The Heart Grows

Working over her armor, Fife checked every strap and buckle. This wasn't just something she'd done before, but she'd actually done it right here several times. The fort around the draconic Swarm dungeon near Polfay was a staging area for delving the dungeon, and though she'd been here before it had never been as a dragon. "You ready, babe?"

"I hope you're talking to me," Breath of Spring said, glancing over at Raze and getting a big grin from her. "Because Raze is spoken for and Huntress is firmly interested in a very brave young man in Northridge." Still adjusting the little cloak she'd been given, Breath of Spring shimmied a little to hopefully get it to settle. It was too heavy and covered too much of her and had too much metal in it—is what she'd told Fife. The real truth was she liked it. She'd heard that the weave of adamantine in it could stop bullets. But she was a dryad and there was a constant urge to complain about clothing, though she tended to lean on that more with her girlfriend. "This armor is too heavy."

Looking over at the boss of her dungeon, Huntress raised an eyebrow. "I've seen you carry Fife."

"That's different." Breath of Spring stuck her tongue out at Huntress. "I want to carry Fife."

It felt like old times for Jack, but there was something missing. "It's hard to believe Brayden couldn't make it." He toyed with his new staff, fingers feeling up and down the wooden haft that was rock hard with permafrost.

Taking a deep breath of warm, early spring air, Jack let out a hissing rasp of chill that made his breath fog and drain the heat from around him. For all his life, he'd never felt so close to his element as he had since taking Travis' offer.

"He's settled down!" Fife found one of her poleyn straps needed an extra notch in it and cinched it up a bit more. "Still, can't blame him too much. Astrid and her pack seem to be doing some hard work out west, and it's good to get them back on their feet and back out again."

"Something killed them?" Skald asked.

"From what Travis said, cannons. Astrid ignited a powder keg and Hreti took a canister shot to the head that ripped his helmet off with him still wearing it. I think we'll need to talk to Axel and Tinpot about reinforcing joints." Satisfied with her leg armor now, Fife stood up and checked her range of motion. "Everyone ready?"

What normally felt like a big room definitely wasn't with Fife, Raze, and Huntress in it.

The big centaur woman had a small wooden saddle-rack on her equine back with rifles, ammo, and spare equipment for each of her companions. She had a pair of pistols and a six-shot rifle over her back.

Raze had her trademark flail, as well as a brace of new javelins in a quiver on her back. Her armor was mostly on her arms, though she now wore heavy chain mail and leather on her torso. Her head was only half covered by a helmet that protected her neck and upper muzzle, but left her jaw exposed.

Skald had a leather and adamantine duster, mirroring Breath of Spring. He had a small drum on his hip and a short sword and pistol as armaments.

Jack wore a duster too, though he'd opted for mithril plates inside his. It was less protection, but much lighter and easier to work with.

The last of the group was Breath of Spring. She had a blooded wolf from Travis' dungeon for a companion, and jumped up and climbed to the beast's back to get a little height and safety. She wore her own duster, and carried nothing else with her.

Each of them gave an acknowledgment, and followed Fife out to the courtyard of the little inward-facing fort. The entrance of the Swarm dragon dungeon was easily twenty feet across. There were signs of claws scraping against the exposed stone, which served as a reminder to them that here be dragons.

Leading her party to the entrance, Fife drew up her magic and leaned forward—breathing a spray of flame into the dungeon to announce her arrival. "Now, a reminder. If we do delve to the bottom, we do not break this one's heart. And, no matter what, if we have to leave in a rush, we destroy our guns first."

Fife was kitted out with her usual gear with one new addition. The device was akin to a tiny mortar, but aimed more like a pistol. Travis had told her it was called a grenade launcher—Fife liked to think of it as the hand of a god. The shells it fired were thicker around than her sword hilt, and the outside of them was carefully stamped so that when they exploded the shell would fragment. She'd practiced with it, but only against stationary targets.

Marching into the dungeon, Fife was pleased to see a group of draconic warriors, their shields raised and ready to repel her group. "This brings back so many good memories. Those damn goblins didn't have any sense of fun. But here"—she drew the grenade launcher and aimed it to land at the warriors' feet—"I get to experience an old favorite in a new way."

Pulling the trigger activated the small charge at the base of the casing, propelling the grenade forward where it hit one of the warriors' shields and detonated. The experience, Fife had to admit, was worth all the work Tinpot had put into it. The three warriors closest to the grenade's blast (including the one that blocked it) were scattered around the room in pieces. The rest of the group were struggling to get back up after the concussion threw them around, but otherwise seemed fine. "Huh," Fife said. "This one kicks up a little."

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From one side of Fife, a rifle sang its sharp song as Huntress dispatched one of the rising enemies, and Raze charged past her other side, laughter bubbling up as she drew her flail.

The newest nightmare Tinpot had created intrigued Robert. He had the neat little canisters on his workbench, still unsealed, while he inspected them. "Remove the big concussive charge, and I could fit all manner of substances in these. I need to figure out a way to have them distribute it…"

Axel wasn't a gunsmith or an alchemist, but the strange mechanisms he was being asked to create lately had left him thinking more flexibly about metal and deforming it with blasts. "A disc of mild steel in here, with a thin adamantine body should let you fill the front of it with a substance that would be propelled out. You'd need a small charge behind the plate, and holes in the front. I'll make one for you. Expect the inside to be hot and under a lot of pressure. We can wad the end up with paper to stop your stuff leaking out."

Quickly writing that down, Robert asked, "How much can I fit in?"

"About this much should be usable." Axel picked up one of the inert shells from the workbench and made a mark on the inside of it to show how much space his mechanism would use. "Everything from there forward. Less if your contents is heat sensitive, since we'll need wadding behind it."

It was, from Robert's perspective, a lot of space. "Thank you. I expect the wolves will all want guns that fire these, and I know Tinpot is working on some for them. Explosions and metal scraps won't always be effective, so I think it's a good idea to give them options."

"You don't have to tell me twice. It's a shame we didn't have a second one ready for Astrid to take back to the West with her." Shrugging, Axel picked up one of the other empty casings. "Can I take this with me to use as a model?"

"Go ahead. I need to figure out what would be the best counter agent to use for things resistant to explosions. Maybe some of the enhanced trap sludge?" The last was more a question Robert posed for himself rather than Axel. "Thank you."

With the smith gone to build the device for him, Robert attacked his notes for details of what he could make. The sludge was a no-brainer since his improved variant was immune to fire. He had samples of Penelope's acid, though it required a mana source to maintain its potency. There were other samples he could try. Poisons that could be inhaled were one such, though remembering the explosion-triggering poison the Northern army had tried to use on them made Robert shudder.

There was a reason why he liked the sludge, and that had nothing to do with it having been the reason Travis caught him and his sister in the first place. The very reason he'd been delving a dungeon instead of spending his life in a locked lab somewhere making chemicals was he'd wanted to find exotic things. Dungeon sludge had proved to be the exact thing he'd wanted—and he'd found it.

It was at least as horrific as the large-scale poison the Northerners used, but it was also his baby—which was why he had a batch mixed up by the time Axel returned. He'd even solved another problem with the design. "I figured out how to store a liquid without it spilling out."

Taking four of the grenade shells from a canvas bag, Axel set them on the table carefully. "Oh?" One thing he loved most about his work was the smart and creative people he worked with. "A glass vial?"

"I considered it. If I made the wall of the glass thick enough, it would survive the initial propelling charge. But here's something even better." Holding up a gold canister, Robert slid it into the open casing of the grenade. "It's immune to the sludge's melting, but the explosion of the charge behind it will force it to rupture and spray the sludge out onto anything you hit with it."

"I made two different grenades. One has the holes on the front, one on the sides too." Axel fished one of the side-hole grenades out. "When you have your payload inside, you push the two halves together with one of the presses Tinpot made."

"Because a hammer would—" Robert tapped the bottom of the grenade with a claw.

"Hopefully not, but there is a chance. The small charge rune inside the grenade is concussive-triggered. If you use a press, it won't trigger." Axel set more of the side-ported grenades out for Robert. "If you make ten of them, we'll be able to use the dungeon system to create more."

Robert sighed in bliss. "This is exactly what I wanted to do with my life, you know?" At Axel's curious look, he continued. "I wanted to research and find new applications for chemicals derived from dungeons, but I didn't want to have to commercialize them. That's why Kate and I came here. We both wanted to do our dungeon research in an actual dungeon, without anyone bothering us."

"You don't like iterating and perfecting your designs?"

"Not if it means having to scale them up for mass production. The dungeon system takes my concoctions and makes them easily and infinitely repeatable. Oh, I just had another idea for what we could put in these." Reaching for a wax tablet, Robert began scrawling a new title at the top: "More Fire."

"You'd want to talk to your sister about that. She might even be able to make contained fire, or…"

The ashen white look of Axel's face told Robert the young man had come up with something very odd. "What?"

"How many half-second-delay explosive runes could we fit inside this? Could we make the whole front of it out of gold, fill it with them, and then…" Axel was relieved to see Robert gaping at him with the same shock he felt. "Fife's already gone, right?"

"It's not that. If you ask my sister to miniaturize her runes…" Robert shuddered. "I don't think she's ever thought about that avenue of magic. She's likely never to sleep again."

"Even if we rushed, we couldn't get that design tested, built, and someone to deliver it to the dungeon she's delving in time. It'll be a present for when she comes back." Flicking his tail in concentration, Robert added, "I guess you know what your next project will be."

"After I make you more of these different canisters. I'll aim for twenty of each, that way you can figure out which you like for what chemical."

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