The light of an enchanted lantern and the fires of a roaring forge illuminated an anvil bench. Hung around its horn was red-hot metal. A hammer struck the molten surface, expelling sparks and blackened hammerscale flakes with every forceful clang.

Elias wiped his forehead. What he was making was a frizzen, and according to the surgeon, it was a vital component in the flintlock mechanism. That kid said he wanted to build a musket—a weapon far stronger and cheaper than any voltech rifle.

Although Elias never heard of such an armament nor believed it could exist, he also didn’t care. He had to obey the queen’s orders. But that changed nothing. Even if the choice was his to make, he would have agreed to the job. Anything was worth doing so long as it let him forget about her. Projects born from a surgeon’s hopeful musings were no exception.

And a job as impossible as this one was just that.

It was the most challenging undertaking Elias had ever attempted. The frizzen was just one of many components, and it alone took days of tinkering to create a functioning sample. No matter what oil Elias quenched it in, no matter what temperature he used to harden it, the steel would chip when it struck flint at high speeds. The metal was too brittle alone.

That was why he welded the steel to a wrought iron bar. Although their differing welding temperatures made the procedure challenging, it was a crucial step. Malleable iron provided the toughness necessary for steel to survive the flint’s impact intact. Together they produced the sparks that set some powder or whatsit alight.

Elias shrugged. Despite dedicating every day from the age of eight to blacksmithing, he didn’t understand how the flintlock functioned or if it even made sense. All his efforts seemed to get him was an aching lower back, stiff shoulders, and legs sore from standing throughout the day.

He needed to rest.

After shaping the frizzen with one final metallic clang, Elias set down his hammer. He stretched. Popping sounds erupted from all over his body, including places they never came from before—his reward for nearly thirty years of intense labor.

Upon reaching a table in the corner, his hand swept across its surface to push away a rumpled brown apron and a cast-iron pouch, which fell to the floor with a loud thunk. Elias dropped onto a stool and looked around the smithy.

Broken files and drill bits lay on the floor. Shattered flint and sideways crucibles with hardened iron clinging to their sides.

What a mess.

If she was here, she definitely would have lectured him. Only an obsessive sorceress like her could have kept Elias’s hyperactive mind on track. Why did he let her leave that autumn morning eight years ago? They could have moved, avoided the Gestalt Wars altogether. His position as guildmaster was a small price to pay for her company.

Elias sighed. There he went. Thinking of her again.

Luckily, when work wasn’t enough to forget, he had a more effective solution. A more delicious solution. Elias reached for a bottle on a nearby shelf and removed its ceramic lid. He looked inside.

What used to be a vibrant red liquid was now brown-tinged and smelled of vinegar. Leaving Amalthea’s finest wine to rot in a hot workshop was a poor decision. But it wasn’t his worst. That one was made eight years ago.

“Here’s to you, Margaretta.”

An odor heavy with sulfur and sweat greeted Dimitry when he opened the door to Elias’s workshop. Warm air replaced winter winds, alleviating the prickling sensation in his numb cheeks. Something crumbled under the weight of his boot when he entered.

Sawed metal pieces, charcoal chunks, and chipped flint littered the floor. Traversing the room without stepping on something was an impossible task.

Hopefully, the clutter meant that the blacksmith was hard at work. If Elias had produced a functional flintlock, Dimitry intended to test it alongside his ceramic black powder bombs. Guns were vital for Malten’s defense. At the moment, only sorceresses armed with vol and magic-powered rifles could effectively dispatch flying devils. His weaponry aimed to change that.

“Yo, surgeon!” said a man whose chest hair bulged from under a brown apron. A blithe smile on his face, Elias placed a ceramic jug onto a flat anvil as he approached. “Here to check on that thing?” His breath reeked of alcohol.

Dimitry wondered if it was safe to work with heavy tools and burning metals while drunk, but didn’t mention his concerns. It wasn’t any of his business. “How’s the flintlock coming along?”

The man massaged the back of his bald head with a giant hand. “I’ve made progress. Check it out.” His hand beckoned Dimitry to follow.

They passed a worktable upholding dozens of wooden pieces with uneven spiral engravings. Thin and of varying lengths, there was only one thing they could be: screws. Bridle screws, frizzen screws, hammer screws, jaw screws, and sear screws. Parts essential in any flintlock mechanism.

Dimitry identified each cylindrical carving’s role but harbored doubts regarding their reliability in a functional musket. The relic’s visions called for metal screws. Wouldn’t the force of exploding black powder shatter wooden parts? Just how much progress did Elias actually make? “Has it been difficult?”

“Difficult?” Elias guffawed. “Nothing’s difficult!”

Although the guildmaster looked optimistic, Dimitry wasn’t. Only seven days remained until the night of repentance. Perhaps he was foolish to believe that an unspecialized blacksmith could produce a revolutionary weapon in just fifteen days.

Elias reached an anvil and lifted the L-shaped piece of dented metal resting atop. “Look at this.”

“Is that the frizzen?” Dimitry asked.

“Yep. You told me to use steel, but it breaks too easily. I welded a worn steel file to a wrought iron bar to make it more resilient.”

“Does it work?”

“Watch this.” Elias smacked it against a sharp and orange flint rock to produce sparks. “What do you think? Impressed?”

Despite the relic displaying the components in a flintlock musket, it didn’t show how to forge them. They could all be made from iron, and Dimitry would be none the wiser. It was the tinderbox in Dimitry’s office and chemistry lab that inspired him to tell Elias to make the frizzen from steel. He knew no other way to produce the sparks necessary to ignite black powder.

Apparently, Dimitry was wrong. “Well done.”

“I know.”

“How about those screws on the table back there? Do you think wood is strong enough to handle an explosion?”

Elias shrugged. “No idea, but metal ones would take weeks to file. Honestly, I still don’t even know if an exploding weapon makes sense.”

“The explosion is only there to propel the ball.”

“Right, right.” The hairy-chested giant grabbed something from an overhead shelf. “I had someone make some of those too.” He dropped the lead bullet into Dimitry’s hand. “But it’s strange.”

“What is?”

“Even with an entire crude vol pellet, a voltech rifle can’t shoot an iron ball further than fifty paces. So how is your flintlock thing supposed to fire something this heavy?”

Dimitry rolled the musket ball in his palm. “Although lead is a lot denser than iron, flintlocks produce more than enough force to shoot them. That’s what makes them so powerful.”

“I hope you’re right.” Elias looked down, his expression somber. “I don’t want any more sorceresses dying doing a job we should do ourselves. By the way.” He plucked metal shards from a near ceiling-height shelf. “There’s something else I want to show you.”

While entranced by his own gathering task, the lumbering man’s hip knocked against a drawer. An orb as large as a fist rolled across the furniture’s surface before crashing to the floor. There was a quarter-sized hole in its exterior.

Dimitry picked it up. “What’s this?”

Elias glanced back. “Oh. That? It’s just a pouch.” He continued fishing for scattered metal fragments. “I made it out of cast-iron for a client who had his pouch cut and coins stolen while he wasn’t looking. Said he wanted something refugee-proof. Unfortunately, it’s so brittle that a single hit from a hammer could break it. I’ll probably have to make it from higher quality materials.”

Dimitry’s eyes furrowed. The orb’s walls were sturdy enough to survive a fall and allow a black powder reaction to build up pressure, but not so sturdy that they prevented a powerful explosion altogether. Could the pouch function better as a bomb casing?

The original intention was to use ceramics. Unfortunately, it was expensive in bulk quantities and broke at the slightest impact. Ceramic bombs couldn’t survive a throw. Cast-iron was better. The question was whether he could get enough in time for the month of repentance. “Do they take long to make?”

“Nah. I could send a mold to the mines and get the blast furnaces to pour a hundred a day. The idea was to make them cheap and quick to make.” Elias sighed. “But not every idea works out, you know?”

“Do you have extras?”

“Why? You also scared of refugees stealing from you?”

“Not exactly.” Dimitry smiled. “I think there’s a better use for your pouches than holding coins.”

“I have a crate full of samples in the back. Grab ‘em if you want.” The giant dropped dozens of metal shards onto a nearby anvil. “But forget about that and take a look at this.”

They were flat pieces of V-shaped metal. Flintlock springs. Or that was the intention. Most had dents, cracks, or broke completely.

Elias massaged his bald head. “These things just don’t want to work. I used all kinds of steel, but no matter how much charcoal I hammered into it or what temperature I tempered them at, most didn’t produce enough force. The ones that did broke when I stressed them. Are you sure they aren’t too thin?”

Dimitry could only shrug. Although he wanted to help, to come up with a solution, he knew nothing about forging springs, let alone more than a blacksmithing guildmaster. “I’m not sure what to tell you. I only know what flintlock parts look like—never made one myself.”

“Alright.” The giant leaned back against a wall. He took a deep breath. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Puffy gray clouds hovered over a field of trees with shattered trunks, crumbling heathen corpses, and brown patches of barren soil. What little grass remained swayed in a frigid breeze. It was the land west of Malten—where stone monsters from the ocean depths ventured to wage war against the soldiers of a small and encumbered city.

Among many casualties was a corpse belonging to a crawling devil. Unlike the six legs a living variant had, this one only had five, which lay sprawled out behind it. The top of its spherical core collapsed, a pool of blue goo overflowing through the cracks. It was the freshest specimen Angelika found. According to her, the celebrated knight Valter killed it last night with a giant rock hammer.

However, having its body go to waste was a shame. Dimitry couldn’t let that happen. That was why he knelt beside it, fitting a bomb between its core and the dirt on which it lay.

His choice of explosive was simple. It was a cast-iron orb stuffed with granulated black powder. Clay sealed the hole on top, and through it ran a black powder encrusted yarn serving as a fuse.

Heart pounding and a proud smile on his face, Dimitry examined his improvised explosive device one last time. How many brainstorming sessions, failures, days of concerted effort did he spend designing it? From sourcing materials to training employees, he did it all. But now came the time to see if his efforts were worth the invested time.

Dimitry exhaled slowly to calm his trembling hands, then glanced back to ensure the resulting shrapnel wouldn’t endanger anyone.

Angelika leaned back against a distant tree with her arms folded across her chest. She doubtless held back the urge to yell at the faerie teasing her from beneath her crimson robes. Beside her was a gray-haired man whose head twitched as it scanned the skies. Fear contorted Clewin’s face. Saphiria stood away from them, waiting. A cloak’s hood enshrouded her face from the afternoon sun.

They were all at least twenty-five meters away. A safe enough distance. Dimitry struck flint against a steel rod. After one of the resulting sparks ignited the fuse, he ran to join the others.

Clewin’s fingers restlessly tapped his thighs. “Madam sorceress, are you sure it’s safe out here?”

Despite her relaxed posture, Angelika brushed aside her windblown red-brown curls to reveal alert orange eyes. “For the fifth time, you’ll be fine.”

Her words did little to soothe the fidgeting chemist.

She glanced at Dimitry. “The thing’s annoyed that nothing is happening. Can you tell it to shut up?”

“Thing?” Clewin muttered.

Dimitry knew Angelika referred to Precious. “It’ll be just a few—”

A sound like that of a firing cannon echoed across the vast field. With a flash of hot red light, metal, stone, and dirt chunks burst into the air only to disappear in a white smoke cloud. Heathen blood poured out of the dead crawling devil’s core through a new gap in its carapace.

Relief and satisfaction washed over Dimitry.

“Yes!” The high-pitched shriek came from the golden-haired faerie peeking beside the sorceress’s neck.

Emerging from a wordless trance, Angelika vacantly shoved Precious back into her robes.

Luckily, Clewin didn’t see the corrupted creature. His gaze remained plastered to the persistent cloud of white smoke rising into the sky.

“It’s beautiful,” Saphiria mumbled.

After the smoke dissipated, the bomb’s effects became evident. Its explosion left a ashtray-sized hole within the heathen’s carapace, while shrapnel fragments left smaller gaps and dents.

Delightful yet unsurprising results.

Crawling devil cores were fluid sacks surrounded by a thin layer of protective stone. There seemed to be other ‘organs’ too, but Dimitry didn’t have time to examine them.

Although his weapon produced a sizable bang, it still had glaring faults. It might have been able to pierce a heathen’s armor while it lay on the ground, but could it do so while the creature lived, giant legs suspending the core meters into the air? Could the bomb hit its target’s only weak point during combat?

“I-is that what we were making all this time?” Clewin uttered, finally recovering from his stupor. “I thought you were gonna set them on fire.”

“This is just the beginning,” Dimitry said. “It’ll be even more powerful once we perfect black powder.” He wanted to mention his intention to manufacture flintlocks and cannons, too, but decided against it. It was still too early to tell if they would ever reach completion.

The gray-haired man dashed towards the supply crate with renewed vigor. “Should I make another bomb?”

Dimitry nodded. “Prepare one with the second largest granules. We’ll be testing which size makes the biggest boom.”

“Got it.”

“Wait,” Angelika said.

Clewin looked up.

“What is it?” Dimitry asked.

She stomped closer. “Even though it’s fun to watch, there’s a big problem with your bomb. Heathens don’t sit around waiting to be exploded. They’ll be gone long before your weapon goes off.”

That was an issue. The only solution was to teach soldiers to adjust fuses for use on mobile targets, but that would require experimentation, supplies, and training. Neither of which Dimitry could afford.

“Hey, alchemist.”

Clewin looked up at her. “I’m a chemist, madam sorceress.”

“Whatever,” Angelika said. “Try making one of those things without the black string.”

“Y-yes, madam sorceress.”

Dimitry stroked his chin. “Do you have an idea?”

“You said the fuse thing lets you ignite the bomb from a safe distance, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“You don’t need it. Watch this.” Angelika grinned. “Is it ready?”

Clewin sealed the bomb with clay. “Here you are, madam sorceress.”

“Can you stop calling me madam? Angelika is fine.”

“Yes, mada—” Clewin’s eyes opened wide as if acknowledging a grave error. “Here.” He held up the cast-iron orb.

She grabbed the bomb and threw it onto a patch of dirt beside a massive, tortoise-shaped heathen. Its armor was far thicker than any crawling devil’s.

“Ignia.”

A thunderous clap roared through the open field, launching debris and white smoke into the air. The explosion dented the carapaced devil’s shell. While it didn’t cause the massive monster to bleed, this bomb’s destructive power clearly surpassed that of its predecessor.

A wide smirk spread across Angelika’s winter-chilled and rosy cheeks. “What do you think about that?”

The ability to detonate explosives with magic was powerful. “I’m impressed,” Dimitry said, “but what was that spell you used? It sounded familiar.”

“You mean ignia?” Her orange eyes narrowed. “It makes things burn.”

Her words jogged Dimitry’s memory. He remembered Saphiria chanting ignia to start campfires during their corpse delivery missions for Delphine and when she set alight tents for his rescue in Coldust.

Did Angelika’s magic amplify the bomb’s effects by igniting all the black powder at once, or did it result from using smaller granules, which packed more explosive force than larger varieties within the same casing? Perhaps both played a role.

Dimitry sighed. Unfortunately, Angelika’s solution wasn’t helpful. “Your magic is effective, but the problem is that it wastes vol, and only sorceresses can use it. I designed this weapon with the average person in mind.”

“That’s not a big problem.” Angelika held an aquamarine pebble between two fingers. “The reason ignia is awesome is because it’s efficient. This crude vol pellet alone is enough for me to start up to ten fires from fifty paces away, and I’m not an exception. Anyone who learned magic past the apprentice level and used ignia to practice their spells’ distance and precision could do the same. They may not be as good as me, but they’ll be good enough to blow up your bombs without some shitty fuse.”

Saphiria nodded. “I trained with ignia, too.”

“Princes—” Angelika swallowed her words. They kept Saphiria’s identity as royalty a secret from Clewin as a matter of precaution. “Who taught you?”

“Mira.”

The sorceress’ eyes widened. “The guildmaster herself?”

“She wasn’t guildmaster back then,” Saphiria said.

“Ah. Right.”

Dimitry wondered if he could create a better ignition mechanism than a fuse or magic during the seven days leading up to the night of repentance. He considered developing a pressure detecting mechanism akin to a land mine, but that would take time. Time he didn’t have. Rushing the endeavor was dangerous. Injuries were inevitable while training an uneducated populace to use sophisticated explosives. Not to mention the fact that a mine’s ground-level explosion couldn’t damage a heathen’s core.

Maybe a dual approach was better? Fuses for people who couldn’t use magic, and none for those that could. However, the latter was clearly a better use of resources. He needed soldiers capable and willing to put it into action.

“How about knights?” Dimitry asked. “Can they cast ignia?”

Angelika shrugged. “Depends which one. Most of those idiots think spells are a waste of time because heathens resist magic. Only a powerful caster can damage a devil directly. That’s why we use voltech weapons and why knights waste their time training with rock hammers.”

“What you’re saying is, finding able men will prove difficult.”

“Yep.”

“Many people in the castle can cast magic,” Saphiria said. “I’ll ask mother.”

“Castle?” Clewin uttered.

Ignoring the chemist’s confused glance, Dimitry glanced at Malten’s distant walls. They would be under siege soon. He had to perfect his weapon before then. Luckily, he was full of ideas.