It was the te afternoon when Sara finally awoke, and this time for real. She'd had expected them to spend the rest of the day in bed, considering their track record, but the spell-bolstered orgasm had smashed her libido to pieces. As they awoke, one by one, Sara found the same sentiment mirrored in Hurlish, and, to her surprise, Evie, who didn't even suggest going another round.

  Instead, after they had spent quiet hour resting in one another's arms, they slowly got dressed. They all moved gingerly, wobbling a bit, but no one fell as they got their pants back on.

  "So," Hurlish eventually said, clearing her throat several times so her voice wouldn't crack. "Want to see the new pce?"

  Sara and Evie followed Hurlish out into the living room, paying proper attention to it for the first time. To her complete and utter ck of shock, the home was spartan in its decoration. Two rooms, a kitchen-ssh-living-room and a bedroom, with a single worn-out sofa dragged in front of a firepce that had never seen an ounce of ash. The bedroom cked a door for no better reason than it hadn't had one when Hurlish moved in, and she'd never bothered to go out and buy one. Sara was fairly certain the specialty bed was more expensive than the rest of the home and its contents combined.

  Well, with one clear exception. Hurlish may not have cared much for knick-knacks and soft pillows, but she wasn't totally allergic to decorations. She just had a different taste than most.

  In the weeks Sara and Evie had been away, Hurlish's weapon collection had grown. Considerably. The walls were covered by various steel-bded weapons of all varieties, from simple carving knives all the way to ponderous greatswords, so rge that only the tallest of orcs could reasonably swing them. With just a cursory gnce, Sara counted over a dozen individual halberds, swords, and war hammers. There was also, taking up a pce of honor in the center of the exterior wall, four well-polished muskets, with a pair of matched pistols hung neatly below them.

  Though there were a multitude of dueling weapons and rapiers among the collection, when Evie finally sloughed out of bed, limp and sore, it was the pistols that she gravitated to. Still reticent to lose contact with Hurlish, she took the woman by the arm and dragged her over to the dispy.

  "What is special about this set, then?" Evie asked, cocking her head as she eyed the pistols. "They seem identical to the variety described by Master's father."

  "They are," Hurlish agreed, pointing to the pque's bel. Sara sauntered up behind them, wrapping an arm around both women's waists, and squinted at the tiny chicken-scratch text.

  Harper's Ferry Flintlock Pistol. Serial Number 1 & 2.

  "These are the first you ever made, then?" Sara guessed.

  "Yup," Hurlish confirmed. "First pistols in all the world. When we watched illusion of your dad talking about all those guns and stuff, I noticed how nuts he tended to get about historical importance and preservation and all that crap, so I thought I'd test these a few times, then hang 'em up to dry. World's first pistols. Real, 'historical artifact,' those. Or they will be, some day."

  Sara felt a flutter of something in her stomach, almost as if she were the one pregnant. For Hurlish to care about Sara's own interests was one thing, almost expected for a girlfriend to do. Caring about what her father might have wanted, when Hurlish had never met the man, and never would? Just to respect Sara's fondness for her father? That was a special kind of thoughtfulness.

  "And the muskets?" Evie asked, too eager to notice the moment passing her by.

  Hurlish picked one up off the wall, putting the stock on the ground, so Evie could see down the barrel.

  "First of each kind of rifling method I tried. Didn't know how best to go about it, and none of 'em turned out particurly good, but hey. First is a first. They'll probably end up in one of those museum things some day, the first rifles in all the world. Bit of a shame they're shit rifles, but hey, what can you do?"

  Hurlish set the musket back up on its peg, then turned to Evie, managing to uncmp the feline's hand from her own. "What about your pistols? You said you jury-rigged some shit yourself, yeah? Let me see 'em."

  "They're certainly not up to your standards," Evie warned, reaching reluctantly into the enchanted bag off her hip..

  "Maybe, but calling 'em pistols in the first pce is a bit of an understatement," Sara noted as the weapons were produced. "You sawed the barrel off a musket. Pretty sure no one's supposed to be taking that kind recoil with their wrist alone."

  "Hand cannons, more like," Hurlish agreed, taking the weapon from Evie. She ran a finger along the barrel's end, feeling the rough iron where a hacksaw had cut it through. "How much powder you putting in these?"

  "A hundred and ten grains or so, if I take the time to properly measure."

  Hurlish's eyebrow raised. "The full length musket's only supposed to be using eighty grains, y'know. You're gonna break something shooting a load like that."

  "Yes, well, nights spent with you two have given me a particurly strong wrist, it would seem," Evie sniffed defensively. "The recoil is considerable, but manageable for one of our Level."

  Hurlish chuckled, pulling the hammer back on the pistol, inspecting the fsh pan. "Not what I meant. You put enough shots through this with a powder load like that, and sooner or ter it's going to split. I bet if I opened it up, I could already see warping."

  "I would have used less powder if possible, but without the longer barrel to accelerate the ball, such a load is required to penetrate enchanted steel."

  "You tried using minié balls in it?" Hurlish asked. "Those should get through armor better, being pointed and all."

  "I considered it, but that would require using one of our limited stock of rifled muskets for the base, which I did not wish to deprive our army of. Without the rifling to engage the grooves, the round tumbled end over end, resulting in worse accuracy than a standard musket ball."

  "Hm. Well, it wouldn't be hard to rifle 'em now, if you want."

  Evie's ears, which had lowered slightly, popped up to their usual alertness.

  "Would that be reasonable? It would weaken the barrel considerably, no? And you were already concerned about warping from the powder load."

  "Since you used the 1842 for your base, it should be fine. Barrel's thick enough to take the rifling without a problem. Though you'll want to lower your powder load, in the future, trust to the minié balls for better armor piercing."

  Sara watched the exchange with a small smile. Evie was often self-conscious at what she considered her ck of practical talents, when compared to her two partners. Sara had offered to help make them, but Evie had refused, sving over the pistols for hours, trying to get the cut as clean as she could with only a hacksaw.

  "We'll probably want to put those in a museum too, someday," Sara said, picking up one of the six mega-pistols Evie had created. "After the st few battles, I'm pretty sure they've ended whole noble lineages all on their own."

  "It's rather unlikely that a family would send their only fertile children to war, Master," Evie argued, though Sara did catch a smarmy flick of her tail. "Were that not the case, however, I suppose it could be possible."

  "War's not over yet," Sara said. "I'm sure you'll get your chances."

  "If you don't beat her to it," Hurlish grunted, handing Evie back her pistol. "I finished up your toy yesterday evening, Sara. Want to come check it out?"

  "Oh? What've you got for me?" Sara asked, fluttering her eyeshes, feigning ignorance.

  "What else?" Hurlish asked, grinning at Sara. "A big fucking gun."

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  "Hurlish. Hurlish, babe, I love you. But this thing is going to blow my goddamn shoulder off."

  Hurlish piteously dropped the weapon in Sara's hands, making her grunt as she adjusted to the weight.

  "I'll be honest, I kinda forgot how small you are. Looked better when it was in my hands."

  "I'm one of the tallest human women you've ever met."

  "Tallest human doesn't mean much, shortstuff." Hurlish replied, resting her elbow atop Sara's head for emphasis.

  "It doesn't matter how short I am. It matters how big this fucking gun is."

  She finally shifted the weapon into a more comfortable position, resting its butt against the ground. The mouth of the barrel poked into her stomach just below her sternum, which meant it was a good deal shorter than most muskets. About three and a half feet, the barrel taking up two of that. A reasonable size, for something like a carbine.

  This weapon was not a goddamn carbine. Sara could easily fit two fingers down the barrel side-by-side, with a bit of wiggle room to spare, and that was just the start.

  "What is this?" She asked. "An inch and a half caliber?"

  "Inch and a third," Hurlish corrected, as if it made it any better. "Which, by your notes, makes it a cannon, not a musket."

  "It's fuckin' ridiculous."

  "So you love it?"

  "I love it."

  Sara swung the cannon up to her shoulder, looking down the barrel. It had the same sights as most of the rifles Hurlish had made, patterned off an AK, where the rear sight would elevate in hundred yard increments, up to five hundred yards. She doubted she'd ever shoot the thing beyond a hundred yards, what with the way most battles had been smothered in an eery powder fog, but she appreciated the option all the same.

  The barrel was over half an inch thick, by far the thickest of any gun she'd ever seen, in this world and her old. And it was steel, not just iron. Though they could barely measure such a thing, Hurlish had aimed for a carbon content of half a percent, and from their talks over the crystal, Sara knew that the resulting steel was at the very limits of what their current metallurgy was capable of handling. The effort required to pound a half-inch thick pte of steel into shape was barely within reach of even Hurlish's absurd strength.

  If Sara had to guess, the assembled gun weighed fifty pounds, and that was without its lead ammunition and powder charge, which would only worsen things. Sara was absolutely certain that her old self would have no hope of holding it on target for more than a few seconds at a time, assuming she could've lifted it at all. With the way most of the weight was banced at the end of the barrel, even her current self ended up tiring from the effort of holding it in a shooting stance.

  Sara reached up to the rear of the gun, pressed the metal tch aside, and broke it open. There would've been no way to actually load a round into the rifled barrel, since the lead had to be rger than the barrel to get the rifling's grooves to bite, and forcing it down the barrel like they did with other rifles would have needed a damn jackhammer.

  Thus, Hurlish had created her first break-action weapon. The steel tch swung open silently, not a scrape or rattle to be heard, and Sara spent a moment admiring the grace of the mechanism. She'd never produced an illusion of a break-action weapon for Hurlish to replicate, only told her that they existed, so the way the smith had managed to get everything to work so smoothly was shockingly impressive. If they hadn't just gotten out of bed, seeing that subtle glide would have ended up with Sara pulling Hurlish back into it. The interior of the exposed chamber was cavernous, an inch and a third wide, six inches long.

  "Here you go," Hurlish said, handing Sara a thick bag. It was an all-in-one powder charge, bullet and bck powder tied together in a fmmable cloth sack, like she wished she could've afforded to have ready for her cannoneers.

  "Master, surely you aren't going to shoot that thing in the city?" Evie asked. "Even if you do not shatter windows with its concussion, I doubt there is a wall thick enough to absorb such a round."

  "It's a lead round, I bet it'll just shatter when it hits stone," Sara dismissively replied, taking the charge from Hurlish. She dropped it into the breech, where it nded with a satisfying thunk.

  "Actually, those rounds are steel-cored," Hurlish said. "A pain in the ass, but I figure if you're gonna be shooting at wizards and knights and shit, it was probably worth it."

  Sara paused, halfway through snapping the weapon closed. "So these are armor-piercing rounds then?"

  "They're not any of the fancy shit you talked about from your world," Hurlish shrugged, "but they're the best I could do. Soft, heavy lead, for weight, with a little steel core for punching through whatever the lead bruised up first. Worked fine when I tested it against some of the captured gear you sent back, but we'll have to see. Damn expensive rounds, by the way, and they take forever to make, so try and use 'em when it matters."

  "It seems like you shouldn't be using such ammunition for a simple test firing, then," Evie noted from the sidelines.

  Hurlish and Sara both gave her a look.

  "But... it'd be more fun if I did?" Sara pintively replied.

  Hurlish nodded solemnly. "Yeah, what she said."

  Evie narrowed her eyes. "You are supposed to be voice of reason among us three, Hurlish."

  "My girlfriends just got back into town. I'm on break. Just, uh, think of it as..." Hurlish's tusks bobbed as she thought. After a moment, her face brightened. "You gotta test it under field conditions, y'know. Yeah, make sure it'll perform the same and all that. That makes sense."

  Evie huffed, but didn't further object, so Sara happily clicked the barrel closed and lined the sights up with the cratered pile of dirt Hurlish had brought in for target practice. Truthfully, she was rather concerned about how much of the explosion would leak out around the break-action's seal, since she'd just shoved seven or eight times the amount of bck powder into the thing than she'd have used with a normal musket. Sara briefly checked to make sure Hurlish was covering Evie's ears, then hesitated for a further second, even as the weapon grew heavy against her shoulder.

  This'd be a pretty stupid end to my life story, she thought. " Here lies Sara Brown. She almost did a lot of important things, until she blew her face off with a massive goddamn gun."

  Eh, fuck it. Worth.

  Sara pulled the trigger.

  The world went white. Her body was thrown violently to the side, like a giant had swung its boot into her shoulder with all its might. The report that rocked through the city was something she heard for only a split second before it was repced with high-pitched ringing, a whine that reverberated in time with the throbbing agony in her shoulder. She stumbled backward several steps, halfway proud she didn't fall, coughing from the sudden shock of inhaling lungfuls of powder, an ache blooming through her abused shoulder.

  Evie said something from nearby that, judging by her expression, was supremely derogatory.

  "Yeah," Sara said, certain that whatever muffled insult she'd just suffered was perfectly accurate. God damn did her shoulder hurt.

  Evie stepped closer and, realizing Sara couldn't hear her, leaned in to shout.

  "Your arm is dislocated!" She yelled. "I'm going to pull it back into pce! Are you ready?!"

  "Gimme a sec– FUCK!"

  Sara doubled over as Evie jerked on her arm, popping it back into pce. The pain hit her like lightning, unbearably intense, but there and gone in an instant. She set the gun down, leaning against it for support, and breathed hard. A gss bottle appeared in front of her a moment ter, the red slurry of a small of health potion swirling inside, which she happily chugged.

  As the cold shiver ran through her, numbing the pain in her ears and shoulder, Sara slowly became aware of the fact that Hurlish was talking.

  "...probably should only shoot that with your armor on, huh?"

  "Maybe," Sara said sarcastically, working her jaw in circles. Her ears felt like they'd popped a hundred times over, the sounds of the world too dull.

  Eventually she stood, waving a hand over the still-smoking barrel. Several smiths from across the yard were looking their way, probably pissed that Sara was back in town. She gave them a friendly wave.

  "I'll give you a warning next time, promise! That was the only one for now!"

  She caught the gnces the smiths shared with one another, ranging from severe doubt to faint amusement, but didn't pay it any mind.

  Abruptly, she remembered that she wasn't supposed to let the burning powder just sit in the gun like that. It would do horrible things to the barrel.

  She thumbed the thick tch over and broke open the gun, leaning away from a second puff of smoke. She turned the weapon over, dumping out unburnt powder and smoking tendrils of cloth.

  "Think we can get those charges wrapped in paper, instead?" Sara asked, shaking the gun out harder. More and more kept falling out, coating the stones in dark flecks.

  "You've basically ate up all of Tulian's paper production for the regur musket's ammo," Hurlish reminded her. "Paper ain't cheap anymore."

  "Nothing about this gun's cheap." Sara shook the weapon a few extra times before clicking it shut, satisfied that she'd gotten the st of the mess out. "You know what's expensive, though? Knight's armor. And unless every shot is costing enough to buy a small vilge, we're gonna be coming out ahead."

  "It's your money," Hurlish said with a shrug. "I just used the cloth 'cause I didn't think you'd want to be taking any of the paper cartridges away from the troops."

  Sara, halfway through adjusting the gun's shoulder strap, froze. "Shit. You're right. Now I feel like an asshole." She mulled it over, deliberating.

  Evie stepped sharply forward, snagging the strap out of Sara's hands. "My gods, Master, just use the paper. It's paper." With a few quick jerks, Evie adjusted the strap to Sara's size, waving for her to put out her arm. "You don't worry about 'stealing' wine from the soldiers at night, do you?"

  "I mean..."

  "Forget I asked." Evie buckled the strap into pce and took a step back. "There," she said, crossing her arms and returning to her spot beside Hurlish, running Sara over with an inspector's eye. "Does it fit well, or is the weight too great? We may need a rger strap, lest it dig into your skin."

  "You always want a rger strap," Sara countered, earning a barked ugh from Hurlish. Evie just stared, unammused. Sara took a few steps back and forth, rolling her shoulders and bouncing in pce, making sure the gun felt secure. She gave a thumbs up. "Feels great, size queen."

  Evie arched an eyebrow. "You do realize it's my desires which dictate your anatomy, Master? Too much mockery and you may end up with something truly unwieldy, next time."

  "Yeah, but you're the one that's gonna be taking it. I'm fine with that."

  Evie smirked. "I suppose we'll have to see, won't we?"

  "Alright, break it up, girls," Hurlish said, giving Evie's ass a firm swat. The feline yelped, rubbing the spot with a look of faint affront.

  "Why was I the only one that got spanked?" She asked. "Master was fully complicit in this argument."

  "Hey Sara, come over here."

  "Oh, no. Don't think you can get me with– ow!" One of Hurlish's massive arms snagged Sara's shoulder and spun her around, delivering the same underhanded sp to her ass.

  "There, you happy, you brat?" Hurlish swept Evie up in an arm, so the orc's breasts were resting on her head. "By the way," she said, looking down at her own cleavage to address Evie, who was hidden beneath, "Your toys aren't done yet. They're a lot more complicated than Sara's gun, after all. Sorry about that."

  "I expected as much," Evie replied, maintaining her noble decorum despite the decidedly indecorous position. "And there's certainly no need for apology, nor concern. Master's victory has won us a reprieve. I trust that they will be ready before battle is next met."

  "Love you too, babe."

  Sara snorted. In the course of running Tulian, they'd both seen Evie's usual response to a contractor announcing a dey.

  "How many rounds do you have ready?" Sara asked. "I'll have to store 'em in Evie's bag of holding, since I'd basically be wearing bombs otherwise, but I'll be gd to get as many as I can.."

  "I've got ten ready to go," Hurlish said, one hand moving to pet Evie's head as she spoke. "But really, that's it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, pretty much every time we've ever made a gun together, there's always something wrong with the first version. I don't think I've ever made a new kind without, what, three prototypes?"

  Sara spun the gun off her back and held it up, running through a mental checklist. She shrugged.

  "I've got nothing. It all looks good to me. I mean, I may want a cleaning tool specifically for it, since it seems to leave a shit-ton of debris behind after a shot. So maybe something to swab out the chamber and barrel?" She swung the gun onto her back, where it settled as a comfortable weight. "Other than that, I got nothing. It's perfect, Hurlish."

  "Eh, well, I'm sure we'll find something screwy once you actually–"

  "If either of you are speaking to me," Evie loudly announced, head rolling back and forth as Hurlish's massive paw of a hand shoved her head around, "I must inform you that I can not hear you."

  Hurlish chuckled, pausing the scratch to say, "You're all good. Still talking gun stuff."

  "Then why did you stop?"

  The orc rolled her eyes as she resumed her scratching. Evie arched up into the touch slightly, and a small rumble began to build in the core of her chest.

  "Looks like we better wrap this up," Sara said, nodding to Evie. "Won't be long, now."

  "Nope," Hurlish agreed, adding a second hand to the rubbing. "How long do you think she's gonna be like this?"

  "We were gone for a while, Hurlish. She's gonna be clingy."

  "Hey, I ain't compining. Just wondering."

  Sara thought it over, tugging a bit on her Blessings to make her evaluation. It was almost funny, when she realized. It was hard to remember that for all her hardships, Evie was still only a twenty-something girl, in her first retionship. And one hell of a first retionship, at that. Perfectly fair if she got a bit insecure about some things.

  "A couple days longer, I bet," Sara decided. "She's missed you more than she lets on." She nodded to Evie's bag. "You notice how nervous she was to show you those pistols she made?"

  "Not really?"

  "Well, she was. While she was making them she kept mumbling about how you'd throw a fit if you knew what she was doing to 'your guns.' Even I couldn't get the idea out of her head."

  Hurlish's eyebrows rose. "The fuck'd she get that idea from? I knew you were givin' them to army brats. I'd be happy if I found out no one stuck their dick in 'em cause they were bored."

  Sara snorted. "Well, for the record, I'm pretty sure no one has. And she's just like that. Y'know, she's been trying to pick up whittling? She says it's to keep her busy, but I can tell she feels bad that we're always the ones giving her stuff, instead of the other way around. I think she wants to help you making weapon stocks and stuff, eventually."

  "Huh." Hurlish abruptly stopped petting Evie, hip-checking her out from under the shade of her breasts, and crossed her arms. "That's enough of that. Don't want you dragging us all into bed again. I got shit for you to do."

  Evie blinked several times, slowly piecing together her wits. When she did, she frowned.

  "For me? How so? Were you having difficulty with accessing the accounts while we were away? If any of the lenders are giving you trouble, I'll–"

  "No. I got all those dispy racks up in the house for the weapons, but my handwriting's shit, so I never put bels on most of 'em. The pques are under the weapons, up top. Sara and I are gonna work on some other shit, so go grab as many as you can."

  "Certainly, but–"

  "Now."

  Evie shivered, pupils diting, then turned on a heel and marched stalwartly back into the building.

  "Subtle," Sara drawled, when Evie was out of earshot. "You sounded like a parent getting their kid to do the dishes."

  "Which is fine. Not like she'd know what that's like, anyway,"

  "Guess not." Sara put her hands on her hips, looking around the spotless forge, which hadn't been prepped for a day's work in the slightest. "So. What are we going to work on?"

  Hurlish blew out a long breath and shuffled over to the bellows. "Hells if I know. I'll think of something."