Chapter 305: A Slurried March Forward For Hope

The mission to dig the tunnel for the miners finally begins properly. ‘Hekate’ is resting in the bus, though Daniel wants to ask her about her rubbing her belly. Doephluev is very pregnant, and if she’s close to a human’s gestation period, it could be within the next month or so that she goes into labor.

So, it might just be the child kicking, which she doesn’t seem as ‘affectionate’ about sharing as the dragons were about noises coming out of their eggs. Doephluev likes to cuddle with Daniel, but she doesn’t seem to be especially attached to her child-to-be.

She might be guarding herself because of the original plan, but she did good today. I can’t fully forgive her until Baelok is dealt with, but we can’t make a move until Yaulander does.

Daniel scoffs as he recalls Doephluev’s words in Hekate’s voice. Everything was said in a way that Hekate might, though, it was admittedly harsh at times. But, it was also surprisingly sincere. Doephluev has always been a skilled infiltrator, but she does also seem to be making some effort to be friends with Hekate… in her own, somewhat awkward way.

Hekate never mentions her ancestors, but she also wouldn’t take kindly to being compared to them.

Yes, you did a good job, Doephluev. Thank you.

Daniel approaches as Neith, still in his disguise as Larven, prepares to activate his water jet cutter at the point King Harnavock’s miners indicated. The Fievegal’s soldiers, including the goblins escorting them, are ready to try to shovel debris out of Neith’s way while the dragon carves into the rock with the jet cutter.

Please work… thinks Daniel to himself. Wenlianna approaches, and Hekate bounds up with her. “Daniel! Is it starting?”

Daniel looks at Hekate, and then Wenlianna. “Yes. We’ll need to stand back, though. Sir Larven, do you have any questions?”

“Power it on, keep it pointed forward, and sweep back and forth, right?”

“That’s right. But, I’m not kidding. The recoil is going to be worse than anything you’ve dealt with so far.”

“Understood,” replies the dragon fearlessly. “Please stand back, your Graces.”

Daniel nods, adding quietly, “Your relief will be here shortly, I hope. If you need a break, don’t hesitate to stop.”

The dragon nods, and he steps forward, readying his aim.

Daniel calls out, “Attention! Non essential personnel, take cover! All hands, ready!” Daniel jogs with the ladies back to the barricade prepared for Sundenelle, and they crouch behind it while Daniel scans the area quickly. Everyone is in their ready positions. He shouts, “Sir Larven, you have the mark! Commence at will!”

“Yes, your Grace!” shouts Neith so he’s audible through his helmet. “Standby!”

Daniel holds a mirror up so that he and Wenlianna can watch, and Hekate and Sundenelle crowd against their shoulders to try to see as well. If Neith loses control of the jet cutter, it will continue to spray a potentially-deadly bundle of cutting streams that could blind or grievously wound a person several yards away. At their current range, there should be minimal risk to any level of barrier, since the actual streams aren’t particularly ‘massive’.

The brief test Daniel ran with a single stream was able to carve into rock at a maximum of about three feet from the nozzle, hammering it beyond that with much less efficient results, meaning his is probably the most destructive and longest range cutting tool ever made, short of an actual high-intensity laser.

The countries a US Navy aircraft pull into don’t necessarily share the same laws as the United States, and many of Daniel’s shipmates bought high power handheld pen lasers that were illegal in the USA at the time because of the sheer intensity of their beams. They could ignite wood at range, pop balloons, and cut paper. If a relatively cheap laser that can be bought out in a random market in a country with more lax standards could do all of that, Daniel is certain that the top developed nations probably had or weren’t far off from having portable lasers that could cut a treasure vault door off in a few minutes.

Daniel’s not entirely sure how to make diodes, and by extension, laser diodes, but if one of his suspicions about the sand coming out of the ground magic crystal are correct, he might be a lot closer to stumbling across it than he thinks.

But for now, the moment of truth is upon them.

Neith braces himself with a few bounces of his shoulders, and he plants his feet, keeping the cutter braced against his hip.

A normal water jet cutter on Earth is a small nozzle or cutting head on a big machine with a single dedicated pump, using one stream to cleanly cut all kinds of materials.

Daniel’s rush-job ‘final’ magic water jet cutter has five nozzles like a gatling gun, though they remain stationary. The goal is to fracture the rock and make it crumble as fast as possible, rather than getting clean cuts.

The ‘barrels’ are slightly angled towards each other, such that just past the three foot mark is the convergence point, such that the cutter should be able to continuously shear chunks of rock as the wielder sweeps it in continuous circles.

There shouldn’t be too much heat due to the incompressible nature of liquid water, but Daniel doesn’t exactly know if there is any actual heat transfer when a magic crystal “creates” water mass from its stored mana energy.

Regardless, the dragon aims and pulls the trigger.

The dragon stumbles back slightly, nearly whirling, which causes Daniel and the three ladies leaning on him to flinch together. For each ‘barrel’, there are three dedicated water crystals dumping water at maximum volume, meaning the pressure will skyrocket until whatever unknown maximum there is to the process. Sharmelkolle doesn’t seem to care, but Daniel probably should have informed Neith that he’s basically holding a bomb that could probably vaporize him if this all goes wrong.

But, Daniel tested the first one for quite a while, and the sharmelkolle never even creaked.

Plus, Daniel kept the actual volumetric space as small as possible.

The group watches as Neith strains against the stream to push it back on target, and the water is rapidly spraying, splashing, and misting all around the front of him, pooling quickly around his feet as the laborers monitor from behind their own shields.

Daniel was naturally trained on a fire hose pressurized to more than one hundred pounds of water pressure while he was in the navy, which provides a lot of pushback on the nozzle operator, such that they were trained to operate in teams to help keep the hose steady. It wasn’t enough to topple a person just because it was ‘100psi’, but it could very quickly cause a lot of damage if a person lost control of the nozzle while it was still on, and it is easy to feel that pressure while holding the nozzle itself.

While the streams are absolutely fractionally-tiny compared to a fire hose, Neith is resisting tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of psi coming out of the nozzles turning that water into five pencil-thick grey streams of laser-like cutting force. And, such a ridiculous thing is only possible because Daniel has magic crystals and someone like Wenlianna backing him up.

He hasn’t sat down and calculated the “maximum capacity” of the standard size enhanced magic crystals, but Daniel guesses that it’s on par with a small town’s municipal water tower, somewhere close to one hundred thousand gallons. He’s not sure how Wenlianna casting a spell into a desktop machine can result in a municipal tower’s worth of water, but he also wouldn’t be surprised to learn that, when someone like Wenlianna charges a mana crystal, that one hundred thousand gallons of water is magically stolen from the sea and stuffed into the magic crystal via Zenkon’s natural mana layer, which seems to be somewhat like a planetary magnetic field, except that it doesn’t have a ‘direction’ necessarily, and permeates some of the crust and up into the middle atmosphere, at least.

Daniel still has a lot to learn about magic and mana, and there are likely many secrets that might go towards filling a thousand chapters of a hypothetical novel about his life, but until then, he is watching one of his joint creations with a woman he loves and their precious friend as his brother by ‘adoption’ and by law uses that creation to all but literally melt away a mountain face.

The streams of impractically-high pressure water bore deep into the rock on their own as Neith slowly steps forward, slowly sweeping the powerful cutting tool in a lazy-looking circle.

He has to move slowly because of the intense pressures, lest he lose control, but even from the small handheld mirror made of polished brass common on Zenkon, they can see small chunks of the rock tumbling away.

“It’s working…” murmurs Wenlianna excitedly. She hugs Daniel’s arm, saying, “Mukori, it’s working!”

Daniel jokes softly, “We’re going to destroy the world, aren’t we, Mukori?”

She looks at him with bright eyes and a rosy blush. It hearkens back to one of their earliest days together, when everything was simpler, and there weren’t apocalyptic threats in recent memory.

“Ah-he-HEM!” Hekate clears her throat dramatically as it becomes clear Daniel is going to kiss the brunette. They shift apart as they laugh, and Wenlianna apologizes sheepishly.

“My apologies, Hekate…”

“Flirting right in front of me…”

“You owe me a serious report later,” whispers Daniel as he stares at his raven-haired companion.

Her ears droop quickly, but quickly perk back up. “W-What do you mean?”

“You did good enough, but we need to work on strategy. With everyone, it seems,” whispers Daniel. He says to Sundenelle for her own and Ecklevon’s benefit, “Your Grace, I would recommend staying down and continuing to use the mirror, just in case. If Larven starts to lose control, hit the dirt and shield your face. I don’t know how harmful the streams are at this range.”

She nods. “We’ll stay down for now. But, heed your own advice, Daniel. I’m not above marrying Hekate if you die to ensure our union goes through, but I don’t think those problems will matter should the worst happen.”

“I’ll be fine,” replies Daniel. He trusts Neith’s strength, or knowledge of his own, and he’ll be watching for any abnormal movements, in case the dragon’s grip slips.

Daniel stands up, and Hekate joins him.

King Harnavock’s nobles are still standing, having not heeded the advice at all, though they have gone pale.

It’s hard to see much, since a violent mist is rolling out past Larven with water pouring off of him like rain. Meanwhile, a veritable river is flowing past his legs, as if he tapped into a lake within the rock. Gravel of various sizes is being carried down past his feet, some no larger than pebbles, others as large as a fist. Yet, the violent current having nowhere else to go shoves them out all the same.

Daniel uses hand signals for the goblins who volunteered for clean out duty. They intend to use a bucket brigade for any current-blocking stones and pass them out of the way so the slurry can keep flowing, at least enough spread out.

As for the cutting, the five streams hiss loudly, primarily from the ‘whistle’ at the nozzles or between the five nozzles where a violent vortex has likely formed, and then at the contact point with the rock, where the streams are unravelling into a turbulent mist bordering on ‘cold steam’ with the roiling chaos by which it explodes in every direction. Pings and screeches come off of Larven’s armor from pebbles being blasted out, with the occasional sparks being just visible amidst the swirling mist around him.

“Daniel… how do you think of these things?” asks Hekate.

“Thank Wenlie-Mukori for the actual conversion to this world’s technology,” replies Daniel warmly. “And, I wish I was smart enough to invent things like this. Live long enough on Earth and spend enough time on the internet, and you’ll stumble across all kinds of things. Magic lets me cheat to achieve the principles here. I wouldn’t know where to begin to make an actual pump that can do that.”

One of Daniel’s seniors in the navy once described piston-style positive displacement pumps as being capable of “breaking something downstream, because it’s going to move the water, whether it has somewhere to go or not. And, if not, it’s going to raise the pressure rapidly until it makes one.” A piston-style pump is what it sounds like, but the mechanic knows all kinds of things go into making a successful positive displacement pump, specifically, not least of which are machine-tolerances and durable seals. The Citadel still lets him cheat those things, essentially, but even the Fievegal is still a long way off from replicating modern Earth technology without using any magic in the process.

For now, though, they have means to behave like a rapidly modernizing nation, but with a bit of a fantasy flair, at least from Daniel’s perspective.

And, in this case, it’s a fantasy water cannon that is burrowing through solid mountain granite like a firehose through a pile of sand. Any faster, and it would be more like a water gun through cotton candy, since Neith’s forward march makes it look like the wall is near-literally melting away.

And, what flows out is reminiscent of microwaved solid honey; hot enough to liquefy, but still chunky as it flows with crystals inside still needing to melt.

Daniel leans down and asks, “So, Sweetpea, where is our dragon-tosser?”

“Tsk-tsk-tsk!” retorts Hekate as she shakes her head. “Just wait until I tell the ‘real me’ that I finally fooled you. Though, I am happy to have won against you, Darling.” She leans close to his face and kisses his cheek.

For one moment, one single second, Daniel has doubts. One of them officially escaped the mansion with a beam of light covering her escape, along with the others she was tasked with rescuing. The other was hidden away for a time in the main bus ‘resting’ after being thoroughly insulted by the Kingdom of Ahmpur’s embarrassing displays of disrespect when they try to behave so pridefully above her. They couldn’t have accounted for the maid recognizing Hekate’s face alone, and yet, Doephluev, masterfully pretending to be ‘Hekate’, managed to play it off of the anger she already showed about being accused without any shred of evidence.

So, Daniel has lost track of the two for a while, focusing his own attention on the jet cutter’s final preparations.

Doephluev is actively trying to get better at fooling Daniel, and she’s helping Hekate. Or, they’re devising their improved methods together, and that terrifies him.

The mechanic finally replies, “Sweetpea, I told you, I won’t tell you how I know. But, if the day ever comes where you do fool me, you’re not going to like what happens…”

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Hekate smiles with a sort of matureness that continues to needle at Daniel’s doubts. She touches his lip flirtatiously, saying with the same tone that doesn’t match her own. “Just as you trust me when you know you probably shouldn’t, Darling, I trust you more than anything else in this world. Even when that day comes, as long as the Hekate-rule hasn’t been broken, you won’t stay angry at us.” She perks up, stepping right back into ‘Hekate’s’ shoes to put her hands on her hips. “Now then, let me go find out where the Grand Princess is. Sir Larven looks like he’s getting tired already.”

She walks away proudly, and she stops when she’s a few yards away to look at Daniel with a devious grin.

He feels sick to his stomach, because his gut is screaming at him that it’s still Hekate, but his brain is having severe doubts. He never thought they’d both be able to emulate each other so well. And, Hekate seems to have become immune to being called on her bluff. He could try to escalate his bluffs, but it would eventually become obvious that he is having doubts.

I’m going to have to scold Doephluev after all. Those two idiots…

Daniel lets out a sigh. He does trust both of them, though Doephluev would be more likely to try to cross the line and fool Daniel into thinking he did something he can’t with Hekate, forcing his hand, in that sense.

The mechanic massages his right temple gently, turning his gaze back on Neith.

The dragon is already underneath rock, and the dattakorien, human, and gatonine soldiers of the Fievegal, as well as some of the braver miners from Ahmpur, have gathered with lumber, ready to reinforce, rescue Larven, or whatever else might need to happen. The goblins are chaotically chattering and somewhat cartoonishly fighting with the water currents to move the larger rocks, still only about the size of their own heads, out of the way.

And, with determined focus, Sir Larven continues to march slowly forward. He’s obviously not some magic animal trained by preteens to fight each other, capable of burrowing through rock like an augur, nor is he one of a colorful bunch of half-man/half-sharks that can ‘swim’ through solid materials in a city environment.

But, he is a titan in his own right, wielding a powerful demolition tool to move steadily like the moons themselves, unstoppable and powerful enough to change the face of the world itself every hour of the day.

For a moment, only a single real regret passes across Daniel’s mind.

If I had the strength, I would…

He lets it go, though. He has never been particularly insecure about his relatively unchanged state of being as a normal human. He has been stupendously lucky since coming to Zenkon for all kinds of reasons. Befriending the Stalvaltans was probably one of the best things that could have happened to him so early on, even if there was a gap when he thought his luck had returned to his Earth days, and he was slowly draining of life.

The wayward mechanic only wishes to be able to wield any tool that he makes for the simple fact that he likes working on things. He had times that he hated people who made his job unnecessarily difficult, but he never really disliked the work itself. Frustrations when he hit snags, but Daniel is a worker bee.

And, given how dangerous so many of our enemies are… I wonder if I can make use of Lucy’s strengths, and intentionally trigger them.

Daniel looks at the elemental as she finally shows herself, now that Hekate has wandered off. She’s curious about the work being done, since it’s such an intense amount of magic, and the mist rolling by seems to have faintly pushed her into her ‘rain’ form, though she’s not as vibrant, which seems to mean she’s not feeling enough water element to gain her full power.

But, the fact that even this much is enough… I wonder…

Daniel’s mind starts to crunch his next projects as he idly watches the dragon. And, before long, Hekate returns with Zuzia similarly armored like a knight, so that her identity will remain completely unknown. Magnir is with them, but he will go third, since he’s ironically the weakest of the three living tanks Daniel brought. If Neith is already tired, Magnir might not last as long.

But, as long as they all work as a team, it shouldn’t be too long before the miners are rescued.

***

Shortly before, Hekate giddily skips along as she cups her cheeks, blushing. She’s out of sight of everyone else, and it’s one of the happiest days of her life. She playfully dances right up into the Royal transport, finally letting out a giddy squeal.

The curtain in the back slides apart with Doephluev in her normal appearance, looking a little haggard from the cramps she says are fine. “So, how did it go?”

Hekate can’t help but wear her biggest, happiest smile as she gives the archoneldwyn a thumbs up. “We’re so close, Doephluev! And…” Hekate blushes as she cups her cheeks. “I… got to kiss him.”

This surprises Doephluev, and any traces of the residual ache from her cramps melts away from her expression.

Hekate quickly adds in an almost frantic tone, “J-Just on the cheek! I was still too shy to… Oooo!” Hekate squirms and blushes, her tail wagging back and forth as if to pummel everything in the bus. She immediately puffs herself back up into her prideful triumph, a fist held upwards near her chest. “But, someday, I will claim his lips as mine and mine alone!”

Doephluev relaxes and smiles softly. “I’m impressed. I’ve been convinced that I captured you perfectly, but he hasn’t faltered once with me.”

“I think he’s bluffing,” whispers Hekate. “But, we can’t let him know that we know that. It’s what he’s relying on. Heh heh heh heh heh!” Hekate rubs her hands together with an ‘evil’ smile on her face.

“So, how’s the digging going?”

“Oh! N-, er, uh, Larven had just started, but it’s crumbling away so easily. But,... Do you know why we can’t just use ground magic to do the same thing?”

Doephluev smiles, and she holds her hand out. She whispers a spell briefly, and a magic circle appears over her palm. Hekate watches as a small swirl of sand appears and condenses into a solid, small figure of Hekate standing with her fist up with her resolute face of determination from just moments ago. She explains, “Summoning earth magic isn’t creating a solid rock right away. It’s a two part process if you actually want to make a rock. Three if you want to add acceleration to it at range.” She hands over the small rock figurine of Hekate, and within seconds, it dissolves into sand that crumbles in Hekate’s palm, causing her to gasp.

“Additionally, like water magic, if you don’t sustain the magic, the grains of rock that were summoned return to their granular state. To make it permanent requires about a thousand times more mana.”

Doephluev does the same thing, and this time, she makes the Hekate figurine with the absolute most adorable pouting face, her ears folded down to the sides and her tail curling gently behind her as she holds her hands together down in front of her.

But, this time, Hekate can feel it. Doephluev is putting a lot more magic into it, and she can even hear a tiny crunching sound as the figurine’s form seems to noticeably smooth out.

“I’m doing a quick job of it,” remarks Doephluev as she’s finishing the spell, “But this is a representation of what happens just to get a solid rock to stay solid longer than a minute or two. That should remain permanent.”

Hekate holds it as if it’s something precious. She can already feel the difference. Even before it dissolved in her hands, the first one felt more ‘rough’, and even had a sort of looseness to it, like a simple dirt clod or molded wet sand. This one is solid, though it’s small and has a lot of delicate pieces.

“Now then, to take solid rock, why do you think we opted not to use magic?”

Hekate answers intelligently, “Because it would use a lot of magic to break the solidness, even into big pieces, right?”

“That’s right. And, if you’re not extremely careful, whatever pieces of the mountain that are especially brittle can crumble, creating a massive pile of rubble that will flow like sand, relatively speaking, and potentially bury you or fill in the hole you just created. Basically, it can be done, but it would drain you, me, Senn, Serrentuk, Neith, and Jeavana just to carve our combined body length into the mountain. And, we might end up collapsing whatever’s left of the tunnel inside, where people are hopefully taking refuge.”

Hekate nods. “So, if it weren’t for the people, we could do it without really worrying that much, right?”

Doephluev shrugs. “Mana is replenishable. But, if the water jet cutter does work… Theoretically it can be made to work for anyone, since the idea for it came from Earth in the first place.”

Hekate’s ears perk up. It’s easy to forget, because Daniel relies so much on magic here on Zenkon in the designs of his new machines, but Earth did all of the same things without magic. It took them thousands of years across their history to move from swords and rocks to guns and tanks, and then to airplanes and space ships that could even land on the moon, but with the shortcuts Daniel, Wenlianna, and Ahok each manage to use in order to bridge the gap, what would require half a dozen powerful mages to use all of their mana will potentially require three people a few hours of time and their physical stamina.

“So… if we were able to make a vehicle that can hold the cutter…” thinks Hekate.

Doephluev grins, playfully warning, “Be careful when you have really good ideas like that, Hekate. If I wanted to, I just have to be the first one to suggest it to Daniel, and he’ll think it’s my idea.”

Hekate’s face drains, and she asks, “W-Wait… You think it’s a good idea!?”

“Obviously. Daniel’s eventual goal will undoubtedly be to do that as well, since he won’t want to have to deploy Neith, Zuzia, and Magnir each time. If a team of goblins can make use of it…”

Hekate grins. “But… If Daniel is already planning it…”

“You’ve seen how Daniel adjusts things the whole way through. Just observe how everything works as it is now, and try to think about how to make it useful to others. That’s what Daniel, Wenlianna, and Ahok do. Even the dragons, when they’re helping Daniel. There’s no reason you can’t. And, it’s alright to be wrong. Daniel was in a hurry today, but for future designs, for our own mines, time is our ally.”

Hekate nods in understanding. “Oh! Do you want to go see it in action?”

“Really?” asks Doephluev playfully.

Hekate nods. “I’m going to go get Zuzia real quick, since she should be in her new disguise. You can walk her out.”

“If you don’t mind,” replies Doephluev. “But, what if I ruin the success you just had.”

Hekate blushes. “I realized I’m not ready for us to win today, so it’s okay if you do. You can do whatever you want within reason. And, um… Thank you… for some of the stuff you said as me…”

“I was dangerously close to making you look like a tyrant…” murmurs Doephluev, but Hekate smiles softly.

“You were fearless… and from what it sounds like, you made me look really smart.”

Doephluev chuckles. “I was actually acting as foolish as I could…”

They both smile at each other, and the feldrok teen sighs contentedly. “I’ll need you to teach me how to be ‘me’ in situations like that, so, for now, get ready. I’ll be right back with Zuzia.”

“Very well, your Greatness,” replies Doephluev with a smile.

***

“Jezu…” murmurs Zuzia through her armor as she witnesses the raw power of the machine Daniel made. It doesn’t have long hoses, noisy pumps, or a carbon footprint of any kind, for that matter.

Though, that does assume magic is fully ‘green’ in the sense that its use doesn’t cause ‘non-renewable changes’, the way that using petroleum, an ancient liquid formed by natural processes, can slowly change the equilibrium of a world.

And, in this case, a handheld machine that is about as large as a small person, if they were held by a collar and a leg, is managing to ‘brush away’ solid mountain rock and form a tunnel. It’s only been about an hour since Hekate rescued her with help from the Fievegal team, and Neith, in his disguise as Larven, has already burrowed three full meters tall and wide enough for him to stand in and keep going. His tail is drooping, and he is tilting his head, shifting his shoulders, and rolling his neck more frequently.

If the estimates from Włócznia Peruna’s final length are correct, they need to get about seventeen to twenty meters straight in, definitely closer to twenty or more from the current starting point downhill of the mine itself, and then dig upwards just to hopefully intersect with the mine itself.

“Centuria, thank you for joining us,” says Daniel as she walks up alongside Hekate-2. She saw the two switch out, and since Hekate is probably the only one strong enough at teleportation to move Zuzia across space, that means this one is Doephluev pretending to be the feldrok teen.

Realizing that she’s ‘Centuria’, she acts just like Neith does, which the grey dragon usually does in and out of disguise, since he seems to be perfectly content carrying himself like an honorable knight before anything else. “My Liege, I have come at her Greatness’s summons. I am honored to serve.” She gestures at ‘Hekate’, and the imposter replies warmly, “Sir Larven looks like he’s getting tired already. Is it really that strong of a tool?”

“You’re welcome to try it out later when we can make sure everyone else will be safe,” replies Daniel. He stares at her suspiciously for a moment, and ‘Hekate’ cocks her head in the cute way that she does, flopping her ears to the same side like a curious dog.

Oh dear god, Maleńka… Why do you have to be so adorable?

Zuzia is relieved that the rescue seems to have gone smoothly. So much so, that the King has withdrawn into the mansion to avoid Sundenelle and Hekate, it seems.

But, more importantly, Daniel seems suspicious of Hekate, and Zuzia can’t help but wonder if Daniel can tell.

The apparent feldrok teen asks cutely, “What’s wrong, Darling?” She grins wickedly, asking with a devious edge to her tone that does sound more like Doephluev. “Do you want another kiss, perhaps?”

Zuzia notices Daniel’s cheek tense, and he breaks eye contact with Hekate with a slight sigh. This causes ‘Hekate’ to grin, as if she just won at something. Daniel’s hands tense slightly into fists, not of anger, but that he knows he’s being had, apparently.

Can’t say you don’t deserve it, but I’m watching you, Daniel… thinks Zuzia to herself. But, let’s get this rescue done and troll each other later.

“My Liege, permission to relieve Sir Larven?”

Daniel looks at ‘Centuria’, which has no direct context in the Eastern Imperial language, giving her a nod. “If you would, Centuria. Water is relatively incompressible, but be mindful that it will continue to spray even after you release the trigger.”

“Understood, your Grace.” She bows politely and then heads for Larven’s tunnel. She moves carefully, since the ground is a shallow river flowing away from the tunnel, with loose gravel and mud. The Fievegal’s workers are blended in with miners from the town, with armored soldiers closest to Larven due to the powerful spray and shrapnel being blasted out of the hole. She makes sure that the others see her coming, since the tunnel itself is being drowned in a rumbling hiss, rushing water, and clacking and clanking of gravel against rock and armor.

Once she can reach him, Centuria pats Larven on the shoulder to get his attention, and she can see him shift, releasing the trigger itself, but keeping the barrels forward until the strongest pressure finally dies down.

With the volume more manageable as the water flows out and settles, Larven looks over his shoulder.

“Dame Centuria, here to relieve you, Sir Larven!” Roetta uses ‘Dame’, and though it might be wrong of Zuzia to proclaim herself a ‘knight’ by extension of using it, she doubts anyone in the Fievegal is going to object. And, if she really wants to, Hekate would almost certainly knight her without question.

Larven chuckles, replying, “Just in time, Dame Centuria. Thank you. Let’s step out, since there’s not a lot of room.”

She nods and turns around carefully, making her way back out. Zuzia is pretty surefooted from her many, many hikes through mountains in all kinds of weather conditions, but she knows more than most, that even the most surefooted person still needs to be careful. She can hear Larven following her out, and once out front, the two turn over the water jet cutter.

Even though the hole isn’t finished, the miners cheer and applaud, calling out how amazing it is that Larven was able to carve so far into the mountain in such a short period of time.

Larven chuckles and waves, saying as Centuria gets a feel for holding the jet cutter, “Daniel suggested relaxing the pressure every so often, just in case there is a finite pressure limit to the metal.”

Centuria scoffs. “I’m certain there must be, so I agree.”

“Just a couple seconds at a time, and I hardly noticed a loss of pace.”

“Got it. I’m going in.”

“Stop at any time if you need to, Sister. Lord Magnir or I can relieve you.”

“Thank you.” Centuria heads into the tunnel, and she picks up where her dragon friend left off.

There is about five seconds of the streams spraying like thin hoses before the recoil really starts to be noticeable, and Centuria braces her legs and the cutter against her hip. It’s a sturdy push, and she uses her practiced skill of footing barriers to keep from being slid backwards on the slick rock under her feet. Unless Hekate can use magic to brace herself as well, she would almost certainly go flying backwards if she tried to use the cutter. It’s not quite enough to push over an adult that is prepared for it, especially ones as strong as Neith and Zuzia, but even with her physical strength, Hekate’s weight would do nothing.

Maybe I should let her try it… As long as she’s wearing armor. It’d be kind of funny to see that little furball go flying. But, also mean, so, I better not.

Amused by her own thoughts, Centuria keeps moving forward slowly and sure. Her ankle gets bumped, and she carefully looks under her armpit to try to see.

“Apologies, Dame Centuria!” calls out a dattakorien man in full armor. “That was my fault!”

He’s barely audible with her helmet, the backsplash spray washing over her, and the rock being sliced, cracking, and crumbling away. She nods and keeps going, focusing on the task ahead. She has to sweep in thirty centimeter circles, whether she can see it or not. Every minute or so, she relaxes her right hand for a few seconds, and like Larven said, the spray only barely starts to quiet down in that time, ramping right back up when she squeezes the trigger again.

Centuria dials in her process to keep a steady pace, and for each step forward, she is careful to keep her center of gravity balanced and to minimize the height of her steps.

Thank goodness I practiced my barriers. Though, carrying a gaggle of literal dragons around seems like it was overkill, now. I thought I was going to be trying to hold back a jet engine or something. Stupid Daniel.

She chuckles to herself, since she knows he was just being cautious.

Either way, she’s making progress, meaning there’s hope for this mine rescue to end in something other than a total tragedy.

***