“What in the hells is this damned thing anyway?” Darak gasped, setting down the large metal component, the dwarf pausing to wipe away the sweat from his forehead. Even with his earth spirit reinforcing his body, the dwarf had obviously had a hard time carrying the metal baseplate.

They were on top of a portion of the wall of Beacon facing east, well away from the city gates. That gave Albert plenty of space from anything that might be critical, even if it did mean that getting his device onto the wall was more difficult.

“Why do you ask, Darak? I’m paying you either way, aren’t I?” Albert asked, grinning as he set down a small crate of components for the device.

“I’m asking because I didn’t expect to be carrying something damned near five hundred pounds!” the dwarf retorted. “You aren’t going to ask me to carry the damned steam engine up here, are you?”

“Of course not! That’s far too big for the stairwell,” Albert quickly replied, shaking his head and looking at the equipment. “Just a few more pieces of it…”

“Guildmaster, seriously, what is this? You just asked for some help carrying things, and it’s one of our days off from the dungeon,” Darak asked, frowning at the handful of pieces in view.

“I suppose I can’t blame you for asking,” Albert admitted, looking over the items, then sighing. “If I’m being honest, this is something of an experiment, so I’ve been loath to talk about it.”

The base of the device was a four-foot across, flat-topped pyramid of steel. While the exterior looked plain, the interior was an entirely different story. Dozens of thin plates engraved with runes to channel magic had been welded into place inside, and connected to the central shaft as carefully as Albert had been able to manage. The only other visible pieces were a shaft like one that allowed a crane to turn, itself covered in intricate gold and silver runes, which was topped by a clamp designed to hold the shaft at a mostly horizontal angle. Another screw allowed the angle of the clamp to be changed, which had made the runes an absolute nightmare, but Albert was proud of the end result.

“Oh? Why so?” Darak asked, resting against the wall as he caught his breath.

“Mostly because the damned thing might not work. I caught wind of a magical weapon during a conversation with the Queen and Sistina, and I worked out a trade, the basic designs of aetheric condensers for the base enchantments of the weapon, something called a Siegebreaker Array,” Albert explained, and shook his head. “I always thought that while the ancients had some interesting enchantments, that when it came to sheer complexity of spells they weren’t anywhere near us artificers, and in some ways that’s true. In others, like in this, they went far beyond what I thought could be done with their form of enchanting. I don’t know if this’ll even work.”

“Huh. That sounds… odd. And the name of it is worrisome. Why are you suspicious it won’t work?” Darak murmured, straightening and looking at it with a frown.

“Because since it’s that complicated, it’s even more complex to create a device that can do the same thing. I give it about seventy percent odds that something in this explodes. Probably fifty percent that it doesn’t even manage to fire.” Albert sighed heavily. “If it doesn’t work, it’ll be depressing, considering that I’ve spent a couple of weeks on it so far.”

“Huh. Now I kind of want to see this experiment,” the dwarf replied, grinning. “And hey, if it doesn’t blow up in your face, at least it’ll be a good show.”

“First we have to get all the pieces up here. Don’t worry, we already got the worst of them,” Albert told Darak, grinning as the dwarf made a face.

“Fine, fine…” Darak muttered, heading back toward the stairwell.

* * *

As Albert and Darak were setting up Albert’s device, Sistina was putting the finishing touches on her own project, a conversion of the aetheric condensers that Albert had shown her.

While the devices were fascinating in their own right, Sistina couldn’t help but think that they were named badly. They didn’t condense the aether, instead simply absorbing mana that had been generated by elemental disturbances. The problem she saw was that the way the artificers had designed their spell-forms, it made the condensers highly vulnerable to overloading if the mana in a region was too potent. While it might not be apparent to others, it was readily apparent to her own senses as a dungeon.

That had necessitated adjusting the condensers, not the least because they would try to absorb her own mana if she set them up inside the dungeon’s confines. Sistina would have rather waited to set them up and tinkered a little more, trying to get more efficiency out of them, but Wenris’ information had confirmed that she no longer had time for that. She had to get more mana, and quickly. That meant taking risks.

Artificers favored steam reactions to generate mana because fire or heat was easy to conjure, and boiling water was easy to control. After a great deal of consideration, Sistina had been forced to admit they had a point, though she wasn’t going to give up on trying to find a better source of mana. As it was, she’d already set up a chamber where she heated water that was supplied to the palace baths and several bathhouses throughout the city, so she already had a ready-made area to use her condensers.

As they settled into place, Sistina held her non-existent breath and waited. As the first trickle of mana began to flow from the condensers, she relaxed. One by one, the devices began to send her that tiny, continuous flow of mana, and her sense of relief was palpable.

The alarm bells broke that sense of relief, and the dryad mentally cursed as she quickly moved to inhabit her body and figure out what had gone wrong this time! Hopefully it wasn’t something caused by the condensers.

* * *

Assembling his device was relatively straightforward. It should be, considering how many times Albert had checked his measurements and sanded the various parts down to ensure they would all fit perfectly. The base had been a pain to position, but at least it wouldn’t have to move until after he was done. Slotting in the aiming shaft had come next, at which point Albert had connected the long cable from the base down to the steam engine chuffing away below them. If the mana transference wires within the cables had broken, Albert would scream, since he’d tested the cables earlier that day.

Finally he’d installed the firing rod itself. The long rod had runes inset in gold along its fine steel length, until it ended in a carefully faceted quartz jewel, its surfaces etched with still more runes. Linda, Albert’s teacher, had always rolled her eyes at his tendency to make his devices in the shape of a staff or rod, muttering something about him wanting to compensate for something. He’d never understood her point, since when you were trying to focus power in a specific direction, a rod or stave was simply more efficient than any of the other devices he’d seen. Besides, he had it on good authority that he had nothing to compensate for.

With the staff atop the device, Albert thought it looked faintly sinister, almost like a scorpion about to strike. Even so, he wasn’t done, as he set up the iron tower shield he’d made just for experiments like this one. The shield was etched in runes to protect from impacts, extreme sounds, fire, acid, and every other consequence of an exploding artificing experiment that Albert had been able to come up with, and it was also designed to stand up on its own so he could hunker down behind it before activating any devices. As its scarred surface testified, the shield had likely saved him from a dozen near-fatal injuries since he’d built it.

“So, now what’re you going to do? I mean, it’s a ‘siegebreaker’ thing, right?” Darak asked, frowning. “Won’t it make a really big explosion or something?”

“Not exactly. I built this to focus the attack tightly… and it’s more meant to take out powerful individual targets to begin with. Shatter siege engines, kill giants, things like that. I was just planning to target a tree or something off in the fields, something that I could make sure wouldn’t have someone hiding behind it.” Albert replied, glancing over the wall nervously. “I don’t want to accidentally hit one of our own… oh, hells. I thought there weren’t going to be any army maneuvers today!”

In the distance Albert saw a loose formation of people on horseback and foot spilling from the tree-line a half-mile out, even as horns began to blow. He couldn’t make them out well from this distance, but it was going to play hell on his plans, especially since hauling his device up and assembling it had taken nearly half the day.

“Albert, I don’t think that’s the army on maneuvers. That looks an awful lot like a bunch of people running away from something,” Darak said grimly, shading his eyes as he squinted. “And… yep, that looks like a rear-guard.”

“What? But… oh, shit!” Albert gasped, flicking his monocle down and activating its vision-enhancement spells. The distance between him and the people near the trees suddenly seemed like it was only a hundred feet at most, and in an instant he saw the panic on the faces of the dusk elves fleeing the trees. Just behind them were armed and armored men and women, and it took the mage a moment to realize that both humans and elves were working together as a mass of orcs and humans surged after the retreating force. At that point the city’s bells began to sound the alarm, and he swallowed hard. “Oh, that looks bad.”

“Yep. I bet you that less than half of them are going to reach the gates, and there are a lot of people down there. That’s gonna be ugly, and I don’t think anyone inside is going to be able to get to them in time.” Darak’s voice was grim, and Albert saw the man’s hand tighten on the wall.

“You’re probably right. No, you would be right. But…” Albert’s thoughts raced, and his enhanced vision fell on a boulder that the fleeing men and women were streaming around, a boulder at least thirty feet across. Suddenly he asked, “Darak, what happens when you hit a rock really, really hard?”

“What? Well, it tends to shatter,” the dwarf answered, looking confused as he glanced at Albert. “Why?”

“It explodes, right?” Albert asked, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake.

“That really depends, but sometimes, yeah. What’re you thinking, Albert?” Darak asked.

“I’m hoping that I’m not about to do something really, really stupid,” the artificer replied, rushing behind his device and pulling out his astrolabe to do quick calculations, hoping he’d be quick enough. As he began to orient the staff toward the boulder, Albert made a mental note to add a hand-crank for the job, to make it more precise and so he wouldn’t risk overshooting. As it was, he at least had a bolt to secure it in place so it wouldn’t rotate anymore. Getting the right angle took a moment more, and he added absently, “I’m also hoping that the Godhammer actually works!”

“The Godhammer? You named that the Godhammer?” Darak asked, his eyebrows rising, and Albert flushed.

“I… had to call it something, and was trying not to say it aloud. It just slipped out,” the artificer admitted after a moment, shaking his head and continuing. “But that doesn’t matter. Now… now I just need to hope this actually works. I’d get well away from it, Darak. As I said, this could go horribly wrong.”

“Whatever you say, Al. And I suppose I should say… I hope you’re right, and that it works. I hate seeing people being run down like dogs like that,” the dwarf replied, clapping Albert on the shoulder and then slowly jogging down the wall, to what the artificer hoped was a safe distance. While the dwarf moved, the artificer settled his cap into place, as well as his reinforced goggles to add secondary protection for his eyes.

Positioning himself behind the shield, Albert brought along the cable connected to the Godhammer’s activation array. Now that he’d spoken the name aloud, he couldn’t help but use it even mentally, and he grimaced, trying to distract himself by watching the events down below. The grim sight was certainly enough to make him pale again.

Adventurers were no strangers to violence, but by and large they were fighting monsters and undead, not other people. As he watched, an orc crushed the leg of a soldier who was protecting a fleeing woman, and as the man fell the huge creature laughed and brought its mace down on his head, even as a nearby human fired a crossbow into the woman’s back. Not every battle was as one-sided as that, but the defenders were trying to flee, and they looked far wearier than the attackers did. Albert’s hand clenched and he ground his teeth, muttering under his breath. “Sorvos, you bastard… how dare you get the Guild embroiled in something as horrible as this?”

It was an agony, waiting long enough for the defenders to flee past the boulder, and for enough of their attackers to come up next to it. But finally they’d gotten far enough. Taking a breath, Albert muttered, “Well, this is a hell of a test. Shadan, by your perfect sigils I hope this works.”

Sending a thread of mana down the wire, Albert braced himself for whatever might come.

A soft whine surrounded the Godhammer, and for an instant Albert thought that he’d failed. Then the whine climbed to a higher and higher pitch, and with the whip-crack sound of shattering crystal it fired. A streamer of silver-white energy streaked across the valley faster than the eye could follow. It was quickly followed by a thunderous sound like lightning had crashed down inches from Albert, only dampened by the shield.

The blast of energy hit the rock, and Albert’s eyes went wide as it disintegrated in a blast of stone shrapnel that ripped into the enemy lines, shredding humans, orcs, and vegetation alike in a massive spray of death and destruction. As the explosion echoed back to him, Albert flinched as a secondary crack and sizzle came from the other side of his shield. Not daring to look just yet, he instead watched as the attackers came to a stop as those just behind their front lines disappeared in the spray of death. Seeing that he’d given the defenders a chance, Albert dared to look around his shield, and he cringed at the sight that awaited him.

The base was smoking, with several glowing holes in the steel, the shaft was sagging, and metal had turned molten along the rod’s length, turning it into an unstable mess while the crystal had exploded. He blinked at it, and cringed again as part of the rod bent under its own weight, snapping off and falling to the ground with a crash.

Darak came over more cautiously, looking at the wreckage of the Godhammer for a long moment. Finally he spoke. “Damned impressive, Al. At least it didn’t explode, right?”

“Yeah…” Albert murmured, then paused and looked out at the battlefield and sighed. “Problem is, based on what I just saw, the Guild won’t ever let me build a functional one. It’d utterly wreck warfare.”

The dwarf laughed and shook his head, grinning. “You’re probably right, Al. Hard to blame them, though.”

“Fair enough,” the artificer admitted, shaking his head and sighing. “A gold to help me clean all this up?”

“Sounds fair,” Darak agreed, but took a step back, adding, “Just as soon as the metal cools.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Albert agreed, then stepped toward the wall, nodding at the people who were rushing toward the gate, and the reinforcements going to their aid. “Wonder who they are, though?”