“First time?”

Those words forced Cato to turn his thoughts away from wondering just how the beginning of his adventuring career had gone so wrong, so quickly. He glared at the stranger, who was standing by the bars of his cell, peering over at Cato and Guinevere in the cells opposite to his own.

The merchant who had begun all this mess in the first place smiled without a care in the world, his hands folded nonchalantly behind his head. He was older than Cato, and if he had to put an estimate, he’d say that he would be somewhere in his mid-to-late-twenties. He was still wearing the deep blue cloak that covered a grey coat and contrasting white undershirt, and the back of his tailcoat was cut in the middle into two strips that trailed to just past the thigh.

The travelling cloak threw it off somewhat, but as for the rest of his outfit, if not for the specks of dirt and the crumpled lines that now littered his attire, he might have passed off as one of the city’s wealthier folk. The recruiter who had promised Cato a bright future ahead if he signed on with Holden Enterprises had been dressed in similar attire that only merchants and the top brass of the excavation corporations wore.

Gauge Gearsprocket. He remembered the man declaring that he remained innocent of all charges, even as those of the Order of the Radiant Talon had transferred them to the District Watch, loudly lambasting a flushed Lieutenant Colbrand and Captain Venetha all the while.

That had been three hours ago.

Before they had even been shown to the insides of their cells, word must have travelled to the Holden Corporation, because a company representative had immediately paid the fines for Colbrand and Venetha. Colbrand had promised that he would sort out the mess and arrange for Cato and Guinevere to be set free, but it seemed that Cato had been a fool to trust him.

Just barely minutes ago, yet another representative of Holden Enterprises had come by, declared that the altercation had gone against the terms of contract that the new recruits had signed, and told them their detainment was no longer part of the company’s responsibilities.

Essentially, they had been cut loose from Holden Enterprises, before their journey had even begun.

“Me, I’ve been around these parts several times before,” he continued speaking, as though this were an everyday occurrence to him. “Let’s see… Icereach, Spiregem, Muckhold, the Blackpits…” Gauge Gearsprocket counted on his fingers, and though Cato sorely wanted to ignore the man, there was little else to pay attention to inside his cell. “… Scavenger’s Heaven, Undermire, Hollowdome.”

He gave a contented smile. “This makes it twelve times, then. Thirteen, if you count the Blackpits twice.”

Cato didn’t know the names of any of those places. Still, that was the least of the many questions that he had surrounding Gauge Gearsprocket.

“This is all your fault,” Cato accused. “Damn it, Colbrand promised us that he would set things straight!”

Gauge snorted, but there was now a spark of delight in his eyes now that someone had finally responded. “Oh, please. If you want to blame anyone, blame that Colbrand. He was the one who didn’t read the sign.”

And that was something else that Cato couldn’t understand about the merchant. He’d had a good amount of time to think, and he thought he could feasibly convince himself that the Cluckenator – that horribly named abomination that started this whole mess in the first place – must have been a children’s toy, with an exploding starknife the likes that could be recovered from among the treasures inside the Dungeons concealed within it.

The alternative was unthinkable. Because if he had truly created his wares as he claimed, that would necessarily mean that he was an Enchanter. Even someone from outside the city like himself knew that those folk were highly valued by virtually anyone of influence in the city, whether from the Royal Court or from the many excavation companies that made their headquarters in the Ringed City of Corasia. They were gifted spellcasters, ones that could shape the potent raw materials recovered from the depths of the Dungeons into all manner of magical items.

An Enchanter would not be found inside a jail. An Enchanter would not have to peddle their goods in a corner street that fed into the heart of the Market District, and instead would have taken a permanent residence within the Grand Bazaar itself. An Enchanter would not be taking pride in the number of times they had run afoul of the law and been arrested.

And an Enchanter would most certainly not be making Fireball-spitting rubber duckies!

“To be fair, though,” Gauge Gearsprocket mused. “Loathe as I am to admit it, the armoured nincompoop did genuinely seem to be sincere about wanting to free you two.”

For the first time in a long while, Guinevere spoke up with a crack in her voice. “Then why –“

“Most probably, he went back to the managerial folk, told them to sort this mess out, and thought the matter settled. Unfortunately, they must have deemed it more beneficial and convenient to simply terminate your employment within the company.” Gauge sighed dramatically. “Ah, you see it all the time. Middle management can be such a pain sometimes, right? Always bending over backwards to please the ones that bring in money for the company; never sparing a thought for the grunts at the bottom rung of the ladder.”

He shook his head. “Paper-pushers. Never did like them. Always kept harping on and on about ‘safety standards’ and ‘company image’.”

Cato frowned. What did that mean? Had Gauge been part of one of the excavation companies?

Guinevere gave a quiet sniffle. She had tried to plead to the guards that her and Cato were innocent, earlier, but her words had fallen on deaf ears. He did not know the Wizard well – they had only just met earlier that day – but though she was not from Corasia, being detained and thrown into a jail like this was clearly not something a city-dweller like her was accustomed to.

“There, there,” Gauge consoled. “Would you like a handkerchief?”

“Huh?”

From one of the pockets of his coat, he withdrew a well-embroidered piece of cloth. Cato had heard the man insisting that he be allowed to keep it when the guards had patted him down, saying something about how it was an important family heirloom. They had inspected it, found that it was just an ordinary piece of cloth, and seemed to believe that leaving it with the merchant was worth it if it meant stopping his whining.

He expertly folded the cloth into the visage of a bird. He stood by the doors of his cell, closed one eye comically, and began to take aim.

Well – if nothing else, at least this little act of making a fool of himself would help to humour Guinevere. The city girl had been a wreck early on, once they had been left behind by Colbrand and Venetha, and in the hours of fretful waiting for any news on their freedom, Cato had tactfully ignored her obvious crying. It was only now that she had started to regain a stoic front. Gauge had only been recently brought in, since the guards had been questioning him in a separate interrogation room, earlier.

He could picture it already. The piece of cloth would unfold and drift to the ground as expected. It would –

The moment that the cloth bird left Gauge’s hand, it fluttered its wings, rising in elegant flight between the bars, turning and curving in an arc toward Guinevere’s cell. It descended gracefully, and plopped itself into the Wizard’s startled hands as she fumbled to catch it.

What?

“Heh. Can’t believe they actually bought the story about it being the only memory I had left of Grandma Gearsprocket.” Gauge snickered. “Maybe not the intended purpose of Love Letter from a Secret Admirer, but I’d say it gets the job done.” He paused. “Final name still pending, of course.”

Again – what?

Very hesitantly, and only at the encouraging nod from the bizarre merchant, Guinevere began to dab at half-tried tears.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice still strained, but regaining some of that city-born propriety. “Umm…”

“Gauge Gearsprocket,” came the prompt reply. “Oh. Wait. Figures; you weren’t asking for my name. Yes, I would like the handkerchief back, thank you very much.”

Cato watched as Guinevere folded it back into a shape that was a poor mimicry of the fanciful bird it had originally been. Slowly, she repeated the movement that Gauge had done, aiming the bird toward Gauge’s cell.

Like a dead fish teleported into the air, it hung in the air for a moment, before plopping lifelessly to the ground.

“Oh, sorry. Forgot to mention, you need to put in a reply for the Love Letter to work. A safety feature to prevent an admirer’s heart from shattering into pieces upon receiving a blank reply, see.”

No, Cato did not see. Still, Gauge continued. “Just write your name or something on it with a little dirt. That should do the trick.” Then, after a moment, he added an afterthought. “I hope.”

Though bewildered, she still did as suggested. This time, the bird sprang to life, flying gracefully to perch on the back of Gauge’s waiting hand, before it unfolded and flattened itself.

“Guinevere Willow, huh?” Gauge asked. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, young lady.”

He stepped with one foot before the other, and in a smooth motion, he bowed forward from the waist, flourishing to place one hand over his heart, while the other was by his back. It was a practiced move, and for anyone who hadn’t been in the company of the merchant for longer than the span of several minutes, it would have passed as elegant.

Gauge turned his attention next toward Cato. “And would you, perchance, be willing to offer your name as well?”

He really, really didn’t want to introduce himself. Something told him that Gauge brought nothing but trouble.

Still, considering that they were in their respective cells, he suspected that it would be easier to humour the man-child of a merchant.

“Cato Feldspar.”

Gauge smiled broadly, and all that false elegance abruptly faded. “Alright! Now that we’re all acquainted, let’s exchange all the nasty details.” He leaned in against the bars. “I’d bet you’re both cooking up a good old revenge plot against your former employers now, yes? May I suggest a Loose Laxative? Original Gearsprocket creation; very effective, very subtle. That armoured lug won’t know what hit him!”

“What?” Guinevere spoke, aghast.

“Just be careful when decanting it at the time of application, though. I still haven’t sorted out the issue with end-users imbibing the fumes.”

Cato didn’t know how to properly respond to that. He had heard that city folk could sometimes be an eccentric bunch, but this Gauge Gearsprocket was just a mystery unto himself.

“What are we going to do?” Guinevere turned instead toward Cato. “We… they can’t just…”

“At least the only charges they got to stick with you two were damage to public property and causing a public disturbance. They’ll let you off the hook easily enough,” Gauge said, emphasising the charges with gestures of his fingers. “I’ve got – what was it; undocumented entry into Corasia, illegal peddling of goods without a license, and marketing of hazardous items without authorisation on top of those two?” He frowned. “Should be the only ones, I think.”

The process had been explained to them, back when they had been detained and their rights told to them. Should they fail to pay the fine, they could still be released, but would have to return and pay heftier dues with interest. It was an enticing offer, but…

“No one’s going to hire us,” Guinevere fretted. “There’s no way we can pay off the fine.”

“That’s how they get you,” Gauge agreed. “Lock you into the system, and pretend to give you a chance; all while knowing that no company would take a risk of taking up a potentially troublesome hire with a black mark against their name.”

Cato shot him a look. For all that he was, apparently, aware of that fact, he was still utterly unbothered by it. The goods that he had been peddling that had not been destroyed in the wake of the Cluckenator had their valuation assessed by the guards, and what was left were insufficient to pay off his fines. The guards had searched him down, and he possessed almost no coin upon his person.

Why, then, did he seem perfectly at ease with it all?

“Out of curiosity, how much are they fining you for?”

Cato grimaced. “A hundred gold pieces.”

To any adventurer with more than several months of experience, it was a manageable sum to procure, but to them, it was a lot of money. Apparently, part of the Fireball had also damaged some supposedly important piece of Corasia’s culture, but Cato suspected it was only the City Watch attempting to swindle them of more gold. In his village, ten gold pieces was more than enough to maintain a family on a modest lifestyle for a month.

“Wait, that’s it? A hundred?” Gauge blinked with surprise, then laughed heartily. “That is – and I mean no offense – a paltry sum. You should have seen what the folks back at the Blackpits were like after I’d blown everything I had on me on snail-racing. Man, were they pissed when I couldn’t pay up.”

Under his breath, he muttered something as an afterthought. Cato’s senses as a Swordsman wasn’t quite as acute as those of a Rogue or Ranger, but even then, he managed to pick up a few phrases that meant nothing to him. ‘Mutant snail’, ‘alchemical steroids’, and ‘arcane propulsion thrusters’?

He had to be bluffing. Surely, he had to be. False bravado, nothing more.

“Well, I don’t know about you two, but I’m starting to get pretty bored. A little bit hungry, too. Reckon it’s almost teatime, yet?” Gauge made a show of yawning, stretching his arms, before leaning in conspiratorially toward the other two. “Alright, here’s the deal. I’ll wait another thirty minutes, see if they’ve got any other updates. If there’s no word by then, I’m busting myself out. You two want in?”

-x-x-x-

“What?”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Hmm. Those two had been asking that question quite a lot.

Rather than replying, however, Gauge instead decided to let actions speak for themselves. Before Cato could even deliver a retort, he was once more stunned into silence, as Gauge reached above his head – and plucked free the Invisible Hat.

It appeared as a fully corporeal object, and he reached into its rimmed interior, pulling out a pocketwatch from within the dimensional subspace powered by his Artificer’s Infusions. Carefully, he turned the knob, letting the hands of the clockface time down for exactly thirty minutes.

“How…?”

Guinevere seemed stunned. She stared at him, and he stared back.

“Invisible Hat,” he offered. “Original Gearsprocket creation. Don’t get your hopes up, though, there’s no chance that I’m ever going to sell this one.”

“How – what –“ Cato’s mouth flapped closed and open like one of the mutated bogfishes warped by unstable magics in the wake of the Spellblight. “That’s a Helm of Invisibility?”

“Hardly,” he scoffed. “One’s invisible, and the other turns the owner invisible. Big difference.”

Interesting, though, that they too had Helmets of Invisibility. Were these, too, enchanted equipment recovered from the Dungeons, rather than crafted by the tender care and attention to detail that only an Artificer could deliver? If so, were they empowered in the same way as those of Zerom – through a mix of fine work involving Sigilcrafting, Alchemy, Battle Smithing, and an Artificer’s Infusions, or did something else impart magical qualities unto otherwise mundane objects?

It was something he had been interested in looking into, after he’d been swallowed and spat out by the Rift during his unfortunate excursion to the Bleakspire Bluffs. He still knew little of how it all worked, but considering how major a part Dungeons played in the lives of the locals, it was enough for him to appreciate the system in place. Corporations competed for exploration and recovery of materials and items from monster-infested Dungeons. Setting up Gearsprocket’s Emporium had been an attempt at raising some capital to start an excavation company of his own, but alas, he had instead been slapped with a hefty fine he couldn’t immediately pay.

That was his plan for now, he spontaneously decided. Check out this whole Dungeon business, take a closer look at magical items that might be found within their depths, and possibly organise a couple Gearsprocket fire sales every now and then whenever he grew bored.

Extending an offer of freedom to Cato Feldspar and Guinevere Willow was likewise a spur of the moment decision. They were unfortunate people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, powerless individuals abandoned by upper management of their former employers, and he liked to consider himself a good person at heart who stood up for the downtrodden.

Ah, who was he kidding? His major motivation was for them not to rat him out. He would need to reveal the items imbued with his Infusions if he wanted to escape, and though the guards had completely glossed over them when they threw him into his cell, he at least wanted to retain that advantage after he busted himself free. If they became his accomplices, it ensured that they wouldn’t blab about him to anyone. Besides, having a few people around would be handy.

He did have several options for escape. Retrieving a lockpick from inside the Invisible Hat was probably the best bet, as much as he would have loved simply blowing the walls of his cell apart with the Gearsprocket Sprouted Rocket.

Loathe as he was to admit it, he was reliant upon his seemingly mundane equipment. Sigils were one of the Artificer’s greatest tools, that acted as connections and gateways to the Planes Beyond through the nature of their patterns. It was an art reverse-engineered from the ruins of civilisations in the wake of the Spellblight, and over the hundreds of years that had passed since the end of the Age of Wonder, much of humanity’s continued survival within a world of magic-warped monsters relied upon Sigilcrafting.

The fundamental theory of sigils relied on their ability to alter what was inherent to the object – either enhancing or diminishing what was already present, or through mediating a connection to the Planes Beyond, to introduce new elements into it. They could have worked to weaken the stone walls of his cell, but he was not as gifted a Sigilcrafter as his siblings that played things by the book. Beyond mere knowledge of a material’s properties, the master Sigilcrafter also had to have an intimate understanding of the object’s history, that which made it what it was.

Sigils, Alchemy, and Battle Smithing. They were the three traditional disciplines of an Artificer’s study.

Gauge Gearsprocket, coincidentally, had three siblings – Gilman, Gillian, and Geoffrey, and they were each respectively masters of their chosen art.

Infusions were something entirely separate, and a practice that was still poorly understood. It was an esoteric art mid-way between the spellcasting of the days of old and the traditional Artificer’s arts that were rigorous sciences in and of themselves. One could Infuse a portion of themselves – the soul, some claimed, though Gauge personally didn’t believe that – and in doing so, impart a spark of magic unto previously mundane objects.

And unlike sigils, these could remain indefinitely in an object without risking instability and decay, so long as the creator didn’t overstretch their limits. The various governments in Zerom tended to reward Artificers capable of imparting Infusions handsomely, valuing the consistency it provided. A carriage zooming along a city’s railway lines could continue indefinitely if powered by Infusions, after all, while one powered by sigils could risk becoming unstable as the underlying array gradually wore out or became damaged. Gauge, however, had never been one to be content with getting paid simply to sit around and twiddle his thumbs all day, existing merely as a source of Infusions.

No, sir. He was an inventor. An entrepreneur. An adventurer at heart, who braved the monster-infested lands of the wild, and who challenged rogues and knaves in darkened alleyways.

He had on his person the Invisible Hat and Gearsprocket’s Sprouted Rocket, each empowered largely by Infusions. Much of it went into the Rocket, considering its varied roles. He could swap the Invisible Hat out for the Coat of Arms, but for now, what he had at the moment should be good enough.

Back to waiting, then. He glanced back at his watch. Twenty-eight minutes, thirteen seconds to go.

He sighed, then stepped over to the bench in the corner. It was dilapidated, the wood creaking at his weight when he sat.

Right. He’d tolerated it thus far, but this travesty could go on no longer.

From within the hat, he withdrew a small pocketknife and gouge that formed the set of woodcarver’s tools stored inside it. He ran a finger along the wood, feeling for its hardness and roughness, and the traces of moisture that originated from water dripping from up above.

With ease, he etched a sigil onto its surface. The wood knit together, its hardness being restored to its former state, and he nodded to himself with satisfaction at yet another job well done. Placing the items back into the hat, and then the hat back onto his head, he enjoyed the fruits of his labour.

“That’s Mending…” Guinevere spoke. “But… how?”

Huh. So, they had a spell that could perform those exact effects?

He supposed it was no surprise – Artificers replicated the feats of wonder that had existed in the ancient civilisations, imbuing power into objects, rather than manifesting power through the soul as was said to occur with spellcraft from the surviving legends.

The sigil wouldn’t last for a long time – it took an expert Sigilcrafter like Gilman who understood every nook and cranny of an object to be inscribed in order to enforce such a lasting change. True mastery of Sigilcrafting required not only an understanding of how the basic structure of an underlying sigil should be altered to suit the object, but also how the object should in turn be modified by the Artificer’s own hands to fit the sigil etched upon it.

Gauge didn’t demand perfection; satisfactory was good enough for him. This bench would hold for at least another thirty minutes, and by then, he would be gone.

That temporary nature of sigils had also, to some extent, probably helped him out. Following the activation of the Cluckenator by the Buffoon Knight, the sigils inscribed into each of his creations that empowered them had been damaged. With the pathways to the Planes Beyond sealed, they quickly reverted to mere mundane objects. By the time that the City Watch had gotten to surveying his goods, all magical nature had faded away from them, which hopefully would let him fade away into anonymity if he laid low for a while after his escape.

Besides – if his upcoming plan worked, they most likely wouldn’t even bother attempting to search for their three escapees, thrown instead into a wild goose chase.

“So,” he said, finding a more comfortable position on his bench. “Have you two made a decision yet? Clock’s ticking.”

Speaking of which…

Twenty-seven minutes, eighteen seconds.

He sighed.

This was going to be a long wait.

-x-x-x-

Guinevere Willow bit her lip, frowning.

Gauge Gearsprocket was a complete mystery. How had he been able to cast the Mending?

The guards had taken away her arcane focus when she’d been detained, and so had been denied her ability to cast spells. Magic was an intimate part of every Wizard’s life, and being separated from a part of her that had always been present since her days of apprenticeship was still a terrifying sensation.

Were those tools in his hands his focus, then? But if so, they were unlike any she had seen before, and she couldn’t detect any trace of magic within them. And there was also that matter with the handkerchief he had offered earlier…

Yes, Gauge Gearsprocket made absolutely no sense.

Even now, she didn’t know what to do. If they failed to pay the fine, they’d be sent to prison, or to otherwise engage in whatever labour the authorities of Corasia demanded.

Gauge was lying on the bench that he had repaired with Mending, limbs sprawled out haphazardly without a care in the world. Every now and then, he would raise the pocketwatch to his face, groan, and let the limb flop back down once more.

There was something about him that pricked at her senses. A spellcaster’s passive senses for mana weren’t the greatest without focusing on a particular object with the Identify spell. Still, when in the presence of enchanted equipment, the passive arcana imbued within would still draw one’s attention.

With Gauge, though what he called his Invisible Hat was obviously magical, it never once registered to her. The most she could sense of it was a vague sense that something wasn’t quite right, and that was only after she had already been shown its existence.

Since then, she had been trying to search for any other magical equipment he had have hidden on his person. For all her efforts, however, as soon as she thought she got a bead on whatever it was that she perceived as odd, it simply fizzled out, and she had to start from scratch all over again.

Again, Gauge stretched, bringing the pocketwatch to his face. This time, however, he perked up, and swung his legs away from where they had been dangling off the edge of the bench. As he stood up, he patted at his coat, a small amount of dust being shaken free.

“One minute left,” he said cheerfully, then shot them a quizzical look. “Have you two made up your minds yet? Fellow dastardly escapees-in-arms, or potential snitches? You do know what it is they say that snitches receive, right?”

He mimed an action of drawing a thumb across his throat, a gasping gurgle escaping from it. It would have been threatening, if not for the extremely comical impression he made of what she assumed was a dying man.

He wouldn’t kill them if they didn’t tag along, would he? Sure, he was a criminal – but to be fair, he had put out a warning on that product of his. What had he called it – Squawkenator? Cluckenator?

Regardless of what it was named, above the long paragraph of subtext, the bold heading of the sign had been clear – ‘WARNING: Beware of Chicken’. Technically speaking, though she had likewise thought it to be some form of bizarre joke, it had been Colbrand who initiated this whole fiasco.

Besides, he had been nice to them so far. And if he could escape…

“The answer, if you didn’t know, is stitches.”

“We knew that!” Cato snapped, before exchanging a look with her. It seemed that he was equally undecided. “We just need more time to think!”

“Well, time’s running out,” he said absently, once more making that hat reappear. He withdrew a set of lockpicks from within, before placing it back atop his head. “Really, though, would you honestly prefer being forced into imprisonment or otherwise being thrown into crippling debt that you most likely won’t be able to repay?”

Guinevere did have family back in Hallowglen, but the guards had simply laughed at her when she had pleaded for them to contact them to pay off the fine. One way or another, with this stain upon her record, she wouldn’t be able to find employment as an adventurer among the excavation companies. Even independent groups likely wouldn’t want to recruit an unknown like herself.

When framed in that way…

Was she really going to have to become a fugitive?

It went against every bit of her upbringing. Her family were not nobles, but they were at least middle-class in Hallowglen. Nurturing her talent in the arcane had been for the sake of advancing higher in society. It wasn’t complex – Dungeons were the lifeblood of all the cities in Restkar, and anyone gifted in the arcane arts were highly valued by excavation corporations.

It had all been perfectly planned – excel in a magical academy, become scouted by a corporation, and rise up among the ranks. After today, that would no longer be possible – not until she grew powerful enough for the mild stain upon her record to be irrelevant.

Gauge Gearsprocket was already outside his cell. “Fifteen seconds,” he called out jovially. “Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve –“

“Alright, alright!” Cato caved in. “Just let us out already!”

Gauge smiled victoriously, dangling the lockpicks around a finger of his right hand. “It will be my pleasure.”

This was it. No turning back.

She had already disgraced herself enough with her unsightly bout of crying, earlier. Now, she needed to find a way to get back on track.

“Thank you,” she said hesitantly, as the door to her cell swung open.

Gauge mimed the action of tipping a hat in acknowledgement – wait, no, there actually was a hat there, she had to remind herself.

“What’s the plan?” Cato asked, eyeing the corridor ahead nervously. “They took my weapon away from me, and Guinevere can’t cast spells without her focus.”

The City Watch was understaffed, and they acted more in the capacity of administrators than peacekeepers. Still, they would be due for a patrol soon enough.

Gauge smiled mysteriously, shaking his head.

“Alright, Rocket, you’re up.”

And with that, Gauge Gearsprocket’s entire left arm popped freely from his shoulder.

The empty sleeve dangled loosely, but even as the arm struck the ground, it began to morph and shift. From what had been flesh-coloured, looking indistinguishable from his remaining arm, it quickly darkened, turning into a metallic grey. The front end folded upon itself, the gloved hand bending over backward along the shaft to rest on its top surface. Then, even that split in two, unfolding along the side, extending outward into –

Were those legs?

But that wasn’t all. What had apparently been a prosthetic arm all along began to lengthen, becoming hollowed out in the middle, even as parts telescoped upon each other and expanded.

A cannon. Gauge Gearsprocket’s hand was a cannon. One that to her senses, was now starting to register as a magical piece of equipment.

But as absurd as it sounded, it wasn’t just a cannon. Even as she watched, simultaneously mesmerised and repulsed by the sight, it began to stand on its hind ‘feet’, the shaft of the cannon angled upwards, as a new pair of limbs sprouted from it near the front. Along the front, a small extension grew upward from the front of the barrel, that then quickly enclosed it, hiding the interior from view through the visage of a canine head that it now possessed.

Joints unfurled from its arms and legs, and like an obedient pet pining for its master, the cannon-wolf that could strut and walk on all four sets of limbs began to run circles around Gauge Gearsprocket.

A prosthetic arm, that was also a cannon, that was also some sort of pet.

She didn’t even bother attempting to decipher just how any of that worked anymore.

“Meet the Gearsprocket Sprouted Rocket,” Gauge introduced proudly, and the dog – no, the cannon, she had to remind herself – steadied itself upon its feet and the rear end of the cannon’s shaft, perched like a pet ordered to sit. “Originally called the Portable Hand Cannon, but that was probably a little too on the nose.”

“By the Divines…”

“Little pressed for time, though,” Gauge said, and eyed his pocketwatch for a moment, before shoving it into his coat. He knelt down, picking up the black glove that had covered his prosthetic earlier, though whatever means of disguise he used to hide the true form of his prosthetic had already been convincing enough. “Tea-time should be coming up soon. Alright, Rocket, do you remember how we did it back in the Scavenger’s Heaven?”

The cannon-dog-arm gave a nod, a dull hum emanating from it. In the dim lighting provided by the torches, it seemed almost to wag its tail – because yes, it had one – but Guinevere liked to convince herself it was an illusion conjured by the flickering light.

“And you two,” Gauge addressed Cato and Guinevere. “Hope you’re good at impromptu acting, because we’ll be partially playing it by ear from here on out.”

“What?” Cato protested, alarmed. “I thought you had a plan!”

He shrugged. “Worked the last time, figured we might as well repeat it.” Without listening any further, he turned to his… pet, and ordered sternly. “Okay, Rocket. Just like last time.”

It stood on its hind paws, giving a little salute. Simultaneously, Gauge grimaced, tugged on the empty sleeve of his coat, and tore it with his arm. Once more, from within his hat, he took out a vaguely cylindrical object wrapped in dark cloth that she couldn’t recognise, and tossed it over to Rocket.

Then, before Guinevere could process that thought any further, it opened its jaw, the angle far wider than what a normal creature should have been able to perform, exposing the entirety of the barrel hidden beneath. What had to be the beginnings of a spell began to form within the barrel of the cannon, arcane energies coalescing rapidly.

Without warning, a wave of force emanated outward from it, barrelling into the bars of Gauge’s cell, breaking them apart entirely as the ruined metal smashed into the wall of the far corner.

Immediately, before either of them could question just what in the hells Gauge thought he was doing, two things occurred.

“Oi! What’s that noise?!” came the shout from up above.

“AHHHH!” Gauge screamed. He flung himself against the wall, clutching at his shoulder. “Oh, Gods! Oh Gods, my arm! It took my arm! What – what is that thing?!”

From up above, the string of barked orders and shouting continued, accompanied by the sounds of weapons being drawn and the rapid stamping of footsteps drawing closer.

Even as all that occurred, Rocket repeated that same feat with the other two cells, a distinct violet glow coming from within the interior of the barrel each time it was exposed.

Down on the ground, with a grimace that didn’t seem at all forced, Gauge hissed at them under his breath, gesturing toward the wall with a finger. “Improvisation! Improvisation!”

Well, she was committed now. No turning back. She hastily propped herself up against a wall, pretending to clutch at a ruined leg.

“AHHH!” she screamed, hoping it was convincing enough. “It got me! It got me!”

Further along the corridor, shadows of the guards were now coming into view as they rushed down the staircase.

She gulped. Something told her that for the sake of her sanity, staying in her cell like a good girl might have been the better idea after all.