“It’s not firing!” a panicked voice shouted, coming from one of the former ballista operators, now an engineer of the slingshot launcher.

  The second iteration slingshot launcher was connected to its triangular support platform, designed to receive recoil instead of blowing it all on the shooter’s face. Despite that, a string was attached to the trigger for a safer test run.

  Assembling the weapon together outside Shivenar’s walls had taken over thirty minutes, half of which were wasted on transport. The launcher looked complete—now with a barrel taller than Vivi, and with the enhancement string attached to the support platform. The final small piece of ether root was embedded into the barrel through a small hole, where it made contact with the missile inside. It was an imposing weapon, easily taller than Vivi and much sturdier than the old wooden ballistas.

  The stretch ropes themselves extended outside the barrel for more tension, connected to small bowstrings, similarly to the ballistas, though this time there were no torsion springs, as those would have been overkill. Cuts had been carved into the bottom of the barrel to allow the stretch ropes to extend inside the barrel. Vertical aim was adjusted with a lever that rotated the barrel up and down; lateral aim by simply lifting the platform and adjusting it manually.

  “The trigger is stuck!” Patryn called as he tried to pull the launch string. Nothing moved.

  Freyven gritted his teeth next to Vivi. “Did we make a mistake assembling it?”

  He walked closer to examine the weapon without fear. Patryn moved with him, while the others nervously watched. Vivi was amongst the latter group, biting her lip. A test run was expected to have problems, but they didn’t exactly have time for that.

  Everyone knew a monster was approaching. Vivi hadn’t told them what, but they knew the weapon had to be ready to fire now.

  From there, panicked troubleshooting began. Was the problem simply with the launch trigger, or was there a deeper problem somewhere in the barrel, preventing the stretch ropes from releasing energy? It didn’t help that an enhanced missile was still inside the barrel, waiting to be launched.

  The air around the front lines was heavy. The artillery slingshot launcher was surrounded by the team of first iteration handheld launchers, who shot the occasional wandering monsters before they could attack. Nobody spoke, but for Freyven and Patryn ordering commands.

  Five minutes later, Freyven walked up to Vivi and said, “The trigger mechanism has a flaw. A stupid design error. We made the latch firm to ensure it can pull the stretch ropes back reliably, but it turns out, the ropes generate enough force to lock the latch in place. Releasing it can’t be done with a string. And pulling it down by hand could be dangerous.”

  Vivi glanced at the design. The stretch ropes were pulled back, quite simply, by a hooked latch. The latch was designed to tilt downward, which would cause the ropes to be freed from the hook. Except the ropes pulled at the hook so hard that their energy fought back against the movement of tilting the latch downward.

  Vivi summoned her hammer. “I’ll handle this.”

  Freyven blinked, looking concerned. Vivi stepped past, onto the platform, where she filled herself with five thousand ether, and slammed her hammer down on the latch.

  An ear-piercing snap shut off her hearing, followed by utter violence.

  The platform underneath jolted upward, causing Vivi to stumble and nearly fall. A cloud of sand erupted underneath the platform, followed by a mild quake. The stretch ropes were ripped to pieces, and the trigger mechanism was an utter ruin, the latch having snapped in half.

  Slowly, the ringing in her ears calmed down and senses began to return as the shock of impact subsided. “Did it fire?” she asked.

  Everyone had their eyes ahead. The landscape had changed. The air looked more clear, fog having been pushed aside in a cylindrical radius where the barrel pointed. Sand beneath was pushed aside, forming a concave. Around the cylinder of clear air was a cloud of sand, where particles had been pushed to.

  “I… think it did,” Patryn responded, shocked. “I couldn’t see anything.”

  “It’s ready to shoot, then,” Vivi said. “Repair the stretch ropes!”

  Her command turned shock to action, and everyone got to work. Freyven and Patryn examined the damages of the launch mechanism, as well as the barrel to make sure it hadn’t deformed. The barrel looked good, but the launch mechanism was a ruin. Not only the hook, but the pulley system as well. Both would need to be fully rebuilt.

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  Without them, the stretch ropes would need to be pulled by hand, which would not only be dangerous, but unstable as well. Everyone immediately got to work replacing everything that broke. They had luckily prepared spare parts, having expected something like this to happen, though nobody believed the launch would be this violent.

  Ten minutes later, while the pulley system was still being rebuilt, Vivi sensed the ethereal aura in the distance. She froze.

  Calling it an aura didn’t do it justice. The feeling was pure hell. The behemoth wasn’t a monster. It was a force of nature on its way to destroy what Vivi called home.

  “Hurry!” Vivi shouted in a panic. “It’s coming!”

  Everyone was hurrying, and her command didn’t make them any faster. Freyven and Patryn scrambled to finish the contraption, while the stretch ropes were being attached.

  Every second from then on felt like a death sentence looming closer. The demons were starting to feel it now as well.

  Then the tip of its head became visible in the landscape, pointing behind a hill. Demons paused, spotting it. To Vivi’s left, one of the first iteration operators squinted, asking, “Is that hill growing in size?”

  His question didn’t need to be answered. The black tip rose, looming over the battlefield, its aura of red wisps clouding the battlefield. It must have still been two miles in the distance.

  A chill ran through Vivi’s spine, her body filling with ether. She summoned an inside-carved missile from spatial storage, as well as an anvil and her hammer. She summoned her small enhancement string—sharpness and flow—and added those through the strength and crush runes.

  Then she hit the missile with her hammer as hard as she could, pushing even more ether through the strength and crush runes. The missile glowed, filling to the brim with ether.

  The man next to Vivi lowered his weapon, eyes filled with terror as he stared at the behemoth.

  Vivi took the missile to the operators. “Arm it!” she called.

  In a rush, the demons loaded her missile into the barrel, pushing it in with a stick. It rested atop the loose stretch ropes. They pushed ether through the enhancement string.

  Patryn and Freyven were still working at the back of the weapon, attaching the pulley mechanism. It didn’t look even close to done.

  In the distance, the behemoth opened its mouth. Ether welled up within. A thorn vine was about to release.

  Vivi gritted her teeth. “Give me that!” she said, picking up the latch. She then manually attached the hook into all the stretch ropes, filled her legs with ether, and pulled. She pulled even further than the launch mechanism had for the previous test fire.

  The thorn vine released, growing and larger as it traveled directly at Vivi’s vision with the force of a crashing ethereal building.

  Vivi yelled out, and released the ropes.

  An explosion blew across her body, and her vision went black.

  ***

  A sharp grinding filled the room as the blade scraped against the sharpening stone. Its veins glimmered. The whole sword glimmered, still fresh from the forge. The hilt was attached with letters engraved onto the hilt.

  He ignored the deadly pains all over his body and lifted the sword for one last test.

  He transferred ether from his core, through his fingers, and through each and every rune on its grip, as well as through the hidden rune on the hilt itself.

  The sword glowed brighter. It did not snap in half.

  His masterpiece was complete.

  “Undre…” Thomas said. “Bring me my daughter.”

  “She is fighting on the front lines, Sir Runesmith,” the demon said.

  “Then bring this sword to her,” Thomas said, “and watch as she destroys what these storms have brought upon us.”

  ***

  Coshi wasn’t sure whether the shockwave came from the thorn brush or the artillery weapon. The impact forced her to close her eyes. She held a hand in front of her face, until the shockwave cleared.

  “Vivian!” she shouted.

  Opening her eyes, the first thing Coshi saw was the weapon on its platform—not in one piece, parts having fallen off by the force of launch, but still mostly whole. The second thing she saw was Vivian, lying on her back fifteen feet behind the weapon.

  The third, and most violent thing she saw, was the giant hole in the behemoth’s body.

  The thorn vine was crushed into bits, dropping limply on the ground and slowly disintegrating to ether. The missile had pushed right through, ripping through the entire thing, before making it to the behemoth itself, hitting the mound right in the middle. The hole was the size of a building, and the behemoth’s skin was buckled inward around it. A campfire of wisps burned, hundreds of thousands of wisps leaking out every second.

  Coshi was at a loss for words. That could have very well been a fatal wound. Not an instant one-shot, but the behemoth would most certainly die a slow death from that. Though, not before reaching Shivenar’s walls!

  “Vivi!” Coshi called again, rushing to her fallen body.

  The girl coughed, her body still flaring with ether. She pushed herself up, thankfully still alive. Squinting her eyes, Vivian immediately looked at the behemoth.

  “It’s still alive,” she whispered, as if speaking out her thoughts.

  Then she glanced at the missile launcher. It could be repaired, perhaps, but even Coshi knew that would take time. Almost everything except the barrel looked bent out of shape, including the platform itself, and the bowstrings, which had snapped alongside the stretch ropes. They wouldn’t be shooting a second time.

  The realization of that was settling in. The missile launcher had been incredibly powerful—enough so to create a likely fatal wound to a behemoth. But before that, the city would still fall.

  “Vivi!” someone called behind them.

  They turned their heads to see a noblewoman climbing the hill, accompanied by four bodyguards. Her name was Senith, if Coshi recalled. Spotting the behemoth, her eyes were wide, and she paused her run.

  “Senith?” Vivi asked. “What is it?”

  Shock remained on the woman’s face as she said, “Your grandpa’s sword is complete. He requested to bring it to you.”

  She signaled to one of the men, who delivered the most insane runesword Coshi had ever seen.

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