by Eric Vall
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is,” I agreed. “Mentally and physically. A mage can die if they don’t rest after using their powers for an extended period of time, or after applying them too intensely. I found that out the hard way, but Aurora had been telling me for ages, of course.” I rolled my eyes. “Can someone die from focusing too much on a rune?”
Dragir shook his head. “No, but a rune can certainly cause you to die,” he explained. “Forming them incorrectly will kill you rather quickly. But if you lose sight of the separation between yourself and the rune, it can take over your consciousness. For example, this Master’s rune. His soldiers are clearly encompassed by it, but what will happen when they do not eat or rest or stop? The rune will not sustain them, it will only force them to do his bidding and disregard all else.”
“That’s fucked up,” I mused.
Dragir nodded. “He may be sustaining them in some other way,” he allowed.
I smirked. “Maybe he’s batch cooking.”
“What?”
“It was a joke, never mind,” I chuckled.
We came around the Mustang, and I unsealed the seam of the driver’s door to crouch down and install the pedals.
Dragir stood behind me and watched as the metal of the floorboard rose in two small mounds, and I placed the pedals aside to adjust the makeup.
With my hand outstretched, I closed my eyes and allowed my focus to seep fully into the steel, and I adjusted the alloys until I felt the familiar spark of the spring steel I’d been practicing with. Then I reformed the mounds into two taut coils before I brought one of the pedals over.
As I sifted through the pedal, the rune began to murmur in my mind, and I grinned as I realized it was the brake. The voice was low and commanding, and it had a sense of being wholly unyielding.
“That makes sense,” I mused as I fused the back of the pedal to the left spring.
Then I did the same with the accelerator and stood up to clap Dragir on the shoulder.
“Now, it looks like a car,” I decided.
Dragir wore a blank expression on his face. “That was frustrating and also amazing to watch.”
I grinned. “Jealous?”
“Yes, that is the right word for it,” he sighed.
A series of giggles called our attention, and we glanced toward the hut a little ways along the cliff where the women had been sleeping.
Shoshanne burst out laughing over something, and Deya giggled as her voice dropped to a whisper.
Dragir abruptly cringed and turned away. “We should go, I do not want to hear this conversation.”
I had a feeling I didn’t want him to hear it either, and I cleared my throat loudly as I stepped aside and gestured to the steering wheel.
“Care to do the honors?”
Dragir nodded immediately and slid into the driver’s seat, and I jogged around the other side to climb in as Bobbie gave a deep growl.
The second I was seated, Dragir floored it, and the studded tires threw chunks of grass and dirt up behind us as we tore into the jungle.
For a guy who’d only driven a car once, Dragir seemed like a damn natural, although he clearly had no fear of accidents yet. We lurched over logs and came within inches of trees without slowing down at all, and I gripped the roof of the car as we took turns so quickly, the tires teetered and left the ground. The suspension held up against the elf’s handling, though, and the jungle bounced by as I tried to stay in my seat.
I really needed to look into safety belts.
I could tell the runes had given Bobbie a stronger kick, and as we roared through the jungle, I realized the elf’s heightened senses made him incredibly suited to the task.
He seemed to anticipate any change in the terrain faster than my eyes could manage, and he reacted in milliseconds to the jostling of the Mustang.
“Don’t forget to test the brake,” I hollered over the engine and the smashing of the ferns around us.
Dragir nodded, and before I could blink, the car came to an immediate stop, and my face would have smashed into the steel dashboard if I hadn’t thrown my arms up just in time.
“Shit!” I cursed as I nearly smashed my face into my arms. It hurt infinitely less than it could have, but I realized I was going to need some way of preventing that from happening to any of my women. I guess, in a way, it was better I was the crash test dummy instead of my lovers.
Dragir snorted. “It works.”
I nodded as I checked to be sure I wasn’t bleeding. My hands were a little tender to the touch from slamming against the dashboard, but nothing felt broken, and my fingers came away free of blood when I checked.
“Now,” Dragir said as he sent me a greedy grin, “bazooka time.”
The car revved, and I slammed backward as Dragir floored it once more, and he took a U-turn so tight I could only see ground passing by my window.
“Shiiiiit,” I groaned and braced myself on the frame of the car, and I heard Dragir chuckle as the tires slammed back to the ground before we barreled over a log.
Then the cliff suddenly appeared straight ahead, and my boots leaped up to the dashboard as I realized I was about to die.
Dragir slammed on the brake at the last second, and the car came to a grinding halt.
I worked to catch my breath and glanced out the window to see the front tires only a centimeter from the edge. My adrenaline was spiked as my pulse slammed in my throat, and I tried to calm my nerves while I looked down at the drop we almost made.
“Holy shit,” I muttered as I rifled my hair.
Beside me, Dragir wore a huge grin on his face while he patted the dashboard affectionately. “I really do like this Mustang.”
I nodded blankly and climbed out the window to drop onto the dirt.
The women had heard the commotion and emerged from their hut, and all of them eyed the look on my face.
“What did you do to him?” Deya demanded, but Dragir only shrugged as he climbed out as well.
“I did nothing,” he told her.
Aurora burst out laughing as I sprawled out on my back and stared wide eyed at the sky.
“I’m alright,” I mumbled. “Good morning, by the way.”
Shoshanne sighed and settled on the grass beside my head. “Good morning handsome,” she giggled.
“Mornin’ beautiful,” I replied with a grin.
“Are you alright?” the healer asked me.
“Totally,” I mumbled. “I can feel my legs again.”
“Work now,” Dragir called over his shoulder, and he headed down the path to the cove.
I slowly climbed to my feet, and Deya grimaced.
“Your brother’s intense,” I told the beautiful elf.
“Yes … he is,” she agreed.
Dragir was already hunched over the bazooka when I returned to the table, and he had a slip of parchment laid out beside him. He was taking measurements and marking them down, and there were a few runes sketched out with exes drawn over them. I looked over his shoulder as I watched him work, but then Dragir muttered to the parchment.
“You are building the rockets, yes?”
“Right,” I replied and quickly turned to the pile of metal. “Rockets.”
The four women were strolling down the path, and Cayla came over to curl around my back. “I’ll make some breakfast,” she murmured in my ear, and I sent her a grateful smile.
“That would be so great,” I told her.
Then the princess left a kiss between my shoulder blades before she headed toward the ocean with the others.
I eyed Dragir’s parchment while I pulled a bit of steel over, and he’d already finished a full sketch of the bazooka.
I realized I’d have to stay focused if I was going to keep up with the elf, and I promptly turned my attention to the rockets.
The original M6 rockets that were used in the M1 bazooka had a conical point at the nose for penetrating the tanks they were designed to destroy, but I wasn’t
up against tanks. The later M6A3 rocket had a rounded nose because they realized the conical shape could ricochet too easily if it hit at the wrong angle, and I decided to go for this design against the Master’s army. It still involved a shaped-charge explosive within the head, but as I remembered the runes we would be using, I furrowed my brow.
“You don’t want me to do anything fancy with these, do you?” I sighed.
Dragir shook his head. “They should be able to fly true to their aim,” he suggested. “Other than that, the runes will handle the propellent and the explosion.”
I scruffed my beard. “So … ” I mumbled to myself, “no safety pin, no booster, no detonator, no igniter … you’re telling me you need a fake rocket.”
I’d anticipated the rune magic to be a work around for some of the components, but I never expected it to replace so many.
“Fake by your standards?” Dragir muttered. “Apparently. It will work by my standards, though.”
“Are you gonna explain any of this to me at least?” I asked as I eyed the covered parchment once more.
“If you finish your work before I do … ” he said with a smirk.
I raised my brow and immediately split a chunk of steel off.
In ten seconds, I had six identical fins formed for the tail assembly and moved on to the stabilizer tube that would have been the powder chamber with a fuse and igniter. I created the walls of the tube slightly thicker than I would have otherwise in order to account for how light the hollow rocket would be. Then I created a nozzle to close off one end and mounted the fins around the base.
Less than a minute later, I had the blunt-nosed head formed and mounted to the body of the rocket, and I handed the complete design over to Dragir.
He raised his brows as he turned his head. “You’re finished already?”
“It’s literally just a case,” I told him. “I don’t see how this is going to work, but that’s the rocket, yeah.”
He nodded his appreciation and stood up from his hunching to study the assembly. “This end faces forward?” he asked as he pointed to the head, and I nodded.
“Like this,” I explained, and I took the rocket to insert it into the back of the bazooka. “See how the head rests in this area once it’s loaded?”
Dragir nodded.
“If this was what it should be, that’s where the wire from the shoulder stock would insert and come in contact with the brass on the nose,” I explained as I removed the rocket. “The wire that’s soldered to the brass would wrap around this tube and tuck into the chamber from inside these fins. So, the propellent explosion sparks here and projects it forward like this … ” I gave the elf a general demonstration. “When this head hits its target, a detonator is supposed to explode on impact.”
“Yes, that is easy enough,” he decided.
I cocked a brow, but I bit my tongue. I could only imagine Edward Uhl would have plenty to say about how “easy” this all was to bring about. Personally, I was done trying to explain ballistics to an elf who could boil a man’s blood with a wave of his hand.
We were both out of our elements.
“So, you gonna show me the runes now?” I asked.
“I’m not ready yet,” Dragir admitted. “You finished too quickly.”
I chuckled. “I’ll make the rest of the fake rockets while you work on it.”
I had forty more assembled when my eyes wandered over once more, and Dragir was carefully forming a few strokes on the page. His level of concentration was almost palpable, and the steel in my hands settled back on the table as I casually inched a little closer to the elf.
There were several faint lines that were labeled with degree markers, and on top of this, Dragir traced his pen more visibly across one of the degrees.
He went back over a couple of his other lines to slowly thicken them, but then he abruptly stopped and crossed out the entire design.
The elf let out a low sigh as he redrew his degree markers in another place to start from the beginning.
“What are the degrees for?” I asked in a low voice.
Dragir drew for another moment before responding. “The degrees map the lines, of course.”
“Yeah but … what--”
Dragir sighed and stood up as he stretched his back.
“Why are you working out here in the sun?” he asked, and I noticed the clenching in his fists. “It is too hot to focus on anything.”
“I didn’t wanna drown,” I told him bluntly.
The elf rolled his eyes and picked up the bazooka to head into the fortress.
“The tide cannot flood the caves, let’s go.”
I grabbed a few rockets and followed, and we wound our way along the hallway to enter the vaulted chamber.
Dragir stopped short when he stepped out into three inches of water, and I smirked.
Then he led me to the furthest hall, and we passed by several chambers before he turned into an arched doorway. It was a good ten degrees cooler here, and the ceiling suddenly scaled at least twenty feet above my head with a few humble windows dotting the curved ceiling to allow the dim cast of daylight to illuminate the place. It was a relatively small and circular chamber with crude shelves carved out of the stonework that stretched up toward the windows on one side, and there were a few rickety iron tables that were badly rusted to a greenish tinge from the salty and moist environment.
I furrowed my brow as Dragir set up shop on one of the tables, and I came to his side.
“Hold on a second,” I said and piled everything back into the elf’s arms.
Then I summoned my magic and let my focus seep into the ironwork.
I could feel the effects of corrosion everywhere the rust bloomed, and it felt oddly irritating to my senses. So, I focused on rebalancing the iron-oxide of the rust, and slowly, all of the rust was replaced with unmarred iron once more.
“Do you have any zinc?” I asked Dragir and turned to find him staring wide eyed at the table.
He shook his head.
“Too bad,” I mused. “You can coat iron in zinc to prevent this kind of rusting. But in this environment, you’re really better off working with wood or stone to be honest.”
I pulled two stools up out of the stone floor for us to sit on, and Dragir grinned as he laid everything out on the renewed table and settled in.
“It is a shame magery cannot be taught,” he decided.
Then he shifted his parchment slightly toward me.
“The degrees mark the elemental lines the rune harnesses,” Dragir began, and I tried not to grin like an idiot as I leaned in for my first official lesson in rune magic.
The elf pointed to the faint mapping he’d drawn out, and I noticed there were some gaps left here and there between some of the degrees.
“For example,” Dragir continued, “if the rune is meant to harness the eastern winds, you would draw your mark along the twenty-second degree line you see here.”
“It’s that specific?” I asked incredulously.
Dragir nodded.
“What if you just want to harness air in general?”
“Then you would use the three-hundred and first degree over here,” he said simply.
I snorted and shook my head. “What about fire?”
“What kind of fire?” he asked. “Simple, eternal, predatory …”
“Holy shit,” I chuckled. “That’s awesome.”
Dragir smirked. “Creating runes is rather involved due to these degrees,” he explained. “This is why there are books of general runes, like the one my sister should not have stolen for you.”
“And you can create your own from scratch?” I clarified. “You know every degree?”
“I do not think any living elf knows all of them, but I could be wrong,” he admitted. “These are things the elven scrolls dictated, and they have been lost for many years. But I know several of them.”
“That’s why there’s some spaces left out?” I guessed.
“Yes, it i
s very dangerous to use a degree you know nothing about,” he assured me. “This is why Deya’s necklace confuses me. My mother used degrees no elf I’ve ever met knows the powers of.”
I raised my brows. “That’s impressive.”
Dragir sent me the first genuinely honest smile I’d ever seen on his face.
“Thank you,” he said. “I am quite proud of her abilities.” Then he abruptly shifted back to business mode and gestured to one of the runes he’d drawn an X over. “The density of your line matters as well. This line is too dense as you can see.”
“What would that do?” I asked.
“In this case, if I engraved this rune on the bazooka, a jolt much like lightning would course through the weapon and instantly kill whoever had pulled the trigger,” he explained. “Which is why this rune is shit, and I must start again.”
Now, I was less amused. “Are you sure we should be fucking with this?” I asked uneasily.
“You should not be, no,” Dragir assured me as he began sketching once more. “You would probably die.”
For once, I wholeheartedly agreed with him on this point.
“What does that line do?” I asked and eyed his work.
“This is a directional degree,” the elf explained. “It dictates whether the rune functions outwardly or inwardly. It’s a pretty standard line. If I were to mirror it in this direction … the balance would cause the person who wields it to be equally affected by whatever they put out. That is rarely ideal.”
“Unless it’s a positive rune,” I pointed out.
“Precisely,” he nodded, “but for our purposes, it would be unwise to balance the directional degrees.”
I furrowed my brow. “So … the runes powering the bazooka will have the degree marked outwardly, right?”
“Some of them,” he muttered as he drew another line. “This particular rune is for the trigger assembly, so it will work inwardly in order to harness the power into the weapon.”
I let out a low whistle. “And the rocket will obviously be outward.”
“The head of the rocket will actually function inwardly,” Dragir corrected. “The rocket needs to do the exploding, so the power harnessed by the rune needs to create this explosion within itself.”