Arriving back in the bunkroom, the fact that I had Jane tucked into my side still was the only thing that saved me from being tackled by all three of my girls.

  “Good to see you two are okay,” Rieka murmured. My princess had taken the time to change into her regular clothes since she had come back.

  “Agreed, I feared the worst for a bit when I saw you carrying Jane…” Shayla murmured, her wings fluttering in concern. The moth-winged woman was still wearing her nightgown, the thin material clinging to her body like a waterfall of silk.

  “Liam, I was so worried!” Kassandra huffed, slithering in a broad circle around me as I carried Jane over to the bunk beds and set her down on the top bunk of the combined set.

  Kassandra had been as good as her word and dragged two sets together to combine so that she had plenty of space on the bottom bunk. My girls usually piled together there with me, used to sleeping so close during our camping.

  “We are both fine,” I said, but I didn’t look away from Jane. The mouse kin woman’s round ears were trembling slightly, but she met my eyes with a brave face, so I leaned in to give her a light kiss.

  “I’m fine, Liam,” Jane said once we separated. “I just… those were people I killed…”

  “And that is exactly why we are out here,” Rieka said firmly, slipping over to stand next to the bunk beds and look up at Jane. “Know that those people were coming with intent to pillage, steal, rape, and burn this town to the ground. They do not deserve sympathy any more than other bandits.”

  “I know, it’s just… different now,” Jane said in a small voice, her ears wilting to either side.

  Rieka, my beautiful wolfish princess, reached out a hand to Jane in comfort. It was clear from the way her ears fell to either side that Rieka was remembering her first time having to take the life of someone. It hadn’t dented my girls up as much as it had me when I’d killed for the first time, but they still knew the pain.

  “It’ll be okay, Jane. Just focus on the fact that they can’t hurt anyone anymore now,” Rieka insisted and Jane gave a damp-eyed nod.

  “What happened out there, Liam?” Kassandra asked more firmly as her circling wound tighter and she used the opportunity to climb my body.

  Unlike the other two, Kassandra hadn’t bothered to throw any clothes on besides her cloak, so when she worked her way higher and that cloak spread to reveal her bare chest, I ended up suitably distracted.

  “Liam!” Kassandra laughed, slapping at my hands as they wandered over her curvy body. “Not right now!”

  “Can you blame him?” Shayla teased with a soft smile, the moth woman’s antennae wiggling in amusement. “I mean… look at yourself.”

  Kassandra puffed out her chest in pride at that comment, then squealed in surprise when my hands landed on her breasts once more. She broke into mad giggles before wrapping both her arms around my head and hauling me face-first into those soft mounds.

  “Well, it’s clear that Liam isn’t bothered by what he had to do,” Jane commented dryly. Since my mouth was currently muffled by delicious mounds of flesh, I responded in the only way I could and gave her a thumbs-up, which got a snicker from Jane.

  When Kassandra finally released me from my plush prison, I wrapped an arm around her waist to support her—and give her tush a squeeze—while waddling over to sit at the table with my lamia-belt still wrapped tightly around me.

  “While I wish Kassandra would at least put a top on,” Rieka said with a long suffering sigh. “What can you two tell us happened out there?”

  Jane shot me a pleading look and I nodded, accepting the task of explaining the bulk of what had happened.

  Shayla took a seat opposite me at the table as well, while Rieka remained beside the perched Jane. In as simple terms as I could, I filled them in on what had happened. Jane chipped in a few details about what had happened before I’d arrived, but left me to talk about the bulk of it.

  Apparently, the raiders had been spotted trying to sneak through the trees to the wall with their ladders. Jane had been patrolling nearby and immediately started casting spells while the soldiers fired their bows into the raiders. It was only when they lit their torches and she saw how many there were that Jane had sent the urgent summon to me since she didn’t know how quickly the other soldiers would arrive.

  When I mentioned that the flame jet wasn’t actually a spell, but the product of a weapon like the gun I’d demonstrated for the girls once, all four of them went pale.

  “Liam…” Rieka murmured, but I held up a hand to stop her.

  “I promised you before that I wasn’t going to bring those kinds of weapons here, and I intend to stand by it. But—”

  “—there are other sources of such things. And Liam’s people had to have invented them at some point…” Shayla interrupted, the moth woman’s antennae curling inwards in concern while her wings fluttered behind her.

  “Which is my concern,” I replied honestly. A gesture with one hand pulled the ‘flamecaster’ out of my Dimensional Pocketthunk of metal on stone.

  Here in brighter light, and with the time to study it earnestly, it was a contraption.

  The ‘wand’ was roughly rectangular, with a bent stock like a rifle and a wide lever along the bottom that would activate the sprayer. The whole thing was made of a mixture of iron and brass, with corrosion marking the front half as well as soot marking the mouth of the sprayer. Pipes and wires ran along the exterior, intermixed with the runes carved into it. A hunk of red crystal set near the nozzle glowed brightly, and I could see heat waves rising off what I was sure was a fire-aligned mana crystal.

  Connecting the ‘wand’ to the tank was a flexible metal tube made up of dozens of small segments that articulated and flexed. The tank itself was a pot-bellied thing that made me think of a propane tank, but squashed so that it was more oval than round. A half-dozen different gauges were mounted all over it, and the tank itself looked like it was made of bronze as well with runes carved into it.

  All in all, it looked like someone had designed some kind of steam-punk version of a flamethrower, but never bothered to build a carry-strap or backpack for the tank itself.

  “Be careful with it,” I warned when all four girls leaned in to look closer. “It’s still active and can fire. You just pull that lever on the bottom half and it sprays jets of fire.”

  Rieka grimaced, kneeling to study the weapon carefully.

  “I worry,” my princess began before pausing to chew on her bottom lip. “I worry that this is like the other weapon you showed us. The most terrifying part about that gun was that it didn’t require magic to operate. It just needed the chemicals, right?”

  “Yeah,” I answered with a frown of my own. “The fact that guns are able to kill so easily and don’t require excessive training to be dangerous—though they become infinitely more so when you have that training—is part of what ruined a lot of power structures in history.”

  Rieka’s frown only deepened at that statement, but I kept talking because I wanted my girls to fully understand.

  “There is a saying back home,” I continued slowly. “God may have created man, but it was Samuel Colt that made them equal. Colt was one of the big names in designing the firearms that acted as class equalizers.”

  “Firearms?” Shayla asked quietly, her curiosity about the term enough to break through the somber mood.

  “It’s a term used for specific weapons that expels a projectile that is propelled by a controlled explosion,” I answered simply. “Learning to control that explosion took centuries, since it usually killed those who fucked it up. From there it was all on material science to improve the materials to handle greater stresses, and the designers to troubleshoot problems.”

  “So what are you saying, Liam? That someone out here is designing those ‘firearms’ that you mentioned?” Rieka asked, the worry obvious in her voice.

  “No.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  My rapid and negative answer clearly surprised the princess, because Rieka’s head whipped up, her ears pointing and focusing on me while her tail began to wag slowly.

  “What?”

  “It’s simple,” I said with a shrug, pointing at the item on the ground in front of us. “Consider who I took that off of. There is that these people are actually designing and producing technology to the level that they are able to make this.”

  “That is relieving.”

  Valda’s voice coming from the doorway made me jump. Having a lap filled with Kassandra prevented me from whirling about, but the dwarf lamia in my arms still squeaked in surprise when my grip tightened and I ended up pinching the handful of ass that I’d been petting idly while I talked.

  “I take it that this is what you wanted to talk to me about?” Valda asked, stepping through the cracked door and closing it behind her. The lizard-folk woman then turned and leaned back against the door, crossing her arms under her full chest, pulling the scale armor tighter to her body and shelving her breasts inside the flexible armor.

  “Some of it, yes,” I answered with a shrug.

  “Elaborate then,” Valda ordered, her gray eyes flinty as she studied the weapon where it lay.

  “A lot of it is supposition—” I started to say, but Valda cut me off.

  “I am capable of reaching my own conclusions on something. Speak what you are thinking and your reasons.”

  I sighed but nodded, taking a moment to organize my thoughts before I spoke. This was made harder because Kassandra’s muscular serpentine tail started squeezing me gently as she settled into my side again, but I didn’t protest.

  “Valda, what you might not be aware of is the fact that we—” I indicated my bonded companions with a nod of my head since my hands were occupied with Kassandra, “—have been finding and studying human-era ruins for the last several months.”

  Valda made a curious noise in her throat, but didn’t go beyond that, so I continued my explanation.

  “In that time, we’ve found several very very old sites that had signs of advancements far beyond what Cortha currently has.”

  “You are thinking of the… what were they called? Trains?” Kassandra murmured and I nodded my agreement with her thoughts.

  “Yes, exactly my thought, actually. Those trains were a mixture of magic and technology from the bits and pieces we found in them. I still have no idea what the hell a samoflange is, but the fact the ones we found were made of mana-infused silver tells me that they had some special purpose.”

  Turning my attention to Valda, I could tell that the scaled woman was waiting for me to elaborate so I obliged her.

  “Trains were a method of mass-conveyance back on my world. They were integral for the development of many nations and are still considered critical infrastructure even hundreds of years after they were first set up. But the point is, these trains were apparently designed by the humans on this world, however long ago it was that they existed.”

  “Thousands of years,” Jane murmured from her perch on top of the bed. “It’s the closest guess that we can make based on the records available. The human-age ruins that are above ground are so worn and eroded that they are basically gone. Only those in caves or underground survive with any real chance of retaining their history.”

  “So you are thinking this is some human-age weapon?” Valda asked, nodding to the bizarre flamethrower. “Designed thousands of years ago and somehow able to function even after all that time?”

  “I know, it sounds preposterous,” I started to reply, but Valda cut me off again with a shake of her head.

  “No, it sounds quite probable, actually. Far more likely than a people who have barely mastered the beginnings of the blacksmith’s craft could design and build something like that,” Valda said, indicating the weapon on the ground. “I was listening for a bit before I came in, and I think there is something else you haven’t mentioned yet.”

  “Which is?” I asked curiously and Valda was quick to supply the answer.

  “The design of that item is unique enough that it would stand out, and the Ironclaw clan knows other metalworkers in our section of the world. We supply the ore for most of them. But that style is not one I am familiar with. That and one other factor: the fuel.”

  I nodded along with her words and couldn’t really come up with a way to argue it. Flamethrowers back home operated on heated oil or diesel, at least from what I remembered. And while they had things like cooking and lamp oil here, I was fairly sure that it was mostly animal or plant based oils. I was fairly certain that you couldn’t just load olive or fish oil into a flamethrower, but that would take some research back on Earth to know for sure.

  “So you’d need a confluence of factors then,” Rieka was quick to interject into the conversation. “Someone to design the thing, someone who has the knowledge and skill of fine smithing to create the components, and a skilled alchemist to refine the fuel?”

  “Unless they’ve come up with some way to do it with magic,” I said with a shrug. “I can’t discount that since I don’t know it well enough to say for sure.”

  “And there is no way the tribes would have created something like this,” Valda said firmly. “Their magics aren’t advanced enough for it, and they have barely started to master iron craft.”

  “Which makes the chances of this being something they were either given or found far higher,” I finished for her, getting a nod from Valda.

  “This isn’t the first of these that we’ve seen,” Valda said after a moment of silence. “I’ve personally seen one other and seen reports of them on several fronts. There are also other strange weapons popping up, but they are rare. Maybe no more than one to a band, and not all the raiding bands have one.”

  “Well that is fortunate,” I said.

  “Explain,” Kassandra demanded, poking me firmly in the cheek with one finger.

  I didn’t have to explain, because Valda had apparently already thought of the issue or guessed my thought process.

  “If they concentrated them together, then these weapons could turn the tide on a front. Imagine if all forty-odd raiders had one of these. Sure, they’d have still lost people, but I guarantee they’d have made it over the walls.”

  That thought sent a shiver through me that Kassandra responded to by pressing herself tighter to my side.

  “Then we have an important issue to consider,” I said, looking up to meet Valda’s gray eyes.

  “Where are they getting them from,” Valda said firmly. “If these are some kind of relic from the human age like you think they are, then there is a limited supply of them available. The rarity amongst the raiders tells me that is likely. But if they are being supplied somehow…”

  “Then the Ironclaw, and by extension the Coldeye Queendom has an enemy that is playing proxy,” I finished for her.

  “I don’t know for sure which I hope for more,” Shayla whispered, drawing attention to her. The shy moth woman wasn’t looking at us though, instead she was staring into the middle distance thoughtfully.

  “Shayla?” I prompted when she didn’t elaborate or even move after a handful of seconds.

  The moth woman twitched, her antennae shooting upright to stretch out to their full length before tucking in close to her head warily.

  “Sorry,” Shayla murmured, blushing faintly while her wings fluttered softly behind her. “I got lost in my thoughts there.”

  “It’s fine,” I said reassuringly. “Both sides of that coin have downsides, so it’s understandable to be worried.”

  “I know that I am at least hoping that they are artifacts,” Valda said with a businesslike snort through her nostrils. “That means that if we can find and eliminate all of them, the threat is dealt with. If another country has developed to the point that they can pass out weapons like this to cause problems, then this is only the beginning.”

  “I will hold to that hope as well,” Rieka murmured, her eyes falling back to the metallic shape of the flamethrower on the floor.

  “Better question,” I asked, getting everyone’s attention pulled to me. “What do we do with one?”

  “I would like to take it and have it studied by our smiths, as there are a number of things that might be learned from studying such delicate work,” Valda said slowly. “The other ones that I’ve seen reports on were all damaged during the fighting or were reclaimed by the raiders before they fled. This is the first one I’ve seen captured in one piece.”

  “That’s because Liam hit him so hard, the asshole didn’t have time to do anything,” Jane said with obvious pride.

  I shot the mouse-eared woman a smile and a wink, getting them returned a moment later. What was more encouraging was the fact that my little scholar was smiling and rosy-cheeked once more, no longer as pale as she had been earlier.

  “I didn’t want to risk getting hit with that thing again,” I said with a laugh.

  Those words were a mistake, because all five women in the room immediately focused on me with the intense gaze of hunting hawks.

  “Liam,” Kassandra hissed in my ear, her voice silk-wrapped iron. “What do you mean by being hit with it, ”

  “Ah… uh…” I said intelligently while glancing between each of the girls, they all had a mixture of thunderous and concerned expressions on their faces. “Well, about that…”

  I was saved from being interrogated by the girls by Valda, who blew out a long breath and pointedly changed the subject.

  “As I was saying earlier, I would like to claim it and have our smiths study it, but Liam claimed it after defeating the wielder. Meaning that it’s his by right of combat.”

  “It’s Jane’s, I was summoned by her and claimed it at her command,” I said almost immediately, making the mouse-eared woman twitch in surprise.

  “What? I… You…” Jane protested, stuttering several times in such a cute fashion that I had to strangle the urge to laugh.

  “Liam,” Rieka cut in. “It might be best if this was studied. While these barbarians might not be able to replicate the metalwork, having a pattern for something like this might lead to certain .”

  I could see the worry in Rieka’s eyes, and I could totally understand her fears. But there was another half to the issue that she might not be considering, so I gave voice to that instead.

  “But studying it will let you know how best to combat them too. Handing over an advantage like that might not be the best choice.”

  “Let me study it first,” Jane said, finally finding her voice and sitting upright on her bunk. “I’ve been studying human ruins for a while now, and seen all the different ruins as the others. If this is human-era, then I’ll be able to confirm that by studying the runes on it.”

  “That’ll at least eliminate one of the possible origins,” Valda said with a nod. “Just be very careful with it… You saw it in action earlier, so you know how dangerous it can get.”

  “Oh, I promise I’ll be careful,” Jane said firmly. “It’s going to go directly into my dimensional bag and stay there when I’m not actively studying it. And I plan to go sit in a very rocky area before I study it.”

  “Be careful of the tank,” Valda cautioned. “The other report I have of something like this says they are explosive.”

  “Yeah,” I interjected. “If it’s anything like the ones I’m familiar with, the contents are under pressure, and if the tank is breached somehow, either by dropping it or a seal breaking, then the whole thing can explode.”

  “Ah, and I bet that is why you made it my problem then, right Liam?” Jane said dryly, the mouse kin woman clambering down from her perch to stuff the weapon into her pouch and out of sight.

  “Nope. You just had the unfortunate fortune to be the one who summoned me. Meaning that you get all the credit for what I got up to,” I replied with a cheeky smile.

  “Speaking of things you got up to,” Kassandra murmured, the edge back in her tone now. “Care to elaborate about that earlier comment, about being hit with this weapon?”

  “Uh…” I said intelligently as my girls’ amused expressions all turned into glares again.

  -----

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