Author's Nightmare: Chapter 144 (Patreon)

Solitaire POV: Day 123

Current Wealth: 255 gold 42 silver 33 copper

I was in the middle of testing how many times a single human being could fold strips of linen in a row before killing himself when Shango called on me, interrupting my work, fortunately, and bringing me bad news to compensate for the upwards tilt of fortune. 

“I won’t be coming to help you in the battle, I need to stay in Elswick.”

As revelations went, it registered somewhere between “I’m pregnant” and “I’m a C.I.A spy and you’re under arrest” in terms of the sense of molten dread it sent bubbling down my body. 

“Explain.” I replied, quite reasonably I thought. Shango stiffened, as if he was preparing for a fight of some sorts. Which was ridiculous, because if I’d wanted a fight I’d have let him know by smashing a hammer across his face without the slightest telegraphing, warning or threat. 

But then Shango spoke, and he told me where he’d been, what he’d done, what had happened. He spoke of Lord Viras, the man’s weird similarity to him, his claim of tutorship from one of the world’s foremost magi. And his promise to destroy us. By the end I was still uncertain, but I had a lot more to think about than just my former friend. 

“You realise he might be trying to split us up.”

“I’d considered that.” Shango nodded. “I wasn’t sure why he’d tell me he planned to destroy us if he didn’t gain something from it.”

I thought about that. 

“Well,” I began, “I wasn’t there, but if he reciprocated this sense of connection you felt, I can see that being why. People are weird about feelings of belonging and kinship.” I knew that better than most, having already felt the experience of meeting a singular man of roughly comparable intelligence after years of wading through morons. “But, still, it could be a trap regardless.”

“Does that make any difference?” He asked. 

“No.” I hissed, finding myself particularly irritated by the fact. Even if it was a trap we didn’t have any real choice here. Either we let ourselves split up, or we let our workstation remain completely unguarded with an active enemy who had his arm elbow-deep in the local law enforcement’s asshole. Not a real choice at all. We could try dismantling it, but even that would set us back…An unthinkable distance. And as of now we needed all the time we could manage to perfect our weaponry and defences. 

“So,” I said at last, “You’re staying behind.”

“I’m staying behind.” Shango echoed, seeming about as happy with the fact as I felt. “And I’ll need a few of the men, too.”

I nodded, thinkin about the best picks almost sub-instinctually. 

“Arthur should stay with you.” I suggested. “The point of this little trip is to spread our reputation and earn favors, not having an already established hero there will make it easier to have people coming away with the idea that we’re the ones doing everything. It just won’t hit home the same if one of our subordinates kills as many as all of us combined.”

Shango hesitated.

“You sure about entering the fight without him?”

“Yes.” I told him. “And I’d rather have him here where all my stuff is even if I wasn’t.”

“Alright then.” Shango thought a moment more. “Alora, I’ll have Alora here too. A trained gunman, or training rather, would go a long way if I have her fire out through the windows.”

I smiled. “We’ll make a terrorist of you yet.” I complimented him, finding myself rather perturbed to see Shango seeming reluctant to accept the praise, and even put-out by it. Some people. 

“What have you been working on here?” He asked, abruptly. “Any new weapons or?”

“Okay, so you know how I have a new shock activated explosive that goes off when it’s impacted?” I prompted.

“I do now.” Shango nodded. I sighed, sometimes it hurt how little people appreciated my work.

“Well, I’m…Fuck it, grenades, I’m making grenades, they’re grenades. You ruin everything.”

Far from being concerned with the savage emotional attack he’d just inflicted upon me. Shango seemed suddenly captivated by the project.

“What do you mean grenades?” He pressed. “Like, you throw them and there’s an explosion?”

“Yes, I do mean things with the literal basic function of grenades.” I nodded. “Watch this.”

I gestured him out across the room, to where I’d prepared a series of stone slabs for testing new devices without targeting any load-bearing beams, again. Rifling around produced two of the spherical new objects, and I hurled one through the air to impact the target nice and fast.

Even standing where we were, a good ten paces back, the shockwave was like a harsh gust against my face. Shango yelped and covered his eyes, I giggled at the sight, and once our ears had stopped ringing he glared at me.

“Flashy.” He noted, glancing over at the stone slabs. “Powerful, too,” He added with a considering glance to the large cracks running a meter across them, “But I don’t see how this isn’t just a worse-ranged version of my rifle.”

It really was nice having intellectually comparable company. 

“Because it’s not done yet.” I told him. “I’m working with Ardin to make casts for lead balls, and we’re gonna add an outer section around the explosives filled with them.”

“You’re going to fill them with bullets?” He asked, getting it now. “And they’ll be launched outwards when it goes off, fuck, how fast?”

“Subsonic.” I sighed. “Though not by a lot, maybe three hundred meters per second, it’s hard to estimate properly without decent equipment. About two thirds the speed of your rifle’s rounds. They’re reasonably big but plate armour will have a fair chance of stopping them, the main purpose of these is to blow up larger formations of lightly armoured enemies. Which brings us to our next innovation.”

I reached into another pile, drawing out the schematic I’d been working on.

“Grenade, meet grenade launcher.”

It was, roughly, as primitive a grenade launcher as you could possibly imagine, really more categorically akin to a scaled-down nineteenth century mortar than its contemporary kin. Shango looked nice and impressed though. Well, good, I should bloody hope he did. 

Shango took in the design, its weirdly short frame, squat, wide barrel, bell-shaped mouth and robust construction. One upside to using this thing would be that, if its wielder were ambushed in melee, they’d already be holding a perfectly serviceable club. 

“How’s Ardin getting along with the other guns?” He asked, finally.

“Almost done apparently.” I grinned. “With the first one that is, he’s had a lot of other stuff to work on. The plan is he’ll have two done by the attack, one of which for Alora.”

Shango nodded. “Well three gunmen is better than one.”

“Unless you’re the enemy.” I smiled. It was a nervous, fidgety smile. The conversation wasn’t actively unpleasant, but it was a distraction from my work. And my work, in turn, was a distraction from the imminent danger I had no choice but to sprint at. 

Preparing the most dangerous and destructive weapons I could had always been soothing in times like that, and most certainly was not “probable cause” regardless of what the cops said. I bit back my growing nervousness, steadying my mind. 

“I think we have decent odds of coming out of this alive.” I told Shango, realising he’d been asking for just the same reasons as me. “You’ve seen a pair of big reasons for why, but there’s also our personal growth. Remember how the vampire ended up after we survived a night. If the enemy doesn’t eradicate us all at once, we’ve got very favourable chances to stave them off nearly forever.”

“Right.” Shango nodded, inhaling, exhaling. His fists were tight when he finished. He was furious. No, wait. Shango didn’t show emotion, he just wasn’t built for it. By his standards this was a stroke of murderous rage, borderline manic hatred. It was almost as intense as a passing irritation was to me.

“I thought we were done with this.” He spat. “I thought…I thought I’d gotten us done with this.”

“Some people just need killing.” I shrugged. “You took care of one problem, Byror. But there’s others. We’ll be done when everything with ill will to us is either very far away, or decomposing into more black powder.”

He stared at me.

“Simple as that?”

I stared back.

“People hurt each other, if you have something they want they hurt you even harder. This isn’t going to stop, it’s not going to end. There’s no peaceful solution here. We’re at war. If we don’t kill we die, if we die we lose, and if we lose more people die. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. Some people need killing, and when something needs doing it’s better to do it than sit around agonizing over a world where it doesn’t need to be done.”

Shango said nothing for a few seconds, then nodded.

“Right. Good talk, Solitaire.” He replied, distance popping up between us again. 

He left.