The crystal smelled like hot glass when it overheated, and it had been smelling like hot glass for the better part of the afternoon.
Lenna Ashvane wiped the condensation from the lens housing with a cloth that had once been white and was now the colour of forge-residue and frustration. The lens housing was brass, heavy, precision-milled, a tube the diameter of her forearm mounted on a swivel bracket that she had designed in her third year at the Institute and that the workshop had built wrong twice before getting right. The swivel was important. The swivel let her aim the light.
The light was the problem. The light was also the point.
