Everyone moved back away from the bed as the two higher golems Rosaluna had activated brought bundles of straw from the small stable, stacking them beside the delirious girl. Mohrdrand watched them closely. Up until his arrival with Jackson, he’d had no clue she might command such things, and his mind was racing through years of connections as he attempted to understand the true nature of the woman he’d loved fruitlessly for more than half a century.

Chi laid herself uncomfortably down on the straw, scootching herself up beside her sister.

“No,” Jack told her. “You need to be on the bed. I can’t examine that pack while I’m leaning over you. We need her on this side.”

It took some doing, but they got the two demons arranged properly. Then Jack sidled up beside the bed rail. “Arm, please,” he ordered.

Chi held out her right arm, and he took her hand in his left. “Light, please, Mohrdrand?” he requested.

The room was suddenly filled with a brilliant, all encompassing illumination.

“Oh,” he looked up. “I need a hank of rope or heavy twine or something. About six feet long. Better yet, two of them about three feet long each.”

Rosaluna hurried to her workbench, returning shortly with a couple of long lengths of heavy twine. Are these long enough?

“Fine,” he said. He wrapped one of them tightly around Chi’s upper arm. Really tight, ignoring her grimace of pain. The rule of thumb was to tighten until you couldn’t stand it anymore and then take a couple more turns. Taking the second, he tied off her sister’s arm as well.

The audience remained silent.

Turning back, he grabbed Chi’s hand again and closed down on it, angling her arm and squeezing. “Okay, gimme a fist,” he whispered. “C’mon, baby, I need a vein.”

Tiarraluna heard the endearment and her hand went to her mouth, her eyes wide.

“Okay, sweetie,” he kept on. Here she comes. Squeeze. Ready?

“Rosaluna,” he said over his shoulder. “When the blood gets nearly to the end of the hose, crimp it off with your fingers, would you please?”

I will, Rosaluna nodded, already beginning the anticoagulant spell centered around the device and those parts of the demons that would directly interact with it.

Holding the tubing in his mouth several inches clear of the still not particularly sharp needle, Jack gave Chi’s inner elbow a few thumps with the back of a finger, looking for a good vein. It was difficult to find one against her crimson skin, but his perception was high, so he managed. “Here it comes,” and he slid the, lumpy needle in through her skin.

Her back arched at the pain. He quickly took a couple of turns out of the twine, and blood gushed along the tubing. A hard spray erupted out the far needle before the old woman got it crimped down. He tightened the twine back down.

I’m sorry—

“That’s okay,” Jack turned again. “I kinda forgot in the moment that it was opaque.”

Rosaluna’s eyes had gone half-lidded as she maintained both spell and pressure on the hose. Even tiny clots could kill, Chi had insisted, and so she would ensure that none formed.

Jack took hold of the tubing and her hand together, guiding both to Cha’s arm.

“Got it,” he grunted, spinning to release the binding from Chi’s arm.

Chi felt a rush of dizziness as her blood began flowing into her sister’s body. She continued squeezing and releasing her fist, to maintain a pressure higher than her sister’s depleted system could manage, forcing the blood into her vein.

Jack, meanwhile took several deep breaths. It was pretty obvious the old woman was up to something with the hose, so he left her to it.

“Meynardo!” he called out. “You back there in the shadows somewhere?”

Instead of his friend, however, a reply came from a completely different direction.

He is out mapping the forest, a voice entered his head.

“Amiandro?”

Yes, friend Jackson, it is me.

“Should’ve expected you when I saw Luciandro,” Jack chuckled. “Give me a count, okay? Two minutes, four, six, etcetera, yeah?”

Of course, Luciandro’s apprentice nodded, although Jack wouldn’t have seen it.

Jack checked the naked girl with the backpack, giving her overall condition his first solid look. Her skin was a sickly orange-yellow hue, pale and patchy, like a dead goldfish. At least where it wasn’t blue-black or brown from bruising.

He hadn’t ever seen anything like this, ever, not even in the desert. She must have been pretty tough to have lived so long undergoing such long term physical destruction. As if he hadn’t already hated the Dread Lord of Tarr enough, he felt himself adding another layer of animus.

Her wounds had stopped bleeding, but he had no clue whether it might be due to the mages working to heal her, or her just running out of blood. Even as he assessed, though, some color began returning to her brutalized flesh. He spared a quick glance for Chi, checking how she might be faring. Her eyes were riveted on her sister’s face.

Just to be sure, he leaned back, caught up a pair of Elixirs of Life and tossed them onto the bed beside her. “You’re bleeding for two, now,” he cautioned before she could protest.

At long last, he sucked in a deep breath and began his perusal of the pack.

Tiarraluna’s frown was volcanic as she watched Jackson lay his face along the naked demon’s chest, but she held herself from commenting. His face showed only clinical concentration. As though he were examining a stone carving for glyphs.

There were no shadows between the girl and the chest strap. Whatever rank Mohrdrand was casting his Greater Illumination at, it was truly impressive. Getting his face right in close, he could see no trace of anything that wouldn’t be found in a typical pack’s suspension. No extra wires, no additional tabs, nothing.

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Moving to the shoulder straps, he examined them next. He doubted he’d find anything here. There’d be no way to gauge beforehand how she’d move around, particularly given that she’d apparently been thrown through the portal. Too much chance of premature detonation that way. He checked anyway.

Next, the pack itself. More specifically, where it lay against her back. “What’s with this chain, here?” he asked no one in particular.

“She had a suppression collar,” Chi answered. “I got rid of it.”

He froze in place, looking up at her and her own collar, still very obviously present. His brows lowered, but he didn’t pursue that revelation yet.

At the moment, the chain lay along the bed beside her, terminating up by the nape of her neck. That seemed strange, given that she’d been moved without the collar. First, though, he wanted to see if they’d placed any kind of pressure switch between the girl and the pack that might go off if the bomb were removed. Fortunately for his examination, her wings had been squeezed between her back and the canvas of the pack. That both made it easier to search for pressure pads, and nearly impossible for them to have reliably placed any in the first place.

Now for the chain. Maybe.... He couldn’t be sure, but there might have been something going on with the chain. The main point, though, was that there was nothing going on physically between the bomb and the girl.

“Okay,” he husked. I’m gonna unbuckle this thing and get it clear. You should all probably get out of here until we find out whether I missed something or not. I’d suggest the far side of the barn at minimum.”

I cannot leave, Rosaluna stated calmly. I must remain here to maintain the spell.

“I’m not going without Rosaluna,” Mohrdrand insisted. “And, besides, someone must continue healing the demon until she begins to show improvement, lest we yet lose her.”

Hard to argue with either of those.

Tiarraluna straightened, squaring her shoulders. “I will not leave—” she started before a stern look from her grandmother froze her mid sentence. Scowling, she stomped off out of the cottage.

Luciandro hesitated, but shrugged and scampered off, gathering such of his clan as were within the cottage on his way.

Amiandro protested momentarily, as he was still counting, but Jack shooed him. “Chi will take over for you, kid,” he told the youngster. “You did good.”

With the others gone, he looked up at the... at his demon girl and smiled. “You ready, Red?” he asked.

“Jerk,” she smiled back, sniffling.

Grimacing and squeezing his eyes shut, he carefully undid the buckle of the chest strap, sliding the strap clear and allowing the shoulder straps to sag.

After a moment or so of not blowing up, he opened one eye and looked around. “Well,” he sighed. “Like the guy who fell off the thirty story building said as he passed the twentieth floor... so far, so good.”

He undid the adjustment buckles of the shoulder straps, pulled them clear, and lay them aside. Then he took Iktchi-Cha gently in his arms and lifted her clear of the pack. More not exploding ensued, at which point, he finally allowed his shoulders to sag and his butt to unclench.

Holding the devil girl against his chest with one arm, he gingerly slid the pack out from under her, grasping it by the juncture of chain and pack flap before laying her back down onto the blanket covered straw, following Chi’s instructions regarding the lay of her wings.

“What's your count?” he asked without looking up.

“T— seven minutes,” she answered.

“T’seven?” he wondered, looking her in the eye. “You sure?”

She grimaced and stuck her tongue out at him. “Okay,” she confessed “ten. Happy?”

Not really, he thought. “Don't screw around, Iktchi-Chi,” he told her. “I don’t want you vanishing on me again.”

Without waiting for her response, he took up the pack, Carrying it like an infant in his arms. He sidled between the two elder mages started to head outside

“Jack?” Chi’s voice stopped him. “I cast Identify on that thing when I first got here,” she said haltingly. “It came back as glyceryl trinitrate, Diatomaceous earth, cellulose, some copper, and a bit of fulminate of mercury.”

Jack looked down at the object filling his hands. “So,” he said quietly. “Dynamite and blasting caps. About sixty pounds, give or take, feels like.”

He stood there, unmoving for a moment. Out into the darkness. “Mohrdrand?” he called without turning.

The old wizard turned and saw his predicament. “Centered on you, then?” he wondered.

“May as well,” Jack responded.

He looked around the yard once he’d gotten outside, wondering where everyone else had gotten off to. He spotted a pale face peeking around the barn door.

“I’ve got the bomb clear,” he called to them. It’s safe to go back inside.”

He stood and waited for them to troop past, stopping Luciandro as he came near. “They’ve been connected for about twelve minutes,” he informed the tiny wizard. “You’re familiar with the procedure, so you know what to look for, right?”

The mouse nodded. “I do.”

“Have Rosaluna knock her out if you have to.”

“I will,” Luciandro nodded before heading for the cottage.

Jack walked for a good five minutes, heading in the direction of the highway, out past Tiglund and the speedwagon and into the open grass. If this thing went off, it was gonna make a big hole.

Once he figured he was far enough out that they’d only know if he screwed up by the sound and bright flash, he tramped down a nice, wide circle of grass and lay the bomb in the middle.

That chain, now. He started at the end farthest from the pack. It ended in a smooth blob of fused metal about six feet beyond the pack. As though somebody had hit it with a gas torch that had been turned up too high.

There was an extra cable laced through the links, he now saw. Braided steel, he decided, using Ascertain. Much stronger than the chain itself, which looked to be cold iron. He paused to wonder if cold iron had the same affect on demons as it did in earth lore. Leave it to their Dread Lord to go that extra step to inflict pain.

Following the chain and its central cable back up to the pack, he found where the chain had been tagged to the pack flap with a canvas lacing. And, more notably, where the cable veered from within the links and disappeared into said flap.

At this point, he already knew what he was going to find, and wondered if he needed to bother. EOD would just blow the thing in place and be done. Of course, EOD would have a way to set dynamite off from a safe distance. He didn’t.

The whole point of dynamite was that it was stable until you hit it with a blasting cap or the like. Just shooting it, even if he had a functioning firearm, wouldn’t do it. Maybe if Rosaluna or one of the others hit it with something sufficiently energetic, it would go off, but he didn’t know what sort of range anything they could wield might have. Himself? Sixty pounds? He’d want to be a good loong way off before he chanced it.

Anyway, he kind of wanted to know. Just a matter of deciding what kind of danger was involved, and whether he wanted to risk it.

Reaching into his belt pouch, he rummaged around and came out with the belt knife he’d taken from the archer after his first encounter with Mundian bandits. In the months since he’d procured it, he’d sharpened it to somewhere on the far side of a razor’s edge, using it to practice some of his new artificer skills.

Giving it a moment’s thought, he decided that attaching the trigger to the flap itself would have been more trouble than it was worth, given the likelihood of blowing yourself up while putting it together. So he lay the lead edge of the knife against the canvas a few inches to the side of the hole the cable entered through.

The canvas parted without effort, and he cut, first a small window into the flap, then a larger, exposing the pack’s contents a little at a time, lest it be rigged somehow to blow upon opening as a secondary measure against just the sort of activity he was engaged in. He could think of a couple of ways that could be rigged, and if he could....

Apparently, the Dread Lord hadn’t bothered. Maybe it just hadn’t crossed his mind that anything might go wrong. Who knew? At some point, Jack would take pleasure in showing him the error of his ways, but, unfortunately, that would have to wait.

He found exactly what he’d expected once the flap was clear. A pull pin detonator, the steel cable tied off to its ring. Ol’ DL had wanted to set the charge off himself, with his own hands, it would seem, and had held on to the means.

“I really, really fuckin’ hate that guy,” Jack whispered to himself through clenched teeth.

His Leatherman made quick work of the cable, and he carefully withdrew the fuse from the stick it had been shoved into. He eviscerated the pack after that, just in case. There might still be secondary triggers hidden away in the interior.