True to my word, Olivia and I didn't leave the compound for two days, electing to keep to ourselves and recover. We stayed close for most of that, switching between sitting together at the fire pit and lying in bed together. We didn't do much of anything particularly… strenuous, just reassuring each other that we were alive and healthy.
The closeness was important for both of us, because long after we first returned, I had a moment where I realized just what I had done, the last twenty or so hours catching up to me. I had what amounted to a minor panic attack when I realized how many times I had actually come close to actually dying, eight by my count, and the amount of pure damage I had taken. Between shattering my hands at the start and losing them at the end, I had been grievously injured several times. My healing magic may have washed away the initial injury, but the trauma built up somewhere in my head, and when the dam broke, I was glad Olivia was around to help.
Having me close by helped her, as she had been forced to watch me dodge an Endbringer for the entire fight, unable to do anything. Several times during the night, she would wake up and grab onto me, waking me up in the process.
By the third morning, I was finally starting to feel better, having digested some of the trauma and pressure, or at least enough to finally start doing things again. A lot of the pressure that had been building up on me from the incoming Endbringer fight had released, leaving me feeling lighter, even with the strain of the fight itself weighing on me. When that too started to fade, I felt free in a way I hadn't in quite some time.
It was almost disconcerting, like I might flutter away with a lack of stress and consequences.
Still, despite all that, when I settled in to start conceptualizing what I wanted to do with my hands, I did it with a smile on my face. I had grown to love working with magic, in more ways than one, so having a chance to work without the pressure and stress of my future target weighing on me was fantastic, and I started with a smile.
"So... How are you going to build anything without hands?" Olivia asked, sitting back at one of the common area tables.
"With magic," I said with a smirk, Olivia rolling her eyes at my response.
A pair of golems helped me grab a few things from the supply trees around the ritual platform. I then led them back towards the common area, letting them dump handfuls of purified and infused gems, a few ingots of various metals, also purified and infused.
To demonstrate that I was serious about the magic comment, I cast the metal control spell and lifted one of the metal ingots, changing it into the shape of a bone. It was a cartoon dog bone, but it was still a bone.
"I can do the same to the stones as well," I explained, dropping down to the seat beside her. "I just need to get a pair of accurate fake skeleton hands to use as a guide."
"And Amy will be able to use them as bones?" Olivia asked, her face and tone telling me she wasn't sure if she should be unsettled or curious.
"That I will have to test," I said, before wincing. "But… I think I might need real human bones for that."
"... How fresh?" she asked, her tone losing the curiosity and going fully with unsettled.
I looked down at her hands, and for a moment she jerked back, only to realize I was messing with her. She slapped my shoulder and leaned back in her chair with a huff. I couldn't help but chuckle, shaking my head.
"I don't think age matters," I assured her. "There are shops that sell human skeletons, though there isn't one in Brockton Bay. I'll need your help buying them, though. My face…"
"Hmm, look who regrets not protecting his identity better now?" She teased, poking my cheek.
"Only for something like this, and only so close to the other day," I explained. "Don't really want the Bio-tinker tag if I can help it, and I don't feel like causing a stampede when people realize who I am."
"Are we leaving now?" She asked, starting to sit up.
"Not right this moment, I need to do some other work first, then we can test the concept with Amy," I explained. "But once I'm done with the planning, I'll need some of the real ones to run a ritual..."
Olivia nodded and settled back, while I started working on coming up with exactly what I wanted to do, so I could form a proper game plan. I already had a general idea of the concept, but I needed to wrangle it into something more complete before I started planning out the details. Once that was done, I could make a sample for Amy to work with.
The concept I wanted to make was to integrate a wand and my spell storage gems into the bones of my hands, removing the need for a wand or staff, and giving me a huge storage bank for spells on hand at all times.
In order to make both possible, I would need to fit a variety of different gems, the vast majority of which would be bigger than my thumb, some as large as my palm, into my hand. I would also need to have a sufficient amount of material for a wand, which would involve a good chunk of magical effects.
For most, this would be an impossible task, as the amount of space needed for the gems alone vastly outmatched the mass of my bones. Thankfully, I had two levels of dimensional partitioning, which let me fit something big into something smaller. I also had three points from fighting Leviathan, which, depending on how the test with Amy went, I would be using to buy a third level of the aforementioned subject.
The idea I developed was one of multiple stages, all focused on my bones. First, the outer layers of my new bones would be mithril, and would be enchanted as my wand, all thirty-something bones working together to make my cast spells as potent and cheap as I could make them. This layer would be hollow, built around a frame of adamantine, which would also be hollow. Inside the hollow adamantine would be a layer of orichalcum, which was, again, hollow. The orichalcum layer is where I would anchor the dimensional partitioning. This would expand the hollow considerably, allowing me to, hopefully, fit up to a palm-sized gem inside.
The first layer of mithril would hold the more complex magic that went into forming wands easily, but would also mute the upper limits of the enhancing effects. That's why my fingertips would be orichalcum leading into a gem, likely a diamond, both working together to maximize the effects of my spells. I wasn't even losing out on potential slots for more stored spells, since my finger tips were too small to hold a hollow properly anyway.
The adamantine would keep the orichalcum and mithril layers separate, preventing them from interacting, increasing how much magic I could layer into them both.
All together, I was looking at a significant amount of fiddly work, but the result would be potent enough to be very much worth it. It would likely take a while, too, since I didn't have ands and would be using magic to manipulate things throughout the process.
Once I settled on a concept and hammered out some of the necessary details, I started work on the proof of concept. That required bringing Olivia to California, then jumping back to get to work on the ritual that would hopefully let Panacea use the metal replacements as normal bones. They would need to be compatible with tendons, muscles, nerves, and a whole lot of other little things, all while still working as a magical focus and spell storage.
This was the first time I was working with merging magic and flesh directly, beyond geomancy, but ritual crafting happily supplied me with a half dozen different methods, some stable and others not. Eventually, I settled on a design, using magic to control metal in order to design the concept, before instructing a golem to write the ritual out that I had come up with.
By then, Olivia had returned, carrying a box of finger and hand bones, a pair of fake hands, and some burritos for lunch. The bones were more than enough for me to work with, the models were perfect for me to use as models for the forming processes, and the burritos were delicious.
Once we finished our lunch, Olivia then helped me write out the last few complicated bits of the ritual, which the golem was struggling with. In all, it took quite a bit longer than it would have if I had just been doing it by myself, but I didn't have much of a choice if I wanted to build myself new hands properly.
It was during the ritual application that I realized the first hole in my design. The orichalcum at my fingertips, which would work as the second-to-last part of the "wand," wouldn't be able to hold the ritual for bone work and the magic needed to integrate it into the wand. It was unfortunate, since using orchalcum would have let me escalate the power, but using mithril and the gem would suffice. If I wanted to make something really go boom, I could always make a specialized, overpowered casting staff or wand.
With my plans adjusted, Olivia and I ran through the ritual, using it on the mithril dog bone I had made earlier. When it was done, Olivia called the Dallons, and we jumped to their backyard, meeting Mark and Amy on their back porch. Both of them looked good, and while Amy still looked like she was at the tail end of recovering from all her hard work, her smile said she was at least happy.
"It's good to see you, Arc," Mark said with a nod, managing to avoid reaching for a handshake. "What is this about having something for Amy to look at?"
"I mentioned it briefly when she offered, but there are some things I want to integrate when Amy rebuilds my hands," I explained, gesturing to Olivia, who held out the metal bone. "I'm hoping Amy will be able to interact with this using her power."
"I'm not sure that's gonna work," Amy said, sounding skeptical as she reached out to take the metal bone. "I can only work with a few metals and only in-"
The moment her fingers wrapped around the metal, she went silent, her eyes going wide as she stared. Silence spread out over the yard, first for ten seconds, then thirty, then a full minute. Mark gave me a concerned look, and I cast a diagnostic spell over the young cape.
"Her brain is working overtime," I explained. "Maybe a sort of tinker fugue? Olivia, take it back from her."
She nodded and snagged the bone from Amy's fingers, who let out a loud gasp when she did. She sat down heavily on a bench behind her, almost not making it in time.
"What was that?" She asked, a wild mix of confusion, wonder, nervousness, and eagerness in her voice. "It was alive… but not? It was metal, but I could feel it… It felt like my power would be able to work on it… maybe not completely but…"
"Do you feel okay, hun?" Mark asked, kneeling so he could get a clear look at his daughter. "Dizzy? Tired? Headache?"
"No, I'm fine, it was just a rush…"
Amy spent a few minutes recovering, her father going inside to get her a glass of water before sitting down beside her. After she finished it, she let out a long breath.
"I can do it, the metal was receptive enough for me to use as a replacement for bones, though it wouldn't do any of the things bones normally do," She explained, but I nodded in understanding. "...How strong is that metal?"
"It's slightly stronger than steel," I explained. "Especially when I treat it right. It's just a smidge lighter than aluminum, however."
Amy nodded, chewing her lip for a moment before finally speaking back up.
"So… here's the thing. We've been talking about letting me make an animal," she revealed, talking quickly at the end as if rushing to get it over with. "Some sort of creation to keep me safe, probably a dog, and give me something to use my power on. It would look normal, and we would tell everyone it's just a well-trained guard dog, but I was going to enhance it so it could protect me. I'll put the bones you make into your hand… if you make me bones for them. Otherwise, I'll just give you back your normal hands. Not going to hold those over your head."
She muttered the last part, looking at me like she expected me to shout and deny her. I suppose she didn't consider the fact that I was well experienced in making sentient beings using my abilities. I had no room to judge her for bringing life to a dog when the town was being patrolled by so many spirit guardians, and Kali was back home, slowly absorbing the mountain that ran along the edge of the forest into her domain.
"Huh… that's an interesting idea," I admitted, tapping my chin, considering the concept. "Tell you what. You make me my hands with bones I make, and we can sit down and plan out a skeleton that will blow this away. I can bake all sorts of effects into these bones, including making them slightly bigger on the inside…"
Her eyes went wide as she considered the possibility, nodding eagerly.
"You got yourself a deal," She said, rubbing her hands together. "I'm looking forward to it already!"
I chuckled and nodded, and after discussing a bit more about what she learned about the metal, as well as letting her hold it a few more times, Olivia and I headed back to the compound. It was about three in the afternoon at that point, so I knuckled down and got to work, starting with the hardest part of the project, the adamantine. The magically resistant metal was very difficult to work with, as I couldn't use magic to form it. Even worse, what I was trying to make was too small and finicky to just pour into a simple mold.
It didn't help that every piece I would need to make would be different, first a right-hand copy, then a mirrored version for the left. I ended up using my control over metal to form the molds so I could shift and help the metal spread evenly inside, pouring the metal directly into them from the specially created forge I made when I first unlocked the metal.
It was slow going, each piece requiring multiple checks and confirmations, and when they were done, I carefully placed them out on a board to keep them separate, so I knew which one corresponded to each bone. I had a small pile of failed attempts as well, as the metal was even more difficult to work with once it cooled and hardened.
By the time I was finally done, it was time for me to take a break for the rest of the night, enjoying some pizza with Olivia before we eventually turned in for the night.