Arwin and Lillia stood on either side of his anvil. The heart thumped away on top of it, dull red flesh pulsating with every beat. They’d decided what they were going to do, but actually doing it was a bit more difficult in practice.
“Where do we even start?” Lillia muttered. “I haven’t made food for a heart before. I guess it should be… mush, or something? We could stuff it into one of the heart-holes.”
Arwin lifted his gaze to look at her, holding back a laugh. “Lillia, I don’t think you can just stuff food into a random hole and hope it gets power from it. It’s a heart. A creepy one, but it’s still a heart.”
Lillia’s nose scrunched. “What if you make a bunch of sharp spiky things on it?”
“I get the feeling that squishing food up and stuffing it into a heart isn’t going to do anything better than shoving a whole roast turkey into it,” Arwin said with a shake of his head. “I do like the idea of somehow converting the food to something the heart can use, though.”
“The can use bit is the problem. I don’t think hearts are meant to consume any amount of energy,” Lillia grumbled. “The stupid Prism thing we got was an exception… but maybe we could take inspiration? It was also a heart, right?”
“I think it had more magic in it. This one doesn’t have a Mesh identification.”
Lillia looked back to the red lump of flesh on the anvil and chewed her lower lip. Her tail snaked out from her pants and brushed back and forth across the floor in thought. Arwin’s eyes followed it, temporarily mesmerized.
“Maybe that’s what we have to focus on making first,” Lillia said.
Lillia nodded sagely. Then she frowned and gave his leg a gentle tug with her tail. “You lost me. What do you mean?”
“You know how your intent heavily controls the result you get while crafting… or cooking, I guess.”
“Yeah. I get that part. But how does intent have intent?”
“We don’t know what kind of food this is going to eat or how it’s going to work,” Arwin said after taking a few seconds to collect his thoughts so he could articulate them properly. “So that means this contraption is going to have to be able to take in some random kind of food and convert it to magic energy. That requires intent.”
“Right.” Lillia nodded. “I’m still with you.”
“So if I work from the bottom up, the converter needs intent to convert magic food to pure magic, but I need to make the converter in the first place. That also requires intent. So that’s basically two layers of intent. I need to have the intent to make something that can in itself simulate intent.”
“That is a damn brain twister,” Lillia said with a shudder. “I’ve got you now.” She paused for a moment and a small grin flitted across her lips as she poked him with the tip of her tail. “Figuratively and literally.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Arwin laughed and shook his head. “That’s good, because it’s threatening to slip out of my head even as I think about it. I basically need an Awakened item, but I can’t just force something to wake up. I can only make them with the potential to wake, and the only item that’s done that so far is Wyrmhunger."
“Let’s take it one step at a time,” Lillia suggested. She rested her chin on Arwin’s shoulder and thought for a second. “I think you’re making your end too complicated. Reduce the requirements. I’ll make sure the food always has a similar form of intent behind it. It’ll just be the closest thing to pure strength that I can get. Then you have your bit focus on harvesting the strength energy and converting that. Leave the rest of it as waste.”
That would definitely reduce the amount I would have to do. I still need to deal with the crux of the issue — finding a way to convert magic food to magic — but it narrows the scope.
“Good idea,” Arwin said. “This is definitely something that has to be made in pieces. Basically a set… but for a heart instead of a living person. Three pieces, I think? Each one can have intent to help reduce the food down to a base magical form and help the process along.”
“What if you replicate something similar to normal eating?” Lillia asked, her eyes lighting up as she abruptly straightened, nearly yanking Arwin off his feet when she forgot that she was still holding onto his leg with her tail.
“You could, but I think you could still help me. I want to try something,” Ariwn said thoughtfully. “I’ve got a grasp of the physical mechanism, but you understand food and its purpose more than me. Do you think you could try to help me form the actual intent for the item?”
“Is that even possible? I’m not a crafter.”
“I’ve got no idea,” Arwin admitted with a shrug. “But we’re trying to make something that really feels like it has no right to exist. Might as well see what else we can screw up in the process.”
Lillia grinned. “When you put it like that, how can I refuse? Let’s give it a shot.”