The military is considered the heart of any strong nation, and Arlin is no different. As an Empire, they constantly need newer recruits in order to sustain their advance and maintain territories. However, conscription is not mandatory. This was changed after the first emperor, the exiled prince, stepped down from office. The subsequent emperor immediately created laws removing forced conscription as a sort of reparation for the many losses accrued during Arlin’s initial endeavor into the creation of magore tech, a process which came at the cost of many civilian lives.
***
The armory was another area of the camp which I had never been inside. It was another leap into the unknown, although slightly less terrifying than my previous encounter with Captain Galen. I stepped through the door and took a second to readjust to the room’s lighting. It was a lot brighter compared to the outside with lanterns dotting the corners of the room. Once my eyes were accustomed, I scanned my surroundings.
The entrance led to a sizable rectangular room, slightly smaller than my bunks. The walls appeared to be a mix of wood and metal, with hooks and shelves lining each of them to hold each tool. Above each of them was a label listing out which item was which and where to place them, although I noticed that some things didn’t appear to be in their correct spots. It was an orderly system to keep track of and maintain each of the tools that the guards would carry and to put them away during periods such as meals or when they were on break. At first glance, I couldn’t tell if the camp was overly armed or under armed, but it didn’t change the fact that a good hit with any of the weapons could kill us on the spot. Elm continued walking forward towards the back of the rectangular room to a door, completely covered with metal. As he was entering, he paused to turn back to me.
“Are you just gonna stand there or are you going to get in here? You’re not here for sightseeing.”
I briskly walked through the room, carefully avoiding any of the walls in fear of disturbing the inventory.
***
“It’s like one giant basket…”
The entire room’s walls were lined with the same metal as the one that our baskets were made out of to carry the magore chunks. It was also extremely stuffy, and the only ventilation I could see was a small grated hole near the top of the room.
I could hear an emphatic sigh come from Elm.
“Congratulations, you’re not blind. Welcome to the workshop, and the place you’re going to be spending your nights for a while. The walls are lined to make sure none of the radiation from the magore you’ll be working with starts pouring out and makes someone’s insides start melting. The refined stuff is nowhere near as bad as the pure shit, but large amounts of it that’s completely without protection is about as terrible for you. It also means that the only people who’ll ever come in this room are you, me, and the one guard here who has aptitude.”
I cocked my head to the side, my eyes finally centering on him.
“Who’s that?”
“You just talked with him.”
Oh… that’s why I never see a guard without the protective gear. But only the captain? That feels weird.
I took my time searching around the room. It was a mix of the normal tools I’d imagine I’d find at a blacksmith and a bunch of odd things that looked completely alien to me. In the center of the room there was a large wooden table with a few of the tools the guards carried lying on the it, some of them looking much worse for wear.
“This one here is a burner. Pretty sure you’ve seen them before. If you’re from Corith, you probably saw them in action too.”
The destruction of my village had given me a good view of the weaponry of the Arlin empire, although from afar. I was kept away from combat, asked to hide on the edge of the woods with the other children of the village. The burner held a very distinct place in my memory, even if I only saw them from afar. The pieces currently on the table all appeared to lack any magore inside of them. Elm picked up one off the table and handed it to me. I instinctively gripped onto it the way I had seen the soldiers grab onto them in the past.
The handle looked like that of a sword, slightly curved to better fit in the palm, but lacking any crossguard or pommel. Where there would be a blade, there was a tube extending outwards in front of me with an opening at the end. The side facing me had a rod sticking out connected to a metal spring with a metal ball attached to the end of it. I remember seeing the soldiers pull back on the rod, letting it slam back into the tube which caused a beam of pure mana to fire out of the end of it. It was a small, one handed weapon that could tear holes through whoever it was pointed at.
Elm grabbed it back from me and unscrewed a part of the tube, showing me the inside. What was connected to the rod appeared to be a small circular plate. The other side of the tube which had disconnected from the handle had what appeared to be a small screw attached on the side of it, and I could see that it was used to tighten up the magore that was probably contained inside.
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“The design of it is pretty simple. Get two pieces of refined magore, one big and one small, pull back the rod and smack them against each other. Since the mana from the big one can’t go to the spot where there’s already a lot of the stuff, it goes in the only direction available- out the end. It’s simple, but it does the job damn well.”
He talked about it with an odd level of reverence. There was a connection that he had to the tool in front of him that I couldn’t find the right words for. Before I could ask a question, Elm leaned over back to the table and grabbed what looked like a small cap.
“The only issue is that when the cap is open and you’re firing it, the refined stuff still gives off some mana that can make anybody without aptitude sick after a while. Hell, you can’t even hold onto the handle when it’s open without protection. Starts to make your hand feel like it's boiling. That’s why these things are pretty damn important. Lucky for you and me, aptitude makes refined magore pretty easy to handle even without gloves. Here, catch.”
Elm reached from behind him and threw something into my hands. I caught it by instinct before looking down only to find a large chunk of refined magore in my palms. I dropped it onto the table immediately out of sheer panic.
“See, what’d I tell you? Doesn’t burn like that pure shit, does it?”
He wasn’t wrong. Despite dropping it almost immediately upon recognizing the substance, I didn’t feel the same burning sensation you usually would when touching pure magore or the stones near it.
“I’d be careful messing around with it, especially after being in the mines. A reaction near the raw magore can cause it to release all of its energy at once.” he said, rubbing some dust which presumably came from the mine off of his shoulder. Although I couldn’t put my finger on when, I was sure that I’d heard something similar to that in the past.
“Wait, does the refined magore ever run out of mana?”
Elm gave a small shrug as he was piecing the burner back together.
“Depends. For this little thing, I’m pretty sure the pieces will start to fall apart before the thing runs out of mana. Refinement process makes the material stable, so smacking them together doesn’t usually cause them to fall apart. Doesn’t mean that firing it doesn’t cause some issues, but running out of power isn’t going to be the main issue we’ll be dealing with. For bigger shit, it can run out but it’d take a lot of effort to do it. Fastest I’ve heard something run out was 2 weeks, and that was one of the iron chariots which had been on and off the battlefield without stopping much.”
Damn, refined magore is crazy. I’d heard some stories from some of the slaves who fought in war, but hearing it from him really puts it into perspective.
It was all so bizarre hearing a man who I didn’t know anything about start talking about his job like it was completely normal. I’d wondered why I didn’t see him in the bunks at night sometimes but I didn’t know that he was the camp’s resident technician.
Wait, he seems to talk about this like he’s been doing it for a while, and Galen said he was alive during the third campaign? So Elm had to be an Arlinian, right?
“Elm, why was Captain Galen so friendly with you? You’re Arlinian, right?”
Elm turned away from the tools in the workshop to glare at me.
“Does that matter to your job?”
“No, but-”
“Then don’t fucking ask. Just because I’m helping you doesn’t mean I’m going to give you my whole life story.”
I backed off from the subject. It was clear that whatever was in Elm’s past, it was something that would be bad to dredge up. I wanted to learn more, but he clearly was not interested in elaborating.
Elm leaned over to the table and grabbed another burner which was heavily beat up. The tube which was supposed to be completely circular was now jutting out in several places with large bumps, and the plate which would hold the smaller piece of magore was malformed. Whatever happened to it, it was bad.
“This is the type of problem we’ll be dealing with the most. Turns out the idiots outside aren’t the best at maintaining their weaponry. Some dumbass decided to have a bit of fun with his burner and go hunting. Fired the thing too many times in a row without stopping which caused the magore to fall out of its plate and start bouncing around. When he was walking back to camp, he took a big step which led to the two pieces smacking into each other. The energy caused the barrel to expand before blasting off the cap and burning his leg. Pretty sure he’s missing a toe or two.”
Ew…
“Captain and the other higher ups at the camp don’t love throwing away mostly functional tools, so it’s your job to repair this one.”
I looked up from the busted burner to his face, which was dead serious.
“I want you to be able to repair this thing on your own by the end of 3 days. If this thing isn’t back and ready to use, I’m out. You need to prove your worth to me before I give you enough respect to lead me into war.”
I looked between him and the gun, bewildered.
“I thought you said you were going to help with the plan?”
“What plan?”
I stood silent for a moment, simply watching his stern face hover over my own. I hated how right he was, but it was true that I still hadn’t taken the first step towards the revolt.
“Prove that you’re worth something, and I'm willing to help you. I'm already a dead man walking but I’m not going to throw away my years just to help out someone who has no value other than some lucky aptitude.”
I took a moment to brace myself. It was idiotic of me to think that a man like him was going to do this for free. Everything has to have a price.
“Yes sir.”
“Alright then. Let’s get to work.”