Kaia the Argent Wing

Ollie and I trudged through the snow towards the workshop and found the forge area outside had changed somewhat. Several well-built wooden windbreaks had been erected around the area, turning the entrance to the workshop into a semi-enclosed space.

April had the forge running and was busy pounding at something on the anvil. When we ducked past the windbreaks and underneath the cover of the awning, I saw it was another dagger. Except… huh, I think this one was from an ingot, and she was trying to lengthen it into some sort of shortsword.

Ollie immediately tried to move in close to see the forging in action, but I held her back with a hand. We didn’t want to get in the way of someone wielding a large hammer and a chunk of red-hot iron.

My blacksmith friend turned the flattened stake iron with her tongs so it was standing on its edge and began to hammer it flat in that direction. Every swing of the hammer caused her lithe arms to bulge with effort, and in approximately zero seconds flat I was no longer looking at her work. Christ, she was toned.

Every now and then, her veins would pulse with magic, and heat would bloom once more in the iron. Eventually she ran out of heat though, and then it went back into the gently smouldering forge.

Wiping sweat off her brow, she grinned at us, "Wassup. This your girlfriend, Kai?"

Ollie and I glanced at one another and laughed. That was… not something I'd ever consider. Our relationship was solidly platonic.

"Nah," I said. "She's a friend. Her name is Ollie. Ollie, this is April. What are you working on?"

"Uh… a sword,” April said a little sheepishly. “I know we’re all using axes and shit, but swords are cool and I wanted to practise my blacksmithing since I’m actually a bit of a newbie. Welding and panel beating are where my skills lie.”

“Might be able to make some pretty sick plate armour then,” Ollie mused. “As far as I could tell from youtube, making plate armour is just making panels and stuff, but… well, you know.”

“Eventually,” April chuckled softly. “Right now I gotta get used to working iron the old fashioned way.”

Ollie tapped her leg. “Damn. I need armour asap. All I have right now are these jeans and this leather jacket.”

She was indeed wearing a pair of jeans and a leather jacket. They looked sorta… big for her though.

“I don’t recognise them. Where did they come from?” I asked.

She pinched the leather and pulled it away from her. “Stole them from the thrift store yesterday. I figured some baggy jeans and a jacket are better than nothin’ right?”

“If I had some more leather I could probably put some iron plates on it for some protection,” I said, thinking aloud. “Might be something else though. Can’t use wire… string or rope would be too jank…”

“Oh, I actually had an idea,” April said, snapping her fingers. “You do a little metal and plastic sandwich. It goes armour plate, then a layer of plastic, then the jacket, then some roughed up plastic for extra sticking power, then a thin sheet of metal for stability, then some sort of foam padding. Rivet it all together, and you have some pretty good armour.”

Thinking about it, I could see how it worked. My biggest concern was a blow hitting the plate and it’s fine but the leather jacket would tear. Maybe if you made the outer plastic an inch or so bigger than the plate and sewed it into the leather so there was less stress on any singular point…

I grabbed Ollie’s arm. “Come on. I was agonising over the armour thing all night last night and April just found a nice apocalyptic chic style solution.”

“Oh,” Ollie said, blurting out a guffaw. “Alright. Catch you later, April.”

"See ya, Stacks," April waved while we disappeared inside.

"Stacks?" Ollie asked me.

I shrugged. "April gives people nicknames, I dunno why. Let's work on your armour."

I had her remove the jacket and place it on a table. Together we worked to figure out where the plates should be placed. We settled on putting two longer plates on each arm, and a V shape of six smaller plates on the front and back. The back would additionally have two long ones covering the shoulder blades. We checked that the placements wouldn't restrict her movement by taping the plates onto the jacket for a little test drive.

With her helping, we found and cut some sheets of polypropylene and began to saw them to shape. The most difficult part was making sure all the holes lined up. Once we had everything correct, the tedium began.

See, if there's any one craft I despise, it's hand sewing. It's just so painfully fiddly, but if you try to go faster you just end up with wonky stitching. I do not have the patience for it. On the other hand, Ollie was fine with it. She just sewed and babbled about everything that'd happened while I listened and made mhm noises every so often.

The others were out with scavenger teams, but because Ollie got wounded and because the medics still didn't entirely trust their new magic, she had to stay in for a day. At one point, we ran into a conversational landmine when she mentioned George.

It was starting to really sink in that our friends were dead. Gone. Beautiful people snuffed out by the bullshit luck of the apocalypse. They didn't get clean deaths either. There was no consolation, no silver lining, and it left this aching hole in my chest every time I thought about them.

More bodies were turning up in general apparently, as the scav teams went into houses. The scene was the same everywhere—normal people ripped apart by crazed, mutated, and frightened animals.

The local pastor was talking about doing proper burials, but we really didn't have the time or the manpower for that. I just hoped the animals ate the bodies before the rot really began to take hold. The only thing worse than a dead body is one that's puffed up like a horrific gore balloon.

To top off the shitty apocalypse butcher's bill was the realisation that we were lucky they were dead. Modern society's population was reliant on a complex weave of logistics that had ceased to function the moment our electronics fritzed out. Without the global chain of goods and services, important products couldn't get to their intended destination.

The most important of those products? Food. Most people don't realise how far some of their food has come before it ends up on their plate. It was scary to think that the biggest killer in the next few months might be starvation rather than monsters.

For now though, my main problem was the fact that I'd stuck myself with a needle twice while sewing the plastic into place. Leather was tough as shit to push a needle through.

When the sewing was finished it was just a matter of grabbing a handheld rivet gun and chonk, chonk, chonk, the plates were fixed in place.

Ollie tried on her new reinforced jacket with a big grin, and to our delight, her movement was just fine. The armour was ready to go! Obviously it wasn't the most glamorous or protective thing in the world, what with the big holes between the plates, but it was better than anything else we could make. All in all, I was satisfied.

So naturally, we spend the rest of the afternoon doing the same to her jeans. It took us until dinner to finish both, and by that time I was more than ready to fall back into bed. I was really paying the price for my night of shield-making.

At dinner I got updates from everyone about the day's activities. Edgewood now had enough mattresses and such for each person to lay on when it came time to sleep. Some people even managed to get their own bed stuff from their houses, along with prized possessions that were left behind. Oh, and on the topic of scavenged houses… there was talk from one of the teams about a nearby house that couldn't be entered. The family who owned it were apparently out of town when the apocalypse hit, but some friends of theirs wanted to check it.

I was glad my wards worked. Now that I knew it was safe, I might upgrade the house a bit and experiment with the ‘changing rules’ as Cynath called them. When I understood it better, it’d be interesting to attempt to put one around the school.

Further out than my safehouse, one of the teams found a group of people holed up inside a church. Unfortunately, they weren't able to convince the folks there to make the journey to the school. At least it was good to know other survivor enclaves were out there.

When dinner was over and I was handing in my tray before I went to help April with the daggers, I felt a presence next to me.

Turning, I found Chloe of all people, but she wasn't wearing her signature scowl.

"What?" I asked, feeling my hackles rise.

She cleared her throat nervously and glanced away. "Uh. I um… Estelle isn't here?"

"No, Chloe," I said, almost hissing. Taking a deep breath to calm myself and to push away the grief, I shook my head and clarified in a much more chill fashion, "Monsters got her and her family. I didn't see the aftermath, but my friends did… and they're having nightmares about it."

Chloe's face drained of all colour, and I noted that her breathing stuttered when she replied, "Oh. Okay. Thanks for telling me."

Then she turned and walked away. No 'I'm sorry for your loss' or anything. Typical. Although, her reaction was damned strange. Why was she of all people upset that Estelle was dead? They used to chat every so often, until one day they suddenly decided to hate one another. Odd. Very odd. If I weren't so exhausted and busy, I might've even asked her… but no, I had shit to do.