Heir of the Magi

Note: Image associated is from Ironage.media, specifically their prompt, 'The Empiricist'

“Sir? Why did you create me?”

Janus started at the unexpected question and the fact that its speaker had snuck up on him. "What? Oh, 'Why did I make you'?" Well, there are quite a few reasons for that. Firstly, because I could. Secondly, to prove a point to the Immortal Council that for all their centuries on this world, they have no imagination."

"Oh." The reedy voice crackled, the hydraulic 'muscles' about its back slackening into what any living being would have called a dejected posture. "I'm made from spite?"

"You've been reading in the library again," Janus said, placing the scroll he had been writing upon down on the desk, settling in for a lengthy question period. This had quickly become routine with the construct he had taken to calling PrOLi, who was increasingly acting like Janus expected any young child might. "There are more than two reasons, but I won't lie; Those two are your origin, the seeds that flourished into your first iterations. But you've become much more than that, PrOLi, so much more."

"How can that be? I'm just a machine aren't I?" PrOLi spoke, its tone constant as ever, incapable of inflection. That didn't stop Janus from hearing a hint of such, nor imagining a furrowed brow on PrOLi's metal faceplate.

"Yes, you are a machine, but that's not the whole of things is it, PrOLi? You have a will, do you not?" Janus posed the question to the machine, curious what it would say for itself. As he watched closely, he saw a faint pulse in the runes on PrOLi's head, the light of pure magic shifting along each letter in an unsteady rhythm, as though the magic was unfamiliar with its own function.

"A will? You mean the ability to act?" PrOLi asked, the letters pulsing less randomly, adopting a strange loping cadence to their light. Janus struggled to hold his smile in as he saw the pulses strengthening. PrOLi had come to what Janus expected would be the tipping point in the constructs facsimile of life.

"Yes. Do you have one?" Janus asked, glad that his beard hid most of the wry quirk on his cheek as his smile fought to be free. Nine years of exile may just be coming to a close, and somewhere in the back of his mind, a fierce fatherly pride was fighting for PrOLi to say 'yes' and for recognition from Janus himself.

PrOLi stood still for a long time, its head tilting back and forth, the pulses brighter on the left tilt than the right. Finally, it spoke again, its voice emanating from behind metal, "I don't know, sir. How would that be tested?" The pulsing letters became regular, though muted, even compared to the weaker pulses from just a moment ago.

Janus let the smile slip onto his face, amused at PrOLi's hesitance to answer arbitrarily. "It doesn't need testing; you've shown it twice now, PrOLi. Without a will, you'd have never asked these questions. Questions of 'How' and 'Why' necessitate a will, because the answers to them direct that will, even as the will directs the answers. Welcome to your life PrOLi. You are truly more now than the sum of all that makes you."