Kaia the Argent Wing

Halfway through making the focus for Brielle, the three of us realised something. If we changed where the inside loop of the handle-shaped focus was, we could let her cast with pretty exceptional accuracy from the palm of her hands. It took only one test with a jury rigged prototype for us to realise she looked like she was blasting things Iron Man style. So yeah, the blaster focus was born right there. It also turned out that what she’d said earlier about the ‘smooth’ way that the mountain lion copper handled magic wasn’t a one-off thing. It was extremely good as a material for foci.

So we made a couple more coppion foci in various styles and set them aside for our casters. Except in Chloe’s case, she got to design one, but it was given to the Captain until he decided she wasn't in time out anymore.

Negotiations took another two hours, during which time the roof of the sawmill got fixed and a target had been thoroughly blasted by Brielle. Her magic was interesting. It appeared generic, but that was only because she'd used the very modular nature of her class’ spells to emulate her favourite spells from D&D. Naturally, her ultimate weapon was a fireball that caused a large explosion on impact. It was actually what we'd heard when we first met her as she tried to break the wards on the tower.

Eventually the Bandoners headed back, but not before delivering a surprise batch of veggies. I've never been more excited to see a carrot and some beans in my soup than I was that night.

The next day, Charles and April approached me as I entered the workshop.

“Hey, cutie,” April said, ruffling my hair affectionately, much to Charles’ discomfort.

“Kaia,” the old man said gruffly. “I got a new large scope task for you. Since you gone and figured yourself as an architect, I'm tapping you in again. We need a real smithy. Not that tent outside. I'm talkin’ big brick forge, stone walls, spark-proof roof, the works. Think you can handle it?”

I stared at them both for like, ten whole damned seconds, then I took a deep, steadying breath. “It is like, eight in the fucking morning.”

“Which means you have so much of the day to use!” April said, squeezing my shoulder affectionately.

“I miss coffee,” I grumbled, scowling up at her.

Charles, who was smirking now, said, “Excellent. I look forward to seeing what crazy outcome you give us.”

He left, leaving just April and I together, and I glared daggers up at her. “Where the hell am I going to get stone, let alone Storm infused stone? Oh, and you know that your dinky little pre-apocalypse refractory bricks won't cut it, which means we need to figure out how to make them. I don't know how, anyway, do you?”

Then, before she could reply, I realised something else and groaned. "Fuck! He wanted spark-proof roofing because thatch won't work for the smithy, it'll burn down in the first week. Which means we need storm infused clay for shingles! Agh! Come on, let’s at least go outside and see if there’s somewhere to build it."

We moved out through the makeshift forge and stared out at the mostly empty field beyond the door to the workshop. So far, the football field itself had been smashed a little by practising mages, and we’d built the sawmill on a nearby section of track that surrounded it. There were a dozen different places we could put a potential forge.

April hummed thoughtfully, then gave me a look, “How do you know so much about so many crafting disciplines?”

“Youtube, tiktok, and way too many crafting games,” I said with a tired shrug. “Oh, and actually trying some of it out IRL. So many little issues get missed in videos and books.”

“Fair,” she said, then grinned. “I guess we’ll just have to find all the materials ourselves.”

I practically growled at her, but then my brain suddenly worked its way through the morning fog and I clicked my fingers, “Ah! I remember seeing clay deposits in the central avenue river. We can get shingles from there. I guess we should ask Cap to have a team investigate the library for books about… related subjects—maybe one will have something about refractory bricks. Stone… that’s a tough one.”

“Are we talking infused stone or…” April asked, slipping into business mode.

“Definitely,” I nodded. “No point in half-assing this.”

“Are you sure it's worth going out of our way to find infused stone?” She asked dubiously. “We don't even know if we'll find some for ages.”

“I have faith,” I said simply. April groaned.

“There’s an open pit stone and gravel mine.”

At the interruption, April and I turned to find Chloe standing in the doorway. She waved awkwardly, and her gaze flickered up to meet mine before it drifted off over my shoulder.

April, who was tapping a finger on her lip in thought, pointed at Chloe. “You’re right! They closed it down when they went out of business. It’ll still be there, though.”

“I bet you it has all sorts of stone-based monsters,” I said suddenly. “Which would be good, because stone cutting is a pretty involved, time-intensive business.”

“I hate to be the one that kills the vibes…” April said hesitantly. “But the quarry is like fifty miles east down the highway. Way further into the mountains, too. It'll be very dangerous.”

Frowning, I had to concede the point. Travel was reportedly very dangerous right now, with large groups of people being magnets for hungry horrors.

“We take a competent team, maybe go through side roads, then I think it'll be fine,” Chloe disagreed. “The freeway is a no-go, apparently. It's too easy for flying creatures to see you on a wide road like that.”

“Who would you take, though?” I asked, knowing exactly who the first name out of her mouth would be.

“Silver,” she said instantly, confirming my hunch. “Then, maybe Quinton and Mel…” she paused and stared at me. “Although, if you're coming along, then maybe your friends would be better. I haven't gone out with them much… but they seem skilled enough.”

Sighing, I resigned myself to entertaining the idea. “We would need to bring hand carts, but… what if we just made bricks out of the clay from the river? Maybe we don't need stone…”

Chloe gave me a look. “I'm sure we could think up a lot of reasons, but the truth is probably that it looks cooler. The quarry has… shit, I don't know what type of stone it was. Does the type matter?”

“I don't know, what did it look like?” I asked. I didn't know the first damned thing about stone.

“Uh…” Chloe said, turning red. “I… can't remember?”

Both April and I gave her suspicious looks.

“It was dark!” Chloe said defensively.

“Why were you alone at a decommissioned quarry at night?” I asked, more curiously than accusatory.

“I wasn't alone,” she said, folding her arms.

“Let's… table the inquisition for now, Kaia,” April said diplomatically. “Kaia, I think it might be worth checking this quarry out. I vaguely remember hearing that the type of stone there was important for metalworking, but don't quote me on that.”

“We can find out pretty easily,” Chloe said, shrugging. “There's old phone books in the school library and they actually have geology textbooks in there. No need for a trip to the cursed liminal space library.”

I stared at her quizzically. The number of times in my life that a phone book had even been mentioned in my presence could probably be counted on one hand. “How does an old phone book help?”

“Because they used to do double duty for businesses as an advertisement space. For example, you need a stone countertop or whatever, you go to the phonebook and look up ‘stone’ then there's a bunch of stone related businesses.” Unspoke in her tone was the duh. “And before you ask why I know that it's because I was getting big into early aughts aesthetics before all this went down.”

“The… 1900’s?” April asked, confused.

Now it was time for Chloe and I to share a look. She answered for both of us. “No, like… the y2k era?”

“Oh god,” April murmured, staring at us both. “Neither of you were even alive then.”

“We're 2005 babies, of course not,” I said, crossing my arms.

“Oh no, I kissed you,” April murmured, horrified. Chloe's eyebrows shot up.

“Oh shush, it was consensual and I'm eighteen, almost nineteen,” I grumbled. “Plus! You're like barely five years older than me! You weren't born then either!”

“I'm early 2000, pretty much on the dot…” April sighed, then shook her head decisively. “Nope, no more flirting with the barely legal. It's gross and I'm going to hate myself forever as it is now.”

Chloe, who'd been glancing wide-eyed between us like she was watching a tennis match, raised her hand, “April, you are not old. Our ages would mix regularly in college and uni anyway. But regardless, I don't think getting bogged down in age gap discourse is going to get us anywhere. None of us can afford to be a chronically online tiktok comments section anymore. I think you would make a cute—”

My hand flew up to cover her mouth before I had even realised I'd moved. “We're besties, and it was a heat of the moment thing. Shush.”

Chloe's perfectly arched eyebrow rose a fraction, and she glanced down at my hand. I jerked it away, stung.

April coughed awkwardly. “So uh… phone books and geology? How about we do that? Also, I think I'll sit out this trip, if you don't mind. You know… because… I still need to work the current forge…”

She hurried back into the forge tent and disappeared from view, although probably not earshot.

“That was awkward,” Chloe commented solemnly. “If it makes you feel any better, that was probably less about the age gap and more about the fact she just got reminded that she’s growing older.”

“Let’s go to the damned library,” I grumbled, turning to head in that direction whether she was following me or not. Plus, it was fucking cold and I wanted to at least be inside and out of the perpetual freezing breeze that slowly but inexorably sapped all warmth from your bones.

 

It took us ten minutes to find the relevant books we needed, and from there we sat down to look through them. Chloe found what we were looking for in the phone book very quickly.

Stabbing the page decisively with a finger, she said, “Ah, here we go. Verkerson Stonework. They sold… uh… limestone and dolostone? I've heard of that first one, but dolostone sounds like… well, I don't know what it sounds like, but it's weird.”

“Okay, let me see,” I said, flipping the geology textbook open to the contents.

“Try the index at the back,” Chloe offered.

An… index? I flipped to the back of the book and sure enough, there were heaps of words in a small font, all arranged in alphabetical order. Dolostone wasn't difficult to find, and several page numbers were listed. That was actually pretty smart. I decided I liked indexes.

“Okay, what is dolostone…” I murmured to myself. “Aha! Dolostone is the name given to the type of rock, which is usually composed of dolomite. It's very similar to limestone, except that it contains magnesium. It is slightly stronger than limestone and is marginally more resistant to acid. Oh! It's mainly used in construction as a construction aggregate, whatever that is, and a bunch of other stuff… plus, it is used in the creation of refractory bricks! This solves two birds with one stone! Literally!”

“Do we know anything else about how to make those bricks?” Chloe asked.

Wilting, I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Give me a second, then,” she said, patting my hand gently.

She stood up and wandered off in the direction of the librarian’s desk. I watched her pull out a drawer and begin rifling through it, until after a minute or two, she pulled a card out and read it for a moment. When she was done, she popped it back in the drawer and headed for a shelf near the back of the small library.

I was very quickly mesmerised by the way her fingers trailed over the spines of the books as she looked for the one she wanted. Her fingers were actually kind of short as far as fingers go, but they were soft and delicate in a way that made me want to hold them, play with them.

She stopped on one particular book, then after checking the cover, brought it back to the table. “I knew they had this book. Engineering and construction. I know it's not exactly what you want…”

She trailed off as she flipped the book open, again going straight for the index. “Aha, page 64. Let's see… oh. It's kinda vague and doesn't mention dolomite or dolostone. That's… confusing. Apparently refractory bricks are made out of a bunch of different things all mixed together, but the main one is aluminium.”

“Huh,” I frowned, then shrugged and asked, “Maybe we can just figure it out. Does it say how they're made?”

“Uh… there's a bunch of technical jargon, but… there, it says it gets fired at a very high temperature, which depends on the mix of fire clay used,” she told me.

Rubbing my temples, I began to think. The bricks we were making—refractory bricks—were there to help insulate the heat of the furnace, along with not cracking or breaking under the extreme heat. Maybe we could just mix clay together into test bricks until we found one that worked? That was probably the play.

“Okay, I think I have enough to start experimenting. The trial and error phase will be much faster now. I guess it's time we go get permission for the trip from the Cap?"

Unspoken was the fact that I had to find a way to either excuse myself from going, in either of my forms… no, wait, I'd need to go as Kaia, or people would wonder where I was. Nobody would bat an eye if Silver went MIA. Crap. What was I going to do now?