The Heart Grows

Frida stared at Astrid. "What?" At the now confused look on Astrid's face, Frida straightened herself up. "Been too long away from the North? You caught me, fair and square. This bringing me back from the dead thing is just more foul Southern heresies, but I owe you five years of labor. Unless you plan to kill me again to feed some sadistic nature?"

"We don't keep slaves here. Either you stay with us or you can fight to the death again. Those are your choices."

"And if I win the fight?" Frida asked, baring her teeth.

"Then you win your freedom." Astrid saw the flames of excitement blaze in Frida's eyes. "If you choose to stay, you can fight me as much as you want. We'll fight and kill and die and grow stronger."

Like others of her kind, the appeal of an eternal series of battles to improve herself appealed to Frida. "And if I win any fight, I get my freedom?"

Astrid hadn't intended it that way. The truth was, she would always have an upper hand against Frida unless she too took up Travis' offer, and that would bind her to the dungeon. "That sounds unfair to you, but I am willing to make that promise. You are not a slave while you're here. You're free to acquire weapons and armor"—Astrid nodded toward the gear already set aside for Frida—"and you are free to train. Finally, you will choose the weapons and armor for our fights and I will choose the time: the start of every month."

"Well," Frida said, taking a deep breath, "since it was the start of a new month just a week ago, let's celebrate it with our first fight. My choice of weapons is our human fists and our armor is our human skin and nothing more."

Demonstrating her control over her body further, Astrid slipped back into her human form. She'd already removed the armor embedded into her body through the Tank class, and so gestured to the door. "Follow me when you're ready. We have a sparring room down the hall."

When Astrid reached the Martial Hall, she was pleased that she heard Frida's footsteps behind her every step of the way. "I'd suggest spending some time with Fife, when she returns, honing your sword use. She specializes in sword and shield, but that woman is a wrecking ball when it comes to moving her opponents into all the positions they never want to be in. Hilda is, of course, willing to train our soldiers. She is in the fort to the east, but you can reach her easier through Breeze—the Verdant dungeon."

Stopping at the middle of the practice floor, Astrid turned and reached for the god that had chosen to sponsor her. Silently, in her head and heart but not aloud, she spoke, "I am about to fight. I ask for no aid that isn't part of my class, but bid you to watch me."

Bookkeeper was again surprised and delighted to be called on. Wiggling her fingers, she delved into the mortal world to watch one of her champions—and then blushed. Watch one of her unclothed champions in a fight with another unclothed woman! Nonetheless, she had been bidden to observe. Being careful there was no large feline or goody-two-shoes paladin around to snoop, she settled in to watch the fight.

Rolling onto the balls of her feet, Astrid brought her fists up and ready, watching the other woman do likewise. Starting slow, she telegraphed a few swings to see how Frida would react. When the bait wasn't taken, she set about throwing some real punches in too.

Frida picked up on the change, now having to judge for herself when to block, deflect, or ignore Astrid's blows. What hit her harder than any of Astrid's punches had so far was how fast her opponent was. She was by no means untrained, but Astrid had her firmly outmatched with reach, size, and speed.

With Frida's measure now taken, Astrid went to work on her. She targeted Frida's ribs mostly, wanting to cause pain without dangerous injuries. When the smaller woman had no real counter, Astrid changed up and slammed a fist first into the left side of Frida's jaw, then reversing it and bringing her right around to connect with the other side.

The hard and fast one-two gave Frida only a brief chance, and she got a solid punch into Astrid's ribs, only to have it feel like she was punching a wall. Then, when the second jaw-shot caught her head and spun it to one side fast, the room went hazy and a moment later (subjectively) she was waking up—staring at the ceiling. "Wha—?"

Astrid reached an arm down to help Frida up. "I think I cracked some of your ribs. Hold on." She cast Focused Heal, the first actual spell she'd gained, and could feel the power of a god flow through her and repair Frida's body. "You need to work on your speed. I'd not suggest challenging me to a fistfight again."

Trying to ignore the casual use of magic, and failing to a fair degree, Frida nodded. "I was faster than that warrior you told to fight me in the woods."

"No, Liv is faster; you just had less armor on. That's how your squad got away from us. We were all wearing enough adamantine that we sank through the snow." Astrid took a slow breath and let her body fill back out, growing in size and muscle while gaining her hefty tail and long snout.

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"You can really shift without the berserker stew? What's the secret to it?"

"For that," Astrid said, "you're going to need to commit to staying here in the South. It was a gift from"—she paused, trying to think of the best way to word the next part—"the best proof I have that dungeons and magic aren't inherently evil. Travis is the dungeon we're in."

"Hello," Travis said, having followed not just Astrid's speech, but also that of Frida. "If you do make the choice to join us here, I can make it so you can shift forms as you please."

The voice in Frida's head startled her for two big reasons. Firstly, no one else was around and that meant it was magic. Second, it had spoken cleanly with no accent and, when she thought on it more, she wasn't sure if it spoke her native language at all. "You're the hole?"

Doing his best not to take offense at the Northern word for dungeons, Travis replied, "Yes. Astrid and her pack had mostly the same offer you did. Some of them took it, some didn't. I won't lie about it—you would be bound to my dungeon for the rest of our lives. In return, you will gain a limited kind of immortality; if you die, you wake up back here."

Watching as Astrid retook her huge form, Frida shook her head to clear her thoughts. "No. I can see many would be tempted by it, but I like my independence."

"Well, you can either train to fight in the coming war or you can work on the fortifications with the other laborers. Your choice." Astrid shrugged her shoulders. "Either way, you'd do well to learn the Southern language."

Narrowing her eyes, Katelyn shook her head. "I don't know. I was reading some of Travis' memory-books, and these seem worryingly close to some bad things of his world."

Hearing his name, Travis turned his attention to the two kobolds and human. Katelyn was looking at some diagrams that Axel and Tinpot had brought her. On one such, Travis recognized something he'd actually done a paper on in high school History. "Cluster munitions."

All three of them froze at the sound of Travis' voice in their heads. Axel reacted first. "Hi Trav. Something you've had experience with?"

"Not personally. Cluster munitions were a problem for a lot of people, though. The biggest issue with them was when they wouldn't detonate on impact. There would be huge swathes of land with the random chance of having explosives in it that might go off if you hit them with a shovel while digging." Travis mentally sighed. "You finally find a topic I'd researched, and it's one I really wish we didn't need to discuss, but we're going to."

"I hadn't thought of that. It could cause more problems in a hostile dungeon. It would be bad enough giving them guns, but giving them explosive runes would be devastating," Axel said.

"That's the only hang-up? Leftover munitions not exploding?" Tinpot asked.

"Yeah. That's the extent of it." Travis saw a smile growing on Katelyn's face. "You have an idea?"

Nodding, Katelyn reached across her workbench and picked up a small stone. It took her a moment to inscribe a rune into it: a weak explosion that would cause more of a pop than a blast. "So, this is a weakened form of the existing rune we use in bullets and grenades, but with half the trigger and a fraction of the impact required."

Turning slightly, Katelyn wound up and threw it into the empty fireplace on the other side of her workroom. It connected with the stonework and popped loudly. "It doesn't take a lot of impact to set them off, but the runes require two such impacts in quick succession." She charged another, this time with the full trigger and same impact, then threw it into the fireplace. "No pop, see? Don't worry, I'll clean it up later."

"How does this help?" Travis asked.

"Runes can have multiple triggers. There are several parts to every rune, but the main two are effect and trigger. The effect is the explosion. The trigger, for bullets and grenades, is two sharp impacts one after the other. I can add more triggers." Picking up another stone, Katelyn focused a little more. This time she added the main explosive pop, the two-impact trigger, and then a second trigger.

Tinpot and Axel watched directly, while Travis used their senses and Katelyn's to observe as she sent the rune flying into the fireplace. Like the second that it shared one trigger with, the rune didn't pop immediately, but after one second it made a satisfactory sound of detonation.

"What did you add?" Tinpot asked.

"The primary trigger was the same as our normal one. Two sharp impacts in short succession and they will detonate the rune. My throw only triggers one, though. The second trigger required one sharp impact and had a short delay. If they don't explode on impact, they will explode a second later regardless." Katelyn picked up another stone, inscribed it the same, and demonstrated again. "Now the question is, will the dungeon accept each rune as the ammo or will I need to make enough of these for, what is it, ten grenades? Whatever. Travis, is this safe enough for you?"

"So," Travis began, "from the way I see it, just firing these will cause them to explode somewhere, a second later, regardless of them impacting anything hard enough to make the primary trigger fire? So, the only way for a grenade full of these to not explode is if it isn't fired."

"Could I request something?" Tinpot asked. Gesturing to his design, he said, "Could we ensure the trigger for the one-second timer's impact be more than simply dropping the grenade? In fact, having it be a hair under the normal double-impact trigger would be perfect. That ensures that it will go off."

Glad that one of the issues had been resolved, Travis paused a moment to think. "What other grenades have you been working on? Nothing with gases or long-acting poisons?" Seeing both Tinpot and Axel turn to look at each other with guilty expressions on their faces, Travis had to wonder how many war crimes he'd have to head off these two perpetrating.

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