Volunteer
The elevation and traversal mechanisms took another week to fully assemble, and with the gun finally, genuinely capable of aiming, the conversation shifted to the one problem no amount of clever engineering could solve on its own: actually finding the hydra, and getting it to hold still long enough for a single, precisely aimed shot.
"We need eyes on it," Petrov said, studying the aiming cone diagram, the bounded arc of coverage centered on the hydra's known territory. "The gun can hit a target within that range, but only if we know exactly where the target is at the moment of firing. Right now we're aiming at 'somewhere in the Wastelands,' which isn't precise enough for a fifty-meter harpoon."
Nettle, who had been quietly listening from the corner of the workshop, looked up with an expression Arista had come to recognize as dangerous well before she actually spoke.
"...What if you fire Bram over the Wastelands with a wingsuit," she said. "Like last time."
The room went very quiet.
Bram, present for the planning session and increasingly regretting it, set down the tool he'd been holding. "...I would like to point out that 'like last time' involved me getting eaten alive by the exact monster we are currently trying to hunt."
"Right, but that's actually useful information now," Nettle said, entirely unbothered, warming to her own idea. "You know where it was. You know roughly what triggered the ambush. If we send you back over the same territory, properly prepared this time, hydra-detection thread woven into the suit, a way to signal position back to the gun crew the second you spot movement in the sand—"
"You want me to be bait."
"I want you to be reconnaissance," Nettle corrected, entirely too pleased with the distinction. "The bait part is incidental."
Arista, who had been staring at the aiming diagram through this entire exchange, sat up slowly, the shape of an actual, workable plan assembling itself despite the horror of what it was built on.
"...It's not a bad idea," she admitted, wincing even as she said it. "We need a spotter who can survive long enough to relay position, and cover enough ground fast enough that we're not just guessing blind. A wingsuit run over the exact territory where we already have confirmed hydra activity is actually the most efficient way to locate it."
"I am sitting right here," Bram said.
"You're extremely qualified for this," Arista said, not remotely helping her own case.
"I have been launched off a catapult, eaten by this exact hydra, thrown from a glider, and nearly killed by my own cockpit in a plane crash. I would like it on record that I am beginning to suspect this entire friendship is built on you finding new and creative ways to almost kill me."
"You also got a title out of it," Arista offered. "Master Blacksmith's Apprentice. That's a good title."
"That title nearly cost me my life the same afternoon I earned it."
"Character building."
Bram stared at her for a long, silent moment, the specific, resigned weight of a man who had, over the course of a year and a half, thoroughly and completely lost the ability to say no to her.
"...What's the actual plan," he said finally, defeated. "Beyond 'fly near the thing that already tried to eat me once.'"
Nettle, delighted the idea had survived scrutiny, pulled out her own notes with the enthusiasm of someone who'd clearly been waiting for permission to share them. "New wingsuit generation, obviously, better hydra-detection thread this time, tuned specifically off what we learned from the first encounter. You fly a wide search pattern over the territory, low enough to spot sand displacement before it becomes an actual attack, high enough that if something does surface, you've got a head start."
"And the signal back to the gun crew?"
"Flare," Arista said, already sketching. "Something bright, something that punches clearly above the Wastelands' dust and glare. The moment you spot it, you mark position, we adjust the gun's aim to that confirmed location, and you get out of the blast radius before we ever fire."
"...How much time would I actually have to get clear."
"...We'll work on that part," Arista said, which did not appear to reassure him even slightly.
Bram closed his eyes, drew a long, steadying breath, and finally, inevitably, nodded.
"...Fine. But if I get eaten a second time, I want it in writing that this was Nettle's idea."
"Notarized," Nettle promised, already pulling out fresh parchment with alarming speed. "I'll even add a little seal."
Gorthruk, present at the planning session in his capacity as both mining authority and increasingly invested project partner, tilted his head at the word.
"...What is a flare?"
Arista blinked, caught off guard by the question. "A signal charge. Bright light, launched or ignited, visible from a distance, usually gunpowder-based back where I'm from. Small combustion charge, packed tight, burns hot and fast enough to be seen for miles."
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Gorthruk's expression shifted into genuine, professional confusion. "Gunpowder."
"...Black powder. Combustible ore-based propellant. You don't have it?"
"I have never heard the term in my life," Gorthruk said slowly, "and I have spent considerably more of my life than most people around minerals, ores, and their properties." He frowned, working through his own extensive knowledge of the Republic's mining catalog. "As far as I am aware, no such substance exists. There is no ore that combusts in the manner you're describing, not in any deposit the Republic has ever surveyed, not in any trade good the Elves or Humans have ever brought to market. Fire exists. Fuel burns. But nothing detonates. Nothing propels itself through rapid combustion the way you're describing."
Arista sat with that for a long moment, genuinely recalibrating an assumption she hadn't realized she'd been carrying this entire time.
"...Huh." She glanced back through a year and a half of projects, steam engines, boring rigs, an entire continental railway: all of it built on mechanical force, heat, pressure, magic, and never once, not a single time, had she reached for anything resembling an explosive. "That actually tracks with everything I've built so far. I never once considered gunpowder as an option for any of this, because I never questioned whether it existed. I just defaulted to steam and mechanics because that's what I already understood."
"You are telling me," Gorthruk said, something halfway between alarm and fascination in his voice, "that where you come from, there exists a substance capable of controlled, rapid combustion powerful enough to launch projectiles."
"Where I come from, it's how most weapons work. Was how most weapons worked, historically, before things got even more complicated." Arista considered the implications slowly. "...Actually, that's probably a very good thing this world doesn't have it. I've built a fifty-meter steam-and-pressure railgun specifically because I had to work around not having an explosive option. If gunpowder existed, weapons development here would look completely different, and probably a lot more dangerous a lot sooner."
Gorthruk nodded slowly, filing that away with the same careful, professional interest he gave every new piece of information she brought him. "A blessing, perhaps, that no such ore exists. Though I confess some curiosity now about what such a substance would actually look like."
"You really don't want to know. Trust me." Arista turned her attention back to the actual, immediate problem, no gunpowder meant no traditional flare, which meant Bram's signaling method needed an entirely different solution. "Okay. No combustion charge. I need another way to mark position visibly from a distance, fast, without anything explosive."
She thought it through, drawing on the same toolkit that had solved every previous problem, mana conductivity, the glowing pipeline, Fen's alchemical work.
"...Mana flare, instead of a chemical one." She was already sketching. "Fen's reactive compound, the same one that glows green under mana flow in the pipeline. If I build a small, portable version, something Bram can trigger by channeling a burst of stored mana into it, it wouldn't need combustion at all. Just a bright, sustained glow, visible from altitude, triggered instantly on demand."
Gorthruk considered the sketch, nodding slowly. "No propellant required. No risk of the signal device itself detonating unexpectedly, which I confess I found mildly alarming about your original description."
"Right, and it's reusable, potentially, depending on how Fen's compound handles repeated activation." Arista was already mentally drafting the message she'd need to send. "I need to go ask Fen if she can formulate something bright enough to see from the ground at altitude, powered by mana instead of chemistry."
"Another substance that does not exist here, reinvented through a substance that does," Gorthruk said, something almost admiring in it now. "You have a persistent habit of that."
"It's usually cheaper than trying to invent gunpowder from scratch in a world that's never had it," Arista said, already heading for the door. "Also considerably less likely to explode in my face while I'm figuring it out."
Nettle's grin, when it appeared, carried the exact, unmistakable energy of a woman who had been waiting patiently for the perfect moment to say something she'd clearly been sitting on for a while.
"Well," she said, entirely too pleased with herself, "Bram did out you on the internet with your title for everyone to see. Seems only fair we could use his respawn notification as the signal instead."
The room went very quiet.
Bram set down whatever he'd been holding, very slowly, and turned to face her with the flat, weary expression of a man who had genuinely thought he'd run out of new ways to be volunteered for something horrifying.
"...You want to use my death as the targeting signal."
"I want to use your respawn notification," Nettle corrected, entirely unbothered. "Technically different. The death happens regardless, whether we use it or not, given the general trend of your interactions with this specific hydra. We might as well get some practical use out of it."
"That is not comforting. That sentence contained zero comforting elements."
"It's server-wide visible, though," Arista said slowly, and Bram's head snapped toward her with genuine betrayal as she actually started considering it. "Or at least party-visible, precise timestamp, exact location data logged automatically the moment it happens. That's actually more reliable than a hand-triggered mana flare, because it doesn't depend on you having time to activate anything before—"
"Before I get eaten again."
"—before the moment of contact, yeah." Arista winced, hearing how that sounded out loud. "Okay, put that way it's genuinely a terrible plan."
"Thank you."
"But only as a backup." She held up a hand before he could fully relax. "Primary signal's still the mana flare, you spot the hydra, you trigger it, we get your position with time to spare before anything actually happens. The respawn notification's just... a worst-case fallback."
Bram stared at her for a long, silent moment. "You're telling me my death is now load-bearing to the mission plan. Not just an acceptable risk. An actual contingency system."
"...A little bit, yeah."
"I would like it formally noted," Bram said, with the specific, exhausted dignity of a man who had entirely given up expecting sympathy from this particular group of people, "that if this happens, I expect a statue. Somewhere prominent. In Tabula Rosa, ideally, next to the actual monument."
"I'll talk to the council," Nettle said, already writing it down with alarming seriousness. "'Here lies Bram, Master Blacksmith's Apprentice, tactical respawn asset.'"
"That is a terrible epitaph."
"It's accurate."
"Accuracy was never the concern."
Arista held up both hands in a placating gesture. "Okay, the actual goal is that none of this matters, because the mana flare works perfectly and you never get anywhere near the hydra's actual range. This is a backup for a backup."
"The real plan didn't involve me dying the first time either," Bram said, flatly. "And yet."
"...Statue," Bram said again, into the silence, entirely serious now. "I want it in writing. Today."
"Today," Nettle confirmed, already sliding the notarized parchment across the table toward him.
Bram stared at the parchment for a long moment, then, with the specific, resigned acceptance of a man who had long since stopped expecting his life to make sense, signed it anyway.