"Cato, I would like to talk with you," the commander said after the meeting concluded.

"Yes?" What was this going to be about now? Once the council had left to make use of their invitation to the kitchen's dinner serving, Michi waved away the guards and relaxed. "Your Fukas drive a hard bargain. "

"They're not my Fukas," Cato clarified, "I really have nothing to do with them. "

"Oh? So how did you come to follow them south? I thought there were no more humans north of Ode's Corridor," Michi thanked the soldier who brought him two plates of sandwiches. Actual honest sandwiches with crunchy lettuce-like vegetables and strips of meat. Cato could almost cry to see just bread again.

"Actually I woke up in the forest near their village. I don't even know how I got there and what happened to me," Cato took a bite and immediately choked. The bread was so spicy! The powdered spice inside the crispy crust puffed into his throat the moment he bit down on it and Cato could almost feel it coming out of his nose. He could barely pay attention to the salty meaty taste it had, not with tears leaking out of his nose.

Michi laughed at Cato's reaction, "never had pepper powder before? They make plain old bread so much more interesting. "

"It's... quite energetic," Cato pretended to think of a word, glad for any excuse to leave the downright dangerous sandwich on his plate without seeming rude.

"Get him one without pepper," Michi said to the soldier. He nodded and took away the sandwich.

"You should look into using that powder against the monsters. I'm sure they'll leave you alone after a taste or two," Cato coughed out enough powder that his mouth and nose didn't feel like they were on fire anymore.

"I wish it was that easy," Michi sighed and put down his sandwich, "the monsters are a huge problem. Your Elka told me you had some interesting ideas, perhaps you could give us one or two?"

Cato sighed again. This misunderstanding was getting quite out of hand. "No one belongs to me!" he snapped, "you really have to work on that!"

"Seriously?" Michi said, "Well, that complicates matters. I was hoping to get you as their leader. "

"What?! There's no way they would accept me," Cato shook his head, "half of them hate me enough already. "

"Then how do the Fukas make decisions? Don't they need a leader?"

"You just talked to the leaders," Cato sighed. Did this commander just negotiate with the Fuka council thinking they were just Cato's pawns?! The very thought was preposterous.

"Hm," Michi leaned forward suddenly, putting on a serious face, "I made that deal on the assumption that you were their leader. Since that was not the case, I think I want something more. And frankly speaking," his tone became low and dangerous, "it's clear who holds all the cards at this table. "

"What do you want?" Cato asked. That might or might not be a bluff, Michi might or might not be the sort of person who could casually threaten the lives of an entire village. Cato thought that Michi wasn't although he wasn't going to take too many liberties with that assumption.

"You see, I was quite impressed when the Elka mentioned how you killed the tremor without magic," Michi said, "I want what's in there. " He pointed at Cato's head. "Specifically, your ideas. Hopefully you'll do better. "

Better than what? Cato wondered.

A guard walked up to the commander and whispered in his ear. The commander sighed and got up. "Looks like you don't get food after all, Cato," he said, silently apologizing to the soldier who had just returned with a freshly prepared sandwich. "The Fukas seem to have visitors and they're definitely yours this time. "

"Danine?!" Cato exclaimed, "what are you doing here?"

Danine and Toal were herded into the small side room with two soldiers standing guard outside and Michi watching with a look of amusement.

"I was following this blacksmith on his fool's errand! Ah... I'm sorry I couldn't keep him out of trouble," she bowed in apology.

"Says the little girl who almost cried when the soldiers brought us in," Toal said.

Danine scrubbed her face hurriedly and scowled, "I was not crying!"

Cato massaged his forehead. What in the world was going on here? "Toal? What are you doing here?"

"Well, I wanted to see what was inside the fort. Ka couldn't describe anything and we're all curious. "

Ah right, he just wanted a story to boast about. Right. Just like Toal to get seized by the Inath soldiers while he was at it.

"So what's this about you bringing some Fuka-only food?" he asked.

"An excuse," Toal said.

"A poor excuse, you mean," Danine said.

"Which you ruined by saying it was meant for Cato. "

"That's enough," Cato cut in, "whatever the reason, I don't think Michi here will be very happy if you just come barging in. " He turned to Michi, "will the Fukas be able to visit? They could try to trade with your soldiers. "

"I will allow limited visits," Michi nodded, "well then, Nais will show you out. Remember that I still want those ideas. Maybe you can think of something that will make fighting ten thousand zombies with six hundred soldiers a bit easier. If not, you have three weeks. "

Cato sighed. It wasn't like ideas grew on trees.

Or perhaps they did.

Cato was walking behind Nais, eyeing the crossbow that Toal had hooked to his belt. The blacksmith kept it near him in case he ever saw a potential hunting target.

It was right at that time when the idea came flying out of the sky. A wooden training spear came flying down from the wall, no doubt knocked loose from the training battle the soldiers were still having. Instead of stepping aside, Nais simply raised a hand and there was a sense of the same invisible object that Cato could 'see' all along the walls.

The spear slowed to a halt. In empty air. No, not empty air, it was embedded in a cube of something that was suspended in the air.

"Was that magic? Inath magic?" Danine whispered.

Nais plucked the spear out of the air, "just a simple shield. What's the point if you can't show off a little right?" she winked at Danine.

Oh. So that was what all those invisible things were. They were magic. Somehow Cato had expected them to be a little more flashy than just invisible bits hanging in the air and on objects.

"Your magic can move things?" Cato asked, "I thought it was all just generic magic bolts. "

Certainly what he had heard of it from Tulore seemed to be like that. Cato had expected to see coloured magic bolts and fireballs.

"Well, those exist too," Nais said, "but that's just basic stuff. Won't keep you alive in a fight. "

"I suppose all those things on your walls and armour are also magic?"

"Mhm," Nais nodded, "without alchemy enchantments, there's no way we could have survived these monster attacks. "

Alchemy hm. She was probably referring to the way the magic seemed to be stuck on to the objects. Cato was pretty sure the ones on the armour and weapons moved with the objects.

Huh. That was an idea.

"Say, Toal, show her the crossbow I had you make," Cato said.

Toal looked at him curiously but did as he asked.

"A crossbow you call this? What does it do?" Nais asked, turning over the weapon curiously. She tugged at the string and raised an eyebrow, "actually, let me guess. It shoots arrows. "

"Yes, something like that," Cato said, "Since the tension is stored in the metal arms and the wooden block behind the arrow is locked into position, the crossbow can have a much higher draw weight and can maintain the draw without straining the archer. So you can aim better with this crossbow than with any normal bow. The problem with crossbows is that they are far too hard to draw. Only Toal is strong enough to draw a crossbow powerful enough to be of any use without a winch. I was thinking that it might be possible for your blacksmiths to build the winches, or at least a magical equivalent. "

"Hmm," Nais said dismissively, "if you think this weapon is good enough to impress the commander... I'm afraid not. While I could load the weapon by magic," she held the crossbow stock tightly with both hands, then the wooden block in the stock drew backwards under the magical force and locked into the firing position, "I might as well use the same magic to attack with. Archers trained with a bow can also fire much faster, and with magical arrows, can hit just as hard. "

Magical arrows huh. "What are these magical arrows? Do they fly faster?"

"Yes," Nais nodded.

"How does that work?" Cato asked, "I mean, does your magic push the arrow?"

Nais shrugged, "I can't explain well. While I know it uses the same sort of technique I used to draw the crossbow just now, magical arrows have some more complicated magic. There were problems with earlier attempts, I don't know the details. "

"How do you make the magic on your weapons if you don't understand them?!"

"Well, we all had to learn alchemy but I was never very good. We have an alchemist staying here though, we go to her for adjustments and new enchantments. She was responsible for making the archers' arrows work. I could introduce you but uh, she can be a bit... strange," Nais trailed off. "Oh, and whatever you do, do not let her test her ideas on you. "

"Power-wise, deflection will always beat deceleration," Tori said, "rather than absorb the force of an attack, you turn it aside. Why would you want to do the reverse?"

"Deflection has holes," Landar replied, "The standard accepted enchantment deflects the attacks in a fixed direction. While it's very good at protecting against objects approaching from half of the angles, it starts to fail more often if attacks approach from the other half. An object approaching fast enough from the wrong direction will go through a deflection enchantment without any loss of speed. "

"Who expects an attack from inside the body?" Tori said, "we always make the bad side face the body. "

Landar indicated her friend's elbow, "take this joint. The traditional deflection field here has a hole in the medial direction, towards the body. So while you are standing here, the hole is covered by your body, true. " She tapped the area on the part elbow facing her friend's hip.

Then she raised the arm into a traditional overhead guard position for swords. "Now you find that the weak point is exposed. What's more, when there's many projectiles flying around, you can find that some will bounce off your armour in just the wrong way. It's how Nightcryers still kill so many soldiers despite each battlemage being as magically strong as them. The leg joints are even worse, you know. "

"That's just good tactics," Tori shrugged, "you try to exploit these gaps while maintaining your shields. It's far easier said than done. "

"So that's why I want to use deceleration instead. It may cost more magic, but it's flawless. Or let me at least try to build a reactive defense. I should be able to vary the deflection by the angle of the attack better now. "

"I've let you try reactive defense the last two times," Tori rolled her eyes, "each time, I managed to go straight through the holes in less than two blows. I think simplest is best. And an attack on a deceleration shield can deplete the magic in the armour in just one hit and no one has the stamina to last through a long battle with one. "

Landar was going to reply but there was a knock on her door. She put down the piece of armour she was working on and made her way to the door.

"Alchemist?" Nais asked after knocking and the door opened to reveal a short woman wearing a heavy dress stained brown with burns and unknown substances. Her long black hair was tied up in a ponytail and stuffed down the back of her dress.

Something in her grey eyes was different, the way she looked at each of them quickly and sharply, resting for a moment on the ears and tail of the two Fukas. It reminded Cato of the scary secondary school teacher he had had, the eyes saw past your skin and seemed to look straight at you. He instinctively gulped and stood straighter.

"These are the Fukas?" the alchemist asked in a clear high voice and waved, "come in. Tori can make some tea. "

"Hey, don't just push the duty of hospitality onto me!" another woman said from further inside, "I've got to get this armour off, you do it yourself!"

Cato followed Nais through the door and stopped at the sheer mess that was obviously the alchemist's workshop.

There were more than just one or two tables. Almost every wall had a table, shelves nailed into the walls above. Every surface had something on it, from simple blocks of metal and wood to half-finished projects and bits of disassembled plate armour like the knights wore. Larger items were even kept on the floor under the table. A huge glass window frame was propped up against the corner, the insets half-empty and the stained glass panes stacked around it. One corner of the workshop wall contained a doorway into a tiny forge opened to the back of the building.

Practically everything was lit with magic. Some fuzzy clouds gathered around the glass window and pieces of armour, some more defined invisible objects set into or around the other items. The most obvious display was the other woman, or perhaps knight was a better word, standing in the center of the room disassembling her plate armour piece by piece. Every piece glowed with magic, down to the mail and leather below it.

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Danine nudged Cato and he stepped forward gingerly, trying not to touch anything. Who knew if pressing the wrong place on the table might set off some magical disaster that would result in everyone turning into chickens? While the enchantments on her table didn't glow with the same sun-like intensity of the ones on the fort's walls, the sheer density of everything made Cato jittery.

A better way to describe it would be like walking into an ammunition depot and finding it stuffed from floor to ceiling with high explosives.

Danine and Toal seemed to take his cue and followed studiously in his footsteps. Nais however, just stood in the center of the room and watched them with an amused look.

"It's not dangerous, come on," Nais said. She bent down and helped the knight with the back portion of the armour. The woman nodded her thanks and they neatly packed it away with an efficiency of well-worn practice.

The sound of utensils from the side room revealed the alchemist carrying a tray of clay mugs. She walked over to the largest table and looked for a clear space. Cato almost winced when she casually pushed aside a stack of unfinished magic.

"So?" the alchemist said, once they all had a mug of clear colourless tea. The smell was minty but it was still too hot for Cato to drink.

"He's Cato, these two Fukas are Danine and Toal," Nais introduced them, "Cato, the alchemist is Landar. This is her friend, Tori. She's a battlemage. "

"All right, do they need something? I'm sorry but I have my hands full with just these," Landar gestured at the room.

"Michi told him to think of an idea to help with the zombies," Nais explained, "I caught a training spear just now and he seemed to have an idea. I think maybe you two should talk. I'll show the Fukas around. "

"Sure, but-"

"Don't touch anything. Yes, we all know that," Tori nodded.

With that, Tori took Toal through to the back where he had expressed some interest in the forge. Cato made sure to snag the crossbow before they left. Landar pointed Danine towards the large glass window and fired up the lights for her. Nais showed the Fuka girl how the glow followed her finger as it touched the glass. The look of wonder in Danine's eyes was well worth the magic that would be spent by playing with it.

"I presume it has something to do with this?" Landar asked, indicating the crossbow with her mug.

"Yes. Our problem with the crossbow is that it is too hard to load. I know of a mechanism that could winch the string back but Toal can't make it. Maybe you can. I was also wondering if you could make a spell that would load the crossbow for us," Cato demonstrated how the string was to be pulled and handed the crossbow to Landar.

"Interesting idea. Nais would say that it's too slow and that magical arrows carry most of the attacking power instead of the bow. It'll never catch on. Yes?" Landar prodded and examined the bow's arm and string, sighting down the groove on the stock.

Cato nodded, "even so, bows take training to use correctly. I was thinking of somehow letting the Fukas use these. "

"Yeah, without magical training, this could be hard to draw," Landar closed her eyes and concentrated. The crossbow drew back in exactly the same manner as when Nais did it. "Takes quite a chunk of magic too. "

"So I had a different idea, but it depends on how your magical arrows work. Do you just make the spell push the arrow?"

"Of course not, a simple pushing spell will make your arrow fly. It won't make your arrow sit in your quiver until you shoot it, you need to make the spell stay there without using any magic," Landar sniffed, "That's why no one managed to make magical arrows before. How would a spell know when you wanted the arrow to fly?"

Cato considered the question and thought aloud, watching her reaction, "that depends on what a spell can detect. If you wanted an arrow to fly ten seconds after you took it out of the covers, then you need the pushing spell to detect light and be able to count ten seconds... although that would have problems at night. "

Landar stared at him, "where did you study magic?"

"I did not? I didn't even know what magic looked like until I saw the gate just now!"

"That thing you just did," Landar frowned at him, "that's from Rilanzar's fifth lecture on magical triggers for alchemy. Light triggers and their limitations. It's so obscure that I'm sure I'm the only person in this fort to know that. "

"Um?" That was weird. Wasn't it just common sense that if a spell detected light, it wouldn't work at night? At least without a torch. He said as much.

Landar looked at him for a long moment. Then a huge smile lit up her face. "You think so too? Selna above, I was so excited about that lecture and when I finally got to hear Rilanzar, I nearly fell asleep!"

Her eyes had lost their stern all-seeing quality and were practically shining. Well, not in the same way that Danine's sometimes actually did, but they might as well contain miniature stars by the sparkle in them. She put her mug down on the tray and dove under the table to look through the wooden crates containing old dusty things.

"I have an old project about these arrows that I want you to take a look at," she said when he asked, "maybe you have a fresh perspective... hm, I swear they were somewhere around here. "

Cato watched her root around for a while longer and decided to put away his misgivings about the magic. She really was causal with the magic and her workshop hadn't exploded yet, it should be safe enough.

"Can I help?" he asked.

"We never used any magical arrows until recently, for the simple reason that magical triggers are hard to get right," Landar chattered as she placed the arrow carefully onto a stone pedestal, taking care to line it up against the target at the other end of the courtyard.

They were in the small courtyard behind the workshop. The open air grassy area held a set of archery targets at the far end away from the forge area, which was covered by a roof. All three sides were walled off with a stone wall about a storey tall. Tori had picked up on Landar's excitement and collected everyone to watch. She stood far back though, all the way back at the wall of the workshop. The reason for that became abundantly clear later.

"The first attempts at magical arrows were the simplest and most dangerous," Landar passed a hand over the arrow, "simply fire the arrow out of a bow and the arrow will fly. It detects force applied. "

She took a rock from the round and knocked it against the end of the arrow. With a zip and crunch, the arrow was abruptly embedded into the target, all the way up to its feathers. Then Cato noticed the splinters of the shattered arrow falling out behind the target board. It had pierced through and hit the stone wall behind it, leaving only a shower of wood chips and the feathered stub hanging from the hole in the target.

Wait, wasn't that ridiculously dangerous?! Cato was quite sure that if that arrow had hit anyone, that person would be quite dead.

As if without any sense of danger, Landar had took up a whole bunch of arrows and built a small pile of them on the pedestal.

The hairs hardly had time to rise on his arm, much less for him to say anything, when she promptly struck the top arrow with the rock. There was a nasty whirring and the sound of a handful of arrows turning into wood chips. The entire pile of arrows had flown off, even scoring the stone pedestal as they had flown. Bits of wood shavings floated slowly to the ground.

"Um," Cato said gingerly, eyeing the box of arrows next to Landar, "let's not do that again. What just happened?"

"Simple, each arrow that flies would pull on the ones next to it, leading to all of them firing," Landar put down another arrow slowly, "it gets worse than this too. They had a tendency to fire when you dropped them too hard, or flicked them with a finger, or in one very fatal case, a bumpy wagon ride. You can imagine the accidents that come about when you have a quiver full of arrows on your back or at your waist. We used to store arrows pointing downwards in case they ever misfired. "

Uhuh. That sounded extremely unsafe. How had this madwoman not killed herself yet?

"You're looking at me like you're wondering how I'm still alive," Landar grinned, "I disable the enchantments before I store anything. They can't go off no matter what you do to them. In fact, that's exactly how my magical arrows work. They have no trigger. The battlemage using them simply enables the enchantment together with releasing the arrow in the bow and the magic goes off instantly. It takes only a little practice to get used to it. "

Huh. "Can you make a spell that disables and enables other spells?" Cato asked.

"Yeah, it could be a bit tricky but I could do it. But how does that spell know when to enable or disable the enchantment on the arrow?" Landar raised her hands, "it's the same problem all over again. "

Hmm. True that. Cato looked at the one arrow on the pedestal. How would he make sure an arrow only flew when it was fired out of a crossbow? He would have to describe what 'firing out a crossbow' meant.

Actually, you had to have a crossbow in order to fire one. What about the crossbow itself?

"Does the spell that enables and disables the magical arrows have to be on the arrows themselves?" Cato asked. It was starting to sound like he should just go learn magic then he wouldn't have to ask these questions.

"Oh... hmm..." Landar thought for a moment, then a smile crept onto her face. Cato could see she already saw the answer. "No, they don't have to be. They just have to touch. "

"Then put an enabling spell on the crossbow and ship disabled arrows. No more misfires. " Cato looked up from the arrow to see her eyes sparkling again.

"And this also solves your crossbow problem!" Landar added, "you don't need a powerful draw, just one strong enough to trigger the arrows, which can be set to fly at quite low force!"

"Or why even have a crossbow?" Cato fired back. There was a weird synergy between them but Cato was too caught up in the ideas bubbling up to notice.

"Yes, why indeed! Take the current magical arrows, have your 'crossbow' detect force applied to one spot on the handle to enable any enchantment placed in the groove. If there's an arrow in there, it flies. If there's not, nothing happens. Perfectly safe!" Landar spun around to the four others.

"I understood none of that," Tori said, "and I didn't fail alchemy like Nais did. Are you sure this is not going to turn out like one of your specials?"

"It doesn't matter, I'm going to make one whether you want one or not," Landar declared and marched over to the forge as if she was going to start right then. "This could be a major advancement in arrows! Who needs a bow?!"

"What's a 'special'?" Cato asked. He had a bad feeling about that.

"It's what we knights call it when Landar does something weird," Nais shrugged, "we don't really understand her sometimes. You do know she's known as the Mad Alchemist back in the Inath heartland?"

Actually no, Cato didn't. And looking at her glittering eyes and slightly crazy grin, he was starting to get a feeling that he might just have made a mistake. And that sheer energy was infectious, he could feel the crazy grin creeping onto his own face. A magic gun, that was what essentially the idea boiled down to. A magic gun! He had been in this world barely three weeks and he already helped invent a gun. With magic!

"Feh, you guys are such killjoys," Landar complained while hunting around for a hammer and charcoal. Apparently she really was going to fire up the forge and get to work immediately.

"Wait, before you start building these things," Cato interrupted, "I want to test the idea. Make one and we'll show this to Michi. If it works then it works. If not, then we had better find out what problems it has before giving it to the knights. " Or worse, the Fukas.

"Point," Landar pouted. Then her grin reappeared and she got right back to setting up the forge. "It doesn't mean I can't make it now! Anyone want to help?"

Tori and Nais shook their heads vigorously. Landar looked a little crestfallen when Toal stepped forward. "I would," he said with a perfectly straight face, "it will be a good chance for us to share our blacksmithing skills. "

Landar wordlessly handed him the bellows.

"Well then, I'm not going to let you sleep tonight," Toal winked.

"Of course! Who needs sleep when you have ideas!!"

Cato could almost see the joke bounce off Landar's shield of excitement. Well then, he still had some talking left to do. A little matter with the Fuka village council. This magic gun was going to change everything. If it worked without killing anyone, that is.