After Cadenza called an end to the meeting, Sera lingered, unsure what she should be doing next. Given that she’d only been present to provide her own insight into the nachzehrer, most of what was said didn’t apply to her. In addition to that, she didn’t even have an official party and Cadenza hadn’t said anything to her.
“So…what do we do?” Sera asked Tiriana, who was similarly idle.
“I think we’re sitting this one out,” the elf said with a shrug. “We aren’t part of Aegis and half of our fighters are out of commission anyway.”
Sera tilted her head to the side. “Half? I know Layla’s weapon was damaged, but you, Rinnie, and Cadenza are fine, right?”
“We couldn’t retrieve Rinnie’s dagger and she’s out of arrows on top of that. And Layla doesn’t just need a new weapon, she also needs to have her armor repaired,” Tiriana explained.
“Being an archer sounds really inconvenient sometimes…” Sera said with a sigh. “Guess I should go help Broviss fletch more arrows.”
“Oh, I forgot you’d been doing that. It’s not a bad idea, but stay put if anyone calls an alarm. We can’t be sure the nachzehrer won’t launch a sneak attack while the bulk of our adventurers are occupied,” Tiriana advised.
“What should I do if the alarm goes up after I leave?” asked Sera.
“Mm, I’ll head over to find you if you’re not back yet and the alarm goes out. As long as you don’t take any detours it shouldn’t be hard to find you,” Tiriana replied.
“Alright, I’ll be careful then. What’ll you be doing?”
“I’ll probably just take it easy and recover my mana. That delve took a lot out of me.”
The two of them headed outside and waved goodbye before parting ways. Sera made her way through the settlement towards the stairs that would take her to Broviss’s new workshop. Despite the circumstances, the town was surprisingly quiet. The researchers didn’t appear to have begun evacuating just yet, so the word was probably still going out to them, and the adventurers would likely be limiting their activities to avoid being exhausted when the time came to fight.
No one had had the time yet to clear the rubble blocking most of the entrances to the lower level, so Sera had to make her way to the main staircase that led to the lower hallway instead. Granted, there was a pretty good chance Broviss’s workshop would never be directly accessible from the surface. He probably liked it better this way.
While Sera didn’t actually know where Broviss’s new workshop was, it wasn’t hard to guess. She’d seen the direction Layla had gone off in when they landed and once she had descended the staircase it was easy to follow the sounds of hammering. Every other room was dead silent, so the smith’s hammer blows announced his location as surely as a neon sign. She didn’t bother knocking when she arrived; the smith wouldn’t have heard her anyway.
Broviss had already gotten all of his equipment set up- that, or forced Layla to do the work for him, using the fact she relied on him for maintenance as leverage. In fact, he was working on her armor at that very moment. Damaged pieces were lying in a pile waiting for attention, while a small number that had already been hammered back into shape were more carefully laid out upon a table. Notably, Layla’s helmet was missing. Sera didn’t recall it having taken any damage, but its absence made her wonder if the woman had dropped off the rest of her suit and worn that single piece home just to keep her face hidden.
As she walked past him, Sera waved at Broviss to let him know she was there and took a seat at a table where he’d left a the materials used to make arrows. The shafts and arrowheads were relatively easy for the dwarf to make even with his build, so she had a barrel and a crate of them respectively to draw from. Her part of the process was taking the feathers and sinew supplied by Isidro and combining them with the pieces Broviss crafted to make the final arrows.
It was a multi-step process that Sera was getting fairly efficient at. Broviss usually handled the first step of preparing the sinew, which was simply pounding and soaking it, so Sera needed only to peel the threads apart, split the feathers into fletches, and then tie both those and the arrowheads to the shafts using sinew threads. A bit of glue to hold down the fletches and firmly affix the arrowheads finished the process up.
Since Sera had begun handling this, she’d noticed Rinnie had been a bit less acerbic towards her in particular, though it was hard to gauge given how little they spoke to each other in the first place. Maybe that would change over time, though it’d be on Rinnie to make the effort- once the tiny scout chose to disappear there certainly wasn’t any way Sera was going to find her.
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A few hours passed while Sera mindlessly crafted arrow after arrow, dropping them into a separate barrel once they were finished. Her concentration broke when she felt something bump against her thigh, drawing her attention away to see what it was. She turned to find herself face-to-face with a gobshite again. A beat passed as she processed that, and then an undignified sound she would never admit to making escaped her lips as she jerked away, falling out of the chair.
Isidro’s laugh brought Sera to her senses, reminding her that there was literally no way a gobshite could have gotten here without help. She delivered him an unamused stare while she went about retrieving scattered components of the arrow she’d been working on. No longer distracted, Sera realized the sound of Broviss’s hammering had ceased. He seemed to doing something to an armor plate, but she couldn’t tell what.
“Those little bumps are how he shows affection!” the hunter declared in his usual baritone. “Funny, isn’t it? They communicate sentiment the same way they hunt.”
“By that logic I’d be forgiven for clubbing you over the head with my hammer right now,” Sera grumbled, shaking her makeshift weapon threateningly. Far from intimidated, Isidro merely snickered in amusement.
“From an apprentice mage, your greatest blow would be little more than a love tap, I’m afraid. You’d only be proving me right,” he said lightly, stepping over to pull his pet away and grab an arrow from the barrel. “Hm, so you’re the one responsible for the improvement in arrow quality lately? An unexpected skill, but not unappreciated.”
“Thanks, I think. These ones are too fresh to use, though. The glue needs more time to dry,” Sera replied as she took her seat back and resumed her work.
“A shame. I’d wanted to restock before the battle,” Isidro lamented as he returned the arrow to the barrel.
“You’re participating?” Sera asked without looking up.
“No, no, scouts won’t have much of a role in a fight like that, and we’re not needed ahead of the battle thanks to the height of this place. I’ll be keeping an eye on the settlement while everyone is gone, though, so I’d feel a lot better with a full quiver.” Isidro’s gobshite, sensing that no one was paying it any attention anymore, plopped down on its master’s feet.
“Rinnie’s tried firing arrows at them, but they tend to catch them…” Sera informed him before he went and got an arrow thrown back at him the way the dryad had.
“Ah, well, don’t mention I said this, but her bow can’t really be compared to mine. I’d wager she’s my equal in an arm-wrestle, but she’s too small to wield a suitable bow, and there’s only so much draw-strength you can get out of a smaller one,” Isidro explained as if sharing a secret. Sera did know larger bows tended to be stronger than smaller ones of the same make, of course, but she also was aware that there were ways of making small bows with a higher draw-strength.
“Doesn’t she use a composite bow, though?” Sera asked, curious.
“Sure, but so do I. And mine is twice as long,” countered the hunter with a shrug. Sera recalled that Rinnie had embedded arrowheads in a golem made of solid metal; from the sounds of things, Isidro’s bow could probably penetrate nachzehrer armor even without the benefit of a mana-charged arrowhead.
“Sounds to me like there’d be plenty you could do in a pitched battle. Actually, with a bow that strong, why even use wood-shafted arrows? Couldn’t you use some kind of bolt?” Sera wondered, scrutinizing the arrow taking shape in her hands. Well, a metal arrow would probably still be an arrow after further consideration, but the point remained.
“Only the arrowhead is really important, and it’s easier to source wood for arrows than metal. A faster projectile will always hit harder than a heavier one fired with the same amount of energy, so making the shaft from metal is only helpful if you expect gravity to be doing some of the work- but at the draw-strengths we’re using, most of our shots aren’t going to have much of an arc to begin with unless we’re far enough away that aiming becomes a problem,” Isidro explained at length. Sera had to bite her tongue to stop herself from making a comment regarding how surprised she was at his in-depth understanding of the physics involved; it was rude to assume he was ignorant on the matter in the first place.
“Well, that’s fair enough, but what about the other thing?” she asked instead, referring to her comment about the upcoming battle.
“Mostly it’s a question of numbers- not enough archers to form an effective unit. I hear the battle plans call for a closer engagement than we’d be helpful in, anyway, and we’d barely make a dent in their gunners before the warriors get in close with the number we do have,” Isidro answered. “If this were the middle ring we’d be more effective since we’d be able to use guns, but…out here that would be too much of a logistical nightmare.”
“So I hear. It’s crazy to me that you have the technology to make guns but bows are still more practical. On Earth bows haven’t been used in war for hundreds of years,” Sera replied. “Though we could just make bullets from lead.”
“A bullet made from pure lead would flatten itself trying to pierce my skin. Without enough high-quality mana crystals to give them some oomph, they’re as good as useless.” Isidro looked down. Sera followed his gaze to find the gobshite staring up at him, pawing at his leg. “Ah, guess it’s feeding time, huh? Well, I’ll come back in the morning to restock. Stay safe out there.”
“Yeah, you too,” Sera replied as Isidro left with his pet, which she was happy to forget the species name of until the next time she was forced to see it. Maybe when she completed her mana core, she could start by figuring out time magic instead of space magic. Then she could go back in time and tell herself to give those animals a better name so she wouldn’t have to hear it while she researched a way home.
Especially if it turned out there really wasn’t one, or that Sera simply didn’t have the knowledge and intelligence to find it. But that was getting ahead of herself- first she was going to have to survive the nachzehrer. And her paranoia told her that this wasn’t a fight that would be concluded solely on the battlefield.
She wondered if it would be better for the fighting to arrive sooner, sparing her nerves, or later, giving them more time to prepare. Whichever she decided, it would probably end up being the opposite.