Locke Wright stood in front of the siege weapon like a priest before an altar, hands clasped behind his back, eyes locked on the curved plating of steelwood alloy.
His voice came without preamble.
"This project," he said, "has consumed more engineers than I ever intended to give it."
He didn't look at them—just spoke into the open air of the lab as the other engineers with dark eye bags ignored whatever he said and continued working.
The weapon loomed behind him, humming faintly with residual mana.
"I've diverted minds from five separate divisions. Enchanters, tacticians, structural designers, a whole think tank from universities under assumed names.
I've had to pit magical theory against mechanical design in ways no one's ever attempted. And after all that?"
He turned, slowly.
"We still don't have a final version."
Volker's brow lifted. "What's the delay?"
Locke motioned toward the weapon. "The enchantments. Both on the bolts, and the firing mechanism itself. No siege weapon in recorded history has attempted this level of mana integration. Not even the royal arcfire engines come close. And they're… clumsy. Massive. Unreliable. This was supposed to be smaller, faster. Smarter."
"So you're inventing the wheel again," Cheng said.
"No," Locke said, walking to a nearby crate and flipping open a lid.
Inside: shredded slates, charred fragments, cracked crystal stabilizers. "I'm inventing a wheel that doesn't exist yet. There's no precedent. No schematic to borrow. Every bolt, every piece of housing, every power channel had to be designed, broken, redesigned, broken again."
Baron Gorath's arms crossed. "How expensive?"
Locke smiled without humor. "More than I'll ever admit in writing. Mana costs alone have hollowed out our supply lines. I've had to test dozens of materials—nothing off the shelf. Everything custom-forged, custom-bound. Every mistake costs mana and time, and both are running out."
He returned to them now, his pace focused but quiet.
"I've already slashed budgets on the other projects. Our naval advancements? Halted. Our next-generation airboard project? Gone. The smart armor project? Dead in its cradle."
Cheng raised an eyebrow. "Just for this?"
Locke stopped a few steps from them, then pointed at the group, index finger steady.
"Yes. And this… this is where you come in."
His voice lowered.
"I've kept this project buried. No council votes. No trade whispers. No official mentions. Not even our own bureaucrats know what this is." He made sure that everybody in the group know that this project has only been known to everyone in this room, and not one more person.
"And I know something about you—about House Maddach."
He looked to Gorath first, then Cheng.
"You don't just want this. You need this. The House of Blades can't survive in a future without a bigger weapon."
There was silence. Cheng stepped closer to the construct, staring up at the triple-barrel formation and the rotating mana chamber.
"I mean…" he muttered, "it looks ready. Why isn't this fielded already? Volker?"
Volker, ever the quiet one, circled the back end of the weapon. His gloved hand touched the bolt feed mechanism gently.
"It's solid," he murmured. "The frame's balanced, runes are live, doesn't look like it's warping at rest. What's the catch?"
Even Knight Malik Qahtani was nodding now. "Honestly, I don't get it. I've seen functioning field weapons with less stability than this. Why not deploy it?"
Locke's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. "Because it works."
Gorath turned toward him. "What?"
"It works," Locke repeated, shrugging lightly. "Perfectly. Everything you want it to do? It does. Test firings show it can punch through fort walls, move faster than our own spotters can track, self-calibrate mid-pivot. It's everything I promised. Hell, I am willing to bet my own life that it could destroy an Imperial battleship and kill all the Knights in it."
Baron Gorath's tone darkened, hearing how effective the weapon was. "Then why are we here? If it works and you know it works, what do you need us for? Funding?"
Locke shook his head. "No."
He walked toward a reinforced case, latched tight with four separate mana locks. He held up a hand, pressed his palm to the control pad. A glow passed across the surface. One by one, the locks unlatched with a soft hiss.
"I need you because it's impractical."
He opened the lid.
Inside the box was a small tank—no bigger than a backpack's size—but inside it glowed a thick, swirling fog of blue-gold light. Mana. Refined. Dense. Pressurized. It shone so brightly it cast thin shadows on the far wall.
Even Volker flinched.
"That's for one shot?" Cheng asked, shivering at the vast amount of mana just kept this way.
"No," Locke said flatly. "That's for half a shot."
Cheng took an involuntary step back.
Gorath frowned. "You're saying a single round costs more than—"
"Than an entire year of arcanist wages," Locke cut in. "Yes."
He gestured back to the siege weapon.
"That prototype is flawless. But it's a glutton. The mana draw is exponential. If we fire it more than twice without completely recalibrating, we risk a cascade failure—and I mean an explosive one."
"So you're stuck," Volker said.
Locke exhaled slowly, nodding. "We're trying to develop a system that can compress and store mana more efficiently. Less waste. Lower volatility. Right now we're getting maybe… ten percent conversion from static mana cores. It's a nightmare."
Cheng crossed his arms, frowning. "I'm no scientist, but if I'm going to advise Gorath on this, I need numbers. Charts. Progress logs. Can you even show us this is possible?"
"Possible?" Locke raised an eyebrow. "Yes. Theoretically. We have schematics. Prototype algorithms. We know what it's supposed to do. But theory and practice aren't friends. Turning one into the other takes time."
"And funding," Gorath said.
Locke didn't respond. He didn't have to.
Gorath glanced at Cheng and Volker briefly, then turned back.
"We'll fund it."
Cheng blinked.
"But," the Baron added, "House Maddach gets exclusive purchasing rights. You don't sell to anyone else."
There was a pause.
Then Locke smiled. And this time it reached his eyes.
"You're the biggest buyer I could hope for," he said. "We'd never settle for some minor house. And we sure as hell aren't giving this to another major."
He extended a hand.
"You've got a deal."