Timeline
Innovation of the Lowered
[2,504]
The Epimelitis strode down the corridor. Her coppery scales glistened every time the dim glow from the artificial ocean lights touched her through a window she passed. Skin-tight dark clothes hugged her figure from neck to toe, shrouded only by a long coat in a similar shade to her copper skin. Compared to the other workers that rushed around her, she looked regal. Yet her powerful stride and the emerald thunder in her eyes made certain that others passed her without stopping.
"Good evening, Epimelitis," a young velen man said. He seemed pleasant but sweat already began beading on his forehead at the sight of her face. He clutched the bundle of rifles in his arms a little tighter as he stepped around her. She nodded to him and tried a smile, but it must have echoed her mood because he fled quickly. She sighed as she turned the corner.
When she was sure that she was out of sight, she massaged her temples. She was not as young as the other velen that ran about the armories, but she had taken on the responsibilities of Epimelitis well according to her predecessor. Since the trouble with the ophids, however, it felt like all she was doing was chasing down children to remind them to do their chores. And she was about to deal with the worst.
Deniisis Perfide had been commissioned by Prince Caput himself to craft a weapon capable of incapacitating a wicker worm without killing it. A gargantuan task to be sure, yet within half an hour of working with Perfide, the master gunsmith of the imperial armory had stormed out, refusing to tolerate him! That had been in the morning. Since then, Deniisis had been working alone and without incident. For around half a day. Given a man of his reputation, that was certainly suspicious. That was why she was in a hurry.
The smell of ironworks hit her nose before she even arrived at the master forge. The scent of burning grew as she navigated the wide corridors. As she approached the large metal doors, she almost regretted wearing such thick clothes. It was necessary, so far beneath the ocean’s surface. The lack of sunlight made every day cold. In that regard, the weaponsmiths and engineers were fortunate.
The Epimelitis heaved the great doors open. They made a loud rumbling sound as they shifted, but not a hint of a creak. Her forges were very well maintained.
As soon as there was space, the copper-scaled pelagian was hit with a wave of heat and smoke. Her nose wrinkled at the overwhelming scent; an amalgamation of metallurgy and the spiciness of conditus folium. She wafted the smoke out of her face and cast her green glare around the forge.
Inside, the room was as big as a hall, with huge pieces of machinery placed throughout. Anvils and presses, templates and smelters, everything a weaponsmith could want was there. And there was so much room that every piece of equipment could have six people surrounding it without the place feeling crowded. Artificial lights on the high ceiling reflected off the cold, white floor, ensuring the room was well-illuminated for as long as they were lit.
In her search for the gunsmith, the Epimelitis found a mess that she never would have allowed from her craftsmen. An almost empty bottle of whiskey on one of the workbenches, scrunched up sheets of paper and cigarette butts discarded at random. The long heel of her boot almost caused her to topple over when it caught the case of a bullet that had been left on the floor! Fortunately, the noise of her stagger brought Deni’s attention.
His attire left little to the imagination. He was naked aside from the tight teal shorts that stopped halfway down his thighs. That made his pasty white scales and the blue flecks dotted about his skin difficult to miss. Sweat and oil covered his forehead as well as his arms. At the sight of her, he grabbed a nearby towel and wiped himself down.
“Do I know you?” he asked. The copper-scaled woman found it difficult to quell her frustration. But she managed it.
“I am Epimelitis Midilia,” she responded in a clear, well-spoken tone. “We met this morning. I showed you to this very room. Do you not remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Deni groaned. She thought she saw him roll his eyes. “I’m just having some fun.”
“I’m here for a progress report,” Midilia continued. The gunsmith threw his towel onto the same bench as the bottle of whiskey, almost knocking it over.
“Of course you are.”
For a long moment, Midilia watched as he lined a narrow sheet of paper with shredded leaves. He licked along the edge of the paper and rolled it into a cylinder before the two velen locked eyes. A storm of green and a blizzard of blue. Just when it seemed like the two might come to blows, Deni shrugged.
“Alright,” he said in a relaxed tone. “I’ll give you a progress report. Follow me.”
The pale gunsmith traversed the forge as if he had lived there his whole life. He came to a table full of scrunched up pieces of paper and varying bullets of different sizes.
"I know it's unusual, but I started with the size of the round. From my own experience, the wicker worms have thick, slippery skin. So we needed something big enough to pierce it and with enough space to store the tranquiliser, but not so big that it needs a chunk of artillery to be fired out of."
The Epimelitis watched carefully as he pulled a bullet from the table. A little bigger than a basilisks tooth, it looked slim, streamlined.
"That looks like a sniper round," Midilia commented, "but it would never fit in any rifle I have seen."
Deni placed the bullet down and wandered over to a furnace that crackled with dying heat. His webbed fingers leaned the roll of paper into the crackling furnace for a second. The cigarette came out lit and went between Deni's lips.
"That's why I'm building a rifle that nobody has seen."
As the pelagian took a deep drag of his cigarette, he nodded toward the far wall. Midilia turned and saw a long cylinder lying across a bench. She immediately strode towards it. As she grew nearer, she barked a laugh.
"This is it? What is it?"
"A pipe," Deni replied simply. The coppery quartermaster spun to stare at him. "Well, it was crafted after a pipe"
After exhaling a cloud of smoke, he chose to elaborate.
"None of the templates fit my criteria and I started to lose my inspiration. So I went for a walk, saw an old drain pipe just lying there in the disposal heap. Looked about the right size, so I hauled it here to use as a template."
Midilia shook her head. He was mad, using an old drain pipe to make a barrel wide enough for the new ammunition. But it was certainly innovative.
"Just need to get the little bits. Trigger, hammer, haven't decided on the sight yet."
"I see," the Epimelitis replied with a nod. When she didn't move for the door, Deni turned his back on her and pulled some large gloves over his hands, stretching them over his forearms. He grabbed a pair of tongs and used them to grasp something out of one of the forging templates.
Midilia lingered for a few moments. There was something about his accent that seemed familiar. An unimportant detail. She turned to leave. The click of her heeled boots on stone sounded three times before his voice made her stop.
"You hesitated," Deni said suddenly. He placed whatever the tongs were holding into a barrel of liquid, producing a sizzle. "What do you want to say to me? Be honest now. I don’t offend easily."
Midilia turned slowly and spoke to the back of his head.
"You're not what I expected," she said with a sigh, as if relaxing her shoulders for the first time of the day. "The drugs, the alcohol, the mess, of course, but after Salen walked out this morning, I thought you would appear less… civil."
Deni laughed.
"The old guy? I have no doubt he's a great gunsmith. His style is too methodical though. He walked out because of the mess I made. Said I worked like a… what was it? A 'primitive gunrunner from Aridus'?"
The copper-scaled velen allowed herself a smile while Deni was busy handling hot metal components with the tongs. That sounded like something Salen would say.
"I'm sure you've heard a lot about me," Deni said with a strained voice. "A man who only drinks, smokes, fights and fucks. I bet you were expecting me to make some objectifying comment as soon as I laid eyes upon you."
The pale velen's head turned so his blue eyes could stare at her for a moment. They angled down to the ground and then back up again.
"Don't worry, it's not your age. Normally I’d be eye-humping those A-grade knockers like you were the last woman on Araevis, but my current predicament has left me rather flaccid.”
It wasn’t the words that shocked Midilia. It was the nonchalant attitude. He was speaking so matter-of-factly, as if he was telling her that water was wet. She should have shouted him down for speaking to her in such a manner! But that accent still bothered her. It sounded like somebody she knew. Perhaps she should keep him talking. After all, her shift had finished. There was nowhere she needed to be immediately.
“Your predicament?” She inquired. “Have you not recovered from your concussion?”
“That?” Deni laughed as he put down the tongs and began removing the gloves. “Oh, that never bothered me. Walked it off. Wasn’t the first, won’t be the last. But I’m so glad you asked.”
He walked over to the forging press, a tall chunk of metal suspended over a metal board with various templates below.
“You might want to sit down, make yourself comfortable. This is going to take a while.”
Midilia remained standing, back as straight as ever. In that pose she was taller than him and that fact satisfied her. The forging press slammed down at the shift of a lever, leaving a ringing in both of their ears.
“You see I met a woman. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I do meet loads of women. But this one’s special. We were both in a shit-hot mess and while an ordinary romance could never last for me, we just… hit it off. Can’t endanger someone if we’re in the same danger already, right? Anyway, I stayed loyal to her. Longer than I’ve been loyal in my whole Vis-forsaken life!”
Deni continued to ramble while he grabbed the long barrel of the weapon he was crafting and began to fix parts to it using a screwdriver. At some point, the Epimelitis had sat down on one of the benches.
“...came back from Arctoa, but I wasn’t the same. Don’t think either of us were. She can teleport to and from Natum at random and I cheated on her in Infernalis.”
Midilia’s emerald eyes snapped to him.
“What?”
Deni groaned.
“Weren’t you listening? I got dragged through a portal into a pocket dimension of Infernalis where I met many gorgeous beings and fucked one of them! I eventually told her, but we haven’t really spoken since. I think she’s avoiding me and our friend Aeria is by her side constantly with her new piece, Dante. I’m glad they’re looking out for her.”
Midilia snorted. He didn’t sound glad. He sounded like a child.
“You feel isolated.”
Deni’s blue eyes glared right back at the copper-scaled woman. After a deep sigh, he alleviated his gaze and his shoulders sank.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “It’s no less than I deserve, for sure. I’m hoping she’ll come back around and I can make it up to her somehow, but it’s not my place to force something, not after what I’ve done.”
The pale velen dragged a smile onto his face as he waved his screwdriver around.
“In the meantime, I can work on this. And smoke. And drink until I pass out.”
Once the remaining parts had cooled, Deni began to place them on the huge rifle. For a while they were both silent. The Epimelitis took her heeled boots off and massaged the back of her feet.
“”So… Natum? Infernalis? Those were metaphors for some horrors you both endured?”
Deni chuckled deeply.
“Perhaps.”
“The South,” Midilia said suddenly. “You’ve clearly been away from the Empire for a significant amount of time, yet something in your voice reminds me of the southern territories.”
Deni’s bloodshot eyes stared at her for a moment. He didn’t seem happy at her revelation.
“You’ve got a good aim,” he said carefully, resuming his tweaking of the large gun. “I suppose I should have expected that from someone used to staring at weapons all day. Vallo Caerulo.”
Midilia’s laugh was sharp, until she cut it off suddenly, her green eyes wide with astonishment.
“You’re from the Azure Trench?” She gasped. “Huge private estates owned by entrepreneurs and nobles? Whatever happened to you?”
Deni smirked mirthlessly.
“I’m afraid that’s a story for another time. It’s about complete.”
Whilst it was leaning against the wall, the rifle looked more suited to being mounted on a small airship than wielded by a person.
“It will probably require two people to use. One to load and fire, another to aim. Not sure if it’ll work yet, but I’ve done the best that I can.”
Deni grabbed the bottle of whiskey and took a hearty swig. Midilia placed her shoes back on and stood.
“You are not at all what I expected, Deniisis Perfide.” She offered her hand. Deni shrugged and then shook it.
“I appreciate your company. I get more done when I have somebody else to listen to my antics.”
With that she smiled, nodded deeply and walked away.
He knows I wasn’t here for a progress report, Midilia thought to herself, and he picked up on insecurities about my age. Even in me he sought a weakness to be exploited. He is a sharp one.
“Keep your chin up,” Deni said suddenly. “You'll find someone who would love to see those A-grade knockers up close."
She couldn’t help but smile on her way out of the forge. Even in his miserable state, spending time with him had made her feel more carefree than she had in weeks.
And he knows exactly what to say to make a person feel comfortable around him, not to mention his accolades in battle. He’s dangerous. Perhaps worth keeping an eye on.