The monarch stared at the schematics Orion had projected over the map table. The internal structure of the dwarven magma projector had been stripped and rewritten in seconds, replacing runecraft with a hyper-compressed magical lens that bore little resemblance to dwarven designs.
Last time, he’d done his best to ensure the artificers could come up with something they felt was theirs, but he simply lacked the knowledge of the dwarven runes needed to even attempt it this time. Considering how complex even a smaller version of [Gamma Ray]’s spellform was, he felt he’d done more than enough.
The one-eyed general broke the quiet, running a hand down his beard. "This is madness. You are asking us to reforge our artillery doctrine on your word, mere hours after you proposed it. We do not even know whether this… radiation… will behave as you claim.”
"It has little to do with my word and everything to do with the fundamental laws of reality," Orion replied smoothly, even as the Wraithgem hummed against his chest, processing the general’s elevated heart rate and shifting posture, recognizing the defensive skepticism of a career soldier facing a paradigm shift. "The Silence-alloy absorbs any mana, and unless you have something capable of launching tier-four strikes in reserve, this is your only option. Ionizing radiation is a physical byproduct of focused light. It bypasses the magic-nullification property by exploiting the metal’s structural faults.”
King Korvan tapped a mailed finger against the table, silencing the room. "I shall not gamble the Sunken Hold on untested theories, but your work with the Barrage weapons affords you some leeway. Fetch the Gem-master General.”
A guard sprinted out, and less than five minutes later, the doors banged open as Thraing marched in.
"I was in the middle of a delicate facet-cut, my King," Thraing rasped, stopping just short of glaring at the monarch. "This had better involve a breach of the inner walls.”
“I need you to take a look at this," Korvan commanded, pointing at the hologram. "The human mage claims he designed a modification to our projectors that emits focused radiation powerful enough to counter the Iron State's new armor. I remember my lessons well enough, but I need an expert to confirm whether it’s truly feasible.”
Thraing adjusted his multi-lensed goggles and stepped up to the table. He squinted at the floating blue code, his eyes darting across the complex layers Orion had woven into the design.
Everyone waited in silence as the old dwarf grunted to himself. He leaned closer, tracing a finger through the air just inches from the holographic projection, where the non-Euclidean routing was rendered. He turned his head, spotted Orion standing across the table, and clucked his tongue before returning to his study.
Ten whole minutes later, Thraing let out a harsh sigh. "The boy knows his stuff. I watched him tame a Wraithgem myself, rewriting the stone’s pathways with a precision that makes my apprentices look like children banging rocks together. If he says this contraption spits radiation, Your Majesty, then it spits radiation. The enchantments, at the very least, are as solid as anything I’ve ever built.”
The validation from the best artificer in the Sunken Hold hit the room, and the generals exchanged calculating looks. The dismissive attitude collapsed, replaced by the realization that the Magocracy envoy had just given them the tool to break the naval blockade and that they could no longer stonewall them.
King Korvan looked at Orion curiously, clearly wondering how someone so young could create such a wondrous creation.
Still, he didn’t ask.
“This is indeed a fine contribution," he said softly. The monarch laid his hands flat on the map, closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly. "If your cannon works as promised, you shall have your battalions.”
There were murmurs among the generals, but nobody dared gainsay the King, and Team Obsidian exchanged happy looks. Even Erethemor, who’d been mostly bored so far, seemed satisfied.
Before Orion could finalize the terms, something shifted.
The distant thuds of artillery hitting the walls ceased, and a strange quiet settled over the Sunken Hold for several long minutes.
Then the fortress’s warning bells began to toll. That sent a shock through the room, and the generals began barking orders, summoning people and sending others to find out what was going on.
It wasn’t long before a scout stumbled in, gasping for air, soaked in seawater.
"Your Majesty!" he cried, falling to one knee. "A dreadnought broke through the blockade line! It is pushing the inner breakwater!”
Korvan spun toward the reinforced glass and stepped out onto the open balcony. Orion, Garrick, and the dwarven generals followed instantly.
The churning ocean was lit by flashes of distant lightning. Out on the dark water, a single amphibious dreadnought was advancing. It was a hundred feet long of brass, but the prow and forward hull were plated in a light-absorbing gray sheen.
It was, undeniably, Silence-alloy. Not enough to cover the whole monster, fortunately, but the fact that the material had reached this far south could only mean that Kethor had begun producing it in vast quantities.
A Slag-Spitter fired from a lower battery. The magic propelling the payload vanished on contact, and the metal splashed harmlessly against the plating, cooling into useless obsidian that slid into the sea.
"They shielded the vanguard ship," Vargus muttered, a farseer over his left eye. "They must be testing the waters before committing the rest of the fleet to the upgrade.”
King Korvan drew a deep breath. His aura expanded, an overwhelming surge of earth-aspected mana that shook the entire fortress. He reached behind his back, drawing a warhammer forged from a single block of black iron.
"General Torin, take the western batteries and concentrate fire on their rear-line ships," he rumbled. "Vargus, rally the Ironbreakers at the lower gates. If anything reaches the sand, you must hold it there.”
"And the dreadnought?" Vargus asked.
"I will take it myself," Korvan declared.
The King then turned to Orion. "Build your cannon, mage, and make it fast, or we won’t see it in action before I crush it. Daelin, requisition any artificers you need. Do not fail.”
And with that, Korvan leaped over the balcony railing, plummeting hundreds of feet toward the rally field below, where battalions were already assembling.
Garrick gestured for the others to gather around him. He looked at Esmeralda, Jordan, and Erethemor. “We’ll have to take part ourselves if we don’t want to lose the goodwill we just gained. The King and his forces will handle the heavy armor, but I don’t doubt there will be more than enough lighter machines for us to get back into the swing of things.”
“We will try to give you as much time as possible, Orion," Esmeralda promised as she followed Garrick out the doors.
"Let's move," Daelin urged, grabbing him by the shoulder. "The best place is battery seven. We can strip a projector there.”
They sprinted through the stone corridors, barking orders for more artificers to be sent after them, and climbed another three flights of stairs to an open-air artillery platform carved into the cliff face. A five-foot-long Slag-Spitter sat on a rotating mount, crewed by soldiers.
"Clear the weapon!" Daelin roared, flashing his royal signet. "Get down to the lower walls and man more useful positions!”
The bewildered soldiers scrambled away, and before Orion knew it, twenty dwarven artificers poured onto the platform. They carried runic chisels, welders, and crates of raw quartz.
“Here?” he asked, incredulous.
“Do you think we have time to get to a lab and back up here?” Daelin replied, and Orion had to shake his head.
The Wraithgem on his chest flared, and Orion expanded his [Holographic Containment] outward into a sensory grid that mapped the cliff face, the beach, and the dark water beyond. Fidelity dropped sharply beyond five hundred feet, rendering the distant figures as wireframes of mana and density, but it was still far more than he’d been capable of before.
He felt King Korvan hit the beach below. Mana from the earth itself seemed to reinforce his bones and muscles.
Out on the water, the dreadnought ground against the rocky shallows, finding purchase on the seabed despite hundreds of mines and artillery strikes. Dozens of smaller, brass-plated skiffs launched from its flanks, carrying boarding parties toward the shore.
"Focus!" Orion growled to himself, turning his attention back to the artillery platform. He projected the blueprint into the center of the battery, magnifying it so every artificer could see. "We need to strip the kinetic arrays and remove the magma chamber entirely. We are converting the barrel into a focusing tube.”
The dwarves hesitated, unaccustomed to taking orders from a human, let alone to dismantling their own weaponry.
"Do it!" Daelin bellowed, grabbing a runic chisel and driving it into the Spitter’s side.
That seemed enough because the artificers surged forward, and the platform erupted into a frenzy of organized destruction. Sparks flew as welders severed the runic lines feeding the magma chamber. Dwarven hammers rang against the chassis, unseating the sequences that had taken Orion and the engineers sweat and blood to align perfectly.
He stood at the center of the chaos, the Wraithgem running a dozen simultaneous simulations. He served as the central processing unit for the entire crew.
"The barrel's thickness is insufficient for the thermal load," Orion called out, scanning the exposed metal. "Weld three layers of mithril plating around the primary chamber. If the radiation bleeds through, it will cook anyone nearby alive.”
“Mirthil?!” One squawked, only to be silenced by Daelin’s glare and ordered to fetch the required materials.
As soon as he returned, three artificers rushed to comply before he could even speak, hauling sheets of silver metal and fusing them to the chassis with searing bursts of heat.
"The lenses," Daelin yelled over the noise of the grinding metal as he hauled a crate of uncut deep-vault quartz onto the stone floor. "How do we cut them?”
"Concave-convex array," Orion instructed, projecting the refractive indices required to focus gamma rays into the air above the crate, using a three-dimensional model of the lens shapes. "Three lenses. The first collects raw mana. The second compresses the wavelength. The third directs the ionizing beam. Tolerances are sub-millimeter. Do not deviate.”
Daelin and four master cutters fell upon the quartz, using their [Runesmith] Traits to shape the crystal directly. Their hands glowed with mana as they forced the stubborn stone into perfect geometric curves.
With every major section now complete or no longer needing his direct help, Orion pushed his sensory field outward again to check the battle below.
The dreadnought had breached the surf, its towering gray prow looming over the beach, as King Korvan stood in its path.
Several wrecks of dwarven constructs, warriors, and Iron State machines surrounded them, and Orion could even spot two kinds he’d never seen before that looked like Preatorians but were slimmer, with twin blades on each arm.
The King seemed unconcerned about his position and swung his black warhammer into the Silence-alloy.
The impact sent a shockwave outward, registering on Orion’s grid as a violent seismic tremor.
The metal did not shatter. The magic-nullification property absorbed the weapon’s kinetic enhancement, turning a strike capable of leveling a mountain peak into a purely physical collision between iron and alloy.
The dreadnought still shuddered, and a visible dent appeared in its armor, yet its treads kept grinding forward.
Soon, the King was locked in a slugfest with a hundred-foot machine.
Further down the beach, Orion felt the distinct, sharp flares from Team Obsidian. Garrick carved through several Walkers disembarking from the skiffs, while Esmeralda moved like a crimson blur, her blood magic ripping apart the Iron State engineers before they could deploy their portable shielding. Jordan anchored the center, his Paladin light a beacon in the dark, and Erethemor…
He was cackling as he slammed into the ranks of ships, trying to get them to form a file so he could burn them in one breath.
"The first lens is set!" an artificer shouted, locking the curved quartz into the base of the cannon barrel, and Orion turned his attention back to the more pressing matter at hand.