Walking into a room full of cobwebs and dust over a slew of items, many of which have rather peculiar shapes. Walking around, I say, "It's pretty dusty."
"Yeah, I guess no one has come by to clean it since I have been gone. Captivant was doing it for me, and I thought his daughter-in-law Liina would start doing it after he went to Fimbulwinter."
Examining the insides of the room, I says, "You can't just expect things like that to be done for you. It's common courtesy to ask."
"But you'd do it if it were you."
"Of course I would, but that is neither here nor there."
Stretching out my hand a touch one of the many objects in the room, and as I do, a loud noise comes out from it, and I jump back in fright and say, "ARGH!"
Avram starts to laugh, and I say, "That isn't funny!"
As a nursery rhyme plays from the machine, Avram says, "It really is. Not even a child would get upset over that."
"Shut up!"
Walking up to the machine, Avram says, "I made this to calm down Intrare when she was born. Captivant's uppity daughter required a lot of stimulus to keep her from running out of the house, and this loud toy worked rather well. Though I am surprised it still works, I wonder what here still function."
A light appears to gleam in Avram's eyes, and he quickly starts running around, touching whatever he can find, and bringing an item to me. He drops a giant tank with a tube attached to a mask. "Put it on."
"I don't want to, it seems dangerous?"
"No, I promise it isn't just come on and try it."
Avram quickly places the mask on my face, and I mumble, "It's too tight, I can't breathe!"
But after flicking a switch on the tank, I start to feel air rush into my lungs, and I say, "What's this?"
"I originally thought that if someone wanted to swim in the sea. I had the idea after I say a Vanir Mammoth when I was younger suck in and store air. If we could use that, wouldn't the average human be able to live in the sea for long periods of time? Though I kind of ran into the issue of not being able to properly control the pressure."
From the container, a surge of air passes through the tube right into the mask, blasting Orb's face with air until he rips it off, and says, "I almost suffocated!"
"Stop whining, you're still breathing. Oh, not this was one of my favourite inventions."
Putting a collar on Orb, he holds a completely detachable handle in his arms, and then, clicking a button, a light appears on the handle that starts to glow brighter the closer he moves to Orb.
"I called this the pet tracker version 75. It is a collar that can figure out the distance you are from the collar just by holding the tracker, can also be used for kids, and partners."
Smiling, I say, "This is really cool, if I had one of these, I would be able to keep track of everyone no matter where they are all the time."
Laughing, Avram says, "You sound just like Draga. But don't get you're hopes up, cause this had a flaw."
"A flaw?" I quickly move to take it off, but then a shock moves from it to the inside of my body.
"You see, I used some cursed beast parts to make lightning as a power source, but I really didn't know how to regulate the lightning, so you get shocked randomly when it's on."
Taking it off, I say, "Are you trying to kill me!?"
"No, of course not, it's just that all intervention has their little issues, it isn't something you should blame them for. Oh no, we have another great one."
Avram quickly grabs to gaint gauntlet and places them on Orb's head, and he says, "The undead power crushes."
"I don't like the sound of that name."
"Don't worry, just lift some stuff and you'll see how great they are."
Walking around the room, I grab objects one by one with the giant oversized gauntlets, and no matter what I pick up, it's no problem, even holding them all at once has no strain on my body. "I feel super strong."
"You see, those gauntlets are made from another cursed beast, and its curse allowed it to triple the muscle density of its body, ignoring the difference in mass that would be created by doing such a thing. Granting it immense strength. It was a tool I invented for housewives to beat up their cheating husbands, and do chores easier."
With a smile, I say, "That sounds very cool. BUT WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS!"
"The muscle growth tends to continue unappeased, and eventually starts to crush the user's arms."
As the gauntlets tighten around Orb's arms, he activates his legacy, freezes them off his body, and says, "YOU SADIST!"
The words from my mouth completely bounce off Avram's head as his eyes gleam more and more at his creation.
Sighing, I say, "I guess I shouldn't ruin this."
As a knock hits the door, Avram walks to it and opens it up, saying, "Hello?"
Walking in behind him, I see a large series of nightmares all facing him, and in the Saviour's song, they all start to speak over each other, but there is one common theme throughout all of their words.
"We welcome you home, Avram, and thank you."
"Without your scanner, my wife would have died during childbirth."
"It finally allowed them to perform a surgery to reduce the negative effects of my curse."
"We were able to find a tumour in my husband's body when he went for a checkup."
"That compound you made allowed my family to start a new farm, and our productivity has increased a hundredfold thanks to you."
"There is more than enough produce to go around now."
"If it wasn't for you, we could have been in a famine."
"It's thanks to you that we didn't have to abandon our family land when the resources dried up."
Each of them smiles while giving thanks or prayers to Avram, and he smiles with the same childlike expression he has had since we all landed in Blestemate and says, "No problem."
Little by little, they all walk off, and as he turns into the room, I say, "I can see why you enjoy doing this so much. You're able to help so many people like this. If you need my help testing anything out like this."
Confused, he says, "Oh nothing like that, I really don't give a rat's ass whether my work helps others or not."
With teal hair, I say, "Then why? Oh wait, I see you're just like you're son, you don't have to be embarrassed by helping others."
He flicks me in the forehead and says, "Unlike Iancu, I am great at expressing my emotions."
Moving to the corner of the room, Avram kneels down, and then opens a trap door, and then says, "Come on, follow the leader."
He walks down, and I follow closely behind him in the dark depths where nothing can be seen. Avram quickly lights a match, and then a moment later he lights a candle, then from that candle a string burns that moves the fire all the way to another connected candle, lighting it up, and this process continues until a large series of candles are lit up, illuminating the room.
Inside the room I see an even smaller and dustier place split into to even split section, a purple one, and a greenish red one with even shoddier things inside that look like they are one touch away from turning into dust, though unlike the things upstairs many of the items down here look like they where fixed after being broken rather than just being unmaintained. "This is Sângele Stelelor version zero, the first canvas for my brain."
I walk around and inspect the room little by little, and as I do, Avram says, "At first, most of my work was actually looked down upon; people really hated it."
"Really? Why."
"It was seen to be a foreign influence to care a lot about engineering. You see, due to the curses, Blestemate has a very different technological landscape than the rest of the world. For things people had to innovate to do, we simply have to make cursed items. It has allowed us to function just as well without relying on outsiders.
So a hobby like mine, which required lots of knowledge from humans as well as imports from their countries to even afford the equipment, was something that put a lot of strain on people at the Church of the Cursed Sky orphanage."
"You're an orphan?"
"I guess I never brought it up. But yeah, just one of the many casualties of curse scavengers from abroad."
Curse scavengers, according to Gheorghe, are people who come into Blestemate to hunt nightmares and then sell their body parts for the production of cursed weapons.
"So I was stranded at an orphanage, though all of the priests were very nice to me. Still, they weren't too fond of all the tinkering I did, so I had to find an abandoned house and work in its basement to stop people from finding out."
Picking up a tiny little robot, Avram says, "I allowed my mind to go wild trying to put together all of the loose thoughts in my mind, scavenging off, and hunting cursed beast corpses to get the materials I need, and working at shops to import things from abroad.
It was great fun, though I was eventually found out, and quite a bit of the stuff here was destroyed."
"How dare they!"
"Thank you. But I knew the risk and got the punishment, and I was really pissed, but someone stuck their neck out for me and got me this place to work, though the whole event just got me more harassment. Made me pissed off, and I did a lot of shit in retailiation."
"Is that where a lot of you're crimes came from?"
Sweating, Avram says, "Don't tell Iancu."
"Promise."
Picking up a little spinning top, I say, "But are you sure it was worth it?"
"Huh?"
"Wouldn't it have just been better to give it up? You're rather intelligent, and I am sure you could have done hundreds of jobs just as good. It just feels like if something is causing you so much pain, it could be better to just run away," I say as my hair turns yellow.
Taking the spinning top from my hand, Avram turns it, and as he does, wind shoots out from it, and it flies through the sky like it has a mind of its own, and my eyes are captured by it.
"Isn't this stuff just so freaking cool!? I don't think I could live a happy life if I were not getting to mess around with stuff like this for the rest of my life. The engineering from abroad, and the unique materials made from curses, I can't just not explore the combination between the two! I don't think I will ever get tired of this all until I die, and luckily I was not only able to help others-,"
Staring at the other section of the room, Avram says, "And to make friends who would work with me."
Grabbing me by the head, Avram says, "Orb, don't be scared or afraid, you've been waiting a long time for this meeting. Just go and express all you want to without holding back, ok? Because I am sure that at the end of it all, you'll be happy you did. You're Orb Rian, and no, why is anyone who meets you not going to love you?"
Gripping my fist tight, I say, "RIGHT!"
From his jacket, Avram takes out a letter and hands it to me, and says, "It's the note Captivant wrote for Dragoste."
"You took it from my things?"
"I knew you'd be meeting him here, so I got the ones for both him and the queen on me, now get going!"
"Right!"
Φ As Orb runs out of the room, I turn my head to the other side of the room, and I say, "It seems this room is still a place that gives hope to more people than just us two."