by Eric Vall
“You have to convince the nobility, Mason,” Cayla said as she climbed off my lap and began pacing instead. “Without the alliance in place, our armies can’t cross the border to deal with the Master’s fortress. Plus, if he should attack the dwarves, the lords won’t send their armies to--”
“I know,” I interrupted, “but don’t worry. I’ll handle it.”
“How?” she demanded.
“I don’t exactly know,” I admitted, “but I’ve got a couple ideas. When I spoke with the Elders, I told them about the agreement that Grot and I reached where the ogres’ hunting habits are concerned. It turns out this opens up all the western mines the dwarves were forced to close down before. Not only are the Elders eager to get their operations going again, but they’re chomping at the bit to rake in a profit over it. Once the nobility understand what they’re about to miss out on, I have a feeling they’ll be scrambling to reverse the tariffs. I’ll just have to handle the topic carefully.”
Cayla narrowed her eyes. “What’s in those mines?”
“Platinum,” I said with a grin, “along with alexandrite, gold, and black opal.”
“Platinum?” Cayla asked in shock.
“That’s right.”
“Gods, alexandrite is so beautiful … and I’ve never even heard of black opal,” the princess breathed.
“Well, hopefully I can get this all handled then,” I said. “If everything goes well, I’m gonna make sure you’re the first woman in the south to wear one.”
Now, Cayla’s greedy grin was back in place.
“We have to be covered in diamonds tomorrow,” the princess informed me. “You remember the way the Elders offered their own jewels for us to wear at their celebration in Aurum. They value extravagance, Mason, and I refuse to let them think you can’t match their standards. You have to exceed them. They’ll respect you even more for it, and you’ll make the nobility look like peasants in comparison.”
“Deal,” I chuckled, “but for now, let’s get this automaton started. The Master will find out what happened in Jagruel soon, if he doesn’t already know, and I need to get their defenses in order before he can lash out.”
“Right,” Cayla said as she tried to refocus. “Automaton first. Diamonds second. What have we got?”
“So, these are the designs I came up with just because I was having fun with it when I worked on the snatcher,” I explained, and I laid four sketches side by side. “I’m not bothering with blow guns this time since I have no way of handling the procedures so far away, and anyone the Master sends to Jagruel will probably be terrifying and extremely powerful. That being said, I’m leaning toward this last design, just because he’s the biggest.”
Cayla nodded as she scanned the parchment over my shoulder. “What’s this strange sword on the middle one?”
“That’s called a machete, like I said, I was having some fun at the time,” I mumbled. “It’s actually mounted to allow for 360 degrees of rotation, so it kind of serves as a helicopter machete of death if need be.”
“Helicopter?”
“A flying machine from my realm,” I replied. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Hmm …” Cayla mused, “and what about this weapon on the smaller one’s head?”
“That’s actually a precursor to the lightning idea I’ve been working on with the 1911,” I explained. “At first, I wanted it to shoot a bolt of lightning, but now that I’ve dabbled with the technique a little, I think I’d rather have it explode in all directions instead. That way, I could send the automaton out on a stealth mission in enemy lines, and with one strike, every soldier in the vicinity drops dead. Then he moves on to another position and delivers another attack.”
“I like that one the most,” Cayla said with a deadly grin.
“Me too,” I chuckled, “but I’m still trying to figure out the lightning rune.”
“Then I suppose you should build the biggest one for the ogres, but can you add your death machete to it? That sounds like more fun, don’t you think?”
“Make the deadliest one more deadly?” I clarified. “Yes, that does sound fun, and I love working with you by the way.”
I shuffled the spare designs aside as I pulled the last one over, and I grabbed a pen to alter it a little.
“No, don’t get rid of the sword,” Cayla countered. “Big Guy’s really instills fear when he unsheathes it. That’s my favorite part.”
“Good point,” I said with a nod, “but does he really need a sword and a machete?”
“Well, and the gun,” she added as she pointed to the automatons left arm.
“I was gonna replace that with a crossbow actually,” I admitted. “Just because he’s living so far away and keeping him loaded would be difficult.”
“Damn,” Cayla sighed. “I wanted the gun, but I see your point. It’s too bad you can’t extend the magazine space to accommodate more cartridges.”
I furrowed my brow. “I suppose I could do that.”
“Without limiting his movement? Wouldn’t the added bulk get caught on the metal around the middle when he took aim?”
“Well, so far I’ve been keeping the magazines for the darts mounted on the exterior of the other automatons, but if I left the arms hollowed out, there’s no reason I couldn’t utilize that space as ammo reserves.”
Cayla nodded. “You could fill the entire forearm and shoulder with cartridges if you could find a means of feeding them into the barrel.”
“Unless I didn’t need to have the cartridges made at all,” I muttered, and my mind began turning a mile a minute.
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know for sure if it is,” I admitted, “but the metal rune Deya was telling us about could be the ticket. She said it draws metal from its surroundings. So, if I didn’t hollow out the arms, but I used that rune on the gun, it could potentially gather metal from the interior of the automaton and propel it from the barrel like a bullet. It would be a long while before it ran out of metal to draw from, and that’s less trips to Jagruel to replenish supplies.”
“That one,” Cayla decided as she nodded fervently. “That’s my favorite design.”
“It’s worth a try,” I agreed. “We’ll get the basic automaton built first, and then see what we can do about the gun. For now, I’ll design it so the sword can double as a death machete. That way I can quickly replicate the entire limb from Big Guy’s design, and just alter the way the blade mounts when it’s extended.”
“While you do that, I’m designing our jewels for tomorrow,” Cayla decided, and she flipped over one of my other designs as she sat back at the table. “I wish I had some way of making our weaponry appear less gaudy, but I suppose we don’t need it at the castle anyway.”
“Actually, I want you all armed tomorrow,” I told her as I sparked my metal magic and pulled three large chunks of steel from the shelf. Then I began replicating the wheel gears and treads of the other automatons, but I increased the size by twenty percent.
“Are you expecting an attack?” the princess asked with concern.
“Not really,” I admitted. “The Baroness mentioned I’ve got some enemies amongst the nobility, though. It’s just a precaution.”
Cayla arched her brow. “You trust her word?”
“I don’t know yet,” I mumbled, “but I’m not taking any risks. She made it sound like Aurora and Deya have been targeted by someone. Two someones, in fact.”
“If that’s the case, I’d rather be prepared,” Cayla decided.
“Me too,” I agreed, and I solidified a cylindrical base and fused the mounts of each wheel gear to the sides. “Now that you’re runed, I’m counting on you to keep an eye out tomorrow, alright? Let me know if you see anyone suspicious. I doubt they’d try anything there, but I want to have their faces in mind in case I get an opening sometime soon.”
Cayla turned a deadly glance my way. “Absolutely.”
“Don’t worry Aurora and Deya over it, though,”
I told her, and I began replicating the stout central bearing I’d used to ensure our snatcher’s torso could rotate entirely around. “The last thing I want is for either of them to feel like them being elven is a danger anymore. With me around, they honestly shouldn’t have to.”
“I agree, but shouldn’t we inform Shoshanne?”
“Inform me of what?” the healer asked as she came through the front door, and I pulled a lump of iron from the shelf to form the solid cylinder that would mount within the central bearing.
“We’re going to the castle tomorrow to discuss the tariffs with the nobility,” I explained as I secured the iron in place. “The Baroness warned me two people who will be there have targeted Aurora and Deya.”
“Have they?” Shoshanne’s cheeks flushed with anger, and Cayla nodded as they exchanged a glance.
“Keep an eye out tomorrow,” the princess told her. “We don’t want the others to worry, but Mason wants to know where he should be aiming.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Shoshanne muttered. “I’d love to get my hands on their lungs myself, though.”
I smirked as I began replicating the series of steel plates that made up Big Guy’s arms. “Is everything going alright at the infirmary?”
“Yes, but I thought I’d come and ask your advice,” Shoshanne replied. “The snatcher returned with much more than I was expecting.”
“Shit,” I sighed. “How many mages?”
“That’s the strange thing.” She frowned. “They’re not mages.”
Chapter 6
“So … what are those?” I asked as I stood in the clearing beside the house.
“I don’t know,” Shoshanne admitted.
“Whatever they are,” Cayla said as she circled the trio of the bodies, “they’re beautiful.”
“And runed,” Shoshanne added.
“Well, we’ll have to remove the runes, I guess,” I sighed, “but do you know how to work with … fur?”
“Well--” the healer began, but Cayla cut her off.
“Or we could keep them,” the princess muttered as she stroked the dense black fur of the beast. “I want to wear this fur every day for the rest of my life. It’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt.”
“Nope. I didn’t build the snatcher so you could skin massive cats and wear their hides.”
“But--”
“Nooo,” I refused. “Tell you what, if you wanna hunt one of these guys down and skin it yourself, then you can wear it. Earn the hide, Cayla, don’t just steal it off a tranquilized body.”
Cayla let out an irritated sigh as she stood up and crossed her arms. “Fine. I will. Just as soon as we figure out what it is and where it’s from.”
I nodded in agreement as I came over to get a closer look at the cat that laid at her feet, but the more I looked at it, the word ‘cat’ just wasn’t accurate enough. For starters, it had pronged horns jutting out of its skull above its eyes, and they were as dense black as the fur of the beast at the base. Toward the tip, though, the black gave way to an ember orange, and I tested the sharpness as I eyed the two-foot long prongs. It wasn’t as razor sharp as I expected, but it would definitely impale the crap out of someone, especially with the strength of the cat behind it. The chiseled muscles in its shoulders could be seen beneath the thick fur, but the fur didn’t cover its entire body. Instead, the fur shifted to scaly skin halfway down each leg, but more concerning than all of this were the beast’s claws.
I pushed my thumb into the pad of its foot to retract a six inch claw the same ember hue as the tip of the beast’s horns, and this time, my finger sliced open nearly to the bone from a single touch. I hissed in pain as my rune rushed to repair the damage, but I was mostly distracted trying to figure out if it was regular pain I experienced. It might have just been my surprise, but I could have sworn the claw felt like flames to the touch.
“How long do you think they’ll be unconscious?” I asked Shoshanne as I looked over the three cats.
“Not long,” the healer guessed. “They have to be at least five hundred pounds each. I’m surprised a single dart managed to knock them out at all, so I wouldn’t expect them to stay this way for much longer.”
“Then we better get to work fast.”
“I don’t know if this is a good idea,” Shoshanne mumbled as she kneaded her hands with worry.
“Would you rather come up against this guy possessed, or not possessed?” I asked her, and she bit her lip. “That’s what I thought. Get your surgical tools and some emergency tranquilizer in case they wake up. We’ll do the procedure right here in the clearing.”
Shoshanne nodded and hurried toward the infirmary as Cayla stooped to bury her fingers in the dense black fur some more, and she grinned to herself in a way that made her look kind of similar to the cat.
“You can feel how powerful it is,” she said under her breath. “What does the Master want with these? They must be special in some way.”
“Well, he’s already got sphynxes and all manner of creatures at that fortress,” I said with a shrug. “Looks like he’s diversifying. What I don’t understand is how the snatcher got them. I’ve never seen anything like this in Illaria, and the automaton is patrolling just east of Serin. At least, I think he is.”
“There’s three, though,” Cayla pointed out as she trailed her hand along a pronged horn. “A pack.”
I furrowed my brow. “You think the Master sent them out for an attack?”
“I would,” Cayla admitted, and she peeled back the beast’s lip to reveal stark white, eight-inch canines. “If I had these at my disposal, I’d send them out in droves to slaughter my enemies. They’re fantastic, how could you not want to utilize this kind of beast as a means to a gruesome end?”
“This is why we can’t have pets,” I sighed as Shoshanne emerged from the infirmary.
“We have Ruela,” Cayla chuckled.
“She’s not a pet, she’s a weapon,” I countered, “and a damn good one.”
Cayla sent me a lethal grin. “I knew you liked her, but thank you for proving my point.”
I shook my head as Shoshanne carefully laid a dish of tranquilizer out on the ground, and she placed a handful of darts down beside it before unrolling her case of surgical equipment.
“Where do we release them when we’re finished?” the healer asked. “Even if I remove the rune, this creature is still a dangerous one, whatever it is, and we can’t just let them all wander around the foothills.”
“We’ll give them back to the snatcher,” I decided. “I’ll have him put them back where he found them.”
“What if the Master recaptures them?” Cayla asked, and I shrugged as I knelt down beside Shoshanne.
“We see if the snatcher brings them back again, I guess.”
“Mason, I’m supposed to be saving our mages, not giant beasts,” Shoshanne sighed.
“I know, but what do you want me to do?” I chuckled. “They’re here now, and they’re runed. If we’re trying to prevent the Master from gaining power we can’t counter, I’d say avoiding coming up against these guys is toward the top of the list. I don’t want a pack of them coming after me any time soon.”
“Me neither,” the healer admitted. “Let’s do this as quickly as possible, though. Would you mind starting on the middle one while I start here? Cayla, maybe you could get the one on the end?”
Cayla and I quickly followed Shoshanne’s instructions as she handed over two scalpels and a fistful of gauze, and we got to work removing the mottled patch of branded flesh from each cat’s hindquarters. The brandings all looked relatively fresh, and they still smelled foul from the singed hair and skin, but the flesh was thinner than a human’s, so the procedure was done much more quickly than I had expected.
In only ten minutes, the three beasts were deruned and bandaged up, but as soon as we stood and looked down on their bodies, I realized there wasn’t an automaton in sight.
“Um, where is the snatcher?”
“That’s about right,” I sighed. “Okay, no big deal. We can just have Big Guy take them back for us.”
“It’s too bad we only have one snatcher,” Cayla muttered. “What if he keeps bringing creatures like this back? He couldn’t fit these and mages in his nets, and if he chooses one over the other, what’s to stop another attack like the one at the Oculus?”
“Considering I still have no idea how that attack was even possible, I’m gonna focus on one problem at a time,” I replied. “Maybe I should make another one, though. The snatcher’s been doing nonstop runs for days, and you’re right. If creatures like this keep showing up, we’ll have a hole in our defenses.”
“But you have to finish Jagruel’s automaton,” Cayla reminded me.
“And the magazines.”
“First things first,” Shoshanne said, and she looped her fingers in mine.
“Agreed. I’ll track down Big Guy first, but maybe you should lace the darts in case they wake up before--”
“What are you doing?” Deya suddenly gasped, and we turned around to see the beautiful elf sprinting toward us with her face flushed as pink as her hair.
“Removing runes,” I said with a shrug.
“Get those out of here!” the elf ordered, and she clung to my arm as she stared at the bodies on the ground with wide eyed fear.
“Do you know what these are?” Cayla asked, and Deya nodded.
“They’re Osulla,” she replied. “Why are they here? You shouldn’t have brought them!”
“The snatcher brought them in,” Shoshanne told her with a worried frown. “Why? What do they do?”
“They’re hellcats,” Deya informed us. “They spread fire wherever they go, and with three, all of the foothills could be destroyed in a matter of minutes!”
“Wait, what?” I gasped.
“When will they wake up?” the elf demanded.
“I-I don’t know,” Shoshanne admitted. “I was worried about the same thing. We need Big Guy to take them back where they came from. Now.”