling, and is thankful she cant blush like humans, though her facial scar had a nice rosy color to it

"Right, you're probably busy and I'm a bother, so, sorry?"

Callista exhaled sharply, crossing her arms as she leaned against the doorframe, her expression flat. Ilyra had that guilty look about her—the one that said she hadn’t quite planned on being caught but was now rolling with it, awkwardly shuffling her weight from foot to foot as she babbled.

The cobbler did smell good. Damnably so. And while Callista wasn’t particularly hungry, she knew that feeling. That subtle, gnawing thought that you weren’t quite sure how to help, so you just… offered what you could. It wasn’t about the cobbler. It was about what it meant. She ran a hand down her face before sighing in defeat. “Alright, alright. Get in here before you turn tail and bolt like a spooked kitten.”

She stepped aside, allowing Ilyra to dart past her with the pouch still in hand, ears flicking, tail swaying cautiously behind her. “I’m working on something, though, so don’t expect much conversation,” Callista warned, already heading back to her workbench. “You can stay, just keep the crumbs away from Aetherheart. I don’t need him gunked up with cobbler of all things.”

Even as she said it, Aether—who had been in mid-reconfiguration on the table—gave an unmistakable whir, his optical lens shifting to focus on Ilyra as though considering the risk factor of her crumb distribution.

Snowdrop had been in one of the other rooms at this point so had missed Felia's entrance. She had stayed with Callista all this time where she could, handing her things, making hot drinks, that sort of thing.

She was also a little apprehensive about where this was going.

"Hi Felia. Ooooh. Cobbler. What flavour?"

Earlier she had tried to explain to Callista what a poppet was, especially a wishborn one. A toy that had gained life though some sort of spark because their owners needed them. She suspected the same thing had happened to Aether.

"And now we have a few plushies as Pathfinders" she concluded.

Ilyra brought the pouch in and set the hot pan some place it seemed least likely to get involved in something destructive, and shook out a handful of spoons. She didnt count, just snatched a bunch, because who has time for counting? She handed a spoon to Snowdrop "Hiii Snowdrop, didnt realize you were here already. It's blueberry! I special requested because that hadnt been done yet. And now it has, and we're first to try it. Exciting isnt it?"

With another spoon, she made a fending gesture to Aether, and snatches a bite only after Snow, and if she was willing Callista had tried the cooling cobbler. Spoon still in her mouth, she made a side to side dancing motion, ears twitching and tail swishing, though carefully, not to dislodge anything. She grabbed another spoonful and considered the lab.

Again, spoon left in her mouth like she had a record setting metallic bleb, she began to push items precariously on the edge of things inwards slightly. The cobbler helped fend off her cat feral instincts, so she began to ward it against temptation, and general calamity. Or CATastrophe.

Then she found something to lean against.

muffled over a spoon "Sho wh't ahm ah look'ng aht?" as she looks at the project.

Callista, who had been in the midst of carefully extracting a component from Aetherheart’s frame, finally glanced up, her brows knitting together at the sight of Ilyra’s feline mischief. "Oi, paws off my disaster waiting to happen," she said, though there was no real bite to it.

She shifted slightly, sitting up straighter in her work stool as she regarded the cobbler with vague disinterest at first—but then her stomach made an entirely undignified noise. A deep sigh followed, the sort that spoke of someone realizing resistance was futile. With a resigned shake of her head, she took a spoon, scooped a small bite, and popped it into her mouth. …It was, regrettably, not the soup that had her stomach gnawing at her relentlessly.

Callista waved her off with the spoon before letting her gaze settle back on her work. Aetherheart lay open on the workbench, the gleaming inner workings exposed, its arcane circuits flickering faintly as if sensing its creator’s touch. Scattered around were blueprints hastily scribbled in her near-impenetrable shorthand, rough sketches of something that wasn't quite Aether anymore. Larger, broader—a framework?

She finally answered Ilyra’s muffled question, her voice steadier than it had been in days. "You're looking at the future." Callista tapped a finger on the main blueprint, where the rough, scrawled name HOWLER was etched at the top. "Aether’s going to evolve. And when it does, I won’t ever be a liability again, If not this than the Mark 2."

Her fingers curled around the slightly scorched gear Aether had given her the night before, the metal still warm from her touch. It was more than a component—it was the first piece. " I owe it to him"

"I would have heated up the cobbler more but I wasn't sure if it was safe to cast even a cantrip near the Core"

"So you're turning Aether into powered armour? Or making him some sort of killer automaton?" She looks a little concerned at the last bit.

Ilyra leaned in to look at the print, her eyes widening some, and the spoon falling from her mouth. She caught it before it had dropped more than a foot

"A Construct?"

Snowdrop nods "Yeah ... or a golem ... I'm not sure. They're usually created as guardians and some are impervious to magic. They can be really tough to defeat. Although I remember one party defeating a construct by using animated rope to have it wrap around the construct's legs, and when the construct tried to move .. it fell over. That was when the party wailed in on it."

She grinned. "I guess it hadn't been programmed to do the bunny hop". She demonstrated by bunnyhopping all around the dining table.

Callista quirked a brow, momentarily distracted from her work as Snowdrop demonstrated what could only be described as an enthusiastic display of gnomish nonsense. A single corner of her lips twitched—not quite a smile, but dangerously close.

Shaking her head, she turned back to her designs, running a hand over the intricate, half-finished blueprints. "Aetherheart isn't a golem. And he's sure as hell not just a construct." Her voice was steady, but there was something firm—fierce, even—lurking beneath it. "He's Aether." She tapped a finger against the schematic where the core integration node was outlined. "This isn’t about building some war machine, or a soulless automaton. It’s about making sure I never end up half-dead in the snow again. It’s about survival."

Callista exhaled, forcing herself to unclench her fists. The blueprint under her fingers had crumpled slightly. "Think of it as the me I should have been," she clarified, rolling her shoulders. "It won’t control me—I’ll control it, Aether will be the interface, the brain of the system, but I’ll still be the one making the decisions. This way I wont need to make the Mark 2 any larger to accommodate a gunner.

She cast a glance toward Ilyra and Snowdrop. "It’s not about making something to fight for me. It’s about making sure I can fight at all." Aether, still partially dismantled on the workbench, let out a soft whir-click, as if in quiet agreement. "The Howler Design is simply the framing to allow Aetherheart to draw on the output of the Indomitus core without turning me into a pile of ash, but who knows. this is a work in progress.. one that goes faster when i'm not... " with a sigh through her nose Callista returned to her work.

"I'm still a bit confused, but I'll guess I'll figure it out when it's done"