'This is insane,' I told Anthelion. 'They saw what I did to Dylin. Do they want me to again do it?'

'Can you not do the same thing but... less?'

'No!' I complained, throwing my hands up in frustration. 'We... need to discuss... this.'

I gestured at the weapons I had laid out on the pallet. I was sitting next to them, while Anthelion had pulled up a stool for us to discuss Gethlyn's plan and why it was insane.

'This,' I said, starting with the Glock, 'is a pistol.'

'Pistol,' Anthelion repeated.

'This is a carbine. This... is a rifle.'

'Riy'fl. Car...bine.'

I pulled out the pistol's magazine and I saw Anthelion's eyes widen with interest, which only grew more intense as I popped out a nine millimetre round.

'This is the magic,' I said. 'This goes bang. This part goes out, very, very fast.'

I handed him the round and he turned it over between his fingers, peering at it. Confused creased his brow.

'How does it go bang?'

'Chemistry.'

'Ke'mis ri?'

'Magic,' I shrugged. 'I don't do the magic. The magic is already in here.'

'I could do this?'

'Yes,' I agreed. 'To make it go bang is very easy. But -'

I held up a hand to forestall his next question.

'To make it go bang right is very hard. I have done this a hundred, hundred times. More.

'But I only have two twelves of these.'

I tapped the round in his hand then, gently, retrieved it and put it back in the magazine before returning the mag to the pistol.

'Two twelve bangs,' I explained, gripping the pistol by its barrel and swinging it gently. 'Then this is a fancy hammer.'

I picked up the carbine.

'This has bigger bangs. More nasty. Goes further. I have three ten bangs. No, two twelve and five, now, because there's one in Dilyn.'

'Can we get it back?' Anthelion asked, grasping the problem as quickly as I had hoped he would.

'No,' I told him. 'Bang, then gone.'

I put it back down and picked up the ASVK.

'This will kill a person,' I said, patting the pistol, then the carbine. 'This might kill a monster. Maybe. But this...'

I hefted the massive length of the rifle, popped off its magazine and showed him the size of the rounds. His eyes widened at the difference in size between the pistol rounds and the monstrous 12.7mm rounds of the ASVK.

'This might kill a dragon.'

'How many of those do you have?' he asked.

'Four.'

'I see,' he muttered, looking at the magazine as I refitted it and zipped the rifle back into its weather bag.

'In my world, I am a paladin of this weapon.'

'The best?' he asked. I hesitated.

'...No,' I admitted. 'But I am very, very good. I made many hundreds of bangs with this magic. I killed many bad people. Even some monsters.'

'Can we make more of the bangs?' he asked, hopefully.

I hesitated again. Not only was my command of the language not good enough to explain the chemistry, but my chemistry wasn't good enough to know the chemistry.

'In maybe a hundred hundred days,' I said. 'Maybe. Probably more.'

'If you fight Marlinya with these, she will die,' he went on, 'and we will have one fewer bangs for no gain.'

'And if I fight her without them,' I picked up the train of thought, 'I will die and you will run out of bangs before you can use these to kill a dragon.'

'We need to tell Gethlyn,' sighed Anthelion.

***

'Tell us how to make this magic!' Gethlyn demanded, when Anthelion tried to explain. He towered over my modest five foot nine, but better men than him had tried to intimidate me with less success.

'I don't know,' I insisted. 'I'm a soldier. Can you make a sword?'

'Blacksmiths make swords!'

'And I don't make magic.'

He turned on Anthelion in irritation.

'If you can't make this magic, wizard, your summoned man is useless to me,' he complained, angrily. 'I will turn this pistol over to the smiths and they will reproduce it. You will learn the magic of the metal seeds.'

'But Ryan has the tools to kill Gazenthlion, Master!' Anthelion tried to argue, but as the words left his mouth, Gethlyn turned on the wizard so quickly I barely had time to grab the carbine off the table in front of us. He had Anthelion by the front of his robes and the head of the staff in the wizard's hand glowed bright blue.

'If either of you intends to use your magic upon me,' said Gethlyn in a low voice, tight with menace, 'do it now. But be sure that if you do not kill me in your first strike, I will end you both before you can make a second.'

I had to admit that, at this point, he was intimidating me like a contender for the Olympic gold in intimidation. I lowered the M4's barrel and, at the same time, the glow on Anthelion's staff returned to its usual dim ebb.

'I will make this as clear to you both as I possibly can and we will not discuss this again,' he said, in the same tone as before. 'Gazenthlion is mine to kill. You give me the tools to end her, and I end her. That is your role in this.'

Then he turned to me.

'There will be no duel with Marlinya. Instead, you will teach the wizard your magic by the end of ten days or I will hand you over to her in chains.'

***

We left the audience room with both of our pride having taken a serious beating, and made our way back to the gate of the keep in silence, each of us mulling over the consequences of what we'd been told.

On the up side, the threat of an imminent fight with the belligerent Marlinya had been removed but, on the other, so had my Glock. And we had been given an impossible task with an even more impossible deadline, under threat of what amounted to death, if my first encounter with Marlinya was anything to go by.

Then, as we reached the gate, a voice called out to us, quietly, and we turned to see the strange, squat gatekeeper, half hidden in shadow. He beckoned, nonchalantly.

'Gethlyn seeks glory at all costs,' he said as we drew closer.

'What do you want, Jorin?' asked Anthelion without any enthusiasm.

'Do you know the man in black?' he asked, a twitch at one corner of his mouth.

'What are you -?' I started, but Anthelion gripped my wrist, startling me into silence.

'He comes and goes. I saw him once,' he replied to the gatekeeper, whose name was apparently Jorin.

'He'd like to meet you,' said Jorin, going to the gate and opening it for our exit. As we passed him, he said very quietly: 'Tomorrow night, at the sign of the Tattered Lamb.'

As we walked away from the keep, back to Anthelion's tower, I waited for him to explain. But as he held his silence, I eventually prompted him.

'Who is the man in black?'

'I thought they were all gone,' he replied. 'I thought Gazenthlion's attacks had put an end to their network.'

'I don't understand,' I told him. It was a phrase I'd mastered quickly in our first lessons, but never had it been truer.

'The Thieves Guild is in the Citadel.'