Thank you all
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Blitukus took a stack of steel bars back to the magma forge, and, using the heat of the mountains blood, heated the steel and forged it into a free-energy steam generator. It was in essence two steel donuts, connected in the middle, valves and weight-driven mechanisms to control them, and a pipe coming out of the middle that would expel steam. On the sides of the donuts were two small tanks, one containing water, the other carefully filled with magma. When the valve was opened from these tanks, it would create flood within the donut, and when closed, it would create anti-flood. The device was self regulated, for if flood were to catch up with anti-flood, the extra weight of the fluid would press down on the mechanisms, shutting valves and slowing the progress of the flood material, and if the anti-flood were getting too close to catching up with the flood, the fluid mass would be low, lowering the weight on the mechanisms and opening the valves, allowing the flood to move quicker. Since other forces would act upon it in flight, he used a counterweight to ensure that only the true mass of the fluid would be measured. All it took were, in essence, flipping a few switches and it would produce free steam for as long as Blitukus wanted, portably. It would allow him to forge small parts anywhere, and would eventually power the flying machine, along with several identical steam generators.
Making all of that steel had exhausted Blitukus, so he brought the new device back to bed. He lay on the bed and lay the device on the ground, testing it, seeing what would cause it to run and what would cause it to not. He opened the steam valve, and watched as it spat steam into the air, mechanisms slowly moving on their own as the device regulated itself. He looked down at it, and it spat steam up at him, fogging up his goggles rapidly. He wiped the lenses off and shut down the generator. He then took his goggles off, lay them down by the device, and let himself fall asleep. That day, his dream started out a dream. He once again found himself standing in Utopias Metropolis, vehicles buzzing about, but something created a sense of dread. He felt detached from the city. Suddenly, there was an impossibly bright flash. All sense of sight and sound were entirely removed. Suddenly, he felt his vision returning, and the bright light dimming. He shielded his eyes as he looked in the direction of the piercing glow, and saw something that truly horrified him. A shell, a shockwave of sorts emanated from the site of the flash. All was silent as this shockwave passed by him. He felt nothing, but saw the towering buildings buckle, their windows all shattering simultaneously as the shockwave hit, the sheer radiance of the glow melting the steel, the combined effect toppling the buildings down onto the streets. Vehicles were hurled through the air, and trees burst into flames as they were uprooted and tossed hundreds of feet. He looked around. Much of the once glorious city had been, for the lack of a better word, leveled. The world seemed to glow red, the sky the color of blood, full of black clouds. Around him lay burning wreckage, and bodies of the dead, nearly nothing left of them but char-black skeletons. His hearing slowly returned. He heard insane laughter from above, and giant demons flew overhead, armed with hideous monstrocities of corrupt technology. He felt a sense of deep sadness, as projectiles flew, cities were annihilated, people suffered, and the world burned.
He woke up, and felt deeply disturbed by what his subconscious shared with him. He sat up, and looked at his goggles, his free energy device.
... capable of grand miracles, capable of unimaginable disasters.
He frowned for a moment, and sighed through his nose.
Never will it be misused so, not by me nor anyone else as long as I still live.
He got up, once again wore his goggles, and felt determined. He was the father of these advanced technologies, and it was, as such, his responsibility to make sure that they proceeded in an honest path as they advanced. He picked up the generator, and moved it back to the storage. He activated the magma loop, and let it run until it gained an orange hot glow. Then, he used it to warm up other steel bars to a high temperature, took his smithing hammer, and began pounding out the plating he would need. As he pounded out plating, he melted the edges, welding them together, and assembled the larger plates into sections of the fuselage. He took care to make sure these sections would allow for efficient airflow, and planned to rivet the sections together. A while later, he began riveting parts of the fuselage together and making some of the smaller components he would need. It was difficult working the steel with a small heat volume, but, he smiled gladly at his now glowing-orangeish-yellow-hot magma loop. Despite being used in a way it wasn't designed for, near the melting point of its components, the steel withstood all of the heat the magma could possibly push through it, and performed beautifully.
Some times it would flare up, becoming that bright yellow, near, but not quite at, the point of damaging the steel. Some times the magma would settle, giving it a dull red heat, but it never stopped. It produced heat out of nowhere. He continued on, stopping to drink shortly after admiring the magma loop. The piles of steel shrunk as his construction grew. He forged the gears, pistons, casings, rivets, plates, all that he needed. Each engine would have a piston powered by three loop devices and a pressure chamber, driving a wheel which drove gears, turning the slow, high-torque motion of the piston into rapid rotation. This rotation was imparted to a two-ended blade, a blade that would dig into the air to propel the craft. When the engine was oriented upright, it would pull air downward, pushing the craft upward. When oriented horizontally, the blade would change its tilt, pushing air instead of pulling it as the blade faced backwards. This would push the craft forward. Two pistons controlled the rotation of the engine. When the lower piston was fed steam, it would rotate the engine upwards, while the upper would rotate it to face horizontally. The engine itself would be mounted between the fuselage and the wing, in a space carved out of the wing. The two-piston idea was also used to rotate the control surfaces that would steer the craft as it glided through the air. He took a break, rinsing his hands off in the river and stopping to eat. While building the engine, he realized that the generator tended to spit out soot from the magma flood within it along with the steam when the fluids flowed slowly, giving it a slight grayish appearance. When they flowed quickly, much more steam was produced, and it was cleaner steam. He devised an air turbine that would use air hitting the engine to drive both the flood and anti-flood faster in all of the generators. It would only work if the craft was going fast enough to encounter a lot of air resistance, but engine output would be much greater once the turbines kicked in. He forged the blades and much of these turbines in the large magma forge, but used the magma loop to forge nearly everything else.
The wind howled and snow blew outside, occasionally blowing in to where Blitukus was working. The heat of the magma loop vaporized any snow that touched it, and most snow that drifted near it. He kept working anyway, and eventually the snow ceased. Work was slow, as it had to be done with precision, lest the flying machine come apart in midair. He riveted the segments together, and began the wings, shaped after a bats wing, curved in the same shape as the fabric of his clothes when he blew over the top. Slowly, the frame was starting to near completion. Throughout the construction, he often walked back down the tunnel to review his design. He finalized some sections, finished a wing, mounted an engine, then eted the other side to see what had to be done.
It was really starting to take shape now, and Blitukus already felt a sense of pride about it. He smiled, adjusted his goggles, and got to work finishing the steel parts of the aircraft. He finished riveting together the wings, and began mounting the other engine, attaching pistons, checking gears, making sure everything down to the individual rivets were in their proper place. He used the remaining steel to reinforce the fuselage and add struts to more firmly secure the engine and wings. Once again, snow blew about and the frigid winds howled. The howling intensified, and as the suns arc sank, snow built up and blew about the room. The magma loop helped heat the room, but the room was still open.
Winter is upon you.
Not much of a matter. Blitukus finished riveting in the shell of the cockpit, and pressed his goggles up, smiling as he looked at the completed steel structure of the craft.
Now he needed to smelt bronze, and make the more delicate equipment, the control mechanisms and linkages and control panel. He also noticed that he could adjust the controls to allow the engines to tilt slightly forward in vertical mode. Not too far forward, of course, otherwise the blade would strike the wing. So, in order to make bronze, he would need more malachite as he had used all that he had mined. It wasn't a big deal, since only 5 had to be mined to provide the 10 bronze bars. He smiled at the nearly complete craft as he walked away, down the tunnel, pickaxe in hand. He reached the small edge of the copper vein, and easily carved out 5 lumps of malachite. Cassiterite was in abundance, so now he just had to smelt it, and no coke was required. He hauled the lumps back tot he smelter. As he moved the cassiterite, he looked at it, and smiled, observing every detail. It was the first metal he had found digging into the mountain, nearly 2 years ago. He finished hauling some of the ore, stopped for a drink, and continued. He felt exhausted from his tireless work in assembling the aircraft, so he finished hauling another load, then went to bed. He reviewed Encased Evils and the materials index, and found that despite being radically different sources, they both agreed exactly on the nature of adamantine. It might be a subject for future investigation, he noted. He put the books down, and let himself fall asleep without removing his goggles. That day he had an odd dream. In it, he slipped on his bridge and fell down the chasm, reappearing at the clouds, and falling further, landing face first in the snow, embedding himself. He found himself uninjured as he excavated himself out of his personal impact crater, and as he looked around, he saw that he was nowhere near his home. All around was snowy tundra, but in the distance, he saw large steel buildings. There was a vast city there, yet it was entirely abandoned. All was still, and there was no activity within the city. Wires dangled from the eternally still buildings, covered in rust and left to a state of disrepair. He walked toward the ruins, and noted the level of rust. This was the ruin of a city of the future, left to decay for well over a thousand years and still counting. When he awoke, he felt the same sense of disturbance that he had felt from the previous dream.
Subconscious... what are you trying to tell me?
He got up, and went to rub his eyes but found he still had his goggles on. He was nearly done with his flying machine. He immediately went back to moving ore.
Is that what someone will try to unleash with my technology? They will never succeed, as I WILL stop that from happening, if it ever seems like it will.
He finished hauling the ore, and melted it down, pooling the molten bronze in the smelter, adjusting the mixture, and dumping the slag back into the magma. He poured bars until he was out of molten metal, and found that, as he had expected, the mixture yielded 10 stacks of bronze bars. He moved the bars to the storage behind the flying machine, and stopped to take a drink from the snow on the way. He looked out across the glacier, and then looked back down the tunnel. His sense of disgust melted, and he smiled. He would fly to meet his mother, and maybe, just maybe, if he made it back, he would be the one to protect the world from such atrocities. He finished hauling the bronze, and opened an engine casing, revealing the generator inside to be used to work the bronze.
He Hammered the bronze into the panels, tubing, wire, meters, levers, switches and buttons that would connect him to the various systems of the craft. Also made from bronze was the steam chamber that would hold the steam for the piston, one chamber per engine. He used pressure meters to give himself indication of the state of the engines, state of the turbines, as well as speed. For speed, he simply left a bronze tube open to the wind, and the faster he went, the more air would be crammed into the tube, raising the pressure reading. He bolted the panel in, adjusted the distance from the steel seat to fit him, and fitted the instruments in, levers in front of and to the side of the seat, switches on the panel. Making the lever that would control direction proved rather difficult, as it needed to freely move in all axes in order to control the aircraft on all axes. He used a ball design, and used spokes on the ball to hook to linkages that in turn fed to valves controlling steam flow. It was tedious, and occasionally frustrating, as it had to be done with precision and sometimes it was difficult to make all of the lines fit and not interfere with one another, but eventually, it had been done. He rolled the rocks out of the way from entrance, and stood before his achievement.
He smiled, then said to himself excitedly, "I've got a flying machine!" Likely a famous gnomish quote but something that hasn't been seriously spoken in over 200 years. He grinned, and stood, almost in awe of what he had accomplished himself. He walked around the cockpit, pressing his hand against the smooth shiny surface of the craft. He pulled himself up into the cockpit, and sat in the steel seat, bronze bolted to steel all around him. The panel and controls actually seemed comfortably configured for him. He flipped two switches, and there was a hissing and a dull rumble as the generators started. The gauge for steam pressure climbed rapidly.
I now depart the surface of this world. I have my steel wings and it's time for me to go to heaven. I'll be there in no time, mother!
He grinned softly, a tear of joy pooling into his goggles. He pushed the regulator forward. There was a loud hiss, and steam jetted out from the engines. There was a loud clank. The piston extended, the wheel turned, and the gears meshed. The piston retracted, and cycled. The blade turned, slowly, but speeding up. The room was filled with the sound of the steam engine hissing and sighing, the blades slicing through the air. He felt the force of the engine begin to pull the craft as he moved the regulator forward further. He felt the entire craft shift, and it began moving. It was working! He adjusted the engines tilt, and they tilted as planned, moving from a slightly forward tilt to straight up. The aircraft coasted out onto the glacier. The sun had just risen, and was casting its rays across the icy surface. Blitukus felt one with his machine, but it was only still a means to an end. He pressed the regulator forward more, slowly pressing it as far forward as it would go. The engine sent out a puff of grey steam, and began putting out larger puffs more rapidly. The blades rotation accelerated further, and the noise of it cutting through the air intensified. The crafts bat-wings bended slightly, and he felt the weight of the machine leaving the ground. The engines made quite a racket, spewing steam all over the snowy surface, but, the craft left less and less weight on the surface, and slowly parted with it. Inch by inch, it lifted off of the ground, nothing beneath it but air. Blitukus was flying. Inches became feet, and the flying machine accelerated, carrying him aloft. He laughed out of the joy of the moment. He had worked for two years, and the end result, this machine, really worked. He let it continue to ascend until it was quite a distance off the ground. Grinning, he looked over the side, and saw the entrance to his tunnel down below. He tilted the engines backward, and nosed the aircraft down. Now was the moment of truth, it hovered, but could it soar? He pulled a lever, and the blades inverted their pitch to push air rather than pull it. The flying machine fell downward but lurched forward. The nose of the aircraft pointed down, and the ground was coming up at an ever increasing rate, but the engines roared by him. He pulled back on the flight stick, and the craft responded. It slowly began to nose up. Still, he was unsure weather he would crash into the ground or not. He closed his eyes, and pulled the stick back as far as it would go. The acceleration pressed him down into his seat, and at any moment he expected it would all end in a mangled heap of steel. But, it didn't. He felt his orientation had changed, and opened his eyes. He was flying forward at high speed, slowly ascending into the sky. He was overcome by an inexplicable sense of joy at the sensation of flight. He found it was simply heavenly. He laughed loud, and adjusted his goggles. The wind was cold and bitter, but his clothes had a thick bit at the neck that acted like a scarf. He looked around. He was controlling over a ton of steel and bronze, soaring through the sky, and it really worked. He saw the meter for the turbine pressure rising. The turbine cought the rapidly moving air, and began to spin, churning the free energy devices that powered the engines. The engines let out a big burst of steam, then began to expel white steam rather than grey steam, and roared to their full potential, digging into the air and pressing Blitukus onto the back of his seat. The flying machine rapidly accelerated to speeds no bird could even dream of. The broad blades spun at a rate that made them appear as semi-transparent, shiny discs. He pulled up, and the craft responded rapidly, arcing upwards into the sky. He turned the craft around, and ascended above the mountain tops, flying through a cloud, leveling off as he ascended above. The aircraft glided steadily across the cloud tops as the sun sent down its rays across the vast space of air and land. The machine seemed to slide on air, and Blitukus moved the controls to keep it pointed properly in line with its own motion.
He spoke to the vast skies, "I'm coming, mother!" He sent the aircraft into a dive, and it accelerated further. He darted towards the ground, and as his speed reached unprecedented levels, the aircraft began to shake and warp slightly. Just before impact, he pulled up, the sheer force of maneuvering at such speeds drawing his blood toward his lower half. Indeed, he thought that if he hadn't have made those extra struts, the wings might have broken right then and there. He ascended once more, his speed making the terrain below a blur to him. He rocketed upwards, punching straight through the clouds, and continuing. He felt the wind pressing at the same speed, yet as he distanced himself from the surface, he felt he was moving slower. He was even leaving the clouds behind. He hadn't slowed much, in fact he was still going faster than when he had first surfaced above the clouds, yet he saw the meters for speed and turbine pressure falling. The engines began to lose power as the air driving the turbines thinned. Rapidly the air became far colder than it even was on the surface. He pushed the craft upward with all of the power he could muster from it, yet it lost more power the higher he went. Soon, he began to feel himself losing cohesion with his familiar realm, in fact, he felt as if he were about to leave for another dimension entirely.
I'm almost there. So, this is what it feels like going into heaven?
He grinned and tried to laugh but found it hard to do so. His vision became fuzzy and he became light headed. The sky above darkened its hue slightly, leaving a slight haze of atmosphere visible on the horizon. He was far above the clouds. He felt his strength leave him, and the cold was beginning to bother him less and less as he felt it less and less. One last time he admired the bronze panel and steel frame, shining brightly in the thin air. He saw the clouds, golden, motionless, far below, the darkened sky presenting a radiant aurora above, arcing near the sun.
This is it! Heaven!
His strength gone, the aircraft drifted out of control, and he slipped out of his seat. He felt detached from the situation, admiring the sky, the world, the steel and steam of his flying machine, and enjoyed the thin air and steam from the engines drifting through his fur. He felt detached from the rest of the world, as if it were all a dream. He looked up, and saw his flying machine take its course without him as he fell through the air. He saw the aurora, the haze of the atmosphere resting on the horizon, and saw the clouds motionless, far below him. He felt suspended in the air, suspended in space, suspended in time.
I won't be needing my steel wings anymore. I'm in heaven! I'll be walking among the angels! I'll be walking alongside my mother...
He no longer felt the cold, or his motion. He felt filled with a sense of peace. He felt extremely exhausted, too.
... after I... recuperate from my flight.
He drifted out of consciousness, and plummeted downward, the unmanned flying machine spiraling out of control through the sky toward the ground.
A while later...
Blitukus awoke from his rest, and felt himself independent from space, time, and most of his senses. He felt he was laying on a powdery surface, a dull wind blowing through his fur. He heard a flapping, and something set down by him.
Mother? Is that you? I'VE MADE IT!
But... he began to sense it wasn't his mother. He muttered, "... you're an angel?" The being by him responded, in a female voice with an Irish accent, "Well I'm flattered! Most people'd call me a demon first!"
Demon? No, I couldn't have gone... NO!
He felt his sense of touch returning, and felt the bitter cold of the area. Hell was supposed to be impossibly hot, yet the cold stabbed into him like a goblins dagger. It was a familiar cold. He was still alive, within the mortal plane. He opened his eyes, and found his vision fuzzy. He blinked several times, and when he looked at the being, he nearly yelled out of being startled by her appearance, and her size. He slowly stood up, and looked at her.
He was looking right at the famous and infamous Red Dragon of the Arctic. She spoke, "Looks like we're even now! Good thing I know how to play catch with magic, but sorry about your flyin' machine, playin' catch with a ton and a half of metal flyin' through the sky at 200 miles an' hour is a bit of a tall order even for yours truely!" Blitukus responded, "We're even...?" The red dragon spoke, "Yeah, I saved your arse a couple o' times, and nearly killed ya a couple of times. So how's your magic comin' along?"
I haven't the slightest clue what to say to such a magnificent creature... erm...
"... magic? You must have the wrong talking dog!"
Blitukus laughed nervously. She spoke, "Maybe, but before I cook ya up and eat ya, tell me, what do you think of my nature?"
She's going to eat me?!
Somehow, Blitukus sensed that the dragon was actually a kind being, despite the menacing speech. He responded, "You're good natured, with no tendencies to order or chaos." She replied, "Exactly! See, I told you I was gunna eat you and you said I'm good natured, and how else would you know I'm neutral on the chaos scale? You can sense the alignment of just about anything! That's magic." Blitukus laughed at the thought, but thought about it. He had always had insight into peoples motives before even really meeting them. Such intuition would prove useful in the future. The dragon continued, "One more question..." She walked up to him and held him in place, shouting into his face, "What kinda buffoonery was THAT?! Flyin' 5 miles high and thinkin' the lack of air wouldn't get to your head! Not even I would fly that high!"
Blitukus' ears hurt a bit after she finished. She let him go, and spoke, "Now that maybe I've blasted some sense into your ears, you'll be sure to think twice first. Bein' smart without bein' wise will put you 6 feet under when you want it the least."
Blitukus rubbed his ears, but he knew that for some reason she cared about him. Otherwise, why would she bother to share her eternal wisdom? He realized... it was likely she was out here alone for a rather long time.
Blitukus spoke, "I wanted to reach heaven, to revisit a dead relative." The dragon laughed, "Congratulations, you damn near made it!" Blitukus smiled, and she smiled back. She asked, "So, my new, short, fuzzy friend, would you like a tour of my hole in the ground?" Blitukus nodded, and followed her through the snow. He offered, "When we're done would you like a look around my tunnels?" She replied, "Heck yeah! But if I get stuck in 'em you're getting me out." Blitukus laughed.
Nearby, to his right, his tunnels entrance was still there. Nearby to his left, his flying machine was partially buried in the snow, but still mostly intact. It had soft-crashed in soft material, and minor repairs would likely bring it back to working order. It could have easily ended up a mangled heap of unrecognizable scrap as well. He was finally getting Lucks attention. His flying machine worked, and it could take him far, but it couldn't take him to heaven. He would need to devise a new machine, but now he could fly back to his empire, share his technologies, and make use of the empires resources to reach heaven, with the peoples permission, of course. He smiled, inwardly and outwardly. He felt capable of building anything. No matter what it took, he would reach his mother.
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Now THAT was long XD
It was worth it, though.
[ October 28, 2007: Message edited by: AlanL ]
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Topic: A Kobold's Quest II (Read 76114 times)