A Perverted Path to Victory

Ignite Parables

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“Hold! Hold, gods damn you!”

Fifteen gunners sat with their fingers on flintlock triggers, crouched to align their vision down the length of their gun. Ignite stood near the gundeck stairs, one hand braced on a ceiling beam to keep himself steady. The sky was bright and blue outside, but the wind was whipping like they were sailing through a squall. Even with her sails reefed to a quarter of their usual spread, the Waverake was heeling hard, her hull beaten by waves whose foaming tips were high enough to send a misty spray through the open gunports. Water was leaking through the gundeck’s boards and spilling to the hold below. If it weren’t for the crystal-powered pumps that constantly spat water back out of the bilge, they’d have had to close the gunports long ago to avoid ending up swamped.

“Adjust range!” Gunner Balon yelled. “Three hundred yards! Execute!”

Well-practiced gunners reached for their elevation screws, twisting the wooden pegs sharply. Beside each gunport was a new addition for the Waverake: stark white paint lines, each boldly marked in fifty yard increments. Every cannoneer on the ship lined their weapon’s muzzles up with the three hundred yard mark, following Balon’s orders without question.

Ignite looked out the nearest gunport, searching the shining sea for their target. It took a moment for the ship’s violent rocking to align itself properly, revealing the stretch of glittering sea which was broken by violent frothing.

A serpent was wrapped tightly around a large cargo vessel, its scaled hide slick with blood seeping from dozens of pinprick arrow wounds. Its massive jaws were latched onto the mast, sawing back and forth, while its immense length wrapped four times around the hull. Ignite could see wood splintering and cracking as the serpent endeavored to crush its prey. The vessel would not last long. Its hull was already bent at an unnatural angle, its once-straight lines turning ominously concave.

“Place wire and brace! Strike salvo bell!”

A deep gong-gong-gong reverberated through the ship as the gun crews lifted their flintlocks out of the way, in its place shoving a thin string of copper wire down the touchole. The wires ran along the ceiling of the vessel in neat, insulated bundles, splitting off to trace down the hull beside each gunport. He traced the lines back to the center of the gundeck, where Gunner Balon stood before a small table, a strange-looking pendulum secured before him. Beside it was an iron box, from within which sprouted two much-thicker wires that pierced the deck to snake up above, where Ignite knew they were connected to a contraption rather like a grain windmill, though it turned no grindstone. The device instead rotated , a “battery,” was plugged into the pendulum, which was rocking with the motion of the ship.

Ignite covered his ears with his hands, watching the contraption carefully. The wires to the cannons connected to the top of the pendulum, while the battery connected to a conductive plate beneath it. He had seen the system demonstrated before. When the ship reached a level angle, the pendulum would graze the metal, allowing the energy within the “battery” to pulse into the wires, along the hull, and down into the cannons, creating popping sparks amongst the blackpowder. Not only did it ensure perfect synchronicity of the cannon’s fire, it also took all the guesswork out of each cannon crew’s attempts to time their shots to the rocking of the ship. The guns would always fire when the keel was perfectly level with the horizon. So long as one accurately knew the range of their opponent, it was near impossible to over or under shoot.

The Waverake’s sails were caught by a particularly strong gust, rolling her hard. Ignite braced. The momentum of the ship teetered it hard on the port side, leaving him clawing for balance.

And then the momentum reached its apex, reversed, and carried her back to starboard, the pendulum swinging towards level. Beneath the copper pendulum, a spark popped.

Ka-THOOOOOM!

Twenty cannons spat smoke and fire, denting the sea with their concussion. The entire gundeck was choked with blackpowder smoke an instant later, the stiff wind blowing it back through the gunports as the recoil slammed the cannons against their restraints. Ignite could see nothing of the shots. He could not even see the far side of the gundeck.

“Good hits!” Gunner Balon crowed. “All on-target! Load, load, load!”

The same wind that first choked his vision soon served to clear it. The smoke was swept away in short order, revealing the effect on their target.

The serpent’s blue scales had turned red. Chunks of meat had been blown from its hide with such violence that viscera was still spinning through the air a dozen seconds later, a gruesome spray of confetti splashing down into the water. Improbably, almost impossibly, not a single one of the iron cannonballs had struck the cargo ship. Every last chunk of iron had pummeled the serpent directly, embedding themselves into the flesh. The blood which poured from its wounds was already turning the sea crimson, spurting from its hide in gouts wider than a man.

The serpent shrieked a gurgling, injured cry, its massive jaws releasing its would-be prey. Its head whipped around to the Waverake, reptilian eyes glittering with a malice that seemed unnervingly intelligent.

“Marines!” Ignite yelled, throwing himself up the stairs. “Load rifles! Assemble on the foredeck!”

Ignite swung his own rifled musket off his shoulder, which was already loaded. He squinted against the brilliant sunlight as he emerged onto the main deck. His marines were already running past him, loading their guns as they jogged.

“First Sergeant,” one of his marines nervously greeted. The man chuckled. “Think these little muskets will do much good against that thing?”

“No.”

The man blanched. “Then… why are we loading ‘em, sir?”

“Your role is to follow orders, Private. Not question them.”

The man paled, then saluted sharply, darting ahead to join the other marines at the prow of the ship.

The serpent let out a furious screech, its spiked maw spraying a gout of seawater. Its coils began to loosen around the cargo ship, every flex sending another spurt of dark blood gushing into the ocean. It was too furious to care about its original prey.

“All loose rope to starboard!” Captain Nora called, cutting the air with her chiming words. “Tie as many lines to the gunwale as ye can get yer hands on! Stand by for crew recovery efforts!”

The Waverake groaned as Captain Nora spun the wheel hard to starboard, tacking them as close to the wind as she dared. When the prow was pointed straight toward the stricken vessel and its serpentine predator, the rudder twisted back to the centerline.

The serpent finished unraveling itself from the cargo vessel. It dropped into the water with a great splash, crashing waves bursting on its narrow head as it slithered toward the Waverake.

“Oh gods,” Ignite heard one of the marines whimper. He shot the man a glare, silencing him.

“Marines up on the gunwale!” Ignite ordered. “Ready aim, but hold your fire! Any fool who wastes a shot on that serpent will get to meet it in the water!”

His troops rushed up against the gunwale, standing on the step that let them aim over the Waverake’s high sides. A second line formed behind the first, waiting to replace their fellows when their shot was spent.

“Sir!” Someone yelled. “It’s comin’ right at us!”

“Silence!”

A wide bow wave was being shoved ahead of the serpent as it snaked its way through the heavy waves. Beneath the cerulean waves, its amber eyes glowed with a profound rage. Ignite could not read its mind, but he imagined what it was thinking all the same. Ships of men and wood were not meant to be threats. They were tempting curiosities, an opportunity to sample novel meats and admire strange, shiny metals. They were not a threat. It was going to do something about this outrage.

Then those eyes lidded. The undulating gyrations of its bloody hide slowed. The wave it had been pushing first shrunk, then dissipated. The creature’s eyes stayed open a moment more, its great jaws opening as it tried to raise its massive head.

The creature collapsed without fanfare. Its head, barely lifted a few feet from the water, slammed into the waves with a great splash. Those amber slits went white as its eyes rolled back into its head. The serpent let out a final few spastic jerks, then lay still.

The marines began to cheer wildly, elated. Men and women shouted at the dying beast, insults and jeers, while the sailors aboard the Waverake began a victory chant honoring the gunners and their cannons.

“Silence!” Ignite roared. “Silence! Back to the gunwale, now! Our work is not done!”

His marines, at least, listened to him, even if the rest of the jubilant crew did not. They flung themselves at the gunwale, shouldering their guns with confused expressions.

Ignite looked at the stricken vessel. Its hull, already aged and battered, had been broken beyond repair by the serpent’s assault. A jagged split began amidships, small at first, only to tear upward with the staccato pops of shattering planks. Beaten by wind and waves, the break remained thin for no more than a handful of seconds. With one final crack, the ship was split entirely in two.

“Aim for the beasts in the water!” Ignite ordered. “Check your aim, do not fire wildly! Do not shoot the sailors!”

The reaction of his marines was mixed. Some understood instantly, recognition flashing across their faces, while others, despite following his orders exactly, still looked profoundly confused. The serpent was dead, they were thinking. What beasts was Ignite referring to?

Their confusion did not last long. As foreign sailors began to fall into the viscera-laden water, a new kind of froth joined the bloody waves. Splashes and flashes of fins and tails cut through the tumult, measurably adding to the ongoing chaos. Bobbing chunks of serpent-flesh began to shake violently, squeezing grotesque fountains of even more blood in the water.

As the Waverake approached, the first sailor began to scream.

Captain Nora’s voice echoed across the waves. “All hands, make ready to recover sailors by all means available! Those not on the duty, help drag the injured away! Clear spaces! Surgeons and healers to the deck! Get yer arses moving!”

The ship exploded into motion. Ignite was one of the few who had expected this eventuality. He knew from awful experience that the death of a creature as large as that serpent would not go unnoticed by the creatures of the ocean. Awful splashes, terrible roars, and now the flailing of panicked sailors, it was all a siren call for every hungry beast in a dozen leagues. Driven mad by the sheer volume of blood in the water, even normally peaceful creatures could become pressing threats.

A feeding frenzy.

The first musket cracked. A fountain of water exploded next to one of the stranded sailors, startling away a dark shadow. The woman shrieked in terror, holding her hands up in surrender, not understanding.

“Fire at will!”

More muskets began to pop. The upper deck of the cargo vessel was already slipping beneath the waters, and while a precious few sailors had thought to climb and cling to the highest points of the masts, even that pillar of safety was rapidly sinking.

Ignite added his musket to the fire as he sighted a fast, sleek blur darting towards a man who was swimming for a tossed line. The soft lead bullet shattered on impact with the water, doing nothing to the creature save frightening it, but that was enough to spare the man’s life. He snagged the rope, wrapping it tightly around his wrists. The Waverake’s crew immediately tugged hard, drawing him through the water.

All the marines now understood his orders. He had sent them to the prow so that they would not impede the rescue efforts, and he had ordered them to prepare their muskets to help fend off the blood-maddened fish. Given purpose and method, their will could now drive them to the excellence he expected of them. During his time with them, they had become good troops. He was proud of them.

With such an inordinately large and well-crewed ship as the Waverake, the recovery efforts were completed in short order, yet even that speed was not enough to rescue all. Ignite himself watched at least two individuals get dragged under, their panicked screams turned to gurgling and trailing bubbles. It was tragic, but there was little to be done. A lesser ship would have been unable to save even a fraction of the crew the Waverake eventually rescued.

A few minutes later, it was over. With the scent and taste of sulfur clogging his senses, Ignite ordered a halt to the firing. Any further shooting of the predators would have achieved nothing more than revenge against an unthinking animal. Some of his marines still wanted to fire, he could tell. To see someone get eaten alive was an awful thing, and this was likely their first time to witness the horror.

Instead, Ignite ordered them to help organize the newcomers on their ship. By the time they had spotted the stricken cargo vessel, the serpent’s gnawing at its mast had already removed any symbol of allegiance. For all he knew, these men and women could have been operating a pirate vessel, or worse, transporting slaves. He dearly hoped it was not the latter; the Governess’s orders still held. It wouldn’t do well for the marine’s morale to execute the people they had just gone to great effort to save.

“Good work, First Sergeant,” Captain Nora said, appearing at his side with the suddenness of a wraith. “Knew ye’d keep yer men under control. Can’t rightly say how helpful it is, to have a fella who’s been in these sorts of situations before.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Ignite replied stiffly. “But I’ve never fought a serpent in such a manner. Only heard of similar feeding frenzies from the accounts of sailors who stumbled across whale carcasses and the like. It was guesswork, not experience.”

“And ye thought to get yer marines up and ready based off that guesswork alone, no?” Captain Nora’s smile flashed at him. “And ye recognized the beast wouldn’t make it to our ship to attack. That’s more than Castalan managed.”

“I only knew that to be the case because you didn’t order a second volley, ma’am.”

The fae-touched captain laughed, throwing her head back. “Right ye are, Mr. Parables! But I don’t care how my crew figure to do the right thing. Just that they do. Ye’re good about that. That means ye get my thanks.”

Ignite nodded, swallowing his next protest. It would have been rude to be so deflective about a superior officer’s praise.

“What will we do with the crew, ma’am?” Ignite asked instead, waving to the blood and seawater-soaked individuals strewn across the deck. The bosun was, as was proper tradition, already screaming their head off about the wood getting stained.

“Ah, we’ll be takin’ em to the nearest port, I s’pose,” Captain Nora said, waving as if it was of no consequence. “Certainly not recruitin’ ‘em, that’s fer sure.”

Ignite sighed. “Another delay, then?”

She grinned. “Another delay.”

“So that you are informed, Captain…” Ignite swallowed nervously as he lowered his voice to a whisper. “This delay was just. I am glad we saved these people. But the crew have begun to mutter that we could have arrived at the Locks weeks ago. Months ago, perhaps. They have begun to suspect you of-” he paused, hesitating, before forcing the accusation past his lips. “-dallying.”

Captain Nora’s expression didn’t change. The same near-arrogant grin split her lips as she, too, dropped her voice to a whisper. “And do ye suspect as such, First Sergeant?”

“I… see their reasons to believe the rumors,” he carefully temporized. “Some of the crew seem near certain of it. I am not among them. But even those who feel certain of it… None of them can imagine why you would do such a thing. What the benefit would be.”

Captain Nora cocked her head, hat falling askew. “Ah, who knows, First Sergeant? I’m a mad cap’n. My ways are as strange as they are senseless.”

Ignite snorted. “Strange, absolutely. Senseless, perhaps. But only by other’s definitions. Not your own. You do not act without reason, ma’am. Even if your reasons can be…” He didn’t bother to finish the thought.

Her eyes glittered. When they weren’t in battle, she loved officers that challenged her commands.

“Maybe I’m just givin' the Locks some time to ready themselves for our assault. Giftin’ myself a better fight. All the better to make my legacy, no?”

Ignite shook his head. “You care too much for your crew to do that.”

Captain Nora shrugged, working her prosthetic leg back and forth. “Who knows? I’m as mad as they come. Maybe I’ve finally lost the last of my mind?”

Ignite looked at the injured crew they’d rescued. Men and women had sprawled across the deck, heaving great, exhausted breaths. Even those who had suffered considerable injuries had an almost palpable aura of relief to them.

“I don’t think so, ma’am,” Ignite said. His expression hardened as he focused back on Nora. “But I will tell you this. If you are dallying, and you intend to dally much further, I must inform you that it is to the Republic of Tulian that I owe my allegiance. It is the Republic of Tulian which will someday soon need my service in the defense of her shores. Not you. Despite your many successes, I know I am not the only of the Waverake’s crew which feels similarly.”

The glint in Captain Nora’s eyes did not dull. If anything, it sharpened. As she spoke, she gained an almost bubbly, childish exuberance.

“Understood, First Sergeant. Once again, I’m glad to have an officer like ye.”

She spun on a metal heel and marched away, moving to interrogate the rescued crew. Ignite knew that, just like all the distractions before, the navigation to a port willing to take them in would add several days to their journey.

How odd it was, to have a commanding officer to whom he would dare say such things. Odder still, he reflected, was the loyalty he felt to Tulian. Not, even, to Sara Brown. To the nascent idea of Tulian itself. Courtesy of the Captain’s communication crystal, they still received regular communiques from the capital. The government that was emerging seemed… reasonable. Honorable. One of the most prominent voices amongst Parliament, at least as far as he could tell from so far away, was a common copper-mining man. Not even one who owned a mine; he’d been working at one, before running for election. Ignite had heard of no other form of governance in which a simple miner could argue for and against its laws.

But as odd as it was to feel loyalty to the ‘nation’ of Tulian, the strangest of all, he decided, was the lack of conflict within him. The confidence he felt in his assertions. That he could look Captain Nora in the eye, an Admiral, and tell her those things? And that he had not felt a twinge of regret when he did so, nor the once all-consuming conflict that might have but a few short months ago? That confidence was not just odd. It was alien. How could he, after spending so long away from Tulian, have grown ever more fond of it?

These were all questions that, ultimately, Ignite felt little impulse to answer. That’s what confidence was, he supposed. What he felt simply was. He would see Captain Nora’s strange quest through, repaying the debt he felt he owed her, but if she did not wish to return to Tulian afterwards, Ignite would part ways with her. Even in the Carrion Navy, Ignite had often felt more aligned to his ship and her crew than he ever had the Navy itself.

How strange, he thought, how very strange indeed.

But he was already confident. He gave it no further thought.

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Tinvel

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As impressive and innovative as sheet metal buildings were, they were loud as all the hells. The storm raging outside— a typhoon, the first of the year to properly hit Tulian— was throwing thick, heavy drops against the roof, each a ringing hammer blow. Despite the fact that the aerodrome was nearly empty, and those few who were present besides Tinvel were mostly working on their own quiet projects, he could barely hear himself think. The wind howled, driving against the walls hard enough to make them buckle and bend with unfamiliar, metallic groans, as if the entire building were an animal huddled on an open plain.

Tinvel did his best to ignore it. Tulian’s new ‘building codes’ had put a lot of emphasis on preparing structures for typhoon-force winds, and the aerodrome was no exception. So long as the street outside didn’t start to flood, he didn’t have anything to worry about.

It had been two weeks since he and Chona had given their speech to Parliament, advocating for the creation of an independent Air Force. The news of griffon attacks had spread through the city like wildfire, propelling the proposal through the fledgling bureaucracy at an unprecedented pace. The vote on it had finished up three days ago.

There would be a Tulian Air Force.

Now, the problem was, is that was all that had been decided. Yes, there would be an Air Force. They’d even written up a little piece of paper about it and everything.

One entire sheet.

What the Air Force’s purpose, role, and budget would be, no one in Parliament had bothered to specify. That would have kept the proposal in talks for longer, and as the Tulian people and their politicians were slowly learning, there was nothing that drove Parliamentary approval rates better than ministers getting to publicly claim they had passed some important-sounding law.

Even if it didn’t actually achieve anything.

Instead of getting all the important things handled by Parliament at large, they’d decided to appoint a committee. One that would come up with all the rules and regulations and budgetary concerns they anticipated the Air Force to have, as well as provide their suggestions to deal with them, and then they would write up a document, one that would later be presented for Parliament to vote on.

Tinvel himself wasn’t allowed on the committee, of course. Not only was he not an elected official, he’d obviously be a member of the Air Force that was created. Maybe its most important. That meant he had a “conflict of interest,” supposedly. He wasn’t even allowed to talk to the committee members. None of Tulian’s pilots were.

Because it would have made too much sense to have someone who actually knew how planes worked to be in charge of the freaking air force!

“You’re looking pissy,” Chona said, her dangling feet swinging lazily from where she sat atop the Sunrise’s upper wing. “Is the engine giving you trouble?”

“Not anymore than I expected,” he grunted. “I’m just… thinking about politics.”

Chona tsked. “Shouldn’t do that. I’ve heard it’ll drive you crazy.”

“Yeah. I think I’m learning that.”

Tinvel tweaked one of the crystals a touch further, splaying his fingers out to get as much contact as he could with the artifice engine. He’d recently learned that people had started calling them “Tinvel Engines.” He hated that. Sure, he had been the first to make one, but he didn’t consider himself the real inventor of the design. Though no one could know it, he’d blatantly stolen Earthly combustion engine designs, replacing their gasoline-powered cylinders with enchanted crystals. It hadn’t been easy, true, and he deserved some credit, but the genuinely complicated stuff, the actual machinery that took crystal pulses and used the energy to spin a propeller, had been stolen outright. They weren’t Tinvel Engines. At best, they were Tinvel-modified copies of the enigmatic, otherworldly “French” and “British” cultures. Then those designs had been taken even further afield by being designs that Professor Brown had helped him mimic, which meant Tinvel was practically the last person involved in the long design process.

The only elements he could fully claim as his own were wrapped up in the crystal network at the engine’s core. The large amethyst geode’s enchantments and the complex artificery that sent energies from the larger crystal to smaller emeralds, that was what he had invented. Not the whole engine.

Tinvel pressed the pad of his right ring finger to one such emerald, his left index already atop its opposite pair. He sent a tiny jolt of energy through his index finger, focusing with closed eyes.

Ba-bump.

The energy hummed. He sent energy down his ring finger.

Baa-bump.

“Got it,” he muttered.

“Figure it out?” Chona asked.

“Think so.” He began running a fingernail along the crystal, tracing the engravings. There was a tiny, tiny little scratch. Invisible to the eye. Likely caused by a dirt particle that had gotten into the engine during takeoff or landing. “Timing issue. Real subtle, but it was enough to be making that rattle we heard yesterday.”

“I thought you looked for a timing issue already?”

“I did. But only with mundane senses. It’s too subtle to hear or see. Maybe a…” he focused harder. “...a thousandth of a second or so. At least it starts that way. With how it was clanking yesterday, I’m betting it’ll eventually run itself entirely out of sync anytime you maintain a power setting for too long.”

Chona hopped down from the Sunrise’s wing, hooking her tail around a support spar to slow her fall. She went over to a paper-filled table and rifled through the sheets, raising her voice to be heard over the pounding rain.

“You sure we’re ready to send non-artificers up in these? Look at this.” She rapped her knuckles against a bundle of papers. The ever-evolving diagnostic manual. “There’s an awful lot of problems you can’t diagnose or solve without a mage’s senses. If some of these happen midair, there’s not going to be anything they can do about it.”

“Maybe,” Tinvel hedged, retreating from the engine cowling once he was satisfied in his adjustments to the crystal synchronicity. He grabbed a rag from his back pocket, wiping the grease off his face. “Maybe not. With this one, I think you can work around it. The problem should end up resetting itself every time you cycle power settings. We can add it to the air-repair manual. If a crew notices crystal pulse asynchronicity, begin regularly cycling the power settings. That’ll buy a non-artificer enough time to get the plane back for repairs.”

Chona looked skeptical. “This manual is getting awfully thick, Tin. I still think it’ll be better to have actual mages and artificers up in the skies.”

“Sure. If you can think of a way to convince the Governess to let them go into combat, be my guest. Until then, I think we just have to suck it up. From the way Professor Brown talked, we’re already making planes that are more reliable than their Earth versions. Those Great War things were deathtraps.”

Chona looked ready to continue the argument, as always, but before she got out another word the sounds of the storm suddenly redoubled in volume, drowning them both in booming thunder and popping rain.

Turning around, Tinvel saw the aerodrome doors groaning open, a large, sopping figure straining to drag them against the powerful wind. The guards at the entrance spent a moment inspecting the figure, hands on their muskets, then abruptly leapt to their aid, throwing their shoulders against the steel gate. The moment the figure was inside, the guards fell back, letting the doors slam shut with an echoing boom.

“Thanks!” The figure called, throwing off their cloak’s hood. “I picked a shit time to go for a walk, didn’t I?”

When their face came into view, Tinvel didn’t recognize them. That was a problem. Only a very select few people were allowed into the aerodrome, and he knew them all by sight. The Governess and her wives, the Irregular guards assigned to protect the doors, and University staff. That was it.

The man that had entered was a total stranger. A broad-shouldered, older orc, one with thick tusks and the barest tinges of gray in his close-cropped hair. Taking off his sodden cloak and tossing it aside, he revealed an exceptionally long musket strapped to his back, one that was, unbelievably, proportionally longer on him than most muskets were on the smallest of catfolk. That meant it was a custom-smithed piece, and an expensive one, at that. It wasn’t his only weapon. Dangling off his hip was a scabbard that sprouted a leather grip so well-worn with sweat and a tight grip that Tinvel instantly suspected it had been at the man’s side since before Tinvel himself had even been born.

“Good to see you, sir!” One of the guards said, offering up their hand to the stranger.

“Been too long,” the man agreed, clasping it easily. “I’m probably gonna be sticking around here for a while, too. This your permanent station?”

“Permanent as it can be, I suppose.”

“Good. Means we’ll get time to catch up. I’ll be in here plenty.”

Tinvel and Chona traded glances. If the guards recognized the man, he shouldn’t be an outright threat. That didn’t mean that he should get to see the dozens of myriad inventions laying half-completed across the aerodrome, however.

“Excuse me!” Tinvel called. “Who are you? What are you doing in here?”

Chona stepped up to Tinvel’s side, crossing her arms.

“Samni, what are you doing?” She demanded of the guard who’d greeted the stranger. “Do you just let anyone in these days?”

The guard, Samni, looked surprised. “Uh, no ma’am. But this is General Voth. With respect, I don’t think there’s anywhere he’s not allowed to be.”

General Voth? The name took a moment to register. When it did, Tinvel still had to rack his brain for what he knew of the man. He’d heard of him plenty, but never actually seen him in person. He was one of the Tulian Army’s three officially-ranked capital-g-Generals, technically equal in military rank to the Governess and her wife, if actually outranked in every meaningful way. That hierarchy discrepancy had never mattered, however, as he’d always been in the south. The rumor was, he’d adamantly refused to fight the Royal Sporaton Army, considering it a suicidal task. After the war had been won, that wasn’t a good look.

Tinvel didn’t know how much truth there was to that rumor, though. Most people repeated it with the unstated implication of calling the man a coward, and any story that served mostly as an insult had him doubting its veracity. As far as Tinvel had heard from any legitimate source, Voth had distinguished himself well enough in his service, working to get the vast, sparsely populated regions of southern Tulian under control while the Governess had focused on fortifying against the Sporatons.

Tinvel still had no idea what General Voth would be doing here, of all places. Voth was the one who took new army recruits out into the field, letting them cut their teeth with long patrols and engagements against wild animals before they were transferred out to the main Tulian Army. A glorified drill sergeant with a rank that was nothing more than an old hangover from the early days of Tulian, when those things didn’t matter so much. Unless some wild beast or gang of bandits had inexplicably broken into the capital, he had no business here.

“You artificer Tinvel?” Voth asked.

“I am,” he said, keeping his arms crossed.

“Good to meet you.” General Voth tossed his cloak aside as he approached, letting it squelch against the aerodrome’s carefully-graded concrete floor. “I’d like to say I’ve heard a lot about you, but I haven’t. Don’t get much news out in the sticks, not until the broadsheets were getting printed that they could make it out to us.” He came to a stop next to the Sunrise, putting his hands on his hips. He nodded toward the plane. “This the one I read about? That took off right down a main street of Tulian?”

“One of ‘em,” Tinvel confirmed. “Her name is the Sunrise.”

“Because it ends Knights,” Chona butted in.

Tinvel rolled his eyes, starting to tell her that the name was only impressive when its hidden meaning was implied, not stated, but before he could, Voth boomed with laughter, putting a hand on his belly.

“Ha! I like it! I like it a lot. Pretty crazy, getting to see it for myself. When we got the news that the capital was building flying machines, I almost had to deal with a mutiny. Took all I had to keep the kids from up and deserting back to the capital to go and see.”

“So you decided to give up and come see for yourself?” Tinvel guessed, attempting a joke. Since General Voth was technically allowed to be here, and he was probably going to end up higher in the military seniority hierarchy than Tinvel, it couldn’t hurt to show him around.

Voth laughed again. “I’m not sure if seeing it sitting on the ground counts. I’m sure it’ll be even wilder once I see it up in the skies. I almost don’t want you to explain how it works, so I can be as surprised as everyone else was.” He huffed a breath. “But that’s not what I’m here for. Gotta learn all I can.”

Chona arched an eyebrow. “Is that what you came for? Is the new Air Force going to be coordinating with your force down south to fight off-” her face twisted as she begrudgingly corrected herself to the politically expedient word, “-to investigate the griffon attacks? It’d be good to have a landing and resupply area we know is safe.”

General Voth’s face flickered. He looked at first confused, then… chagrined? He stepped away from the Sunrise, rubbing the back of his head.

“Ah. Y’didn’t hear?”

“No.” Chona crossed her arms yet again, looking at him with suspicion. “What? What happened?”

“Well. Parliament appointed me head of the Air Force.”

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“Fucking ridiculous!” A book careened through the air, crashing against a wall. “Stupid!” An empty lamp went sailing. “What the fuck were they- can they even- who said they could do that?!”

Tinvel sat, slumped, in a nearby chair, watching Chona furiously pace. They were in the aerodrome’s office, a comparatively tiny nook tucked into the corner of the massive building. Every time her rant drew near a table or bookshelf, her tail would swipe up to knock some other unfortunate object aside, leaving her arms free to gesticulate wildly, making harsh, chopping motions that accentuated every word.

“It makes sense to them,” he grumbled, almost helplessly.

“It doesn’t make any fucking sense!” A candlestick was wrapped up in Chona’s tail, only to get slammed into the floor so hard it bounced up and over her head, clattering to the concrete as an unrecognizable lump of metal.

“I said it makes sense to them,” Tinvel emphasized.

“Who?! Fucking idiots?”

“Parliament.”

“Yeah! Fucking idiots!”

“Look, Chona,” Tinvel threw his hands up. “I don’t agree with it. But there’s at least a reason for it.”

She spun on him. “Are you not angry? You should be angrier than me!”

“I am,” he said, gritting his teeth, “but let me at least explain why they did it.”

Chona let out a half-sputter, half-scream, but stopped pacing. She faced him directly, hands on her hips, and made a well, what have you got? gesture at him. Tinvel sighed. At least she’d stopped pillaging the table that sat between them.

“Voth’s a… political pick,” he explained. “He’s pretty much the only officer the Tulian Army has that was still an officer under King Tulian.”

“Which means he’s a fuckin’ geriatric.”

Tinvel thought the orcish man wasn’t yet out of his forties, but didn’t voice that.

“Maybe, but it also means he’s experienced,” he said instead. “If you want to weaken the argument of the Ministers who don’t support an Air Force, who better to lead it? It’s a lot harder to claim that airplanes are an artificer’s tinker-toy when you’ve got some hardass, grizzled soldier in charge of them.”

“The guy learned how to fight with sticks and fuckin’ stones,” Chona spat, “and they want to put him in charge of us? Of airplanes? You heard him! He doesn’t even know how they work!”

“Neither did we, last year.”

“But we built them! We learned all that shit, and it took us months! The fight we need to have is now. He doesn’t know a damn thing about aircraft, and he doesn’t have the time to learn!”

Tinvel’s fingers curled tighter on the arms of his chair.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess he doesn’t. But you know what? That’s what we’ve got to do.”

Chona’s eyes grew wide. “The hells it is! I’d take just about anyone over this. Shit, I’d take Affe being in charge over some random fuckin’ soldier!”

Tinvel scoffed. “You don’t mean that. What does Affe know about running an army?”

“What does Voth know that someone else can’t learn in two fuckin’ seconds? Get food, get people, pay them money! Sure, figuring out the math, getting a team to sort out pay or whatever the hells, that takes some work, but that’s something anyone can learn. That’s what staff are for! But who the hell would trust a general that’s never swung a sword? No one! So why trust a general who’s never flown a plane? We need someone that actually knows what they’re doing!”

“Like who?”

“Like YOU!” Chona roared, slamming her hands down on the table.

Tinvel’s fingers, which had begun to bite into the wood of the armrests, violently released themselves. He flew to his feet so fast he was left dizzy, the headache that had been brewing behind his temples bursting into a fully-flowered migraine. He felt his face flushing red, but he didn’t bother to hide it.

“Like me? Like ME?!” He bellowed incredulously. “I’ve been in two fucking fights! Two! And in one of them, two of my friends DIED! I lost my shit so hard I spent a week wandering in fucking circles looking for another fight, and the only reason I didn’t get MORE people killed is because we caught them while they were fuckin’ SLEEPING! I might have started a fucking WAR!”

He advanced on Chona, stabbing his finger towards her with every word. “The fuck is this?! You thought we were going to end up kings of our own little fucking Air Force Empire? You thought we were gonna join the military- START a military- without having to deal with politics? You’re not a fucking kid out in the fields anymore, Chona! They told us to do shit, and we have to DO it!”

“Me?” Chona’s black fur was puffed up, standing on end, making her seem twice the size she normally was. “ME? You’re saying I’M acting like a kid? You, Tinvel, how about you? YOU aren’t some brat stuck in a basement reading dusty books anymore! You’ve done shit! Accomplished something! People listen to you now, which means you can actually DO something about this, and- and you just won’t?”

“Since when have you given a fuck what I’ve done?” He swept his hand out at the walls, beyond which sat the Tulian University. “When have you ever thought I should be in charge of shit? When did that ever worry you for a gods-damned second?!”

“When you started trying to get us killed in fucking dogfights, Tinvel!”

“Then get out of the plane! If you’re scared, I can get another backseater!”

He’d made a mistake. In a flash, Chona’s expression went from ‘furious’ to ‘utterly apocalyptic.’ The table between them shot upward, seemingly propelled in equal measure by magical black energies and her furious snarl, shattering into a dozen pieces where it dented the bomb-proofed ceiling. Chona leapt across the emptied gap, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and shoving him backward.

“You are NOT going to fly to your death with some other fuckup in your plane!”

“If I’m going to be-”

“NO!” She drove Tinvel’s back against the wall. “Absolutely not! Put Voth in charge, throw random civilians up in a plane, do whatever the fuck you want, but you are NOT flying without me! Not now, not FUCKING ever!”

We’re… not arguing about the same thing anymore, are we?

“Chona.” Tinvel put a hand on her wrist. He could feel it trembling. “Okay. Okay. Look, I won’t fly without you. Not combat missions, anyway. Not without you, I promise.”

She dropped him, spinning away. “Fine,” she spat. She began angrily patting down her fur, trying to smooth it back down to normal. “Fine. Good. Glad you understand that. But Voth still shouldn’t be in charge of the Air Force.”

“I wasn’t ever going to be in charge of it.”

Her eyes flashed, but the heat which came to her voice was lesser. Simmering, not raging. “Why not, Tin? Why not? You should be. Hells, I wasn’t kidding when I said Affe would be a better choice.” She laughed bitterly. “You know what it takes for me to say that? About him?”

He snorted. “Yeah, I do. But did you ever really think I’d be in charge? Of a whole branch of the military? That’s like making me… like making me Grand Admiral of the Fleet, or the highest-ranked general of the army. I’ve been in two battles, Chona.”

“You already built the damn air force. Why not be in charge of it, too?”

“Because…”

Tinvel’s eyes grew hazy. He’d been to visit their families, the day before the storm. Hunes and Docks. They’d both… they’d both had big families. Mother, father, siblings. They’d all been there, too. That was his own fuckup. Next time, he wouldn’t send them a letter ahead of time. They’d gathered their whole families up, ready to listen, not once fathoming why he was coming to visit.

Images of a half-orc child, barely five years old, sobbing uncontrollably, flashed unbidden through his mind’s eye. The image was blurred by his own tears. He’d almost been crying more than the kid. The black eye he had— given to him by Hune’s father, worsened by Docks’ mother— still throbbed. He hadn’t wanted… hadn’t deserved to drink a healing potion for that. He wouldn’t. He’d hidden it beneath facepaint, because people would have made him heal it otherwise. He refused.

“I’m not…” he croaked out, “...I’m not ready to be in charge, Chona. I’m just not.”

Still wiping woodchips of a shattered table from her fur, she made a disgusted noise. “Don’t be fuckin’ ridiculous. You’re more ready than some old-ass General will ever be. You just need a staff, or a-”

“No.”

The single word echoed in the small room. Chona stopped brushing herself, facing away from him. She didn’t turn around. Tinvel had felt a certain… ring to the word, as it left him. A confidence he’d rarely, if ever, felt. Certainly one he’d never actually put into words.

“I’ll fight,” he said. “I swear it, I will. I’ll kill, too. As many people and as often as I can, if it comes to that. But I’m not going to be in charge. Someone else needs to do that.”

Still facing away from him, Chona straightened, hands falling to her side. With an almost petulant groan, she threw her head back, staring at the ceiling through closed eyes.

“You’re not going to change your mind on this, are you?”

“No.”

“No matter how much I bug you about it. You’re not even going to fight them on putting that guy in charge, are you?”

“No.”

She let out a defeated sigh. She finally turned around, crossing her arms beneath her cloth-wrapped chest, tail drooping low.

She met his eyes. Then her attention flicked down, to his feet, and darted back upward, moving from point to point, inspecting him so quickly he barely caught it, until she met his eyes again. Her tail began to raise once more as she let out an irritated huff, snapping her head towards the door.

“When the hells is that storm going to end? We’ve got places to be.”

He chuckled. “Really? We?”

Through the corner of her eye, she scowled at him.

“Yeah. We. I’m taking you on a date.”

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