Chapter 110: Production Schedule

‘Well that was a pleasant evening,’ Sapphire mused to herself as she stretched in her bed. Everyone had gotten along well, nothing had exploded, and she was in her own bed again. Something she didn’t think she would have missed this much.

Maiko had also proved good company, though she was not bringing him inside yet that was for sure. It was also early summer so that would have been a dangerous game to play anyway. He was gonna be coming back, so it was a rare opportunity to test someone out for a bit before trying to make things work. Might as well use it.

After she got dressed, she had made her way outside for some fresh air. Looking down from the platform, the camp below was already buzzing with activity as people broke camp. They would be heading out after breakfast, hopefully finding something worth their time sooner rather than later. They would check in periodically with both Bizmati and Deriva, adding Hylsdal to the schedule once the rebuilding efforts got underway. It had been agreed that Victoria would be borrowing the other earring for the time being. That essentially gave them an opportunity to call for aid while the combat wing was scouring the island for anything suspicious or unwelcome.

Jarix would of course be staying at Bizmati Keep, and Tiguan would be guarding Deriva, and Hylsdal once it got started. Arch was gonna be heading back to the capital to pick up materials for Hylsdal, a route he might end up doing quite a few times, giving them access to goods on a semi-regular basis if they ended up needing them. The dagger recovered at Deriva was placed into Baron’s care for now; hopefully it would draw the enemy to it or something.

It had been an unceremonious goodbye as the combat wing headed off on their mission, a quick salute and a promise of terrible vengeance to be reaped on the foes. Archeon had hung around for a little longer to have a quick dad talk with Jarix without his mother. It had left the young dragon seeming rather happy as his dad took off back into the sky, much to Sapphire’s bemusement. She had not spent much time with Jarix yet, but he was certainly full of life.

For Saph, though, it was very much a case of back to work. She didn’t complain though; she hadn’t been properly hunting for way too long, so that would be a refreshing trip to be sure. Even if she had a feeling Jacky would be insufferable today. The feast yesterday and the generally high level of disturbances over the last few weeks had managed to put a dent into their food reserves once again. That wouldn't be too much of an issue though, since they were able to field their entire hunting party once again in addition to their two new recruits. Jarix had been allowed the day off on account of him technically having gone out yesterday and his crew being put to work in the workshop and smithy.

In reality though, Jarix staying was just as much because Dakota wanted to take the opportunity to get started with their newest additions. They might be able to fly, and Pho was at least a fairly competent shot, but there was still a long way to go.

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“So Junior, Radexi, and Zarko are gonna help Shiva with the castings for the base today. We three are gonna try to finish the motor and Ray you are helping Kullinger with the furniture. Then, hopefully, we will be ready to start work on the powercell tomorrow, maybe the tool sleds too. Sound good?” Tom questioned the room of crafters, warriors, and one scholar, or whatever would describe Linkosta. She had agreed that the easiest way to learn about what they were making was to help, at least for now. It would also give Tom the opportunity to pick her brain on what parts magic might be able to help with. She was gonna be splitting her time of course, having enlisted the help of her mother and father to help study the unicorn horn in detail.

“Once the casting is done, I will be working on my mother’s armor,” Shiva objected. Tom didn’t really want to argue. She was still in a good mood today following the outburst of unadulterated joy from yesterday and the later shoulder pat. He really didn’t want to ruin that. That and the fact it was Jacky’s armor and he wanted that ready for her as soon as possible made it an easy point to concede.

“Right, we will hold off on the tool sled till you’re ready. We are gonna need you for that part,” Tom replied with a nod, looking around to see if there were further objections. “Well people, let’s get to work.”

It was a very different experience working in the smithy and workshop with this many people here. It all reminded him of when they had made the bow originally… Shit, they needed to make more of those too... He would have Kulinger start on that tomorrow. There wasn’t really any other woodworking that needed to be done right now anyway, surely he could squeeze it in between the furniture he was currently working on for the new arrivals. It was mostly a matter of restoring stuff they had sitting around, some of it rather badly damaged but still better than starting from scratch… apparently.

As the three of them worked, Linkosta of course had a lot of questions, though Tink seemed to calm down. It appeared to help that he actually had his hands on the subject in question as Tom explained how it all went together. The inventor Silently working away only asking for clarification at times.

“So I was wondering a few days ago, and I asked your brother… and your father if you could make a remote trigger… How hard would that be?” Tom questioned as he set about soldering the feed wires to the brushes.

“As in it just needs to move a little?” Linkosta replied, head buried in the sketches for the motor.

“That should do it, yeah.”

“Well, it’s simple enough to do. You need something to scribe the enchantment onto, preferably something sturdy, and something to scribe with.”

“Like, unicorn horn?”

“Oh god no. Don’t waste it on that,” Linkosta replied, looking up from the drawings with a horrified expression. “I can’t even tell you what that is worth.”

“Then what?” Tom questioned, with an apologetic shrug. He had just been trying to figure out what was needed.

“Well, the easiest is blood, of course. It would be short-lived and easy to disrupt but it is readily available. Dragon’s blood is definitely the best… that you can get a hold of.”

“Right…” Tom could have sworn he had heard not to fuck with blood magic somewhere. Granted, it was most definitely a video game, book, or maybe a movie, but still, that sounded like bad mojo. “Anything else?”

“It needs to hold magical potential so that it may flow through it. Technically anything that has held the essence of life would work. Tree sap for instance. We had to use that for a class assignment once. It’s shit, but it works… Sort of. You could also go for ground glow moss. Bone meal lasts a while and is easy enough to repair. Just make sure it’s from something pure and preferably powerful.”

“And how long would it take to make?” Tom questioned, putting down the soldering iron. This was more interesting for now. Apuma had said it couldn’t pay off to blow up something enchanted, but this sounded easy.

“Well you would have to etch in the enchantment into the object and test that it works by powering it yourself. Then you would fill the etching with whatever material you want to carry the enchantment. Then comes the matter of powering it. Most enchantments draw from the user but there are other ways.”

“What about magic batteries?... A place to store it,” Tom clarified since well they hadn't made it to batteries yet.

“Magic comes from living things… so unless…”

“Yeah no, we are not putting a squirrel or something inside a bomb. They are way too cute. What about the earrings? They go long range, can we have the thing you are holding draw the power?”

“Definitely. That means you have a range though, without a powered receiver it won't reach that far. Greater range means more power draw.”

“That sounds depressingly familiar,” Tom had to admit with a sigh. He had hoped it would be well… magic. As in, throw magic at the problem to make it go away. “How far can an enchantment draw from?”

“With direct draw, as in taking straight from you, not far. Meters at most, and touch is definitely preferable. You can send it further though by linking enchantments to each other.”

“Right…” Tom had been considering the possibilities for using something like this. They had obviously already figured out long-range communications, and so far all he had been able to come up with was making things trigger either by remote or if something got close. Now, though, it sounded like a magical land mine would need a live rat or something inside to power it. That seemed excessively cruel to say the least. Maybe a central rat the provided power to a lot of mines… ‘ay ay ay’

“So no booby traps, but a remote could be done. Maybe have a thing that arms the bombs… that could work.”

“If you don’t need much power you could just use a plant. They are much easier to feed and not quite so... sad,” Linkosta interrupted.

“Oh, Greenpeace is gonna love this.” ‘flower power, he he’

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“Who?”

“Not important. So we put a plant in a thing and it can power the enchantment?”

“If it only needs to flick push a thing then sure it will kill the plant though unless it’s a big one. It will still take days of work to make it to. I can only enchant for a few hours per day. It’s not an easy process, and I’m not that good.”

Tom had to ponder that for a second. That still sounded worth it to him at least. “Would honey help with that?”

“Short run, yeah. It would help put in the last sprint so to speak… It would be a shit evening though.”

“Huh. You do know we are kinda gonna have a lot of that around here, right?”

“Did you bring magic bees that don’t sting or something?” Linkosta questioned as if that was preposterous.

“Well no… we do kinda have that at home though, but that’s beside the point. We have something better. You saw all the fields, right?”

“Yes. With various plants from your home, right?”

“Some of them make something even sweeter than honey.”

“Oh come on, that’s not true!”

“Remember what Saph said,” Tink interrupted, seemingly growing impatient with the lull in progress following their little conversation. tapping the stator as if to emphasize his point.

“Just go with it. He usually doesn’t lie,” Linkosta echoed with a sigh. Tom was not entirely sure if he should take offense to ‘usually.’ It was true though, so meh. It did make him ponder just what lies Saph had caught though. “So you have brought a plant that grows honey… Fuck.”

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“Right, form up with your wingman. Learning by doing. You will mimic them as closely as you can. Pho, you get Sapphire. Bo, you get Esmeralda. Jackalope and Fengi you show them how it’s done. Understood?” Dakota shouted up as they made it to today's hunting spot. They were gliding above the forest on some hot air coming from a clearing below.

“Understood,” Sapphire shouted out, looking to her partner for the day. “I’ll go slow. Don’t worry,” Saph let out with an evil grin, looking towards Pho.

“Why? Wings aching with old age?” the greenhorn replied with a cocky grin as they rolled over.

“You asked for it.”

It became readily apparent that Pho was definitely a fine flyer. For her age she was sturdily built, but she was still young. So Saph was a little heavier, and on the dive, it showed, but that was not the point of today. First up she would need to learn to spot a target and pursue, until then they had to conserve their strength. The tree cover was dense here, so they had to go below the crowns of the heaven oak to have a chance of spotting targets. Of course, that also made them easy to spot in turn against the green background.

“The biggest advantage of hunting out here. It’s so rare they see us that their eyes are not constantly on the skies,” Saph explained after a quick scan to make sure there was nothing interesting below. “Next up, don’t let them hear you. Soft and slow beats like this.”

“So what, we just fly around trying to be quiet, looking for something that moves?”

“More or less. But keep your eyes forward too. The fun part comes next.” Luckily for Saph, it hadn't been one of those days where it took forever before finding anything. What was even better was that it had been a couple of small rabbits. Saph did quite like rabbit, even if it easily went dry if you overcooked them. But mainly they were fun to hunt; they were fast, and they could dart around if you let them. These seemingly hadn't noticed anything was wrong... yet.

Saph glided over Pho to get close to her head as not to have to shout. “Four rabbits down there. Follow my dive, pick a target and pursue it. They will break and run,” she went while pointing. Normally wing signals and gestures would do, but Pho was new after all. Pho just nodded in reply, readying the bow they had dusted off from the armory.

Sapphire daintily tipped into a dive, picking up speed, not tucking her wings to make sure the membranes didn’t flap and make noise. These had seemingly been a remarkably slow bunch of rabbits, as they made it near enough into firing range before the rabbits bolted. Most of the rabbits turned left at a flat sprint, one running directly away from her and Pho instead. ‘Someone forgot where home is,’ Saph mused as she took aim. She needed to teach Pho how it was done, so while she could have fired from a way off she needed to do it properly today, no cheating.

She heard Pho change direction behind her, likely going for the larger group of targets. A rabbit might be fast, but if it wanted to outrun her it would need to do better. Saph let the arrow fly as she pulled up, being content with the range. Rabbits would dart in a new direction if you got too close, so range was your friend.

An evil grin spread across Saph’s face as her new bow drove the arrow straight through her target, pinning it to the ground with a satisfying thump. Triumphant, she pulled up to scrub some speed before turning back to see how Pho had gotten on. Sapphire found the young huntress on the ground with her arm buried up to the armpit in a rabbit hole.

‘Seriously?’ Saph had to question. She had seen some dumb shit before, but come on. Pho was supposed to have grown up at a keep for Pete's sake. Sapphire had touched down next to Pho, leaving her own rabbit for later.

“Find anything interesting down there?”

“The little fuckers just dug a damn hole and ran. Damn cowards!”

“No, they ran home. Like we run to the keep. Get up, you won’t get them out without something small and nasty. Did you shoot?”

“Yeah, one. Didn't hit shit though,” Phospeheno replied, clearly rather annoyed with the lack of success.

“Go get the arrow. I’ll fetch mine. For next time, if they all run one way, that’s where home is. Go for stragglers or try and cut them off.”

“Would have been nice to know before,” Pho protested as she scratched her neck, looking back to where the arrow had probably landed.

“There is always next time. If we are lucky we find some jackalopes. They are even faster. More meat on them too.”

“Great, even harder to hit,” Pho replied with a sigh as she scanned the ground.

‘She has no clue where it went,’ Sapphire chuckled to herself as she went to collect her kill, doing a quick hop into the air and a few flaps to make the distance. She set about quickly cutting up the kill, they would be out here for a while after all, so it was best to get it done with. Saph glanced back at pho a few times the young huntress still not having found the arrow so Saph pretended to take her time. No use embarrassing the rookie further.

“Found it,” Pho shouted out after a few minutes of silence.

“Good. I’m about done too,” Saph replied as she made a show of wiping her hands off in the grass.

From there it had been rinse and repeat. They had run into Jacky and Fengi at one point, the two of them seemingly having had a bit more luck, having gotten a few nice pheasants. Saph and Pho had found a single green-necked goose just before it was time for the midday break.

“Well here’s your chance to be quick. Knife only. Go get it!” Saph ordered, letting Pho take the lead. Chasing down a goose was no easy feat, but it could definitely be done. Saph had seen Pho race back in the capital before she had put on her own little performance. Pho was light and fast and she had a good altitude advantage on the goose who had seemingly been looking for a nice place to land or maybe water.

Pho did not disappoint, putting on a heroic chase as the goose fought to get away. The goose could likely keep going for longer, but it just didn’t have the speed to get away without a good lead. It was very maneuverable though, so it became a fight of whether Pho could catch it before she tired herself out. The virtue of recruiting former racers was that speed and maneuverability weren’t really a concern. A fact Pho aptly demonstrated as the dumb goose let her get above it without turning away. A mistake it paid for with its life as Pho dropped on it by simply folding in her wings.

Pho’s plan had clearly been to elegantly catch the goose with her feet, but the goose did have something to say about that. It banked away sharply, letting out a panicked honk as Pho’s outreached hand clipped its wing with the knife, breaking it and sending the goose hurdling, at top speed, into a tree trunk. It let out a final screaming honk before it hit, falling to the ground lifeless.

It was a kinda tragic way to go, but that was just too fucking funny for Saph not to laugh.

“Well that got it,” Pho shouted out, with a restrained chuckle of someone who knew they really shouldn’t be laughing.

“Yup, sure did.”

With the slightly smashed goose collected, Saph had shown Pho how to cut out the guts and other nasty stuff they didn’t want from her first kill. Saph cursed herself a little for not using the rabbit as an example earlier too. Pho was not much of an artist with a knife. She nicked the intestines, getting shit on both the meat and her hands. That seemed to really fuck with the wannabee huntress as she desperatly tried to wipe her hands off in the grass cursing both the goose and it’s close family. Sapphire used a bit of her water to wash the meat so as to not spoil more than necessary, then waited for Pho to calm down.

“We are gonna have to work on that,” Sapphire stated as she tied some string around the goose’s legs to make it easier to carry.

“I know, it’s just Ughr.”

“Oh you are not gonna like what happens if we find something bigger.”

“Oh don’t tell me.”

“There is a lot of shit in a red deer,” Saph replied with an evil grin.

“Please no.”

“And you need practice.”

“We won’t find any deer today, right?”

For the midday break they had rested atop one of the rocky outcroppings that dotted the landscape with the others. They ate some snacks and enjoyed a bit of sun before it was time to get back on the wing. Bo and Essy had done the worst thus far, with Jackalope and Fengi in the lead, having scored a jackalope in addition to their pheasants. Dakota had mostly been going around trying to keep track of everyone from above, making sure no one flew off too far.

“I bet you can't catch us,” Jacky let out, cocky as ever. “I don’t even need to use my gun.”

“You aren’t allowed to use your gun. You need to save the shots,” Dakota clarified in a disapproving tone.

“I know. That’s why it’s so good I don’t even need it.”

“By weight or by number?” Saph questioned, pondering if perhaps she should take that bet.

“Weight of course, otherwise you will just find a birds nest somewhere and commit a genocide.”

“Genocide? Did Tom teach you that one?”

“No apuma did, don’t you remember the movie about the big bomb.”

“I fail to see how that correlates to raiding a birds nest?” Essy added in sounding understandably confused.

“Fuck it just by weight, I wanna find a nice deer anyway. or maybe a few namesakes”

“You’re on,” Pho answered, Saph turning to look at the greenhorn.

‘Okay then.’

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By the time dinner rolled around the motor was mostly assembled, only needing the controls and a power source. That was gonna have to be the subject of further experimentation, while also providing a good chance to run a little safety course for everyone involved. He had yet to really make a power source beyond experiments using blitz gel. So, incredibly enough, Tink actually had the most experience on that front with the crude idea Tom had come up with for the capital expedition. There was no way he was gonna let Tink know this of course, but still it might be useful.

Saph had seemed awfully chipper, if rather tired, when the hunting party had made it back. Combined with Jacky not wanting to talk about how it had gone, Tom rather quickly arrived at a conclusion as to why. The fact that Pho also looked pretty worn out betraying it had likely been a group effort.

Jacky had at least been pleased to report she had gotten two jackalopes for her new “ear defenders” as she had taken to calling them. She refused to let Tom call them earmuffs, since that clearly wasn’t bad ass enough. That was yet another thing that would need to be done later though. Next up was stargazing with Linkosta, and Tom had no clue what to expect.

“Jacky, have you ever heard of a god… coming down?”

“I mean… if you are asking if I have seen it or known someone who has seen it, then fuck no. Mum used to tell stories and Dakota definitely thinks they're real”

“Fair…”

“What? You're scared they are gonna come for you?” Jacky replied with a chuckle before she ripped another bite of the bone.

“Not quite sure.” ‘Tom the heretic, might need to start praying’