by Eric Vall
Dragir pulled the bazooka back to his side of the table and furrowed his brow.
“This is wiring?” he asked as he traced his finger along the copper.
“Yep,” I replied. “If you pull the trigger, you’ll see it comes in direct contact with the ball, and that should route the energy of the rune along to the next point on the inside of the chamber. I’m gonna put a band like the one I described to you around the nose of the rocket and thread another wire to the propellent as well.”
“Fascinating,” Dragir muttered. “If this road works as you say it should, I don’t think I will need the channeling rune at all.”
“That’s the idea,” I told him with a chuckle. “Direct circuit, no nonsense.”
The elf nodded his appreciation, and then he pulled a sharp metal pick from his pocket that reminded me a lot of something my dentist would have used back on Earth. Except this one had a distinct rune etched into the slim handle, and it curled into a very subtle S shape from one end to the other.
“Is that for engraving the rune?” I asked.
“Yes,” Dragir answered as he studied his sketches carefully. “Do not shift the table even an inch while I do this. I don’t want to misalign the degrees.”
I moved my work to my lap just to be safe, and while I secured a band of copper around the head of the rocket, I kept half of my focus on Dragir.
It looked like he didn’t follow any visible degree markers for the actual engraving, and he stooped only a few inches from the metal as he carefully began to copy the rune.
A strange sensation came over me as the metal pick scraped against the trigger, and I slowly set the rocket down after a minute.
“What is that?” I asked in a low voice.
The air felt heavy all of a sudden, and somehow, the silence felt dense in my ears, like I’d stepped inside of a vacuum chamber.
Dragir turned and furrowed his brow. “You can sense that?” he asked.
I nodded.
Dragir looked like he hadn’t expected this. “Interesting,” he muttered. “That is the element I am engraving. Try not to make any sudden movements. It can interrupt the connection.”
I raised my brows as the elf turned back to his work, and I sat in fascination while he slowly etched out the entire engraving. With each new line, the atmosphere seemed to shift, and it was as if a new presence had entered the small room. Whenever he increased the thickness of one of these markings, I could feel the added weight pressing down, and I did my best not to move an inch as my awareness of the elements around me heightened.
I couldn’t identify what they were, only that there was a distinct difference between each one, and they didn’t seem to leave once they’d arrived. The room was crowded with line after line adding to the mix, and their proximity began to feel claustrophobic after a while.
Out of curiosity, I summoned only a tendril of my own magic and sent it into the lever itself, and I immediately noticed the murmuring of the rune was off balance. Some aspects were louder or more grating than others, and they seemed to war incoherently with one another inside the metal. It was an incredibly disorienting sensation, so I pulled my attention out of the lever and focused on the tool Dragir used instead.
It was only made of silver, but it was somehow sturdy enough to disrupt the surface of the steel, and the tool gave off a soft hum I’d never quite heard before. It was between the beating of a bird’s wings and the drone of a distant plane, but it had a clear pitch it stuck to without wavering.
The elements continued to shift around us while Dragir remained inches from the trigger, and after a while, he finally lifted the tool and sat back to check his work. Gradually, the tumult in the atmosphere began to settle, and within a few minutes, the small room felt clear again.
Dragir nodded. “It’s done.”
“How’s it look?” I asked eagerly, and I leaned over to get a look at the finished product.
I could hardly believe he’d managed to get the details correct in such a small space, but to my eye, the tiny rune on the trigger looked identical to the sketch on the parchment.
“You are finished with the rocket?” Dragir asked, and I sent him a grin.
“Just a second,” I chuckled, and I quickly soldered the copper wire to the band around the head of the rocket before I handed it over. “I’ll secure the last end once you decide where the propellent will be.”
Dragir nodded and turned the parchment around. “I had a design that wouldn’t work very well with the channeling approach,” he muttered, “but it should work with this wiring you’ve assembled. We can start with that.”
“You sure you don’t want to take another minute to go over it?” I asked uneasily. “It is the exploding part.”
Dragir shrugged and placed the tip of his tool on the rocket. “It should be fine.”
I cocked a brow and picked up the bazooka to study the rune while Dragir began his engraving, and I was pleased to find I could identify four of the degree lines by sight.
“Wait a minute,” I muttered as I looked more closely. “Some of these are curved lines. What elements do those correspond with?”
Dragir glanced up. “Those are cohesion lines,” he explained. “They join the elements which fall out of balance with one another in order to hold the rune together as a whole. It is something you learn to sense with practice, and they must be drawn last as the rune requires. Those are the best instructions I can give, I’m afraid.”
I let out a low whistle. “That’s pretty cool,” I mused.
Then I let my magic seep into the trigger again, and this time, the murmuring was steady and constant, much like Deya’s necklace and the pedals. After having explored the metal during the engraving process, I could clearly sense the balance that had been found, and I grinned as I listened closely to the rune.
The energy sounded sporadic and like a force ready to break from behind a wall, but it was different from the way the accelerator had sounded. This force was more powerful but also lighter in weight, and I was so tempted to pull the trigger and see what it was capable of.
The presence of new elements for the rocket pressed around me more by the second, though, and I decided it’d probably be best to wait until Dragir finished his engraving.
I couldn’t help but notice the bazooka as a whole had an entirely different feeling in my palms now that the rune was in place, and I took some time to get familiar with the change while I watched Dragir work on the rocket.
He pinched at the bridge of his nose a couple of times, and a thin sheen of sweat built on his brow while he squinted hard in concentration. The rune on the head of the rocket took longer to create than the trigger had, and judging by the feel of the atmosphere, it was a much more complex one.
Then an extremely uncomfortable shift occurred in the air, and Dragir shook his head.
“Do you have a different rocket?” he sighed in irritation.
“Which line is wrong?” I asked and slowly stood to get a better look without disrupting the elements.
“This one,” he said and pointed to a slender and looping line. “It’s not supposed to intersect with the thirteenth degree. It’s throwing everything off.”
“Let me try something,” I muttered as I summoned my magic, and I carefully seeped into the head of the rocket.
It was surprisingly chaotic in there, and I almost couldn’t focus on my magic with the elements so completely out of balance. I furrowed my brow and forced my attention to stay sharp despite all of this, and as I looked down on the rune, the line Dragir had misplaced slowly faded away.
It took more focus than I’d expected to dissolve the enchanted line, and when I pulled my focus out of the metal, there was a sharp ache behind my temples.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Irritating,” Dragir chuckled. “Thank you.”
Dragir finished engraving the last three lines of cohesion, and when he was done, we sat in silence while we waited for the elements to sett
le in their places.
Finally, the room was cleared again, and I shook my head.
“That’s so disorienting,” I mused. “How can you focus with everything out of balance like that?”
“Practice,” the elf said with a shrug. “This is why sketching your rune first is very important. It’s easier to be sure your elements are correct despite their protesting. Then you only need to feel out the lines of cohesion.”
“And you have to do it all by eye for the actual engraving?”
“Yes,” Dragir replied. “Any extra lines on the surface will throw off the connection. It’s admittedly not an easy form of magic to work with.”
I grinned and gestured to the rocket. “Last rune?”
Dragir smirked, and an eager glint came to his serpentine eyes.
“Last rune,” he agreed, and he flipped the rocket around to make the engraving for the propellent.
Chapter 6
Dragir engraved an extra six rockets for the occasion, and we made our way up the path and along the cliff for a test run of the first bazooka. Cayla saw us emerge from the hidden fortress with the weapon and ammunition in hand, and she was the first to hop up and join us.
“Please tell me that’s for me,” she purred, and her blue eyes trailed along the steel shaft with a glint of longing.
“As soon as I’m certain it’s not going to kill us all, you’re on deck,” I told the princess.
Aurora trotted over with an eager grin and announced she was second in line, while Shoshanne and Deya trailed at the back with their arms looped in each other’s.
“You’re both trying this one,” I informed them. “You’ll love it, I promise.”
They nodded their consent, but I didn’t miss the uncertainty in their eyes.
Dragir looked less and less confident as we walked on, and by the time we found a clear space to set up for a trial run, he had a tense furrow on his brow.
“Perhaps the women should stand further back,” he muttered as he laid the rockets out in the grass.
“They’ve seen me almost blow my hands off before,” I told him with a grin. “Should be alright.”
“This weapon is more likely to blow you into pieces, though,” he pointed out, and I faltered slightly.
“You said the runes would work fine,” I muttered.
Dragir only shrugged. “I do not guarantee anything. This is a weapon I have never worked with, and an application I’ve never tested with rune magic.”
“Love the confidence,” I chuckled. “Let’s do this.”
Then I pulled the bazooka from the grass and turned to the women.
“First of all,” I began, “this weapon has what’s called a backblast, which means the exhaust from the initial explosion that propels the rocket is going to shoot out the back of this pipe. Always stand clear of the pipe and stay aware of where the back is facing when you turn and adjust your aim.”
The four women nodded diligently.
“Next,” I continued. “We’ll have what’s called ‘a loader’ for the battle, which will be an elf standing to our side like this … ” I gestured for Dragir to come over and help with the demonstration, and he stood at my right flank. “This person is in charge of loading the rockets for you. Tap them when you’re ready for another rocket, and they will in turn give you the all clear to fire once the bazooka’s loaded.”
“Can’t I load it myself?” Cayla asked.
“You could,” I allowed, “but it’s faster to have someone on hand for that. Now, since this is the first test run, I’ll just come out and say it … this might go horribly wrong. So, stand back a little and … I love you guys.”
The four women instantly crinkled their eyebrows nervously, and I had to chuckle at the line of nearly identical worried frowns.
“Don’t laugh,” Aurora sighed. “I hate this part, but we love you, too.”
“Sorry,” I muttered as I tried not to chuckle “You’re just cute when you’re worried.” Then I turned to Dragir to begin the trial, but the elf only gave me a stone-faced expression.
“You are not testing it,” he suddenly said. “I will test it, hand it over.”
“No way,” I countered. “I got this.”
The muscle in Dragir’s jaw twitched, and he flicked his gaze to the four women standing ten feet away. Then he leaned in and lowered his voice.
“You cannot expect me to let you do this with four women who love you standing by,” he told me. “I engraved every rune on that weapon, and I have never used any of them before. I will test it.”
He had a valid point, and I glanced back at the women to see they’d gone slightly paler since the discussion began.
“Alright,” I relented and handed the bazooka over, “but if you blow up, we’re all screwed as well. You realize this?”
“Yes,” Dragir agreed. “Let’s begin.”
I took a deep breath as I loaded the first rocket, and I spent a minute summoning my magic and checking the alignment of the contacts within the chamber and on the head of the rocket. Once I was sure all the connections were sound, I stepped back a pace and sent the elf an uneasy smile.
“You ready?” I asked Dragir, and he shifted nervously but nodded. “Go for it.”
The second Dragir pulled the trigger, a jolt of electric blue lightning shot from the lever and coursed up his arm, and the elf was thrown back at least twenty feet as the bazooka went flying into the air.
The women shrieked, and I lurched back before I sprinted over to see if he was alright.
Deya was close behind me, but she was shaking so badly with shock, she could hardly do more than stare and ask her brother repeatedly if he was alright.
Dragir’s eyes were wide and blank as he twitched lightly in the grass, but he actually chuckled when I pulled him upright.
“That was my mistake,” he said as he flexed his hand to help control the twitching. “The grounding line is not dense enough.”
“Fucking hell … ” I breathed and rifled my hair. “Are you gonna be okay? That looked like pure fucking lightning shooting through you.”
Dragir nodded and got to his feet. “It was,” he muttered. “Give me one moment, and I will fix it.”
Deya shook her head and caught him with a vice grip on his sleeve.
“You will not,” she informed him curtly, and I raised my brows as the leaves began to tremble around her.
Dragir sighed and glanced up at the trees. “Don’t do it,” he warned his sister, and he sent her an amused grin. “I can assure you, your runes hurt more than the bazooka did.”
Deya considered this for a moment before she finally released her hold, and she kneaded her hands nervously while she continued to shake with worry.
I tucked her under my arm and laid a kiss in her hair. “This is what trial runs are for,” I told her gently. “We have to make sure the weapon won’t malfunction ever again. He’ll be fine.”
Deya nodded along as I handed her off to Shoshanne, and I kept my expression as reassuring as possible until they were all well behind my back.
By the time I joined Dragir where the bazooka had landed, I was almost as tense as him.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” I muttered in as low a voice as I could manage.
“Not remotely,” he answered and pulled the engraving pick from his pocket as we crouched down in the grass.
“Which line?” I asked.
Dragir pointed to the culprit before he lifted his head to call out to the women.
“Do not move if you can manage it,” he instructed. “This will only take a moment.”
We all waited while Dragir carefully traced the forty-third degree to increase the presence of his grounding element, and after a moment of stillness, the rune settled once more, and Dragir took a deep breath.
“It is ready,” he muttered. “I think.”
I nodded and picked up the bazooka, and we returned to where the women were waiting to have another go.
The r
ocket was still loaded in the chamber, and I carefully double checked all of the components before I gave Dragir the all clear.
Then he took one last steadying breath, and I suspected we all cringed as he pulled the trigger.
There was a sharp zapping sound, but no sparks of blue this time, and a split second after the trigger was pulled, a shot of white flames burst from the back of the pipe before the rocket launched.
Dragir and I stared in anticipation as it coursed through the trees ahead, and the moment it hit a trunk, all six of us dropped flat on our bellies across the ground.
The explosion was three times larger than any bazooka I’d seen in the old war films, and the sound clapped deafeningly like a strike of lightning throughout the jungle. The trunk it had struck shattered as the ferns around it ignited, and I craned my neck to see how wide the zone of destruction was.
The explosion had destroyed an oblong space of about thirty feet across, and the tree took two others down with it as it blasted apart and crashed into the flaming undergrowth.
“Hoooly shit,” I laughed on the ground. “That was fucking awesome.”
Beside me Dragir was grinning from ear to ear. “It works like a bazooka, yes?” he asked, and I nodded heartily.
“Better,” I assured him. “Did you see that fucking range? That had to have been three hundred meters, and it was still flying straight.”
The women were laughing as they came over to join us, and Cayla pulled me up from the ground to give me a fiery kiss.
“You like that?” I asked her with a broad grin, and the princess kissed me once more for good measure.
“I want it,” she told me outright. “I’m next. Please! Please! Please!”
“Hold on,” I chuckled. “One more test run on me, then you’re up.”
Cayla consented and stepped a few paces back, and Dragir quickly handed the bazooka over to me.
He was still grinning as he loaded the next rocket, and once he gave the all clear, I steadied my stance and pulled the trigger.
It didn’t feel like any other weapon I’d ever fired, and I sensed the power of the rune sparking as I cinched the trigger. The connection was perfectly smooth and direct when the lever made contact with the copper, and the kick of the rocket wasn’t anything the women would have trouble with.