The legal system of Arlin is extremely complex and depends greatly on location. During the slow integration of Arlinian culture, the legal systems of the annexed territories were often merged with Arlin’s as to create a smoother transition. This is also complicated further depending on the governor placed in control of annexed territories.

***

I struggled to move down the line for dinner as the thoughts of the previous night still rattled around in my head. It was 35 days until the planned revolt and I was now more troubled than ever. I’d gotten way too close to having the entire plan falling apart.

And now I had to repair an igniter before Elm would teach me anything.

As I was moving along, I stretched out my tray only to find the woman in front of me grab my wrist and pull herself close to me.

“Read the note. I will take a lack of response as a yes.” She spoke in a hushed tone, her voice raspy and dry.

As I studied her face, a name finally clicked.

Twig?

That was the only person who it could be, and her description definitely fit the Twig moniker. She was abhorrently thin, with an extremely gaunt face. Her hair was a pale blonde, and it was completely unkempt. It felt as if she was one layer of skin away from becoming a skeleton. Whether she had been like this before or after the mines was completely unknown to me, but the magore poisoning was clearly having an effect.

I nodded in response and walked back to the usual table to find Elric and Alex already sitting there having a lively conversation. Sera appeared to be off at another table talking with Elina and a few others who were curious about her situation. As I sat down to take a look at my food, I noticed that the piece of meat she had given me, which was even drier than the jerky, had a rolled up piece of paper inside. Paper and writing materials were forbidden for slaves, so how she had gotten her hands on something like that was beyond me. The criminals at the camp were closer to the guards a majority of the time, so it seemed a tad more likely that they could have gotten it somewhere and used it for this. I turned up to Alex and Elric staring at me, wondering why I was analyzing my meat so intensely.

“You guys mind giving me a bit of cover? I have a message from Twig.”

As Alex and Elric moved a bit on the table to block the view of some of the guards by moving to my sides, I extracted the piece of paper from the meat and slid it into my boot.

She said something about a yes or no… that’s not reassuring.

***

As I sat in my bunk, waiting for Elm to grab me for work, I held the letter close to me. The paper was thin and worn. As I unfurled it, I produced the faintest light possible with my pointer finger so I could read its contents. It was a small improvement, but I’d figured out how to move the light to specific parts of my hand. I still couldn’t make it any brighter, but I had a slight bit more control.

“I’m willing to work with you on your revolt plan. I want to take this place down as much as you do. Sera is a great girl from what I’ve seen and I can sympathize with your cause. However, I’m only going to do this on two conditions.”

I was expecting that. At least she’s already on board.

“I do not want you sacrificing my girls. I know you probably don’t have the highest opinion of us, but I won’t participate in this if you are knowingly using my girls in a way which will get them killed. They might not have aptitude like you, but they’ve all got skills which could be useful during or after the planned revolt. My life doesn’t matter, but theirs do.”

Sacrificing them?

The criminals at the camp were there for a reason, but the thought of having them be used as cannon fodder felt off to me. There was a good chance that people could die during the revolt, but knowingly using people for their deaths was just not something I could do.

“Second, I want all of the guards dead. All of them. They deserve a fate worse than death for what they’ve done to my girls over and over again. Especially that shithead Galen. Killing them is a mercy for their crimes. That’s all I need. My life doesn’t matter and you can use me however you wish. I’m already nearly dead from the magore poisoning and won’t last too much longer, even if we do win. “

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

That was something that I could work with, but it worried me. Alex had offered the idea to use some of the guards afterwards in order to help us find roads or get to locations of safe passage, but it was fine by me if they all died. Survivors could cause problems for us down the line and the rage of those at the camp needed to be taken out on someone. The fact that she could help lead the other criminals was good. I still didn’t know the way to use them in the plan, but there had to be something.

Galen was a person who I specifically wanted dead, and understood why they desired it as well. The man disgusted me on a visceral level.

“I just want my girls to be safe and away from this shithole. If you are fine with these conditions, then I’m all in. Good luck, and give any information you think I need through Sera.”

Looks like it’s all good… that’s a relief. Now, where is Elm?

It was a little bit past the time when he would meet up with me and bring me to the armory, but something was off. It was off. After a bit of deliberation, I decided the best decision would be to make the trip there myself. As I walked out of the bunks, I could see a few of the guards turn to watch me while others seemed to just ignore me. They’d seen me do this trip a few times and knew that I was now working with Elm, so I’d appeared to have garnered a bit of trust. As Elm had said before, it probably wasn’t the best idea to mess with the person who kept their guns working. I took a bit of time to pay attention to the walk and the amount of time that passed between the bunks and the armory.

It took about 3 minutes for me to walk from the bunks to the armory, which included me being forced to snake around several of the tents and buildings which were utilized by the guards. If I ran, I could probably make the distance in about half the time. If we were considering the rush to the armory and the captain’s office, that meant that everyone who was going towards that side would have to run for 90 seconds while likely dodging fire from the guards. That was worrying, but the explosion of the mine would create enough of a distraction to the point where the guards would likely be split up and there would be less of them along that path. As I opened the door to the armory, nodding at the guards who were at the sides of the building, I could hear voices coming from inside the room in the back.

***

I walked over to the door to the workshop and tepidly opened it to find Elm seated and Captain Galen hovering over him, his hands on his hips.

“Roy, I said no and that’s not changing.”

“I know. I just thought I’d give you the chance to think about it again.”

As I stood there silently, I watched Galen and Elm glare at each other. For two men who I had only seen act extremely friendly with each other, this tense atmosphere was unfamiliar to me. Captain Galen looked away from Elm to turn to me and give a small wave.

“Good evening North. Sorry for holding you two up with your work. Glad to see that you have a strong enough work ethic to show up on your own.”

“Thank you sir.”

As the captain left, he turned back to Elm and smiled before closing the door. Although he wasn’t showing that much emotion, I could see that Elm’s hands were tightened into fists. Something about the conversation I had missed severely ticked him off. Knowing Elm, asking him about it directly would only make more problems, so I decided to leave him alone in that regard. Elm got up from the chair and let out a deep sigh as he turned back to the table where a large piece of magore tech was laid out. He beckoned me over, and I studied the odd weapon that Galen had called an igniter.

It had the same grip as a burner, but the tube that came out the front was extended, and there was now a wooden extension out behind the tube which tapered off with a stock. It looked about the same size as a crossbow and was most likely intended to be carried in the same fashion with the stock placed in the area between the shoulder and the collarbone. On the extended tube, which probably functioned like the burner, there wasn’t the same spring mechanism where one would pull back on the rod and let go to fire it. Instead, there was a cranequin placed on the left side of the igniter with a grip. Elm held it up to give a demonstration. He turned the cranequin, and the back of the tube slid outwards and moved backwards along the rail inside the wooden extension until it was close to Elm’s face, where it locked in place. When it locked, a small piece of metal appeared out in front of the grip, which he pulled backwards. When he did, all of the tension released and the tube slammed forwards and the small metal piece disappeared back into the area below the tube. From what I could tell, the cranequin appeared to rotate backwards until a set point where it would allow the user to pull on the small trigger, which would release all the tension of a spring hidden inside, slamming the two pieces of magore together. Then, a person would turn the cranequin to repeat the process.

“So it’s an extended version of the burner, but using a sort of crossbow mechanism in order to get more power out of the magore?”

Elm took a moment to turn to me, a look of genuine surprise on his face. His training methods about how to work with the tech were not the most friendly, but it had allowed me to understand the basis of how most magore technology worked.

“That’s correct… it does use a larger primer and main rod, but it functions the same. The length of it also helps with making it more accurate so it can be used over longer ranges. They’re a lot less common than burners on the battlefield due to manufacturing costs and the size, but they’re pretty good at hitting people from a range where most bows are going to struggle to hit. Plus, this shit tears through armor.”

It made me a bit happy that I was clearly getting better at understanding the material that Elm had me working with, and although it wasn’t exactly showing, he seemed to appreciate my progress.

“We need to check up the thing’s internal system and deal with some of the rust, as well as check up on the primer plate.” Elm paused for a moment, closing the door a bit tighter and checking the small vent near the top of the room. “After that, we can finish that first lesson of yours.”

I internally cheered while grabbing the tools out of the box for the repair job.