79: The Most Versatile Gun in the West

“How are you able to summon the Red Nightmare?” Claih demanded as soon as we were back with the wagons. The fear in her eyes was potent, an almost physical force emanating from within her. Or maybe it was the way she clutched at her still holstered magitech sidearm.

“It’s not just the Red Nightmare,” I said, moving to stand between the obrec magitecht and my girlfriend.

“Not just the Red Nightmare?” the woman asked in a choked voice, staring at me with confused awe. “What else can she summon?”

“All of them,” Grace said quietly as she stepped up beside me, a hand coming to rest on my shoulder. To me she said, “They may as well know the truth.”

Around us were arrayed all the persons of note within the caravan. Mer and Kit stood next to each other, Otho leaning on his rifle nearby. Jerril and a few other obrec in leadership positions stood to the side while Adam and Troy stood with Grace and I.

“I agree, after that… I think it’s time to talk about what happened,” Troy said gently, stepping up onto Grace’s other side. “Who knows, maybe they will have some insight.”

“Okay…” she breathed, biting her lip for a moment before looking sideways at me.

“I’ll tell the story,” I smiled, bumping her with my shoulder affectionately.

I took a moment to order my thoughts, dredging up the memories so that I might tell them properly. “Alright… so about two months ago, we found a ruin,” I began, looking up at the small crowd. “It was a ring builder ruin, specifically a research center. They appeared to have been studying magic, trying to understand it or something. At the lowest level we found a strange mass of energy contained within a large glass tank. It appeared to be a combination of every type of magic there is.”

As I spoke, Claih’s expression quickly went from fearful and hostile to curious, her grip on her holstered sidearm lessening as she listened.

“There was an… accident…” I said slowly, wincing as I remembered my fuck up. “My fault… I unwittingly blocked a containment pylon and allowed the magic to break free. It bounced off my shield and right into Grace… she just absorbed the whole lot, like water down a drain.”

“This power is finite then?” Claih asked, eyes finding Grace as her mind whirred.

“No… she began to generate it on her own, we don’t know why…” I shook my head, again pausing to figure out what to say next. “She was volatile afterwards, anyone trying to touch her would be violently thrown away by the energy discharge. Except me, I was able to absorb her power through skin contact and turn it into growth energy. I could drain her so she didn’t uh… fill up and explode.”

“By the gods…” Otho whispered, eyes wide as he stepped forward. “Can you imagine what would have happened if that stuff got out of her? If she had detonated?”

“Nothing good, and certainly on a larger scale than what we just witnessed,” Claih agreed, her expression having changed again, to one that looked almost like respect.

“We didn’t really know what to do, until someone interfered,” I sighed, taking Grace’s hand in my own. I made eye contact with as many of the obrec as I could before I spoke her name. “Ollinfer, one of your obrec gods. She redirected us as we tried to enter my grove and gave us an offer. She would make an altered warlock bond with Grace, allowing her to siphon off the excess magic that was produced and use it for herself. It also appears that there were some other side effects, a few abilities that allow Grace to manipulate her magic in unique ways.”

“Ollinfer,” Jerrig breathed, a smile slowly contorting his grumpy old face. “Grace is a warlock of Ollinfer!”

“Well, now I am considerably less worried,” Claih smiled, then laughed and shook her head. “Ollinfer might be a conniving hag, but at least she’s a conniving hag in the general direction of good.”

Grace burst out laughing, then ran her free hand through her hair with a sigh of relief. “That was my take on her too. One of those rare, ruthless and ambitious individuals who is actually on your side.”

“We’ll have to watch out for her, but on the whole I think we’re safe,” Jerril mused, thumb and forefinger stroking his chin. He let out a small grunt and gave Grace and then the attending crowd a hard, pointed look. “You should keep that little talent of yours a secret. That goes for everyone here! Any obrec who speaks a word of this, I will see you clanless within a day, do you hear me? Take this to your graves.”

Agreement came forth from everyone in a burst of chatter, and Jerril seemed satisfied. He was right too, if it became common knowledge that Grace had the power to wield the Red Nightmare, there would be hell to pay, in many different and terrible forms.

The conversation continued into a more lighthearted direction after that, and it was clear the danger had passed. Our allies were once again friendly.

We also found out a lot more about Ollinfer and her past exploits, including falling in love with the head of an obrec clan at one point. That story ended in heartbreak for her when the guy rebuffed her, saying that having a relationship with a goddess probably wouldn’t work.

Then there was the time that she apparently got pissed off at a river for diverting down a path that starved an area of forest from the water it needed. She exploded the river. There was also a story about her getting drunk off the growth magic of a human mage she’d uh… fornicated with, then wandered into an obrec town and picked a fight with the gatehouse. Not the people within it, the actual gatehouse building itself.

She replaced it later when she woke up the next morning though, so that was good. Now the town had a gatehouse made out of impenetrable wood that they were actually quite proud of apparently. All of that was to say that she was startlingly similar to many polythiestic religions. She wouldn’t be out of place in the greek pantheon, that was for sure.

Claih approached us after we’d gotten back on the road, hopping up into our wagon with a tentative smile. I was nestled into Grace’s arms again, my default position when we were travelling, and Claih sat down opposite us.

“Hello, I came to discuss some things, but first I must apologise for my antagonistic attitude before,” she said with a gentle expression. “I should have behaved better.”

Grace answered before I could, “No, it’s honestly understandable considering what we just saw.”

I had to agree with her there. What had happened to those scouts would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. It had been beyond horrifying. Anyone would be rightfully shaken by what they had witnessed.

“Thanks,” she smiled, but shook her head anyway. “On to my main point for being here though… Grace, can you really wield magic from every realm?”

“Near as I can tell, yeah,” she nodded. “Or… create it anyway. I can’t actually do anything with it once I’ve made it.”

“Can you take it back into yourself?” the magitecht asked curiously. “If so, could you create a small amount of combined energy for me? It should be safe.”

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, eyeing her skeptically. This hadn’t exactly worked out well last time. I was really not keen for a repeat of last time.

She chuckled, her long furry pointed ears twitching for a moment. “Yes, I’m sure. Each realm of magic has an opposite that will uh, keep it in line, so to speak. I’m interested to finally look at all of them together, existing in harmony.”

Huh… I wonder what the opposite realm to the Red Nightmare was? Could it be the Nameless Garden? Or was it some other realm that was like, blue or something? Well, then again, energy from any realm could take on any colour so I guess that was a moot point. Except for the base colour… wait, concentrate!

“Alright,” Grace shrugged, raising her hand. Crap, I’d gotten too distracted to voice any more concerns! Nerd sniped by magical theory! I instinctively cringed away, and she let me out of her lap before she did her thing.

The magic swirled down her arm, which only took on her default plantlike appearance. The white rainbow energy flickered into existence in her palm, just a tiny mote of the stuff that spun and twirled lazily. Oh, that wasn’t so bad. It was kinda cute… it just needed googly eyes.

“Eternal chasm, that is beautiful,” the obrec woman murmured, leaning forward. A thoughtful expression came over her face, followed by a sheepish look. “Alright, now I know I don’t have the best track record with you, but hear me out…”

“Oh no,” Grace said with a roll of her eyes, closing her hand and taking the energy back inside herself. “Here we go again.”

“Grace… you would be an incredibly powerful magitecht, if you wanted. You’d be able to charge your own devices with whatever energy they needed on the spot. I know of mages that have taken up the craft as well, and warlocks… but you would be above them all,” she said, excitement drawing her forward again. “Then, like the pure snow at the top of a mountain, you could fire all of them at once. I could help you, teach you… or just make the weapons for you.”

Oh, now that was an idea. Images of Grace wielding a rifle that she could calibrate to perfectly pierce our enemies’ shields came to mind. She could give others crystals charged so that they could do the same!

“I wouldn’t be the best at like… developing stuff,” my girlfriend sighed, but she quickly shook it off in favour of being cautiously excited. “But if you designed some guns and made them, or taught me how to make them and maintain them… I could do that.”

I didn’t mention it out lout, but if Bray didn’t hate us over everything, he could build and design new and interesting devices for Grace to use as well.

“Yes!” Claih exclaimed, pumping a fist in the air and accidentally punching her own antler. “Ah, ow! Damn!” she grumbled, shaking her fist out. “What I mean to say is that, I am very excited to try. I’ve never had the opportunity to experiment with every energy at once like that. It would be a great help to my own research, so it isn’t exactly complete altruism on my part.”

“That’s fair,” Grace agreed, a wistful smile on her face. She turned to me for a moment, and I felt my heart do little flips when she hit me with that expression. “I’ll be useful to you! We can be a team, mage and magitecht!”

“Yeah,” I said, a smile of my own tugging at my lips. She needed this. Since almost day one of knowing her, she’d been grasping and reaching for some way to gain control of herself and her destiny on this world. Here was her chance.