Sixty Nine

Fyndraxis and Bird returned to reality and the crisp fall evening that it contained. They had spent a few days inside the sword designing the new magic system and the new Hunters that would constitute its power. Outside the sword in the real world, a few minutes had elapsed.
“Ready?” Fyndraxis asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Bird answered as she shrugged off her cloak made of Hunters. She laid it in a pile next to the sphere that Fyndraxis had been using to roll around. He dismissed his sphere and came to rest on the ground.
“OK, here we go,” as Fyndraxis said this, he fired up his nanomancer software and hit what he was calling, “The Big Red Button”. This button, when pressed, started a series of protocols. Firstly, his Hunters played a game of evens and odds separating themselves into two groups and each one finding a partner in their opposite number. Once paired up, the even Hunter would consume the odd and print out a Hunter 2.0. This new Hunter would then turn around and eat the Hunter that birthed it, leaving exactly zero old Hunters left at the end of the process. Or one. There was a fifty-fifty chance that there were an odd number of old Hunters.
The process was surprisingly quick and the only real evidence that anything happened was a puff of black smoke that was pure carbon. This was Mycellus’ cut. This carbon was returned to the earth to be used however he saw fit. Fyndraxis’ Hunter horde had turned from a metric ton to 850kg, not a huge price to pay to keep a god off of his back, and the actual number of units hadn’t changed.
“Was that it?” Bird asked.
“Yeah, looks like that was it,” Fyndraxis wasn’t disappointed exactly. He knew it would be quick and punctuated with some black smoke, but it lacked the drama and theater that the birth of a new magic system required. So he made all the hunters glow a pleasant cherenkov blue into the night. It was his signature color and it seemed fitting.
“Nice, can I give it a shot?” She asked.
“Whenever you are ready,” he bade.
“Console,” she intoned.
As she spoke this word, molecules in her lungs gathered in a great diaspora passing over her vocal cords, tongue and teeth. In this epic journey of about half a meter or so, they picked up vibrations crafted by her body to be propagated into the universe beyond. This vibration, born in her brain as meaning, left her mouth as a wave front and washed over the Hunters before her.
As the Hunters were always checking the air for vibrations of a certain pattern, a few of them noticed that this passing wave front closely matched a piece of data hardwired deep in their memories. This code word “Console” triggered a cascade of actions. The first of them to hear the call volunteered to oversee the operation. They marshaled the requisite number of units required for this action and triangulated a vector in which to move. Once this vector was calculated, they fired up their little rockets. Once enroute to their objective, they began organizing themselves according to another piece of data that they had. This was a blueprint of a Console interface unit.
This Console materialized in front of Bird with a hiss. This was the hiss of a couple million little rocket engines firing to get the Hunters where they needed to be. The Console floated in the air in front of Bird offering her a couple of options of what to do. On the face of the unit, the Hunters had arranged their bodies so their bellies were facing Bird. This was the side of them that could change color. By working as a team and changing the colors that they displayed, they could convey information to Bird’s brain via her optic nerve. She could then make decisions about what she wanted them to do.
After some poking around, Bird found the option to organize a group of Hunters into a cohesive unit and give that unit a behavior. She had recently given up her Hunter armor and she wanted a new set. When she touched the screen, the Hunters read her DNA and started remembering who she was. She was the first user of a new system, so there was nothing really associated with her account. Fyndraxis had a file that outlined the behaviors associated with Bird’s armor and sent it to her. It popped up on her favorites list and she pressed the button labeled render.
When the render button was pressed. A group of Hunters was assigned to the task. From then on until told otherwise, they would act as Bird’s armor. This could not be stolen or otherwise molested. It was coded to her DNA. If she somehow lost it, she could simply recreate it and the Hunters originally assigned to do that job would pass back into public use.
As Bird and every other user went out and collected more Hunters, they would be coded to their DNA. Most of them. Fifteen percent of the harvested Wendigo would be returned to the earth, but that was merely a weight thing. Fyndraxis would take a fifteen percent cut for himself, leaving eighty five percent up for grabs. Fyndraxis’ fifteen percent were his to use how he saw fit. Nominally, they would be for public use. They would wander around looking for Wendigo to destroy and build their numbers unless they were needed for another task. Generally, they would be the mana that drives the magic system.
Fyndraxis eventually would end up with access to an absolutely enormous amount of these things. He would maintain root access to these in case shit went down, whatever that meant.
Bird toggled the lapel switch that commanded her cloak to change into a set of armor. The cloak flowed over her body and hardened to an onyx carapace. She had taken a shine to Fyndraxis’ Daemon armor that he had been sporting lately and decided that she wanted a set.
Fyndraxis had based the look of his armor on an anime that he had enjoyed in his youth. The anime itself was complete trash, but the aesthetic was undeniably awesome. The armor was a complete Guyver ripoff. Blades protruded from the elbows, the head had a crest for some reason, and it looked like something Mycellus had grown in a vat. The important thing was that it was radiation proof. With the hexagonal packing that the new Hunters provided, there would be no gamma rays sneaking in anywhere. Her eyes were even covered now. The new hunters made little displays in front of her eyes so that she could see the outside world.
The skin of the armor could change color as well, making Bird almost invisible. The armor looked at what was behind it, and displayed that for everyone to see, or not see, as it were.
None of this new whiz bang technology really helped Fyndraxis with his body problem though. So he would still be rolling around in his sphere for the time being. Gas tight spheres could do all sorts of wonderful things though. He could fill it with hydrogen and float around like a party balloon. Granted, he would have to do his best not to turn himself into a tiny hindenburg, but it opened up a whole universe of possibilities.
“Mycellus approves,” Bird said as she flexed her newly armored fist, “the technology is granted to us for an undefined probationary period pending further review.”
“So, don’t fuck it up?” He asked, knowing the answer.
“Yeah, pretty much. Want to head back home?” She asked, doing some light stretching, preparing for a sprint back to the lodge.
“Sure,” he said.
She grabbed the Daemon Sword, and fastened it at her hip. She looked to the south and shot off into the night, trailed by all the Magic that existed in the world. It did its best to keep up.