“Because that’s wasteful foolishness. Then any common defensive charm would stop not just the projectile, but also your attached spell.”
“This was a rank ten, so his spells hit so powerful, it didn’t matter. He’d just blast through any protections anyway. I can’t do that yet. But it did give me an idea. What you say is true. Anybody with some money can go to the market and buy a charm that’ll stop a few bullets. I’ve got one myself.”
“I found that out when I shot you the first time last night.”
“I’m still sore from the impact. How’s the leg?”
She scowled but had no response to that.
I pulled back my sleeve and showed her the magic bracelet I’d taken off a Frunza Tarlev student who’d been dumb enough to try and fight me and Trax.
“I have one of those as well,”Trax sent, because if Squalos weren’t already terrifying enough, a Squalo who was temporarily bulletproof was even scarier.
“A protective spell activates automatically when something fast comes at it.” I took the bracelet off and went over to the big log I set in the corner and set the bracelet on top of it. “How long the shield lasts, how much it stops, and how fast it recharges will depend on the power of the enchanter and the amount and quality of the elements used. But these are so simple that a piece of wood can activate them.”
I went back to the workbench and picked up one of the experimental cartridges. I’d already infused these lead bulletswith Red dust, using a formula and focus that was somewhere between my warming bowl and a snail grenade. The soft grey metal emitted just a bit of red light, which was barely visible here. In comparison, Adderlane’s bullets had been infused with so much magic, they’d glowed like beacons, but I was nowhere near his level.
I kept a few cotton balls in my vest for just such an occasion and squished them into my ear holes. Drawing my gun, I broke it open, unloaded the normal wax paper cartridge, and inserted the magical one.
“It’s just going to flatten itself against the shield,” Dathka said. “This is why I carry a matched pair of pistols. The first shot sets off the enchantment, then I shoot them with the second while it recharges. Simple.”
I suppose that was simpler, but I couldn’t afford to buy another pistol yet. Gnomish craftmanship was expensive. “Unless they’ve got more than one protection on them, or I’d rather not waste an extra bullet. Plug your ears.”
I concentrated until I could clearly sense the Red coating the bullet, and once I was sure I’d willed it to life, I hurried and fired it at the target. The last thing I wanted was for that spell to cook off inside my gun.
The sharp crack of the bargemaster’s handgun reverberated against the bricks. Through the spreading cloud of smoke could be seen a lingering shimmer from where the shield had activated to stop the bullet. Not so much as a bit of bark had flown off it.
Dathka took her fingers out of her ears and snorted at my obvious and amusing failure.
Except the bullet that had smashed itself flat against the shield and remained there, glowing orange, and that grew brighter and brighter, until it was a molten bit of slag. The protective shield went down, as all magical shields must do, and that bit of slag promptly fused itself to the log. The wood beganto char and blacken. Smoke hissed out. Then it burst into a small circle of flames.
“Wood is dense. It should be a lot more impressive on skin and flammable clothing. As a man who’s been hit by droplets of lava, believe me, that’s going to hurt more than you can imagine.” As much as I wanted to brag about my latest creation to this snobbish Latro, I stopped myself from elaborating further. This spell had several useful applications. It wasn’t as mean as theScrews of Chaos, and nowhere near as destructive as a snail grenade, but I could shoot a bullet a lot farther than I could throw something.
“What happens if your victim’s not wearing a shield?”
“I’ve not tested that yet, but I suspect the bullet would punch a hole like usual and then turn molten while lodged inside their body.” The bullet’s glow was slowly fading as it began to cool, but it had burned a divot into the log. “Which… yeah… Ouch.”
“Something that hot lodged within them, their insides would cook. Their blood would boil around it. The pain would be incomprehensible. How much?”
“How much what?” I asked as I picked up a staged bucket of water to douse the log.
“How much to enchant these molten bullets for me? Would you give me a discount if I purchased a hundred?”
“Saints, woman, how many people do you plan to shoot?”
“The list is long.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m still experimenting on this batch. I’m not ready to try them out in real life yet. But in the future, I’ll happily take a Latro’s money to pay the Latro’s rent.”
Dathka let out a long sigh. “Alas, I’m low on funds for now. We’ll revisit this discussion in the future. A deal’s a deal. Let me show you how to purge an Elemental spirit, which I’m amazed none of you know, as it is a spell so simple, even an idiot child should know it.”
She ducked out the door and left me there to put out the fire.
“That female seems pleasant.”
“She’s kind of the opposite of that, Trax.”
“I was guessing. It is hard to tell with you humans sometimes.”
