Threads of the Soul

"You're telling me, that that little thing there is gonna revolutionise the world? That it's gonna be the 'future'?"

"I certainly am, my friend."

"Well damn. But seriously though, what the hell is it? Like is it a bomb? A pill? Because if it's one of those mystical pills, people won't be able to swallow it. I mean look at it! You'd choke on that thing, and there is no way in hell I'm sticking that up my-"

"Ah Stop stop stop! Jesus man, what are you thinking? Of course it's not a pill, and it's not a bomb either. It's a battery."

Seth shook his head, leaning back in his chair as the Man-Spider puppet immediately went back to its work, using the scalpel in its hand to carve runes into the strange harness Seth was wearing.

The harness in question was made of leather, leather made from magical beast hide of course. It was composed of a comfortable shoulder pad, on his right arms shoulder, and moved across his chest a cross pattern, wrapping beneath his left armpit so that it didn't slip off, and crossing on his back as well.

From the right hand shoulder, where it had a wide surface for support, more straps moved down what remained of his arm. It wrapped around the stump, almost like a collar for his missing limb, and was attached to a flat, metallic ring. Like a circular plug socket.

In the very middle of his chest, where the straps intersected, there was a circular metal recess with tiny claw-like arms coming off of it in the four cardinal directions. It was like a metal maw, waiting to be fed.

"A battery? I mean that's great man but... I don't know if you noticed, but all the tech got fried. What good is a new battery if there's no electronics for it to power?"

"Electronics? Who said anything about electronics?"

With a sly smirk, Seth tossed the crystal into the air before catching it again and slapping it into the metallic recess on his chest. The metal teeth closed around the crystal, holding it in place like a diamond atop an engagement ring, as the runic carvings all across the monster leather began to glow.

It started with those closest to the crystal before cascading outwards, as if the harness was being filled with a luminescent liquid that was flooding through the entirety of its being, all from the crystal at the centre.

Seth rolled his shoulders, tilting his head from side to side to properly crack his neck, as he let the harness become filled with the mana he had embedded into the crystal. Once every runic symbol was incandescent, they all flashed in unison, before lowering their luminescence to a gentle, dull glow.

Giving it a few more seconds, Seth let out a sigh of relief before chuckling softly.

"Well that's good, it didn't blow up."

"Wait, What?! You were wearing that thing knowing it could blow up!"

"Well... Yeah, but only a little one."

Seth held up his hand, holding his thumb and index fingers close together, before shrugging and focusing back on the task at hand, pun intended. He shifted his body, so that the socket over his stump was pointed towards the multi-armed puppet, which was holding yet another arm in one of its hands.

This arm, however, was much shorter than the ones it had attached to its own body. One might even say that it was suspiciously close to the size of Seth's own arm. The one he still had, that is.

It was silver, forged from the same metal as the rest of the objects used in the crafting of this harness, such as the crystals socket, and had a black leather between the joints to give them proper movement abilities.

At the very end of the arm, the opposite end from the fingers, was a plug-like structure. Perfect for fitting into a socket, Fancy that.

Clicking the new arm into his harness' socket, Seth narrowed his eyes and poured his focus into the arm. The runes of his harness gradually grew in the intensity of their glow, as the crystal in the socket dimmed ever so slightly.

Under Seth's intense gaze, the arm shifted ever so slightly, before the fingers slowly closed into a fist. A smile exploded onto Seth's face, and he couldn't help but laugh at his success as tears formed at the corner of his eyes.

Sure, he used two arms practically every day when he possessed Corvus or his other puppets, Hell with the spider puppet he was using more than two, but there was just something different about it being his own body.

For months he had been able to feel his fingers moving, feel an itch on his forearm, only to look down and see nothing but a stump. He had cracked his knuckles habitually for years because of the pain in his fingers before he lost the arm, and even now he could still feel that pain flaring up despite there being nothing there.

For all Seth knew, his arm was in the stomach of some creature that had found it as a free meal. Although I guess at this point the monster would have... ahem, passed it on to the earth.

Wiping away the tears from his eyes before they could fall, Seth held out his left hand towards Lee and gestured towards one of the tables out of the puppets reach.

"There's a hammer on that table, pass it here would you?"

"Oh uh, sure. Does it need some adjustments or something?"

"Something like that, Yeah."

Seth smiled warmly at Lee as he handed him the hammer. It was a good, weighty club hammer to be precise, the type that some might call a mallet. He adjusted it in his grip and looked down at the metal hand with an intense gaze once more.

Tilting his head from left to right, he seemed to be examining the piece, trying to find the small fault in its design. At least that was what Lee thought, as he watched with rapt attention. That was, until Seth lifted the hammer above his head and got to work on that flaw.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLUNG!

Over and over, Seth wailed on the metallic hand with that hefty hammer like it had killed his mother. Beating it senseless without mercy for a solid thirty seconds, before letting out an annoyed groan and tossing the hammer to the side.

"Damn, can't feel a thing... Oh well, something to improve for the future I guess."

He looked up, ready to say something else to Lee, but paused when he saw the strange look Lee was giving him. The type you would give someone if they had stripped naked and called themselves the king of the mole people, before trying to dig a hole in the concrete floor or, even worse, if they said they liked Dragonball Evolution.

"What? What is it?"

"Dude... How long have you been down here?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about. Anyways, you can go now. I have work to do."

"Gladly, I don't want to be the next one that gets the hammer treatment."

"Oh wait, before you go. Have you been to the castle dungeons yet?"

Seth stood from his chair, rolling his shoulder as he continued to flex the fingers of his new prosthetic hand. Despite the beating he had given it, it wasn't actually dented all that much. It hadn't just been a test of whether or not he could feel, there was easier ways to do that, it was also a test of the material.

The 'metal' actually came from the bones of a creature. It was one of the first that Seth had tried to domesticate, a task he was currently still working on achieving. It had remarkable defence in terms of its bones, which unfortunately didn't translate well to getting a flying dagger through your eye.

But by melting down the bones, which took some serious heat, he could reforge them into various items. One of which being his harness and his new arm, although that was almost the extent of it. He didn't have very much to work with, hence the domestication.

"Hey man, it was just a joke!"

"No no, We don't use them as prison cells anymore. They're storage rooms. There's no rush on it, but there's the possibility you're going to have to transport things from there in the future, so it would be best to get a breach point as close as possible."

"Oh... Right, right. Of course, I knew that. Duh. Anyways... I'm gonna go, I'll swing by there if I'm in the area though or if something comes up."

Lee flashed him a nervous smile as the air shattered into shimmering glass fragments behind him and, with a single swift step through the spacial breach, Lee disappeared into thin air. A second after his departure, the air knitted itself back together, back to the way it had always been.

Seth chuckled to himself, flexing his new fingers once again. They were stiff and a little unresponsive. He certainly wasn't going to be as dexterous as before, or be able to perform quick movements, but it was better than nothing. Plus maybe he would get better with time.

The only downside was each movement cost a tiny sliver of the crystals charged mana, and he didn't know if they could be recharged yet.

Regardless, now that he had an extra hand to help him, it was time for Seth to get down to business. He had work to do.