*Julian Gandr*

  Lucas was giving a massive list of warnings and cautions, but Julian was too tired to listen. When Lucas had said that he would be ‘borrowing’ him and his subordinates, what he apparently meant was that he would work them like slaves. Half the words that he had said while he was explaining what he was having them do were not translated by the collar either, so no one had any clue what they had produced after all that effort.

  It was just a white powder, perhaps a poison? Lucas had specifically said it was not dangerous currently, but considering he had been making them take different chemicals through all sorts of reactions that changed them greatly it could be a single step away for all Julian knew.

  “Now having said all that,” Lucas seemed to be wrapping up and Julian refocused his wandering mind back to the hero. “I would much prefer to be using this for fertilizer, but life sucks and right now I will have to win a fight against a force that vastly outnumbered my forces, so fuck it.”

  He grunted as he lifted up a large package, it seemed decently heavy.

  “In my world, we would call this an improvised explosive device.” Lucas sat it down on the table that had been set up for him, and the table bent a bit under the weight. “It also happens to be illegal, well technically anyway- it is covered under a series of laws designed to allow law enforcement to arrest people for things that might not be specifically covered by a law.”

  It was essentially a small barrel, the inside was packed with bits of metal and had a core of the white powder that they had been so busy making. And Lucas claimed it would revolutionize warfare, they only had a couple of the things right now and one was set out in the field far away that Lucas planned to use as an example.

  It was so far away though, and Lucas had even insisted that wooden barriers be set up between the barrel and them and had a small ditch dug as well. This was more defenses than you would need against a mage attacking…

  “So if you would be so kind as to ignite the one out there and then everyone will jump into the ditch and cover your heads.”

  One mage scrambled up to do as Lucas asked as Lucas himself jumped down into the ditch and curled up into a ball. It looked rather pathetic, Julian would go down there but he wouldn’t do that and neither were the other mages. At least this would be over so-

  By the gods that was loud! Julian brought his hands to his ears and swore that the ground had shaken slightly underneath him. Looking backward, he saw a pillar of smoke and dust raising up into the sky.

  “What the hell was that!” He shouted, but he could hardly hear himself.

  “I already told you,” Lucas seemed really quiet, so Julian must have lost some of his hearing after that loud noise. “You really should have listened.”

  Lucas climbed out of the ditch and walked over to the wooden barricade and gestured for Julian to come over and take a look.

  “You know, I tried to measure out roughly two thousand feet, which was a little more than I should have needed according to the Department of National Security’s charts for a fifty pound bomb, especially since a pound of ANFO is about eighty two percent as effective as a pound of TNT.” Julian could barely make out what he was saying, but couldn’t make heads or tales of it. “But those charts did note that it was the range in which life threatening injury was unlikely to occur, which isn’t a zero chance.”

  Julian walked around the barricade to see that there were several bits of metal pushed deep into the wood. Wait… They had flown this far and had enough power to go three inches into the wood?

  “Come on Julian,” Lucas waved to him. “Let's go take a look at the blast zone.”

  At first, there wasn’t much damage done, but as they approached the site Julian could see that the ground was shredded and there was a crater where the barrel had been. Julian had been at war against the demons for most of his adult life, and a good chunk of his childhood- but when he thought about what this would do to marching soldiers…

  “I can see why you refused to make weapons for us at first,” Julian said, feeling sick. “I don’t think a mage could do something like this…”

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  “Sure you could,” Lucas laughed. “You just don’t use magic very well, and this hardly qualifies as a weapon to be honest. The material to make this is available for purchase to little kids and can be cheaper than dirt.”

  “That is… Terrible…” What kind of world had Lucas come from?

  Lucas glanced back at him in confusion, then his face relaxed. “Ah, well you would think that if you weren’t aware of what a real weapon is I suppose. Anyway, even though it is available for purchase the sellers and law enforcement are not stupid. Just searching for the information is enough to warrant the police looking into your actions, and the people selling it are quite happy to pass your name along if they are worried.”

  “If that wasn’t a ‘real’ weapon,” one of his subordinates asked. “What is a real one like?”

  “Depends on what you are trying to do I suppose?” Lucas mused offhandedly, “A sniper rifle would not do nearly as much damage as this, but then again a good sniper could pick off a target from miles away. Alternatively, artillery could send shells that pack a stronger punch than this flying farther than the human eye can see, and powerful countries have weapons called ICBMs that have ranges that measure in the thousandsof miles and can wipe a city off a map.”

  Julian vomited.

  “Woah man,” Lucas noticed Julian’s condition and came over in concern. “You ok there? Get some sleep, all that work I had you guys doing would have weakened your immune system a bit- but it should bounce back pretty soon.”

  “I- I’m not sick.” Julian managed to get out as he wiped his mouth, “just a little… surprised.”

  “Oh. Oh!” Lucas seemed to realize what Julian meant- and he laughed! Julian had not expected that kind of reaction. “Yeah, war is pretty shitty. But overall I would say my world is fairly peaceful, barring a few regions. This isn’t the kind of thing most people need to worry about.”

  *Lucas Jaeger*

  Julian heaved again, but he seemed to have an empty stomach so he just retched a bit. Perhaps Lucas should have expected this? The only reason Lucas could be so blaisé about the whole thing was that he had not really experienced war himself, in other words, he was free to ignore the results of his actions. And to be honest, he planned to keep it that way. Lucas was not a sociopath, though honestly he wasn’t very far from it, but if he was also aware enough to know that if he actually saw this go off in a crowd and had to see the results of it- he would be horrified.

  Still, he had not expected this result from Julian. Lucas would not have thought he would be able to conceptualize what this thing could do. Well, it is what it is.

  “This will take a mage to set off,” Lucas continued. “It would take more than some person with a torch to do it, so it can be safely moved. I will be relying on the input of the military to know where to place them- it will need to be within range of mages and along the path they will be marching.”

  Julian was looking at him as if he was evil, what the hell did these people expect? They had wanted weapons from him, and now they thought that they were too powerful? That is more than a bit hypocritical, but then they might have been simply unaware of what they were asking for.

  “After the detonations, we will send our soldiers forward to take advantage of the confusion.” Lucas rather hoped Julian would get his shit together, he had no experience with any of the stuff he was talking about, it was just the kind of stuff that would sound good in an RTS game. “Once they get their act together, we fall back to the wall and let the archers pick them off as they try and regroup and then set off a second wave of explosions once they have reorganized. I can’t be sure, but I would expect the second charge would break them.”

  It would certainly have me running, Lucas thought to himself. Hell, he’d be fleeing after the first one.

  “After that, I would prefer to negotiate rather than try and force them into compliance.” Though if they wouldn’t negotiate, Lucas was not going to just leave them be. For that matter, he doubted that they would all decide to talk- so he supposed some of these nobles would need to be put down. “On that note, if it should come to that I will need absolute control over the soldiers. I don’t want them killing civilians, looting, raping, or pillaging. I actually need those people after all.”

  “There is… Something wrong with you.” Julian managed to stand up straight and those were his first words?

  “How so?” Lucas sighed in frustration, “and did you simply not notice my attitude until now? To quote the general, Robert E. Lee, ‘It is good that war is so terrible, otherwise we might grow too fond of it.’ I don’t enjoy doing this you know, but losing is not an option and I don’t know a nicer way to do this.”

  “For that matter, the way I was fighting earlier was far more cruel than this.” Lucas had to point this out, as no one seemed to really care a huge amount about how he had used magic that day. “If one was to compare the two by the laws of my world, detonating this bomb would be a fairly large crime, but still one that would be handled by a regular court. The way I killed people in the palace would have been a war crime violating multiple treaties and international laws, as well as quite a few national ones as well.”

  Lucas walked away shaking his head. A bomb couldn’t do more than what a person with a sword could do, it was just far more efficient at it. A bioweapon could wipe out a country and leave any survivors wishing they were dead.

  No, he should calm down. How can Lucas blame them for a lack of perspective when they had no way to understand the difference between the weapons? Regardless, he did not want to deal with explaining it.

  And he had a meeting with the commanders of the few soldiers he had now anyways.

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