Diya had been prepared to receive a cantankerous welcome from Old Quin, perhaps a shouted curse, perhaps a kettle flung in their direction. Instead, his workshop offered only absence. No copper pipes sighing with steam, no glow of oil lamps through fractured glass. Just stillness, heavy and wrong.

  The hearth was cold, the rafters bare. Shelves stocked with all manner of reagents glimmered in the flickering light of their lanterns. They entered quietly, and with an apprehensive nod split up to search the shop.

  A quick examination revealed nothing too unexpected. The place was in decent shape, or well, as much as a workshop built in the ruins of an ancient city could be.

  Tamsin sifted through the cluttered desk, papers and tomes spilling in every direction, until her eyes caught on an unremarkable piece of parchment. She traced its surface with a gloved finger, interest sparking.

  “What’s it say?” Diya asked. When no answer came, she leaned over, only to be confronted by a page of inky blue symbols, jagged and curling in a language she couldn’t read.

  Her jaw tightened. Of course. Another locked door her mind couldn’t open. She cursed her township’s damned isolationism, and the way it had left her blind to the wider world.

  “It’s a letter stating that his requested reagents were ready to be picked up from the farm.” Tamsin said.

  A cramp of concern gripped Diya, “do you think he was there during the Skarlith raid?”

  Tamsin’s eyes scanned the letter until she found the detail she was searching for, the date. She crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it into the cold, unlit hearth, then barked a curse in the language Diya couldn’t understand, something about swearing transcended language.

  The silence pressed in around them. Without Old Quin, the task ahead was theirs alone.

  After allowing themselves a few minutes to wallow in self-doubt, they shrugged it off, accepting that their mission was solely in their calloused hands.

  Diya pinned her hair back and turned into a tornado raging through the workshop, snatching reagents from the shelves like they might expire at any second. The way Tamsin watched her made it clear that she doubted Diya’s capabilities. It didn’t matter to her, she often did her best work in the absence of belief.

  Trundling over to the desk with arms full of Quin’s reagents, Diya shot her acquaintance a dirty look before dumping her selections on the workbench. “No need to help, I’ve got it.”

  A pouch of cindersoot, jars full of murky liquid with odds and ends floating in them, dried stonemoss, vials of resin clouded with age. Diya and Tamsin pushed the Skarlith captive in a stout oak chair and tied him to it, taking extra care to ensure each knot was tight.

  Once he was well secured, Diya took each reagent one at a time and waved it in front of his black eyes, then touched it to his skin.

  The first seven reagents drew no reaction at all. With each failed test, she could feel Tamsin’s judgmental gaze heavier upon her. Sweat beaded at her brow, the waves of self-doubt threatening to pull her under again.

  A reassuring coo came from the corner where Shikra rested by the hearth.

  Diya looked affectionately towards her partner and wiped her brow. Her gloved hands scooped up the spongy stonemoss and rolled it between her fingers. When she held it out towards her test subject, it became visibly uncomfortable.

  The Skarlith hissed the stonemass as though recognizing some ancient enemy.

  “See that?” Diya said, a grin creasing her lips. “It appears that it doesn’t like the stonemoss.”

  “Then that’s our starting point.”

  ***

  Her first bomb was crude—powdered stonemoss mixed with cindersoot, then wrapped in moth-bitten cloth, stuffed into a ceramic jar, fuse then jammed in like an afterthought.

  They found a space down a moss-covered stone stairwell that might have once been a storage cellar. After clearing all the debris from the center of the cellar, they moved their test subject into the space. There it sat, no longer hissing or trying to free itself. The stillness it had adopted was far more unsettling to Diya, it felt utterly unnatural. It’s six black eyes watched them emotionlessly. The eeriness of it bothered her enough that she ripped off a piece of a ragged curtain and blindfolded the creature.

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  Once ready for their first test, Diya placed the ceramic jar next to their test subject, then gripped a torch in one hand and the fuse in the other. She took a deep breath before nodding to Tamsin who watched from the stairwell.

  Flame touched the fuse and Diya dashed up the stairs like she had no idea what might happen next, and perhaps she didn’t know all too well. Afterall, science was all about iteration.

  After a moment there came a small pop from the cellar followed by a sputtering, then thick white smoke wafted up the stairwell.

  Diya donned a gasmask and stepped down into the cellar. She tiptoed towards the test subject, plumes of smoke clouding her vision. Once she got close enough to see it, there sat the Skarlith, however rather than reeling in agony, it merely twitched its antennae.

  Stomping up the stairs with irritation, Diya spat soot onto the floor. “Second time’s the charm...”

  ***

  Hours passed. She tried mixing stonemoss with sulfur powder, the result: sparks, fire, and one ruined workbench. They tried mixing the stonemoss with various preserved odds and ends, the results: nothing more than variations of stinking tar that stuck to everything but the Skarlith, never producing any reaction from it.

  They had learned that the Skarlith likely had no sense of smell, because while they were disgusted by the odor, their captive wasn’t bothered in the slightest.

  With each failure, the creature sat unflinching as though mocking them with its stillness.

  Tamsin wiped ash from her cheek, then blood from a shallow cut staining her sleeve. “We’re going in circles.”

  “Circles are fine,” Diya said, grinding more stonemoss with the mortar. “As long as the circle gets smaller each time.”

  “Is it getting smaller? Or is it like a rip in your favorite garment growing larger each day until you have no choice but to throw it out?”

  Diya stopped grinding the stonemoss and stared over at Tamsin. “I can do this.”

  Tamsin stoically paced back and forth, not so much as acknowledging the affirmation. Each step pushing her closer to the edge. “You have no idea how desperately I need you to be right.”

  “We are going to figure this thing out.”

  Without warning Tamsin fell to her knees and began sobbing. “I’m such an idiot! He bent me to his will like clay and I was too dumb to even notice. And now I’ve tied every last ounce of my worth to a prophecy I’m not sure I even believe in…”

  “Whoa…i-it’s going to be o-okay,” Diya stuttered, glancing around anxiously. “You are worth so much more than what you’ve been conditioned to believe.”

  “I wanted so badly to be important and valued by my family that I leapt at the opportunity.” Still, her tears poured down her face. “My mother was finally going to be proud of me once I found the one foretold by the prophecy. And now she’s dead. I was absent in her final months. Searching for something that might not even be material.”

  Diya blinked, mouth agape. “Okay, that’s a…lot to unpack. I don’t know that I fully understand…but your feelings are valid. Despite what you think, I’m sure you have always been important and valued by your family. And if not, then that’s their loss because from what I’ve seen you might just be the most incredible person I’ve ever met, Tamsin.”

  Between heavy breaths, she wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up. “Do you really think so?”

  Diya crouched down so that she was face to face with her, wiped her tears and stared into her misty eyes. “I do. You saved me from a life in prison, or quite possibly execution. You showed me the surface, a new world that I was raised to believe inhospitable. You fought for me to get a chance to learn the power that might save my people. Oh, and I watched you seriously kick ass with those maces, that’s got to be worth something.”

  Tamsin beamed, lantern light glistening in her eyes, then she leaned in and kissed Diya. She pulled away ever so slightly, clearly surprised, but then pulled Tamsin closer and kissed her back.

  They held each other tightly, afraid that if either spoke that the moment might vanish. Eventually, Tamsin cheek pressed warmly against Diya’s neck whispered, “We are going to figure this thing out.”

  ***

  They worked late into the night, sharing stories with each other and with a fresh determination to find a concoction that worked. They were on their twenty-third iteration, having tried everything logical at this point and pushing into the borderline absurd.

  Diya sat at the workbench mortar full of ground stonemoss watching Tamsin as she plucked reagents from the shelves and held them up, only for Diya to shake her head time and time again.

  Tamsin held up a taxidermized squirrel wearing a tiny hat, and they shared a laugh. Next, she held up a jar of fluid in which a shriveled turnip with a face drawn on it floated glumly. They shared a look of surprise then fell on the ground roaring with laughter.

  “Old Quin must have gotten a bit bored from time to time, eh?” Diya chuckled.

  After making a pot of chai tea, the two huddled over the workbench, drained of ideas, nearly ready to call it quits and go to bed. It was late and the caffeine was all that was keeping them awake, but even that was fading.

  Tamsin felt her eyelids getting heavy and she nodded off, then was snapped back awake by the sound of her tea cup shattering on the workbench. Without thinking she tried to scoop up the fractured pieces, slicing her palm. Her blood dripped into the stonemoss mixture. The reagents hissed as if whirring to life, the smoke that rose from the bowl shimmering faint violet.

  “Careful,” Diya said, then noticed the plum hued smoke and leaned closer.

  “Magic needs sacrifice,” Tamsin whispered, eyes intent. “Even borrowed sacrifice.”

  They shared a look of wonder and Diya immediately began tamping the mixture into a ceramic sphere. They rushed to the cellar, donned gas masks, and Diya lit the fuse.

  Her heart beat like a drum in her chest as she chased Tamsin up the overgrown stairs.

  From the workshop above, the explosion wasn’t much more than a small, muted whump.

  But then Violet smoke cascaded up the stairwell. The Skarlith who sat unaffected all day suddenly shrieked. They ran back down the stairs where they saw it thrashing about, legs jerking in an arrhythmic panic. Its antennae thrashed like broken whips, and then it collapsed, shaking weakly against its bonds.

  Tamsin’s tired eyes widened and she wrapped her arms around her friend. “We did it...”

  Diya’s grin was sharp and tired. “We’ve got our weapon.”