GOBLORE: Part III (Story) (Patreon)

Muahahaha! Another installment in your (my) favourite goblin-based isekai story! More gobs! Technology! Kitbashing a battery charger out of spare parts! Constructing a gastraphetes! And, yes, finally some goblin breeding! Almost 20k words, so, yeah, lots of content to enjoy!

Read the first part HERE and the second part HERE. And if you want to see what Keela looks like, golly do I have some pics for YOU!

As always, let me know if you read it and what you thought.

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The council reconvened an hour later. Unlike the previous meeting, the room was full to bursting with agitated voices. What had once been an item of passing interest, the overall management of their little colony, had turned into a life or death decision-making process. Nell, doing her best to be the leader, struggled to maintain order. Some conversations were losing the pretense of ‘intellectual debate’ and were sounding more like panic. Jesse felt a little self-conscious about being in the room with frightened Kith himself, given what happened last time. He stood near the back, letting the voices around him speak their piece.

“You saw them,” Kalvis said, his bitter voice cutting through the din. “Those were the ones who attacked us. Those...Wolven monsters. They butchered my friends, Nell. We can’t trust them!”

The head of the community grimaced. Other conversations died out as heads turned to her. She visibly squared her shoulders, feeling the weight of expectation upon her. “I hear you, Kalvis. I hate them too for what they did to the others. And no, I don’t trust them. But we have to be realistic. There’s less than a hundred of us. You saw their numbers. Not just the Wolven, but the archers, the armour...Gods above, even if the matter of arms was even, they could overwhelm us with brute strength. Not all of us are as strong or quick as Huntress,” she said, motioning to the taciturn woman near the door. Jesse had last seen her traipsing off, presumably to tail the army and see that they weren’t lying in ambush. He hadn’t heard her enter, but he never heard her do anything, so that wasn’t surprising.

“The moment we go on those ships, we’re done. We’ll be clapped in irons and sold, or worse.” Kalvis spat.

“I don’t understand why they didn’t attack. It’s what I would have done. Why give us the time to ‘think it over’?” Huntress asked.

“Misplaced magnanimity?” Vee offered.

“I don’t think so,” Nell said, running her hand through her hair, “Either they don’t think we’re enough of a threat to warrant wasting resources on, or they have something more pressing that requires their attention.”

“Krosen,” Huntress supplied, to nods around the table.

Jesse bent over to whisper with the little alchemist who shared his bed. “I’ve heard you mention them before. Who are they?”

“The original owners of this area,” Vee explained, her cadence that of the teacher she’d been most of her life, “Hundreds of years before it collapsed, the Empire subsumed their territory, integrating some and pushed the rest to the edge of the continent. And by integrating I mean…not exactly treating them well.”

“Are they a potential ally, then?” he asked.

“Only in so much as they are the enemy to our enemy,” Vee continued, “We might be related, distantly, but Kith and Krosen never got along before the Empire fell and those resentments remain. The Folk used us for our brains and hands, rather than our ability to haul materials or fight in their wars. Krosen see us as soft, spoiled, the favoured children of our shared abusive parent. We’ve made some overtures but they’re mostly uninterested in us. There’s no telling how they’d react if we asked for their help fighting off an attack or, Gods forbid, were forced to flee into their territory over the Wile River.”

Their eyes returned to the table. The conversation had continued without them, with Nell’s unwavering voice taking precedence. “Our focus needs to be on the facts, not fear or conjecture. Like it or not, our options are limited. Either we take the Folk at their word…or else we take our chances on splitting up and trying to get us all back to Voxus piecemeal.”

“We could defend ourselves,” Glora said. The table offered a mixture of groans and scoffing in response. All save the small cadre that had clustered around her, who nodded in silent agreement.

“We’re academics, not soldiers!” Vee said.

“In our histories there have been many times our people have been forced to protect ourselves, with violence if necessary. When Voxus originally broke away from the thrall of the Empire, when the Silithin raided our outer villages we chased them off with our superior weapons! Some of you may have forgotten our roots, but I haven’t.”

More grumbling, with Glora’s crew of faithful staring daggers at those that raised objection. Jesse felt a twinge in his gut at the clear signs that factions were forming, and an even worse feeling when he realized that he agreed, at least in principle, with Glora. You didn’t win by giving a bully what they wanted.

“It only took half a dozen Wolven to do terrible things to the sailors on the beach,” Zixie added, hugging herself in the process, “I don’t want to see that happen to anyone else, on either side…”

Kalvis hammered his fist on the table. “We can’t let these Folk bastards get away with what they did!”

“This isn’t about getting revenge, Kalvis. Do you want us all to die?” Vee asked.

“We don’t have to kill them all. We can just...survive. Fight defensively. If they are reluctant to just strike out of the blue, then maybe we can make it too costly for them.”

Vee threw up her hands. “And what grand fortification do you think the few of us could erect? None of us are masons. It took us weeks to make the cold storage shed that we’re using as a jail, and that was just mud bricks. Even if we had the tools, the sheer labour needed to quarry stone would make us doing anything else, including feeding ourselves, impossible!”

“It doesn’t need to be a stone wall.”

The goblins turned to Jesse, and at that moment he realized that he’d been the one who’d previously spoke. His throat suddenly felt dry. He hated public speaking.

“It doesn’t?” Vee asked. “Wouldn’t a wooden wall be easily burned?”

Whelp, he was into it now. He stepped closer to the table and tried to keep his voice steady. “Hypothetically, you could dig a trench around the parts of the village you wanted to protect, then mound the earth on the closer side. Forming both a vantage point from which to see and fire down into while effectively doubling the size of the berm your enemy had to get across.”

“What about the Wolven?” Kalvis asked. “They can leap pretty high.”

“Stakes, I guess. Roman forts used to have pointed stakes to keep back cavalry. You could place them at angle to make the jump either dangerous or impossible. There're ways to coat them in something inflammable too.”

Murmuring between the various members of the informal council. Jesse didn’t know if he had overstepped his position as an unofficial member. He retreated behind Vee, who turned around in her seat to face him.

“Hold on. You’re not seriously suggesting we fight them, are you?”

“I was just thinking out loud,” Jesse admitted. He wasn’t going to suggest these people stick around to get themselves killed because of some things he remembered from history class or video games. “I don’t have any experience at this kind of thing myself, but my phone has a bunch of overviews of the conflicts my people engaged in. The tactics, the weapons, that kind of thing. It’s all very general, but it might help offer paths that this world hasn’t gone down yet. Stand on the shoulders of giants.” He paused, realized the phrasing and his audience, and added, “Metaphorically.”

“But you have no personal experience? Your knowledge is based on the factoids pulled from the ether on that device.” Vee’s voice again, a little more cutting than he thought it needed to be. But she had a point.

“You’re right. I’m just…Listen, I’m not an expert. Fighting is awful, and people are probably going to get hurt, maybe even killed. I’m not gonna say that this is a sure-fire way to stay alive and together. But if you can visibly make yourself a harder target, they might not be as willing to spend resources trying to dig you out. This is just another option. Can’t hurt to have a plan C for if A and B don’t work out.”

The discussion drifted down other avenues after that. First believing the Folk and their offer, then looking for a ship they could charter at the nearby neutral port town of Swifttail. The final scenario, deemed a long shot, would be to either rebuild the Looking Glass or construct an entirely new vessel to sail back to Voxus.

“Keela’s raft is one thing,” Kalvis explained, his weary tone implying this idea had been brought up a number of times before this, “But an oceangoing vessel, especially something that can get through the dangerous waters we need to go through, is another thing entirely. We had a chance when the Looking Glass was just beached, but I was there when it ripped apart. It sank in pieces, surrounded by the razorreefs that tore it asunder. It’s gone. We might be able to dive for some more sundries than the stuff we already pulled off, but making a new ship on our own in two weeks is madness!” He took a breath, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “I’m sorry. I lost friends when it sank the first time, I lost even more when it sank again. I want nothing to do with that damn boat anymore.”

Nell nodded. “Then we now have three choices, none of them particularly appetizing: believe the Folk and their suspiciously generous offer, find a way to make the meagre valuables we have worth passage for all our people on a ship someone else owns, or staying here and potentially fighting a well trained and equipped army for the right to stay exiled from our homes.” She hesitated before continuing. “I think…I think we’d all benefit from some time to think this over. We’ll reconvene tonight after sundown. Go about the rest of your day as normally as you can. We may be leaving this village soon, but there still work that needs doing.”

The crowd filed out of the town hall building slowly. Conversations continued all the way out the door. Jesse waited for Vee to collect her notes.

“Jesse,” Nell said above the din, “Could you stay behind for a few moments?”

The formerly cacophonous room was deathly silent. Nell’s gaze bored into Jesse, who sat across the giant table in the nearly empty meeting hall. He didn’t try to meet her eyes.

“We didn’t get off on the right foot, exactly. You have every right to resent us for that. But my people have lost so much. Our home, our friends, our hope. We...I, I can’t lose any more. When you say that you have ideas on how to defend us. I need to know we can trust you,” she said. He felt there was a veiled threat behind her words, like if he proved untrustworthy he’d be thrown to the Wolven. But there was also desperation and fatigue. Leadership was exhausting.

“I don’t harbour any ill will about the attempted murder, if that’s what you mean,” he replied. After a beat, he shrugged and amended that statement, “Okay, I still do. Y’all were pretty quick to resort to immolation for a bunch of academics.”

She scowled at that. Jesse knew he might be skating on thin ice, but if they couldn’t be honest with one another, the distrust would linger.

“How much do you know about us? About our village, I mean?”

“Just the basics. You were on a survey and exploration mission, there was an accident, ship broke apart and stranded you here.”

She nodded. “You can’t imagine how scary those first few days were. Captain Trasik and I feuded over leadership of the survivors. We outnumbered the sailors, you see. In our society, males are generally deferred to when brute strength is needed over careful thought, but I wouldn’t have it. They refused to see me as leader, keeping with Trasik instead. So, in the end, they built a separate camp closer to the shipwreck site. This village was defenseless, at least for a while. We slept in perpetual fear of a Wolven or a Krosen or a clicker attacking us in our beds. Over time, we mended fences, brought some of the males back. But they were always itching to go off on their own. To leave us, the weak academics, behind.”

“That’s awful,” Jesse said.

“Yes. Yes it was. And it happened, eventually. Some perished when the refloated Looking Glass sank for a second, final time. Others died at the male’s camp, ransacked and destroyed by the Folk’s Wolven servants. The rest, save for Kalvis, went off into the forest and have yet to return. Their skills, their strength, gone for good. You see my problem.”

Jesse wasn’t a super smart bookworm but he could add two and two together. “You think because I’m a male I might flake out on you, or go do something stupid.”

She gave a light shrug of her tired shoulders. “Your gender’s track record is not good. You’re not Kith, for all I know your species handles gender disparities in completely different ways. I can commit my people to your ideas, at least in lieu of something better, but I need to know if it’ll be wasted effort. Can I trust you, Jesse, to stay here and help us for at least the duration of the current crisis?”

He chose his next words carefully. Jesse was fully cognisant that his position in this little village was tenuous, and that he remained here entirely on the say-so of Nell.

“I understand that you have been burned before. But I’m not like those others. Until I can find a way to get back to my world, I am stuck here. I have nowhere I can go in the first place. And if our plans clash, I will defer to your leadership.”

“And if the Folk insult you? Humiliate you? Denigrate your manhood and demand you fight in single combat?”

“Then,” he said with a feigned sign, “I guess I’ll tell him to go fuck himself. But I won’t run in, guns...ah...sword a swinging. I’m not that brave.”

“Huntress told me otherwise. And while we rarely see eye to eye, I trust her opinions on character.”

That Huntress chose to talk him up in her report to Nell surprised him. “It was me and Huntress out there, alone. All I did was run for it. She shot all the arrows and chased the Wolven off.”

“Bravery is not a vice, Jesse. But understand that there is no room for cocksure, madcap solo adventuring in my village. We either move together, or not at all. Is that understood?” She waited for his nod before finishing her thought. “Good. Now, what exactly did you mean when you said ‘earthwork’?”

He went into further detail. He found a piece of scrap paper, flipped it on its back, and started sketching out some basic diagrams. “It’ll be a lot of work. But if everyone we can manage to free up gets to digging, and with the proper tools, we could get it done in time…”

***

After another two hours discussing his ideas for making their little village more defensible, he’d stopped by the kitchen for another bowl of that stew stuff. Miri was there and kind enough to hook him up.

“You Humans sure do eat a lot!” she said. When he stammered out an apology, she waved him off. “No, no, I didn’t mean it like that! I’m glad someone properly appreciates my cooking! Plus you were kind enough to listen to me wax poetic about tuber growth, which is worth more than your share.”

His long discussion had got him thinking of all the things they’d need to hold off a sustained siege, not in the least of which would be a readily available food supply. “Do you think we could go over the crops you have later this afternoon?”

She beamed. “Absolutely!”

He’d just finished the bowl and handed it back to Miri when they both caught the pitter-patter footsteps of a running Kith approaching. Jesse didn’t recognise her, and she addressed her comment to the woman behind him.

“Keela’s back!”

Miri set the bowl down and dashed out, not even bothering to remove her apron. Jesse watched half a dozen others run in the same direction. Their faces were visibly cheerier than they had been at the meeting, the pall that had hung over the village shifting just a bit. He jogged behind them, easily keeping pace with the dashing figures, until he spotted Vee peeking out of her house to see what the commotion was.

“Apparently someone named Keela is back. Nell mentioned her at the meeting. She has a raft, right?” Jesse asked.

Vee nodded. “She’s our link to the outside world. She takes it between here and the nearest actual town, a place called Spitetail.”

“Why don’t you live closer to them?”

Vee made a face. “Because we didn’t know about it. By the time Keela started exploring with the raft, we’d already had most of the buildings up. Most of us aren’t tough customers, the kind that make it in a smuggler town like that. Plus, y’know, Kith go for a hefty price on the open market…” She soured further, and Jesse put up a hand.

“Alright, forget I asked. I know you all are smart cookies and would have thought of stuff like this. I’m just kinda lost. This is so far beyond my life experience.”

“I hope you don’t hold what I said in the meeting against me,” Vee said.

In truth, a part of him wanted to. She shot him down pretty hard. But he saw the truth in her words, and having different perspectives and ideas would help them a lot more than sycophantic praise in the long run.

“I don’t. You want what’s best for your people. I was just making suggestions.”

They walked toward the river, letting others speed past. Jesse took time to notice the placement of things in the village. Seeing them on the map Nell had drawn was one thing, but applying them to how things looked in reality was another.

Temporary, the pseudo-ironic name the Kith had given their little village, was founded close to a bend in the river Wile, forming an easy source of water and serving as an access point to the sea. Aside from that and the thick treeline out in the distance from the village, there were no real barriers to keep someone from just waltzing in. There was a night watch, two women at either end of the village looking for dangerous animals more than enemy armies. That would be the first thing they’d have to change.

The only building close to the river was a large house built in a different style to the others. Huge logs of some sturdy-looking tree with dark red bark lifted it several feet off the ground. Below it, between the stilts, a long, U-shaped wooden platform floated at water level but lashed with rope to the stilts in such a way that it could be raised or lowered to adjust for the river’s height. Ingenious, or overdesigned, he couldn’t tell. Gently sloped ramps lead from the boathouse up the river’s wide bank to the structure on top of it. Within sat a dozen or more wooden crates with the word LOOKING GLASS stencilled into the sides.

“The Wile’s banks flood intermittently, and the change in water height is beyond anything I’ve seen in rivers back home. Our first two docks floated away. Inconvenient things for docks to do, I should note.”

The crowd shuffled around the dock, looking to the south. It took some peering but Jesse caught sight of it just as the murmuring picked up. The raft itself wasn’t complicated. Two layers of oppositely stacked logs, of same colour but thinner than the ones used for stilts, held together with long sinewy brown rope knots. Atop this, a shack made in the same style as their huts sat at the back like a pilot house. The front was filled with crates, baskets, and a smattering of heavier objects spaced out in such a way to balance the load. Two figures used oars to propel the raft forward. One another Kith lady, and the other…not.

“Is that…” Jesse began, surreptitiously pointing toward the tall figure on the starboard oar.

“Vulperi? Yeah. Do they have those where you come from?” Vee asked.

He laughed. “Sorta.”

It was difficult to tell because of the distance, but she had to be at least as tall as him, maybe taller. Especially with the pair of pointed, fuzzy ears that protruded from her head. The fuzz matched the ruddy colour of her hair, tied up in a pony tail that bobbed up and down with the motion of her rowing. Her complexion was much darker than the Folk, even more than Jesse in fact, much of it on display thanks to a skimpy cutoff top. Her pants were purely utilitarian, but they did nothing to conceal the swishing, fluffy tail that twisted behind her back.

“You didn’t tell me there were cat…fox…there were others on your expedition besides Kith,” he said, voice lilting up to make the statement a question.

“She wasn’t with us on the Looking Glass. That’s Keela’s crew member and contact for our dealings in Spitetail. Forget her name, truth be told.”

As the raft neared the dock, the woman with the fluffy ears threw a line out to be caught by one of the more muscular spectators. They worked in tandem to haul in the boat, tying it off to a series of notched bronze mooring posts.Once secured, the pair pried the door off the pilot house and dropped it down as a gangplank. Out of the little shack walked a third member of the raft’s crew.

Black curly hair matted with spray and sweat framed a gorgeous face marred by a smarmy grin that removed any sense of genuine mirth from the equation. She was buxom, even for the prodigious chests of her fellow Kith, a golden cog perched between her cavernous cleavage. Her simple clothes contrasted with the golden ear rings she wore. Despite her outward beauty, the closest thing to the vibe this woman gave off was the one time he’d tried to buy a used car from a dealer. Worst mistake of his life.

“Keela!” came a familiar voice. Miri raced out and threw herself at the disembarking raft captain. In a surprising display of strength, she lifted the raft captain into the air, squeezing her in a bearhug before letting her drop down to the dock in a daze.

“Hasn’t been that long,” she said with a little laugh.

“Yeah, but it’s been long enough!” Miri shuffled off to let a little crew of workers start taking items. One Kith at either end of the big boxes, occasionally struggling with some of the heavier items. “What have you got for us?”

“Not as much as I wanted. Running low on buyers who want pelts, might have flooded the market in town given that it’s mid summer. Another load of ronk husks, needles, thread, arrows, a few loose copper statuettes that I, ehm, ‘found’ on the dock.”

“You stole them?” Jesse asked. He knew he wasn’t involved in the conversation but he couldn’t help his curiosity.

“Who’s this tall guy? Looks like Folk to me,” Keela said, her eyes narrowed into slits.

“He’s okay,” Vee said, holding out her hands in a forestalling motion. “He’s lost, like us.”

The sailor goblin tilted her head, waited for further explanation, then let her hand drift off her weapon and onto the tied up end of a rucksack. “Sure, why not. This bay’s like a basket trap for all kinds of weirdos. Well, pleasure to meet you, Jesse. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bunch of stuff to offload.” She pushed past the assembled crowd with the heavy bag slung over her shoulder, shoulder to shoulder with Miri. With the goodies revealed, most of the curious went back to whatever they were doing beforehand.

“Well…she’s certainly different,” Jesse said.

Vee nodded as she watched the smitten couple go. “Yeah, she’s a bit of an acquired taste. She was our ‘guide’, hired by the Looking Glass crew to get us through some of the choppier waters in Southern Castis. Ended up being near useless past the Throat, but she speaks the trade pidgin that the Vulperi and the Lotor use. She’s also the only one of us with sailing knowledge besides Kalvis, and he’s needed at the village most of the time.”

“Do you trust her?”

“I think so. If she wanted to, she could have bartered her skills or stolen something for passage back to her old area of expertise. That she’s stuck around say something about her character.”

“Or that she won’t leave Miri,” Jesse suggested.

“That too. But Miri wouldn’t leave us voluntarily. And unless Keela planned to wrap her in a sack and take off for Spitetail, she’s stuck with us.”

They headed back to the main square of town, a day of labour winding down around them. He heard the hammering of metal coming from the far end of the village. Kalvis was still hard at work. The lumber workers, three gals he didn’t know the names of yet, were cutting and planing wooden boards. A profoundly laborious task done by hand, he realized. With the river nearby, there was a way to harness it for power. Somewhere in his notes there was a water-powered sawmill idea. That and the mill, and a dozen other things you could use…

“I got preliminary permission from Nell. We can start in the morning,” he said, voice tinged with excitement. It’d be a lot of work, but he could finally prove that his ramblings weren’t complete nonsense.

Vee nodded warily. “I still have some misgivings about militarizing…but if we can make ourselves look like a dangerous enough target, maybe we can prevent a conflict altogether.”

“That’s the plan. We’ll get you back to your home at some point, but from what you’ve all told me about these Folk dicks, I doubt they’ll actually be accommodating.”

“So. What’s the first step?” she asked.

***

“You know I’ll do anything to strike back at those Folk bastards but…do you have any ideas that Aren’t completely insane?” Kalvis asked.

Jesse looked between the small blacksmith and the hastily sketched sheets of plans that he had placed on the table next to a variety of tools. “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

Kalvis stood about the same height as the rest of the people in the village. He did, however, sport as impressive a set of muscles as he’d seen on Huntress, and the callouses of hard work to match. He wore a pair of goggles on his forehead that mussed with his hairline. Unlike the delicate glass lenses that Vee used, these were heavy, practical protection against wayward shards of burning metal. Likewise, he favoured full pants and long sleeves, complete with a leather apron to keep him safe from the heat. He reminded Jesse of his Dad’s friends from the plant. The memory made him wince, knowing he might never see his family again.

The blacksmith thumbed through the pages he’d written up. Though it was written in English, he tried to includes as many illustrations as he could manage with his limited artistic experience. Each page, however, kept him aware that blank paper was a finite resource in this little village. Yet another resource they would have to replicate in some fashion to keep the wheels turning.

“I recognize some of this. I’m not an expert in the finer points of machine making, mind. I can’t build a clock from scratch, but I can certainly try to replicate this ‘crossbow’, for instance. If I can spare the material.” He held out his hands to indicate the small smithy around them. “This is about all we got. I have some reserves of iron, various parts we pulled off the ship. But the XO took a lot of what we could have salvaged when the Looking Glass went down in the razorreef waters offshore. And if I’m going to work it, I’ll need a steady supply of charcoal. Coal, preferably, but we haven’t found a supply of it in the area.”

Jesse gave a weak nod. It was about what he expected, but nowhere near what he wanted. A lot of his ideas couldn’t be done with just the supplies of iron they had already, plus whatever other metals they’d found. “Didn’t your ship have weapons?”

“That we did. We had blades, bows, harpoons, even some light armor. Not enough to sink us if we got knocked over board, of course. But a lot of that was taken by the expedition. The stuff they left us with was basic. Knives, a few hatchets, the bow that Huntress carries. I’ve done my best with the tin we found, and our trader connection has been getting as much as she can from her dealings with Vulperi. But...” he spread out his hands.

“Honestly, from what I’ve seen you’ve done incredible. Why’d the ship have you in the first place?”

He leaned back against one of his shelves. “I was the Quartermaster. Sort of fell into that position because I knew my way around a blacksmith hammer and a ledger. I was only with the others for a few months before we set sail on...this adventure.”

“So you have experience as a smith before?”

“Of course. Plenty of metalwork needed to keep a ship in action, though obviously not a great idea to start forging in the middle of a boat mind. But being the sole provider of metalwork for an entire village? It’s been taxing, especially with the little iron we have on hand. I had enough experience with copper and brass to have a head start in figuring out bronze. I tried my best to replicate weapons. But there’s only so much we can do…” He balled up his little fists.

“Progress is progress. Without you, the others would be up shit creek.”

The colourful idiom broke the blacksmith out of his frustrated funk. “Heh. Shit creek, eh? I’ll have to remember that.”

They spent a while going over all the things Kalvis had forged before and after he’d arrived on this continent. It was an impressive collection of items ranging from the incredibly useful (nails, hinges, bridles) to the trivial (rings, simple filigree). But where they would get the resources to make these objects was another matter entirely.

Kalvis unrolled crude map of local resources on his work bench, keeping it flat with some of his tools laid down on the corners. He pointed out the details as he came to them, Jesse trying to take mental notes. “A few weeks into being marooned in this place, I bothered Huntress enough to help me venture around the local area, looking for ores. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find iron to save my life. Our resident geologist didn’t make it off the ship the first time we crashed, unfortunately. We had some books on the subject but I’m still a layman. I’ve been heading up when I have time to pull tin from deposits along the old river beds, close to the root of a mountain range west of here. I’m not exactly burdened with free time to do so, but I’ve made a few trips to pull as much as I can. That, combined with the copper we can get from trade, gives us bronze. Copper on its own is good for decoration, but not much else.”

“Why not just trade for iron?” Jesse asked.

He huffed. “The damn Vulperi won’t sell it! Or more accurately, they won’t sell it in meaningful quantities at prices we can afford. Besides, Iron isn’t significantly better than bronze, at least from a toughness standpoint.”

Jesse tilted his head. “I thought iron was better than bronze?”

“Steel is better than bronze,” Kalvis amended, “Iron on its own holds an edge just about as well as bronze does. Only it’s more plentiful…or it should be. Making steel…that’d be the goal. With steel I could make armour, weapons, axes that don’t break…”

A thought dawned on Jesse. “What if I had access to a few hundred pounds of steel? Could you use that?”

His eyes lit up. “Could I use another few hundred pounds of steel? Yes, of course I could! Why?”

Jesse told him about the car. Though the front and back of his sedan were likely plastic or aluminium, there was a significant amount of steel still in automobiles. Galvanized, even, though that would probably be lost (or at least mitigated) in any kind of reforging process.

“Presumably you are not raving mad and this was indeed a self-propelled carriage, why take it apart? That sounds like a technological marvel we could learn so much from!”

Jesse gave a shrug. “Maybe from the engine, some of the other parts. But I bent it around a tree. Even if we repaired it, I wouldn’t have any idea where to get gasoline. And even if we found fuel, where would I go? One car as a whole component is useless, besides maybe the inherent speed one can get up to if we needed to deliver messages or something. No, the steel that makes up its chassis is much more useful for our purposes. And as much as I’d love to keep it around, if only for nostalgia purposes, I have to consider what would help us all survive.”

With some descriptions and creative use of the map, they were able to pin down a rough location on the car. “Getting it to us will be tricky, if it’s as big as you say. In that kind of dense forest? You’d have to break it apart. Then…wagons, maybe?” He brushed at his wisps of a moustache. “No…clearing a road to there would take time. Time we don’t have.”

Jesse decided to give the relocation plan some thought in the coming days. But in the meantime, they had to consider the options that were immediately at hand. “What other resources can we access in the immediate area around us? No wrong or too obvious answers.”

“Well, there’s the crops we grow. Miri’s the expert there, of course. Furs and pelts from the animals Huntress hunts and catches in her traps. Lumber is plentiful, at least. There are things we could, in theory, exploit. But without the tools, hands, and industrial backbone, they’re little more than flights of fancy. In particular, this cave here,” Kalvis circled a lump on the map far to the north of the mountain range with the tin ore. “This used to be an Imperial mine, judging by the fallen in buildings and the scraps of equipment that haven’t been looted. There’s deposits in the rock of runestone.”

“Runestone?” Jesse said with a raised eyebrow.

“You don’t have runestone?”

“Maybe we do and it’s just called something different. What is it?”

Kalvis made a ring with the fingers and thumb of one hand. “Blueish gemstones around this big or smaller. They used to be important to the Empire’s magic, if you believe those stories. Not anymore, of course. The magic power that the Folk were said to have is long gone. The stones themselves are beautiful and fetch a decent price at market. Extraction would be an involved process, but it has some value as a trade commodity. Plenty of Folk looking to play up an ancient bloodline by making or buying jewelry with runestones embedded. But it’s not like a necklace is going to let you throw fireballs anymore.”

He looked for a hint that the blacksmith was kidding. Jesse tried to remember he was in a different universe and that he was talking to a three foot tall green Humanoid. “Is…is magic real here?”

Kalvis thought a moment before replying. “I’m not sure. Some of the more grandiose descriptions of what the Eternal Empire could do? Probably not. But the world is full of strange things. I’ve seen some. Other instances might well just be advanced technology. Your pocket library, for instance.”

Jesse smiled. “You all pick up things pretty quickly. I’d be surprised if you weren’t making things like my phone sooner than either of us would think.”

He grunted an affirmation to that. “Maybe. Can’t say I’d see it replacing paper, though. How would these academics waste everyone’s time without it?”

***

“And this,” Miri said, bending at the knee to cup a large green fruit on a trellised vine between her fingers, “Is a guago!”

Jesse had been getting an earful of horticulture from the village’s resident expert for what had to have been forever. It was a lot of unfamiliar proper nouns to keep track of, and truth be told his eyes glazed over a bit when she explained the difference between the flavours of blue pinnerts vs orange. But her enthusiasm was genuine and infectious, and soon he was back to asking clarifying questions.

“You didn’t do all of this yourself, right?”

She laughed. “Oh gods, no. Lena’s an arborist and helped me immensely with picking, digging out, and relocating enough of the smaller trees for viable harvests. Zima and Sheena did a lot of the crop planting with me. They’re an astronomer and a hydrologist respectively but they grew up on farms. Others pitched in where they could. Plucking weeds, trimming dead stalks, twisting vines on trellises, checking for pests, warding off grazers. Farming’s a lotta work!”

“I bet. I’ve never done it myself. Unless you count a little potted plant back at my apartment...damn, poor guy’s probably not doing so hot now.”

Worry creased Miri’s eyes. “I suppose you’re in a worse place than we are, from what you’ve said you’re the only one of your kind around. I might have disagreements with some in our little village, but at least I have them for company. For what it’s worth...I’m glad you’re here, Jesse. We need someone like you with some fresh ideas and a different perspective. Plus, you enjoy my cooking, and that’s always a plus!”

Jesse gave a slight smile back. “Thank you. Means a lot to know I’m not a burden...forget it, back on topic. How much food could we pull from your crops if we harvested now?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “It’s only midsummer! A lot of produce isn’t finished ripening. These guagos aren’t even edible til they turn red.”

“I realize it’s not optimal. It’s just that we’ll need a lot of food regardless of what the village decides to do. Whether it be for travel or for...siege.”

She nodded slowly. “You’ve been talking to my sister again.”

“Glora? No. In fact, we haven’t exchanged words since she wanted to burn me alive.”

“Ah. Well, as you’ve probably noticed, her little cabal and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on the question of the Folk’s offer. If I had my way, I’d start negotiating for safe passage and get us all back on a boat to Voxus as soon as possible. As much as I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to expand my skills, I miss feather beds. And proper lamps. And books…” She trailed off in wistful contemplation.

“And if the Folk are lying?” he asked.

“Why would they do that? They want us out of here, we want to go home. Seems like a perfectly reasonable exchange to me.”

“They don’t seem like reasonable people. At least from what Kalvis was saying.”

“I certainly don’t condone what they did to the men. That was…truly awful.” Miri’s eyes bored into the plants at her feet, a tinge of moisture in her eyes. “But I have to believe we can come to some kind of peaceful arrangement! The Folk can’t want an armed conflict any more than we do. The Wolven, though? I don’t know. They’re supposed to be intelligent, I heard one speak after all, but their behaviour makes me think they’re more beast than person.”

“But that doesn’t let the Folk off the hook. You blame the hand holding the bow, even if it looses on accident.”

She chewed her lip before giving a slight nod. “Quite. I’ll start figuring out what we can take from the garden without needless harm to the plants that are nowhere near ripe yet. That means no guagos, no loppies, and definitely no flamefruits.”

“Flamefruits?”

They walked over to the edge of the little orchard Miri and her team had planted. She stopped at a copse of tall, reedy trees with a single round cluster of tightly packed foliage on top. Within it, green lumps about the size of her fist grew in bunches of three or four at random intervals.

“These little guys make excellent tarts and preserves, but they won’t be ready until early fall.”

“Why are they called flamefruits? Do they turn red, like the guagos?”

“Huh? Oh, no, they turn lighter green. But their peels, when dried, burn like crazy! They’re excellent firestarters, plus they can keep fires extra hot! That’s why the flames on the…erm.” She trailed off, rubbing the back of her neck while looking off in the distance. “The pyre. It’s why the flames were blue.”

Jesse threw her a casual ‘whatareyagonnado’ shrug and examined the flamefruit. It looked like a lime, but longer. Or like a bumpy, chubby cucumber. Somewhere in between. That it had some kind of flammable material in it was remarkable. Some kind of oil, he wondered. “Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. May I take a few, to study?”

She shrugged. “For sure! I’ll get the ladder. Just don’t try to bite into them. This early in the season they’re about as hard as rocks!”

***

Miri was far from the only Kith who was reluctant to put their full effort into the idea of fighting. Though trust in the Folk was threadbare and none of the women could be considered naive after so long on their own in harsh country, the idea that a cadre of short academics could be a threat to a heavily armed and apparently disciplined mercenary force had few adherents.

Chief among those who wanted to fight was Huntress and Kalvis. The former because she trusted nobody but herself, and the latter due to a clear thirst for revenge. Neither was a sustainable foundation on which to build a defence, but it wasn’t nothing.

Another potential source of support was Glora, the village’s religious head. Her and a small group of the more devoutly religious members of the expedition formed a powerful bloc, roughly 1/4th of the total population of Temporary. With their zeal, they could have the basis for a militia on their hands.

“The only problem,” Jesse muttered to himself as he puttered around the workshop, “Is that she tried to kill me.”

Vee waved him off. “Minor details.”

“It didn’t feel minor!”

She put down her pen, stepping over to his side of the room to look at the collection of miscellaneous wires and electronic components on his desk. “How goes the battery…winder?”

“Charger. And not good.” He set the long cigarette lighter plug down. “I feel like I’m in my high school shop class again. These wires do…something, that connects and converts power from the battery to the port, which then supplies power to the USB cable and charges my phone. But the specifics are eluding me.”

“Can’t you find the answer in the library?” Vee asked.

He shook his head, pointing to the black brick on the far end of the table. “It’s down to 5% charge as it is. And the information is really general. There are no technical manuals, but there is an extensive history of the Current War.”

She tilted her head. “How does your world have information on our fight with the Folk?”

Jesse opened his mouth to explain, then shook his head. “It would take too long to explain that dumb pun based on the turn of the century’s most esoteric dick measuring competition. And I don’t-” His voice cut off mid sentence. “Wait…I think…it can’t be that simple, can it?”

His hands flew to a small knife that Vee had lent him. He cut the port end that lead to the cigarette lighter section off and started stripping wire. There were four tiny wires within, colour coded: white, green, black, red. He tugged at those as well, peeling back the protective rubber coating.

“Why are you destroying those? Don’t you need them?”

“I’m not destroying them. I’m exposing the bare wire. Need some length for this.

Vee huffed. “Well, if you’re not destroying it, just what the hell are you doing?”

“Sorry. Okay, so, the bare copper here is important. It’s what sends the power, the controlled lightning, along. We got four cables here. Now I’m going to bet that the green and white cables are data, information. Don’t need those. The red and black ones, however, correspond to conventional positive and negative terminals. The same colours on jumper cables! And since a battery provides direct current already…” He tied the red wire around the positive terminal, the black around the negative terminal, and held his breath. After a quick prayer to Saint Nikola, he plugged the charger into his phone.

He held his breath. This was it. Either this worked or he was stuck with the little he’d already written down. No smoke or spark yet, that was good.

He saw it. The little green battery icon, followed by the percentage charge.

“Holy fuck!” he cried, and picked Vee up off the ground, “I did it! I’m the best fucking electrical engineer on the planet!”

Jesse swung her around, laughing like a man without full possession of his faculties. The elation took a while to fade, and by that time Vee had become visibly dizzy.

“While I’m happy you’ve found success,” she said a little shakily, “I’d really like to be on the ground again.”

He sputtered an apology and gently lowered her down. She caught herself on the closest wall, shaking off the disorientation.

“I don’t think it’s good for either battery to do this for long periods of time. I’ll have to charge it in spurts. Otherwise…holy hell, we got ourselves at least a couple more charges. The battery’s only a few years old, it should have a lot of its natural life remaining.”

“So this is not a permanent solution? The battery from your conveyance is limited as well?”

“Exactly. If we think of the power in terms of water, I’m opening the locks between a nearly drained reservoir and a largely full one. The influx of water will stave off complete depletion in the short term, but the draw that drained the first lake is still there. And there aren’t any more batteries to find. Once this one’s dead, that’s it. Even if we could pull out the car engine whole, there’s almost no gas on this planet to make it run.”

“Then we should preserve as much information as possible, shouldn’t we?” she said, then tapped her finger on the open notebook next to the charging phone. “Your language. Teach me.”

Jesse let out a breath. “I’m…not really sure how. Or where to start.”

Vee thought for a moment. Then, she rushed over to her desk, fetched a sheet of paper and a pen, and slapped it on the desk.

“Let’s start with something easy. Table. How do you write it in Human?” she asked, handing him the pen. He took it and wrote the word at the top of the page. Next to it, she scrawled a set of her own curious characters. “Alright. You show me what each symbol represents and I do the same with mine. Eventually we’ll figure it out.”

He stared down at the two words, so radically different but, to his ear, pronounced the same. “I still don’t understand how we can so easily understand each other. How can our worlds take such divergent paths yet both land upon the same language?”

“I suggest you don’t investigate it too closely,” she cautioned, her attention turning to the wall farthest from the door, “Whatever force put you here did so with a purpose, I believe. One does not stumble blindly into such a circumstance. Whoever left you here wanted you to interfere, and it would be much more difficult, not to mention time consuming, if you had to spend weeks mastering our speech first.”

Jesse had to agree. Some kind of gift left to him by the wall guardian to help him integrate, maybe? Having such a powerful creature manipulate his brain like that had horrifying potential, he realized in retrospect. But there was nothing he could do about it but keep going and hope that whatever that entity had done, it had been in his favour.

***

Jesse’s next few days were crammed full, his myriad plans running him between buildings like a firefighter at a gender reveal party. There was Kalvis’ smithy, Vee’s workshop and language lessons, Miri’s botanical expertise and food storage mission, and a half dozen other ideas from both his own mind and that of the women in the village. One Kith he’d never met had an elaborate scheme to harvest razorreefs to use as the tips of spiked weapons, whereas another had the idea of using sea shells from the beach to create a highly caustic quicklime solution. Many of the plans were not viable in the time allotted, but the idea that he wasn’t alone in this mission was heartening.

The primary project, in terms of energy and time expenditure, was going to be the wall. He took half a day just to survey out the village and planting stakes that delineated where they needed to dig. He felt a mix of emotions. A vague sense of satisfaction at having a plan he thought of expressed in reality mingled with an itch at the back of his mind that he’d made a mistake. Were they prioritizing defensive fieldworks at the expense of preparing for a more sensible course of action? Was he leading these academics down a plan of action that’s going to get them all killed?

He consoled himself knowing that not only had Nell and many of the others had agreed with this plan as at least a fallback point, but that the Kith deserved to protect themselves against someone trying to shove them out of their little village. From what they described, the Folk trying to boss them around haven’t lived in these parts for centuries or longer. Ancient claims mattered little to people trying to survive. Maybe if they’d come out and wanted to negotiate, to strike a deal that got the Kith moving somewhere else, there’d be more to discuss. But given what had happened to the men in their group, torn up by those ravenous Wolven, Jesse could put no faith in them keeping their word. This may be unfamiliar territory for him, but he knew a bully when he saw one. And Jesse hated bullies.

Digging was slow at first, limited by the lack of sufficient tools. They had enough to till soil, and plenty of axes to chop at clusters of roots and stumps left behind in the initial sweep of the clearing, but they hadn’t performed any significant earth moving beyond what was necessary for the cellar. The few shovels they had were a smattering of light spades and picks for unearthing gems or fossils and the like, as well as a smattering of new ones carved out of wood. As more were produced, some of the many tools they’d need, more people could work on the berm at a time. He focused the digging party on the wall build up to the north of the village. That was where they’d seen the Folk mass their forces, and though it wasn’t assured that they’d approach from there, it was as good a place to start as any.

The most enthusiastic about the project were members of Glora’s little group. Equipped with the same dower expression she wore, what they lacked in spirited conversation they more than made up for in work ethic. He even found himself working alongside the religious fanatic herself, both of them sweating in the midday sun in a ditch that reached up to just below his knees. Her robe had been put away for the moment, her wild blonde hair tied in a ponytail. He couldn’t help but look over at her once in a while. Under that robe she had hid some of the widest hips he’d seen in these villagers, with a chest to match.

“I’m not going to apologize.”

“Sorry?” he asked, averting his gaze.

“I assume that’s why you keep staring at me when you think I’m not looking. You want me to plead forgiveness for my assumption that you were a threat to this community,” she clarified, her voice toneless and clipped.

“Okay?” he said, taking the chance to plant his shovel and lean against the handle. “I don’t need an apology. Just tell me it won’t happen again and I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not going to say that either.”

“Then why the fuck did you start this conversation?” Jesse asked, bile leaking into his words despite his best efforts.

She exhaled. “I’d like to thank you.”

A pause. “Okay…I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting that.”

“Quite. Before you arrived, I was quite vocal in my belief that Temporary was a death sentence the moment someone stronger than a single biterbeast came at us. Many of our number would have taken that offer by the Folk commander which would have had us likely shuffled off into bondage. Now we won’t, or at the very least, will make the Folk pay for their intrusion in blood. And so, I want to express my gratitude.”

“Huh. Well…you’re welcome.”

“I will no longer forbid my flock from breeding with you, if they desire.”

Jesse tilted his head. “I’m…not sure how to respond to that.”

“The texts are very clear on the matter. Vivia, Goddess of Life and Growth, encourages us to be fruitful and raise our numbers. And if we are to build a community here that lasts, it will be with help of our progeny. I expect you to assist us.”

“Look, I’m flattered, but-”

“If it’s a matter of worrying about their care, do not fret! My flock will see to the children’s every need. All you need to be is the sire, nothing more. Vee confirmed you are fertile, so I expect to do your part for the community.”

And then they went back to digging.

***

“Behold!”

Vee looked at the amalgam of metal and wood with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m...guessing that’s the thing you wanted Kalvis’ help to build. But what is it, really?”

“It’s a crossbow! Well, it’s his version of a crossbow. He worked super hard on making it with the tools and metal we had on hand, including some of the last bits of iron. It’s not operated by a crank, like I was expecting. Instead he...actually, I’m not quite sure how the mechanism. He showed me but I didn’t catch all of it.”

He held out the weapon to Vee, who picked it up with significant strain. Despite it being designed for Kith proportions, it was still nearly as tall as she was. A long rectangle of wood bracketed at the front by the familiar concave shape of a bow, with a stiff but elastic rope strung between both sides. A strange clamping arrangement met the rope, the draw string, where it intersected with the wood. The other end, the butt, of the weapon ended in a strange handled arrangement.

“I fail to see how this is better than just making a regular bow,” she said, looking the device over before resting it on the ground, leaning it back toward Jesse. “In fact, isn’t this front part just a slightly smaller version of a bow? Why can’t we just use that?”

He picked the crossbow back up. “Well, despite the weight, you don’t need to be strong to use a crossbow. Have you seen Huntress’ arms? She’s jacked! We don’t have time for y’all to get fit, but we can get these made and put them in Kith hands where y’all can train to use them. Maybe prop them up on sandbags to ease arm strain. It works, I believe, kinda like this.”

He disengaged the little clamp on the wood and revealed the stock of the weapon to be actually in two pieces. A longer U-shaped section on the bottom, cradling a smaller sliding portion in the groove. Releasing the tension allowed the sliding portion to push out beyond the curved bow part, where he clipped the string, pressed the bow into the ground by the handle, and pushed. The slide with the string attached pulled back, clicking on pairs of identical bronze teeth near the back of the device, until it slotted into place on the final notch. Then, he brought the curvy handle up to nestle into his shoulder, and pulled at a little lever on the bottom.

*THWIP* The taut cable snapped back, sending the slide forward in a blur. Vee’s eyes widened.

“Oh! You use your body weight to put energy in, and the mechanism transfers that energy into the arrow! Ingenious! What does it fire?”

Jesse reached over to the side of the desk and grabbed a quiver with three wooden shafts sticking out the top. “I borrowed these from Huntress. Her arrows are fletched, and mine would go farther if they were but I just needed a few bolts for testing. Need tips too, else they’ll just thunk off a target.”

Vee continued to examine the weapon, bending over to run her finger along the notched sections along the side. “From what you described, it involved an elaborate cranking mechanism? We have something like that for lifting things, but I doubt we could make them in sufficient quantity along with the rest of this thing. From what I can see, this design is significantly less metal and casting intensive. Just the teeth and the latch, see?” She pointed at the indicated parts of the weapon. “The rest is wood, and though the specific shape and kind we want for the project is not infinite, we live within walking distance of a densely packed forest. Wood is readily available where iron is not.”

“I suppose. The lack of metal was one of the things I was worrying about, actually. Hopefully once we get my car back, we can alleviate that problem. At least in the short term.”

“Yes…about that...is it really necessary for you to be the one to go?” Vee asked. Before he could answer, she added, “It’s just that last time, from what you said, you nearly died. You already showed Huntress where your cart is. Couldn’t you stay in the village and work on, well, one of the dozen projects we need working on?”

Maybe it rational to want to protect himself, to focus on the bigger picture and let others do the hard work for him. But he shook that thought off.

“I’m not a coward, Vee. I’ll admit...I was terrified when I was chased down by that Wolven. But if your people are going to put themselves in danger of being mauled or shot full of arrows, I’m doing the same. Besides, Kalvis is brilliant, but it’s still an alien piece of tech to him. I don’t want the team that goes out stuck for any length of time just because they don’t know where to cut first. I mean, I suppose I don’t know much more than they do, but I at least know what a weld point looks like.”

Vee didn’t object verbally, but she didn’t look convinced either. She turned to her workbench to tap at one of the beakers of coloured liquids. Jesse tried to come up with the words to assuage her fears but they didn’t come to his lips.

After a deathly somber silence, Vee spoke once more. Her voice was a low croak, her throat tight. “I just don’t want to see you hurt, is all. We’ve lost so many already.”

Jesse kneeled down and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. Huntress’ll have got my back. And if worse comes to worse we can just take the raft back to the village. We won’t be stranded out there like we were before.”

Vee nodded, though she kept her back turned to him. “I know. And I don’t mean to coddle you or pretend you wouldn’t be valuable out there. But your arrival has been one of the only fragments of good news since we capsized. You and your device are so full of wonders and mysteries and I am genuinely excited to explore them with you. To think of you snatched away by a careless arrow and losing that. Losing you…” She turned to face Jesse, letting him see just a hint of dewing around her eyes. “You are important to our little village. You are important...to me.”

He gave her a weak smile. “And you’re important to me, Vee. You were the first to stand up for me in this whole world. I’ll do my best to come back in one piece. And after all of this bullshit with the Folk is settled, I’d be honoured to tell you everything you could ever want to know about me and my world. Would you do the same?”

“Of course!” she said, voice lightening a touch, “But I can’t imagine what we have to offer in comparison.”

“Nonsense. I’m just a guy with a phone and a basic education. I have no idea what you’re even doing on the table there. Some kind of chemical reaction?”

She nodded, gratefully taking the lead. “Oh, this? Well, I was listening to you talk about your people’s form of alchemy, and I got an idea…”

***

The next day, Jesse met up with the little team that was forming for their perspective mission to retrieve his car outside the little warehouse next to the dock. Kalvis was a must; he had all the experience with metals and the tools/brawn to make anything happen. Huntress was going along too, as she was the only one realistically capable of fending off a predator if they ran into one. Or, he realized with an internal shiver, another Wolven. The only other critical member of the team was Keela. Without the boat, none of their plan would be possible.

“No,” the boat’s captain said, and returned to her work, scratching notes in quick shorthand on the wooden crates with a chunk of white chalk.

The flat denial caught them off guard. Her participation had been, perhaps unwisely, assumed.

“This is kinda important,” Jesse said.

“I got a dozen “kinda important” things to do for this community. I don’t got days to waste on a magical self propelled carriage.”

“It’s not magical!”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Listen, you might not be Folk, but that doesn’t mean I trust you.”

Huntress stepped forward. “It exists. I’ve seen it.”

“Like I’d ever trust you. You’re even crazier than he is!”

The bow woman’s eye twitched. “You don’t need to believe it. Just take us up river and you’ll be able to confirm it for yourself.”

“Does Nell know about this?”

“She approved it,” Kalvis replied. His gaze was snapping between Keela and Huntress worriedly. “Jesse hasn’t let us down yet. And if there is a source of steel out there, we’d be willing to part with a percentage.”

That got her attention. Keela momentarily took a break from staring poisoned daggers into Huntress to focus on the blacksmith. “How much?”

“10% of the weight.”

She laughed. “It’s my boat. This doesn’t happen without me. 40%.”

Kalvis threw up his hands. “Almost half? We’ll have nothing with which to defend ourselves!” He closed his eyes, visibly calmed, then opened them. “15%.”

“I’m not budging. Miri and I will be fine regardless of how this ‘fight’ with the Folk goes.”

Jesse could tell this was going to end with a poor outcome if he didn’t intervene. Either she’d demand too much and they’d be fucked or she’d refuse outright. He took a gamble.

“What if I had a way to make your raft faster?”

Keela turned to him. The first time she’d looked at him during the whole conversation. “What do you know about sailing, pinkboy?”

“I know you’d encounter less drag heading upwind if you added a centreboard.”

Her mouth scrunched up. “I have no idea what that is.”

“It’s a little slotted board you slide in the middle of your boat. If your raft is flat-bottomed, might want two. Creates lift, limits drag, keeps you from having to fight the wind when you’re trying to sail in something other than directly downwind.”

Blank stare. “You want me to…cut a hole in my boat?”

“Okay, it’s like this.” He grabbed some of the chalk she was using to mark individual crates and drew a crude boat on the side of one. In the bottom, he drew a little ridge at a 45 degree angle to the perpendicular. “Similar to your rudder board, but for a different purpose. The centreboard provides a counterforce that allows you to steer at sharper angles to the wind.”

“Wouldn’t that make it harder to steer in shallow waters?”

“Yeah, that’s why it’s retractable. Like this.” With a few more chalk diagrams, he was able to convey the general idea. It was one of the dozen other half-cocked ideas he came across while trying to record everything he could find that might possibly come in handy somewhere along the line.

She moved her hand over the chalk outline. “And you’re just giving this to me right now? If you’re not bullshitting me, and if this works, you just gave away a huge bargaining chip.”

Jesse shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe I increased the speed of the only supply vessel this little village has for the benefit of everyone. That’s not the only thing I can find in my pocket library. Help us, take 20% of the steel we salvage, and we can work together to make your raft the best thing on the water.”

They set a date, did some preliminary planning with a crude map of the area, and the rest of the team left. Jesse hung back to discuss the upgrades he had at least a basic grasp of for the raft. They had to be relatively cheap in terms of labour and time. While discussing ways to get more fabric to make a proper sail, her fluffy eared compatriot strolled in with a bowl of stew.

“I believe you’ve yet to meet my first mate. Vash, this is Jesse. Jesse, Vash.”

The Vulperi gave a single wave of the hand with a spoon in it, heading off into the back without saying a word.

“Does she ever shut up?” Jesse asked sarcastically.

“She takes a while to warm up to people. Frankly she trusts faster than I do. Speaking of which,” Keela reached down and pulled out the dagger from her leg sheath and put it on the table in front of her, “Let’s talk about why you’re really here.”

He frowned. “I’m not a spy. I’m not even from around here!”

“That’s what you say. But you look far too much like Folk to be coincidence. I’ll go along with your plan, but if there’s even the HINT of you endangering this village, or more importantly, my precious Miri, I will cut you from stem to stern. Do we understand each other?” Both their gazes fell upon her knife. It was notched and scratched in places from well use, but the metal glinted and looked to have been sharpened recently. It was not something he wanted to imagine shoved into his ‘stern’.

“I understand, but, again, not here to get anyone hurt.”

She nodded, but her expression made it clear she didn’t believe him. He took his leave, backing up out of the room while Keela made a show of using the dagger to file down a fingernail.

***

The sun had come and gone, and Jesse’s hair still dripped from a quick swim he took to clean off. The eager eyes of the villagers were getting hard to ignore. While he never considered himself a looker, he was beginning to feel like the cover art of some cheesy romance novel. He was grateful for the opportunity to get out of sight to talk with Vee, where they could wax platonic about the serious, life or death issues that assailed them. After a while, they took the discussion back to his place.

“So how long will you be gone?” Vee asked. An hour spent sorting out the plans for the remaining week’s worth of time before the Folk return. There was so much to do and not enough time to do it. Papers and instructions on a dozen topics lay strewn about the desk, the floor, and just about everywhere else. The only place free was the bed, which after a long day of digging, looked painfully inviting.

Jesse shrugged. “It shouldn’t be more than three days. If we take more than that, it won’t be worth anything.”

She nodded. “It’ll be dangerous out there. The Wolven, now the Folk. Gods only know what else. Could be worth it to take some time and…reflect.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Reflect on what?”

Vee casually strolled over to his bed. He noticed for the first time that she wasn’t wearing the usual skirt underneath her apron. Bare green thigh made parts of him stir.

“Oh, you know,” she said, sliding down onto the furry blanket and spreading her legs. The apron came off, and Jesse caught sight of her pussy for the first time. Instead of behaving bashfully, like he had before, he held her gaze, “Think about all the things you’re going to be fighting for out there. What you’ll be risking your safety for.”

Her blouse came undone, revealing her breasts. Despite her diminutive size, she was perfectly proportioned.

“Vee, are you sure?”

“Jesse,” she purred. The scientist, the dispassionate observer was gone. She slid two fingers down to her clit and gave it a few gentle circling strokes, “We’ve been playing around enough. It’s for the good of everyone. I like you. I think you like me. Why don’t we do something for us?”

There was surely a reason why they shouldn’t fuck. Why he shouldn’t take this woman and stuff her to the brim. But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of it.

In a flash he was on his feet, shucking off his clothes. She stared up at him with a fierce, evident hunger. Her lower lips began to dew with excitement, her need now physically manifesting and make her eagerness all the more clear. Vee wanted him like she wanted to eat or breathe, and he was happy to oblige.

He was already hard as a rock when he fell upon her. His mouth seized hers, claimed her as its property. Their tongues danced, his hands falling around her to keep her close. The size discrepancy would have always made sex a little different from his previous partners, but in this moment he saw it opened up all new avenues to explore. He bent his knees, holding her in both arms, and lifted. She rose off the bed, still locking lips as he returned to his feet. She couldn’t have been more than forty or fifty pounds, but the day of labour made his arm muscles sing. He ignored it, though. There were some things that were worth it. He pulled his mouth back for a moment and grinned.

“Do you mind if I try something?” he said, looking down to indicate where his erection pressed against her inner thigh.

“Fuck, why not?” she said, wrapping her arms around him as best she could.

Gently, he eased her down onto his cock. She breathed in sharply when he slipped inside, her negligible nails digging into his skin in a not-unpleasant way.

“You okay?” he asked when she was about a third of the way down.

“Abso-fucking-lutely I’m okay,” she said, shaking a little, “I’ve never done this with a tall person before. Gods there’s so much of you!”

He grinned. That was never a bad thing to hear from a partner, but he was sure the effect was magnified thanks to their respective sizes. He pulled her back up and repeated the motion, her eagerness coating his shaft with a glistening sheen. The thought occured to him that he was using her like a sextoy, and he had to tense up to keep from exploding in her right there. The moment passed, he worked himself up to a steady pace, dropping her down then lifting her up, stuffing her like she was a cheap pocket pussy.

“I suppose…I should tell you…” Vee said through heavy breathing, “That some Kith have a…ngh…special sense for when they’re…ah…seeded.”

He was way too into it to stop fucking her, but he did slow down. “What do you mean?”

“When our bodies sense seed, they climax…we can’t help it!” she whined.

“You’re kidding right? Cum makes you cum?”

She nodded shakily. “So, y’know, for your information, if you shoot inside me, I’ll lose my mind.”

“You little slut, you’re trying to trick me into knocking you up, aren’t you?” He punctuated his question with a slap of his bare ass cheeks. She squeaked, but the heat in her eyes only grew. So she was a kinky little thing, Jesse though, that was good to know.

“Is it working?”

“You tell me,” he shot back, and shoved her down deep inside. Her body stretched impossibly around his cock, and most of his deep disappeared inside. After a few throbs inside her, he pulled out again. It felt so fucking good to be inside a woman again. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it, doubly so without a condom.

That familiar tension built up in his waist. His pace sped up as he chased the tipping point.

“Getting close,” he huffed, pace slowing as he mustered the last of his control.

“Do it,” she moaned, her chubby legs wrapping around his waist, “Leave it in. Cum inside me.”

He knew he probably shouldn’t. That he wasn’t exactly father material, that this whole madcap scheme was a terrible idea. But a deeper, primal need rose to the fore, eager for the chance to finally be sated. Here was an eager partner begging to be stuffed full of his seed. A gorgeous, fertile woman was begging to be bred by him. His lust addled mind couldn’t resist that opportunity.

He shoved her down as deep as he could and let go.

Vee cried out as hot, sticky spunk pulsed inside her. True to her word, her muscles clenched down in sympathetic orgasm. It coated her insides, jetting out only after she reached her limit. He dragged out his own orgasm by lifting her up and down again, slowly, milking his cock with her body.

“Fuuuck,” Jesse said, exhaling with the word. Vee was insensate, her eyelids fluttering. He gently pulled her off his flagging erection and settled her gently down onto the bed. Unplugging himself let a gush of cream flow out of her overstuffed hole. He was almost proud of that. Jesse settled down on the bed next to her, cradling her head in his weary arm and waiting for her to cum down from her orgasmic high.

“Whoa…” she said in a thready voice, shaking her head to clear it. “That was a lot. I guess it had been too long.”

“Same. Well, a proper fucking at least. Thank you for letting me do that. Christ, I think I’m just about empty.”

“Hey, I enjoyed it too. Definitely seeing the advantages of having a much bigger partner.”

They cuddled in silence for a while. Vee wasn’t the partner he would have thought he wanted back on Earth. She smelled of oil and ozone, she wore unflattering work clothes most of the time and never touched makeup. But she was smart, thoughtful, and terrifically cute. If there was a more perfect woman out there, he hadn’t found her.

“So…” he said after a while, “That whole thing about climaxing instantly when your body senses cum…was that real?”

She gave a light shrug. “That’s a hypothesis. Would you like to run another test to further confirm the result?”

He pulled her into another kiss. It turned out he had some more left in him after all.

***

Jesse was still thinking of the night with Vee when he boarded the raft. He wore his first new outfit, his old clothes mercifully given a chance to be washed. Zixie had worked night and day to make something of a much larger size than she was used to, something that he was incredibly grateful for. The shirt was nice and breezy, done in a kind of earthy green colour. Humorously, the fabric she’d used was a dull beige. He’d travelled infinite light-years to a strange universe…only to end up in khakis. He did wish that it wasn’t so tight around the crotch, but knowing her, that might have been intentional.

Despite it being the crack of dawn, he was far from the first one there at the dock. His old adventuring partner leaned up against the warehouse wall.

“Have fun?” Huntress asked. She had her bow slung on her pack, unstrung for the journey but likely no more than a minute of shucking gear and restringing away from a deadly volley.

He blushed. “We weren’t THAT loud, were we?”

“Let’s put it this way: my house is on the village’s outskirts and I still got woken up. I sleep pretty lightly, though. Never know who’s…” Huntress drifted off, her eyes following Keela’s form as she carried a heavy box into the warehouse.

“Taking off some of the ballast. If it’s the amount of steel you’re promising, I don’t want to have to chuck it overboard just to get under way.”

Jesse nodded, but Huntress just glared. When the raft captain went back down the stairs to the dock, he whispered. “What’s with you and her? Did you date or something?”

The look she shot at him could curdle milk.

“We don’t see eye to eye on many things. I find her worldview repulsive.”

“And I,” Keela said, peeking out from around the corner, “Hate you too!” She made a show of clomping down the wooden steps to let them know she was really leaving this time.

“She seems pretty self-sufficient. I would have thought you would appreciate having someone like that around.”

Huntress shook her head. “The world’s made worse by opportunists like her. You might have noticed some of us wear the emblems of our gods around our necks. She wears the cog of Cevaria, goddess of greed.”

“Of commerce,” Kalvis corrected, “And the forge, and discovery.” He carried two heavy buckets full of tools, and Jesse moved to pick one up. The blacksmith gave him a thankful nod, and the three of them stepped down the stairs to join Keela by the raft.

“She chooses her totem well. It’s people like her that made me sail halfway across the world in the first place. Civilization,” she said, somehow making the last word sound like a curse. At the sight of the raft and its captain, she raised her voice. “The Folk damned this world with their dreams of empire. People like Keela would do the same given the chance. I have nothing but contempt for her and her kind.”

“Likewise, zealot.” Keela’s voice was calm, almost sing-song, as she made her final preparations for the trip. “I don’t hold to anyone so hypocritical as to enjoy the comforts of society while making a show of spurning its trappings. For a wild woman, you sure do enjoy our goods, our produce.”

“I add to the soup pot with my bow and my hands. I’ve done more for this…Bah!” Huntress threw up her hands, dumped her pack on the raft, and stalked off.

“Are you two gonna…survive one another?” Jesse asked.

“If the price is right, I’ll put up with anyone. I just enjoy riling her up. She takes herself far too seriously.”

Kalvis dropped off his tools next to her pack. “I’d take her seriously too, given that she’s the best shot with a bow in the entire village.”

“I can take care of myself,” Keela said, winking at Jesse. The memory of her threat still lingered. He swallowed hard. This was going to be a long boat ride…

They were close to setting off when he heard a familiar voice call out for them to wait. Stuttering steps on the ramp leading down to the boat dock made them all look up to see Vee running down, her arms wrapped around the crossbow Kalvis had made. Around her back, a quiver of bolts that jostles around loosely with her frantic pace.

“You almost forgot this!” she said, they stooped to catch her breath. He took the weapon and the quiver from her gently, set them aside, then picked her up in an embrace.

“Thank you Vee,” he said, giving her an earnest kiss which she eagerly returned. Setting her back down, he looked behind him self-consciously to the varied reactions of those on board. Disgust from Huntress, a beaming grin from Kalvis, and wild disinterest from Vash. Keela pretended to roll her eyes, but the tiniest little smile curled at the side of her mouth.

“If you two squids are done sucking face,” the raft’s captain asked facetiously, “we’re overdue to shove off.”

“Just a sec,” he said, examining the bolts. “You did these?”

She nodded. “Kalvis helped. They’re bronze tips, not iron, but they should make someone think twice about messing with you.”

He slotted it back into the quiver, slinging it over his shoulder. “You’re a peach, Vee. Thank you, again. For everything.”

Vee backed up the gangplank, which Jesse helped Vash to settle back into place on the raft. He gave her a final wave.

Vee folded her arms. “Come back safe, you hear me?” she said, then added after a laugh, “I can’t read your godsdamned handwriting without you!”

***

They set sail with a party of eight in total. Jesse, Huntress, Kalvis, Keela, Vash, and three others. None had particularly applicable skillsets to scrapping a car, but they were hard workers and would be the muscle they’d need to complete their plan. There was Bee, a linguist who also served as one of the village’s carpenters, Jeela, a limnologist with an interest in rivers and other inland water features, and Riri who was…

“What exactly was your specialty?” Jesse asked the Kith woman. Riri was short, even for her kind, and sported one of the village’s few pair of glasses. She looked up from her notepad, briefly, before returning to a sketch.

“I was on this trip to study a family of amphibious quadrupeds who live along the coastlines of the Southern Ocean called the bliskask.” Her voice was low, almost mournful. She held up the pad, and it showed a sort of long legged crocodile. Judging by the reedy plants for scale, the thing had to be at least a couple metres long.

“So you’re a, what, bliskaskologist?”

“Sure. Unfortunately for me, we ended up in a part of the world without examples of bliskasks, so I’m here without much ability to contribute.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you on board,” Jesse said, trying to add some pep to his voice. If she noticed, she didn’t show it.

“Least it gets me out of the village,” she mumbled, and went back to sketching.

Jesse took a turn on the oars, which were how they were getting up river. They were lucky the Wile had such a gentle current or this would have been a shitshow. Their little craft swung drunkenly from one side of the river to the other until they got a rhythm down that kept them in motion without dislocating a shoulder fighting the person on the other side. He handed off the oar after an hour to rest, deeply grateful that it would be much easier going with the current on their way back. He didn’t want to try to paddle a raft loaded with heavy steel parts against the flow of water.

Past noon, the travelers enjoyed a light meal of fruit jam on a doughy flatbread. All he needed was some peanut butter and he’d have a dose of nostalgia for 3 AM meals at college, and the thought gave him yet another pang of regret. It hadn’t really been that long since his car had flown through a tear in spacetime, but it had felt like months. Every moment filled with some alien idea, some new discovery. In some ways his life was more fulfilling than the IT job he’d had, but the absence of a million comforts and familiarities couldn’t be ignored. PB&J. Air conditioning. Deodorant.

He finished his jam taco and walked over to where Huntress stood, near the front of the raft. Licking his fingers clean, he realized that she hadn’t eaten yet. Her eyes were locked on the far side of the river, hand resting on a freshly strung bow.

“You know, Miri makes a damn good jam. I can take over a lookout for dangers if you want.”

She gestured with her chin ever so slightly to the treeline. “Danger’s already here.”

Jesse looked out toward where she nodded. His eyes scanned a dense forest, similar to the one on the side of the river he was familiar with. He looked for movement, for limbs, for fur, anything.

“You sure? I can’t see anyone out there.”

“They’re good. Better than the Folk at this. Staggered formation, small groups.”

“Krosen?” Jesse ventured.

Huntress nodded. “This far west, they’re likely traditionalists. Embracing their old ways, before the Folk captured them and used them as cheap muscle.”

“Your kind of people,” he said with a laugh.

She broke the stare to face him. “Do not mock me, Human.”

“I’m not…I just meant they were survivalists like you.”

Huntress stared at him stonefaced. To his eternal gratitude, her attention drifted, returning to the forest. “In a way, I suppose you’re correct. I see the trappings of our supposed civilization as fetters, they see their own culture as corrupted by their former masters. But it would be a mistake to think them as backwards or primitive.”

“I don’t think we could call anyone primitive, given our level of tech at the moment. Hopefully, with what we get from the car, I can help us along.”

She spat over the side. “I’ve seen your metal machine. Perhaps I should shove you in the river. Let the Krosen deal with your kind of ‘help’.”

“God you suck. You’re like if Ted Kaczynski was three feet tall,” he said, shaking his head. He went to go find someone slightly less Luddite, leaving Huntress to her silent vigil.

***

“Squad Leader Kolis!” a whispered voice called out. Kolis’ cold grey eyes snapped to the source: the youngest member of his squad. Some vagabond from the North side of Nowhere, fresh in his first tour out on the borderlands.

“What is it, Veren?” he rasped. Kolis was getting too old to be playing in the woods with children barely out of their first century. His hair was turning from its natural platinum to a duller grey, the keen senses that had served him well were starting to dull. But what he lacked in vigor he made up for in experience. It would take more than the sight of some forest creature to make him break silence.

“There’s something…unnatural. Just out of the glade there, do you see?” Veren pointed a gloved finger in the direction he was indicating. It took a moment of concentration, but just this once his older eyes didn’t fail him. There, several hundred metres forward amongst the trees, was a smooth shape.

He motioned for the squad to form up and follow behind him, which they did without another word. They walked in a staggered column, arrows nocked. In his time, the bow of a scout was as unique as a fingerprint. Ornately decorated and customized to the wielder, they served as an extension of their body. You didn’t just pick one up and start firing. You had to train for years to make it a part of you, to make each arrow count.

Or at least, that’s what Kolis believed. His was just so: a masterwork. The others in his squad were fresh hires on Frostfire’s payroll, equipped with weapons from a quartermaster’s shelf. They were well trained enough, he’d seen that they had been put through their paces else he wouldn’t have taken them into the field. But it wasn’t like the old days.

They rounded a large, half-decayed log and finally got a closer look at the object. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen in his many, many years. A metal…cart? Carriage? There was nowhere for a beast to be hitched, no means of visible propulsion at all. Furthering the mystery was the dense cluster of trees immediately surrounding the anomaly. There was no way it could have been pulled here unless it was dropped from the sky. Or, he realized with an icy chill, it had been here and the forest had grown around it.

“It might be something of the Old Empire,” Kolis pondered. He tapped the impossibly clear glass with a finger. Only the slightest refraction of light told him the pane was even there to begin with. “I’ve heard stories of self-propelled conveyances. But this doesn’t look at all like the frescoes in the Hall of Memories.”

Malar, his second in command, shook her head in abject confusion. “What else could it be? Surely not a product of the Krosen. The brutes couldn’t design a forge for themselves, let alone this wonder.”

“It’s far from the sea, so not Vulperi make either…” Kolis wracked his brain, settling on a disturbing thought. “What if it’s Kith?”

The squad exchanged glances. They’d been there at the Kith’s little village to deliver the threat, pulling back to crush the Krosen raids into their side of the Wile river. The Kith were legendarily crafty, if craven and prone to poor decisions. But why had they left their creation out here for anyone to find?

“Whoever created it, they’ll likely be back for it at some point. Fan out and look for signs, then we’ll report back. Commander Falan is going to want to hear about this immediately.”

***

Jesse peered over the gnarled bark of the gigantic log he’d hidden himself behind. He’d spotted his car alright, sitting where he’d left it partially embedded in a tree. But judging by the armed figures peering through his cracked side window, they weren’t the only ones. The weapons and clothes resembled the ones he’d seen the Folk wear. He returned to his sitting position, adjusting when he felt a knot of a root press into his back.

“We got a problem,” he murmured, his voice weary. They’d trekked all the way out here just to be too fucking late.

“How many?” Huntress asked. Her hand hadn’t left her bow since they’d left the raft. A comfort, Jesse thought. At least one of us can throw down if it comes to that. He winced. His crossbow. He’d completely forgotten it, again. It was on the raft, waiting for him.

“I saw three. No idea if there’s more, the forest is pretty dense. Might be some hiding.”

Huntress nodded. “It’ll be five, likely. Old Empire doctrine said go out in patrols of five. The good news is that if this is just a patrol, it’s likely the first time they’ve stumbled upon your conveyance. Bad news, if we let them leave they’ll bring down that full force on us and we won’t get to haul back a sliver of steel from your mechanical death trap.”

“You’re not suggesting that we…kill them?” Bee asked, staring at Huntress with wide-eyed terror. “Not only is murder wrong, but if we kill them we’ll never get a chance to deal if we end up taking them on their offer! You’ll be dooming us to getting attacked!”

Huntress exhaled sharply through her nose. “You still think they were telling the truth?”

“I don’t know if they were telling the truth. But I do know that trying to fight a trained and well-equipped army is worse than suicide. It’s a bad idea.” The linguist said. She’d been one of those opposed to the whole ‘stay and fight’ plan in the first place. Why she’d come along was anyone’s guess, though she carried several of those religious talismans around her neck. Glora’s influence was not to be underestimated.

“Ladies!” Jesse hissed, holding out his hands to them before adding: “And Kalvis. Arguing will just reveal ourselves to the scouts. If Huntress is right, five’s more than we can probably take on. I ain’t an operator, and they’re likely very good with those bows. I think we should wait for them to head back to tell the others, then see what we can do about hauling as much of the car as we can.”

***

By the time the Folk were on the move, the rest of the raft’s compliment joined them in the cover around the car. Looking from them back to his vehicle, Jesse suddenly had deep doubts him and his short compatriots could get a meaningful amount of steel out before they had to flee.

Huntress appeared from the trees whence the scouting party had departed, giving them the all clear. The wheelbarrow squealed and squeaked as it rolled over roots

Kalvis ground to a halt at Jesse’s side, his eyes wide. “Gods…you know, after all this time I still thought you were kidding.”

“Nope. That’s my car. Shame it wouldn’t turn over, of course. I think you’d get a kick out of hearing an engine.”

“Likely. From what you describe, it’s…well, it’s something I want to spend a year with a workshop to try and replicate. But there’ll be time for that in the future, I’ll wager. Now, we need to take this thing apart as quick as possible. Firstly, how dangerous is dismantling this thing?”

“It’s not going to explode if you cut the wrong place, if that’s what you mean,” Jesse said, then caught himself, “Actually, good point. There’s a tank of a flammable liquid at the back, it’s called gasoline. There won’t be more than a few litres in it but a wayward spark could cause it to ignite. Best to drain it, if we can. Other than that, and with the battery out already, I think the only dangerous parts is the weight. Oh, and the tires. Don’t puncture those, they’re full of air.”

“Full of…you mean they’re hollow?”

“No no…well, yes, but not quite. It’s full of pressurized air. Like using a bellows then sealing off a container. The air keeps the tire’s shape while allowing it to deform over rough surfaces.”

Kalvis nodded at the explanation. “I’m not used to thinking of the air we breathe as a material in and of itself but indeed it is. Interesting. Alright, next question: what should we NOT destroy?”

That was a tougher question. Ideally they should outright destroy as little as possible. All the little bits and bobs of wiring could be useful down the line for getting any amount of electronic infrastructure started, but that was a lot way down the road. He explained, briefly, what to look for and what to preserve. Despite reading the pedia entry on cars forward and back he wasn’t anywhere close to being an expert. They would just have to do the best they could and hope nothing useful got smashed.

“Anything with wires coming out of it or otherwise looks complicated. Oh, and the glass. Keep the windows as best you can. I’m guessing clear glass is a rarity in these parts. Might be useful if we ever mess around with optics or whatnot.”

“Fine, fine. It is pretty remarkable. Without the cracks in the front pane I wouldn’t have been able to tell there was glass even there. Your people were miraculous smiths and artisans.”

“We just had a head start,” Jesse said, uncomfortable with the association with magic or the divine. The last thing he wanted to be was some weirdo lording over advanced knowledge like some pretend god in some bad time travel story. “Had y’all been around for as long as we have, you would of come up with the same things and more, likely.”

Kalvis nodded but held a doubtful expression. “Perhaps. At any rate, let’s get to work. I’m eager to see the innards of this fantastic contraption.”

An hour passed before they were even able to start taking things off. Part of the problem was a lack of compatible tools. Kith had no equivalent to a screwdriver, something Jesse kicked himself for not investigating or preparing for. It took some time for Kalvis to file down a chisel to work in a similar fashion. Once they had it, however, they could start removing the valuable parts in earnest before taking the heavier, blunter tools to the chassis.

The first obvious roadblock was the engine itself. The tree he’d crashed into appeared solid, but the front of the car had partially crumpled inward, squishing the parts together. Getting the battery out had already been a bitch. Removing the engine would be worse.

Their resident smith looked over the tree, block and tackle in hand. “The root structure looks firm, but if the engine’s as heavy as you say it is, if we hook it up to the wrong branch it could snap and somebody could get hurt.

Jesse only a basic understanding of how mechanical advantage worked, but he knew enough to not want to mess around with the potential of dropping something heavy from a great height.

“Maybe we could disassemble it too?”

The blacksmith grimaced, pointing at the now exposed engine head. “You see all that? As far as I can tell it’s solid metal all the way through. Breaking the elongated frame apart is one thing, trying to section off bits of a giant brick like that’ll be another matter entirely. We could try disassembling it, but I doubt I’ll have the tools or the time.”

The easiest steel to get was the hood, trunk, and roof panel. Cutting the comparatively thin material holding those in place would be laborious but not prohibitively so. While Kalvis worked on the block and tackle, Jesse and the others used a hacksaw and brute force to cut through those, though not before removing the windows and stacking them gently on the side. Then the myriad tubes and fitting connecting the engine components together had to be separated. Kalvis and Huntress took turns, their smaller yet muscular physiques allowing them a better chance at getting into the densely compact machinery. They also tried to hammer out some of the bent-in front grill to get it out of the way.

Once the major components under the hood had been separated from one another, they were ready to send the engine came up. Kalvis had cajoled Huntress into climbing up and hooking a section of chain originally from the Looking Glass up around a high point on the tree’s trunk, amidst a cluster of branches. If they didn’t hold, hopefully the friction with the trunk itself would keep the whole kit and caboodle from falling on them.

They all worked in tandem on the rope to haul it up. Inch by inch it lifted, the tree groaning against the strain. Finally, when their arms were aching and their hands were ropeburned, it cleared the edge of the car. They lowering it to the ground, immediately exploding into weary celebration. This made lifting the car with a combination of the jack and the pulley system much easier. Kalvis had the idea to actually tip the damn thing over, given that the interior was what they needed least and a lot of the good metal was on the bottom in the chassis.

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Jesse asked.

“Everything about this is dangerous, but if we want this done fast, we’re going to need to cut some corners.”

So they did, but not before draining out the various fluids into whatever spare containers they could find. They couldn’t think of a use for oil, transmission fluid, or wiper juice, but they did take pains to carefully catch all the gasoline that was left in his tank. It was enough to fill one of the large casks of water they had taken along for the work, which they had since drunken clean through.

It was an understatement to say junking a car without power tools was a lot of work. But the Kith proved to be much stronger than Jesse had thought, especially when working in groups. A three person team with chisels and prybars worked on one end, while another used mallets to break up partially dislodged pieces. They all went onto the bed of a handcart, which everyone took turns schlepping back and forth to the raft. Jesse proved to be the best one for this task, so he took twice as many shifts hustling long sections of bent, mangled steel to Keela, who stowed them away with an ever increasing look of surprise on her face. From what Jesse gathered, steel wasn’t a rare commodity in the larger cities, but finding a giant reserve of high quality steel in the middle of nowhere like this wasn’t exactly a daily occurrence. He figured she was seeing…whatever the Kith version of dollar signs were.

He’d just returned from depositing the muffler and some other scraps when Huntress’ head perked up. She held her fist to head height, something Jesse gathered meant get down, or silence, or otherwise stop and shut up. Nothing besides the gentle breeze rocking the canopy overhead. Then…the snap of a twig from somewhere to their north.

Jesse scooted over to her side. “Animal?” he asked.

“Technically,” she said with a sneer, “They’re back.”

Kalvis sagged, dropping his hacksaw roughly into his tool pail. “And things had been going so well.”

***

Jesse’s heart hammered in his chest as he dashed through the forest. It was a minor miracle he kept his footing among the twisting roots that lined the ground. Between them and loping around tree trunks, every step of his flight felt like an obstacle course. But just when he felt like he needed to take a break, an arrow slammed into the bark next to him and he was reminded that, yes, this was life and death.

“Surrender yourself, interloper!” an androgynous voice demanded from behind him, their calls no more compelling than the last half a dozen times. He wondered if the arrows were actually warning shots. He didn’t want to test that theory. If they weren’t and he did try to give up, there was every chance these Folk would make him permanently cosplay a pincushion.

He hadn’t seen any of his Kith allies since the initial volley. God, he thought, I could really use that crossbow right around now.

The Crossbow!

He’d completely forgotten it. Again. Presumably it was still on the raft where he’d left it. He cursed himself for leaving it behind. Maybe he could have given cover to his comrades, let them get away. Or maybe he would have gotten filled full of holes and given the Folk a mechanical advantage.

That was something he hadn’t considered in his mad dash to implement as much technological change as he could in the short time allotted. What if his stuff fell into the wrong hands? A crossbow was just archery by another name, but the plans he had on the proverbial drawing board…gunpowder, Greek Fire, things that could break this world’s balance of power for good or ill. If he survived, he’d have to give some serious consideration to just how much he should be sharing.

Another arrow plinking off a root knot at his feet knocked him back into reality and the present danger to his health. But the trees had started to thin, and one or two of the landmarks he’d made sure to keep in his head for when he was shuttling steel back and forth were visible. He was close to the river.

Something brushed by his sleeve. At first, he slapped at it like it’d been a speeding insect. But his hand came back a dark red. An arrow had skimmed him, its razor sharp head slicing through skin with barely any resistance and left a trail of blood sliding down his arm. If they were loosing warning shots, the people doing the warning were losing their patience.

Ignoring the wound as best he could he pressed on, blistered feet carrying to the edge of the water. The raft, mercifully, was still there. Kith scrambled to rearrange the steel to form a primitive wall in the centre of the boat. The wagon was tipped over, and Huntress’ red hair poked out from the side.

“Down!” she screamed, leaping to her feet. Jesse took the command and dived, slamming belly first into the sandbank. An arrow sailed over his head a fraction of a second later, disappearing into the woods where it terminated in a dull *thunk*. Whatever it hit didn’t scream, so it might have missed. Alternatively, it might have very much not missed, and there’d been no time for the target to make a sound.

“Thanks,” he said, breath heaving.

“Don’t mention it. Couldn’t leave without you; would unbalance the load without your lumpy body.”

Despite their peril, Jesse laughed. Getting back to his feet, he stumbled on board the raft and collapsed against the pile of salvaged steel opposite the river bank. Hundreds of pounds of former car weren’t exactly comfortable, but it was enough protection from arrow fire to keep him safe. At least for the moment. Huntress raced forward momentarily to collect some of her expended arrows, then joined him on the raft.

“We got everyone?” Jesse asked, his creaking voice making him suddenly aware of an incredible thirst.

“All save Kalvis.” Keela replied.

Jesse’s heart fell. Without the little blacksmith, they were impossibly fucked. “You lost the only one of us who can work metal?!”

Keela’s glare could have melted the sand around him to glass. “Hey, asshole. This was your mission, don’t forget that. And Kalvis is much more than your little worker puppet. We knew him longer than you have.”

He wanted to spit out another retort, but her works burrowed their way through his defensiveness. She was right, he can’t just think of Kalvis for his skills. That kind of gross utilitarianism was not only shitty to do to a person, it was also wrong.

“Sorry. Do we know which way he went during the split?”

Keela gave a shrug. “I’m not a tracker, but probably from that direction.”

She pointed over the side of the boat to a point far to the north. A tiny figure sprinted down the beach, casting up plums of sand with his frantic footsteps. In pursuit, a trio of Folk archers.

“Cast off, for gods’ sake!” Kalvis screamed, dashing as fast as his legs could take him. Jesse thought for a moment about jumping over the side and picking up the bastard like a football. But he looked to his arm, which was still bleeding profusely, and decided that wasn’t a great option. He took off the brand new shirt Zixie had so kindly made for him, tore a long, thin strip from it, and tied off his wound. It’d need to be cleaned and maybe sewn shut, but that could wait. So long as the bleeding stopped, he’d be alright. He’d have to make it up to Zixie later.

His crossbow lay within the pilot house. Keela had apparently decided to keep the mechanical weapon close. With some pain, he worked the action, pulling the slide back and loading the bow with a significant amount of energy. He slid a bolt from the little quiver and slipped it into place. His weakened arm made aiming difficult, so he ended up leaning it on top of the pile of automotive scrap, crouching down to sight it. A lifetime of mass trivialization of violence made him lock onto the centre of mass of the closest Folk archer, but he hesitated. Defending one’s self with violence was one thing. Using a weapon to kill someone, even for a noble cause, was another. In the end, he sighted the ground at his target’s feet.

*THWIP*

The bolt impacted several feet and to the left of the target. The scout’s head snapped up in response. Jesse gave a sarcastic wave with his good arm, then started recocking his weapon. Several of the passenger Kith were watching him, keeping out of sight of their shared enemy.

“What did you call that?” Bee asked.

“A crossbow. All the puncture power of a regular bow but you don’t need to work out your whole life to use it.”

“Punctures nothing if you purposely shoot low,” Huntress chided. “This isn’t a game. Put holes in them or they’ll kill us.” She punctuated the statement by loosing another trio of shots. One went wide, the other two slammed home. One sailed clear through the thigh of one of the pursuers, sending them rolling to the ground. Another stuck into the chest of the nearest Folk. He screamed, snapped the shaft off with his free hand, then returned to his quiver to return the favour.

“Jesus,” he said while peeking over the edge, ducking back down just as an arrow sailed through the air where his head had just been. “These guys are intense.”

Huntress grabbed him by the collar. “Put Holes In Them.” Her voice was cold, unshakable. They’d become better acquainted over their adventures but she was still a woman of sheer, singular will. He swallowed, nodded, and set another bolt in the crossbow. The bronze arrowhead should penetrate better than her sharpened wooden ends, but they were much more expensive to produce. It all came down to how much foot poundage (or Joules if you were sensible) you could put into the arrow. His mechanical advantage over her conditioned muscles and training.

He bit down and used his injured arm to lift the crossbow up. They were in throwing distance at this point. Kalvis was juking left and right but it was only Huntress’ skillfully aimed shots that was keeping him safe. The closest Folk archer had just slipped past one of her arrows and was drawing back his own toward the blacksmith’s back. Jesse put sights on, accounted as best he could for drop, and pulled on the trigger.

The bolt appeared to sprout from their upper torso. He must have hit something important, as the soldier dropped the bow from limp fingers and collapsed to their knees.

“I did it!” he cried, then immediately felt regret. He’d done it alright. He’s hurt a person. Jesse sagged against the steel. The sharp metal jammed into his back, keeping him locked into the moment.

“Good shot,” Huntress said, loosing her own arrow down range.

“I just shot someone.”

“Yes, and you likely saved Kalvis’ life. You wanted to fight the Folk rather than flee? This is what is involved.”

He nodded absently. Intellectually, she was right. That Folk was trying to hurt one of his new community, he was within his rights. But he’d never seriously injured someone before. Imagining the act was one thing, achieving it was something completely different.

Kalvis boarded and slid behind the raft’s tiny pilot house. He sucked in air, hands over his knees. “Gods preserve me, that was terrifying. Thank you for waiting for me. I got lost in the woods, thought you would have left by now.”

“No one was getting left behind,” Jesse said, “But, now that everyone’s here…Keela?”

“I’m working on it!” the raft’s captain shouted. “Get the gangplank up, I’ll get the anchor.”

While Jesse and Riri got to work pulling in the board, Keela slid to the side of the raft, knife in hand, ready to cut the rope holding them in place. Huntress quiver was running low, and her fire became sporadic. Just enough to keep the remaining Folk’s heads down. But more emerged from the woods, bows in hand. Jesse yanked in the plank, running back to cover as more shafts sprouted from the log deck.

Keeping the steel pile in between her and the Folk, she sawed at the anchor rope. Her knife was sharp, but the rope was well hewn and it took an agonizingly long time to cut all the cords to free themselves from the shoreline. Arrows flitted overhead and bounced off cover, giving her plenty of motivation. With a shout of triumph, the rope snapped in twain and they were free to move downstream. Bee and Riri dug out the paddles and got to rowing out into the current. They were loose. They were free!

But the sense of victory was short-lived. The raft turned in the flow, and momentarily the side that had been protected was exposed to the enemy. Jesse watched, crossbow half cocked, as an arrow loosed from a Folk archer. It soared through the air, seemingly in slow motion. Jesse’s head snapped around to see its target.

Keela’s triumphant expression turned to a look of terror. She tried to move out of the way, but the arrowhead sunk deep into her chest. Her dodge turned to a tumble, and she fell headfirst into the water.

“Keela!” Vash screamed, pinned down in the pilothouse by more and more arrows. Huntress was doing her best to retaliate, but was almost out of arrows. The others were rowing or cowering or catching their breath after running for their life.

Without thinking further, Jesse dived in after her. He wasn’t anything resembling a strong swimmer, and in the failing light it was all he could do to keep himself oriented in the river. Arrows sliced and skipped over the water, pressing him under and away from shore. By the time he reached Keela’s body, they were both far toward the centre of the river.

He wrapped an arm around her to keep her close, then pressed two fingers from his other hand to her carotid. A pulse, thready but there. The arrow still jutted out of her chest, the wound leaking a trail of crimson into the turbid water. She needed treatment fast. But as he thrashed to his side to look for the raft, to his horror, it was far away and moving farther with every moment. It was still under attack, but with the heavy load and the flow of the current, steering the craft was probably a bitch and a half.

Jesse had to focus on his own survival. His and Keela’s at any rate. He backstroked to the opposite side of the river, keeping the Kith woman’s head above water. The rain of arrows subsided the further he got. Either he had left their range or they did not see him as a danger. His arms burned, doubly so for the one already wounded. His legs thrashed unevenly, propelling him in fits and spurts. The moments of exhausting effort feeling like eternities. He only stopped when his feet scraped the bottom of the river. With the last ounce of strength, he pulled Keela out of the surf and up onto the sandy shore. His last conscious thoughts were of Vee, and hoping that he got a chance to see her again.