Kaelas and Sarak treated this place like a playground.
“So,” I said, my voice flat. “This is the ‘milestone achievement’ you three burned seventy-two man-hours on?”
I pushed my safety goggles up the bridge of my nose, arms crossed behind a wall of reinforced sandbags. Before me, resting on a rusted, angled launch rail, sat a cylinder of pure industrial malice. It was a two-meter iron pipe with four fins welded to the rear—fins cut from scrapped oil drums, their edges jagged and bleeding red rust. The warhead was painted a jarring crimson, featuring a crudely drawn, mocking skull.
It wasn't a weapon. It was a winged propane tank suffering from an identity crisis.
“Don't look at her like she’s scrap, Boss!” Sarak, the goblin engineer, was caked in soot and vibrating with caffeine tremors. She slapped the iron pipe, producing a dull, hollow metallic thud. “This is the Hellfire Custom. Pure, unadulterated kinetic delivery!”
“The core logic lies in the propellant formulation,” Kaelas added, looking up from a chaotic nest of copper wiring. His fox-kin fur was puffed out like a dandelion from high-intensity static charge. He waved a notebook that looked as if it had been dipped in acid. “The previous iteration was a glorified firework. But this time? I’ve incorporated pulverized Storm Geode dust. The energy density is off the charts. Theoretically, the Specific Impulse should increase by 300%!”
I rubbed my aching temples. “I don't care about the specific impulse. I care about the Circular Error Probable. Can this thing actually hit a target, or is it just going to redecorate the landscape?”
“Regarding the Aerodynamic Stability...” Kaelas scratched a fuzzy ear, his confidence wavering. “The energy release from Storm Geodes is extremely... ‘enthusiastic.’ Its flight path might possess some stochastic variances.”
“Stochastic variances,” I repeated, deadpan. In engineering terms, that meant ‘uncontrollable suicide machine.’ “Everyone to the bunkers. Clear the blast radius.”
Fifty meters back, in the shadow of a granite outcrop, Mykra was curled into a tight black ball. He seemed to merge with the darkness, his oversized hood concealing his face, leaving only a pale, translucent chin visible. He clutched an experimental infrared sensor to his chest like a holy relic.
Brad was busy stuffing high-density acoustic foam into his ears. Seeing Mykra frozen, Brad tossed him two plugs. “Hey, Spook. Plug up.” Brad’s voice was a deep rumble. “Trust me, when this candle lights, the overpressure will turn your eardrums to jelly.”
Mykra flinched like a startled snail. He didn't take the plugs. His dead-fish eyes remained locked on the sensor’s oscillating needle. His voice was a raspy grind of rusted gears. “...No need. World... already loud.”
At the command post, I raised my right hand, checking the wind shear on my interface.
“Three.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Ignition sequence start.”
Kaelas slammed the plunger.
The atmosphere was brutally shredded. The launch rail was instantly engulfed in a thick, violent plume of blue-purple exhaust—the visible ionization of a forced Geode reaction. The Shockwave swept across the testing ground, vaporizing the moisture in the air. The crude iron supports of the rail disintegrated into molten slag under the thermal shock.
The Hellfire Custom screamed into the heavens, trailing a five-meter-long wake of magical instability.
“Thrust positive! The math holds!” Sarak shrieked, jumping and waving a wrench.
The physics caught up. The rocket demonstrated severe aerodynamic instability, failing to maintain a clean ballistic arc. Upon reaching an altitude of five hundred meters, the uneven burn rate of the Geode dust caused the center of thrust to misalign with the center of mass. The projectile began to corkscrew like a drunken giant. It ascended in a chaotic spiral, performed an unprompted 90-degree yaw to the left, and then dove, nearly burying itself in a ridge three kilometers east.
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“That trajectory...” I stared at the twisted trail of white smoke. “It’s a macroscopic manifestation of Brownian Motion. It’s flying by RNG.”
Mykra, still crouched in the shadows, tracked the smoke with unblinking eyes. “...Chaos,” he whispered.
At fifteen hundred meters, the propellant exhausted itself. “Remote detonation!”
A dull red fireball bloomed at high altitude. Thousands of jagged iron shards saturated a two-hundred-meter sphere of airspace. The sound of the blast rolled over us seconds later—a heavy, chest-thumping thud.
“Lethality is within acceptable parameters,” I said, lowering my binoculars. My tone was cold. “But the impact point was three kilometers off-target. If that were an enemy airship, the crew would have had time to brew a pot of tea and write their wills before we even got close.”
Kaelas and Sarak hung their heads like shamed apprentices, mumbling about fuel viscosity and fin symmetry. A rasp drifted from behind the rock.
“...Fuel.” The voice was barely audible.
Mykra stood up slowly, maintaining a strict two-meter safety radius from everyone else. His pale fingers tapped the glass casing of his sensor. “Fuel... has a will.”
“A will?” I turned to him, brow furrowed.
Mykra avoided my eyes, staring at the scorched earth, though his speech quickened. “Storm Geodes... they have an instinct for mana. Like moths... to a flame. They aren't flying randomly. They are... searching for high-energy gradients.”
He reached out and, with surgical precision, drew a complex geometric rune in the ash. “Umbra... Mana Beacon. Used for... marking targets.” He pointed to the rune, then to his own dark eyes. “Engrave this on the warhead. I... on the ground... will ‘illuminate’ the destination.”
The logical circuits in my brain snapped shut. “You’re suggesting we utilize the Geode’s natural mana-taxis, synchronized with your shadow beacon, to force an induction-based guidance loop?”
Mykra gave a stiff shake of his head, clearly not following the jargon. “Thrust is too great. Cannot fully... control.” He picked at his fingernails anxiously. “Only... a suggestion. Give the fire... a suggestion.”
“A suggestion?” I blinked, then let out a sharp laugh. This was the fantasy-world equivalent of Semi-Active Laser Guidance.
He would act as the designator; the rocket would be the hound. In a wasteland where the laws of physics were fractured by magic, this was peak tactical adaptation.
“A ‘suggestion’ is more than enough!” I strode toward him, instinctively reaching out to clap his shoulder.
Mykra reacted as if I were holding a live wire. He performed a rapid lateral slide, pressing his back against the hull of the supply truck, breathing hard. “...Don’t touch.” He lowered his head, his voice trembling. “...Dirty.”
My hand froze in mid-air. I looked at his shrunken posture. A mix of pity and cold analysis washed over me. When he said "dirty," he wasn't talking about the mud; he was talking about himself—the internalized self-loathing of an "Umbra remnant."
“Apologies.” I withdrew my hand, resuming professional distance. “The proposal is logically sound. Plan approved.”
I turned back to the dissipating black smoke on the horizon. “Sarak, get back to the forge. I want a Mk.II with reinforced fins and double the payload. Kaelas, assist him with the rune inscription. And stay back—don't let your static charge touch him.”
Mykra’s tight shoulders loosened a fraction. He clutched his sensor and gave a nearly imperceptible nod. “...Algorithm. Cracking... begins.”
The first hammer blow echoed from the forge in the distance, ringing like a church bell for the god of industry. The projectile was a ball of chaotic variables, and my guidance system was a traumatized recluse hiding in the dark. On paper, it was a disaster. But engineering isn't about perfect parts; it's about making the imperfect function in unison.
As the smoke cleared, I didn't see a failure. I saw the grinding gears of a new era finally catching traction. The arm of Skyreach had reached into that forbidden sovereign space—the High Altitude.
Question of the Day: What should be the first live-fire target for the Hellfire Mk.II?
?? A) A Storm Clan Scout Ship.
(Result: Shock and Awe. Bring down a major target to show the world that Skyreach’s airspace is a no-fly zone.)
?? B) The Wolf-kin Vanguard’s Siege Engines.
(Result: Tactical Denial. Wipe out their heavy equipment before they even reach the walls. Artillery supremacy.)
?? C) A "Mana Well" in enemy territory.
(Result: The Engineer's Choice. Sabotage their energy supply. Without mana, their shields and flyers are just expensive statues.)
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