Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Durable

"Alright, go for it."

Krill stood behind the waiting blast shield and covered his antenna waiting for the eruption that was sure to follow. With him waited what was probably half of arcadia. Ok, granted that was probably an exaggeration but that's sure what it felt like. They had returned to their dark home moon defeated. The plan had been to go out and deal with the void once and for all, but instead they came limping back not a few months later with their captain missing his heart and one lung and hovering near death.

Arcadia was poised on the edge of disaster.

Celex and Kelly's return had proven that dying didn't mean the same as it used to, but they were almost certain that if Adam died, his anima was unlikely to make it to revelation, or back home. Kazna would make sure of that, wherever she was. Sunny was almost sure he would be destroyed and harvested out of spite. If there was anyone Kazna blamed more than Sunny for everything that happened, it was Adam.

Kay Peered around the side of Krill wide green eyes both confused and eager to see what was going on, though Sunny kept a tight hold on one of his upper hands. Kay had hit a growth spurt while they were gone and was now almost as tall as Krill. Kay's continual questioning as to where his dad was, was beginning to affect everyone.

Sunny had tried to explain that his dad was sick and needed to rest, but still kay at least wanted to visit to help make him feel better. How did you explain to a toddler that his father had about a fifty percent chance of survival.

They would cross that bridge when they got there.

On the other side of the blast shield, Celex stood sleeve rolled up to his elbow, which was gloved, hair tied back in a surgical hairnet. He wore a mask and a gown and even surgical booties over his shoes. A glass wall separated him from everyone else along with the aforementioned blast shield.

The room was completely sterile, and glowing light from the DECOM chamber glowed a dull green through the room.

Next to him, celex stood by an open top glass cylinder bubbling with a strange clear blue mixture.

The Tesraki had explained the fluid was a special mixture designed to facilitate the growth of stem cells, while simultaneously containing all of the material required to keep the organs alive while they were being grown. There was something else in there about how the water contained certain types of elemental metals to augment the building of the artificial bla bla blam or maybe he had just heart that part wrong. He had been to focused on the biological nature of the heart and lung.

As far as krill was concerned, and he was always very concerned, there was one big issue that they needed to address.

Energy.

Anima energy was powerful and ran through Adam's body with Krill's most recent augmentation. Power surges in the anima had already proven trouble for Adam's mechanical leg and eye, so it wouldn't do to give him a mechanical heart just for it to rupture and overload from too much anima energy.

That wouldn't do at all.

So there was only one way to test it.

They were either about to do absolutely nothing, or completely destroy a multimillion dollar set of artificial organs.

Celex flex his hand over the water, before slowly sinking his hand into the slightly viscous fluid. Or perhaps, viscous wasn't the right word, it was thicker than water, that was for sure, and rather slimy, but it wasn't syrup either. The fluid itself was rather warm at around 98.6 degrees, or the average temperature of the human body. He paused only a little before gently cupping his hand around the artificial heart.