Moka’s mind reeled. Receiving a vision was nothing like seeing her god in his hall. Touching on a divine mind left her consciousness rocking like a raft adrift in the ocean. At first, she thought Azarus had summoned her to a field of wild grass. Waist-high stalks of wild grasses in a riot of colors spread out in every direction. The color caught her attention first, so different from the monotone wasteland, dead things lit by orange and purple light. After a moment, she realized something was wrong. There were only three colors.

As that thought crossed her mind, Moka looked down to where she was running a blade of grass through her claws. It was a tongue of fire. She dropped it with a jerk, snatching her hand back. The flames she had mistaken for grass hemmed her in on all sides, reaching for her. Her brow dripped with sweat as an oppressive heat revealed itself, as though it were there the whole time. A piercing cry gripped her attention. She wrenched her eyes up to its source.

A great shadow passed overhead, weighing down the world with its passing. The grasping flames retreated. The heat bowed to its authority. Moka could not get a clear look at it, forced to turn her gaze away by the force it projected. The pressure of its presence carried thoughts and emotions that pressed against her consciousness like a flood. Defiance in the face of challenge. A breaking heart, pressed against glass, unable to aid those in hardship. Ruthless calculation lurking behind a perspective that shifted with mercenary efficiency. Dice clicking while friends laughed, bold and fearless of the outcome.

Moka collapsed to her knees under the strain. The images and feelings tried to draw her into depths deeper than she could fathom. As they threatened to swallow her, she could feel an intense yearning radiating out, stoked in charcoals of rage. Something wet fell on her face, breaking her free from the whirlpool of concepts. She lifted a hand to her cheek, withdrawing it to see her fingers wet with paint. Someone grabbed her by the elbow, helping her to her feet. She saw he held an umbrella, but she could not bring herself to look into his face. He was not looking at her. He was gazing after the departing shadow of the phoenix. His umbrella seemed to hold up the sky.

After a moment, he sighed, reaching into his satchel and handing her a cloth. His exhale reminded her of home. It sounded like the wind rushing down the mountains and into the valley. Moka looked away when he turned to her, feeling ashamed. It was like he saw right through her, past her meager emotional defenses. She cleaned the paint off her face with the cloth, huddled beneath his umbrella, occupying her face and hands to avoid seeming rude. Offending the man was the last thing she wanted to do. The man’s voice was wry, as if he saw everything Moka was, and found it amusing.

“You act in my name, and represent me to the world. People know me through what you do.” His words brooked no argument. He spoke like his truth was the only thing that mattered, as though he could not imagine a world where he was wrong. “I ask that you use the power I give you to weigh the scales of fate in favor of the worthy. I find Tevzaga worthy.”

Moka froze. She didn’t know what to say. Getting an actual response to her prayer seemed like such a ridiculous option that she had not fully considered the ramifications. She had asked for guidance, and here it was, in no uncertain terms. What should she say? Her mind went to her usual responses for when she felt uncomfortable. Her jaw clenched, locking her mouth closed. She did not dare speak them aloud.

Moka felt someone push her, a firm hand on her back. She stumbled forward, falling back onto her knees into the dirt. The cloth slipped from her grasp. Her head bowed beneath the weight of expectation, pressing her forehead into the earth. She whispered the only words she could think of.

“I hear you, Azarus, and obey.”

She stayed like that until the urgency of the situation pressed on her. Rising to her feet, she set off toward the outpost, ducking into whatever shadows she could find. Her body moved on autopilot as her mind raced. She mumbled her task beneath her breath, forcing herself to be positive.

“Sure. A distraction worthy of the Lord of Chaos. I can do that.”

Azarus’s presence descended on her like a bird landing on her shoulder. Moka felt like he was looking through her eyes, seeing what she saw. Her heart skipped a beat, causing her to stumble into a ditch. She trembled, reaching for the familiar comfort of anger. It came easy.

Moka had asked her god for guidance, and he had overlooked the problem like a giant not deigning to notice the struggles of an ant. If Tevzaga was the hero, and Moka’s task was to change her fate. To her, sparing Tevzaga the fate of killing the one she loved seemed like the kindest option.

Moka had seen it in Tevzaga’s eyes every time she talked about him. She recognized a woman in love like she recognized her reflection. Every word Tevzaga said about Davok reverberated with praise, even when framed like an issue. How would Tevzaga live after doing her duty? Would she feel as broken as Moka did? It was a life Moka would spare her, if she could. As much as being called ‘little one’ by the giantkin had riled her, when Tevzaga said ‘little sister,’ she could almost believe her.

Azarus asked too much. She was just a village girl. The first Trial had been harrowing, if straight forward. Kill the monster. Easy. Giant shapeshifter, done. On to the next impossible task. Intervene in the internal strife of a broken nation. Why not? If anyone can do it, it’s the goblin girl with a bag of tools and magical abilities she didn’t understand.

Moka cursed under her breath, half hoping Azarus could hear her. She slid into a dip in the earth, crawling on her hands and feet with ease, her joints built for such movement. As she peaked over the ridge, judging her distance to the outpost’s walls, an icy tendril of fear rose through the anger. It was too persistent for her rage to burn away. She remembered the man’s presence and how he shielded her from the crushing presence of the phoenix. In her mind, the memory overlaid with the swirling, ringed eyes and coat of galaxies she had seen. She took it back. She did not hope he heard her.

Moka reached up to her cheek, wiping off imaginary paint. The memory of a ruthless, shifting perspective came to her. She borrowed the image, trying to apply it to herself. Her only option here was to shut up and do as she was told. Azarus told her to aid Tevzaga. Tevzaga said she needed a distraction. Moka did not understand her abilities, but she had them and so she would use them however she could. If Azarus thought she could change fate, he must have given her the capability.

Moka scrambled closer to the wall, dashing through the shadows with her duffel bag clutched to her chest. Her shoes still hung around her neck, bumping against her chest. The claws on her feet helped her dig into the loose dirt for traction. Up close, the wall was impressive, despite its materials. Moka thought the packed dirt would shrug off catapult shots with ease. The orcs had dug up massive boulders from somewhere and used them like pillars of support embedded in the dirt.

Moka snuck up to the nearest boulder. The dirt of the wall had an outer layer that was too loose to climb up without making a ruckus or falling into the spikes of strange material below. A clever design, in Moka’s opinion. Aggravating for her purpose, though.

The boulder was well lit, with braziers set near them at the top of the wall. Moka could hear patrols passing by semi-regularly. The light from above cast a deep shadow at the very base of the boulder. As soon as she heard a patrol go by, Moka ran across the pool of light and into the boulder’s shadow, near a cluster of spikes. The guards must have not seen her, or have bigger concerns than a lone goblin, because no one cried out as her crouched form darted through the light.

Sliding under the shallow shelf between the ground and boulder, Moka cleared her mind of everything but her immediate goals. She moved fast, laying out the contents of her duffel bag, doing her best to keep the tools from clinking together. With special care, she unslung Granon’s gift from over her shoulder and set it next to her tools. It was crucial.

Grabbing a handsaw, she set to work harvesting a few spikes. Material was what she was here for, and these would do. She reached out of the pool of shadow, staying hidden up to her forearms as she worked. Internally, she reasoned Azarus would protect her. Regardless, she was quick, not seeing a reason to risk it. Arm burning from the strain of her furious sawing, four stake-like spikes in hand, Moka retreated into the shadow.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

The stakes were flat, about the width of her hand and half as thick. Moka reached into a twisted knot in her soul and pulled on it. [Deconstruction] sprang to life, a soft white light emanating from her palm. She pressed her hand against the first stake she claimed. A pulse of light lit up the surrounding darkness, hopefully invisible from above. The stake collapsed into three neat piles of sand, dust, and thick goop. Moka paused, staying absolutely still. The alarms were silent. She relaxed, then got to work.

[Good Enough] tugged at Moka's attention, suggesting the goop would make for a decent glue. Giving her hand and the pile of materials a thoughtful look, Moka tapped the boulder she was hiding under, hunched over on her hands and knees in the small space. She wondered if the boulder would crumple into rock dust if she tried to [Deconstruct] it.

Putting that consideration aside for later, Moka laid the three remaining stakes in a row, almost touching each other. She noted the thickness and width of the material, bouncing her head from side to side as she made a few mental calculations. Grabbing Granon’s rope, she kneeled on a section and pulled the end, observing how it flexed in her hand. The rope seemed to shrink under her ministrations until it was closer to the width of a ribbon than a decent rope. It did not lose any length of tensile strength.

Moka shrugged as she watched the rope do the impossible. Seeing reality change in ways she did not understand was becoming a fact of life. She wound the ribbon-like rope around the length of her forearm, using her hand and elbow to measure how long it was. Satisfied, Moka sketched the parts she would need into the dirt.

At times like these, Moka was grateful for her grandfather. Growing up, she had a cousin who would needle her about him, relentlessly. That cousin had been dumber and uglier than the rest, with a mean-streak a mile long. When she had complained to her parents, they told her he was bitter because he was not related to her grandfather by blood. And he was insecure about his intelligence. Moka thought the second explanation more likely. Her parent’s solution had been to tell her to beat him up if she could not handle the criticism. It had not worked. In her opinion, they built dumb goblins tough to even things out.

Smart goblins had their own advantages, Moka’s grandfather being a prime example. Three villages over, they still talked about his unique crossbow design to this day. She was pretty sure they did, at least. It was a safe assumption, considering her village was only decimated a few nights ago. The thought caused Moka to fumble her saw. She pushed it from her mind, focusing on more pleasant memories.

Moka’s father had often talked about how his dad, her grandfather, came up with the idea of using the stock of a crossbow as a pump-action instead of using a winch to pull back the crossbow string. He had the original blueprints and was proud of them. However, the few times Moka had met her grandfather—he was a busy hob before he died—he had never mentioned the crossbows. He only ever wanted to talk about clocks and gears.

The happy memories brought more pain. She knew how it ended. Moka pushed thoughts of her family from her mind. They were dead, and she was here. She had to keep moving, never looking back.

Sawing the tips off the stakes left her with three equal-sized planks. To Moka’s irritation, the material gummed up her saw as she worked, peeling off in dozens of small strips that stuck together. It was like trying to wrangle the hardest piece of soap she had ever dreamed of into shape. Using her chisel, a mallet, a few small wedges, Moka split the first plank along its length. The technique avoided the tedious, inefficient sawing.

The inside of the plank, where the two sides separated, was rough and uneven. Moka solved that with a few swipes of her planer. Using an attachment for the tool, she carved two smooth grooves into the bottom of one plank. A few seconds with her saw helped her cut in half. It was much easier with the plank being half the thickness of the stake.

Moka used her finger to brush the bottom-most grooves with her salvaged goop. She stuck the full length plank into the grooves of the halves, forming a box-like shape with an open top and ends. The front side had two-finger’s width of plank sticking out, while the back had more. It would need trimmed. Moka put her creation to the side, to let it finish drying. [Good Enough] would make it quick, probably. She grabbed the next plank and began processing it into the various pieces she needed.

Relying on the heavy use of her god-given Skills, [Good Enough] and [Course-Correct], Moka used a hand drill with a hollow bit and her trusty chisel to turn the plank into bolts and crude gears. It took her a few minutes to shape the final plank into a crude crossbow stock, shaving off long strips with her chisel. She resorted to the saw to cut off the end of her three-sided box to make it mostly even, relieved to find the goop dried fast.

Moka attached the rough stock to the box on a hinge, where the extra length of plank used to be. She carved the end of the stock with teeth, matching them the best she could to the pivotal gear. It took her another few minutes to play with her imitation of her grandfather’s mechanism, until levering the stock up and down caused the slide, which she cut into shape from the spare length of the half-plank, to pull back. She had wedged the slide into the second groove, after carving notches into its underside.

Done copying what she could, Moka set the box and stock to the side. She took a deep breath.

Taking a moment to lick a trail of blood from her hands, a consequence of slipping with her chisel, Moka tried to ignore the ticking clock in her mind. It sounded like grandfather’s clock, a continuous march of clicks, pushing time forward. Tevzaga needed her to make a distraction, and she was running out of time. If it was not already too late. She refused to storm the compound empty-handed, but she could not shake the feeling it would cost her.

Moka dug a splinter out of her finger with her teeth. The material was quite sharp when it broke into shards. Sharpening it into bolts would probably work better than launching lop-sided rocks. She looked at the quick sketch she had marked into the dirt, her ruby eyes making up for the low light.

Without the time or expertise to make a bow arm or a bowstring, Moka had limited options for creating something ranged. That was where the divine-energy infused rope came in. She was sure it had some special uses, but all she had figured out so far was it could change size and it snapped back into place when stretched. It reminded her of a slingshot she had seen once. Not the kind you twirl, but the kind you pull back and release. That was what gave her the idea.

Using her drill, two bolts cut to size, and a generous portion of goop, Moka mounted two attachments to the front of her makeshift weapon, using the small shelf she had left jutting out the front. The bolts were flush with the box-like sides, leaving a small gap between them. Moka took her ribbon-like rope and tied one end around a bolt, leaving a fair amount sticking out of the tail. She ran it back and forth between the bolts, keeping the length consistent while she hung it between the miniature posts. Doing a full loop around each bolt before stringing it back the other direction, Moka used as much of the rope as she could before the bolts ran out of space.

Moka tied the rope off on a bolt. There was a significant length left over. She ignored it for now, taking two square wedges of material with a hole drilled in the center. With a bit of finagling, and an instance of [Course-Correct] ringing through her soul, she slid the wedges down the bolts, goop squeezing up and out. The wedges were ill-fitting, but a few strikes of her mallet and liberal use of the twisted knot in her soul where [Good-Enough] dwelled fixed that. She figured the goop would hold the wedges in place. They pressed down as far as she could force them to, pinching the rope on the bolt to keep it from squirming loose.

Cutting a chunk of cloth from her coat, Moka used it to gather the excess goop from the wedges. She wrapped the cloth around the middle of the overlapped rope to avoid any future tangling. Seeing the end in sight, she attached a flat piece of material to the slide she had installed in the box, gluing it to the rope with the rest of the goop.

It took Moka a few minutes to test the trigger mechanism, more a lever than anything. Once she was satisfied, she used the pump-action to pull back the slide attached to the rope. She grunted as she brought all her strength to bear. Mechanical leverage evened the odds, helping her fight against the rope’s strength. Moka reckoned it would take her at least a minute to reload between shots if everything went well.

The gears slipped twice as she pumped the stock. She dry fired it once, to make sure it worked. The device wrenched in her hand as the slide reached the end of its path, but did not break. Moka hoped Azarus was watching. Surely, he would admire her hard work and dedication. He ought to, considering what he asked of her.

Moka gathered up the leftover bolts, each one about the length of her forearm. She had made ten. One went to create her weapon, the rest she cut triangle tips into with two decisive chisel strikes. After a minute of fumbling, she found she could only fit three bolts into the boxy chamber. After three shots, she would need to find some rocks for ammunition, or meet up with Tevzaga and beg her to make some iron bolts.

Moka took the rest of the rope, looping it over itself along the length of her weapon’s crude stock. She tied off the end when she ran out of stock and considered the remaining length of rope. It was enough to tie to the loose end she had left after fastening the rope to the bolts at the front of the weapon, creating a strap to hang it over her shoulder with. Moka smiled to herself, happy to see her calculations worked out.

Lungs expanding to their fullest, Moka inhaled and exhaled a large breath. She cradled her creation in her hands, her eyes fixated on the wild idea that came together well beyond her expectations.

“I dub thee [Bolt-thrower].”

[Bolt-thrower] in hand and [Deconstruction] on her mind, Moka turned to the boulder acting as a roof and walls as she crouched beneath it. No alarms had sounded yet, so Tevzaga was probably waiting to see if Moka would provide a warning or a distraction. Out there eating jerky and pretending to be a cloud while Moka labored away. Moka pressed her palm to the boulder and pulled at the twisted knot in her soul tied to [Deconstruction]. The sooner she caused a distraction, the sooner her ‘big sister’ would get to work.