Spellbreakers?

Working in a somewhat different way, call it practice, call it story fragments, whatever they are here's the first. One purpose here is that I'll do a little daily free writing, then go back and poke at them to see what might jump out and bite me. As ever, these are my original work, copyright M.K. Dreysen, all rights reserved to and by me.

June 2022 Story Fragment by M. K. Dreysen - Spellbreakers?

Randy would rather have used black powder. Drill, pack, wax and fuse, and most of all know that each charge fit the bill.

Dynamite made him nervous. Even in quarter stick sizes, and the stable stuff that didn't leak more fun than he wanted. The client had insisted, though. "We can get it for you, we use it in the mine."

Cheaper, that's really what they were after. Just getting Randy here and doing his thing, that was expensive enough.

Most clients, by the time they needed him they'd already come to the cost they'd paid. Ponying up for Randy to supply his own bang didn't hurt any more than the lives they'd lost.

"Stop," Randy said. To the kid, his apprentice and wow didn't that make Randy feel the weight of age. "Pay attention now, you don't want to crack it."

The seal, and more importantly what was on the other side. The kid set aside her drill bit, dusted granite fragments from the whole, and peered inside.

"See anything?"

She stuck her finger into the hole, felt around. "It's clean."

"How deep?"

She rolled her eyes, then used the stick, a willow stub with a notch cut to the depth needed. "Just right."

Randy held the lantern close enough to verify where her thumb was, flush against the stone and the stick's notch just past. "Yep, ok."

Gwyn moved enough so Randy could slide the quarter stick into place and set his fuse. Then she molded the wax into place to hold the dynamite. "How many more?"

Randy stepped back, lantern high while Gwyn reset for the next hole. "Two more, there at the top. Unless?"

"Unless I feel something shift when I'm drilling, right."

The drill bit wasn't sensitive. Gwyn was, though, and the metal could transmit, just a little, if the seal and what it held looked to weaken early. Randy waited until Gwyn had set herself and was comfortable with the angle before he turned to getting his fuses in order.

First tie the newly set fuse into other live ones, make sure of the loop and bundle, set it aside and clear. And only then pull the next fuse length free. He'd walked the loose fuses down the shaft that morning, each one shifted from one side of the shaft and room to the other as it was set.

He walked up to the surface, tying the new live fuse into the hot bundle as he went. By the time he'd returned to the door and the seal, Gwyn had finished and was set to start on the last hole.

Randy grunted, used the willow rod to check the completed hole's depth. "How'd it feel?"

Gwyn stopped, wiped her forehead and drank a little water from her canteen. "Nothing shifted. Not quite."

"But..."

She pulled the drill bit down and placed a gloved finger on the bit. "Like the bit was binding up. Not stuck, just..."

"Hmm." Three charges set, Randy told himself. Three quarters of a stick of dynamite. Plenty of boom. "Why don't you go ahead and stop."

"You're worried?"

Randy always worried. Spellbreaking could go wrong in only about a hundred and one different ways. And that was just dealing with the explosives and the vagaries of old abandoned ruins and mines.

But the dangers that kept Randy up at night were the ones that happened slowly. As slowly as the reach of a demon through stone, grasping at the first energy source it had gotten close to in who knows how many centuries? That was bad.

Worse was only blowing part of the seal, and then having to come back down here and do it again. "I'll drill, you pack."

"Not worried about rubble?"

Randy laughed. "They've asked to leave it so they can dig for treasure on the other side. Moving a few extra rocks won't hurt them." Besides, the clients had been the ones who'd insisted on using the dynamite because it was cheaper.

Randy ignored the way the drill felt more like he was tapping a glue barrel than hollowing out a piece of Rocky Mountain granite. By the time he'd finished and packed the last stick, Gwyn had the hot fuses ready to go. Randy sipped from his own canteen while he, and Gwyn, verified the coming shot. "Ready?"

"Buy you some coffee?"

"And those sandwiches old lady Mintner put together?"

"Damned straight." Last night's roast beef and day old bread, wrapped up in wax paper with a pickle each.

The spellbreaker and his apprentice set up the plunger, wrapped the master fuse and tightened it down, then counted and waited for the thump and dust cloud, the route that the demon or spirits or whatever the hell else it was that had been sealed below would take on their way to the cleansing clear sunny sky above.

Then they sat down and unwrapped their lunch and waited out the fight between clean air and broken containment.