Even as Dimitry pressed on the four quadrants of her abdomen in search of rigidity and tenderness, Liphilt watched him with awe. She was one of twenty Hospitallers that had suffered an injury during yesterday’s pandemonium. Someone had shoved her to the ground while they were fleeing from crawling devils, and another had kicked her in the stomach.

Though Liphilt shied from speaking, her wide-eyed stare was that of someone who was witnessing a miracle. Not a single patient died despite a dozen heathens breaching the outpost’s defenses last night. The cruelty of this world conditioned its inhabitants to expect death, so when none came, they celebrated with desperate gratitude. ‘Surely,’ Liphilt seemed to say, ‘the apostle will protect us. He will banish the corruption.’

Unfortunately, she was wrong.

Dimitry’s luck was running out.

The sorceress expedition was leaving soon, a mysterious blue avian had watched them from the horizon, and as the moon waxed, the assaulting heathens would grow in number and strength, culminating in a massive wave on the upcoming Night of Repentance. If a dozen crawlers and fliers could toss the outpost into chaos, how many people would die during a full-fledged heathen raid? The question sent chills down Dimitry’s spine. Startled him into breathless wakefulness. He colonized the coast to save lives, to reduce the burden on his hospital by giving refugees homes and jobs and food, not to send the poor to their deaths.

Dimitry needed weapons. Now. Rifles were the difference between a coastal city and a frozen grave along the shore. He prayed Saphiria had found a solution for the production bottleneck like she said she would. However, as much as he adored the girl, he couldn’t rely solely on medieval craftsmanship to save his people.

He needed a backup plan. Dimitry hoped he had one: Impedeall. It was the latest spell he had learned in the dark hall. Last night, the magic seemed to make Angelika invisible to a pack of crawlers. They scuttled right past her. Could impedeall make heathens ignore his settlement as well?

After Dimitry discharged Liphilt, his latest patient, he pocketed his examination gloves—sewn from the heathen gel ‘plastic’ Clewin prepared—and stepped outside the toasty clinic. He waited by the padded linen walls, which glowed red with incendia to rewarm the constant stream of underclothed soldiers on the brink of hypothermia.

Impedeall’s only victim approached. Her red-brown curls blowing in a frigid gale, the sorceress shambled in from a bumpy road paved by the constant marching of troops. “Hey,” Angelika muttered.

Dimitry nodded ahead, and they walked past endless tents interlaced with the occasional log shack and outhouse. Though he had briefly examined Angelika after the crisis, he looked over the girl for injury once more. She had no obvious wounds, but that wasn’t what worried him. An accelall enchantment had mangled a chicken during last month’s experimentation. Clearly, impedeall wasn’t as horrific, perhaps because the reflectia garbs under her robes deflected oncoming magic, but the fluttering in his gut demanded he take caution. Missed injuries from spells with uncertain effects could prove lethal.

Angelika avoided his gaze. She looked down at the skirt of her robe instead, which flapped around her legs and formed a crimson silhouette of two toned quadriceps.

Her defeated posture gave him pause. “Is everything okay? Does anything hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

A quiet ‘I’m fine’ was the least comforting answer a mopey nineteen-year-old could give. “If anything hurts, anything at all, I’d really like to know.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing. Tell me what happened.”

The girl’s face was as pale and still as porcelain until the corners of her lips twitched. “You and I and everyone else knows what happened. I couldn’t even keep a buncha refugees in line. Hell, even the crawlers thought I was pathetic because they hauled their asses right past me. If you have to do my job for me, what am I even good for?”

Ah. So that was it. Yesterday, the troops had fled the front lines, and Dimitry had to issue commands to keep them from trampling over each other. That was Angelika’s responsibility. The girl must have taken a hit to her wavering confidence as a leader.

Doubt was a killer. Dimitry had seen a simple screwup make wrecks of once excellent nurses. They’d start avoiding patients, blaming their colleagues for their own mistakes, second-guessing themselves during routine surgeries and making careless errors when they hurt most. If doubt could do all that to a nurse, how would a military commander fare? He couldn’t let that happen to Angelika, especially when last night’s havoc wasn’t her fault. “I think you did your job well.”

“Please.” Her boots flopped across trodden snow. “Just be honest and tell me I’m not meant to lead an entire damn army. It’s fine. I already know. It’s not in my blood.”

“Angelika, I saw you draw away those crawlers so your men could escape. You’re a hero. I didn’t have to bury a single person today because of your courage and quick wits. I don’t care that you’re not some noble-born warmonger; you have the makings of a leader.”

“What kind of leader inspires their soldiers to run away?”

“That’s…” Dimitry sighed. “That’s my fault. No one in their right mind would charge at heathens with a halberd. I thought I’d have more time to arm the troops. And the crawlers, I did that, too. They ignored you because of impedeall.”

“Impedeall? Is that another one of those spells?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s it do?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “I thought it’d protect you somehow, but all it did was make the heathens run right past you as if you didn’t exist. Your distraction failed because of me.”

“Oh…” Angelika lagged. She stopped beside the only oak in a plaza of snow, slow breaths escaping her nostrils as pale wisps. “So it wasn’t me? You’re not just smooth-talking me like you do everyone else?”

He stopped and glanced back. “Want me to drag Precious out of her cellar so she can tell you for sure?”

“The little bugger’s got enough shit to do. I saw those faeries she’s trying to tame. They’re real assholes.”

Dimitry eked out a smile. The girl trusted him more than he did himself. “Thanks for being understanding.”

She weakly punched him in the shoulder. “Least I can do for the guy who’s trying to save the world.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration,” he said. “Just Malten would be nice.”

“Malten is my world. My mom and sisters live here, and I’ve never been anywhere else. Don’t even know what Volmer or Feyt looks like. Neither kingdom exists as far as I’m concerned.”

Dimitry averted his gaze. How sad. The girl spent her life fighting stone beasts and training for the next encounter, never free to enjoy her youth. Suddenly, the struggles of his childhood seemed petty. “Well, to keep Malten safe, we need to survive out here first. I was thinking Impedeall could help. If it can make heathens ignore you, then—“

“—it can make them ignore the colony? Malten maybe?”

“I’m not sure we have anywhere near enough vol or enchantresses for that, but if we can just secure the important areas—“

“—we can funnel them through a firing line?”

“Stop finishing my sentences.”

“Sorry.”

“But you’re right,” he said. “Heathens can appear anywhere. North of us, south of us, west of us, and if the coordination they showed yesterday is anything to go by, they might even flank us from Malten’s direction. However, if we can manipulate what they see, we can hide the residential areas and force them to go through a minefield or a firing line like you said.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Angelika said, “but how do we know whether the enchantment will work the way you think it will?”

“We don’t.” Dimitry lowered his voice so that the passing workers couldn’t hear him blaspheme. “That’s why I want you to capture a live crawler.”

Angelika stepped back. “You want me to do what?”

“We’ll experiment on it with impedeall. Once we discover the spell’s precise effects, we can use it to our advantage.”

“But, like, how am I supposed to explain to everyone that the apostle wants to adopt a pet heathen?”

She made a good point. Dimitry told his soldiers he aimed to vanquish the corruption, not keep it in a cage. Having an unholy beast around would throw his divinity into question. Or would it? Perhaps the proper framing could turn his problem into a source of morale. “When I passed through Estoria, I saw the Church collect heathen parts for some kind of purification. Let’s just call the experiment a purification, and to keep the troops happy, you can let them vent their frustration by pelting the crawler with rocks in between tests. We needed a way to relieve stress around here.”

“Another secret, huh?” Angelika twirled her hair around her pinkie. “That might work, at least until some pissed peasant throws a boulder at it and it bleeds to death. I’ll let them do something less deadly, like flog it with a horsewhip. Should keep it alive for a good while.”

“Perfect.”

“Still, even if we get the impedeall idea to work, the heathens will just trample us on their way to Malten. You really think your mines and those exploding rifles can kill them before they stomp all over everything?”

“Who told you my rifles exploded?”

“Warnfrid. ‘A sorceress’s puny iron pipe cannot contain the holy might of Zera,’ is what he said. Which is stupid, because Zera’s Thunder obviously works.”

Dimitry shook his head. Why couldn’t knights and sorceresses just get along? “Ignore him.”

“I thought you told me to learn from him.”

“He may be a decorated war veteran, but he’s also a geezer. You’re young and bright. Times change. Internalize only the lessons you decide are useful and ignore everything else he says.” Dimitry resumed walking. “Besides, what he saw was just a test. The princess herself is working on the finished product. We’re on our way to meet with her now.”

Angelika waited until a group of men hauling a willow log passed. She caught up with a swift sprint. “Just like the late duke, huh?”

“Saphiria’s father?”

“I heard he developed voltech rifles back when seal technology was still brand spanking new. He even gave my dad a prototype. It’s hanging on our parlor wall.”

Dimitry glanced back at her. “Your father knew the duke?”

“Well, yeah. My dad was one of the royal army’s three head channelers before the war. You know, when it was a real army. He never really talked about it, but mom says dad and the duke were kinda close. That’s why we were allowed to move our shop to the castle district. Anyway, suppose it makes sense that Her Royal Highness is upholding the tradition of making crazy shit."

How strange for a duke to fraternize with a ‘lowly’ family of mages. His influence explained why Saphiria didn’t care for peerage. Dimitry hoped his innovative spirit had rubbed off on the girl as well. She was the light at the end of his tunnel. If Saphiria succeeded in mass-producing rifles, his defenses could hold off against an entire raid. His settlement’s future would be secure.

Past the restless hubbub of workers running back and forth, black smoke billowed from the half-height walls of a crudely built log barn—the workshop where two dozen blacksmiths were developing rifles and guns. His destination. What if Saphiria awaited him inside even now, hands on her hips, eager to brag about her triumph?

Breaths shallow with anticipation, Dimitry’s pace hastened. He swerved between tents, Angelika straggling further behind, him passing knelt passersby. As he crossed the vacant field outside the entrance, something crunched beneath his boots.

Black-gray shards. They littered the ground, concentrated around a patch of charred dirt and the nearby stack of shattered cast iron tubes, each one with thicker walls than the last. The smallest was no wider than a faucet pipe. The largest, girthy like a man’s thigh.

Dimitry’s gut dropped. Those weren’t guns.

Angelika’s quiet footsteps approached from behind. Her gaze traveled from a pile of broken clay and sand molds to the busted barrels. “Are… were those supposed to be rifle barrels?”

“No,” he hoped he wasn’t lying. “The real barrels are inside. They wouldn’t keep them out here to rust in the snow.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you run a few more loading drills with your troops? I’ll have them brought to you, stock and all.”

“Uh… right.” Angelika shot him an unsure parting glance before walking off.

After checking that she had gone, Dimitry passed the workshop gates, hot air blasting into his face. Each blacksmith and apprentice raised an upturned arm and knelt as he traversed an interior overflowing with metal and carved wood cylinders of all sizes. Some cylinders had bores. Most didn’t. Those that pressed into sand and clay beds hinted they were the models used to shape the rifle barrel molds before casting.

A girl whose raven hair flowed down her shoulders hovered over one such model. Though soot had blotted her plain yellow under tunic and cheeks, and the forge’s heat had smeared her mascara, the slender beauty’s royal authority was obvious at a glance. Noticing that the hammers halted their clanging, Saphiria looked up. Her troubled scowl made way for surprise. “Dimitry.”

“Your Highness,” he said as he approached. “Any—“

“A moment.” She looked past the blacksmiths gathered around her to a slack-jawed kid at her rear. “Towel.”

The daydreaming boy startled to attention. Head down like a smitten teenager before his celebrity crush, he fumbled a rag and held it forward on two trembling palms.

She plucked the cloth from his hands. “Now give us privacy.”

The kid scrambled to his master’s side, and the chorus of beaten metal returned as every man resumed his duty.

Saphiria dabbed charcoal dust-infused makeup from her face. “I did not expect you here so soon,” she whispered, barely audible amongst the ringing of iron. Her tone said it all. It telegraphed failure like an orthopedic surgeon whose incompetence led them to perform a crippling wrong-site surgery.

Shit. It was as Dimitry had feared. Rather than asking the obvious, he sought to understand. Perhaps he could help speed up the process. His gaze fell to a pile of closed-end iron pipes. “Are you trying to cast rifle barrels?”

“It is the only way to prepare hundreds before the Night of Repentance. All I require is one functional mock before production can begin. Just one.”

“Judging by the remains outside, I’m guessing them blowing up is the problem?”

“I have underestimated the ferocity of black powder. Cast iron is brittle. No matter the thickness of the walls or the diameter of its bore, not a single barrel can fire a ball with sufficient force to pierce a crawler without shattering.” Her fist clenched around the handle of a basin, carbonized flakes drifting on the brown water within. “It is most infuriating.”

Dimitry had no technical solutions to offer. He knew little about metallurgy and even less about gunsmithing. But he did have something. Upon examining the largest of the barrels, he recalled the 10-pounder Parrott rifle the flintlock relic had shown him in a vision. It was the cannon he saw fire at an American Civil War reenactment during his college years—back when he had time to travel. Perhaps he could salvage the situation. “Can you try making that one longer? And thicker.”

“Thicker? But why? This barrel already requires several men to lift.”

“I remember seeing voltech cannons in Malten. It’s not like sorceresses had to lift those.”

Saphiria gasped. “You intend to cast cannon to slaughter carapaced devils?”

“And crawlers. If you make the barrel big enough, I know it’ll be able to handle the pressures of black powder combustion. I have a design in mind that you can reference.”

Her big indigo eyes danced across his face. “How I wish to venture into your mind.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She pivoted, long black hair fluttering behind her, and shouted commands across the barn: “Elias, prepare a frame large enough to cast cannon and a pulley system sturdy enough to transport them!”

The shirtless guildmaster wiped the sweat from his forehead with a hairy arm and waved. “You got it, Your Highness!”

Saphiria’s awe at a two-hundred-year-old invention made Dimitry wish he could bring her to Earth to show off the wonders of modern civilization. Skyscrapers, fighter jets, space telescopes. An inquisitive girl like her would marvel at every discovery, and he would savor her amazement.

Saphiria yelled more orders, whipping the blacksmiths into a frenzy, and turned back to Dimitry. “And the fliers? That massive bird? How shall we kill them?”

Right. There was still the issue of airborne enemies. They could take out his gun crews and leave his army defenseless. “You told me we’ll have around sixty voltech rifles to remodel, right?”

“I have sent my knights to Malten to collect the surplus, and we are forging as many as we can now. Still, I fear it will not be enough.”

Dimitry massaged his temples. She was right. The long reloading times inherent to muzzleloaders, their poor accuracy, and the hastily trained riflemen that would wield them meant that volume was the only way his colony would survive. Sixty wasn’t enough.

Praying for another idea, he scanned the faulty barrels once more, this time focusing on the thinnest of the bunch. As Saphiria had pointed out, brittleness was the issue. Thinly shielded cast iron chambers couldn’t handle the pressures of black powder. The material itself was the problem. What if they tried another one? “Have you considered using cast steel?”

Saphiria’s expectant gaze turned to disbelief. She stared at him as if he had asked her to invent a titanium alloy. “Cast steel?”

“If you can cast iron,” Dimitry said, “I’m assuming you can cast steel as well. The extra strength might give us the boost we need.”

His utterance caught the attention of the nearby blacksmiths. One among them lowered his hammer, leaving the red-hot flash pan on his anvil to cool. He watched on with bewildered eyes. The rush of moments past seemed to slow.

Saphiria regained her composure. Steps slow and thoughtful like a sage who peered into the distant past, she walked past him. “Dimitry, perhaps you are correct. Long ago, when I was but a child too restless for sleep, Father would sit at my bedside and tell tales of his forays into the elements. He yearned to uncover the secrets of metallurgical alchemy. The transmutation of soil and rock into iron. Iron into steel. Steel into gold. Among his many adventures, he would heat many metals until they flowed, and although my beloved father had never produced gold as was his dream, he did cast steel. It was weldable and drillable. Ductile yet resilient. A barrel of cast steel may indeed be strong and light enough for a single man to wield.”

Saphiria stopped. “However, steel was plentiful back then, before the war. My smelteries no longer have the men or the time to infuse wrought iron with charred bone and charcoal. The blacksmiths must do it themselves. Producing enough steel for a barrel can take weeks, and while cast steel is sturdier than cast iron, few would sacrifice the immense strength of forged steel by melting it down. It is a priceless treasure only the wealthy can afford. There is simply not enough to go around.”

Damn. Yet another production bottleneck. Steel this time. Dimitry lowered himself onto the edge of a casting frame the size of a bathtub, careful not to disturb the neat layer of moist sand and clay within.

Saphiria looked at him, and her indigo eyes softened. She sat beside him. “If it’ll help, I can melt down my armor. I don’t mind.”

“You’re kind,” Dimitry said, “but I doubt all the gear in your royal armory would put a dent in how much steel we need.”

“Then we must use what we have.”

“What do we have?”

“Your wondrous mind.”

“If only solutions came so easily, Your Highness.”

“My blessed archbishop,” she said, “if anyone can bring about a miracle, it is you. Not even your staunchest detractor can deny as much.”

The confidence with which she spoke and the sincerity in her glance attracted attention. Now Saphiria had done it. All the workers in the smithy watched Dimitry as if Zera herself was about to ascend from the planet’s core and whisper a brilliant idea into his ear. Too bad he was on his own.

Steel. Steel. How the hell was he supposed to make steel?

His gaze traveled to a voltech rifle that underwent conversion into a firearm. The lustrous gray metal that comprised its barrel was wrought iron. Saphiria mentioned that the addition of charcoal—a concentrated source of carbon—to wrought iron produced steel. That was all Dimitry had to do: add carbon to wrought iron. He’d get all the steel he ever needed. The question was how?

He then glanced at the experimental rifle barrels. They were made from cast iron, a material whose pitch-black hue hinted at its rich carbon contents. Wrought iron was deficient in carbon, and cast iron had lots. Logically, steel must have lain somewhere in between.

What if Dimitry combined cast iron and wrought iron? Fused them until he found the perfect ratio of carbon to iron? Though thermomechanical methods wouldn’t work—any forging advancements he’d come up with Saphiria’s ancestors would have discovered decades ago—he had something this world didn’t: basic chemical knowledge and the ability to modify magic. It could work. He had everything he needed: tools, stacks of iron ingots, and a bright metallurgist’s help. There was even a spell that perfectly suited his needs.

Yet Dimitry hesitated to take action. The last time he had modified magic, a freezia enchantment went berserk, casting doubt on his divinity. Another failure could tank his troops’ morale and bring an abrupt end to his ambitions. Was it worth the risk?

Yes.

The coastal city of progress Dimitry envisioned would plant its flag into the snow at last. Neither heathens nor marquis would threaten his people. He rose to his feet, all eyes on him. “I need an enchantress, a clay bowl, and a chicken.”