The walnut floorboards hummed beneath Loria’s slippers, shuddering with the unstable charge leaking from the girl on the rug. A furious emerald light pulsed from her stepsister’s skin, flickering like a faulty gas lamp about to explode. The erratic thrum deep inside the girl’s ribcage intensified. “She… she said it would be fast,” Callista choked, her voice a reedy whisper, barely audible over the magical tremor. Her eyes, wide and unfocused, stared blankly at the ornate plaster ceiling. “A flash, then… then no more… no more pain.” A tear traced a path through the shimmering green on her cheek. “Mother said… she said it would be for the fortune. For the Veldts to claim the estate.” Fortune. Estate. Vondra wasn’t just trying to get rid of her; she was attempting murder. And not just Loria’s, but Garrond’s, Brixen’s, and anyone else on the property. Callista was a living bomb, sent here to detonate Cogwater. The sheer absurdity of the betrayal ignited pure, practical outrage. Her airhead persona, so carefully cultivated, shattered like cheap porcelain. “Brixen!” Loria’s voice, sharp and commanding, sliced through the humming air. It was a tone no one on Cogwater had ever heard from her. “Those automated tea-carts! The ones with the reinforced chassis! Get them in here, *now*! And clear a five-foot perimeter around her!” Brixen, who had been frozen mid-step, a silver tray of empty teacups still clutched in his white-gloved hand, blinked. His normally impassive face contorted into an expression of utter bewilderment. He looked from the convulsing Callista to Loria, then back again. “Lady Veldt?” “No time!” Loria barked, already scrambling across the velvet rug, ignoring her expensive silken gown. Her eyes were alight with a fierce, calculating intelligence. “Lord Skall! Your study has spare transfer tubing, correct? The thickest gauge you have, preferably with a high-tensile alloy! And any thermal baffles you keep for your suit’s power core!” Garrond, who had also been watching Callista with a mixture of concern and growing horror, visibly flinched at Loria’s sudden transformation. His ‘spoiled, naive’ wife was speaking in highly technical jargon, her movements quick and decisive. He stared, completely stunned, as she knelt beside Callista, her hands hovering, not in comfort, but in precise assessment of the magical field. “My… my suit’s components are in the workshop below,” Garrond stammered, his baritone rough with surprise. “The heavy-duty lines are for the primary power transfer. Why?” “We’re building a containment field, you imbecile!” Loria snapped, completely forgetting her demure act. Her mind raced, sifting through schematics, calculating stress tolerances, energy dispersal rates. Callista’s core was on the verge of critical mass. “She’s a living power surge! We need to isolate the arcane energy before it goes kinetic! Brixen, are those carts moving?!” The butler, jolted by Loria’s uncharacteristic ferocity, finally spurred into action. “Yes, Lady Veldt! Immediately, Lady Veldt!” He dashed out of the study with uncharacteristic haste, his usual stately gait replaced by a frantic scramble. Moments later, the tell-tale whirring of automated carts approaching echoed from the hall. Garrond, still processing Loria’s sudden metamorphosis, moved with surprising speed. “Piping and baffles, you said?” he murmured, already heading for the hidden panel behind a massive, leather-bound globe. He pulled it open, revealing a vertical shaft leading down. “Follow me. We’ll be faster if we retrieve them directly.” Loria nodded, her gaze fixed on Callista’s increasingly violent tremors. The emerald glow was now pulsing almost continuously. “Hurry!” Garrond descended the shaft with practiced ease, Loria sliding down after him, her silken dress catching on nothing, her focus entirely on the task at hand. They emerged into a smaller, secondary workshop, filled with discarded suit parts and gleaming tools. Garrond immediately grabbed several thick, coiled tubes of gleaming bronze-alloy sleeve and a handful of flat, dark leaden plates. Back in the study, Brixen had arranged four automated tea-carts in a rough square around the shuddering girl, their reinforced chassis gleaming. Their small, internal power cores whirred softly, steady beside the erratic rattle on the floor. Loria, snatching the insulated lines from Garrond, wasted no time. She barked orders at Brixen to use his serving tongs to help her thread the flexible, yet robust, tubes through the sturdy framework of the carts. Her bare hands, usually kept pristine, worked with speed and precision, twisting, connecting, securing. “The lead plates!” she commanded, her voice raw. “Place them on the inner surface of the carts, facing inward! They’ll absorb the initial arc-flash!” Garrond, still in a daze, followed her instructions with a growing sense of wonder. He watched as his wife, whom he believed was only capable of discerning fine lace and judging the quality of macarons, expertly connected the final junction, forming a shimmering, almost invisible field of pure arcane impedance. As the circuit closed, the emerald glow around Callista flickered once, then stabilized into a soft, steady luminescence. The violent trembling ceased. The erratic hum settled into a low, rhythmic thrum, like a distant, perfectly tuned clock. Her stepsister sagged against the velvet rug, eyelids fluttering shut as the frantic gasps slowed. She was still glowing, but the furious, destructive energy was gone, contained, directed. Loria stood back, her chest heaving, a smear of grease on her cheek, a small wrench still clutched in her hand. The crisis was averted. She had built an illegal anti-magic centrifuge out of tea-carts and spare parts in less than five minutes. Suddenly, the reality of her exposed genius crashed over her. She looked down at the brass spanner in her hand as if it had spontaneously appeared. Her face flushed. “Oh! This… this funny little metal rod!” she stammered, forcing a wide, vacant smile. She quickly tried to tuck the tool behind her back. “I, ah, I must have picked it up by mistake! I was just… admiring the shine! I read about quantum mechanics in a fashion magazine once, you see. Fascinating stuff, all those tiny… things.” Garrond, who had been staring at her with an unreadable expression, slowly crossed his arms. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched the corner of his lips. “A fashion magazine, you say?” His voice was deep, resonant, laced with a new, dangerous knowing. “Tell me, my dear, did that same magazine also teach you how to forge Royal Guild patents?”

Defusing the Sister