The Crucible Campaign

19: The New Moon

.^^ Honey-Bomb ^^

— Tommy —

In six days of traveling through this forest, the 'Crimson Foothill's', apparently named for the red leaves during the summer, we had yet to encounter a red dragon. Of course, I considered it obvious that during winter, there were a plethora of Ice dragons, and I was right, as that's all we found. Varying sizes, from 6-12ft in height, varying temperaments, and even a few who didn't want to fight us, instead challenging us to debates on various discussions, which I found both curious and fun.

Per Glade's orders, we only killed the dragons that were 12ft tall or over at the shoulder, and also displayed a violent attitude. It was much like catch and release fishing, where only certain sizes were allowed to be taken home.

We considered sending the others through the vault, but we hadn't heard from mom or dad as to the fate of the first, beyond dad replying to the first message, so we decided against it, for now. He'd said something to mother about getting Renata and meeting him at the bank, then it had cut off.

As we got further in, the dragons got scarcer, and bigger, though they also slipped away from us, and tracking them was difficult, even for Karon, who claimed she was an accomplished tracker, but didn't seem very impressive, so far. Not to mention being a skinny little bitch.

I cleaned my pistol carefully, as we rested in a camp for the evening. There was no need for a fire, with Sandy cuddling up on one side of Cassidy, who was doing the same thing I was and detailing her weapons. Karon leaned against her back, watching the rear. Glade leaned against mine, doing the same.

Finished, I reassembled the revolver, loaded it, and sheathed it, then pulled out my mixing bowl, and decided to try to experiment with a few of the smaller scales we'd picked up, after our battles with the dragons.

I crushed one with some difficulty, and not a little amount of Heat, and began testing it for any sort of chemical resistance, finding it to be a simple Keratin, only super-condensed, and therefore about fifty times as thick as nails. The scales were literally really thick body hair.

Chuckling at my discovery, I began checking for reaction to magic, by way of sticking a mithril needle into the liquid scales, and then touching a different part of it with a simple crystal torch. The mithril heated up slowly, and the crystal died out, to my surprise.

"Curious..." I hummed, and then consulted my Alchemist's Book. It informed me, when I asked it the question, that dragon scales were a terrific conduit for magical energy, much like wolfram for electricity, and this was the secret to their skill in magic. When I asked if it would make for a proper material for a grenade, the book was inconclusive.

I frowned, and cooled down the scales slowly, mixing in the crystal torch, after refilling it with magic. The result, a softly glowing ball of quasi-metallic crystal, was placed in a glass vial full of diluted ethanol. When shaken to activate the ethanol, and exposed to air, the resultant magical surge and light particulates would ignite the ethanol, and explode quite violently.

I planned on comparing the two, as soon as we fought an enemy that we didn't need to skin. My grenades had yet to be of assistance, in any of our little scuffles. I sighed, and shook my head, stowing the new grenade with the other violent ones, in the vault. The ones on my bandolier were all designed to distract or disorient; flashbangs and noisemakers, mostly. Not dangerous, if they went off on my chest, through some unforeseen event.

Next, I mixed another batch of my proven explosive, the honey-bomb, a mixture of explosives on-par with TNT, held stable in honey, which exploded when activated in various ways.