Chapter 28

  Preparing for the Next Fight

  Luna’s gaze lingered on him, sharp and searching, before she finally spoke.

  “That… whatever that was—you moved like the old generals in the Greenwood war-stories. If you can fight like that… can you teach my people?”

  Lux’s jaw tightened. “I could… but it’d be better if we had guns.”

  Her brows knit together. “Guns? What’s that?”

  He let out a short breath, looking toward the forest as if picturing something far away.

  “They’re weapons from my world—metal tools that fire small pieces of lead faster than the eye can follow. You point, you squeeze a trigger, and at the other end… someone drops before they can get close. No bows to draw, no blades to swing. They’re… the equalizer. One person with a rifle can hold off ten if they know what they’re doing.”

  Luna’s expression was unreadable, though her eyes glinted with curiosity and wariness. “And you know how to make these… guns?”

  Lux shook his head. “Not from scratch. I can strip one down, repair it, fire it with deadly accuracy—but building one? That takes tools, metal, powder… and a place safe enough to work.” He looked back at her, voice dropping. “If I had guns here, Luna, this fight we’re in… it’d be over before it really started.”

  Luna’s head tilted slightly, her voice soft but intent.

  “Could you… sketch them? These guns. Even if you can’t build one here… maybe someone could.”

  Lux hesitated, eyes narrowing as he weighed the idea. “Yeah… I could draw out the basics—different types, what parts they’d need, how they fit together. But…” He tapped his temple. “The more I try to pull it from memory, the more I realize it’s not all here yet. I can give you enough to understand the shape and the function, but not the fine details that make them work flawlessly.”

  She stepped a little closer, lowering her voice. “Then give me the shape and function. If we can’t have your guns now, maybe one day we can. Greenwood’s forges aren’t dead forever.”

  Lux gave a faint smirk. “Alright, Princess… I’ll get you your sketches. But if someone does figure out how to make them, promise me one thing—” He locked eyes with her. “—we only put them in the hands of people who’ll use them to protect, not to become the next Baron Blackwood.”

  Her answer came without hesitation. “You have my word.”

  Lux was still crouched over a flat plank, using a piece of charcoal to scratch out the rough profile of a rifle when a shadow fell over him.

  Garrick crouched down beside him, squinting at the strange sketch. “That… doesn’t look like any crossbow I’ve ever seen.”

  “It’s not,” Lux said without looking up. “This is a weapon from wherei come from. A gun. You load these—” he tapped a small rectangle near the middle of the drawing “—with cartridges, and each one fires a metal projectile at speeds so fast armor doesn’t mean much.”

  Garrick gave a low whistle. “You’re telling me one of these things could turn a fight like that we just had into a slaughter?”

  Before Lux could answer, Strenn padded over, brushing soot from her fur. She leaned in, tail twitching with interest. “I used to work a forge in the south before they… took me.” Her voice tightened at the memory, but her gaze was sharp on the sketch. “Some of these shapes… I could work the metal. Not the parts inside—yet—but the barrel, the housing… even the trigger frame, if I had the right tools.”

  Lux looked between her and Garrick, feeling the spark of possibility. “If you can shape it, and Garrick here can find me the metal and the right workbench, I can guide you through the rest.”

  Strenn’s lips curved in a faint, determined smile. “You saved my life, human. Let me repay that by giving you a weapon that’ll keep you alive.”

  Garrick crossed his arms. “Then it’s settled. We figure out what’s needed, we scavenge it, and we make your… gun.”

  Lux nodded, but his eyes hardened. “Only for people we trust. The wrong hands, and this becomes another Blackwood problem.”

  Both Garrick and Strenn answered in unison. “Agreed.”

  Luna's pov

  From her perch on the edge of the broken wall, Luna’s sharp ears caught the low rumble of voices below. She glanced down, curious, and saw Lux crouched over a broad plank with Garrick beside him and the monkey girl—Strenn, if she remembered correctly—leaning in close.

  Charcoal scratched across wood as Lux’s hands moved in quick, precise strokes. He was explaining something, his voice steady and confident, his finger tapping points along the strange shapes he was drawing. Garrick’s brows lifted, and Strenn’s tail flicked with barely restrained excitement.

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  Luna narrowed her eyes, listening more intently.

  “…a gun,” Lux was saying, his tone patient but carrying an undercurrent of urgency. “…fast, powerful, and simple to use once made. You two are the first people here I’d even think about trusting with this knowledge.”

  Strenn’s golden eyes gleamed as she nodded. “Metalwork I can handle. The shaping, the barrels—if Garrick can get me the stock and tools, I can make these pieces.”

  Garrick grunted in agreement. “You tell me what you need, I’ll find it. Smuggle it if I have to.”

  Luna felt something strange stir in her chest. When she and Lux had spoken of these weapons earlier, she’d thought it was only a dream—a fanciful ‘what if’ for some far-off day when they had the means. She hadn’t expected him to already have allies willing and able to bring the idea to life.

  For the first time since her kingdom fell, Luna felt the faintest pull of something she had thought lost forever.

  Hope.

  She tore her gaze away before anyone saw the softening in her eyes, silently vowing to protect that flicker of possibility until it became fire.

  Luna dropped from her perch without a sound, landing lightly on the packed dirt. Lux glanced up mid-sentence, one brow arching, but she didn’t speak until Garrick and Strenn drifted a few paces away to check the scrap they already had.

  She stepped closer, voice pitched low. “How soon?”

  Lux tilted his head. “How soon… what?”

  She kept her gaze fixed on him, her tone almost too calm. “How soon could one of these… guns… be made?”

  He studied her for a moment, reading more in her eyes than she’d intended to show. “Depends on what we can scavenge. Garrick’s got sources in the city, Strenn knows her craft. If we push hard—weeks. Maybe less if luck’s on our side.”

  Luna folded her arms, leaning in just enough for him to hear the steel in her whisper. “Make it less. Every day we stay here, the Baron gets closer to gathering the forces to crush us. Also if these guns can even the odds like you claim… I want one in my hands before he does.”

  A slow, sharp smile touched Lux’s lips. “Then we’d better get Garrick moving.”

  For a moment, they just stood there—two leaders, two different worlds, bound by the same dangerous goal. And for the first time since meeting him, Luna realized she wasn’t just hoping Lux knew what he was doing.

  Lux ran a hand over the pile of scavenged metal and tools Garrick and Strenn had managed to set out on the workbench. He crouched down, turning a few pieces over in his hands, weighing them like a man trying to force a puzzle piece into the wrong spot.

  “…Damn it,” he muttered under his breath.

  Luna, who had been watching from a few paces away, took a step forward. “What is it?”

  He sighed and set the scrap down. “Not enough. Not for the M1 Garand. Not for the Thompson. We don’t have the right machining or the parts. Even if we stripped this rundown settlement bare, we’d still be short.”

  Before she could answer, something inside him jolted—like a mental tripwire snapping.

  The settlement faded from view, replaced by the dim glow of a small black-and-white TV. He was younger—barely a teenager—sitting cross-legged on the carpet. The flickering screen showed a dusty street in some old western town. Two men faced each other, hands hovering over worn revolvers.

  He remembered the music, the tension, the way his father had leaned on the doorway behind him and said, “That there’s a Colt Single Action Army. Changed the West.”

  The scene shifted in his mind—he could almost feel the heavy steel, the simplicity of the mechanism, the way even a crude workshop might manage to make one.

  When the memory faded, he was back in the settlement, Luna staring at him with a faint crease between her brows.

  “I think,” Lux said slowly, “we can make something else. Something simpler. And it’ll still do the job.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “Something from your world?”

  He nodded, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips. “A little piece of the Old West.”

  Lux grabbed the nearest scrap bar, testing its weight before setting it down with a dull clunk. “We’ll need a forge,” he said, glancing between Garrick and Strenn. “A real one—hot enough to work this iron scrap into something usable.”

  Strenn’s tail twitched as she adjusted her grip on a pair of worn tongs. “I can build the frames, file the parts, and set the springs… but without proper heat, we’ll get nothing but brittle junk.”

  Lux’s gaze drifted toward the wall. Lyra was leaning against it, bow slung over her shoulder, her eyes scanning the treeline like a hawk. “Lyra,” he called out, his voice carrying just enough authority to make her straighten.

  She turned, one hand brushing the fletching of an arrow. “What do you need?”

  “I need you to scout the surrounding structures—any standing buildings we haven’t cleared yet. Look for a blacksmith’s forge, a kiln, anything with a chimney big enough to handle the heat we’ll need.”

  Her sharp eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re planning something.”

  “Yeah,” Lux said, pulling a piece of charcoal from the table and starting to sketch on a flat scrap of wood. The outline of a revolver began to take shape. “Something that’ll even the odds.”

  Luna, still watching from her spot across the room, felt that strange warmth in her chest again. She had thought the talk of “guns” was just another piece of human madness—but now she was watching him bend the problem to his will, slotting the pieces together like he’d done it a hundred times before.

  Lyra gave a small, knowing smirk. “I’ll find your forge,” she said, before slipping through the doorway, silent as a shadow.

  Lux didn’t look up from his sketch. “Good. The sooner we have heat, the sooner we can make these.”

  Lyra's pov

  The forest edge loomed in the distance, dark shapes swaying in the night wind. Lyra slipped from building to building, her boots making no sound on the cold dirt paths.

  First, the old storehouse—empty. Just rotting sacks of grain, gnawed through by vermin.

  Second, a collapsed barn—only charred beams, the smell of old fire.

  Third, the tanner’s shed—half caved in, stinking of mildew and animal hide, no forge in sight.

  She kept going, combing the edges of the settlement, but every promising silhouette turned out to be another ruin. Her quiver grew lighter in her mind with every minute wasted—no forge meant no weapons, and no weapons meant they’d be relying on steel and luck.

  By the time she circled back, the answer was written in the faint frustration on her face. She didn’t have to say the words—Lux just met her eyes and gave a tight nod, understanding without asking.

  Luna's pov

  From her place near the far wall, Luna watched the exchange between Lux and Lyra, but her focus kept drifting back to him.

  He wasn’t from this world—she knew that much. His speech was strange, his customs stranger, and he carried scars that didn’t belong to any man she had ever met. He’d walked into this cursed city and done the unthinkable—fought Blackwood’s men and lived. Fought monsters without hesitation. Freed her people.

  And now here he was, calmly sketching weapons no one here had ever seen, speaking in that steady, unshakable tone that made others listen.

  She caught herself staring, and her pulse quickened. This man… this human… risked everything without demanding anything in return. Why? Was it duty? Pity? Or something else entirely?

  Her mind whispered an answer she wasn’t ready to admit.

  If she was honest with herself, she feared what it meant.

  Because the closer Lux came to her, the more she wondered if she could ever let him go.