------------------------------

  Hurlish

  ------------------------------

  Tulian's university was a pce Hurlish had gotten pretty familiar with over the past few months. She spent a lot of time there testing things she didn't want the other smiths to see, or stuff she wasn't sure would be safe. As far as fucking around with explosives went, there wasn't a much better way to keep things safe than to have a cadre of baby magelings underfoot. Even Evie had been forced to agree that there wasn't a real risk of getting hurt when she was working in the university.

  Of course, because she'd worked there so often, she was getting pretty well familiar with Garen's little crowd of students. As she walked up the university's shining white steps with Sara and Evie, she saw one face that had been daydreaming out of one of the open windows brighten, recognizing her.

  "Oh boy, here we go," Hurlish grumbled.

  "Hm?" Evie hummed from her shoulders. "What's the matter, Hurlish?"

  "Ah, nothing. Just..."

  Hurlish trailed off as the kid disappeared from the window, only to emerge from the university's front doors, a gaggle in tow. She recognized them all, of course.

  "What are you bringing today, Hurlish?" Called the first girl, Tokkid. An orc girl about fifteen, she'd taken a shine to Hurlish harder than the others, even though she was a pure mage, without any real interest or talent for craft work or artificery. "Besides your wives, that is."

  "None of your business, 'Kid," Hurlish called back. "Here on official business or whatever, so I don't have time for you."

  "I doubt that," said one of the other kids. Tinvel, one of Garen's little prodigies, and one of the few Hurlish actually worked with, rather than taught. "You're not the type to spend hours talking over pointless little things like a politician, which is what I assume your partners are here for."

  As the other kids filed in around Hurlish, two on either side of her, she exchanged an amused gnce with Sara. The Champion of Amarat, resplendent in her one-of-a-kind suit of bcksteel armor, was being entirely ignored. That didn't happen often.

  "Did the st pistol work well?" Tokkid asked. "I know you were worried about it."

  "I don't know. Let's find out." Hurlish looked upward. "Did the pistol work well?"

  Evie fondly patted the rge leather satchel on her chestpte. "Excellently, dear."

  "Worked 'excellently,' I hear," Hurlish said, imitating Evie's refined accent. "Now scootch, kids. I actually got stuff to do."

  The kids gave her a bit of room, but didn't stop following along. Hurlish fended off a few more irritating questions before finally getting a word in to Sara.

  "You need me when you're meeting up with Garen?"

  "Not really, no. Mostly old world power-generating stuff, I think."

  "Correct, Master," Evie said. "Garen sent a letter to me beforehand, so that I could know how much of your time would be consumed by the meeting."

  "So no, Hurlish, not really. You can go py. Also, Evie, did you really make him send you an itenarary for this meeting?"

  "I do it for everyone you have a meeting with, Master. You are the general of an army, the leader of a nation at war. Your time is incomprehensibly valuable. If those that wish for a piece of it cannot recognize such, their concerns clearly are not worth your attention."

  "Goddamn, girl. I wonder if Garen can magic up some xanax for you."

  While Sara and Evie fondly bickered over the feline's paranoia and/or perfectly reasonable caution, Hurlish turned her attention to Tinvel, who'd stuck around the longest of any of the kids. Most of them did technically have stuff to be doing, tasks that Garen had given them for the day, and they'd faded away to return to them.

  "Where's your girl, Tinsmith?" Hurlish asked, looking around for the young artificer's ever-present companion.

  "My girl?" Tinvel asked, forcing an incredulous look onto his face.

  "You know what I'm talking about. Chona, what's she up to?"

  "How would I know? I haven't memorized her schedule."

  Beside them, Sara snorted. Just because she'd basically just met Tinvel two minutes ago didn't mean the literal Champion of Amarat couldn't smell bullshit when it was steaming at her feet.

  "Yeah, yeah," Hurlish said, "but really, where is she? If we're gonna be doing testing while I wait, we'll need her."

  Tinvel floundered for a moment, less than subtly trying to think of a way to excuse the fact that he knew exactly where Chona was.

  "I think she's got some project Garen gave her," he eventually said, "trying to improve her shield or something. Probably because she keeps sticking her neck where it doesn't belong."

  "Well, could you go grab her? I'll meet you at the testing grounds."

  "I guess," he muttered, splitting off. Hurlish and the others watched him meander down the hallway, a trio of amused smirks on their faces.

  "Chona's his age, I'm guessing?" Sara asked.

  "Yeah."

  "They're gonna fuck," Sara said.

  "Oh, yeah."

  "Like, it's gonna be messy."

  "Absolutely."

  "How long do you give them?" Evie asked. "If they met as Garen's apprentices, they've known each other for three months or so. I give it another three."

  "I'm betting less," Hurlish said.

  "Without using my Blessings?" Sara hummed thoughtfully. "I'd go with Hurlish. I bet, like, two months. But they'll probably get stuck on the whole 'we're just rivals-with-benefits' stage for a good while. Gives me that kinda vibe."

  "I could see that."

  "Are you gossiping about my students?" A voice called, bouncing off the hallways. A moment ter, Garen emerged around a corner, the glowing spell that had thrown his voice fading from his lips. "I'll have you know that they are children, Sara."

  "Teenagers, Garen," Sara countered, "and repressed ones at that. You've got them all working so hard that they're gonna find some way to blow off steam."

  "An appropriate metaphor," Garen said. He gnced up to the hallway's high ceiling, and Hurlish noted for the first time the cloud of steamy smoke that had followed him. He looked back down to Sara, smiling half-heartedly. "There are a number of matters I seek your advice on."

  "Need me?" Hurlish asked. "Or is it all abstract half-philosophy crap again?"

  "The tter, I'm afraid," Garen said. "Though I will remind you, 'abstract philosophy crap' does eventually become something more concrete."

  "Well, holler when it does, so I can actually build something worth building. I'm gonna go find something useful for myself to do."

  Hurlish reached up and grabbed Evie around the hips, tossing her off. The feline nded adroitly, smoothly pivoting to stand beside Sara while facing Hurlish.

  "Be careful, Hurlish," Evie warned. "I will keep our communication crystal close, in case you need us."

  Hurlish rolled her eyes. "If Sporatos could break into this pce of all things, the war would've been over months ago. I'll be fine."

  "Within the university's walls, I'm less concerned with assassins, more with premature detonations of experimental weaponry. Be sure to stay well away from what you test, dear."

  "Yeah, yeah," Hurlish said, waving the feline's concerns off. "I promise. Chona'll put up a shield and stuff, too. Don't worry."

  "I don't think I'm capable of that," Evie said, "but I'll attempt it."

  "See ya after while, babe," Sara said. "Have fun blowing shit up."

  "Always do."

  Evie and Sara followed Garen off to the room whose door was still pouring steam, the mage creating a small bubble of energy around them so they could ford the boiling interior. Hurlish shook her head. She knew that stuff was going to be important some day, but she really didn't get why they were working so hard on it now. Seemed to her like there was a lot of things that were worth worrying about sooner.

  Like what was waiting down in the testing room. She whistled a mindless tune as she made her way through the run-down university's hallways, taking turns that she knew well.

  The whistling was a bit of a show, to be honest. Sara and Evie were stressed out of their minds, just about going gray from the effort of running the city and army, and Hurlish had made a point to be her usual old self. For one, it was because Sara said stress could affect the baby's health, but that wasn't all of it. Her partners were people-persons, either magically gifted or explicitly trained to all but read the minds of the people they talked to. Thing was, those skills were something they had to think about, or in Sara's case, actually activate. And they didn't with Hurlish. She'd always been the impcable bcksmith, uncaring and uninterested in what was happening outside of her forge. So what if the Royal Army vanished like a bunch of damn specters, their ghostly image lurking around every corner Hurlish could imagine? So what if Sara and Evie were going into battles more dangerous than any they'd ever seen, trusting their lives to weapons Hurlish had personally made? So what if all the pns for a life Hurlish had been conjuring up for nearly a year were tossed up in the air, ready to crash and shatter at any moment? She was Hurlish the bcksmith, and that meant she didn't give a shit. It was an image she tried to project for her partners so hard that she nearly believed it herself.

  So she kept up her jaunty whistle as she walked down the halls, hands shoved in her pockets. Tulian's only university was looking better than it had in years, half thanks to Garen's renovation work, and half because the sections that weren't worth salvaging had been hidden behind boards and moth-eaten curtains. It was a good example of the whole city, Hurlish thought. Fundamentally broken, a shell of what it once was, but slowly being patched up, turning into something new. It'd be years yet until the university was back at full capacity, but it did the job for now, and that was all that mattered.

  It didn't take long to reach the "testing grounds" of the university. After all, it was just the central courtyard around which the entire university was wrapped, the decorative stonework and benches covered in a yer of random crap. Piles of cratered dirt lined one end of the hundred yard rectangle, bricks of half-shattered concrete haphazardly dropped at the other end. Several cloth pavilions and tents had been put up along the perimeter, to shade students from the sun as they tested their spells and artificeries. Several members of the City Guard were present, as well as a few of Evie's trained Irregurs, testing what the magelings had created. Most of the kids couldn't have swung a sword if their lives depended on it, so having someone that knew what they were doing was welcome. The Guards and Irregurs, in turn, were probably helping out in the hopes that the kids would py favorites when they finally got good enough to make real enchanted gear.

  Tinvel and Chona were under one of the tall tents, already at one another's throats.

  "If you think my shield is truly capable of stopping that thing without slowing it first, you clearly haven't been paying attention to the lectures on force dispersion!"

  "Oh, well I'm sorry," Tinvel sarcastically drug out the st word, "I was thinking you were supposed to be good at casting spells."

  "For three month's practice, my spells have achieved far more than you've ever dreamed of, with your little tinker tools and stupid projects!"

  "Hey kids," Hurlish interrupted as she stepped under the pavilions shade, "how's it going?"

  "Good," Chona immediately chirped, fshing a smile at Hurlish. "We've made quite a bit of progress since you st visited. I think we're almost ready to take it out for a field test."

  "Yeah, maybe a few more changes I want to make before we drag it out of here, but we're close," Tinvel agreed, turning away from Chona.

  Hurlish resisted the urge to ugh. The speed at which they'd abandoned their argument was shocking. Hurlish wasn't Sara. She couldn't read their minds. But it always seemed to her like their arguments were almost a matter of obligation, not actual ire. They never seemed to actually care about the insults or general bickering, just who won in the end. And that rivalry almost never took priority over doing their actual work, which meant they'd drop it like nothing the moment it was actually time to knuckle down and get something done.

  "And you're sure this one's not gonna explode on us?" Hurlish asked, crouching to inspect the cannon that rested under the pavilion.

  "If it does, there's not anything more I can do," Tinvel replied with a shrug. "I threw on every st strengthening enchantment I'm capable of producing. If this doesn't hold, we'll probably have to wait until I Advance before trying again."

  "Here's hoping, then," Hurlish said. She didn't miss the casual reference to Tinvel's level, but she did her best not to show any reaction. Word had gotten out into Tulian about how little the Champion cared about the taboo around levels, and no group was hopping on that bandwagon more than the baby mages at the university. They all liked to style themselves as purely practical researchers, even if they were still full of the same orneriness as any less-talented teenager.

  The cannon was, if Hurlish were feeling generous towards herself, the first design that wasn't a straight-up copy of Sara's old world. It was close to a copy, damn well identical when you didn't look close, but there were some differences. Enough that it filled her with a different sort of pride than the earlier cannons had, when she'd been struggling just to equal the wonders of another world's wars.

  The long cannon was based on the Three Inch Ordnance Rifle, the weapon Sara's father had uded for its accuracy. Unlike the 12-pounder Napoleons, which were built with extremely expensive bronze, the new cannon was made of far cheaper iron. It cost a fraction of the Napoleons to make, at least in terms of materials, but that didn't come for free. Sara's father had warned them that iron cannons had a tendency to burst when fired, injuring or killing their crew, something that Hurlish's earliest tests had borne out with disturbing frequency. Something about the Ordnance Rifle, however, had been different, and in Sara's world it hadn't exploded like the others. Problem was, they didn't know why. Hurlish was a good smith, a great one, but that didn't mean she could whip up whatever wild shit the "factories" of Sara's world could do. Sara didn't know what made the Ordnance Rifle so good either, and ironically, her manufacturing knowledge was too advanced to be of help. She lived in a time when steel was common as dirt and just as easy to shape, rather than the expensive specialty product it was for Hurlish. Sara didn't have any ideas for replicating the Ordnance Rifle's durability other than making it out of steel, which was both economically improbable and physically impossible.

  After some arguments back and forth, Hurlish had gotten her way, and the Ordnance Rifle project had turned down a new road. They couldn't replicate the old world's factories, not for a long time. Hurlish got why Sara wanted to do everything the way her ancestors had: it'd worked. They'd ended up producing wonders like nothing Hurlish had ever fathomed. But that didn't mean that Hurlish's world was devoid of its own wonders.

  Hurlish crouched down next to the recently-dubbed "Bolt Cannon." The name had been Tinvel's idea, because he'd based many of the enchantments lining its length on those used by siege ballistas. As she ran her hand along its length, Hurlish could feel the gentle sweeps of glyphs rising from its wrought iron skin. She didn't know much about the specifics, nor did she care to learn, but she'd gotten the gist. The vast majority of the glyphs were for reinforcement, densest around the cannon's breech, applying constant inward pressure at equidistant points, like the entire thing was being squeezed by a monstrous python. Their first version of the cannon had actually needed to be scrapped, because the force of the glyphs had been so strong the breech had shrunk, crunched inward until it was noticeably thinner than the rest of the barrel. This second version had been made thicker, then the compression enchantments had been added on piece by piece, the shrinkage carefully tracked, until it had settled at exactly the right width.

  Then the other enchantments had been yered on. Chona and Tinvel had spent weeks on it, with Hurlish popping in every few days to monitor their progress. Tinvel had modified enchantments meant to keep a noble's house cool, turning them into something that would radiate the burning heat of cannonfire away from the barrel at a constant rate, regardless of external temperature, hopefully limiting the development of heat fractures. If it was being fired in the snow or a desert, the barrel should cool itself the exact same way, every time. Chona had then created an endless litany of shields for Hurlish to fire at, her spells designed to note the exact angle that the iron bolt was striking it at, even roughly noting the rate it was spinning. So far, at a hundred yards, the deviation between shots hadn't been more than a fraction of a degree, implying that at a thousand yards it'd be hitting within a foot of its aiming point. It was still possible the round would start to tumble as it lost energy, but that wasn't something they could test here. That'd require firing it outside the city walls, where anyone with eyes could see what they were working on.

  "I only added one enchantment this time," Tinvel said as Hurlish inspected the cannon.

  "Yeah?"

  "Not to the cannon itself, though," Tinvel said, picking up one of the half-finished cylindrical pieces of iron ammunition. "To the bolt."

  Hurlish frowned, looking up from her inspection. "I thought we weren't going to enchant any ammunition. Too expensive. We're gonna be literally throwing it away."

  "Couldn't help myself," Tinvel said with a shrug. "And I think this one'll work well. Its only ingredient is quartz, so it doesn't add much to the cost, and it's simple enough that it only takes me about a half hour to finish the enchantment, start to finish."

  "And it takes twenty seconds to fire a round," Hurlish reminded him, standing and crossing her arms. "That math doesn't work out."

  "Call it specialty ammunition, then," Tinvel said, holding out the bolt for Hurlish to inspect, waggling it enticingly. "For firing at important targets, or at extra long range. Trust me, it'll be worth it."

  Hurlish took the bolt, inspecting its craftsmanship. The ammunition for the Ordnance Rifle had taken her a while to figure out, even with an illusory replica to copy from. At first it had looked like a sold iron bolt, a tapered cylinder seven inches long, but with one prominently odd feature. A lead band had been wrapped around its midpoint, ruining its aerodynamics. It'd taken her a while to realize that the lead band was obscuring a tapered end to the iron bolt, the actual projectile notably smaller than the one that was loaded into the gun. The lead band was only there to engage the rifling, spinning the round down the barrel, then it'd be torn off as soon as it broke into the open air, leaving the smaller but far stronger projectile flying free.

  And now, Hurlish noted, the exposed bottom of the round was sporting the telltale mark of enchantment glyphs. She tilted the bolt to one side, letting the sun hit the glittering quartz.

  "How's it work then?" She asked, not bothering to hide her doubt.

  "That enchantment," Tinvel said, pointing at the bolt, "is connected to one on the rear of the chamber."

  "Connected how?"

  "Sympathetically," Tinvel replied matter-of-factly. Hurlish had meant if there was a physical, literally-touching-each-other connection, but he happily jumped straight to the jargon. "It's like a little invisible string is trailing out behind the bolt as it flies, tugging on its rear just enough to hopefully stop it from tumbling when it runs out of energy."

  "Which means," Chona butted in, picking up another example of the bolts with her tail, "that it's going to ruin the round through most of the flight, because it won't be pointing towards the direction of travel, but the opposite end of the cannon's breech."

  Tinvel turned on her. "As if that would matter, when we're firing the highest-speed cannon anyone's ever made. The Bolt Cannon'll never be fired at more than what, ten degrees of elevation? Any inaccuracy added by the enchantment will be more than made up for by the fact that the round won't tumble."

  "Ten degrees of elevation is only at current ranges," Chona quickly snapped. "This gun can shoot farther, that's the whole point. You wanted to make a long-range round, and you made something that limits its range, because they can't fire it at greater elevation."

  "Even if that were true, and it's not, that still means this round is more accurate than anything else at typical ranges."

  "What about spinning?" Hurlish asked, butting in on the argument. It didn't sound like the kind of thing that would be solved without field tests, so she wasn't interested in hearing them yap. "It's probably gonna cause problems with that, right? 'Cause if you've got this invisible string tied to the back of the bolt, it's gonna slow down its rotation."

  Chona and Tinvel exchanged a confused look. "Why would it?" Tinvel asked.

  "Uh. Because that's how stuff works? Pulling on the back of a spinning thing'll slow down its spin."

  "You're thinking about physical ws," Chona said. "Not mages. The round's still stupid to make, but that's not why."

  "Yeah, the enchantment's only attached to the horizontal axis," Tinvel said. "I didn't associate it with the vertical or rotational axises." He paused. "And the round's not stupid, Chona."

  "We'll see about that."

  "What'll you bet on it?"

  Hurlish rolled her eyes, ignoring the kids in favor of slowly rolling the cannon out from under the pavilion. Though Sara was tearing her hair out over it, a part of Hurlish was gd the Sporaton army hadn't showed up yet. It gave her longer to do her part, to get things ready. If the 3-inch Bolt Cannon worked as intended, it'd be the first properly accurate artillery the Tulian army got in their arsenal. Sure, it took a long time for Tinvel and the other artificers to yer the enchantments on the cannon after she'd cast it up and bored it out, but that wasn't necessarily the worst. For all she knew, whatever manufacturing process Sara's world had used would've taken even longer. Maybe this was an improvement. She doubted it, but it was nice to imagine.

  "Hey!" Hurlish barked, getting the attention of the kids again. They blinked, realizing the cannon had already been wheeled out to its firing position. "Want to help make sure Evie doesn't come down here and rip you to shreds, or do you trust the gun enough for me to fire it without shields?"

  Both apprentices hurried over, rolling up their sleeves as they set to work. Hurlish was betting that Sara's meeting with Garen was going to take hours, and she was hoping to have the cannon's test results ready before they were done.

  ----------------------------------------------

  Sara

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  The first steam engine this world had ever seen was a disaster. She should have expected that, considering how little she knew about early machinery, but she'd at least expected it to work at least a little bit better.

  Considering the entire reason Sara had begun this project was to avoid using oil and coal for power, the fact that the very first steam engine reminded Sara of an oil derrick was fairly ironic. It had a long beam set horizontally above a boiler, tilting leftward as the pressure rose, drooping to the right as it fell. The boiler itself was a simple iron cylinder with a pipe poking out of the top to let the steam rise, a valve controlling the amount that was let through. The bar that bobbed back and forth was connected to a second tube beside the machine, a tightly sealed ptform being lifted and lowered via chain to create a vacuum. The negative pressure was fed through a series of pipes to pull water out of a trough nearby. Sara remembered enough about the industrial revolution to know that the first steam engines were used to clear water out of mines, and that was she'd had Garen try to recreate.

  But problems abounded. The valve that allowed steam through had to be manually opened, because Garen couldn't think of a way to mechanically link the valve to the rising pressure. It took some very careful timing to prevent the steam from building up too high, risking a pressure explosion, or opening it too soon, stalling out the entire mechanism.

  "Have you tried cutting a hole in the top of the pipe?" Sara asked. "That way when it reaches the top, the excess steam'll pour out, and the whole thing'll fall back down."

  "I recalled that potential solution from your letters, yes," Garen said, "but my attempt at doing so only resulted in an abrupt loss of pressure. The mechanism violently dropped as the pressure was released, which admittedly created quite a bit of power, but only for a brief moment. The water that was attempting to be lifted from the trough fell back down the pipes before the pressure returned."

  "Did you try messing with different diameters of release holes, though?"

  "Not as of yet, but it is on the list of potential solutions."

  Sara frowned, walking around the prototype steam engine. To her eyes it looked like something out of the history books, exactly what came to mind when she thought of early steam engines. But there was obviously something missing, because it couldn't actually do any kind of useful work.

  Sara had once considered herself pretty knowledgeable about machinery. She'd made a minor hobby of working on her car, a shitty old '04 Civic, souping up its engine with aftermarket parts. She understood catalytic converters, basic engine tuning, gear shifts, and had even dabbled a bit with screwing around with her engine's fuel injection. None of that was helping her here though, because all that knowledge depended on a couple centuries of technological advancements that were as alien to her as nuclear physics. She'd drawn up the basic idea of a reciprocating piston system for Garen, and been pretty proud of herself for it, all the way until she realized that there wasn't any way to actually build the thing. The mechanical tolerances necessary to keep things moving smoothly was unachievable without precision machinery. Any attempt at making an honest-to-god piston engine would end with the thing seizing and ripping itself to shreds. Not to mention the fact that anything involving fuel injection was dependent on spark plugs and explosive fluids like gas or oil, which would defeat the whole purpose of using magic to power things in the first pce.

  Thus, the crappy mess before her. The source of heat was a fat red gemstone encircled with runes sat beneath the boiler, visibly radiating energy into the open air. It wouldn't work without Garen's presence, but that was a solvable problem, at least in the long-term, and right now she was more concerned about locking down the mechanical side of things.

  After several hours spent discussing alterations to the device with Garen, including occasional tests after fiddling with the machinery in ways which were possible only with Sara's welding dagger, the mage had stepped back from the work, wiping sweat from his brow.

  "I must be honest, Sara," he said, shaking out his sweat-stained hand, "I question the level of priority you have assigned this project. I am an archmage with decades of experience in the arcane. I may have an oath against using my talents for violence– and I very much appreciate your respect of said oath– but for your war effort, there must be better pces to levy my skills."

  Sara straightened from where she'd been kneeling beside the boiler, groaning as she stretched out her cramping back. "You're not a fan of this project, then?"

  "I would not go that far, Sara," Garen temporized. "It is fascinating work. It is only that much of the knowledge I possess is irrelevant for this effort. You speak of your old world's mechanical engineers, the talents they accumuted in pursuit of perfecting machinery. I have no experience in this field, less even then a bowyer or a siege engineer. I suspect that even among Tulian's comparatively limited popution, there would be a number of individuals that equal my engineering skill."

  "Well, for one, I doubt that," Sara said. She reached up to re-tie her hair, which had come loose during their work. "Almost everyone with actual talent dipped after the storms, 'cause they could make money in Sporatos. Even Nora had to go around to other ports and pilfer shipwrights for the Waverake, and there's a lot more shipwrights out there than siege engineers. But the main reason I want you working on this stuff is because I actually trust you, remember."

  Garen smiled lightly. "A sentiment I am grateful to receive. Yet I am still capable of acknowledging that such trust is not unique. You have told me on a number of occasions how easy it is for your Blessings to discern whether someone's loyalty is genuine or feigned. Such an ability would trivialize the effort required to locate a trustworthy engineer."

  "Yeah. But none of them would be an archmage that can whip up something like that in a few hours," Sara said, thumbing at the glowing heat crystal. "You're an all-in-one solution to a lot of problems with this project. Besides, what else would I have you working on?"

  "Defensive enchantments?" Garen suggested. "The walls of Tulian have been untended for quite a while. Their enchantments are weak, near failing. Though I haven't done a proper survey of them, I suspect the city's defenses are nearly as weak as mundane granite. There is nothing in my oath which forbids me from using my spellcraft to preserve lives, rather than take them."

  "See, that seems like a waste to me," Sara said. "Using an archmage to toughen up some walls? No thanks. No, if you want the callous, purely calcutive reason you're in charge of this project, it's because you're valuable. The problem with long-term pns is that they're a long, long way away. If I win this war, Sporatos isn't going to just sit there and start happily trading with their new neighbor. They're gonna want to come for us again. Maybe next year, maybe the year after, who knows. But they're not gonna just sit there and let a new rival power build up on their border. And next time, they're not going to come in overconfident. They've got the popution to bring an army six times the one that we're barely holding off right now. I want factories ready to pump out everything we need before that happens, and with how much we're struggling already, every week counts."

  Garen chuckled. "I understand, Governess. I only asked because it felt like a point that needed to be broached. Few in your position would be content to utilize my abilities in such limited capacity."

  "For a Champion of Passion, Master can be remarkably emotionless in her reasoning," Evie said. She had thus far occupied her time shadow-dueling at the opposite side of the testing room, content to leave Garen and Sara to their tedious work. "I suppose an aspect of Emotion is the ability to control its manifestation, no?"

  "Eh, dunno about that," Sara shrugged. "Not like I've got a great track record of keeping a cool head when things really get nasty. I've just got the luxury of self-awareness. At least when I have time to think things over, that is."

  "Self-awareness is among the greatest of virtues, Sara," Garen said. "Hardly a trivial talent to possess. If my students had barely an inkling of it, I expect you would have had mages ready for battle weeks ago. As it is, it may be years before I feel comfortable releasing them to be active on the field of battle."

  Sara was curious about that, the fact that Garen was apparently fine with his students someday going to war, and was about to press him on the topic when she felt a buzz from one of her waist pouches. A muffled voice rose from the crystal, barely audible. Sara nearly flung the priceless artifact across the room in her desperation to pull it out.

  "...repeat, a scout has returned," the voice said. "General, please confirm receipt of message."

  "One of the scouts is back?" Sara asked, holding the crystal to her lips. "With word on the Sporaton camp?"

  "Yes ma'am," came the simple response. "They're at the east gate."

  Sara didn't even Garen time to say goodbye before sprinting out of the room.