Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

“Exactly,” Bastille said, taking the bear from me and pulling the tag—the pin—out. She tossed it out the window. “If you build weapons that look like weapons, then everyone will know to run away from them! This way, the Librarians are confused.”

“That’s sick,” I said. “Shouldn’t I be ducking or something?”

“You’ll be fine,” she said.

Ah, I thought. This one must be some kind of dud or fake.

At that second, the grenade outside the window exploded. Another blast threw me backward. I hit the wall with a grunt, and another piece of plaster fell on my head. This time, though, I managed to land on my knees.

Oddly, I felt remarkably unharmed, considering I’d just been blown backward by the explosion. In fact, neither explosion seemed to have hurt me very badly at all.

“The pink ones,” Bastille said, “are blast-wave grenades. They throw people and things away from them, but they don’t actually hurt anyone.”

“Really?” I said, walking up to her. “How does that work?”

“Do I look like an explosives expert?”

I hesitated. With those fiery eyes and dangerous expression …

“The answer is no, Smedry,” she said flatly, folding her arms. “I don’t know how these things work. I’m just a soldier.”

She picked up a blue teddy bear and pulled the tag off, then tossed it out the window. I braced myself, grabbing the windowsill, preparing for a blast. This time, however, the bear grenade made a muted thumping sound. The sand in the next room began to pile up in a strange way, and I was suddenly yanked through the window into the next room.

I yelped, tumbling through the air, then hit the mound of sand face-first.

“That,” Bastille said from behind, “is a suction-wave grenade. It explodes in reverse, pulling everything toward it instead of pushing it away.”

“Mur murr mur mur murrr,” I said, since my head was buried in the sand. Sand, it should be noted, does not taste very good. Even with ketchup.

I pulled my head free, leaning back against the pile of sand, straightening my Oculator’s Lenses and looking back at the window, where Bastille was leaning with arms crossed, smiling faintly. There’s nothing like seeing a Smedry get sucked through a window to improve her mood.

“That should be impossible!” I protested. “A grenade that explodes backward?”

She rolled her eyes again. “You’ve been in Nalhalla for months now, Smedry. Isn’t it time to stop pretending that everything shocks or confuses you?”

“I … er…” I wasn’t pretending. I’d been raised in the Hushlands, trained by Librarians to reject things that seemed too … well, too strange. But Nalhalla—city of castles—was nothing but strangeness. It was hard not to get overwhelmed by it all.

“I still think a grenade shouldn’t be able to explode inward,” I said, shaking sand off my clothing as I walked up to the window. “I mean, how would you even make that work?”

“Maybe you take the same stuff you put in a regular grenade, then put it in backward?”

“I … don’t think it works that way, Bastille.”

She shrugged, getting out another bear. This one was purple. She moved to pull the tag.

“Wait!” I said, scrambling through the window. I took the bear grenade from her. “This time you’re going to tell me what it does first.”

“That’s no fun.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow at her.

“This one is harmless,” she said. “A stuff-eater grenade. It vaporizes everything nearby that isn’t alive. Rocks, dead wood, fibers, glass, metal. All gone. But living plants, animals, people—perfectly safe. Works wonders against Alivened.”

I looked down at the little purple bear. Alivened were objects brought to life through Dark Oculatory magic. I’d once fought some created from romance novels. “This could be useful.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Works well against Librarians too. If a group is charging at you with those guns of theirs, you can vaporize the weapons but leave the Librarians unharmed.”

“And their clothing?” I asked.

“Gone.”

I hefted the bear, contemplating a little payback for being sucked through the window. “So you’re saying that if I threw this at you, and it went off, you’d be left—”

“Kicking you in the face?” Bastille asked coolly. “Yes. Then I’d staple you to the outside of a tall castle and paint ‘dragon food’ over your head.”

“Right,” I said. “Er … why don’t we just put this one away?”

“Yeah, good idea.” She took it from me and stuffed it back into the cabinet.

“So … I noticed that none of those grenades are, well, actually deadly.”

“Of course they aren’t,” Bastille said. “What do you take us for? Barbarians?”

“Of course not. But you are at war.”

“War’s no excuse for hurting people.”

I scratched my head. “I thought war was all about hurting people.”

“That’s Librarian thinking,” Bastille said, folding her arms and narrowing her eyes. “Uncivilized.” She hesitated. “Well, actually, even the Librarians use many nonlethal weapons in war these days. You’ll see, if the war ever comes here.”