I awoke and glanced over at the time display, which read 5:45 AM. I hadn't yet familiarized myself with the times of sunrise and sunset, but judging from the dark outside of my window, I was not running late today.

  After taking care of my morning routine and packing up, I headed downstairs. Abernathy, Elsetha, and Tobias sat around a table eating some kind of porridge. Katarina bounced down the stairs after me with a big smile.

  “Good moorning!” she sang, flipping a chair around with one foot and sitting in it backwards.

  “Morning,” I said, taking a seat next to her.

  “Ah, Chanter! Excellent!” Abernathy said. He had rings under his eyes. It always amused me that the marsupial beastkin managed to look so exhausted through all that fur.

  “Did you sleep last night?” I asked.

  “Yeah I did. A few hours. I was working with my new Tinker’s Kit. So many possibilities. Oh man. Okay. I made this for you.” He pulled out a metal canister about the size of my forearm. It appeared to be a plain metal cylinder. He pressed along the base and twisted, pulling a smaller cylinder from within.

  “I am still working on synthesizing a useful compound from the web grenades you gave me, but this should add a lot of force to an explosion. You don’t want to use this underground or around other people though, it should be a… big boom.” He pulled a small rod of iron from within the inner tube.

  “The idea is that you would enchant this bar of iron. Throw the device. When it detonates, the entire unit will go off. The inner cylinder is made of a thinner sheet of iron. The outer most is thinner still, but thick enough to withstand impacts. This large chamber,” he gestured at the gap between the inner and outer chamber. “This is where the shrapnel goes!”

  His eyes lit up as he withdrew numerous sharp scraps of iron from his inventory, along with a small pile of tiny iron shavings.

  “Wait… you made Chanter a bomb?” Elsetha asked. “Have you seen what he does with copper coins? This is going to get us killed. You are going to get us all killed, Abernathy.”

  “I love it.” Katarina added.

  “I won't kill everyone,” I said, eyeing the device with large eyes, “but this is… incredible. How do you know it will work?”

  “Calculations are all I have at this point. We don’t really have a safe place to conduct field tests, but running a few rough calculations based on what I have seen from the coins, it should work.”

  “So I enchant this iron bar, assemble everything, then throw the cylinder and that’s it? It seems pretty complicated.” I said.

  “It’s quite simple, really. Here, watch.” He locked the central canister back in place within the outer canister. The bar of iron lay on the table next to the device and the iron scraps. He then used a small hand shovel to scoop the shrapnel pile up and pour it into the canister. After that he twisted the lid, turned it over, and manipulated the circle on the opposite side. A small circle slid open in the middle of the bottom.

  “You can slide the iron bar, once enchanted, into this spot. Close it, and you’re good to go! I should be able to make one that acts as a widespread adhesive once I get this webbing figured out, but for now it functions as a shrapnel-laced explosive.” He handed me the device. I inspected it.

  Abernathy’s Makeshift Pipe-bomb.

  Unique. Single Use.

  Without a core primed to explode, this is nothing more than a paperweight. Add an enchanted core, and it becomes an indiscriminate harbinger of death. The progressively thinner structure design promotes and maximizes shrapnel potential in an explosion.

  I looked at it for a moment, then back up to Abernathy.

  “This is scary,” I said.

  “Yeah it is. That is a lot of metal. And I am not saying you should use it first chance you get. But, if you can use it to do something good, it is worth the risk.” Abernathy looked down at it with a small smile. “And remember, it is an early prototype. I am going to keep working on it. I should get it much smaller and more versatile.”

  “Amazing.” I said.

  “Not the word I would use,” Elsetha said. “Please. Please don’t kill us.” Katarina snorted a laugh.

  “Don’t worry, I will not use this if anyone’s around. I don’t want anyone to get hurt either.” I pulled my lute out and performed the enchantment on the small bar of iron at 93%, pouring ten points of mana to strengthen the enchantment.

  I picked up the bar and slid it into the hole at the base of the bomb. I twisted the bottom, closing the opening and effectively arming it. Elsetha stiffened, breathing in sharply through her nose. I placed the item, now labelled as Abernathy’s Makeshift Pipe-bomb [PRIMED], into my inventory.

  Elsetha exhaled, relaxing. “Just keep it in your inventory, please.”

  “I want to see it go off!” Katarina said, her eyes wide.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “See what go off?” Arlo said, joining us at the table.

  “Abernathy just made Chanter a pipe-bomb!” Katarina said.

  “A what? A pipe-bomb? Oh gods, really Abe?” Arlo asked. Abernethy scratched behind his head, shrugging.

  “It was just an idea I had. He promised not to detonate it around us.” He said.

  Arlo looked from Abernathy to me. I nodded. “I won’t!”

  “I’ll hold you to that.” Arlo said.

  “So what happens if you perform that song again? Will it fail?” Katarina asked.

  “It cancels the current enchantment, passing it to the new object,” I responded. I hadn’t actually tested it out, but I had found a more detailed sub-menu about the ability that explained it.

  “That is convenient,” she said, “so you can still enchant something else in combat, then if you need to use the bomb you can just enchant that bar of iron again.”

  “Yea, that sounds right,” I said.

  Hannah made her way down the stairs, yawning. We ate breakfast and hurried out into the city streets and towards the North Gate. We arrived just before the first lights of dawn began painting the dark night sky with swaths of yellow and red.

  Balen was fidgeting with the cart to the side of the road just inside of the gate. The cart was full of barrels, the smaller cart full of empty water containers from our trip here.

  “Mornin’ to ya’ all, and thanks for not bein’ late!” he said. He gestured to the water containers. “There’s a water station, we need to refill the water cart for the trip.”

  He pointed to a small building built near the gate. It was similar to the one built on the other end of the desert. We spent the next several minutes filling the containers. The sun had fully crested the horizon as we made our way out of the fort.

  “Are these barrels empty?” I heard Abernathy ask from within the cart as we made our way back.

  “Nae, that’d be wasteful merchant work. Don’t never move about empty.” Balen replied. “I load up with salt they mine in the fort alongside the sandstone. Can buy it for cheap there, then use it to salt the fish and sell the extra in Verdantbrook.”

  “Oh, that is convenient,” Elsetha said, also from her place within the cart.

  We spent the day walking through the desert. I tried keeping my eye out for the kitsiho, but didn't see it. I left vials of water out nonetheless, and noticed the vials I had left the day before were gone. Tobias confirmed that he had been able to spot the white winged creature a few times in the distance.

  We made it through the desert without incident, once again not passing a single caravan or traveler. It seemed this road was not frequented. I spent the day practicing my songs, getting my Stringed Instrument performance up to 45 and building my lute’s attunement up another 15% towards the next level.

  After two days of practicing and walking — and not doing much else — I could perform Cahl’s song twice before failing.

  We made camp at the water station on the border between the desert and the grassland as the sun began to set. Cahl called me on the lute and we caught up. He told me he was still digging into Sranthic and the Senc, and that it would likely be at least another day until he had scoured most of the Archives in Verdantbrook. He also said he might not find anything there about them. If that happened he might be going to a larger city for research. He invited me to come along if I wanted.

  We weren’t alone this time. Another trading caravan arrived and set up at the opposite end of the campsite after we had set up for the night. A high elven woman with a large scar in her left ear and down the left side of her face, two slanted scars that resembled claw marks, approached and introduced herself as Raela, a ‘purveyor of exotic goods’.

  She was friendly enough, if a bit stand-offish, and wouldn’t go into detail on the nature of her “exotic goods”. Her caravan consisted of three covered wagons, closed tightly with thick canvas. Four muscular humans worked for Raela, and didn’t come over to say hello. They went in and out of the canvas covered carts every ten to fifteen minutes, emerging moments later.

  Katarina and Hannah walked over to engage in conversation and were sent away almost immediately, Raela apologizing but firmly saying she wanted no guests. We thought it odd, but Balen said it was pretty common for merchants to keep to themselves at way-stations such as this. Tobias eyed the carts warily.

  “I just have a bad feeling about this,” he said, “I mean, look at Lesh.”

  His falcon’s feathers were puffed up. It maintained a steady gaze on the caravan, shifting its head and body regardless of how Tobias moved, always watching the caravan.

  We took turns keeping watch that night. I spent some time tinkering with a new song during my time on first watch.

  My time spent practicing over the last two days had greatly increased my familiarity and comfort with the lute. There was a rhythm in my head and I had a strong urge to bring it to life.

  The song was energetic, a series of quick riffs brimming with optimism, almost as if it could capture the fun and camaraderie I had experienced over the last few days with my friends. A perfect series of moments, memorialized.

  I was careful to practice it as quietly as possible while the others slept, going over the movements with my fingers just above the strings.

  The music flowed through me as I began forming the song. I could feel it. I began pressing down a little harder on the strings, almost there, on the cusp of creation. But it was missing something, some vital component.

  I pressed harder, trying to push through the block with grit and determination. I was so close.

  “Chanter stop that!” Elsetha called from where everyone slept, about twenty feet away. I immediately put my hands over the lute strings, silencing them. “We are trying to sleep! Stop looking at your lute and keep watch. Quietly.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” I said, putting my lute away. The rest of my watch went by without incident. My fingers itched to keep playing, but I pushed the desire aside. Elsetha was right, I needed to keep an eye out.

  Hannah grumbled when I woke her, but stood and rubbed at her eyes, walking around a bit to wake up for her watch.

  “See anything?” she whispered.

  “Nope. Same guy has been up, keeping watch over the other camp. Haven’t seen or heard anything else all night.” I replied, pulling a sleeping bag from my inventory. “Goodluck! Don’t wake up Elsetha.”

  Hannah snorted, walking a little further from where everyone was sleeping. I climbed into my sleeping bag and fell asleep almost instantly, that energetic, happy melody still playing in my mind.

  I was pulled from an exhausted, dreamless sleep by Lesh’s piercing alarm, a loud, raspy “KACK! KACK! KACK!”, which echoed into the night.

  Hannah screamed.

  “Wake up! Wake up! What the… what is that?! Wake up, everyone! Wake u—” her calls were cut off suddenly as I stood, struggling to orient my senses.