Warlock of Omaha

Warlock of Omaha By Hemaccabe Chapter 2: Unicorn Hunting ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

As luck would have it, the mundane world has an answer for those who can't throw magic fireballs, it's called the shotgun.

While I took many steps to improve my ability to defend myself, the most obvious was firearms. Over the years, what is available in the world of firearms and what is recommended for personal defense have changed. When I first got started, the consensus of the self-defense expert community for the best personal safety firearm was a shotgun. I ended up with a Remington 870 Marine.

I took the shotgun apart and put it back together many times until I understood every bit of it. I practiced for at least two hours a day, while also going down to a local range at least three times a week. Each time I went, I spent a few hundred dollar's worth of shells shooting endless streams of trap and skeet. After a few months, I wasn't going to the Olympics, but I had achieved a high level of basic proficiency.

Not being one to ever leave well enough alone, I played with the 870. I would have liked a box fed semi-automatic shotgun better than the pump fed Remington but didn't feel there were any good options on the market. The 870 was the preferred option for countless law enforcement agencies and is very popular to this day. That meant there is a bottomless pool of accessory options. Shotgun shells are also known for coming in a substantial variety. I ended up with a variety of doo dads including an upgraded stock and a rifled barrel.

There's an old saying, "Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."

Whoever started that saying obviously didn't know about shotguns. The point of a shotgun is that it fires a shell full of pellets and will hit an area that grows larger the further from the gun it hits. This doesn't mean shotguns require no skill. You still have to be on target to have an effect, but it is a much larger area of effect than you'll get from a rifle or pistol. The standard pellet options for personal defense shotgun shells are size 4, double aught and slug, with double aught being the most popular. Double aught has a small number of large pellets covering a small area. Size 4 has more smaller pellets covering a wider area. The slug breaks the rules being a single large "slug" of lead, often hollow pointed. A slug firing shotgun will give up a lot of range and accuracy to a rifle, but that single huge slug, firing with such huge force behind it, is absolutely devastating.

Of course, no shell option was good enough for me. So, I created a flechette shell filled with wicked, needle-like stainless steel darts that fired from my, unusual for a shotgun, rifled barrel. My flechette loaded shotgun rounds looked like a slug with lots of pointy ends in one direction. The whole thing would be spun by the gun's rifled barrel then come apart after leaving the muzzle and corkscrew downrange. The flechette package would be backed by some size 4 stainless steel shot, an oversized load of fast burning powder and a fast primer. I coated all the projectiles in tracer material which meant they burned as they flew. I put magic into them to help them fly straight and true and seek out the weak spots on targets. That meant anything I fired at would have big pointy bits of burning stainless hitting them with extreme force and supernatural accuracy. I did extensive testing on ballistic gel, different kinds of armor and sides of pork. The effects were devastating out past one hundred yards.

Why stainless steel? Two reasons mostly. Firstly, steel is illegal in most pistol ammunition because it's too good. Steel is really hard compared to the lead most bullets are made of and therefore much more likely to penetrate most kinds of body armor. Police, who like to feel body armor makes them safe are understandably concerned. The better penetration is the kind of advantage I want when facing things that are much nastier and more resilient than mere mortal men.

Which leads to the second reason. As I've said before, there is very little magic in the world. I've been in hundreds of shops claiming they sold "real" magic paraphernalia and I've never found a single thing with any magical resonance. One is much more likely to find such objects in old antique shops or at swap meets. Even still, I've hiked over many acres of such places and frequently come up empty. However, of the magic that does exist, most comes from what I call, "fairyland."