A Perverted Path to Victory

Sara Brown

------------------------------------

There was something dangerously heartwarming about the scene before her. It was just hours after a battle had been fought, hours after Sara had finished screaming until her throat felt raw and bloody, and here she was, staring down at something with a quiet, unadulterated joy. That wasn’t natural.

She couldn’t help it. This was just too damn cute.

Graf sat in Hurlish’s oversized rocking chair, a little green-skinned baby cradled close to his chest. Tahn was suckling on Graf’s index finger something fierce, his bushy brown eyebrows furrowed in extreme concentration. His jaw was working as hard as it knew how, wiggling left to right, while his hands– which he’d just started to understand could be used to grab things the week before– were wrapped tightly around the base of Graf’s slobber-covered finger. Tahn had finally found a part of someone’s body he could latch his fangs onto without it being jerked away alongside a shout of pain, and he was reveling in the opportunity. His adorable gurgling noises filled the air as he attacked Graf.

Sara wouldn’t admit it, not to anybody, not even her wives or her father, but this was why she’d shoved photography up the priority list of Tulian’s burgeoning chemical industries. The fact that she wouldn’t have a photo of this moment was the worst sort of sin.

There was a small upside to the absence of a camera, though. Without any reason to worry about being recorded for prosperity, Graf wasn’t sparing a thought for keeping up appearances. Though it felt weird to be saying it about a man in his eighties, Sara thought he was almost as cute as Tahn. Graf was looking down at the child with a mystified wonder, as baffled by his own reaction to Tahn as he was enraptured by the child’s every move. He had a light, open-mouthed smile, and had begun to make little cooing noises in answer to Tahn’s gurgles, wiggling his finger back and forth like they were playing tug of war. The weathered, bony fingers of his other hand supported Tahn’s diapered butt gently, keeping him firmly in place, but Sara could see tendons straining beneath his skin. Master Graf Urs, a deadly mercenary renowned across gods-knew-how-many kingdoms, was absolutely petrified by the thought of letting this little baby fall.

“I’m sorry,” he said without looking away from Tahn, “could you repeat the question?”

They were beneath a tall pavilion, one that had technically been set up for the army’s command staff. Sara knew perfectly well they had extras, so she hadn’t felt any guilt when she and Evie had commandeered it. A plush rug had been spread across the trampled grass, elegantly carved wooden chairs arranged in an oval around the spot where the table had been, until Hurlish had tossed it aside. Sara stood a few feet away from Graf, still clad head-to-toe in her diplomatic armor, while Evie had dragged a chair over in order to sit next to him, her chin resting on her palm as she watched Tahn. Hurlish sat across from the pair, but since the command staff of General Borek’s army hadn’t included any orcs, Hurlish had been forced to snap the arms off one of the richly decorated chairs in order to fit. She hadn’t looked very guilty when she did it.

“I was asking if you had an independent source of blacksteel,” Hurlish repeated. “Someone who’s not in either Empire, Sporatos, or, preferably, on this continent at all. We haven’t got any of it left in Tulian, and everyone in a thousand miles has turned us down when we asked to buy some of their stock.”

“I don’t, I’m afraid,” Graf said. He chuckled as he tried to pull his finger away from Tahn, only to have the baby open his mouth just enough to make a series of angry babbles, using both arms to drag it back. Graf let him struggle for a moment before, of course, letting him win.

“How’s that the case?” Hurlish asked. “You know practically everyone everywhere, but you don’t have a blacksteel supplier?”

“Wealthy though the Night’s Eye may be, blacksteel is still too expensive for me to contemplate making it a standard part of my troop’s equipment. What blacksteel exists among us is something individual members purchased for themselves. Or, I suppose, as is more common, earned it by killing some noble fool on the battlefield.”

“Damnit.”

“Hurlish,” Evie scolded without looking up from Tahn.

“Really? ‘Damn’ counts as a swear word now? Come on, he’s not gonna be talking ‘till the winter after next. He won’t remember it.”

“When I said I do not want us swearing around our child, I did not add any caveats to the statement.”

“Alright, alright.” Hurlish held her hands up in surrender. “Whatever. Just didn’t think that one counted, was all.”

“It does.” Evie returned her full attention to Tahn, stern expression melting away. “What about manufacturing methods?” Evie asked, addressing Graf. “If we cannot purchase blacksteel, do you know anything of the means to create it?”

“I am afraid I cannot help with that, either. In all my life, I have met only three smiths who claimed to be able to create blacksteel, and all of them wisely disallowed me from entering their forges. A mercenary, after all, is the least likely sort of person to properly guard a secret.”

“Only three?” Sara asked, eyebrows raised. “I know Sporatos has all their supply coming from the capital, but I thought that was just the King being paranoid. What, is there just one dude in the whole country who knows how to make it?”

Graf looked up at Sara, giving her a meaningful look.

“Da–” Sara cleared her throat. “Darn. That sucks. If we had some blacksteel to work with, I can’t imagine what kind of guns we’d be able to cook up.”

“Hence, I imagine, why you have been unable to find a state willing to sell you any.”

At that, Evie made an odd expression. One Sara had quite literally never seen cross her wife’s face until this meeting. It was unique, something she’d never seen on anyone else before. It was the look of a woman who wanted very much to scowl, who was so used to digging into frustration and anger at the most minor upset, unexpectedly finding herself unable to muster up the emotion. Seeing her son resting on Graf’s chest had lifted Evie’s spirits so high that even repeated, concerted effort hadn’t managed to bring her down.

“If they worry we will turn blacksteel guns against them, they are fools,” Evie said flippantly. “The Tulian Republic has not shown the slightest bit of expansionist tendencies from the moment it was founded.”

“Until its founder marched headlong into the jungle in order to involve herself in a foreign war,” Graf countered.

“To assure the protection of our sovereignty from a larger power. If anything, Sara is here as a hostage for Tulian’s safety.”

“I know that,” Graf comforted her, “and most people can recognize that, but the counterclaim is enough ammunition to those opposing the export of blacksteel that you have found no success. Given time, or, perhaps, Sara’s personal appearance, you will find someone willing to sell.”

Evie huffed, settling back down. That same strange expression briefly washed over her face, unvarnished joy tainted by a more familiar frustration, but it was quickly slipping away.

Tahn renewed his attack on Graf’s finger amidst a bout of particularly fierce gurgles, causing Evie to forget about anything else. She let out a pure, chiming peal of laughter, one without the barest traces of her characteristic cynicism. She laughed carelessly, like a girl kicking her feet in the cool waters of a lake, like a mom with half a glass of wine in her.

Like a woman whose son was happily playing with his grandfather.

It was the second time she’d laughed like that since Graf had lifted Tahn out of Hurlish’s hands, and it was the second time, ever, that Sara had heard such a beautiful sound from her wife.

Her heart clenched.

She would do anything to give Evie a life where that laughter was commonplace.

With an incredible exertion of willpower, Sara dragged her attention to Graf. It was the first time she’d seen him outside his armor, and she’d been shocked to see he looked so… normal.

He wore a plain black undershirt, its armpits stained with a fair amount of sweat, as could be expected of anyone wearing metal in a jungle. His arms and what she could see of his torso were deeply scarred, yes, but with a child on his chest, Sara found herself struggling to accept the spiderweb of wounds as the product of violence. Right now he just looked like another old man, one who’d lived a life of hard, honest work.

Sara still didn’t know what to make of his and Evie’s reaction to her calling them family. She had framed Graf as Evie’s adoptive father without giving it much thought. It had just made sense. The Empire placed a massive cultural emphasis on the importance of family, and she’d exploited that to strengthen her argument against General Borek. Ejecting a dangerous ‘Aberration’ from Imperial borders was one thing, but forbidding a father from visiting his daughter? That was nigh unthinkable. Even the foulest criminals, those held in the deepest, most horrid Imperial prisons, had a well-precedented legal right to be visited by any member of their immediate family. Not only would Borek find such an act personally repulsive, his enemies and allies would, too.

And, as was essential for any good lie, Sara almost considered it the truth. Sure, Graf hadn’t formally raised Evie, but Sara hadn’t known the woman for a month before she’d been subjected to a hundred different variations of “Master Graf once said…” about nearly every topic that existed. Regardless of how much time they spent around one another when Evie was young, they had been emotionally inseparable. Their hug on the field of battle before the end of the Tulian-Sporatos War had only confirmed what she already believed.

Clearly, it wasn’t something the two had considered for themselves. They’d both frozen stiff the moment the word father slipped out of Sara’s mouth, and they’d blinked in confusion every time she’d referred to them as such thereafter. It was like she’d been speaking a foreign language, or as if she’d made some absurd, utterly nonsensical claim. To Graf, Evie was ‘Lady Evie,’ and to Evie, Graf was ‘Master Graf.’ Nothing more, nothing less. Their relationship was self-defining.

Sara couldn’t do anything to force the issue right now, sadly. Even when she activated every Amarat-gifted Blessing she had, her mind turned up nothing she could say to encourage them closer. Some things just had to happen on their own.

Deciding to content herself with pleasant conversation and an adorable time with her wives and child, Sara fell into Hurlish’s lap, leaning her head back to settle between her breasts. Graf flicked an eye over to her, but that was it. Public displays of affection were far from the strangest thing the man had seen.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what the heck was Borek talking about back there? You know, the ominous stuff about mountains falling, stars disappearing, and locks being broken?”

“I do not mind offering some explanations. I can’t promise I’ll be particularly helpful, however. His claims were the first I have heard of any of these events, but as far as I am aware, he was speaking without exaggeration.”

Sara would have sat forward in interest if her head had been resting anywhere else.

“So the stuff about the outer Lock of the Sea being broken?”

“Presumably some monstrous creature has seen fit to wail against one of the great gates long enough to smash them to pieces. It is not the first time it has happened, though it has been many centuries. There are dozens more Locks behind the first, and it will be repaired in time. As an isolated event, I would think little of it.”

“But it wasn’t isolated. Not if a Leviathan washed up on the Carrion capital’s shores.”

Graf nodded. “Just so. I imagine they will be having quite a time controlling the madness among their people. Even the corpse of such a creature is enough to ensnare and shatter lesser minds.” He smiled lightly, glancing at Evie. “Several Champions of Amarat have survived in the historical records as healers of madness. Perhaps you could promise the Carrions an appearance from Sara in exchange for some concession or another?”

“She is a busy woman.” Evie pulled out a weathered notebook, the one in which she kept Sara’s official calendar. She ran her finger down a page of the appendix, then jotted something down. “But long distance travel has been an effort undergoing considerable change as of late. It would be worth opening discussions regarding the topic, at the very least. How long do you think it will take the Carrions to clean up the creature’s corpse?”

Graf shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest clue. I don’t know any more about its size than you. The first I heard of all of this was from Borek.” He thought for a moment, eyes glazing over as he dredged up some hazy memory. “I have seen some Leviathans large enough to swallow a fleet, and others barely large enough to bite a single vessel. Perhaps it will take weeks, perhaps months.”

“Hm. I will see what our contacts in the Carrion capital have to say.”

“We got contacts in the Carrion capital?” Hurlish asked, surprised. “I thought that place was some big secret. They move it every few years, right?”

“Yes, dear. But we are aware of its current location.”

“I take it,” Graf said, “that you learned that from your Admiral Nora, Evie?”

“Yes. She has proven a font of impossible information, even if she is of otherwise questionable reliability.”

“I haven’t heard much about her, what with my interests remaining largely on the land, but she’s been the subject of several intriguing tales. Nora is Sinti’s girl, isn’t she?”

“She claims to have learned from him, yes.”

“Then she is another one of your new friends who I’d very much like to meet someday.”

“Of all our acquaintances and allies, Nora is the one I can predict the least. If you happen to be present when she is, I will gladly introduce you, but until then…”

“I understand.” Graf adjusted his grip on Tahn. The baby’s efforts to tear his finger off had been slowly petering off, his catlike ears drooping as he fought off the urge to nap. Graf smiled at the baby in his arms, patting him on the back, then looked up at Sara. “If you are going to ask me about Borek’s other claims regarding disappearing stars and swimming text, I’m afraid I have little to offer. If the General was not exaggerating, those events smack of divine involvement more than anything else.”

“More than an entire valley filling with fire?” Sara asked. “I haven’t even heard of this Keakou Valley, and I’ve heard a lot of things about a lot of places. I’ve got to admit, I’m curious.”

Graf’s face smoothed itself over. “I cannot speak to that.”

Alarm bells rang in Sara’s mind. “Can’t? Or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

Sara inspected Graf’s face. It was absolutely, without flaw, absent of all emotion. The abrupt change was jarring. If the rest of his body hadn’t still been moving, she would have thought he was dead.

“Huh.” Sara smacked her lips. “Not even if Evie asked you?”

“No.”

“Interesting.”

For the first time since Graf had joined them beneath the pavilion, the silence stretched a touch longer than was comfortable. Evie was visibly confused, and Hurlish seemed to be rethinking letting Graf hold Tahn. It didn’t last very long; his emotionless state broke shortly, replaced by his earlier, kinder expression.

Sara let her mind wander, thinking back through the endless list of things she’d heard. Amarat’s Blessings had allowed her to collect and catalogue millions of conversations, and their exact wording could be summoned to the forefront of her mind as easily as her own name.

Something to do with Admiral Sinti, Sara decided. Graf hadn’t asked after Nora for no reason. In fact, she began to feel increasingly certain, he’d likely glossed over the other disasters specifically so that their discussion of Keakou Valley would fall directly after he brought up Nora. Whatever he couldn’t say, they were related.

Millions of words flashed through Sara’s mind, some incomprehensible part of her mind selecting, analyzing, and discarding each sentence. What would have taken a thousand archivists a century to parse was something she rifled through in a matter of moments.

She found only four conversations of relevance. All four of them were instances of drunken Tulian Navy veterans stumbling home from a bar, whispering far too loud for the secrets they were supposed to be hiding. They’d been discussing the story of Admiral Sinti’s defeat fifty-two years ago. In her studies with Evie, Sara had learned historians considered it the continent’s most important flashpoint of the last century.

Sinti’s Black Fleet of a thousand ships had been destroyed before they had reached the shores of the Northern Empire, the slaughter so complete that the beaches were said to be covered in more corpses than grains of sand. The Northern Empire had collapsed without warning a week later, an unexpected disaster often attributed to the consequences of whatever bargain they’d struck to call down Sinti’s defeat. That collapse left Sporatos ascendant as the only major power on the continent, freeing the King to turn his attention to the east and south. Sinti’s rallying of almost half the Carrion captains, then their subsequent deaths, had created an unprecedented political unity within the Carrion Navy, right after he’d finished wiping out every other major navy. The Carrions had been left free to monopolize trade across the known sea.

And despite all of this, despite how absolutely critical the event had been to the shaping of the modern world?

No one knew what had destroyed Sinti’s fleet.

There had been fewer than fifty survivors. By the record books, none of them had been anyone of importance. Just exceptionally fortunate sailors. Their only commonality was that they, every single one, refused to speak of what had caused Sinti’s defeat.

The historians liked to claim that Sinti had invoked some terrible punishment, his sinful arrogance finally taking its toll. The gods had punished him, and the few survivors had been the precious few who had been repentant enough to earn their lives. The theory was evidenced by the fact that the survivors refused to speak of the final day of the Black Fleet’s existence: no amount of bribery, cajoling, torture, or spellcraft could force it out of them. Some of them had endured those efforts for decades. Only purehearted faith could have resisted all of that, the scholars claimed.

Of course, those historians also claimed Sinti had died, which Sara knew was bullshit. Nora had met the man.

Those drunken sailors Sara’s Blessings had overheard? They had their own theories. Not about what had destroyed the fleet. No, they only whispered of why the few survivors wouldn’t talk. It was a curse, they murmured. A curse so powerful that even the greatest archmages in the world couldn’t so much as smell it, much less break it. They said that it sewed shut the lips of anyone who had witnessed Sinti’s defeat, that its perpetrator had sought to erase every trace of their deeds. Honestly, after what Sara had seen of this world’s gods and scholars, she was far more inclined to believe those drunken sailor’s claims than a half-century of politically-motivated historians.

All of these thoughts passed through Sara’s head in a flash, no more than two breaths passing over her tongue.

She met Graf’s eyes, searching for a reaction. He gave her nothing.

“Well,” Sara said, sinking even further into the softness of Hurlish’s chest, “now that we’ve got all the boring crap out of the way… you want to shoot some of Hurlish’s guns?”

------------------------------------

Hurlish of Tulian

------------------------------------

Graf Urs was a freaky motherfucker.

Sure, Hurlish had known he was a strong guy. Evie all but slobbered over the dude’s biography. Barely even realized she was doing it. Evie had told her so many stories Hurlish couldn’t remember half of ‘em. He’d fought some King here, killed some Lord here, conquered this or that city, broke some wall down with his bare hands, whatever. Big, important stuff. That made him the exact sort of type Hurlish had done her best to avoid back in Hagos. Working for nobility was risky enough, but working for important nobles? Not in any hell would she have willingly gotten wrapped up in that. If Graf Urs had walked into her shop back in the day, she would’ve grabbed as much coin as she could fit in a fist and dove out the back window.

Now that she was actually seeing the guy work, she was learning she’d been completely goddamn right.

Graf squinted into the powder fog his gun had just spat, searching for what was left of his target. After he’d handled the first few guns she’d given him like a champ, Hurlish had handed him one that she’d never let anyone but herself fire, not even Sara. It had a two inch bore, a barrel about six feet long, and a kick that had thrown her flat on her ass the first time she’d pulled the trigger.

Graf hadn’t so much as twitched. Hurlish had put guns in hundred-pound vices that had more give than that man’s shoulder did. She couldn’t be certain, but she was pretty damn sure he hadn’t even blinked. Hurlish had seen the crater he’d left when he decided to make a point to General Borek. It had been as tall as Sara and twice as wide. The way people were talking about the whole showdown, no one had even seen the guy move. One moment he’d been standing still, the next he’d been fifty feet away, General Borek’s face in his hand.

“I believe that is a hit,” Graf calmly informed her, handing her the rifle. “An excellent weapon with superb craftsmanship, but not one I imagine will find frequent use among your soldiery.”

“Probably not,” Hurlish agreed, setting the gun on the rack with the others. “Not unless we find some volunteers who don’t mind missing their shoulders.” The scent of sulfur and saltpetre hung thickly in the air, and she took a deep, satisfied breath.

They’d gone down the road a ways to test their guns away from snooping eyes. Sara and Evie were sitting nearby, trading an earmuffed Tahn between them as they watched Graf chat with Hurlish. While she hadn’t been working on anything top secret while in the Empire- she wasn’t stupid, after all- she’d still been keeping herself busy. The Imperials had provided her a whole team of people just to lug around a portable workshop, one that took the poor bastards a full day and night to set up each time the army decided to camp for a while. When she wasn’t experimenting with her Skills, she’d been tinkering with minor changes to the designs of guns she’d already perfected, trying to find something that fit the needs of the slowly-emerging Blackpowder Irregulars.

There weren’t many of them, not yet, but she wanted to get ahead of the game. As far as she knew, Gunner Balon, Shale, and Evie had been the first people in all the world to get a blackpowder Skill. She didn’t know the specific details of what Balon or Shale’s skills were, but she knew Evie’s. When Sara had dragged them up to their Sixteenth Advancement, Evie had suddenly found she could suddenly keep an eye on her chosen opponent from much, much further away. She could discern details of their body, clothing, and equipment like they were standing a few dozen yards away, even if they were really five hundred. It wasn’t a pure blackpowder Skill, since it was mostly just an upgrade to another dueling Skill she had that let her focus on a chosen target, but the influence of her interest in guns was clear. A rapier duelist didn’t have much use for staring at someone across a field.

As nice a Skill as that was, it didn’t influence Hurlish’s designs much, besides maybe making her stop riding David’s ass so hard to get her some working rifle scopes. No, what interested Hurlish more than Evie’s Skills were the few kids in the army who’d gotten their first Class with musket in hand. Sara had managed to tease some details out of them, and the way their Skills were starting off was interesting. They got stuff that helped them brace for recoil, feel out how a shot was gonna get twisted by the wind, and a few other, harder to define Skills. She did feel bad for the one kid who’d gotten something that let him see through powder fog easier, since that wasn’t gonna be a problem for all that long, but other than that, it was good stuff. She’d started building custom guns to take advantage of what she anticipated their Skills to become, and whether he knew it or not, Graf was her first test subject.

“How’d it treat you?” Hurlish asked.

“Predictably. It had the most recoil by far, and its trajectory was accordingly flat. Using such a long loading rod was difficult, and I imagine such a large powder charge will foul the gun incredibly quickly.”

Hurlish grunted in assent. That was about what she’d expected. Truth was, she’d never fired that gun with a full powder charge, as she’d been a bit worried it would blow up when she did. That was why she’d gotten Graf to hold it. If the gun had burst in his face, he would have been fine. Same couldn’t be true for anyone else.

“I do apologize that I cannot return this kindness,” Graf said, looking over the various guns he’d fired so far. “If I had any with me, I certainly would have let you sample the Night’s Eyes own weapons. If it is any consolation, I assure you that none are the equals of the examples you have allowed me to use today.”

“You know we’re not tasting wine, right? You don’t have to pay me back with something from your own collection or whatever.”

“Would you refuse it if I did?”

“Hell no. I’m not stupid. But that’s not the favor I’m trying to earn here.”

Graf’s lips quirked into a half-smile. He seemed to enjoy Hurlish’s bluntness. “So you are trying to earn a favor from me, then?”

“Like I said. Not stupid.” Hurlish glanced over Graf’s shoulder, checking on Sara and Evie. They both had ear protection on, and they were absorbed in conversation with one another, looking down at Tahn in Sara’s arms. Satisfied she wouldn’t be overheard, Hurlish clapped a hand onto Graf’s shoulder, dragging him closer. She bent down to growl into his ear.

“You’re gonna come see her again.”

He looked up at her, head cocked. “I’m sorry?”

“Evie. You’re gonna come see her again. Soon.”

“An odd thing to ask, but easy enough. I’m sure I’ll find time enough-”

“No,” Hurlish growled. Her fingers tightened on his shoulder until her nails hurt. If it had been anyone else she grabbed like that, there’d be nothing left except wet meat. “You’re gonna make time for her. You’re gonna cancel jobs, you’re gonna ignore battles, you’re gonna tell your King to go fuck himself, if that’s what it takes.”

“Though I am grateful for your sharing of these weapons, what you have told me is nowhere near worth abandoning my duties.”

“Don’t care.”

“What?”

“Don’t care,” Hurlish repeated. “You’re old as dirt. I’ve met plenty of old folks, and if I know one thing about ‘em, it’s that their heads are full of shit they wish they woulda done. Living a fighting life like yours, I bet you’ve got more of those regrets than most.”

“My failures upon the battlefield have very little to do with your demand that I frequent Tulian. If you are trying to associate my strength with your nation, I refuse.”

“Oh, get over yourself. I don’t give a shit about you.” Hurlish jerked her head toward Evie. “I care about her. You see how happy she’s been since you showed up?”

Graf blinked in surprise. Compared to how Sara and Evie had been treating him, this was a wide departure. “Yes? It’s been pleasant to see. You and Sara have been good for her.”

“We have been. But not this good. This is the happiest I’ve ever seen her. It’s because you’re here.”

Graf didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, so Hurlish continued.

“I know my wives, Graf. Right now, Evie’s too distracted being happy to think things over, but later? It’s gonna fuck her up. She won’t like how good she felt when you were around. She’s gonna be nervous about it, paranoid she was letting her guard down. I’m gonna try and cut that off at the head, but there’s only so much I can do. Now, Sara?” Hurlish snorted. “She’s just about pissing herself with excitement over how chilled-out Evie is. We’ve been trying to drag that out of her for a long time, and this is the best either of us have managed. So Sara’s probably thinking up some complicated-ass plan to get you coming back around as soon as possible. It’ll work, I’d bet my right arm on it, but it’ll take time. And I’m not interested in waiting.”

Graf listened to her with a silent, unnerving attentiveness. Hurlish was damn glad she didn’t have Sara’s Blessings. The full and undivided attention of Graf Urs was disturbing enough when she couldn’t halfway read the man’s mind.

“I think you put too much faith in my abilities to raise young Evie’s spirits,” Graf eventually said. “She is her own woman, and she does not need to rely on me for her happiness. And even if what you say is true, what leverage do you have to force me to visit? I took a risk enough as it was to see her even this once; the political consequences of my consorting with an enemy of Sporatos are considerable. Further visits will be putting the entire Night’s Eye at risk of disbandment.”

“I ain’t got shit,” Hurlish admitted casually. She released her hand from Graf’s shoulder, taking a small step back. “But you’re an old man. You’ve done a lot of important crap, and that means you’ve probably made a lot of big mistakes. Maybe some of them were stuff you couldn’t have known at the time. Things you don’t beat yourself up over, because you couldn’t have known to do any different.”

“Some, yes. Everyone has regrets. I only focus on those where there was room for improvement.”

“Yep. Which is why I just told you all this shit. You’re trapped, now. If I hadn’t said all this, you coulda ended up looking back at this in ten years and thinking to yourself ‘oh, I should’ve visited Evie and Tahn more, but that’s alright. I couldn’t have known, we weren’t that close at the time.’” Hurlish smiled, dry and humorless. “Not anymore, though. Now you know what the right thing to do is. And if you don’t do it, that fuckup’s all on you. No excuses. Just guilt that’ll last ‘till you’re dead.”

She looked up at Sara and Evie, realizing they’d begun to notice the lack of shooting. Time to wrap things up. Hurlish poked Graf’s chest with one thick finger, right in the middle of his breastbone.

“I like you, Graf. So far. But if you think you’re a good man? The kinda man Evie thinks you are? Prove it.”

Hurlish went to the guns without another word, lifting a shotgun off the rack. She returned to Graf just as Evie arrived, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“What are you whispering about, Hurlish?”

“Stuff I didn’t want you to hear.”

“And were you hiding it from me because you feared for my safety, or thought I would overreact to a perceived threat?”

“No.”

“Hm. Alright then. If it’s not a matter of safety, I don’t mind.”

Graf’s head tilted back, eyes wide. “You don’t mind?”

“She is my wife.”

“You don’t trust anyone.”

“Your information is out of date, Graf. There are three people in the world I trust implicitly. Sara and Hurlish are first among them. They are allowed to speak without my overhearing if they wish to.”

If it’d been Sara standing in Hurlish’s place, the conversation probably would’ve ended there. But Hurlish had never had (or wanted) either of her wives’ knack for subtlety.

“Who’s the third?” Hurlish asked.

Evie frowned at her. “I think that should be obvious.”

“Garen?”

“What? An archmage? Of course not.”

“Ignite?”

“He is a valuable ally, but vulnerable to his prior loyalties. I watch him less closely than others, but I still watch him. Much like Vesta, now that I think of it.”

“Ketch?”

Evie scoffed. “Do I trust her? I suppose so, in a way. But the nature of the witch she is bound to is as alien to me as the void between stars.”

“Then who?”

Evie’s pupils narrowed to slits as she stared up at Hurlish, irritated. Evie knew Hurlish was perfectly aware of who that third person was, and Hurlish knew she knew. Hurlish still stared back down at her, unflinchingly committed to the charade.

“Master Graf, of course,” Evie eventually said. She spoke quietly, as if she was confessing to something bad.

Graf, for his part, laughed. “Really? You consider me someone worthy of your utmost trust? So soon after you refused to share information on your weapon’s capabilities?”

“The same sense of duty which compels you to answer your King’s summons is what makes you trustworthy, Master Graf. No one could call you predictable, not in battle, but you are remarkably consistent in your values. And… I do not believe I would have anything to fear from you, should a battle progress to the point that we found ourselves duty-bound to point blades at one another.”

“You should not trust any potential adversary so. An alliance forged in peace is nothing more than fuel to be burned in war.”

“Pretty sure whatever y’all got going on is a lot more than an alliance,” Hurlish grunted. “But whatever, I’m done talking about that. You got any other juicy news you want to share out of Sporatos?”

“None that I can think of which is within my rights to share, I’m afraid,” Graf said. His eyes turned to Hurlish’s guards, who were standing nearby, facing the jungle wall. “Unless, of course, you were to give me information in exchange.”

Hurlish snickered. “Don’t like not knowing something, don’t ya?”

“I must admit, I am rather curious about what lies beneath those robes.” Graf squinted at the green-cloaked guard’s backs. Hurlish didn’t know what kind of bullshit senses Graf had, but she doubted he could see straight through thick cloth.

She hoped.

“They are living, yes?” Graf asked. “Not enchanted automatons or golems?”

“What will you give me for that kinda info?”

Graf chuckled. “A politician you are not, Master Blacksmith. Most people begin by demanding particular information, then argue their way down to a more reasonable exchange.”

“I ran a shop. I know how to haggle. You’re just wrong to think I give enough of a shit to bother.”

“I do know many things that would be of use to you, you know.”

“Probably.”

Graf inspected the guards for a while longer, then shrugged, apparently finding nothing of note. Or, at least, nothing he was giving away.

“My thanks for your hospitality, Master Hurlish,” Graf said, bowing. “It was a pleasure to meet you and your son, but I’m afraid I must be leaving. General Borek’s claims must be investigated, and if my sources confirm them, the appropriate measures undertaken.”

Evie stepped forward. “Will the Night’s Eye be taking a contract?”

“Always, my dear. We have more offers for employment than I can keep track of. Including,” Graf directed himself toward Sara, who was approaching with Tahn, “an offer from the Empire you fight. As the only military force outside Tulian which has faced your firearms, they are keen on receiving my advice.”

Hurlish nearly choked on her own spit, coughing loudly, while Sara and Evie showed only the mildest of surprises.

“Even though I beat you?” Sara asked sardonically.

“Per their contact I spoke to, they do not believe the ‘rumors’ that your force bested mine. They attribute my loss to political interference and inadequate preparation, rather than my own inability.”

“And are they right?”

“Of course,” Graf smirked. “Do you really think that you could have bested me if I’d had the time to train my troops appropriately?”

Sara snorted. “No. You nearly beat my ass already. I’m never gonna fight you again. Not if I can help it.”

“A sentiment I have often heard.”

Tahn started to squirm in Sara’s arms, his bleary eyes peeling open. He looked around, his still-floppy ears trying their best to scan the area like his mother’s did. He began to wiggle petulantly as his eyes landed on Hurlish, crying out.

“Oh, you’re a hungry boy now, are you?” Hurlish cooed, holding her hands out. “Did chewing on that old wrinkly finger tire you out? Huh? Did it?”

“Wrinkly?” Graf asked, bemused.

“She’s not wrong,” Evie said. “You are showing your age.”

“Awfully rude to point it out, though.”

“C’mere, Tahny-Tahn, it’s alright.” Hurlish carefully took Tahn from his other mom, tucking him to her chest with one hand while pulling down her shirt with the other. Tahn eagerly latched onto a breast and, as ever, Hurlish winced at his total inability to control where his tiny kitten fangs pierced.

“I really do have to be leaving,” Graf said. To his credit, he didn’t make some awkward show of turning away when Hurlish had pulled down her shirt. Of course, the guy had probably lost any interest in tits twenty years ago, so maybe it shouldn’t be that shocking.

“How’d you even get here?” Sara waved to the endless jungle. “It’s not like there’s a boat or something you could have taken.”

“As your wife so helpfully reminded me, I am an old man, Sara. I haven’t the time or energy to make journeys such as these on foot anymore.” Graf put his fingers to his lips and whistled. It was a shockingly loud, ear-piercing note, one that carried incredibly far.

Evie’s ears flicked towards the right, her head following a second behind. Sara and Hurlish both followed her gaze, staring at the thick tangle of tree limbs and vines.

A tangle which began to shake and twist. A stretch of trees some fifty feet across began to tremble like a typhoon was coursing along the road, limbs jumping and leaves falling.

Sara leaned forward excitedly. “Oh my god, that better be a fuc- freaking T-Rex.”

“I’ll betcha fifty gold it’s not.”

“Evie is the one that keeps all our money, so I don’t know how we’re gonna settle that.”

“I was gonna bet something different, but Graf’s here.”

“Oh, I’ll take that bet.”

“You don’t even know what-”

The trees began to part.

Hurlish had heard before about the strange nature of jungle beasts, how they were able to slip their way through impossibly tight spaces to ambush people out of nowhere. She’d found it hard to believe, but that didn’t mean much. She’d seen lots of things she’d witnessed with her own two eyes hard to believe, especially after she’d met Sara.

But this one turned out to be particularly hard to swallow.

A shining head emerged first. From jaw to brow, it was as large as Sara was tall, covered in cool blue scales the color of an afternoon sky. Dagger teeth were revealed by its curled, snarling lip, filling the air with an almost imperceptible, powerful rumble. The vertical slits of its tiny, beady eyes were set in a deeply recessed brow, and they seemed to be staring straight at Sara. They had an iris of yellow-tinged green, and as its head continued to press forward, Hurlish was forced to realize that they were not small at all. Each were the size of a human skull. It was just that the head they sat in was so much larger.

The eyes flicked to her. Hurlish took an involuntary step back, covering Tahn with both hands. Evie’s musket swung off her back in a flash, the click of the hammer’s cocking answering the creature’s rising growl. Only Sara and Graf held their ground, one out of disinterest, the other out of fascination.

The head emerged fully from the brush, tree trunks warping in impossible ways to admit the bulk that followed. Hurlish was first struck by the thought that the creature was some kind of massive snake, watching the way its reptilian head continued to move forward foot by foot, yard by yard, stretching out into the open road.

Then the head reared up, towering over the trees, and the rest of the body emerged.

“That’s a fucking dragon!”

“Sara!” Evie reflexively scolded, even as she tracked the monster’s head with the sights of her rifle.

The beast paid their outburst no mind. It stepped into the open with all the grace of a regal king, its hide glittering ever so slightly in the sunlight. Even with its neck curved in serpentine fashion, its head rose forty or fifty feet in the air, glaring down with an imperious, contemptible sneer. The underside of its neck was lighter in hue than its upper scales, a blue so pale it was almost white, while its back was covered in the dark shades of the ocean depths. The size of its scales varied, from more than a handspan down to a few finger widths, and despite their utter inflexibility, they twisted and slid over one another like the finest suit of armor Hurlish had ever seen.

Its right leg emerged, pressing down into the mud. At first Hurlish didn’t understand what she was looking at. The limb was twisted and folded in ways she had never seen in another living creature, flaps of leathery skin bulging thickly between two thick trunks of muscle. When its left leg emerged, stretching slightly further, she understood. Its wings were like that of a bat’s, and it was walking on what would have been a human’s knees. She couldn’t fathom how wide the wings would have been when they were spread, but she knew they were titanic. A hundred feet, two hundred, she would have believed either, but it was certain they dwarfed any plane Tulian had ever envisioned. She doubted even Sara’s world had something so massive that could take to the sky.

The creature turned to one side as it fully exited the jungle, shaking broken trees from its hide as a dog would water, then stretched forward, as if it were showing them its profile for their admiration.

Tall spines rose along its neck, shortest at the base of the head, longest at the center of its back, falling to gentle nubs at the tip of its tail, which was almost a hundred and fifty feet from the tip of its snout. Its neck and tail were responsible for a considerable portion of that length, but not all of it. Its torso was as barrel-chested as an ox, swelling even further with each rumbling breath. What she could see of its ribcage dropped halfway to the pathway below it, wide and tall enough to fit two of the homes that Hurlish had been born and raised in. The spikes at the highest ridge of its back were even taller than her, and a number of leather saddles were wrapped around the centermost examples, made of the softest, finest leathers and buckled by gold and silver. Some of the largest spines featured exquisite carvings, the work of a master sculptor etching an entire tapestry across gleaming ivory. Beneath her rising fear, Hurlish found her smith’s eye entranced by the beauty of the saddles and the elegant carvings they framed. She couldn’t help wondering what story they told, why they had been created, and if they served only a decorative purpose, or if they were literally as enchanting as she already found them.

Then the beast turned to Sara, lowering its bestial head so it might better stare her down.

“Do not call me a Dragon,” it rumbled, “lest you invoke the wrath of that which you cannot withstand.” The creature’s voice shook dust from the ground as it spoke, but its lips didn’t move. Only its tongue did, a thick, barbed thing that flicked and writhed behind its teeth.

Hurlish discovered herself taking another step back, her hands closing tightly around Tahn. She felt some long-lost instinct swelling within her chest, compelling her to hide her child from the beast. To hide herself, to dig a ditch and crawl inside, waiting until hunger or thirst forced her to emerge. Her guards appeared in front of her, all four of them, their robes rustling as they readied themselves to defend her.

“Hello, Imperequs,” Graf called out cheerfully. “I trust you found good prey in the jungle while you waited?”

The creature ignored Graf even as the old mercenary began to approach it. Instead its massive head swung around, falling low enough to look Sara directly in the eye.

“Champion of Amarat,” it hissed, the words pouring steam from between its lips. “What have you done to this world?”

“A whole lot, honestly.” Sara spoke with the same confidence she always did, as if she weren’t looking down the throat of something that could swallow her whole. “You’re gonna have to be a bit more specific.”

“The old mountain rumbles. The sleeping dead have begun to stir. I smell the scent of a slaughtered Fate in this land.”

“Oh, get over yourself, Imperequs,” Graf called. “She’s a Champion. Things always go to shit when they’re around. It’s not your job to keep them under control.”

“This one is different,” Imperequs hissed. Its head remained still, but its neck was undulating left to right, a hypnotic pattern of twisting muscle. “She has done things which no Champion should.”

“Is that for you to decide, or the gods?” Graf reached the beast’s flank, which he gave a few firm slaps. “Now, let me up. I’m too old to be hopping onto your back anymore.”

To Hurlish’s shock, the massive creature pulled away, carefully lowering a wing to the dirt. Graf began walking up it as casually as any hill, heading for the centermost saddle.

“Evie,” Sara said, turning on the woman with a dangerously excited glint in her eyes. “You did not tell me Graf rode a fucking dragon!”

Sara was so consumed with her own excitement that she hadn’t noticed Evie was still pointing her rifle at the thing’s head.

“That is not a Dragon,” Evie whispered from behind the sights of her gun. “And you should thank the gods for that fact, as if it were, we would all be dead. Stop invoking the name of such a foul thing.”

“I,” the beast declared, still maintaining its imperious tone even as it contorted itself to allow Graf to walk up its back, “am a Wyvern, Champion of Amarat. And should you mistake my kind for our decrepit, bestial progenitors once more?” Imperequs huffed, steam rolling out of its nostrils. Hurlish thought she could see a light glowing deep within. “Then we will see how much of your god’s power you have been lent. Our kind will not be defined by the sins of our creators. There is no graver insult.”

It seemed this threat was finally enough to break through Sara’s excitement. Hurlish could see the realization come over her, snapping her back to the present. She drew herself up, shaking her hair out, and by virtue of posture alone, became an entirely different woman.

“My deepest apologies, Noble Imperequs,” Sara said, abruptly addressing the wyvern with all the pomp and circumstance it referred to itself with. Hurlish could’ve sworn her armor gained a new level of shine as she put her fist to her breastplate in a sharp, military salute. “Though I have lived in this world of yours for some time now, the remnants of my birthplace remain rattling within my mind. I now find myself suffering the misfortune of knowing little of your kind, and through this regrettable mistake, have inadvertently erred in my address to one such as yourself. Perhaps you have heard of me, perhaps not, but if you have, I believe you will know that when I intend to offend, I do so with great zeal and little subtlety. Rest assured, when next we meet, I will behave as a Champion of Amarat ought.”

The wyvern huffed, stirring up a cloud of dirt and steam. Despite that, it seemed pleased, raising its head a few feet.

“My kind are not the only thing you are ignorant of, Champion. You have no idea what you have done today.”

“I do not,” Sara agreed. “I have fought and won a battle, true, but this is something I have done many times before. If you wish to shed light on what remains dark for me, I would accept your knowledge with grace and thanks.”

Graf settled into the saddle on Imperequs’ back, resting a hand on the spine before him, which was twice his height.

“Don’t listen to him, Sara. He’s just full of hot air. And no, Evie, I did not hide the fact that I am a wyvern-rider from you. This is simply how I’m being transported to my meeting with the Adjutant. Say what you will for Imperials, but they do know how to put on a show.”

Imperequs twisted his neck around to face Graf, dipping his chin towards the old man. “It is an honor to hold the Scale Breaker on my back, if only for a day.”

“Yes, well, unless you stop threatening Evie’s wife sometime soon, you’ll end up with me on your back for much longer than a day.” Graf turned to look at Evie, Sara, and Hurlish, raising a hand. “I wish you luck in your battles, and look forward to seeing you again. And remember, Sara, if there’s ever an opportunity for your father to speak of his old world’s strategies with me, I would be glad for the opportunity.”

Before any reply could be offered, Imperequs spread his wings, buffeting them all with a rush of air. Hurlish turned away, tucking Tahn to her chest just as a second, far stronger gust rushed over her.

When she turned around, the wyvern was gone.

“Okay,” Sara said, turning on Evie. That dangerous smile had returned. “What. The. Fuck.”

“Sara-”

“I know, I know, no swearing. But come on!” Sara pointed at the sky. “That was a- a- freaking wyvern! Flying lizard! It breathes fire! Or I think it does, anyway. Please tell me it can breathe fire.”

“Some do, yes.”

“And you never told me about them, why?!”

“From your own retelling of Earthly folklore, it seemed you were familiar enough with the concept. I never thought it important, considering their rarity.”

“What? Who gives a crap if they’re rare! I want to learn about the not-dragons! You’ve gotta tell me everything!”

Unheard by her two bickering wives, Hurlish sighed. She loved them both to pieces, but sitting in on one of Evie’s long lectures wasn’t her favorite way to pass the time.

------------------------------------

Chona

------------------------------------

Engines buzzed over a sea of lush greenery, the clicking pops of sorcerous energy colliding with hardened steel roaring loud enough to carry for miles. The cellulose-doped canvas skin of the Sunrise held strong against the battering headwind, stiff as the metal its lacquered sides were often mistaken for. The right set of wings, painted a vibrant crimson, stood in stark contrast to the deep green camouflage which coated the rest of the plane. The plane responded alertly to its pilot’s every twitch, ailerons and elevators flicking and bobbing constantly, a thousand unconscious adjustments required to keep the craft on a straight path.

Sitting up in her seat as much as her harness allowed her, Chona searched for the head of their midair convoy. She could see the tail of the second plane, which was a few hundred yards ahead of them and about a dozen yards below. It was the northern variant of the Halfeye design, lacking the cumbersome pontoons of the Sunrise. A second northern variant flew even further ahead, its nose just beginning to dip into a shallow dive, aiming for a column of smoke rising from the teeming jungle. The three planes were flying in direct line with another, a dozen yards of altitude difference between them. Affe and Cebrav’s plane was in the lead, Hunes and Docks behind them, with Tinvel and Chona taking up the rear.

Affe leveled out his dive no more than fifty feet over the canopy. A small hatch opened in the bottom of his plane, just behind the main landing gear. A foul sludge began to fall from the plane, grayish black droplets scattering in the air. Chona leaned as far forward in her seat as she could, gripping the back of Tinvel’s chair.

Here… we… go!

A gout of flame burst out of the plane from Affe’s backseater, Cebrav, who launched a torrent of boiling orange and red that shot towards the forest with all the speed of a bullet. The waterfall of sludge ignited with a flash, the intensity of the flames multiplying tenfold as the liquid burst alight. Affe began a slow climb as the hellish mixture of fluid and flame continued to spew down on the jungle, careful to keep himself away from any sudden updraft fanning the spell back into his plane’s belly. In a matter of seconds there was a long, glowing streak sketch across the leafy canopy.

Affe’s climb suddenly steepened, accompanied by a light roll to the left as Cebrav’s spellflames died out. Hunes’s plane began its own dive, aiming for the spot where the last trail of fire had ended. A hatch opened beneath the plane as it passed over the tail end of Affe’s path of destruction, dumping more gray fluid onto the trees. Almost as soon as the liquid began to fall, spellfire leapt out, igniting the droplets in midair with a woosh audible to Chona even over the roar of the wind and engines.

Smoke began to fill the skies. Chona watched, enraptured, as the wildfire sunk its roots into the jungle. Some of the liquid was scattered enough by the wind to escape the initial conflagration, but not for long. It was easy to tell when fire spread to the droplets. The flames always flared fiercest there. The ocean of fire became a macabre reflection of the night sky, inky darkness exchanged for an orange glow, bright pinpricks of burning fluid shining as the stars.

The flames from Hunes’s plane died out, and she, too, rolled to the left, clearing the way.

“Ready?!” Tinvel yelled over the wind.

“Gods, yes!”

Tinvel tipped the nose forward, beginning their descent. Chona ignored the way her stomach seemed to fall the wrong direction, gripping the release lever that was on the left side of her seat, her other hand already pointing downward, fingers spread and twitching with anticipation.

The plane leveled off. Chona kept her eyes locked on the floor of the plane, waiting for Tinvel’s word.

“Target!”

Chona jerked the lever back, adding a second gust of wind to buffet her fur as the floor opened up between her feet.

The Sunrise, with its ungainly pontoons and status as the first plane of its type, lacked many things its later copycats took for granted. The Type N Halfeyes that Affe and Hunes were flying had simple landing gears, more robust sparring between their wings, and a variety of minor improvements over the Sunrise, all derived from the lessons Tinvel had learned while flying the original plane. The Type Ns were more agile, easier to handle, and overall better fliers. They were fighter planes through and through, designed to bob and weave through the aerial battles that everyone was increasingly certain would be coming. And in most cases, that was great. They did what they were designed to do, and they did it well.

But they hadn’t been built to take off over water, nor carry heavy pontoons. They had weaker engines, and they weren’t designed to carry as heavy a payload as the Sunrise. More importantly than that, their gemstone powerplants weren’t constantly tended by Tinvel, the artificer who had invented the very concept. Their agility and speed came at a cost, and today, it was that their fluid tanks could only hold forty gallons.

Sparks popped and crackled over Chona’s palm. She could feel her spell fighting to be set free.

She took a deep breath, focusing.

Then she pulled the lever back another step, opening the lid on both hundred gallon tanks hidden within each pontoon.

“BURN!”

A guttural roar echoed over the jungle. The spell tore through the air like lightning, starting as a solid, hair-thin beam of blinding white just above her skin, maintaining its form for a dozen or so feet before the blistering winds broke it apart into a vast, billowing sheet of flame. The curtain of fire she summoned was twice as wide as the Sunrise’s wings, and within that orange glow were dozens of white stars, each of them being physically driven to the ground by the force of her spell.

Chona desperately wanted to turn back to look at her handiwork spilling onto the ground, but she couldn’t. She gritted her teeth, willing herself to continue the spell for as long as she could. The Sunrise’s twin tanks took time to drain, and she’d be damned if she was going to waste even a single drop of Professor Brown’s liquidated “thermite.” She kept pushing, drawing on that ineffable reserve deep within her mind.

First she began to sweat, the heat baking her from below, and then that sweat began to steam, evaporating as soon as it rose from her pores. The edges of the plane’s hatch began to warp and blacken from the heat, but the fluid was still pouring. She couldn’t stop yet.

“Chona!” Tinvel yelled.

She ignored him. She kept the spell going, even as her arm began to shake, her fingers twitching and curling as the muscles beneath her fur twisted in agonized protest.

“Chona!” Tinvel yelled again.

“Not… yet…!” She said, forcing the words through her gritted teeth.

Instead of yelling at her again, Tinvel jerked the plane into a far steeper climb. She kept the spell going for a moment longer, her eyes beginning to flutter. It was only when they’d gone high enough that her flames couldn’t reach the forest anymore that she allowed her fist to fall closed.

Her right arm was jerking and twitching as if being twisted by an invisible specter. She couldn’t feel anything from the tips of her fingernails to her armpit, all sense of touch replaced by a dull, painful needling. She knew from experience that the pain wouldn’t remain dull for long.

“The hells were you thinking?!” Tinvel cried, leveling the plane off. “You can’t support that kind of spell for that long!”

Chona leaned over to the speaking tube, not trusting herself to yell over the wind quite yet. “We still had thermite left in the tanks!”

“That doesn’t mean you should kill us to get it all used up!” Tinvel yelled furiously. Chona flinched away from the voice tube, which made it feel like he was screaming right into her ear.

“I told you we needed it to disperse faster if we’re going to have that size of tank,” Chona said. “We don’t have much of it, and we need to burn a whole lot of jungle.”

“We’ll design a version we can shut off, then. But I’d rather waste the fire than have you burned to a crisp. Can you even do another run today after that?”

Indignant at the suggestion, Chona reached up with her right arm to flick Tinvel in the back of the head.

Or, at least, she tried to. She sent her arm all the right orders, and it sure felt like it was moving, but there wasn’t any arguing with the fact that she could see it hanging limply at her side.

“...No.”

“See! That’s what I’m talking about!”

“Oh, come on!” Chona cried indignantly. “You push the Sunrise too far all the time! Why’s it any different when I do it with my spells?”

“Because I actually learn something when I try a new trick with the Sunrise. You knew exactly what would happen when you kept that spell going!”

This time, Chona used her left arm to flick Tinvel in the back of the head.

“Ow! The hell?”

“How do you think I’m going to get better with my spells if I don’t push myself? Huh? You really think practicing on some empty hill is the same as doing it up here?”

“Maybe it’s not the same, but only one of those gets us both killed!”

Chona had another retort at the tip of her tongue, but she was forced to bite it back. Hunes was curving gracefully into position off their left wing, taking a sedate path to recreate the small arrowhead formation they’d begun the day in.

Chona watched the girl’s turn carefully. The timid alchemist had shown an affinity for flight, taking well to the controls of her plane, but Chona still felt she lacked a certain ineffable boldness that was necessary to make someone a true pilot. Hunes loved flying as much as the rest of them, but she didn’t seem interested in it for any particular purpose. She would have been perfectly happy exploring the world in lazy spirals, never coming close to putting her plane through its paces.

Affe, predictably, was Hune’s dead opposite. When it became clear it was time to form up once more, he snapped his Halfeye onto a knife’s edge, right wings pointing vertically into the sky, rudder kicked hard over so he wouldn’t plummet out of the sky. Chona watched the canvas skin of his Halfeye shake and shiver as he pulled back hard on the controls, whipping his plane around in the tightest turn he could manage. He’d begun his turn more than twenty seconds after Hunes, but found his position far earlier than her. He snapped sharply out of the steep turn, his entire plane rattling as it was buffeted by the wind and his own harsh maneuvering. The whole thing had looked fancy enough, but Chona wasn’t impressed. At the end of the day, any plane flown by Affe needed twice as much maintenance time as the others.

With both wingmates in position, Tinvel held up his hand and made a quick series of gestures. It was an order to adopt a wider formation and gain altitude, so they could observe the progress of the fire below. The original plan had been to continue starting nearby fires with spells alone after they dumped the experimental payload, but Tinvel seemed to have decided he was more interested in seeing the results of the test.

Or he’s trying to give me time to get my breath back, Chona thought. She wouldn’t be able to cast another spell for a while. At least not one that was powerful enough to light a sopping wet jungle on fire.

The trio of planes began to spiral upward, shadowing the ascent of the smoking black mountain they had summoned. The fires were progressing shockingly well below them. They’d spent most of the last week aiding the efforts of loggers trying to tame the ravenous jungle. Sara’s initial hope, that of using gemstone-powered chainsaws and industrialized logging equipment to tame the cursed growth, had proved fruitless. Their trio of planes had been sent south a week before to help by launching flame from the sky as often as they were able, but it was only today, with Professor Brown’s thermite, that they’d begun to see success like this.

Chona leaned over the side of the plane to look down on their handiwork. The alchemical fluid- which Professor Brown had named “Boiling Thermite”- was doing wonders. Despite the fact that it had landed on only a small percentage of the trees, they lent the inferno so much additional heat that it was easily overcoming the jungle’s humidity. The blaze was already spreading far faster than it ever had before, and, Chona noticed with no small amount of pride, the final stretch was twice as wide as the earlier sections. It made the rising pain in her arm a touch easier to bear.

“Fuck burning it the old fashioned way!” Chona yelled at Tinvel. “We should land and get more thermite! It’ll be worth our time!”

“You’re just saying that because you screwed yourself up with that spell,” Tinvel hollered back.

“Oh, fuck off!”

Tinvel didn’t seem convinced by her eloquent argument, but he did seem to find some merit in landing to acquire more boiling thermite. With a few quick gestures to their wingmates, their trio closed in once more, tilting towards the north.

Chona leaned back in her seat, steadying her breathing. The consequences of her overreach were starting to make themselves felt. The pins and needles in her right arm were turning into knives and daggers, and her head had begun to pound as if she were severely dehydrated, an ache slowly suffusing itself through her whole body.

The first time she’d felt like this, she’d been worried she was going to die. Before Garen had come to her village to recruit her, she’d been a self-taught mage, improvising spells as best she could to help fend off bandit raids. When she felt her body going numb, Chona had crawled to her parents in tears, apologizing for killing herself just like everyone in the village had said she would. Now that she had more experience, she knew the sensation would pass. She’d pushed herself too hard, but she’d done worse before. All she could do now was distract herself.

And what better way to distract herself was there than to think of the ominous, looming specter of upcoming paperwork? Since she was technically on official government business, she knew she’d have to write a report of some kind about the day’s mission. Mages like her were in an awkward position amongst the half-baked Tulian Republic’s legal code. She was a student of the university, yes, but as one of its most successful mages, she was also regularly hired out to work on projects throughout the city, which left it unclear if she was a student or worker.

In addition, the entire aeronautical program was in quite the legal spat of its own; was it a University project, or a military one? For that matter, would they be replicating the military of the Governess’s home, with separate branches for various commands, or would it be a united force? No one seemed to know, and as the first Tulian Parliament had begun to take shape, battle lines were being drawn over all sorts of jurisdictional questions. Even though she’d written a report summarizing each day of the last week, Chona still wasn’t sure who she was actually supposed to give it to. Her current plan was to send it to Steward Evie and hope for the best.

And, Chona thought, if SHE’S going to be reading my report, I have to make sure it’s actually worthwhile. What the hell do I even say about this stuff?

Hoping to distract herself from the building migraine between her eyes, she started to collect what she knew of thermite and its uses. In its raw form, thermite looked like little more than a red powder, as if someone had ground up a rusty blade in a mortar and pestle. When Professor Brown had first shipped it in a nondescript box to the university, most of them had been unimpressed. It didn’t look like much, after all. The only one who had taken an immediate interest in the product was Hunes. She’d sensed something in the powder, and, with a flick of her fingers, dropped a spark on top of it.

A few minutes later, when Garen’s spells had put out the fire and the smoke had cleared from the room, they came back to find the iron box Professor Brown shipped the thermite in glowing cherry-red. After that incident, they decided to read the included instructions, which had thankfully survived the conflagration.

Thermite was… terrifyingly simple. It was just powdered iron and zinc mixed in a two-to-three ratio. That was all it took to create a burning powder which could, once ignited, reach a white-hot glow in a matter of seconds. She had no idea why it hadn’t been discovered before, but she was glad it had first cropped up in Tulian.

The liquid alchemical suspension that they were using to contain the thermite was a different story. It was Hunes’s brain child, an attempt to recreate “Greek fire” from Professor Brown’s old world. While the fledgeling alchemist hadn’t succeeded in reproducing the characteristic green flames of the otherworldly weapon, her mixture of resin, quicklime, and ritualistic infusions of energy had created something more than awful enough on its own. Every batch had been infused with an Intent to slowly envelop contaminants, thus creating pockets of isolated material within itself. That meant the thermite powder, once mixed in with the alchemical fluid, didn’t diffuse outward, but instead slowly gathered into dense spheres. Those spheres became a core of ever-burning fire, driving the temperature of their flammable surface even higher than would have otherwise been possible.

And it was working wonders. She watched the massive column of smoke slowly recede into the distance, her inner pyromaniac singing in her heart. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing that had been created.

Chona shook out her arm, testing its response. She was beginning to feel something now, and the daggers were once more being replaced by mere needles. She turned to look at the other planes, wondering how they were handling, now that their tanks were empty. She and Tinvel had been worried dropping so much weight mid-flight would cause serious control problems.

Affe’s doing good, she reluctantly admitted. The arrogant mage was flying exactly fifty yards off their right side, hanging in the sky as if he’d been pinned there. For all his wildly irritating arrogance, Affe at least tried to back it up with dedicated, routine practice. The fact that his cockiness managed to outstrip his considerable skill was a testament to the depths of his narcissism.

Chona turned to her left, wondering how Hunes’s plane was handling. She had the least experience of all of them, and her backseat mage was (at least in Chona’s opinion) one of the weakest of those accepted into the exclusive flight program. It would be best to keep an eye on them-

Chona blinked. They weren’t there. She twisted in her seat, leaning aside to look up, wondering if Hunes had allowed her plane to drift too high, hidden behind the biplane’s upper wing.

No one was there.

Chona leaned further still, scanning the horizon. She was about to call out to Tinvel when she finally looked down.

And saw Hunes’s plane trapped in an inescapable flatspin, a massive chunk ripped out of one wing.

“Shit!” Tinvel screamed.

Chona ripped her head around just in time for Tinvel to jerk the Sunrise into the tightest turn it could manage, narrowly avoiding a blur of white feathers and black claws shooting past.

A screech of fury filled the sky as the griffon’s wings snapped open below them. It began to flap hard, regaining altitude for another pass.

Just as Hunes’s plane struck the ground below, Chona heard a roar of flame off to her right.

“Shit!” She echoed, raising her trembling hand.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!