by Simon Archer
“Setback?” She looked around. “Is this not the Hunter’s cache?”
“Nah, we found the right one,” I assured her, leading her out of the bunker with a hand to her back. “We did our job right. It’s just this Hunter who didn’t make any tools that could last thousands of years in your world or stand the test of innovation. We gotta try to go back to my world to resupply and make our camp here.” With that, we were outside the cache, and the Dog Squad was standing just outside to stare at us.
“How was it, sir?” Old Yeller asked. “Where’s the magic musket?”
“No magic muskets for us, Old Yeller,” I informed him. “But that don’t mean we’re out of magic just yet. Hopper and I have to pop back through a magic portal to another world for a bit. You guys stand guard here until we get back. Okay?”
“Is that command for all of us?” Foxhound inquired. “You didn’t use our special names.”
“Yeah, I should probably do that.” I chuckled. No point in holding on to frustrations of bureaucratic minutia at this stage of the game. “Old Yeller! Lassie! Toby! Scooby! Foxhound! Guard the cache until we get back, alright?”
“Can do, boss.” Toby took a position around the entrance to the cache, along with the others. They stood in scarily equal lengths apart in a pentagon, standing completely straight, almost like totem poles.
“You ready to portal-hop over?” I asked her, stretching out my legs. “First, we’re gonna just test how long you can keep the portal open for. Don’t want the Wolves waiting too long with the time skips in play.”
“Okay.” She braced herself with her hands outstretched, conjuring the portal with her hands. As her focus increased, her resolve steeled, and her passion engorged, she pushed forwards as her powerful magic… did nothing. More twisting of her hands around themselves, spinning them like some Las Vegas witch. Nothing came out, no powers, no magical bolts, no window into another space. It was a solid five minutes in, and Hopper’s face was fixing to pop like a red balloon.
“I don’t think it’s happening, honey.” I put a hand on her shoulder as a burst of gasping exploded out of her, recovering from straining herself for so long. “Is there something wrong?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the ground, drawing circles with her foot. “I thought I had mastered it already. I’m sorry I’ve displeased you, my lord.”
“What did I say about your ‘master pleasing,’ huh?” I turned her shoulders to look her in the eye. “You’re always doing great. I ain’t gonna stop you from trying, but I’m ordering you now to keep that in mind while you do.”
“Yes, my lord.” She broke out of my arms to hug my waist as I felt the spot become wet with tears.
“What’s the problem, boss?” Lassie spoke up from his statuesque post.
“Slight portal snafu, nothing more,” I told him. “Stay here while we try to open one somewhere else.”
“Portals don’t work in the Baron’s territory, sir.” Foxhound stated. “He keeps them away so the Rabbits can’t get out.”
“We were told to look for portals and bunnies as well as to guard this spot,” Toby added. “Any we found we were supposed to bring into the Baron’s castle.”
That would have been nice to know beforehand. Not only did we have an armory full of mostly useless equipment, not only were we going to have to spend the time to learn the ins and outs of portal-hopping and time travel at the same time, but we couldn’t even use the portals any closer than smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, forcing us to spread out whatever we brought over thinner than a pancake. And that was if this goddamn Baron didn’t decide to put his magic- portal-jammer-doodad over the area as soon as he figured out we were trying to kill Timberpine.
To make matters worse, all of the time skip Colonial-Era mumbo-jumbo could be screwing over finding Timberpine in the first place. It’d been almost a full day between Hopper coming over and us portal-hopping back. We could have missed him by a country mile. He could have been dead for fifty years by now.
And, the icing on the cake, they were looking for portals and bunnies. They could have been already waiting for us to show up with a trap I couldn’t outmaneuver without knowing where it’d spring up. I could have only hoped against them looking for Hopper specifically. That would have taken the element of surprise right out of our hands and put Hopper in the most danger in one swoop.
I couldn’t let that happen. And I never would.
9
“The portals don’t work here?” Back at the catacombs, Tinker asked about the problem we’d been having, the tumblers in her head spinning and turning with ideas and numbers I was sure would be like Egyptian hieroglyphs to me.
“Yeah, but we’re working on a solution to that problem as we speak,” I said, making sure she knew we weren’t worried. “And you’ve already been a big help for that. We’ll be seeing in just a bit what--”
“The emotional trigger!” she exclaimed suddenly. Catching her excitement, she gathered her wits again. “Um, sir, Hopper’s emotional trigger for her portals could help me figure out a way to counteract the nullifying effect if I could get the right materials. I might be able to help her focus and connect with her powers, possibly project a field that could allow her to utilize them without restraint.”
“Don’t overwork yourself, honey.” I put a hand to her arm. “We’ll be fine. You’ll have your own part to play, don’t you worry.”
“But I want to help!” Tinker hopped anxiously in place. “Sir, there’s more I can do for you if you just give me a chance.”
“You’ll be getting plenty of chances!” I held her still at both her arms. “You will never have to worry about being useless around me, and I will always be happy with anything you bring to the table.”
“Everybody works to their best ability under Lord McCallum,” Hopper added. “You’ll be meeting the others soon, and there’ll be a place for you. Plus, you’re already going to read for us!”
“I have a lot to offer, though!” The mechanic bunny insisted. “I want to make sure you’re the best Hunter you can be, even if the first Hunter couldn’t leave you anything behind.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” I corrected her. “Some things need a double-take to be truly seen for what they are, and to find everything that’s there.”
Back in the bunker, in the story, things were looking pretty tight. That wasn’t going to stop me. If I had to pick off Wolf packs one by one until every noble’s underlings worked for me, I could have waited as long as I needed to build that up. We were going to win this if I only had one limb on my body to fight with. So, it was back into the bunker for inventory. I was gonna make this bunker feel like a military base by salvaging and stretching every last resource we had.
Lessons were learned; it paid to always move forward when everything was crashing down, even if it meant changing what you were gonna do. Turns out that we had way more than my initial evaluation would have suggested. Two salvageable muskets, giving me two more ranged Wolves when I needed them since Wolves hadn’t bothered with changing designs in the millennia they’d been around, and some workable bayonets for all of them. Still a fair amount of bandages in the medical kits and most of the alcohol wasn’t opened, so we had plenty to stave off infections. From all the kegs combined, we had enough dry powder for all the pellets we had with us to fire with Wolf-killing grain counts. The paper of all the documents was sturdy as hell for old paper, so we could have carried it all out of the place to get it read somewhere else. All accounted for, I was starting to like the odds. We could build on this.
The only question left was what the hell were these weird little arrowhead-looking rocks with the magic symbols on them?
If it weren’t for the floating door with the same kind of thing on it, I would have thought these were medals for the Hunter. They were also glowing, so there was magic going on here. We just had to figure out what it did. I only had three of them here, plus one somehow stuck to the side of a powd
er horn I had filled up, but that could have been a really good thing if these things were super magical.
“Hopper, come read these for me if you please?” I said to my inventory assistant, who was putting all of the bottles of rubbing alcohol in the shape of a heart.
“I am always pleased, my lord.” She skipped over to my side, looking at the marked stones I held. “What are these?”
“I was hoping you would help me find out.” I handed them to her.
“Let’s see,” She gave them her best scholarly oversight. “This one says ‘fire’... and this one says ‘storm.’” She set those two down. “This last one has two on it. One of them says ‘cup,’ but I don’t know what the other one is.”
“Some kind of cup magic?” I took the stone from her. “‘Fire’ and ‘storm’ are sounding really good, but what do we do with a cup? If the other word was ‘ice,’ we’d at least be able to keep our drinks cold, maybe.”
“I would imagine that powerful nobles would never want to drink at an uncomfortable temperature.” Hopper giggled. “Some of this magic may just be for quality of life.”
“However, we do have a clue to help out with the last one.” I held up the powder horn with the symbol on it. “Maybe the ‘cup’ means that it has to be stuck to a container.”
“Maybe it lets you put more inside of it, my lord?” Hopper threw out an idea. “The other word could be something like ‘bigger’ or ‘more.’ ‘More cup.’”
“I looked inside already.” I had to refute her. “It didn’t look any bigger, and it ain’t heavier than the other full powder horns.”
“Did it do anything to the inside?” she asked. “Is the powder somehow different in feeling or smelling?”
“Not that I’ve noticed.” I gave it another whiff, not noticing a change. “Better than all that, though, what if…?”
I picked up an empty powder horn, pouring the contents of the first one into the second. In a short while, the second one was full to the brim.
And so was the first as well.
“That’s the stuff.” I looked at it, satisfied at the two brimming containers in my hands. “The magic rock keeps whatever cup it’s on full, no matter how much you pour it out.”
“That’s amazing!” Hopper took the normal powder horn from my hand. “We would never run out of gunpowder. We would never run out of anything we needed!”
“Hold on there, ma’am.” I slowed her giddy train down. “It’s stuck onto the powder horn, and I ain’t risking breakin’ a magic horn of explosives. Looks like we’re stuck with endless gunpowder and one other thing we want. It also looks like we can only pour it out forever, not fill it.”
“That’s still amazing, my lord.” She looked at the other cup rock. “Think of the possibilities! We could make giant bombs. Or we could make explosive traps. OR we could line all the walls of Thumperton Port with powder and blow all the walls down when we rush in!” She then made explosive noises with her mouth, accompanied by her hands expanding as each ‘charge’ went off.
“The enthusiasm is appreciated,” I snickered and held her arms down, “And we may try one of those, but for right now, I’m hoping to expand the definition of ‘cup.’ For example…”
I took out my three guns, deciding on the pistol to experiment with since it had the most common range for combat. I took the magazine out, picking up the ‘cup’ rock. Before I made any permanent decisions, my careful eye examined the width of the rock and the magazine in the same line of sight to make sure it would still fit inside. Satisfied that it could, I affixed the rock on. A flash of light ran from the top of the rock to the bottom, almost like a seal being applied, and it became fixed in place on it.
“Ooooh,” the curious bunny cooed, looking intently at my hands while I worked on all of this. “That’s pretty clever, my lord. You’d never have to worry about running out again.”
“If this worked, I’ll never worry about even reloading this thing again.” I popped bullets out of the magazine as I talked. “As long as it doesn’t have a battery or something.”
“A battery?” she asked me.
“Some little thing inside to keep it ticking,” I answered. “Certainly hope the magic doesn’t run out. These damn rocks don’t come off once you put them on.”
“May we call them ‘charms,’ my lord?” She requested. “It sounds more fitting for a lord’s magical armory than ‘rocks.’”
“Sure thing, honey.” I allowed it, quickly rethinking my words to say something more royally fitting as well. “Uh, sustained. Approved. Acknowledged. Verily? Whatever, go ahead.” I hoped I wasn’t expected to sound like a lord when I became one.
“How many do you think you’ll need, my lord?” She looked down at the table I was dropping bullets on. I hadn’t even noticed I had thumbed out at least forty out of a seventeen- capacity magazine, and a few had rolled off onto the floor as the pile kept collapsing on itself.
“I think that’ll be good.” I slipped the forever-extended magazine into the pistol again. “Start loading the good papers and stuff out. I’ll see what I wanna do about the rest of these charms, here. And keep a lid firm on the forever horn. Could drown all of us if we left it tipped over long enough.”
These things were permanent, so I had to pick wisely what I did with them. I also didn’t know what they would do once they attached to anything, or even what they would attach to. They were lying on the table well enough without sticking. Maybe they don’t like wood. As of right now, I was thinking that gun modifiers were the best use, purely because I couldn’t even guess the implications of them being attached to anything else. If I attach the fire charm to the machete, would it set just the blade on fire or the whole thing? Would it turn into fire and destroy my machete? Anything could happen.
The sawed-off was gonna have to make the sacrifice, only because close-range is not where I want to be with these Wolves, and that’s the shotgun’s effective space. I was willing to lose it if anything happened, but making it much more devastating would be a lot of fun. And so, on the side, the fire charm went. After I unloaded the thing first, of course.
It was stuck on, so it could have been working. And the gun wasn’t on fire, so I could still keep it. It also meant no fiery machete if I found another one. I knew it would have been impractical to have it on fire all the time, but it would have been so cool. My inner child was a mite disappointed, but I was sure we could both settle for a magic shotgun.
The next set of experiments would have to be done outside the bunker, so that’s where I put myself. Hopper was heading back down to grab another load when I realized I had left a lady alone to do all the heavy lifting herself. Very ungentlemanlike of me, especially when I knew a few Wolves who would do that instead.
“Hopper, you can go back out here with me,” I told her as we both headed up the stairs.
“Are we leaving everything else here, my lord?” she inquired.
“Nonsense, my dear. There’s plenty for us to use here, but we have people for that kind of labor now. Boys!” I addressed the Barking Brigade. “Would two of you kindly carry the supplies out of the bunker and set them next to the pile Hopper started?”
“Um…” Lassie started. “Which two of us are ‘boys,’ again?” I was considering the ‘hey, you’ system of naming again for these Wolves as I resisted rolling my eyes. Maybe it was my fault for thinking they should have been able to glean some contextual meaning from my words. Then I remembered who I was dealing with. Subtlety of thought was as far from them as east from west.
“Lassie and Foxhound,” I was more direct this time, “Go get the supplies from the bunker.”
“Can do, boss.” The blonde and the spotted Wolf left their posts to obey, passing us as they headed inside the bunker.
“Am I to understand that you don’t want me to perform such tasks, my lord?” Hopper asked me. “Do I not work well enough to please--?”
“I am pleased,” I spoke before she could quite finish her s
entence. “I just would rather you come with me to possibly set something on fire with magic.” Bouncing feet and clapping hands followed me as the little arsonist happily joined the magical experimentation. I went to find an open space, so we actually didn’t have to set something on fire.
After not exploding from putting the live round in the fire-charmed shotgun, I aimed it up in the air and took a shot. The whole sky glowed bright red as flames shot out of the barrel, spreading out into the open space with heat and light. I could feel the finger and thumb of my pump-action hand get a little crispy from being so close to the fireball that exploded out. The flames quickly died out, and Hopper and I were left with fairly giggly expressions on our faces. I inspected the gun, finding that the flames somehow didn’t make the gun any hotter, but the shot still required a round to fire, it seemed. Thankfully, even though the fireball was massive, nothing actually caught flame. Smokey the Bear would have been proud. But we were the ones who made the fire in the first place. Smokey the Bear would have been neutral, I guess.
Satisfied that these charms were safe enough, I slapped the storm charm on my pistol, excited to test it out on someone later. While a storm rifle seemed like a cool idea, maybe shooting out lightning bolts instead of rifle rounds, a light show like that would only give away my position.
Lassie and Foxhound had finished up the heavy lifting, having brought up everything I asked them to. There were also some piles of moldy wood, some metal shards, and literally everything else inside the bunker. I might have been a little irritated that they still needed such specific instructions to do simple things, but the piles were separated from the usable supplies, and they would be the ones putting it back in there. At this point, it was becoming more my fault for not learning my lesson.