Kaia the Argent Wing

Organising a party to hit the library took longer than I thought, because on the second day, I made an incredible discovery while tinkering in the workshop. I was Kaia then, of course, and what began as an exercise in simple curiosity quickly morphed into something much bigger.

I decided to see what happened when you melted amber again. Turns out, you just got molten amber, which could then be infused into mundane materials. Needless to say, this caused quite the stir as everyone began to try it on different things. Wood and cloth took the amber especially well, because they could soak up liquids. Metal and plastic, however, because they were hard and incapable of absorbing anything, had to have the amber added during the smelting process. Then we realised that adding amber to already storm-attuned materials gave them a small bump in power.

So, to sum it up, amber as we currently understood it was essentially a way to make slightly worse versions of materials we didn't have access to. For example, the wooden handles of our axes could be strengthened, allowing us to put more force into our attacks without fear of breaking said handle. Of course, we had access to a bunch of storm-attuned wood from the alien woodland now, so that wasn't such a concern.

Anyway, the discovery caused a cascading series of delays as everyone infused their gear with a little extra storm power, or in my case, added it to my new plate-reinforced leather armour. April was not happy about having to start from scratch making the plates, since even though it was squiron, we could still add amber to give it a little extra toughness.

So yeah, that's why I was heading out of my safe house as Silver a full five days late. By now, a team had been put together. Mel—who I recognised from the Primary School dungeon—would be healing, Quinton and his ridiculous moustache would be leading, Scott, one of my— well, Kaia’s friends was coming as our rogue, Chloe was coming as support caster, and to my surprise, Ben, the kid from the first day of the apocalypse was here as our magical artillery.

“Mel,” I smiled as I met them outside the workshop. “How's your wound? Did it heal okay?”

Back during our terrifying escape from the dungeon, she’d been hit by one of the snow scorpions. The wound had gotten infected by some sort of frostbite-inducing poison. The scorpion that'd hit her had turned out to be a smaller, stealthier, and deadlier variant of the awful monsters.

“Yeah,” she said with a grateful smile. “The nurses wrapped it up in bandages, then set a hot water bottle on it until the poison broke down. Once it was out of my system, healing magic worked just fine.”

“Phew,” I said with a relieved smile. “That wound looked nasty.”

Then I nodded to Quinton, then Chloe—who was giving me a glare as frosty as Mel’s wound had been—before settling on Ben.

“Good to see you still alive,” I said.

He grinned and extended a scrawny arm for a fist bump. “Thanks to you!”

Reciprocating the bump, I asked, “So now that you’ve had time, how's that spellslinger class working for you?”

He shook the staff in his other hand. “Thanks to that cute tinkerer from the workshop, I have a cool staff as my casting focus.”

I, of course, recognised the staff because an order had come in for a couple of them. Charles had set me to making them. It was nice to see my work was appreciated. All the casters needed—

Slowly, I looked down at my own, empty hand. Well, that was interesting. It would seem I'd gone and forgotten to follow the rules! When had I stopped using a dagger as a focus? Shit, I didn't even have one right now.

“Kaia is very cute now,” Scott remarked with a grin. “She's had a bit of a personality change too, in a good way.”

Choking on nothing but air at the sudden declaration from my buddy, I raised an eyebrow at him in question. “Uh, sorry. Um, hey. You're Scott, right? We met… I can't remember.”

“The steam engine parts,” he said, with a knowing grin. “Don't worry, I know I'm a forgettable dude sometimes. Used to bother me, but now it just makes it easier to stab shit in combat.”

“There must be a weird magical aura thing going on,” I muttered, almost to myself.

“Nothing I'll admit to!” He winked slyly.

That really raised my eyebrows, but then I remembered that he'd just called me— Kaia cute. “Uh… how has Kaia's personality changed?”

“She's gotten more… bratty,” he said, after searching for the right word. “Mischievous, even. Oh, and a hell of a lot more confident. Doesn't take anyone's crap when she's talking shop. I saw her roast this one lady in the workshop who was getting all weird.”

I did my best not to get grumpy all over again, remembering that incident. Stupid woman had tried to use her admittedly superior knowledge of carpentry to demand I hand over the better spoon carving knife. I was already pissed off—trying to work storm-infused wood from the alien woodland with mundane tools would get anyone's temper burning—and so all that anger was turned on her.

“Well… glad for her,” I said awkwardly, trying not to blush. “Speaking of the workshop, should we head inside and see what they've got for us? I was told we'd be getting some fancy new equipment.”

“Oh, definitely,” Scott said. Then he pursed his lips and seemed to lose himself in thought as he stared at, or rather through, me.

Quinton either didn't notice him phase out of reality for a second, or didn’t care, because he nodded approval and gestured for everyone to head towards the workshop.

Chloe sidled up beside me and murmured, “The armour that April, Vincent, and Kaia made for you is pretty impressive.”

I glanced down at her and frowned. “Why did you emphasise Kaia’s name?”

“Oh, no reason,” she said breezily. “I think you’d like her, though.”

I had to dodge Scott as he bounded forward a few steps past me before I could reply, “I’m… sure I would?”

I was so confused. Like, if it weren’t for the odd vibes I was getting, I would think she’d figured out who I was. The way she was looking at me said something different, however, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what.

We stepped through the door to the workshop before she could reply, but I still got a knowing smirk. What did she know? Who knows… 

“Ay, Silver!” April called when she caught sight of me.

I waved and led our squad over to the table where all sorts of equipment was laid out.

“Welcome, brave librarians!” She said, laughing at her own joke. “We here in the workshop have been working hard to get some prototype gear ready for you all. We'd like your opinions when you get back, but let's not delay.”

She picked up one of the six axes on the table and held it out to Quinton. “So, this is the first version of the axe that I would actually call ‘feature complete’. It has a squiron head, and a handle made from aliak.”

It took all my willpower not to pinch the bridge of my nose and groan. Aliak was what we were calling a species of tree from the alien woodland. It was a mashup of the words alien and oak, and it was just as painful as ‘squiron’.

The axe was actually really cool though. We'd picked some deadwood from a fallen tree that hadn't started rotting yet, so it was nicely dry and aged already. It was waxed with a mix of melted candles and amber, and then wrapped in some of Vincent's roughly cured hide.

The axe head itself was squiron, but with a little extra amber thrown in, along with enough charcoal that our rudimentary tests had us pretty sure it was steel… or as April referred to it—squeel. April had gotten much better at folding the handle hole on the axe too, so it was a lot more aesthetically pleasing than previous versions. Then, as a last addition, there was a long, brutal spike that arched out from the rear of the head. It was very obviously a weapon, rather than a tool.

“Shit, this is incredible,” Quinton remarked as he turned the axe over in his hand. Careful not to hit anyone, he gave it a few test swings. “Phew, swings good, too.”

Unable to help myself, I reached out and plucked one from the table. The fit of the handle was great, and the heft felt nice and chunky. Of course, I'd helped make them, so I knew they were good… but it was nice to hold one regardless.

Soon, everyone was playing with their new axes. Even Ben, who really didn't have a use for one as a caster, was playing with one.

“Next, we have the daggers,” April grinned proudly. “They're made with the same materials as the axes, but they also come with a rough leather sheath. If you come back with a book on leatherworking and tanning, they'll be upgraded.”

The daggers were so good, and as a crafter, I was almost more excited for them as I was about the axes. With double edged, foot-long blades of squeel, they were extremely dangerous little things. I could easily see myself working some poor enemy with it. Just, stab, stab, stab!

Next, my smithing friend hefted a round wooden shield. There were six of these too, and again, our mage was getting one whether he liked it or not.

“These babies are going to save your lives,” April told us proudly. “The wood is rough-cut aliak wood, and the metal is old fashioned squiron. Note the metal spokes radiating out from the boss in the middle. They're reinforced, so they'll be a bit heavier than their counterparts from antiquity, but we don't have the luxury of semi-disposable shields right now.”

I'd been the one to point that little necessary design flaw out, actually. Back in the day, wooden viking shields like these, even the reinforced ones, would often break. Thankfully, the materials to make them weren't too hard to come by, so any shield that got hacked up in battle could be fixed or replaced with a spare. That kind of repair and replacement rate wasn't something we had the resources or manpower to handle, so chunkier, more robust shields were required.

“Now, we ran out of time to make them, so they aren't here, but we wanted to make some helmets at some point,” April continued. “Leather and chainmail is also a goal, but it's going to take a lot of learning, experimentation, and books to do that. With the very obvious exception of this.”

Finally, she put her hand down on my armour. The chest piece alone had taken us several hours of hammering. I remember being struck by the massive difference between my tiny torso as Kaia, and the huge plate of squeel we were working.

That plate was shaped to cover the entirety of the main ‘face’ of my boobs—sort of like those cut-off shirts that showed a bunch of underboob. At the top, it had a collar to deflect any incoming attacks away from my neck. The whole thing was reinforced with and attached to a rough leather shirt thing that cut off an inch past the underside of my boobs. Unfortunately, I had to be helped into it because it laced up at the back before another plate was strapped in place to cover my shoulder blades.

The leather corset thing was pretty much as it'd been described, except with rows of chunky metal studs. That one at least laced up on the sides. The most frustrating pieces to make by a significant margin, had been the forearm and thigh guards. They were huge and had taken way too long to hammer out, even if their shapes weren't as complex as the breast plate. Along with the pauldrons, I was going to be considerably well armoured compared to last time.

None of the gear, including my armour, was anything more than functional, with little in the way of decoration, but it was solid stuff nevertheless. I was almost hoping our assumption that the library would be a sort of dungeon was accurate. Almost.