The wooden butt of the rifle drove itself back into Lauka’s shoulder, the cloud of smoke and fire that erupted from its barrel quickly disappearing into the wind behind them.

From the depths of the dark woods some hundred or so metres away from the singular sailship barreling across the plains of the North, a metal target dinged.

“Hit!” Lauka repeated, releasing her hand from its trigger and letting its butt fall freely.

“Hot damn,” the girl behind her said, braced against the gunwale on the other side of the small, wooden vessel. She made a motion with her hand, checking a box placed within a map of the area she held with her clipboard. “That’s six for six at this point.”

“It’s the gun, not me,” Lauka replied, her knees and hips bending and flexing to keep her upper body as upright as possible even as the sailship continued to shudder violently. “The rifling makes it a lot easier to shoot accurately!”

The sailship suddenly surged into the air, the girls feeling for just a moment as the force of gravity faded away.

Before promptly returning, the wheels of the wind-powered vehicle creaking out in stubborn resilience as they slammed back down onto the snow-covered grass.

“The last one’s coming up,” the man sat at the bow of the ship, beyond the mast and sail, yelled. “In the cluster off the port bow!”

Lauka popped open the leather pouch bouncing energetically against her side, her right hand diving into it as she peered off into the distance.

There, as she sat half-knelt with her knee banging against the ever-moving wooden floor of the sailship, her eyes picked out the form of a small cluster of black trees, huddling together amidst a vast, snow-covered landscape.

She retrieved a cylindrical paper cartridge from the pouch, popping it back shut before bringing it to her mouth. Feeling as the wind beat against her heavy leather cloak and her firmly tied-down tricot visor cap, she bit her teeth down on the loose tab folded from its untied end.

“Lauka?” the man asked, raising his voice slightly in opposition to the roaring winds that whipped their vessel’s sail about.

She pinched shut the area between the gunpowder charge and the tab’s end, ripping it from her mouth and spitting the torn piece to the wilderness.

“Gotcha!”

She let slip the rifle in her grasp, grabbing it again once her hand got to its muzzle. She fit the pinched end of the cartridge into the thing’s barrel, releasing her pinch as she shook it gently.

“Brace!”

Not taking her eyes off the process even upon hearing the man’s warning, she wrapped the fingers of her right hand about the gun’s muzzle– firmly holding the cartridge in place.

The entire vessel then jolted into the air, the sound of the supplementary chain thoroughbraces holding its hull to the wheel-frame rattling filling the air.

She felt as her knee lost contact with the wooden floor, the entirety of her body slowly rising against her will.

“Brace again!”

This time, the girl had called out the warning, throwing her arms about the gunwale as Lauka winced in anticipation for the impact.

She felt the force first in her knee, and she immediately thanked her past self for deciding to bring along her knee pads. The force shot into her hip and then up her spine, the butt of her gun nearly thudding against sailship’s deck as it sank in her grasp. Then came the rattling of the chain thoroughbraces once again, yelling out in their metallic desperation on behalf of their leather cousins who bore the brunt of the impact.

Lauka gave the cartridge one last shake, forcing out any last bits of gunpowder before flipping it over in her hand. She slipped its thinner end into the barrel, ripping the paper about its perforations and exposing the head of the shiny lead bullet within.

Not moments later, the thing disappeared into the barrel’s interior, its width small enough as compared to the calibre of the gun to be able to slip down with little assistance.

Lauka smiled slightly, wasting not another moment to pull the ramrod from its holder. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of seeing the new bullets fall into place so relatively easily.

“Halfway there, Lauka!” the man called.

“I hear you!”

She placed the ramrod against the muzzle of the barrel, pausing for a moment as the sailship continued rumbling beneath her.

“Tina, turning right, sharp!”

The girl dropped her clipboard, letting it clatter against the deck by Lauka’s feet just as she managed to slip the ramrod into the rifle’s barrel. She continued on past the mast, grabbing a rope affixed to its very top and whipping it about to get it up to tension.

“Ready?” the man asked, his eyes flashing into the mirrors placed by his feet as the girl put one foot atop the right– or ‘starboard’– gunwale.

“Ready!” Tina replied.

“Now!”

He grabbed a hold of the lever to his right, yanking it to the midpoint just as the girl planted both her feet against the gunwale and leant out of the ship. She yanked on the rope with the entire weight of her body, her braids almost brushing against the earth below as the sailship slowly shifted its weight onto its right wheels.

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There, Tina could see as sparks flew from the brakes that gripped the axles of the right wheels, the sailship gradually turning to the right in response to their efforts.

The man, managing with his hands a great system of several differently coloured lines, let loose a singular one. That one– a sheetline pegged to the right– then gave way to the forces of the wind, allowing the sail to swing forward from its position pointing starboard.

He then yanked on a rope on the opposite side of the system from that one– a sheetline pegged to the left–, the muscles of his arms bulging as he forced the sail into position pointing port.

The wind still blew from directly behind them, though now as it began shifting towards the starboard tack– the back right– with their turn, it would be caught better by the sail following their adjustment.

His eyes flicked towards the horizon once more, leaving the ropes in his hands and the mirrors that let him keep tabs on the rest of the deck behind him.

Just in time to see as they had not quite cleared themselves from a rapidly approaching hill.

“Come back, Tina! Brace!”

Lauka chucked the ramrod back into its holder, grabbing the powder horn fashioned from the ivory of a felled beast that she slung about her shoulder.

She heard as the deck shook once more, Tina hurriedly hopping back onto it as she popped open the horn, using it to flick open the iron frizzen.

“Three!”

She shook the powder horn, watching as black powder spilled into the flashpan before letting her eyes flick back onto the horizon in search of the target.

A target that was rapidly approaching alignment.

“Two!”

She capped the horn again, throwing it aside as she flicked the frizzen shut and spun the flintlock’s cock into a fully cocked position.

“One!”

She slipped her finger into place by the trigger, firmly fixing the butt of the rifle into the pad she wore about her right shoulder.

She nestled her head up against her shoulder, staring down the sights of the rifle.

“Brace!”

The gun’s muzzle thundered into a cloud of searing smoke once more, Lauka’s body jerking mere fractions of a second after as the left wheels of the sailship slammed into the hill.

The chains rattled, Tina grunted, and in the distance a metal target dinged.

“Hit!”

The sailship slammed back down onto the earth.

“Seriously?” she heard Tina gasp, struggling for stability as the sailship shook beneath them.

The man looked back at them in surprise, quickly turning back to let loose a line that let the sail slacken altogether.

The giant sheet of white cloth flapped in the whip, rotating about the mast as it collapsed in its entirety.

With the sailship now slowly coming to a natural halt, he rose from his position, unbuckling the harnesses that held him down to hurry over to where the two girls were.

Lauka shifted herself closer to Tina, keeping the muzzle of the gun pointed well away from the two of them as she curiously peered over the girl’s shoulder. She watched as she checked off the last of the seven boxes and as she scribbled the word for ‘hit’ in flowy Saracenic in a small table at the bottom of the page.

“You hit every single target,” Tina said, checking the table again in disbelief.

She turned to look Lauka in the eye, the latter returning the gaze with a few clouds of mist as she tried to calm her breathing.

“That I did,” she managed.

“Wait,” the man said, himself taking an incredulous look at the table as the wind began to pick back up around them. “So all you had to do was change the shape of the bullet?”

“Yeah,” Lauka replied. “But changing the shape of the bullet also let me rifle grooves into the barrels.”

He and Tina looked at her, neither of them quite catching a word of what she said.

“So technically it was two things,” she shrugged.

“I… see,” he said, not quite convincing anyone.

“Mm,” Lauka hummed. “All that remains now is finding a faster reloading system and a way to shoot in the rain.”

“Oh, wait,” Tina suddenly cut in. She looked at the man, continuing, “Have you told her what the elders want yet?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes slightly as she turned to Lauka.

“Basically,” she continued. “They’re wondering if you could make a smaller version of the firearms too.”

“Like… one you could hold with one hand?”

“Yeah!” Tina replied. “Since a lot of the beasts we’ve been getting recently have taken to hiding in the woods, and it’s a little hard to be able to react quickly with the large muskets we have right now…”

“Okay,” Lauka replied, her eyes already drifting off in thought as she added ‘higher power pistols’ into her mental checklist. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, one more thing,” the man said. “Our report’s the last you’re going to get in a while.”

The wind roared past the three of them, now back to its full speed as their sailship drew to a complete halt.

There was a howl in the distance, the three of them momentarily glancing at the source of the noise before returning to face each other.

“So…” Lauka finally responded. “Nothing from the Eaziz? The Yusheed?”

The man shook his head.

“Neither of them turned up at the rendezvous point at Yellow Rock,” he said. “We held back for three extra days to wait for them, but we weren’t prepared for a ten-day stay. So… we left.”

“Do you have any idea what happened?”

“Well,” Tina replied. “We’re not too sure of the paths they took. But judging from the facts they probably went south, closer to the Houzen Woods and opposite the path we took. Maybe they encountered something there that delayed them quite a bit?”

Lauka sifted through the annals of her mind. Looking back on previous reports and on the large map of the general locale she hung up in her living room, there had been a growing trend of beast reports in the fringes of the woods and a falling trend of them further out in the open. She had inferred that what was happening was likely a migration event of some sort– though the cause of which she had no inkling of an idea of–, and had informed the Sahlbaridis as such.

For them to have that information yet still be hampered, was something that didn’t quite sit right with her.

“Alright,” she eventually said. “Okay. Thank you. I’ll have to talk with your elders for a bit later tonight.”

“Of course, Lauka,” Tina replied. “We’ll let them know.”

“Mm, thank you,” she said. “Alright. Let’s get back to camp. I feel a little off, somehow.”

“Gotcha.”