As the days stretched on, the camp did not disappear as quickly as the villagers expected. Instead, it stayed. The Director had agreed to lend his manpower, not just to assist in rebuilding, but to protect the village while it recovered.
In the Badlands, weakness invited attention. A wounded settlement was no different from an open carcass in the desert. Raiders, opportunists, and worse would come if given a chance. By remaining, The Director ensured that chance never came.
It was goodwill, yes, but it was also strategy.
His presence strengthened his ties with nearby settlements. Word would spread. Favor would accumulate. And in a land where survival depended on alliances as much as strength, that goodwill was worth more than any resource buried beneath the sand.
The temporary camp slowly began to change.
What was once a cluster of tents hastily assembled for rescue became something more permanent. Reinforced positions were established. Watch points rose along the outskirts.
Equipment that would normally stay packed was now unpacked and organized. Paths formed naturally between frequently traveled areas, worn into the ground by routine.
It had become an outpost.
From there, The Director began planning operations into nearby regions. Reports of disturbances, missing caravans, hostile groups, anything that threatened the fragile stability of the Badlands was noted and addressed.
Solving problems early meant preventing larger ones later. Because of this, every agent stationed there was constantly working. They would leave at dawn and return at dusk. Sometimes they returned injured, sometimes they didn't return at all.
Even Anora was no exception.
She came and went without warning, sometimes gone for days at a time. When she returned, she looked worn out, sometimes with new scars, dust in her boots, but always the same calm expression she wore.
She never spoke much about what she did out there. But she always checked on Pheo. And eventually, she stopped staying long enough to watch him. The responsibility fell onto him, or rather, she made sure it did.
One morning, before leaving again, she stood in front of him with her usual relaxed posture, though her eyes carried something firmer beneath it. "Behave," she said simply.
Pheo frowned slightly. "I always do."
She gave him a look that told him she didn't believe that for a second. "And stop wandering into places you shouldn't," she added.
He didn't respond.
She stepped closer and flicked his forehead lightly. "And by the time this village finishes reconstruction," she continued, her tone shifting into something more serious, "you better have a weapon."
She turned to leave, but paused briefly. "And Pheo," she said without looking back, "don't waste your time waiting for supervision." Then she walked off, disappearing deeper into the outpost.
He was then left alone. Alone with his time. Alone with his choices. And for the first time since arriving in the village, Pheo realized something. He couldn't rely on Anora to help him with his path this time.
—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The days of training had given him an answer. Just not the one he expected. Pheo stood alone in the training area, the early morning wind brushing against his skin as he held a spear in his hand.
He had been practicing with it for the past hour. Thrusts, recovery, footwork, with every movement feeling slightly off each time. Not necessarily wrong, but not right either. It was as if he was wearing someone else's shoes.
He exhaled slowly and lowered it.
Around him, weapons lay scattered. A hammer. A dagger. A staff. A short axe. Tools of war, with each of them being capable of killing in the right hands.
But none of them felt like his.
He picked up a dagger next, flipping it in his hand the way he'd seen Anora do it countless times. It spun once before he caught it, but the motion lacked the natural ease she had. When he tried again, it slipped slightly in his grip.
He clicked his tongue and set it down. The sling, he could use. The sword, he understood. But everything else… he could learn, but never be a natural with. He stared at the weapons laid out before him, his reflection faintly visible in the polished surface of a nearby blade.
He had been trying to force himself into something new. Something different. Something that would prove he wasn't the same helpless child he once was. But that wasn't how this worked.
Strength wasn't about abandoning what you knew.
It was about refining it.
He closed his eyes and began to think. It wasn't about power, not about expectations or awakening, but about himself. What he was comfortable with. What he trusted, and what he could rely on even when everything else failed.
When he opened his eyes again, the answer was clear. He turned and left the training area, entering inside the tent that Anora had given him. Pheo sat cross-legged on the ground with a worn notebook resting on his lap.
He flipped through its pages. Notes and observations, fragments of thoughts he didn't want to forget skimmed by. He stopped on a blank page, then began to draw. His hand moved carefully, deliberately.
He sketched the base first. Then the grip. The proportions. The balance point. He added small notes along the side, marking adjustments. Reinforcement here, weight distribution there…
He thought about its reach, its versatility, and its recovery speed. He wasn't designing something extravagant. He was designing something familiar. Something he could trust in the heat of battle. Something that would feel like an extension of himself, not something he had to fight to control.
When he finished, he stared at the page for a long moment.
This wasn't his final weapon.
Not yet.
But it was the right one for now.
He closed the notebook and stood back up. There was only one person who could make his sketches turn from fiction into reality. Closing the notebook with a clap, he got out of the tent and headed elsewhere.
The areas that Midas lived in was separate from most of the camp. It wasn't hidden, but it wasn't central either. The path that led to Midas' home was nothing like the rest of the camp.
It was narrow, uneven, and forgotten.
Sand had long since reclaimed most of it, swallowing what used to be a proper walkway. Bits of warped metal and fractured plating jutted from the ground like bones, half-buried and rusted by time.
No one maintained it. No one needed to.
Except him.
At the end of it stood a structure. It wasn't a house, not really, but a wreck. The massive frame leaned slightly to one side, its hull torn open in places where the metal had crumpled inward like paper.
Its shape was foreign compared to the simple constructions of the Badlands. Smooth in some areas while jagged in others. It was the kind of structure that didn't belong to this era.
Something that had fallen from the sky, Pheo slowed as he approached it. There was something about it. Something familiar. His eyes traced its silhouette, following the unnatural curves, the seams, the exposed interior that had long since stopped functioning.
A faint pressure stirred in the back of his mind, like a memory trying to surface through thick fog.
He had seen something like this before. He was sure of it. But no matter how hard he tried to grasp it, the image slipped away before it could fully form. He frowned slightly before stepping inside.
The interior was larger than it appeared from the outside. The air smelled faintly of dust, metal, and something older, something that didn't belong to the present. Tools were everywhere, but unlike the chaotic wreckage outside, these were organized.
This place wasn't abandoned.
It was repurposed.
"Pheo!"
The sudden shout shattered his thoughts. He flinched instinctively, his body tensing as his head snapped toward the source. Midas stood further inside, grinning widely as if he'd been expecting him.
"You made it!"
Pheo exhaled, the tension leaving his shoulders as he greeted him back. "Yeah." He barely finished the word before Midas walked up to him and slammed a heavy hand against his back.
The impact echoed through his chest. Pheo staggered slightly forward, coughing once from the force. "Still light," Midas said with a laugh. "You eating enough?"
Pheo straightened himself, resisting the urge to rub the sore spot. "I am." Midas didn't dwell on it. His expression shifted quickly, eyes sharp with interest. "So," he said, crossing his arms. "You here for advice?"
Pheo hesitated for only a moment before shaking his head. "Not exactly." He reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded notebook page. "I already decided."
That caught Midas' full attention.
Pheo unfolded the paper carefully and handed it to him. "I made a sketch." Midas took it without a word. His eyes scanned the page. The grin on his face faded. Not into disappointment, but into focus.
He studied the page, his eyes moving slowly across the measurements, the annotations, the internal mechanisms Pheo had carefully drawn. "You've got talent," he said, almost absentmindedly.
Pheo barely heard him.
His feet carried him deeper into the wreck. His fingers brushed against the cold metal walls as he walked, tracing seams and dents worn smooth by time. He moved past hanging cables, past hollow compartments stripped of whatever purpose they once had.
There was something else.
Something he knew.
Behind him, Midas kept talking.
"This isn't just a rough idea," he said. "You've got exact tolerances. Clearances. You even accounted for internal stress." He flipped the page slightly, examining the smaller notes written along the margins.
"You know how weird this is? Most sketches are just drawings of what they want it to look like. They don't think about what makes it work down to the last detail."
Pheo stepped over a fractured panel resting against the floor. His hand slid across a curved section of the hull.
"It's specific," Midas continued. "Very specific. You even wrote down the mechanisms needed for it to function properly." He glanced up briefly. "I'd barely need to change anything."
Pheo stopped walking. His eyes settled on a section of the interior where the metal had warped inward, as if something had forced its way out, or in.
Midas leaned back against a workbench, still holding the sketch. "You ever think about doing this seriously?" he asked. "Designing things, I mean. You clearly understand how parts move together."
Pheo didn't answer.
His hand pressed flat against the metal.
And then it came.
Not a full memory.
Not clear, but enough.
A dark space. Cold and tight.
Pheo's eyes widened slightly.
"Ah."
"I remembered now, because of this." he said, running his hand lightly across the curved metal lining the wall. "This wasn't meant to be a house. It used to be something else."
Midas didn't respond immediately, still flipping through the notebook as his eyes traced the measurements and mechanisms Pheo had drawn. "Hm?" he muttered absently.
Pheo stepped back outside, looking at the broken silhouette as a whole. The tilted frame. The split tail. The hollow cavity as its center. "It's resourceful," Pheo continued. "Building around wreckage like this."
Midas gave a distracted grunt in response, his attention still fixed on the blueprint. "You work with what you have."
Pheo hesitated.
"...This used to be a helicopter, didn't it?"
The page stopped turning. Silence filled the wreck as slowly, Midas lowered the notebook. "What did you say?" His voice had changed, not louder, but sharper, focused.
Pheo turned back toward him. "A helicopter," he repeated. "This part here was the main body. And the tail would've extended out that way. The top should've had–" He stopped himself. He noticed that Midas was staring at him now. Not with confusion, but with certainty.
"How," Midas asked carefully, "do you know that word?"
The air between them grew heavier. "I was sure," Midas continued, taking a slow step forward, "that I was the only one here who knew what this was."
Pheo blinked at the sudden sharpness in Midas' voice. For a moment, he wasn't sure how to respond. But the tension didn't make sense to him.
"It's just something I read about," Pheo said, waving a hand dismissively as if it were trivial. "A long time ago. I found the way it functioned interesting. The concept, the balance, the way the blades–"
He caught himself, realizing he was rambling. He rubbed the back of his neck and laughed lightly. "If I ever visited the capital, I would've wanted to ride in one."
Midas didn't laugh.
"You wouldn't," he said.
Pheo tilted his head. "Wouldn't what?"
"You wouldn't be able to ride one."
His tone was calm but certain.
"There are none in the capital."
Pheo frowned slightly.
"In fact," Midas continued, "there isn't a single one left in this entire continent."
The words didn't register properly.
"...What?"
Midas gestured around them. "This is not a machine people use anymore. It's a relic. A vehicle from the past."
Pheo stared at him. Then laughed. Not because it was funny, but because he didn't know what else to do. "That's impossible," he said. "I read about it. Everything. How it works. The components. The structure. The purpose."
He pointed faintly toward the exposed interior. "The transmission. The rotor assembly. Even the way the pilot controls pitch and–"
"Enough."
Midas lifted a hand, cutting Pheo off mid-sentence. "I don't need to hear about transmissions and… whatever else you were about to say." His eyes narrowed slightly. "I need to know how you know what a helicopter is."
Pheo exhaled, irritation slipping into his voice. "I told you. I read it in a book." He frowned. "Is that so unbelievable? Why are you acting like I just said I built one?"
Midas opened his mouth, then closed it again, visibly steadying himself. He turned away for a moment, pacing once across the hollow interior of the wreck before speaking again, more controlled this time.
"You have to understand something," he said. "Old World technology wasn't just advanced. It was… absurd." He gestured toward the curved metal ceiling above them.
"They conquered the skies."
His voice carried a faint trace of awe despite himself. "Not just these things. There were vehicles thousands of times faster than anything on the ground. Machines that could cross the continent in hours."
Pheo stayed silent, listening. "We've recovered fragments," Midas continued. "Bits of knowledge. Power systems. Metallurgy techniques. Weapon components."
He tapped the wall again.
"But one thing none of us–none of us– have been able to fully figure out, is how they made something more than ten times larger than a car fly."
"Not properly," he added. "Not in a way we can replicate. The capital included."
Pheo's brows knit together slightly.
"So," he said slowly, "if you really read a book about it…"
Midas folded his arms.
"Then demonstrate it."
Silence.
"Explain it," Midas clarified. "How does something that heavy leave the ground? And don't give me surface nonsense. Tell me the principle."
Pheo hesitated for the first time. Not because he didn't know, but because now he was being measured. "If you truly read it," Midas said quietly, "you should be able to show me how it's done."
Pheo raised both his hands slightly. "I wouldn't be able to build one," he admitted. "Not here." He gestured vaguely around them.
"There are too many materials that I don't know how to get, let alone if they still exist. The alloys, the precision components, the fuel systems. Even the tools that are needed to shape them."
He paused.
"But I definitely can prove it. By theory."
For a moment, Midas just stared at him.
Then he laughed.
Not loudly. Not mockingly. But with genuine disbelief. "You?" he said, shaking his head. "You think you can answer questions about Old World Technology, especially ones that I wouldn't know the answer to?"
His eyes narrowed with amusement.
"Do you really believe you understand something even the capital can't figure out?"
Pheo didn't shrink from it. "As long as it's about helicopters," he said simply, "I can try." He hesitated only slightly. "I read a book about it after all."
Midas exhaled through his nose, still smiling. "Fine," he said. "Let's start simple."
He pointed upward.
"What makes it rise?"
Pheo answered immediately.
"Lift."
Midas tilted his head. "And what creates lift?"
"The rotor blades," Pheo said. "They're shaped like airfoils. When they spin, air moves faster over the curved surface than beneath it. That creates a pressure difference. Lower pressure above, higher pressure below. The imbalance produces an upward force."
Midas' smile faded.
He hadn't expected that.
"...Alright," he said slowly.
"And how does it control its direction?"
"The pilot changes the pitch of the blades," Pheo replied. "Collective pitch changes lift overall. Cyclic pitch changes lift at specific points during rotation. That tilts the rotor disc and creates horizontal movement."
Midas' brow furrowed. He didn't interrupt him nor did he correct him, he simply asked another question. "And torque?" Midas said. "If the rotor spins one way, why doesn't the body spin the other?"
"The tail rotor," Pheo answered. "It produces sideways thrust to counteract the torque from the main rotor." There was no hesitation or signs of guessing, just certainty in his voice.
Midas stared at him now. Really stared at him. "...Why doesn't it collapse under its own weight?" he asked.
"The lift exceeds the gravitational force," Pheo said. "As long as the upward force is greater than the downward pull, it stays airborne."
Midas stepped closer again.
"And efficiency loss at higher altitudes?"
"The air becomes thinner. Less density means less lift. The rotor has to spin faster or increase pitch to compensate, but there's a limit to that."
Midas' lips parted slightly. He asked another question. And another. Each one harder than the last. Air density. Drag. Energy transfer. Rotor efficiency. Angular momentum. With every answer coming without delay.
The disbelief left Midas first. Then the skepticism. Then something else replaced it.
Curiosity.
He stopped asking questions to try and expose Pheo in a lie, but started asking them to learn. "What happens," Midas said slowly, "when forward motion increases lift on one side of the rotor more than the other?"
"Dissymmetry of lift," Pheo replied. "It's corrected by blade slapping and cyclic pitch adjustments."
Midas' eyes sharpened. "And autorotation?"
"The rotor keeps spinning even without engine power because air flows upward through the blades during descent." Midas walked slowly in a circle thinking. "...So the air itself becomes the medium of support," he murmured.
"Yes," Pheo said.
Pheo frowned slightly. "If you understand so much about machines," he asked, "why did helicopters give you so much trouble."
He gestured toward the drones resting in the corners of the room. Thin, skeletal constructs of metal and canvas, their frames patched together from pieces that clearly did not belong to the same origin.
"You built those."
Midas followed his gaze. For a moment, he didn't answer. Then he gave a quiet exhale. "It's different," he said. He reached down and rested a hand on one of the drones, his fingers brushing against its worn surface.
"These were never mine."
He tapped the metal lightly. "They were already machines. Broken ones. Dead ones." He paused. "I didn't create them. I found them and gave them a quick fix with what I know."
His hand slid along the body, stopping where newer metal had been fused to older, darker alloy. "I never understood how they worked," he admitted. "Not truly. I only understood what they did."
He turned to face Pheo.
"And that's not the same thing." Midas walked slowly across the room as he spoke, his voice calm, but threaded with something quieter beneath it. "When I was working on hundreds of these underground, I tried to restore them as they were."
His mouth twitched faintly.
"I failed."
He let out a small, humorless breath. "Again. And again. And again." He raised a hand, holding his fingers apart slightly. "Hundreds of attempts. All ending the same."
"I didn't have their knowledge," Midas continued. "I didn't have their materials. I didn't have their tools. I didn't even have their language." He glanced at the drone again. "So I dropped trying to bring them back to the world."
His eyes hardened slightly.
"And instead, I made something new."
He crouched beside it. "I studied what remained. What parts still moved. What parts still reached." He looked back at Pheo. "And I cheated."
A faint smile appeared. "I let the wind do the work." He stood again. "The drones don't fly because I recreated how the Old World did it with their propulsion." He shook his head. "They fly because I built them to navigate freely using the air."
He gestured upward slightly. "They don't fight gravity. They negotiate with it with a bit of help from electricity." He let out a small laugh. "It must've been nothing compared to what they had before."
There was no bitterness in his voice. Only acceptance, as if he had been defeated in all aspects as a creator.
"No," Pheo said as he stepped forward. "What you did was harder."
Midas looked at him, blinking slightly at his words.
"The Old World had thousands of years." He gestured vaguely outward. "Thousands of years of discoveries building on top of each other. Every answer built on another answer."
His gaze returned to the drones. "They weren't starting from nothing but scraps."
"You were."
"They had complete puzzles," Pheo said. "You were given broken pieces. Pieces that didn't even belong to the same set." His voice remained calm. "And you still made something that worked the same."
He looked at Midas directly. "That doesn't make you lesser, it makes you flexible." His eyes moved again to the machines around them. "You didn't just copy the Old World."
"You adapted without it."
"What you've done," he said, softer now, "has already surpassed most of what exists today." Midas didn't laugh this time, he didn't deny Pheo's words. He only stood there, looking at the machines he had built from corpses. That was when he finally stopped seeing the countless tests he had done as failures, but as proof.