After Miss Igai and I left the creep Marzi to die, she showed me around the castle. Well, she says she only showed me the relevant bits, but the tour was so long we had to break for lunch AND dinner. We ate each meal at a different mess hall.

As it turns out, the engineering department is the only department that’s not located in the actual castle itself. All the explosions from various unsuccessful projects caused the department that used to be next to them, the castle’s postal service, a large amount of grief. And damages. And ruined mail.

Miss Igai told me an unfortunate story where we almost went to war with the Federation of Anti Independent Republics and Yahoos, or Fey Kingdom if you don’t feel like playing the acronym game, a surprisingly large nation of fairies the Othium Empire is unfortunate enough to call neighbors, when an important diplomatic letter was destroyed due to a test of semi-automated armor. She also mentioned that this was how she died for the sixth time.

I purposely ignored the fact that this ‘semi-automated armor’ sounded a lot like the robot suits those jackasses from the Mecha depo in my last life were working on, and asked about the whole ‘dying six times’ thing. Isn’t that like, illegal or something? How in that braindead god’s name can someone die six times and still be alive enough to talk about it?

As it turns out, biology, or something. Miss Igai patiently explained as I interrupted many times about how bullshit that whole thing was, that a Kaviar’s life is split into ten-year segments. When a Kavair reaches the end of that ten year lifespan, or dies of unnatural causes and their corpse is… together enough, their body starts to bloat and harden up like a cocoon. About three months later, a slightly younger version of the Kaviar pops out, sporting a new black spot on their skin. This isn’t infinite though, as Kaviars can only undergo this process about seven times before they get too… crumbly to continue… as Miss Igai put it.

After that talk, the senior maid continued showing me around the castle, and we eventually ended up at my new room.

So now that the tour is over, I’m faced with my greatest challenge yet; convincing Miss Igai to get rid of this bed and replace it with a large pile of expensive furs for me to sleep on.

“Julie, that is the stupidest and most barbaric thing I’ve ever heard. Beds are made specifically for comfort! Why would a haphazardly thrown together pile of fluffy animal skin, which would offer NO BACK SUPPORT, be better?”

I scoffed. She calls it barbaric, yet she is truly blind to the worldly pleasures one can experience on this Earth- or uh, Lesotis.

“Miss Igai, while I don’t expect someone as uncultured as you to understand, beds cannot compare to the enveloping feeling of warmth those ‘fluffy animal skins’ can offer.”

Miss Igai sighed and pinched her nose, the many wrinkles on her old looking face becoming more pronounced.

“Whatever. You Magic Engineers all have the strangest preferences. I was going to have you fitted for actual clothes, but if you like animal furs that much then you might prefer to keep what you have.”

“No no, I’d prefer not to wear a shirt with a giant stab wound in it.”

I stretched my shirt out to show the giant cut that the princess made when she threw me out that train. I tried to sew it shut on the trip to the capital, but I’m not much of a seamstress and all my thread got set on fire.

“Alright. Come to my office tomorrow morning and we’ll get that sorted while I give you a proper introduction to your attendant Marzi.”

With that, Miss Igai walked out and I was left alone in my room. I hopped on the bed and collapsed. A child should not have to walk as much as I did today, this castle is huge!

Anyways, I should get ready for tomorrow.

Getting up off the bed I start combing through the room, looking for wires or peepholes or anything of the sort. This is an old habit back from Earth, where the weapons industry was cut-throat and merciless and people would steal your ideas whenever they could. But also because of the whole ‘Second’ situation.

If Rola decides to keep an eye on me, then finds out that I have a rock in my boot, then I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my boot. Or my leg if I happen to be wearing it at the time.

After confirming that my room isn’t bugged, I take off my boot and pull out my rock. The smooth green surface drawing my gaze, even though I’ve seen it about a thousand times already.

Now, where can I hide this…

Normally, I’d just keep it in my boot, but I’ll be getting a new wardrobe tomorrow. I’d also really prefer not to keep this thing on me at all times because I had some close calls on the carriage trip to the capital.

My room was decently sized and sparsely decorated. It had my bed, a desk, a wardrobe, a sink, a lamp, and a rug. No windows. The lamp was connected to the castle’s magic power grid, so I had a decent source of light that I didn’t have to worry about powering.

Lets see, hiding it under the bed is cliché, and I’m having it removed soon for a superior sleeping implement, so that won’t work. I’d hide it under the rug, but then there would just be a lump in the middle of the floor. They might not notice right away but they’ll notice when they trip on it. Could I hide it in the wardrobe? Nah, that creep Marzi would probably find it real quick if I put it there.

If she’s going to be my attendant, then I ought to set some ground rules next time I see her.

Maybe I could hide it in one of the desk drawers? Well, then they’d just have to open the damn desk. Wait… I have an idea.

I pull out that stupid fire magic book and compare it’s thickness to the rock’s. The book is a little bit thicker, perfect. I take out the knife Esia gave me and start cutting a rock-shape out of the book’s pages. It takes some time, but I’m happy I was able to put this stupid book to use. I still wish one of my guns survived rather than this book though.

Having stuffed the rock in it’s fire-proof-prison, I closed the cover and put it in a desk drawer. Nodding my head with the satisfied thought that no one could ever find this, I pulled out a pen and my journal. The journal was pretty much out of space, but I could probably find some margins to make use of.

Now, if I remember properly, I was working on a plasma-railgun…

I can’t believe I was surprised when Dorran talked me into doing his dirty work, Mom would kill him if I told her that he made me install glowmoss. I almost died too! Well, actually I’m a little too fast for the glowmoss to get to me, but that’s beside the point. It came right at me!

“Kiwi.”

“...Yes, Dorran?”

“I’ve sealed the door, you can come out now.”

“Are you sure? It won’t claw through the ice?”

“Of course not, it’ll be dead in a few minutes due to lack of magic and oxygen.”

After Dorran started talking about Miss Fulcreek and his experiences with her, I started asking a few questions. They may have been a little provocative… but how was I supposed to know he would start going on a rant about how annoying the Fulcreeks were and how Miss Fulcreek ‘takes after her father in the worst possible ways’? Because he was too busy yelling about Miss Fulcreek’s ‘rune spiel’, he was a little late in killing the glowmoss.

By the time he heard it’s unholy shrieks, it was already lunging at me with it’s dozens of spines and needles and mouths.

Luckily, I’m very good at running away.

So I went and hid in Miss Fulcreek’s old room in her pile of furs. I had to use magic to make myself smaller but it’s hardly an issue, plus these furs are actually kinda comfy. I’m completely hidden! Even if the glowmoss managed to break through Dorran’s ice, it would never be able to find me!

Wait, then how did Dorran find me?

I popped my head out from under the furs.

“Dorran, how did you find me?”

“Kiwi, your magic, while visually subtle, isn’t exactly quiet to my senses.”

“Do I smell?”

I sniffed the furs. No, they smell fine.

“No Kiwi, I just excel at detecting magic. While yours would be quiet to most people, it wouldn’t have fooled me or the glowmoss.”

“W-wait, so the glowmoss knows where I am?”

“Yes. It’s trying to claw directly to you. If you listen you can hear it.”

H-he’s right. It’s still coming after me! I gotta get outta here!

“If you want, you can leave. You’ve done enough work for the day. I dropped Julie off in Bexelleaf, Talcoya about a month ago. She said she wanted to leave the continent.”

“Wait wait wait! You’re telling me that she could be halfway to Heslios right now!?”

“She would be if she didn’t have the attention span of her father. She probably got distracted by some asinine contraption and forgot all about leaving the continent. If you hurry, she might still be there.”

“Alright, I’ll get going. You owe me one.”

“Of course.”

I jumped out of the furs, ready and willing to start my pursuit of the daughter of the world’s most famous criminal. Like an ace detective, taking in every detail to get a complete read on their target. Yes, that is certainly the reason I was running out of the room.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the nightmare held back by nothing but ice.

On my way out, I noticed that there was a shiny bit on one of the things lying around Miss Fulcreek’s room. These things have been everywhere around Dorran’s hidey-hole, but this is the only one I’ve seen glowing. As a totally cool ace detective, it’s only natural that I investigate this anomaly. It’s possible that this might give me valuable information to find my new charge.

“Kiwi don’t touch that.”

I started to poke at it.

“Kiwi I’m warning you-”

As I was poking at it, the shiny bit pressed down and gave an audible click. Lines all over the machine started glowing and it made a beeping noise. Then, all the other machines in the room started to glow and beep, and I could hear beeping coming from the other chambers as well.

I thought it was really cool, until the first one started to spark. Actually, I don’t think it should be glowing this much.

“Uhh, I should get going.”

I ignored Dorran’s yelling as I ran out of his cave, definitely not hearing an explosion behind me. I spread my wings and flew away to find my groupies. Miss Fulcreek could be anywhere by now, so I’d best start searching as soon as possible. I went and found Ned and told him to tell Ted and Red that I had a cool job for them and to tell Ted to tell Jan, Nan, and Ann the same thing, but I don’t think those three will come. Jan, Nan, and Ann are always canceling plans at the last minute. A small part of me thinks they just don’t like me.

I waited at our usual meeting place, a small hole in the wall of a niche tavern in Qushye, a terribly named country west of the Silverset Mountains and north of Ostia. The hole itself could really only fit about two cats comfortably, luckily fairy dragons are smaller than cats. I had to shrink myself down to fit in here though.

While I was listening to the bard play a song glorifying the Othium empire, the squad finally showed up. The once spacious three foot wide hole in the wall became a little tight as four fairy dragons piled in. It was Ted, Ned, Red, and Ann.

“Hey guys, where’s Jan and Nan?”

Ted shook his head and Ann rolled her eyes. Red left to go swipe some food.

“They said they had better things to do.”

“I can tell you right now they didn’t. They just wanted to screw with the Fort Gaines town festival. We do it every year.”

Jan and Nan do seem to enjoy that, they talk about it a lot. Red came back with a small mutton leg.

“Then why are you here and not there?”

“Because Red, we do it every year. They’ve started to advertise us as one of the attractions to bring in tourists. I don’t even get royalties. Also, glad to see that your wing is doing better Kiwi.”

“Thanks, I think the scar really accentuates my coolness.”

Ned ignored my scar and moved on with the conversation.

“Speaking of attractions, there was another explosion on the Silverset Mountains this morning.”

“Another one? They’ve been doing that a lot recently.”

Ann looked at Ted with a face.

“What do you mean recently? They’ve been exploding practically non stop for the past five years. Although, a month is a long time between explosions. Do you think something happened?”

Oh this is awkward. It’s okay though, they can’t pin me to the scene of the crime.

“Ah! Kiwi came from that direction when we met up. Kiwi do you have any idea?”

Dagnabbit Ted!

“I’ve got no clue-”

Totally sold that.

“-but I’ve got a job for you guys.”

They all look at me with mild suspicion. Which I think was a little unfair. My last ‘job’ may have almost gotten Ned eaten by a Leviathan, but that was five years ago!

“What kind of job…”

“Do I get paid?”

“How long will it take?”

“I’m not sure I feel like doing anything right now...”

I lean forward and let the tension rise for a second, then I whisper.

“Julie Fulcreek is alive and I’ve been tasked to find her. Her last known location is Bexelleaf, Talcoya. She was there a month ago with the intention of leaving for Heslios, but my source tells me that it’s likely she’s still on the continent.”

All the fairy dragons paused.

“JULIE FULCREEK IS ALI-”

Red started to yell but I quickly covered his mouth. There are people outside our hidey-hole who might hear us.

“Dang it Red! We gotta keep this on the down low! I’m supposed to keep her alive, not put a target on her back!”

“Wait wait wait, Julie Fulcreek is alive? How?! Didn’t she die in that train explosion?!”

“If Kiwi’s source is to be believed, then apparently not.”

“So she survived, somehow, high up in the mountains as a four year old human. I find that hard to believe.”

“My big brother took care of her. She’s the one who’s been causing the explosions up in the mountains.”

“But wait, wasn’t there another explosion this morning?”

Crud! They’re on to me!

“Uh- yeah there was, wasn’t there…”

Ted nodded.

“So Kiwi caused the explosion.”

“I did no such thing!”

Ned took a small piece of Red’s mutton leg and shared some with Ann, I think he likes her.

“So it’s great that Kiwi is starting to take after Boreas and all, but how are we going to find the rightful King of Thieves? We can’t exactly go calling her name.”

“King of Thieves? Wouldn’t she be Queen? Actually, isn’t there already a King of Thieves?”

“I don’t really feel like getting into it right now, it’s a whole thing.”

I’ve heard a little bit about the Thief Hierarchy, but I never really understood it. Either way that’s not what we’re here to talk about.

“Ned makes a good point; our only lead is a month old and just asking around would only draw attention. Any ideas on how to find her?”

They all sat back, clearly thinking hard. Ted spoke up first.

“Well, she is a thief right?”

“Yeah.”

“She is a Fulcreek.”

“Can’t see why she wouldn’t be.”

“She stole from my brother’s hoard a lot.”

We all vaguely agreed. Ted continued while gnawing on the bone of Red’s mutton leg.

“Then… wouldn’t she be robbing places?”

“Makes sense.”

“Fits her character.”

“It’s what her father would have done.”

“Her mother too.”

Having picked the bone clean, Ted started to wave it around like a grand staff to give his declaration more weight.

“So to find her, all we have to do is rob places and we’ll run into her naturally!”

Oh my Gods Ted…

“That’s absolutely BRILLIANT!”

“I can’t believe Ted came up with an idea that good…”

“This is pretty out of character for him isn’t it.”

“Come on guys give me a little credit!”

“But where do we start? There’s tons of places with decent coin to rob, she could be anywhere!”

“Well, Kiwi said that her last known location was Bexelleaf right? So how about we start there then work our way up to Ots?”

Red panicked a little at the mention of the Empire’s capital.

“Oh no way, I’m not going back to Ots. Not after last time. Why would she be going there anyways? They killed her dad didn’t they?”

Ann smacked Red’s head with her tail.

“Man up Red, it’s not like you’ll be killed. Besides, why wouldn’t the King-slash-Queen-slash-whatever of thieves be making her way towards where all her subjects are? Lots of money to steal in Ots too.”

Did I miss something with Red? He wasn’t so reluctant to go to Ots last time I saw him.

“What happened to Red?”

“Elves! Elves happened! I stumbled into an elven plot to start a civil war-”

This time Ned shut Red up.

“Dang Red! Are you trying to spill everyone’s secrets!”

You’d think that you wouldn’t get used to living next to a bloody thirsty monarch, but human adaptability surprises even myself.

My average day starts way earlier then I’d prefer, at an ungodly 10 in the morning. Around this time without fail, Marzi would come to my door and bang on it with the might of Zeus until I gave her the go ahead to enter my room. She’s not allowed to come in uninvited.

After I decide that despite my best efforts I can’t ignore Marzi's door pounding, I climb out of my pile of furs and dress myself. Miss Igai, true to her word, had me fitted for clothes a month or two ago. Unfortunately, she just gave me about ten sets of the same thing. A black dress shirt, baggy pants with lots of pockets, and a lab coat. They gave me two sets of new boots as well, Although my rock is still in the fire book.

“Alright Marzi, you can come in now.”

Marzi walks in to start her duties while I continue with my morning routine.

“I keep telling you Julie, wake up earlier. Miss Igai’s gonna start to complain to me about you always being late.”

“It’s ten in the morning! It’s still the middle of the night! In what world is that late?!”

“Julie the sun is in the sky.”

“You can’t prove that, this room doesn’t have windows.”

As I brush my teeth and collect my notes, Marzi straightens the place up; moving any stray furs back to the pile, sweeping up any trash I neglected to properly dispose of, and scrubbing equations off the walls. Well, only the equations I’ve marked for her to scrub away. I’m still workshopping a few of them.

“Alright, to my workshop. I’ve got a few new ideas that I may need you to test Marzi.”

Test subjects are always hard to come by. Now that I have a quasi-immortal working for me, I can pay less credence to ‘work safety regulations’. Man, some of the stuff I have planned would make J just run away in terror.

I wonder how J’s doing, he’s gotta have a new arm by now right?

“Actually Julie, you have a different agenda today.”

“Excuse me wha?”

Marzi smiled, seemingly happy that I won’t be blowing her up today.

“The Fairy king is arriving today to necessitate better diplomatic relations between our nation states. His Majesty wants to start a campaign against the Elven Councils of Isera in the coming years, and doing so would be extremely difficult if we, to quote his words, ‘had a bunch of fairies begging for attention the whole time’. In hopes of preventing any accidents that would disturb negotiations, he has temporarily suspended all engineering projects. Basically, His Majesty doesn’t want some a-wall magic engineer screwing things up.”

Why is she looking pointedly at me when she says that? I have never ruined a deal in my life with my amazing inventions. My last life doesn’t count, I’ve grown since then.

“So why are you telling me about this now? I had some big tests planned today and I had the railgun warming up all night.”

“I told you a week ago, and two days ago, and as well as yesterday. I honestly don’t think you listen to me.”

“I listen to you plenty.”

“Really?”

Marzi’s voice was thick with doubt.

“Then what’s on your agenda today? I told you yesterday.”

“Uhhhhhhhh...My schedule today involves… uh… AH! Before we do whatever it is on my schedule that I definitely know about, I have to go discharge the railgun!”

Totally saved that.

“You didn’t answer the question.”

“The question can wait, the railgun might explode if I leave it charged for too long.”

“But didn’t you just say you left it charging overnight? If it was that dangerous why did you leave it unsupervised?!”

Marzi’s panic was understandable, she’s held a few of my babies as they’ve catastrophically failed before, and they just had to charge for a few seconds.

The answer to that question was the same as most questions people don’t understand. Magnets. Like, do we really know how magnets work? I’ve never made a railgun before, mostly focusing on plasma weaponry, so this is my first foray into magnet...ology? Magnology? Mangalia? Anyways, my first thought was to just use electromagnets for propulsion of the plasma payload, only to remember that I’m not working with electricity anymore, We’re in magic land now. And let me tell you, magic is NOT a proper substitute for electricity.

So my next thought was to use the magic to turn generators which would make electricity which would power the magnets. When that got so bulky I couldn’t even carry it, I decided to try cutting out the middleman and just turn magic into electricity then power the magnets with that. When Marzi almost died of electrocution, I decided to just try and make magic magnets. The downside to that is that not only do I have to charge magic for the payload, I also have to charge magic for the magnets and those magic magnets are not cheap. Plus they barely work, I still have tons of fine-tuning to do.

Anyways, the prototype railgun takes a metric tonne of magic and if I don’t safely discharge it, I won’t have a workshop anymore.

“Well, leaving it charging overnight isn’t that big an issue, I put a shit load of energy crystals on it, but leaving it charging for longer than that could cause problems. My agenda can wait until then.”

Marzi and I briskly walk out of my room, Marzi locking it behind us. My first observation of this castle still stands, it’s fucking massive, but after having spent a month or two here, I vaguely know where I am in relation to everything.

I follow my now usual path as I make my way towards the courtyard where the Magic Engineer Building was banished to. We’d call it the M.E. building, but the Military Enforcement Department is a thing and they’d beat us up if we stole their name. So we affectionately refer to it as ‘the Warehouse’, even though we have actual warehouses next to it to stockpile all the crap we make. Look, we're engineers not linguists.

Speaking of ‘we’, the other engineers at this castle are pretty cool. Everyone was pretty accepting of me and my revolutionary ideas. Well, everyone except those fuckers working on the semi-automated armor. It’s just a worse version of the robot suits the mecha department was working on in my old life and god are they snotty.

They have it in their heads that their armor is the absolute best thing in the world, even though my plasma weapons are literally 100 times better in every way. Speaking of my weapons…

“Hey Marzi, since we’re here already, and the prototype’s been charging all night, why not get a few tests in? See if those magnets really work.”

Marzi, who was about to unlock the Warehouse door, pauses for a moment and sighs.

“Julie, please tell me you didn’t make up the fact that your prototype would explode horribly just to lure me out here to get me to blow myself up for your sick amusement.”

I’m sensing some hostility here.

“No it will actually explode and probably kill us if we don’t hurry, and I do not take sick pleasure in seeing you get hurt.”

Marzi and I walked in and toward my workshop. The inside of the Warehouse was basically a huge complex of storage units, each one some schmuck's personal workshop. Each row of storage units was two units high, with stairs up to the walkways above appearing at every corner. At the west wall of the Warehouse was the testing area, a heavily reinforced box specifically made to resist explosions. All tests of any device with an expected output greater than a toddler throwing a baseball had to be done in there, lest everyone’s workshop ceases to exist.

“Then why am I the only one in the testing box while you’re safe behind half a foot of reinforced steel?”

As we walked past the workshop of the head engineer on the shit-armor project and saw that his door was open, Marzi and I stopped to do our daily ritual. Where-in we took out ink brushes we kept on us and drew phalluses on every exposed surface. It’s something that Marzi suggested when I made my dislike of these assholes known. Apparently she got the idea from when Daddy protested a rival gang here in Ots by drawing obscene pictures on everything they owned.

“Well someone has to pull the trigger. Tell you what, I’ll be inside the box next time.”

“I’d like that.”

I could tell we were at my workshop by the worrying glow coming from the second floor storage unit. Running up the stairs and inside I saw that my prototype was fully charged and that the energy crystals were still taking in magic. I quickly pulled a lever on the wall, cutting the flow of magic into the room. And just like that, we’re no longer in danger of violent combustion.

The energy crystals were still a little overcharged so I took a few minutes to fix that. I took the crystals off the housing and put them in a magic syphon, sucking out magic until the crystals weren’t overcharged. I decided not to put the crystals back on right now, as according to Marzi I’m not even supposed to be here right now.

I opened up one of my cabinets where I store my guns and energy crystals, and immediately noticed something wrong. Something very wrong.

“Hey Marzi?”

Marzi, who was waiting outside my workshop, as this is my sacred space that no one may defile, yelled back an answer.

“No Julie I won’t help you with any tests today, we have a big list of ceremonies that we technically have to be present for so hurry it up.”

“No Marzi I- Marzi, did you take one of my guns?”

“Those accursed things blow up in my hands seemingly every time I touch them, would I take any?”

“Marzi, some of my guns are missing. Are you sure you didn’t take any of them? I promise I won’t be mad if you did so please return them.”

I started to tear my workshop apart. Digging through old boxes, throwing papers around, flipping piles of shit upside-down looking for my guns. Having heard the noise, Marzi pokes her head through the doorway.

“Calm down, maybe you just misplaced them.”

“I DON’T MISPLACE MY BABIES MARZI!”

Suddenly, we head a clang echo below us. I run outside and lean over the railings to see some shady asshole covered head to toe in dark clothing scrambling to get on his feet. It looks like he fell off the second story walk way and onto the floor, maybe my shout startled him?

But what really caught my attention was the bag slung on his back, and one of my rifle barrels sticking out of it.

Fucker. You mother fucker. I ran back inside and grabbed the one rifle he didn’t take and jammed an energy crystal in it’s crystal housing. I rushed back outside while charging up the mechanisms in the rifle just in time to see him turn the corner towards the Warehouse’s back exit.

“Marzi! Double time to the south door!”

I jumped on Marzi’s back and pointed towards the gun-stealing-shit-nosed-fucker’s destination.

“I am not a horse Julie!”

“Your legs are longer than mine and you're faster than me! START RUNNING!”

Following my orders, my stallion sprinted down the stairs and towards the back exit, clearly running a little faster than she usually does. Maybe she’s using magic or something, I wouldn't know. Meanwhile I was scanning every inch of our surroundings with my rifle at the ready. I may not be as good a shot as my old coworkers, or even drunk-me, but I still hunted for my food up until a few months ago and unlike the jerry-rigged swords I used to use, my new rifle was a proper one with real iron-sights.

Whoever decided to steal my babies wasn’t as familiar with the Warehouse's layout as we were, because even though he had a head start on us, we both turned the corner onto the hallway towards the exit at the same time.

With the scum of the earth in my sights, I aimed my rifle and started spamming the trigger. It’s not good for the rifle, but my guns are capable of rapid-fire. The markings adorning my rifle lit up and smoked and the magic formed multiple bolts of dark red plasma in rapid succession. The bolts rocketed towards the fucker who’s face seemed to fill with terror. I don’t actually know becuase his stupid face was coverd by his hood, but it looked like he was pretty scared.

In a vain attempt to escape his doom, he quickly conjured blue barriers eerily similar to Alice’s, as he ran towards the exit. The barriers cracked and shattered as the bolts collided with them, dissipating and letting the latter bolts by without trouble. The remaining bolts slammed into the thief’s back and left leg, a loud *CRACK* echoing throughout the Warehouse as he was covered by two red flashes of light. When the light receded, the thief was on the ground. His wails of agony audible.

Getting off of Marzi who ran next to the fuck-theif, I quickly grabbed the bag with my guns, took out a fresh pistol, and slid the bag across the hall and out of his reach. I kind of expected this, but my rifle was overheating, smoke still billowing off it’s barrel. I handed it to Marzi after slamming the rifle’s butt into the guy's face, breaking the camel's back and knocking him out.

“Now lets see who tried to steal my life’s work.”

I crouched down and pulled off his hood.

“...An elf…”

“Yep, that’s an elf.”

It was an elf, one I hadn’t seen before. Elves weren’t common in Ots as the Empire really didn’t like the Elven Council of Isera. I still saw one every once in a while, but outside of those rare occasions the only elf I see during the average week is Alice.

“Marzi do you know if we have any new elven engineers in the castle?”

Marzi shook her head.

“...We should probably tell someone about this.”