Hunter Or Huntress

“Well shit,” Tom mumbled to himself as he lay there staring at the wooden ceiling, Jacky snoring at his side. “I guess the dreams are sticking around a bit longer then… huuuhr god dammit.”

It had been one hell of a dream, so vivid and lifelike, and he could remember it perfectly. Even so, he did grab his little notebook from the nightstand and start jotting down some details just in case they came in useful. They would help him remember. It was like some episodic series “The Fucked Up Life of an Inquisitor… Joy of joys,” he muttered to himself as he tried to recall, which was not tricky in the slightest, unlike dreams he had before Joelina went spelunking in his brain.

The courtyard, the dragons, faces, names… He remembered it all. So it all got documented in a notebook that he would most certainly not be sharing with Paulin or even discussing with anyone. Even telling Jacky ran the risk of that damn spy Paulin overhearing. It had been bad enough when it was just Kokashi listening in to sate Essy’s appetite for knowing how and what everyone was doing.

“Uuurg, fine, time to get going,” he complained to himself as he finished his write-up. Gently he removed the blanket, trying not to wake Jacky just yet, and sat up on the bed, doing a slight stretch. She grumped a little but other than that didn’t seem bothered. That would likely change once she started getting cold under there.

He rubbed his eyes and yawned, feeling a shiver run down his spine as he got up, grabbing the chamber pot to relieve himself. “Running water, you will be a godsend,” he mumbled before setting it down and putting the lid on it. He would take it down once they went for their little morning exercise routine… If they even would today.

He walked to the window and opened the wooden shutter a little, letting the cold wind buffet his face together with a smattering of rain droplets splashing off the window sills. “Still raining. Still windy. Not as bad though… I’m guessing they’ll be fine at least… But I ain’t getting Jacky out in that without a really nice carrot on a stick. Oh well,” Tom mumbled to himself as he felt his sleepy self slowly get brought kicking and screaming into proper wakefulness by the cold water.

‘Right so, sit-rep. Saph, Fengi, and Yldril are out in the rain, not much to do there. Inquisition working away down below. We’ve got a whole stack to go through, and they’ll probably be getting another vault open any day now. Even if it does take longer when you don’t feel like blowing the hinges off. We have a swamped building site and no pumps to clear it, so all the nails and brackets we have made are useless for now. Winter is coming, but we’re at least ready for that, or we will be once we get our shopping list back. Shotguns are nearly rolled out, but we’re stuck making stuff for a warehouse so we can scramble to put it together if the water clears. Rifles are next. I need to finish drawing those up. We’ll make them through winter, then that’s that for weapons, for now… Well perhaps some better grenades, but that can wait. Then they can’t reasonably ask for anything more. Christmas needs to be celebrated too, stuff will need to be made for that, but that comes later. Dakota wants to take us training, but then the storm happened… Maybe we are just gonna need tomorrow off as well. That would be a shame now, wouldn’t it?... I also kinda want to go fishing… hmm…’

‘For now, today is a weekend, no training with Dakota. Rachuck might try and get some hours in, but I would rather not. So what should I do?...’ he shuttered the window again to ponder to himself, sitting down by the small table and rubbing his bearded chin a bit. “Kinda funny Paulin hasn’t even objected to the whole ‘days off’ idea, at least not where I could hear it. No way she’s not hating this. Unless she has something she wants to do today? What would she even spend the day on? Nah, who am I kidding, she’ll be spending the day spying on everyone to work out who she likes and who she doesn’t… Yeah, that would make sense now wouldn’t it?” he mumbled as he glanced over the drawings strewn over the table and the shut-down laptop.

‘Do I wanna just relax for a day? I’ve done plenty of that though, and with winter will have oceans of free time by the sounds of it… No fuck it, I’m grabbing Edita. I want to know how all this crazy anti-grav stuff actually works. And that weird cold steam stuff… The keep could really use central heating, maybe just use regular water steam though. Kinda defeats the point if the radiators are cold… else it sounds like we would need really high-pressure pipes. Yeah, that ain’t happening. How the hell does that even work? Do you just vent the ice cold steam after you’re done with it? Steam cools when it expands after all. This stuff might even make a cryo gun or something…’

‘And is it just wasted? Edita was talking about rituals and frost powder. Doesn’t sound like something you want to just vent… but a condenser won’t work unless you can somehow cool the spent steam down to minus whatever the fuck… magic heat exchanger maybe? But that would need to be powered. No such thing as free energy, even with magic by the sounds of it.’

‘And surely the expansion wouldn’t sap enough heat to condense it either, even if it did that would lead to vacuum in the cylinder, not exactly optimal…’ Tom let out a groan, grabbing his hair and resting on his elbows as he tried to come to terms with whatever fuckery this stuff was. “Now I know how Edita feels about the laptop and plastics… Urhg… Right, no. No use theory crafting, just ask the damn woman. So for now, keep central heating using old fashioned steam.’

‘So have the heat come from the forge, and have some kind of engine work as the pump too. But we’re mostly out of space down there. Can’t really just put in a steam engine and boiler. Well, maybe a little one. Enough to drive the lathe and mill perhaps, use the waste heat to heat the keep somewhat. They would love that… Ooor. Maybe convert a storage room a level further down into the boiler room. Would just need to work out how to connect up the chimneys somehow.'

‘I need pipe to do that though… Both hot gas and water pipes. High and low pressure. That means either cast iron or we need to start rolling plate. The factory would need a plate roller, but ain’t no way we’re fitting one in here… Cast it is, I guess. Iron is the cheapest metal they have after all. Well, second to lead… I guess. High temp and lead pipes is not something I’m messing with though. If we do make cast iron pipes, it would be in segments… How do we join them? Can’t just braze it. We would need threaded joints. Oh that is going to be hell to make on any sort of scale. We can't cast that so we need to cut it, which means making thread-cutting tools able to chew through cast iron… god dammit, I guess maybe that adamantine stuff would be useful for that.'

“Anyhow, to work. Better to worry about what I can do something about for now,” he sighed to himself as he turned in the chair to face the desk, scratching the back of his neck.

“Right, where were we? Yes, caliber choice. No need for necked-down rounds, we’ve got chamber pressure for days. Single shot for now at least and sticking with 45 caliber straight wall since it’s easier to make… gonna need new bullets though. Don’t want the old flatnose ones for the Marlin… Urgh that would mean designing a new bullet. I know jack and shit about that… I wonder if something else might fit?’ he pondered to himself, getting out the laptop to do a quick search through the old manuals he had. Nothing useful seemed to pop up. Most 45 caliber as it turned out was either for pistols, or old as balls rifles much like his Marlin lever gun. And it wasn’t like he had google to narrow down some handbuilt monstrosity, likely from Texas or something. Sharing calibers was a bit of a moot point anyway the pointy bullets of what he wanted might just set off the whole magazine tube on his gun when fired, or if he dropped it. And he would want more pressure than it could handle anyway. Actually, it sounded like an accident waiting to happen.

After some more searching for something at least close to wha he had, he was left disappointed, though it did highlight another slight problem with his plan. Making a long slender 45 caliber bullet would put it within spitting distance of something like 50 BMG from the heavy machine gun. That was far, far too heavy a bullet to be using for any of this. And if he wanted a rifle that big for killing dragons or some kind of dangerous game perhaps, he would just use the damn 50 BMG they already had tools to make.

“So either stick with something like the 45/70 from the Marlin and don’t worry about it, or go with a lower caliber faster round… urgh, decisions decisions. We want it putting holes in armor first and foremost. And mithril is a light, strong, and tough bastard, not to speak of that magic that messes with inertia. They can probably strengthen the metal too with it somehow… So .30 cal then. It’s the most common caliber for a reason, universal incarnate. Use straight walls and rely on the flash to get the pressure of a spitzer round like 308. Much easier to make and no need for filler, just a bit of messing around with case length… I really would want something that could measure the chamber pressure or at least just the muzzle velocity for getting rifling right though. Oh why didn’t I bring a chronograph?” Tom sighed, leaning back in the chair and cursing the fact he hadn’t just brought every scientific instrument he could think of and reasonably afford.

‘Might need to ask Edita if she has any good ideas on that one. Otherwise, make one and keep test shooting until the fucker at least doesn’t keyhole or wobbles too bad. Don’t need to be perfect the first time around after all. A good guess should see us close enough.’

__________________________________________________________________________________

The weather hadn’t suddenly turned into a sunny summer’s day, but it had gotten a bit better as the sun climbed lazily behind the cloud cover. The rain was still falling, though it was no longer the torrential downpour of yesterday evening and the wind had indeed died down considerably. It was still bitingly uncomfortable, but if they kept moving they could just about keep their fingers from freezing off in this sort of weather.

Trusting that the weather would carry on the trend they had delayed setting off on the scouting flights to instead see about what they could do to fix the broken bits of harness and scattered logs laying about the place.

Yldril had been able to get the logs all gathered up in one place once more, walking with wings outstretched the whole time to give Fengi and Saph cover from the rain as they worked with the chains, straps, and ropes.

The wind still buffeted the dragon from time to time, knocking her off balance. One time she even fell over completely, which of course led to no end of complaining, but neither Saph nor Fengi felt like getting any more wet than necessary before having to go fly in the autumn rain. The logs were all soaked, so Kalestine’s hard work had been for nothing on this whole load.

“They aren’t going to be happy back home are they?” Fengi questioned, kicking a wet log a little.

“I’m the one who’s pissed, fucking Raulf and his damn weather magic. What’s the point if you can’t trust it?”

“I don’t know. Let’s just get this home… Today was supposed to be a day off after all.”

“Oh, I am taking tomorrow off too if we make it home today, and the day after that. I don’t give a damn thing what they think. They can send Jarix or bribe Glira once she gets back if they are in such a hurry.”

Fengi looked about to say something before Saph brought up Jarix and Glira. “Yeah, hear that, Yldril? A few days off. It’s not like we can work on the warehouse anyway with all this water. I’m sure it’s looking like a lake right about now.”

“Thank the gods above, wouldn’t want to do it all over… Oh wait,” Yldril replied darkly, glaring at the bundle of logs. “Are you about done with that?”

“It’s only two of us, give us a damn minute here,” Saph grumbled, getting back to wrapping rope around the end of the log Yldril had perched so it had an end sticking into the air. “Keeps aren’t built in a day after all.”

“Well you better get this done in a day.”

“You know, once we get home we’ll be in for a warm meal and a warm bed too. We aren’t being slow because we want to.”

“No, you’re being slow because you suck at this. Hurry up,” Yldril snarled, annoyed, before a gust of wind nearly knocked her off balance again. “Stupid fucking weather!”

“We’re huntresses, not loggers. And keep the wind off us please,” Fengi pleaded Yldril, groaning as she leaned into the wind before a massive wing came down to touch the ground between them and the wind. “Thank you very much.”

Yldril didn’t respond, instead just grumbling angrily and looking around the landscape. With the field repairs complete they finally managed to get her hooked up to what was left. Staling for time a little longer to let the weather clear a bit more, Saph and Fengi had rebuilt their shelter on Yldril’s back. Though this time they had rigged additional straps for them to hang onto between the spines on her back. Handrails if you would.

Finally out of excuses, The two dragonettes had taken to the skies together to scout out the path home, looking for any landmarks they could find. They had flown these areas for years, over a decade in Saph’s case so they know plenty of interesting spots.

“Isn’t that hornlake ever there?” Saph shouted out over the wind, pointing at a shimmering bit of water inlaid between the rolling hills and surrounded by a few trees. If one looked at it from above it did look a bit like a horn… if there was something wrong with you that is.

“Yeah, let’s find Tritop. Has to be that way, right?” Fengi replied, pointing along the valley of the hills the lake was nestled in. Saph nodded in agreement and the two set about following the valley until it led into three soft hilltops, each one a bit bigger than the last.

“There it is!” Saph shouted out, seeing it first as she was in the lead breaking the wind for Fengi.

“Great! We’re going that way then!” Fengi replied, pointing left towards where the keep would have to be.

Saph replied with a thumbs up held high up so Fengi could see before the two of them banked into a turn heading back towards Yldril. They would luckily be flying with the wind heading back, which also meant less water pummeling them as they went along. Flying helped with keeping warm, but Saph could already feel her wings going numb.

Linkosta had once gone on in great detail about how blood was cut from the wing membranes when you were cold to help keep warm and how that was perfectly natural. That didn’t make it any comfier though. Visibility still wasn’t great, but at least they were used to seeing the terrain from up here as opposed to on the ground.

“Let’s get back down in a hurry,” Saph shouted out as they made good speed through the rain.

“Yeah, I feel like my digits are freezing off,” Fengi echoed. Clearly the smaller woman was suffering even more than Saph was right now. They hadn’t gone far, so finding Yldril shouldn’t be that hard. Fengi had told her to sit down before they left so she didn’t just wander off on them too. Just in case.

It was a brief search as they came back down to an impatient-looking dragon, who was more than ready to get a move on. Saph even caught an actual sigh of relief when Fengi answered in the affirmative to whether or not they had worked out which way they were going.

And so they set off, with what they had been able to save in tow. A lot of the smaller branches, sticks and twigs were left behind, not worth the effort. And the tarps were just rolled up and laid on top with the rest of it, rather than spread out to cover the logs. It was too late for them anyway. The small skid at the front had also been destroyed in the slide, meaning they were carving thick grooves in the ground behind them almost like when Jarix was plowing. And it showed. Yldril was straining far more against her patched up harness just to move the logs along on level ground.

Sapphire didn’t feel any inclination towards trying to fix the problem though. The trip had been miserable, but not as bad as yesterday. The furs were at least mostly dry when they set out, Yldril having kept them under wing as the two girls scouted the way ahead.

Several more times Saph and Fengi had to go up to make sure they were on the right track, and they soon started taking turns doing it. The result was a little zigzaggy, and they had been far off track yesterday. If they had pushed on, they would have hit the edge long before they hit the keep. Today though they were making good progress. And Yldril seemed to have learned her lesson, even if she refused to admit it, taking the time to go around rather than over anything that looked too steep.

The dragon was also showing signs of the strain, taking a break every now and again, legs quivering slightly before she forced them to stop. ‘Stubborn to a fault,’ Saph sighed to herself as she felt Yldril tremble for but a moment, for once feeling a touch sorry for the dragon. The feeling soon vanished as the next string of complaining began. About how stupid this idea had been. How incredibly useless whoever had planned it all was. How she was going to bury Raulf somewhere no one would ever find him, and how everyone including the gods were to blame for how miserable this all was.

Saph did have to concur about the planning part. This had all been a stupid idea to try and get things done sooner. For the future she would only support flying the logs back, damn it if they would need to do many times more flights and wait until Yldril’s wings could be trusted. If nothing else, they could just set Jarix to it too. He could carry a few of these logs lashed to his sides surely. Yldril certainly could once she was flight worthy again.

‘You live and you learn I guess… What a shitty way to learn though.’

__________________________________________________________________________________

Back at the keep, Tom had spent the morning working on ideas for the rifle now that he at least had some idea what it was supposed to be firing. The design was nothing fancy at all, quite the opposite in fact. About as bargain basement simple as one could make a rifle really. A barrel, a bolt, a simple trigger, some sights, and a stock. The problem would be the ammunition, but that was a bridge he would cross when he came to it. He had mostly agreed with himself by now that the rifle ammo should be in .30 caliber with a straight-walled cartridge though. Then he would just have to see if his boom powder mix could make it go fast enough. If not, a longer case was always an option.

With a fast round and perhaps even with a steel core, it should be capable of dealing with even magically enhanced Mithril plate armor from his experience. Though that should of course be tested at some point. The action might be worth thinking about too. Who was to say a bolt action was the smartest option? He knew that older breech loaders had often been block drop, rolling block, or even trapdoor. What he didn’t know was which one could both survive the pressure he wanted and be the easiest to make. The falling block had less lathe work than any of the other options, and he had seen an old Martini-Henry rifle a while back at a museum. It was almost a little too ironic to give the Bizmati redtails a redcoat gun though. He guessed there was the American Sharps, which were pretty similar as far as he knew. Both would need to be scaled down to take 30 caliber rounds for his use, rather than those big old black powder rounds they had been designed for. There was also the Remington rolling block guns he had seen at the Danish armory museum. He knew some of those were converted to smokeless and kept in service, likely longer than had been a good idea in true Danish fashion. But if it could handle smokeless it would probably survive what he had planned.

His work was interrupted by a grump over from the bed as Jacky turned over to grab at where he used to lay. “Someone’s gotten cold I see,” he snickered, getting up and bringing the chair along as he sat down next to the bed.

“Morning, sleepy head.”

There was no meaningful response, Jacky instead just rolling back to where she had come from, laying on her side facing him on his little chair. She had also developed a very annoyed look, almost snarling in fact.

“Oh someone isn’t happy the hot rock is gone,” Tom gave her a poke on the shoulder to see what that would do. She rocked back and forth a little but aside from that there wasn’t much reaction.

“Come now, give a me a bit more than that,” he chuckled as he tried again to the same effect.

But his pleas were met with nothing save for Jacky pulling the blanket up a bit further and tighter before deciding to lick her chops in her sleep. Tom took his chance and grabbed the tip of her tongue and gave it a bit of a yank before letting go like a pull start lawnmover. That did the trick as her eyes shot open and her head snapped up, looking around in confusion.

“Whaaa?”

“Brum, bre, brumb brum,” Tom let out in his best Briggs and Stratton impression, doing his best to remain serious.

Jacky’s head turned to him slowly, eyes narrow with suspicion as Tom did his best to look perfectly innocent, still trying to sound like an idling lawnmower.

“Did you just… Do something funny?”

“No no, I’m unable. Engineers don’t know what a joke is you see.”

Her eyes narrowed even further till they were but slits and they settled into a staring contest.

“Right, come here!” she finally broke out, Tom scrambling to his feet.

“Braaaaaaaa!” he shouted out, sending the chair flying in his exuberance to get off the line and away from Jacky, who was still struggling with the blanket.

Tom did consider going for the door, but since Jacky wasn’t really wearing much he decided the door should probably remain closed, leaving just the far side of the rather small room. In a few bounding steps he made it to the far wall and turned back to face his fate. Jacky had managed to stand up on the bed, throwing the troublesome blanket off.

“I can taste your salty ass. Should I take the fingers? Or perhaps just retaliate?” she questioned as she walked to the edge of the bed before hopping down, landing on the floor with grace, double-jointed legs absorbing the hit like a Rolls-Royce’s suspension.

“I plead innocence!”

“You are anything but innocent,” she growled, baring her teeth as she stalked forward. There wasn’t really much space on either side of her to get past, and Jacky wasn’t exactly slow on her feet… but she had just gotten up.

Tom took his chance and tried to dart left before juking right, trying his level best to see if he could get around her. Jacky fell for it, lunging left with her arms outstretched before planting a foot in front of her, trying to wheel back about.

“Hah, got yo-” Tom got out just as his right foot snagged on Jacky’s outstretched tail.

He promptly stumbled to the floor like a drunk idiot, and by the time he was back up onto his knees Jacky’s arms were wrapped around his waist and he was hauled into the air, kicking and writhing as she licked him in the ear.

“I taste you. I know who is to blame now.”

“Let me go you foul woman. I’ve done nothing wrong,” Tom protested as he tried to kick and flail to get free, with predictably little effect. When he finally gave up, Jacky threw him onto the bed and tossed the blanket over him afterward, blinding him.

Not quite sure what she had planned, Tom looked for the edge of the blanket as he heard her call out “Cannonball!”

He immediately threw himself to the mattress and covered his head, expecting an impact at any moment. Jacky was kind enough to give him a few seconds to duck before jumping. But she still came down rather hard on his back, even despite the lower gravity. It didn’t hurt much, but Tom still let out an involuntary groan before he started struggling once more to get out from under the blanket. Jacky now, lying on top of him

He couldn’t see anything, so it was more of a token effort that soon had him pinned down under Jacky, who had decided wrestling practice was in order. Though he did manage to stick his head out from under the cloth bed sheet, though more so by accident than any skill on his part.

“Oi! Fat ass, get off!” Tom laughed out as Jacky froze.

Tom continued to struggle, for a while longer snickering all the while. “What, do you give up? I’m not out yet.” Then he noticed the open door, a staring Edita standing there looking more like the dragonette embodiment of a question mark than the horrified or perhaps abashed expression Tom would have expected from anyone else walking in on this.

“Is this some sort of training against attack by assassins? I can assure you the Inquisition has no wish to see you killed in the night,” the artificer tried, with what Tom guessed was the only reasonable explanation the woman could come up with.

Tom just stared, Jacky throwing a quick glance down at herself before looking back to Edita with a strained smile. “In future, we tend to knock first.”

“Oh I know, I thought something was wrong… Everything is perfectly fine then? I do not need to fetch the others?”

“Nooo, no no no,” Jacky quickly scrambled off of Tom, waving her hands in front of her. “Everything is just dandy.”

“Oh… Okay… Do we have to do anything today?” Edita then questioned, looking to Tom, who was lying on his chest and trying to look up at her, with just his head sticking out from under the sheets.

“Only what we want to… I might have some questions for you. But I’m sure I’ll catch you in the forge or some such later. For now I guess… Go have some fun?”

“I see,” she replied cautiously, like she wasn’t ready for that consideration. “I- I will think of something. I know several games, perhaps Ray and the children would find them entertaining.”

“That sounds like a brilliant idea,” Tom replied, quite pleased her idea of fun didn’t seem to be making something go boom, like Tink or Twitch.

“Thank you. I will see you later. You may come to me at any time,” the now rather excited looking artificer replied before turning to leave, thankfully closing the door behind her.

“You know, you really should have locked that,” Tom said after staring at the door for a little, honestly finding it all rather funny.

“I did,” Jacky replied, staring at the door.

“Ahr… Right, where were we?”

“Here!” And Tom promptly had his face smashed with a pillow.