By morning both Moonwalker cells were humming again, though Ray’s ribs complained about every step of the trail.
They followed the drag marks north along the channel, past snapped reeds and bait hooks rusting in the mud.
Yuzu watched him take a fallen log one stiff step at a time, "Your ribs got worse after the lizard, so stop pretending otherwise."
"My ribs are fine, Doc, they’re only expressing some strong opinions about last night’s swim."
"That is the same thing said in a stupider way," she said, offering him her good arm for the next log.
The trail ended on a hummock above the northern mire, where silk tents sat on the mud like frosted cakes.
[ SITE SCAN ]
[Site: Bait Camp]
[Banners: House Amamiya]
[Armed Guards: 22]
[Livestock: Caged]
Guards in grey livery walked the perimeter, each one wearing a willow beneath a rain cloud on his chest. Beyond them stood a striped pavilion, a dozen cages of bleating goats and three drake carcasses on a gantry.
’Twenty-two guards plus a meat crane means this is either a hunt or the worst picnic I’ve ever seen.’
A hard-faced man with a scar through both lips stepped into the path, one hand resting on his sword hilt.
"This camp belongs to Lord Julian of House Amamiya, so state your business or walk back the way you came."
Ray spread his empty hands, smiling like a salesman at a locked door, "We’re hunters, friend, here for whatever—"
The swordsman thumbed his blade an inch out of its sheath, "Real hunters carry spears, while you two carry nothing I can see."
The smile went out of Ray’s face at once, though his empty hands stayed exactly where they were.
"Put that inch of steel back where it lives, sir, while we’re both still being polite."
The swordsman held his eyes for a long breath, then slid the blade home with his jaw set hard.
"Oh, do let them in, Cleat," a bright voice whined from the pavilion, "this dreary, wretched bog hasn’t given me a single interesting visitor in weeks!"
Lord Julian lounged under the awning in sea-green silk, a goblet in one hand and a lapdog asleep beside him. He looked about twenty-five, soft around the jaw, wearing the easy smile of a man who never paid for anything.
The swordsman stepped aside with the face of a man swallowing a lemon, "Tch, his lordship collects strays the way other men collect debts."
"You trudged all the way here through the mire on foot, which is either gloriously brave or gloriously lost, two qualities I adore equally!"
Ray bowed with his salesman’s smile back in place, his ribs stopping him halfway down, "Mostly I’m following a dead drake with your crest stuck through its face, my lord."
"Another of my lines, then, since that greedy old Tyrant keeps stealing my bait in the night," Julian sighed, delighted rather than worried.
"What exactly is a Tyrant, when everybody south of here tells it like a ghost story?"
"It is a bog drake older than my grandfather’s grandfather, thirty paces long, with a hide no blade has ever pierced," the lord said, stroking the dog’s ears, "though Father insists it cannot be done, so naturally I intend to own it."
"You want to keep a thirty-pace drake... as a pet?"
"A great house needs a symbol, peasant, for nothing says House Amamiya like a chained Tyrant howling at the gates!" he declared, raising his goblet toward the mire.
’This spoiled bastard wants to put a leash on a walking earthquake, which tells me nobody ever told him no.’
Yuzu leaned in at his shoulder, her voice low, "Check the goats’ ears, those are Cypress Bluff brands."
He glanced over at the cages to find she was right, every goat carrying the same farmstead notch.
’He’s baiting his trophy hunt with stolen livestock, so now I know exactly what kind of employer he is.’
"I could use another hunter for the netting," Julian offered, waving his goblet, "plus your little friend can patch up my men if things turn ghastly."
"What does the job pay, my lord, seeing as that’s always my first question?"
"Twenty silver a day each, provided nobody so much as scratches my Tyrant," he said, swirling his wine.
"Deal, though I’m not dying for your lawn ornament, my lord, so the minute it eats somebody the rules change."
"Hahaha, how delightfully grim you hunters are!" Julian crowed, already turning back to his wine without an answer.
"You just took a job from the man who stole those goats," she muttered as they followed Cleat across the mud.
"I took a job that parks us beside the thing I came to see, while the receipt for those goats comes later."
The scarred swordsman held a tent flap open with two fingers, nodding at the cots inside, "Sleep in your clothes, given that the drake comes for the bait whenever it pleases."
A shed skin hung crusted along the tent’s far wall, stiff as bark and long as a hay wagon. Each scale was the size of a dinner plate, with grey mud still packed into the seams between them.
Ray knocked a knuckle against one scale, listening to it ring back at him like a pot lid.
[ TARGET PROFILE ]
[Target: Bog Tyrant]
[Threat Grade: C]
[Hide: Mud Plate]
[Mana Barrier: Active]
[ ASSESSMENT ]
[Plain Rounds: Ineffective]
[Infused Rounds: Surface Damage Only]
"Holy hell, a mana barrier on top of plate hide turns both my pistols into expensive whistles," he murmured.
He stood staring at the skin for a long while afterward, thumb tapping the strap of his holster.
Yuzu sat on the edge of a cot, unbuckling her rapier, "You went quiet the way you do right before spending money."
"Quiet means I’m doing math, a totally different hobby with way fewer receipts."
"Your math always ends at a shop counter."
He opened the Forge catalogue anyway, scrolling past nets, spears and pots of glue until one blueprint stopped him.
[ FORGE BLUEPRINT ]
[Name: Enma]
[Type: Siege Launcher]
[Use: Breaches Fortress Gates]
[Blueprint: 10 BP]
[Fabrication: 400 HC]
"How much is it?" she asked, reading his face like a tavern menu.
"It leaves me eighty in the account, making it... four hundred for one shot."
"That’s the price of a farmhouse, Ray, spent on one shot at a lizard."
He rubbed his ribs, eyes still on the glowing catalogue, "I’m considering it the way a drowning man considers a rope, Doc, with a lot of love and zero shopping around."
He unlocked the blueprint, feeding the coin into the Forge before he could talk himself out of it.
[ FORGE BUILD COMPLETE ]
[Build: Enma]
[Type: Shoulder Launcher]
[Load: Single Charge]
[Warhead: Not Installed]
[Blueprint Points: 7]
[Balance: 80 HC]
’Eighty left in the account, which means my next hot meal depends entirely on this tube working.’
The launcher settled across his shoulder, a fat barrel with a stock grip, a trigger guard and a sighting glass. Runes ran along its whole length in a red spiral, warm under his palm like a stove left burning overnight.
"You beautiful monster," he whispered, sighting down the glass at the gantry, "you’ve got a recoil damper, a breech so clean I could eat soup off it, plus a sighting glass with—"
"Do not eat soup off your weapon while we’re guests in a lord’s camp."
"A man is allowed one quiet moment with a brand-new launcher before somebody mentions the price or the soup."
The launcher was still empty though, sending him outside to look for something worth putting in it.
By the gantry the cook was hacking drake carcasses apart for fresh bait, tossing each core into a slop bucket. The fist-sized cores glowed orange through the muck, each one warm enough to make the slop around it steam faintly.
Ray crouched by the bucket, careful of his ribs, "Why are you throwing those away like apple seeds when they glow like that?"
"They burn the bait if you leave them in, mister, plus his lordship calls them rubbish anyhow," the cook grunted, never looking up from his cleaver.
"I’ll give you two silver for the whole bucket, plus a third for a pouch of quartz dust if you’ve got one."
The cook bit each coin in turn, staring at him like the stupidest man in the whole swamp.
"You’re paying two silver for... rubbish, mister?"
"I’m paying two silver for a warhead your lord threw in the trash, which makes it the best deal in this bog."
Ray hooked the handle with one finger, lifting the full bucket as easily as a cup of tea.
’Since the rank-up a full bucket of cores weighs nothing at all, a perk nobody bothered to warn me about.’
Yuzu met him at the tent flap, pinching her nose shut, "Ugh, that bucket smells like a tannery somebody set on fire."
"It smells like ammunition, which is the finest perfume a working man can buy."
Back in the tent, he fed the biggest core into the Forge for a warhead, pressing the rest into rounds.
[ FORGE BUILD COMPLETE ]
[Build: Launcher Warhead]
[Charge: Drake Core]
[Payload: Incendiary Breach]
[Blueprint: Included With Enma]
[Fabrication: 0 HC]
[ RECIPE UNLOCKED ]
[Recipe: Hot Take]
[Type: Incendiary Round]
[Blueprint: 2 BP]
[Fabrication: 0 HC]
[Crafting Cost: 10 Mana per Round]
[Yield: 8 Rounds]
[MANA: 70 / 150]
[Blueprint Points: 5]
He held one new round up to the lantern, its tip glowing like a coal pulled fresh from a hearth.
Yuzu leaned away on her cot, eyeing the glowing tip, "Tell me that bullet isn’t about to explode in your hand."
"It glows when it’s about to set something on fire, a completely different thing and way more fun."
"You named a bullet Hot Take, though, so I already know how this ends."
"It ends with the first custom ammo I ever built going straight into the face of a very rude drake."
He bought twenty plain rounds from the Shop as well, then rubbed quartz dust into the gauntlet’s empty cells.
[ LOADOUT ]
[Hard Sell Cells: 2/2]
[Rounds: 52]
[Incendiary: 8]
[Balance: 60 HC]
He slid the warhead into Enma’s breech, listening for the soft click of the lock catching home.
Outside, the guards were hauling nets toward the bank while Julian called for more wine and better torches. Cleat walked the line behind them with his sword drawn, watching the black water instead of his men.
Then the bait lines began to twitch as the light failed, the goats in their cages falling silent at once.
Yuzu rose from the cot with her rapier already drawn, "It’s coming, the goats heard it before we did."
"Good, I just spent a damn fortune on a very specific welcome present," he said, settling Enma on his shoulder.