A wail sounded from the bushes until another magic bolt from Cormac silenced it. He carefully scanned the forest around him for other targets.

  Luke whipped his head around, expecting to see monsters ambushing him. He had seen half of a monster arm fall from the bushes as Cormac’s attack hit. It was large and furred with long claws.

  Shepard and the other pilots were calmer than Luke, but still put their backs to each other and kept a vigilant watch. Luke had already forgotten the other three men’s names. One of them pointed to the trees above them and shouted, “Target west, in the tree!”

  A wolf monster was using its long claws to dig into the bark of the tall redwood-like tree nearby. It had a H. R. Giger vibe in the way it moved around the tree trunk. Once it saw it had been spotted, it leapt towards the humans, flying through the air like a rocket.

  Once he heard the yell, Cormac spun and pointed his finger at the strange wolf. Another ball of mana appeared and condensed in an instant. He sniped the monster out of the air, the attack coring the monster end to end.

  The former navy men jumped out of the way and the corpse tumbled to the ground where they had been standing.

  Luke got his first real look at their attackers. The monster had long soft fur and two pointed ears. It looked remarkably like a wolf, with a tail and everything. The limbs were where that comparison fell apart. The legs were triple jointed and thickly muscled. The claws on the end of the paws were over nine inches long and serrated.

  The six of them stood there in silence while they waited for another attack. None came. Eventually Cormac started walking and the rest of them followed.

  It took a bit for Luke to calm down. If they hadn’t seen the ambush, people could have died. He had trained not to panic when he was in the National Guard, but now that the danger was past, he felt all the stuttering emotions wash through him. Relief and anxiety took turns over and over again until he had control of himself again.

  Luke caught up with Cormac and said, “Thank you for saving us. That was some impressive magic. Are you a wizard of some sort?”

  Cormac chuckled softly. “No, my class is a simple force manipulation one, it’s called Mana Maestro. It allows me to manipulate liquid mana with rhythmic force vibrations. If you thought that was impressive, just wait until I have the chance to set up a symphony.”

  “Symphony, like music? Do you play music with mana?”

  “In the most destructive sense of the word, yes.” Cormac stared down at him. “This is of course covered by your secrecy oath.”

  Luke nodded but said nothing. Another reference to an oath that he should have taken two days ago. Apparently he had slipped through the cracks. He had no intention of spilling secrets, but even less inclination to be magically bound to keep them. He would be happy to let everyone assume he had taken the oath.

  There was one more monster attack along the route before they reached the estate/village of Bona Urbo. Cormac frowned and looked contemplative after the third wolf monster.

  As they walked up to the village walls, the nearby dwarves’ attention was drawn towards the city center. Everyone moved to look that direction as one. A hover cart was heading down the main road and would pass them soon. It was a large hexagon shaped silver cart that hovered three feet above the ground. There were hexagon windows on each face and Luke thought he could see a single person sitting in the middle.

  As the cart drew close to people, they fell to their knees, creating a wave of obeisance as it hovered through the village. The ornate decorations on the outside of the cart sparkled in the early morning sunbeams. There were three guards ahead and three behind, their own armor the same color as the cart.

  Cormac muttered in English. “Kneel down, fists on the ground.”

  Luke immediately bristled at the command. He didn’t want to kneel in the dirt for some two-bit dictator. The other four men hurried to obey. Luke realized if he made a stink about it, they would probably get in trouble too. Reluctantly, Luke got to his knees and put his fists down.

  The hover cart stopped in front of Cormac, who hadn’t knelt. The window nearest him opened up and an elf wearing an eyepatch had a quiet conversation with Cormac. The orc gave him jazz hands and the cart sped away.

  As soon as the metal cart was on its way, Cormac gestured to them to stand. The six of them quickly walked to the runewright’s shop. Luke noticed that the orc didn’t come inside today either.

  After the guys had suited up in their mech armor, Cormac addressed Shepard. “We likely have Hive Wolves nearby. I ordered the warriors at the Shrine of Might to take care of them three days ago, but they clearly haven’t. I want you to do a circular sweep around the city and then meet me at the training camp after you have completed a full rotation.”

  “Yes, sir!” Shepard said with a salute. He dropped his suit’s visor and jogged away.

  The longer legs of the combat mechs meant that they quickly disappeared down the road south. Cormac walked north with an angry look on his face.

  Luke had stood off to the side while they hurried about, and now he walked into the runewright shop. Kruro was in her usual place in the center of the room. She was bent over a shield atop her obsidian workbench. Without looking up, she grabbed something wriggling from a bowl on the bench and gulped it down.

  She glanced up as he walked in. In elvish she said, “Welcome back. Interesting leg. Will you have a new one every day?”

  Luke shook his head. “No, this is just my running leg. I normally use the one you saw yesterday, but this one has better shock absorption for longer runs.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  While his cell phone translated that into elvish, he walked to the back of the room. Kruro had finished the two mech suits he had worked on two days ago, but there were two more in need of repair. He dropped his backpack on the workbench and took out his other prostetic.

  “May I look at your walking leg? I am assuming you made it yourself?” Kruro asked.

  Luke unzipped his bag and handed his runed leg over. “Yes, I made it. I just used the same runes you used for the power loaders. Although, after you teach me the Adept Agility rune, I’ll probably re-work it.”

  Kruro hovered her scaled hand over the runes, inspecting them one at a time. “This is good work. You miniaturized the vastigi rune while keeping the agon rune’s throughput high. You probably would have gained a silver runewright class if you had constructed this during your system assessment.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t though. I have set my sights higher. I want to design and build my own magic mech combat suit. Something more than just a copy of your design. I figure that should be a feat good enough for the system to give me a gold runewright class.”

  “Perhaps. The system does not always give you the class you expect, it could give you a tinkerer or armorer class instead. The greater your feat, the better the resulting class. To temper your expectations, my own class is silver ranked. And even that is considered a valuable class.”

  “I plan on creating the greatest magic mech that either world has ever seen. It’s gold all the way for me.”

  She laughed and said, “I would be glad to see it. But today you must work on simple repairs. Perhaps I can teach you the Adept Agility rune once the repairs are complete.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Luke said with an eager grin.

  He took his leg back from Kruro and swapped it out. Then he pulled a broken mech onto the workbench and got to work. A strange feeling washed over him as the day wore on. It was one he was entirely unused to.

  Job satisfaction.

  He liked working on the mech suits and he had his own plans to look forward to. It was going to be hard to only work every other day at this job. It was a strange realization. The day flowed by, like a swift stream through a meadow.

  As promised, once he finished all the repairs he could do himself, Kruro took a break from her work and taught him the Adept Agility rune.

  “This rune is two steps higher than the Novice Agility rune you already know. Do not be discouraged if it takes longer to learn it. The first difference you will notice is that the linking symbols are radially distributed instead of along the center core.” Kruro pointed at the edges of the rune.

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  She continued, “The difficult part will be the center eight. You need to infuse it with the concepts of smooth speed and effortless dexterity in addition to the standard agility. Focus on your mental construct before you touch your inscriber. I used to visualize the rune in action before I got my class.”

  “You don’t have to visualize runes anymore?”

  “No, the Runewright class covers most of that. My intent is mostly instinctual at this point, and my dexterity stat is enhanced when carving runes. It’s the only way I can create the tiny runes modern enchanted objects require,” she said and looked away. Her tail started slowly waving.

  Luke wanted to ask her dozens more questions about her magic class, the one he was shooting for, but he could tell she was losing interest in talking with him. He asked a few clarifying questions and then got to work.

  He traced out the rune on paper with a pen a dozen times before he made his first attempt. Like she said, it was important to focus on the mental image when inscribing, so he had to get comfortable enough with the rune’s shape that he didn’t have to focus on it.

  When it was time to try, he walked over to the mech he had just repaired. Kruro had scraped off the shoulder agility rune so he could practice. He wished that he could practice on something less important, but this was the only way he could tell if his links to the other runes were working correctly.

  He took a deep breath and placed his inscriber on the chitin pauldron. He poured his focus into the advanced intent and imagined the best agility he could think of. Smooth speed, effortless dexterity, agility. He also had to keep in mind the placement of the other Adept Agility runes so the linking symbols would work. He didn’t let his concentration falter the entire time until he was done with the rune. He took a step back and waited. The rune stayed dark.

  He had failed.

  It was a predictable result, but was still disappointing. He took a deep breath and recentered himself. Then he scraped off the top layer of chitin and tried again. He would have two or three more tries before there was a danger of compromising the material. He would have to create an all new pauldron if he failed too many times.

  This time he tried to hold the inscriber looser and carve with smoother strokes. He imagined he already had the agility the rune was supposed to impart. His intent was clear, his lines even.

  To his surprise, the rune started softly glowing. It had worked. He excitedly called Kruro over to confirm.

  She carefully inspected it and grunted out, “Good job. Now do it again. Replace all the agility runes on both suits of armor.”

  She dropped the mech and slithered away. Luke could tell she was a bit mad at him. Probably for succeeding so quickly. He smiled to himself. It wasn’t his fault he was good at this. Humans were naturally good at the spatial reasoning needed to link unseen runes.

  He quickly finished her task and started work on his own project. He was going to make a magical mech so impressive that the system would have to give him the best runewright class it had.

  Cormac had promised that he could make his own mech suit after a week of work, but the assessment period would be over by then. He needed to get it done within the next few days. Forgiveness was better than permission in this case.

  He started with the mech’s front chest, the breastplate if this was a suit of armor. Kruro’s design had it split in half so it was easier to get in and out of the mech. That was a design flaw in Luke’s opinion. He created a single chest piece of mana infused steel backed by a layer of chitin. He put the hinges on the left for the steel and on the right for the chitin. That way the design was still balanced and the pilot would be protected.

  As planned, he put all of the runes on the inside of the armor. It would make repairing them more difficult, but if his design worked, he wouldn’t have to repair them in the first place. To that end, he also added double the amount of reinforcing runes Kruro used, making the mech more than bulletproof when powered by a mana core. By the time Shepard and the others arrived, Luke was halfway done with the torso.

  More good news, the mechs they were using were unharmed. Luke would have the next work day to himself for crafting. The pilots weren’t as enthused. They hadn’t found the Hive Wolves they had been expecting and that made Cormac angry.

  Luke didn’t let it get him down. He was in a fantastic mood as they jogged back to the portal. His day got even better as he made it back to Earth.

  His phone buzzed again and again. People had been trying to get ahold of him while he was across the universe. Allen had sent him several different memes. He would respond later. First he was going to text back to someone else. Vanessa had texted him and mentioned she was back to day shifts now. She said she wanted to chat sometime. Looks like he was going to get that date with her after all.

  Today’s chapter title comes from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012).

  I believe the line is an homage to JRR Tolkien's exchange with his editor about the correct spelling of dwarves. The editor thought it should be dwarfs, and Tolkien's like, bitch, I wrote the dictionary, it's dwarves.