If there was some test in the Revolvers’ Guild that involved running through pitch-black corridors towards certain danger, gun in hand, and nothing more than a makeshift plan—Florence would have already achieved master status.
Nothing good ever comes of the Underground, she couldn’t stop repeating to herself. It was still the most logical place to have collected the majority of Loom. But that didn’t change its innate nature: a gaping black hole, filled with nothing but misfortune and bad luck, especially every time she was in it.
More gunfire echoed as her hands counted the canisters that ran along her belts and shoulder harness. She had a good twenty made, ready to go. Those, combined with the one disk bomb she also had tucked away, should be enough ammunition. Should be. If it wasn’t, she would just have to improvise as she had done so many times before.
“All noncombatants,” one Raven stood at a crossroads shouting, “head down to the lower halls. This is not a drill! All noncombatants should retreat down to the safety of the lower halls. This is not a drill! Do as you were instructed.”
Florence broke free of the startled and cowering masses, and continued to head upward toward the gunfire. The potent smell of sulfur in the air guided her, like a hound attracted to the scent of its quarry. But when she emerged at last into one of the uppermost tunnels—a rare exit topside—ready for a fight, she found none to be had.
A Dragon lay prone on the floor. Gold blood still oozed from his gaping chest and from the forearm that had been torn off at the elbow. Four Fenthri lay dead, scattered around the Dragon. Two Chimera nursed slowly healing wounds; they bled black, which was lucky, but would be out of commission for however long it took their bodies to mend.
“Press forward,” Vicar Gregory ordered from just ahead. “Reseal the doors.”
Florence strode past the deceased Dragon, toward the vicar. Just around the bend where he stood, Florence saw two heavy steel doors warped open. Wedged between them, like tree limbs through walls after windstorm, were the remnants of a glider.
“The bloody Rider slammed right into them,” Gregory explained unnecessarily.
“Are there more?” Florence asked, trying to catch a glimpse of the sky through the sliver of an opening.
“Likely.”
“How did he even get through?” The doors were thick and sturdy. There should have been no way to penetrate them, even sacrificing a glider. What was more, the Dragon shouldn’t have known about the entrance at all. Florence only recognized it as the one major access point to the Underground because it was fairly infamous in the Ravens’ Guild. But because it was so notable, no one ever used it.
“Came out of nowhere. We didn’t even see him until it was too late.” Her confusion still apparent, Vicar Gregory continued, “I had taken a small party out through the gates in an effort to help fortify them.”
“Oh, the irony.” Did it not go without saying that they should not be opening gates and letting the Dragons know of their location?
“Florence, I don’t know what you’re aspiring for, but do be mindful that I am still the Vicar Revolver,” Gregory said in a cautionary tone.
“Yes, you are, and I am grateful that you hold yourself to the highest standard in order to prevent oversight that leads to accidents like this.” Her remarks earned some looks from the other Revolvers, but Florence held her ground. Let them see; she wasn’t in the wrong here.
“You only just arrived, so I realize you have not yet been informed that the vicars have agreed to collapse tunnels to protect from below and fortify the entrances above.” Vicar Gregory ground his teeth. “I think you should head back into the depths of the caverns for safety. With the other noncombatants.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. After all, you said it yourself: I’m a Revolver, right?” Florence had no inclination to be dismissed and was ready, at last, to use Gregory’s words against him. She looked back to the Dragon, then returned her eyes to the sky. There were no rainbow trails, and the sensation of magic did not prickle against her skin. “Plus, I think he was just a scout.”
“Why would the Dragons merely send a scout? They made it perfectly clear their attack would come in three days.”
“Three days were up two days ago. I’m sure the attack came, but they went to Ter.0 first, expecting to find us waiting and insolent.”
“Scouts,” Gregory repeated. “They’re sending scouts to see where we ran off to.”
“That would be my guess. And we can only hope that this Rider was the first.”
“And why is that?”
Florence wanted to think his aim was a lot more accurate than his intellect. “Because when this Rider doesn’t make it back to Nova, it will be fairly logical for the Dragon King to assume he was killed. And the death of this Rider will lead the Dragon King and his agents directly to us.”
“And why would we want that?”
Florence forced herself to sigh mentally, rather than heaving it outward in frustration. “Because we are relatively protected here. And as long as we don’t go showing our faces, or get careless, the Dragons will know where we are but not how to get to us. The Rivets’ Guild, on the other hand, is not so fortunate.”
“We must get a message to them.” Gregory had finally caught up with her logic. “I believe Vicar Dove has a means to communicate.”
Florence sincerely hoped so, because if they didn’t, there was a real possibility that Garre could still fall.
Arianna
Arianna didn’t know what to do with herself when nothing was going catastrophically wrong.
The peace was nearly unnerving. Whenever it became too much for her, she retreated to Master Oliver’s quarters and tinkered with the various projects, the original intentions of which she could only guess. She had yet to figure out how to contact Florence unnoticed about the gun schematics Oliver had been working on. Her solo attempts to complete his renderings only yielded uncertain results.
A Revolver’s insight on the mechanics of weaponry would be imperative to finishing her late master’s great work. Still, she continued to hope against hope that she would find some way to communicate with Florence privately, rather than involving all the vicars and half the remaining Revolvers.
Arianna wiped soot off her hands from the charcoal pencil she preferred for drafting schematics. It was a pointless gesture, as she was just about to head down to the factory floor that had occupied most of her time in the past week. The factory bustled along with all the impressive noise of a fully operating manufacturing line, but any Rivet who looked upon it would know that it was anything but.
They were grossly understaffed for the technical nature of what they were trying to produce. The tooling workshops had only completed one out of three specialized machines required. And while she had heard from Victor Willard that more Rivets were on the way, Arianna didn’t want to sit on her hands and wait.