I had been expecting him to carve a few basic runes onto the JP. I’d read up a bit on the process of Enchantment at lunch. It wasn’t my branch of magic, so I really only knew what I’d picked up secondhand from him. According to the literature, Enchantment was an insanely difficult discipline, tied with the Conjurer’s illusions for the most skill intensive. 

An Artificer could imbue an object with power by carving or engraving a rune or a sigil and pouring their will and intent into it. Exactly which rune or sigil they used didn’t matter so much in an absolute sense; each one developed sort of their own code or language through years of experience. The important part was that they could clearly visualize what they wanted it to do, hold that image in their mind as they placed the mark, and pour a steady stream of magical energy into it to burn it into reality as they worked. 

Most Artificers were limited to no more than one or two Enchantments on a single object. Placing one was hard enough, but to place another, they had to hold both runes in their mind at the same time, focusing on not only how each one was supposed to work separately, but how they worked together. Anyone who could do more than 3 was considered an authority in their given field, and more than 10 was the sign of a true master of the craft. 

Edgar was, apparently, a master. My rifle looked like it had spent months in a custom engraving shop. Silvery vines scrolled across the surface, each branching off into clusters of leaves every few centimeters. Upon closer inspection, each of those leaves was some sort of arcane sigil, the meaning of which was so far beyond my understanding that I couldn’t begin to guess. I got a headache just looking at it too hard. And, the first time I picked it up, the jolt of magical energy nearly made me drop it. It was like grabbing a powerline. 

“How the hell did you manage all this?” I asked, awestruck. 

“I cheated,” he said, and refused to elaborate further. 

However he’d managed to pull it off, Edgar’s work was impeccable. I’d barely gotten my old thermal optic mounted to the rail up top and battle zeroed a few minutes ago, and we were already pushing out past a thousand meters. 

I followed up the first hit with two more in quick succession, marvelling at how steady the rifle was. 

“This thing is a dream,” I said. 

“It helps that you brought me a solid base to work with,” he said. “I can do wonders with a shitty gun, don’t get me wrong, but when you start with a masterpiece, the only real limit is the ammo. Match grade 6.5 Creedmoor stays supersonic out to about 1,200 meters or so. The downside to my ammo regeneration spell is that it can’t reproduce enchantments on the starter rounds, so we’re going to have to get into handloading if you want to go further than that.”

“I don’t know what I’d do with that much range,” I said, and fired off another quick pair of shots at the 1200 meter steel plate. It took a couple seconds for the sound of the impacts to reach us. “It’s a miracle I’m hitting out this far.”

“Not a miracle, just magic,” Edgar said. “There’s only so much I can do to improve a shooter’s base accuracy. If your technique is garbage, the rifle will compensate to a certain extent, but you’ve still got to have the skills to make it work. That said, if you do have those skills, I can build on them to bring you up to the next level. I’m telling you, we can clean house come the next tournament.”

“Let’s survive tonight first,” I said, and plugged another bullet into the center of the target. 

“True that. Speaking of, you and Cora have the talk, I take it?” he asked. 

I sighed and stroked the trigger again. Despite my breath control being sloppy, the bullet landed exactly where I wanted. Almost like, you know, magic.

“You mean the talk where she told me the reason she’s such an ass is she’s a zealot and she wants me to hate her? Yeah, we had the talk.”

Edgar snorted. 

“Don’t be too hard on her,” he advised. “Girl’s been through more than either of us, and honestly? I can’t say she’s wrong. Maybe she’s wrong about how she goes about it, but her intent is solid.”

I groaned, partly out of frustration and partly out of discomfort as I pushed myself up from the prone position. 20 year old me could have stayed behind the rifle all day without so much as an itch. 30 year old me had to answer to achy joints and stiff muscles. 

“Pretend I’ve only known about magic for a few weeks now and break it down Barney-style,” I said, turning to face him. 

Edgar isn’t the easiest guy to look in the eye. It’s not that he’s ugly, because he’s not. I’ve never been much for guys, but he had the square-jawed good looks Hollywood expects from soldiers. That crooked grin of his could make a nun blush. And unlike Cora, half his face doesn’t look like melted wax. I can’t say he’s got particularly intense eyes, either. No “piercing gaze” or whatever other poetic cliches romance writers like. 

No, I find it hard to face Edgar because he’s just so damn earnest. Not naive, not innocent, just earnest. He says what he means and means what he says, and you can see it written all over his face, plain as day. He’s the sort of guy who you hate to disappoint, and I’m always worried I’ll see something other than approval or acceptance one day. 99% of people who ever walked the face of the Earth, I wouldn’t give a damn, but no one wants to disappoint a good man. 

“Look at it this way,” he said. “You’re used to seeing gods as myths, or metaphors, or whatever. And if you're not, even the most faithful of the flock has his moments of doubt, when he has to wonder if his god is real or not. When you really think about it, that uncertainty is a luxury, because it means you’re still free to chart your own course. You can read the words, you can take them to heart, but it’s up to you to decide what they mean to you, personally. We don’t get to do that. When we want to know what our gods think, we just have to ask them.

“Now, I know what they say, what the Old Gods themselves say. They’re not deities. They were once human, just like the rest of us. But what do you call an immortal, nearly omnipotent being who’s been around for longer than human civilization, who can call upon the wisdom of every king and sage that ever was, who can literally unmake our world, if not a god? And if a god tells you that nothing, in this or any other world, is more important than our mission, wouldn’t you take that to heart?”

I frowned and considered his argument for several long moments. 

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “I mean, we know that the Old Gods don’t always agree on everything. If the Eldest said the sky was blue, the Enchanter would say it was green, just to spite him. And as near as I can tell, the Conjurer makes shit up just because it’s fun. If one of them was to make an argument from the bottom of their heart, I guess I’d take them seriously, but I wouldn’t take it as absolute gospel truth.”

“Nor would I. But then again, we’re not scared little girls who’ve just watched their whole family get murdered and had to fight their way to freedom. When the most powerful being you know of stands in front of you and tells you exactly what you need to hear, at the most vulnerable point of your life, most anyone would take it to heart,” he said. 

“That’s what happened to Cora?”

“More or less,” Edgar said. “The Eldest rescued her from a bad spot, and she’s dedicated her life to paying him back for it. I didn’t like her or her ‘mission’ at first either, but he and I had a heart to heart once I started working with Cora. He laid all his cards out on the table and let me make up my own mind. I decided that he was right, mostly. We differ on some of the particulars, but not enough to be a deal breaker.”

“Maybe he and I need to have that chat,” I said, “because I still don’t buy it. I get the whole Hunting thing, don’t get me wrong. It makes sense that you can’t hold a mage prisoner, and once they break bad, you can’t just let them run free. But I don’t see how it’s worth all three of our lives to kill a petty crook or something.”

“I don’t expect you to, and I doubt the Eldest would, either,” Edgar said. “You’ll get your heart to heart before too long; he likes to have a chat with all the new Hunters sooner or later. Until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it. Once someone earns a bounty on their head, they can’t be left breathing. Nothing says we can’t be smart about curing their oxygen habit, though.”

Damned if he didn’t mean it, too.

“That’ll have to be good enough, for now,” I said. “I’m going to hold him to that heart to heart, though. If the Eldest is satisfied with making someone like Cora, I’ve got some serious concerns about the direction his moral compass points.”

“Don’t think about it too hard,” Edgar warned. “You’ll work yourself into a tizzy trying to figure out how a mind like that works. Just wait until you meet him, then you can decide. Now, as much as I hate to interrupt a good theology session, you got any questions about tonight?”

I frowned and went back over the last few days in my head. I knew there was something important I was supposed to ask. What was it?

Oh, yeah. 

“Hey, what was with that blue stuff when I shot the light?”