I noticed him on the third day back.
Not immediately — that was the thing. He was good enough that it took me three days, which told me something about either his skill level or my own inattention, neither of which I found particularly comforting.
I was passing through the Guild Hall to find Kael – he had mentioned that he had a new gadget he needed help with outside – and it was in one of the main common areas that I spotted what was wrong.
He was sitting at one of the long tables near the far wall with a broadsheet open in front of him, which was ordinary enough. People read in the common area all the time.
Except I recognized the broadsheet.
Not because I'd read it — because I'd seen it. On the board outside the mess hall, three weeks ago, before someone took it down and it presumably made its way through the building in the way that old papers do. The date on the masthead was visible from where I stood. Three weeks old.
A man reading a three week old broadsheet was unremarkable on its own. People read old papers. It happened.
What was less unremarkable was that I didn't recognize him.
That would seem like nothing. But I had been in this guild for the better part of a year. I knew the faces — not all the names, not all the departments, but the faces. The elephant man. The woman with the red braid who worked the equipment desk on Thursdays. The three initiates who always ate together and always sat too close to the door. The guild had a population and I had, without meaning to, learned it.
This man was not part of it.
He was ordinary looking in a way that was almost its own kind of distinctive — average height, average build, the kind of face that didn't give you anything to hold onto, a shiny bald head that was clearly shaved out of discipline. Plain dark clothes. Patient stillness.
He wasn't looking at me.
I kept walking.
Kael was waiting for me in one of the outdoor courtyards. Not an illusory one; the sun above us was real, riding high in a clear blue sky. He sat cross-legged in the grass.
He waved. "Hey."
SCRUB booped a greeting from beside him.
I sat down nearby. "Hey."
I noticed that although Kael's face was friendly, he wasn't quite meeting my eyes. This wasn't entirely abnormal with him, but something about it this time gave me pause. I shrugged it off. "What did you need help with?"
He produced a leather roll from behind SCRUB and unfurled it between us.
He gestured to the contents like a mother introducing you to her newborn.
At first glance it looked like a flare gun — the same basic silhouette I'd been carrying on my belt for months, the same general relationship between handle and barrel. But only at first glance. The more you looked, the more wrong it was for a flare gun, in ways that suggested it had started as one and then been convinced to become something else entirely.
The barrel was longer. Significantly longer, and thicker, with a slight octagonal cross-section that caught the light along its flat faces. The metal was darker than standard guild issue — a deep, almost blue-black that looked like it had been treated rather than simply finished. Along the top of the barrel, Kael had etched something in fine lines that I couldn't read from where I was standing but that appeared to be measurements.
The handle was the most familiar part — the same basic grip as a flare gun, wrapped in a dark material that wasn't quite leather and wasn't quite wood but seemed to be both somehow, fitted carefully enough that it sat in the hand rather than just being held by it.
But between the handle and the barrel, where a flare gun had nothing of note, Kael's version had a cylinder.
Six chambers, arranged in a wheel, each one bored cleanly through and sized for something considerably smaller than a flare canister. The cylinder was attached to the frame on a pivot that allowed it to swing out to the side — Kael demonstrated this eagerly – and each chamber was empty, waiting.
The whole thing was about the length of my forearm. It weighed, when Kael placed it in my hands without asking if I wanted to hold it, considerably more than it looked like it should. "It's the prototype."
I felt he was somewhat underselling the situation. "Is this the modified flare gun?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Six iterations later, I think I've finally got proof of concept."
I stared at the contraption, befuddled. "How does it work?"
Kael grinned. "So, in short. You point at something, pull the trigger. Boom."
"More specifically."
"Okay," he settled into the posture he adopted when he was about to explain something at great length. "So. The standard issue flare gun."
He pulled his own from his belt — a regular guild issue model, for comparison — and held it alongside his prototype. "Standard flare gun works on a mana-pressure system. You load a canister — the canister contains a compressed mana charge and the flare material. When you pull the trigger, a small release valve opens, the charge ignites the flare material, and the pressure expels it from the barrel. The mana does most of the work. The mechanism is mostly just directing it."
He set the flare gun down. "The problem with that system is that it requires mana-charged canisters. Which are expensive, which have to be manufactured by people who know what they're doing, and which can misfire if the mana charge degrades. Also—"
He held up a finger. "—the flare itself is the projectile. It's designed to go far and make light and noise. It is not designed to be precise. Or fast. Or to do it again immediately."
He picked up his prototype. "Mine doesn't use mana. At all. No charge, no release valve, no dependence on canisters that need to be specially made."
The satisfaction in his voice was palpable. "Instead it uses a chemical charge. A small amount of a fast-burning compound — I've been working on the formulation for ages — seated behind a solid metal projectile in a self-contained cartridge. When the trigger is pulled, a firing pin strikes the back of the cartridge. The impact ignites the charge. The rapid combustion generates pressure. The pressure drives the projectile down the barrel at significant speed."
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He paused to let that land. "No mana involved at any stage. It's entirely mechanical and chemical."
"What's the projectile?" I asked.
"Small. Dense. Metal."
He produced one from a small pouch on the roll — a cartridge, I now understood, the charge and the projectile housed together in a brass casing the length of my thumb. "The cartridge contains everything it needs. The charge at the back, the projectile at the front, the casing holding it together. You load the cartridge into the chamber, the chamber rotates when you cock the mechanism—"
He demonstrated with a satisfying mechanical click. "—and you fire. When the cartridge is spent, the casing stays in the chamber. You swing the cylinder out, clear the spent casings, reload."
"How many?"
"Six chambers. Six shots before you need to reload."
He said it like six was a number that should impress me, which given that a flare gun held one shot and required significant effort to reload, it did. "The cylinder rotates automatically as you cock the hammer. Each pull of the trigger is a fresh chamber."
"And it's accurate?"
"More accurate than a flare gun. The barrel length helps — longer barrel means the projectile is being guided for longer before it leaves. The rifling helps more."
He indicated the inside of the barrel, which I now noticed had a subtle spiral pattern cut into it. "Imparts spin to the projectile. Spin means stability. Stability means it goes where you point it."
"How far?"
He considered. "Significantly farther than you'd want to be standing from someone holding one."
He picked it up, checked that the cylinder was empty with practiced care, and held it out to me. "I'm calling it a Combustion Armament. It's the most accurate description of what it does.""I think 'firearm' sounds pretty cool.""It doesn't need to be cool. It needs to be accurate." He spoke in a slightly miffed tone, but I could see him considering a name change.
"So this is a weapon?"
"Well it certainly isn't meant to be shot into the sky. I originally intended to make a more efficient and effective flare gun. And I did. The Guild already has my proposal. But then I thought, 'what if we could deal with premature respawns from a distance?'"
I turned it over in my hands. It was heavier than the flare gun. More deliberate feeling. The balance was different — the weight distributed along the barrel rather than concentrated at the back. "Has it been tested?"
Kael's expression did something complicated. "...That's why I needed your help."
I stared. "You're going to shoot me with this?"
Kael laughed. "No. I need you to fire it, so I can see what it looks like in operation."
"Fire it at what?"
He gestured a ways off to his left, where a training dummy from the Guild Hall had been placed.
I considered his proposal. "Alright. This sounds kind of cool."
"It's going to be incredibly cool."
We both stood and I took the Combustion Armament in hand. "How far should I stand from the dummy?"
Kael shrugged. "The math says about ninety feet, but I'm not completely certain yet. That's part of what we're trying to figure out."
I nodded. "So I just aim at the dummy and pull the trigger?"
"Yep. There's a small metal protrusion at the end of the barrel to help you. But the thing is going to make a small explosion, so you might want to brace yourself."
"You'll understand if I have second thoughts."
"I will, but I hope you're not."
"Not really."
I stepped within the prescribed distance of the dummy. I held the prototype the way I would hold a flare gun, in one hand, but aimed at the blank canvas face in the distance.
Kael ran far to the left – too far to not make me concerned for my safety. SCRUB beeped excitedly.
I looked down the barrel. The metal bit at the end was actually rather intuitive. I focused it on the dummy and pulled the trigger.
Nothing could have prepared me for the noise.
It wasn't like the flare gun. The flare gun made a sound you could describe — a heavy thump, a whoosh, something that had a shape to it. This was different. This was a crack so sharp and so immediate that it seemed to arrive before the trigger had finished moving, a sound that came from everywhere at once and then was gone, leaving a ringing in my ears and the smell of something burnt in the air.
Several birds left a nearby tree at significant speed.
Somewhere behind me, Kael was saying something. I couldn't hear it yet.
I lowered the device and looked at the dummy.
The result was not subtle.
At ninety feet, the projectile had taken a clean hole through the dummy's torso — it had a clean entry point on the front and a considerably less tidy exit point on the back, judging by the large chunk of stuffing that had been blown out of it. The dummy rocked on its post and then settled, listing slightly.
I stared at it for a moment.
Then I looked at Kael. He was standing stock still, eyes wide.
We made eye contact. Kael spoke first. "That…was…"
He pumped a fist in the air. "AWESOME!"
He dashed over to me, SCRUB scuttling behind him. "You were amazing! Are you okay?"
I shook my limbs. "Well my arm hurts. Wasn't expecting it to be so violent."
"Well I did say it would make an explosion."
"You did."
"Is it bad?"
"Nah, it'll be fine."
"Great! Let's go again!"
That's when the City Watch showed up. Two men clad in half-plate, swords drawn, raced across the grass toward us like they were charging a monster. I widened my stance, confused, but ready for a fight.
They stopped about ten feet away, one of them barking at us. "What in the name of the gods was that?!"
Kael put a hand on my shoulder. "I got this."
He stepped forward. "Gentleman! Have no fear. My name is Kael Lithwell, Janitor and tinkerer. The noise you heard was me testing a new creation of mine."
One of the men lowered his sword slightly. "And it failed?"
Kael's smile had a cocksure aspect I hadn't seen before. "Not at all! It went perfectly. You're also welcome to check with Guild Reception: I filed for and received permits for outdoor mechanical experiments. No one is in danger."
The guards sheathed their swords. The other man, much taller than his companion, spoke next, speaking carefully. "Carry on then. But if anyone gets hurt, I know your faces. Clear?"
"Crystal, sir!"
The guards departed and Kael turned back to me, his face a mix of relief, horror and exuberance. "Holy shit."
"You almost got into some serious trouble."
"Worth it."
"Did you actually get permits for this?"
"Not at all. I don't have the gold for permits."
"For a certified genius, you sure do make some dumb decisions."
"Progress waits for no man, Lorne. And certainly not red tape."
We decided to call it a day after that. I helped Kael lug the training dummy across the courtyard. Passersby were staring at us with appropriate confusion: apparently a lot of people had heard that incredibly loud noise as well.
After much effort, we got the training dummy back to the equipment room, and waited patiently for the quartermaster to finish yelling at us. I felt strangely elated after what had just happened, so I could handle a little angry scolding.
As we left, I saw Alara approaching us at a quick pace. She seemed intent. "Lorne. Can I talk to you?"
Kael stared blankly but said nothing. "Ummm…yeah…sure…"
I followed her away from Kael to a nearby corridor. Her braid lay over her left shoulder. I noticed it was not particularly well kept today.
She leaned against the wall and sighed softly. "I need your help with something."