As it turned out the Ostians didn’t have anything as important as battle plans on them but they did have lots of useful bits and pieces that delighted Ursula and Amris. They set up in one corner of the command tent with a big map of the continent and a lot of pins and red yarn.
“You got back quick,” I said to Akira as he finished delivering the last of the paperwork that his squad had found.
“I used Shadow Step,” he said. He pulled a potion from one of Asser’s distinctive bandoleer belts and drank it in one. It was the distinctive blue of a fatigue potion. Most of the potions on the belt were the same.
“You chug all of those in one day and you’re going to be puking for a week,” I said. I closed my eyes to look up Shadow Step, and there it was, exclusive to the SHADOW WARRIOR.
SHADOW STEP - INSTANTLY AND INVISIBLY STEP FROM ONE SHADOW TO ANOTHER WITHIN VISUAL RANGE. ONCE ACTIVATED SPELL LASTS 10 SECONDS PER LEVEL OF SPELL. FATIGUE COSTS DOUBLE WITH EACH ADDITIONAL PERSON INCLUDED IN THE STEP.
“Okay,” I said, “Starting to see why you need so many mana potions.”
“They’re not Mana they’re…” Akira was unable to let the inaccuracy stand but I cut him off.
“I know what they are. I was expressing surprise that a Ninja needed them.”
“I’m all about the Advanced Ninjutsu,” said Akira and he almost succeeded in keeping a straight face.
I thought about some of the very bad Ninja movies that I watched as part of my misspent youth. Stepping from shadow to shadow seemed right but there were a few other things I wondered about. “Can you be in two places at once then?”
“No but I can use Shadow Body to project an image of myself and then use Shadow Step to step into the shadow cast by the body, or use the projected image to cover for me stepping into a shadow.” He managed not to sound too smug about it.”
I closed my eyes again to focus on his corner of the skill tree. There was a cluster of abilities with shadow in the name that I was instantly envious of.
“You’ve got a teleport spell,” I said.
“Yeah but the Fatigue costs are huge. I mostly just use it at the lowest level to add range to shuriken and dagger throws. It makes more sense to use Shadow Step to infiltrate and only use Shadow Gate on myself as a last resort escape. ”
“So you use it to teleport your throwing stars across the battlefield?”
“As long as I can see a gap in armour I can hit it dead on.”
“I’m really glad you’re on our side,” I said. That brought out the most genuine smile I’d seen from Akira.
Something about the thought of teleporting objects reminded me of what I’d recently learned about dimensional storage.
“Is the teleport spell limited by the tier of the object?” I said.
“Yes, but don’t get excited. I know what you’re thinking about it but it’s not like when you overload a pocket dimension. The spell just fails. No one’s been able to get any fancy glitch effects. Believe me, we’ve tried. We are ninjas.”
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“So people have tried deliberately overloading dimensional storage?”
“It’s not widely advertised, but yes. It’s an old Ninja tradition to have just insanely high tier daggers as a hold out weapon. If you get trapped you’re supposed to stuff the dagger into the low tier dimensional storage bag we keep our rations in order to avoid capture.”
“That sounds… messy.”
“It’s the Ninja way. Either in and out and no-one knows you were there or leave nothing in your wake but smoking ruins.” He sounded oddly cheerful about it.
Before I could ask him if he was genuinely okay, Asser clapped me on the back and insisted that Akira and I join him in his workshop.
###
I had lost count of how many workshops Asser had overseen in the relatively short time I’d known him. He seemed to enjoy putting a workshop together and then trashing it with a massive project far more than simply having a workshop and using it daily.
This workshop showed all the signs of a big project. There were metal scraps and dust everywhere. Every surface was marked with grease smears and the air was heavy with the scents of sulphur and charcoal.
One bench was laid out with completed objects in labelled bins. Stacks of weapons and equipment ready to be handed out.
Asser led Akira and I to one end of the bench before handing both of us a cloth and leather pouch that looked for all the world like a pocket removed from its clothing.
“I call it the arsenal pocket,” said Asser “It’s a cheaper and safer version of dimensional storage. Each pocket links to a single, shared storage bin inside the Safehold, and objects can only be taken out, not added, via the pockets. When you get a minute sew the pocket onto your clothes.”
“Are you going to tell us what’s in the pockets?” I said.
“Give me time to get to it,” said Asser. He picked up a couple of squat black metal cylinders from the bench and handed one to each of us.
They fit well in the hand. I could tell they were made for throwing. I turned it over in my hand, inspecting it closely, but I could see no markings or instructions.
“You’ve got Amris to thank for these,” said Asser. “He showed me basic Stasis spells and I worked out how to forge a two phase Stasis rune. These are very simple alchemical grenades. Black powder packed into a metal shell with a fulminate of mercury detonator.”
I had some idea of how volatile fulminate of mercury could be and it made me want to be as far away from the grenade in my hand as possible. I noticed that Akira had stiffened up. He was probably feeling something similar.
“Don’t worry,” said Asser, grabbing the grenade out of my hand and giving it a good shake. “The stasis rune prevents anything from changing inside the grenade until it passes through the opening of a pocket. Passing through the pocket arms the grenade and you’ll be able to tell if it’s armed because the Stasis rune appears on the surface of the grenade. Once it’s armed the detonator can detonate but the black powder won’t ignite until you activate the Stasis rune again by throwing it. The rune will change colour and then the grenade will explode the next time it hits something.”
“This seems needlessly complicated,” said Akira.
“It’s a grenade that can’t be thrown back,” said Asser.
“Is this what all the black powder they’ve been making got used on?” I said.
“Only the last two days output. We’ve only got about twenty thousand of these. A lot of it got used to make simple ammunition for the rifles that the Black Woods forces have seized from the Ostians. The rest went to ammunition for the trebuchets and the hwachas. And of course I kept some back for you.”
“For me?” I said.
Asser let me over to a section of bench that was much tidier than the rest. Laid out on the polished wood were all the components I’d been collecting to build my shotgun. There was a parts bin filled with the pill containers that I’d planned to use to make cartridges and another filled with pre-made percussion caps. They must have mass produced them to make ammunition for the rifles. Pride of place went to two steel pipes, carefully bored out to the exact circumference of the cartridges.
“Shall we leave you to it?” said Asser.
I waved them away without speaking.
As they left I heard Akira say, “Take me to see these trebuchets. I can’t wait to see what kind of insanity you’re planning on launching from them.