I stumbled back to my room and flopped onto the bed, proud of what I’d accomplished but bone tired. I’d known becoming friends with Princess Melanie would be a lot of work, but I hadn’t expected it to involve so much theater and family drama. Come to think of it, had me and the princess actually become friends? I certainly didn’t think she hated me anymore, but regardless, I’d gotten Thomas back, so I was content.

  I slept like a log that night, but the moment I woke up the next morning, I tracked down Thomas and put him to work. It’d been nearly a week since we’d been able to focus on my lemon charger, and I intended to make up for lost time.

  Thomas sat in the center of his Wizard Room, Gerard’s textbook opened on his lap. We’d worked out a system, he’d read from the book and figure out what supplies we’d need, and I’d sort through his mountain of stuff to look for the materials. “It says in your spellbook that we need zinc and copper to create something called an electrical circuit.”

  I nodded sagely; those were definitely words I recognized. “And do you have either of those things?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got plenty of copper, but I’m not sure what zinc is.”

  I slid a wooden ladder over to the c-section of Thomas’ shelves and climbed until I spotted a chunk of golden-brown metal. “I’m pretty sure zinc is gray,” I said as I pocketed the copper and slid back to the floor. “It’s shiny and kind of brittle.”

  “Oh, crumbly chunks!” Exclaimed Thomas, lighting up. “That’s gonna be under C also.”

  “Crumbly chunks?”

  Thomas shrugged. “I’m a wizard-in-training, not a magical component namer.”

  Fair enough, I climbed back up the ladder and saw what I was 80% sure was a chunk of zinc. I know there’s a trial-and-error process in science, and mistakes were to be expected, but hopefully, using the wrong metal on my lemons wouldn’t result in any unintentional explosions. Fingers crossed, Thomas and I got things right on the first try.

  “How exactly will this electricity stuff help us drive back those invaders?”

  “Huh?”

  Thomas squinted as he flipped through the pages of the textbook. “I’ve reread this lemon spell dozens of times, but it doesn’t make sense. It says lemons can create electricity to power a lightbulb, but we already have your sun cylinders.” Thomas looked up at me, “Seems kinda redundant”

  “Electricity is the fuel source for all sorts of magic spells.” I replied, “It may not make sense now, but trust me, there’s a method to the madness.” I felt terrible lying to Thomas again, but what could I say? I have no clue how to fix your situation, and I’m only looking for a way to get back home. I doubted that would go over well.

  Thomas and I both jumped as we heard a woman wailing outside. “Pericles! Pericles!”

  The two of us poked our heads out one of the room’s windows and stared down at the town square; a woman was kneeling over a man who had collapsed to the ground. “Does anyone have food?!” She yelled out, her frantic voice echoing throughout the city. “He hasn’t eaten in days!” Despite her cries, no one responded; everyone in the square cast the two pitiable looks as they continued on their ways and patted their empty stomachs. I felt my heart wrench at the sight; we were all hungry, and it looked like some people were running out of time; I was running out of time.

  “We better get back to work,” I said, looking away and trying to block out the image of that desperate woman from my mind.

  “No.”

  I turned to face Thomas, his mouth was set in a grimace, and he had a weird look in his eyes. “No?” I asked. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d ever heard Thomas say no to anything; he was typically super agreeable.

  “I’ll help with your lemon magic later,” replied Thomas, rapidly flipping through Gerard’s textbook. “But we’re out of time. The townsfolk are dying; we need a quicker solution to dealing with the Boujie Boys.”

  I looked Thomas up and down, feeling an odd mixture of respect and frustration wrestling in my gut. It was cool that Thomas wanted to take charge and do what he thought was best for the kingdom, but couldn’t he have done that after I had made it back home first?

  “The lemon magic is the priority,” I asserted, probably sounding angrier than I meant. “Trust me, that’ll help the most.”

  Thomas shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t think that’s correct; let’s try and find something else in the spellbook. Something that can help us break the siege or create more food.”

  I glared at Thomas and weighed my options. I could pull rank and demand that he help me, but that could also end up driving him away, and I was 110% certain I couldn’t figure out how to charge my laptop without him. But on the other hand, how was I supposed to stop a siege or make food appear out of thin air? I guessed I was screwed if I didn’t placate Thomas, so I better put my noggin to work.

  “Fine.” I exhaled. “One more side project, and then it’s straight back to the lemons.”

  Thomas visibly brightened. “Absolutely, and thank you, Piper!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said dismissively, circling the room and perusing Thomas’ shelves of metals and liquids. “I’m gonna take stock of our inventory,” I continued, motioning back to the textbook, “See if there’s anything in my book that catches your eye.”

  Thomas flashed a crisp salute and resumed searching through the textbook. “There’s something in here about how to survive the Zombie Armageddon,” said Thomas as he turned to a random page. “I know about Armageddon from the bible, but what’s a zombie?”

  “Nothing we need to worry about, thankfully,” I replied as I sorted through the R section of Thomas’ shelves and found a rotten egg and rancid roaches. “But maybe something in that chapter might be useful. Where I’m from, people are really into prepping for the end of the world.”

  Thomas flipped past a few more pages and read from a random spot. “M’lady, while you were partying, I studied the blade.” Thomas looked up at me, “There’s something in here about how to make katanas. Would that be useful? Also, what’s a katana?”

  “Just a sword,” I replied as I headed over to the M section of Thomas’ shelves and found a container filled with moldy mice. “That wouldn’t be all that useful, seeing as we already have swords.”

  “What about a flamethrower?” Asked Thomas as he flipped to a new page. “Throwing fire sounds pretty useful.”

  “Huh.” I said, stopping, “Now there’s an idea.” Not only were flamethrowers frickin awesome, in this time period, it would probably look like genuine dragon fire. I wished my Bluetooth Speaker was still working; firing a flamethrower while a dragon roared in the background would’ve been so cool.

  “A flamethrower would be exactly what we need, but we’d need fuel for it.”

  “Like some kind of magical substance to sustain the fire?” Asked Thomas.

  “Sort of. It’s a bit of a long shot, but do you happen to have any gasoline?”

  Thomas’ confused expression was the only answer I needed. That wasn’t good, but it was possible he just referred to the stuff by a different name. “It’s kind of clearish brown,” I said, recalling the many times I’d gone with my parents to the gas station to fill up their cars. “It smells weird, and it’ll set on fire if it comes in contact with a spark or a flame.”

  Thomas scratched his chin in thought. “I don’t have anything clear or brown,” he said, “but what you’re describing kind of sounds like boom-boom juice.”

  “Boom-Boom juice?” I asked, trying to stop my eyes from rolling in the back of my head. What was with Thomas and all these weird naming conventions?

  Thomas laughed. “I’m kidding, Piper, it’s called oil; we’ve got lots of it in Praedones.”

  Oh, a joke from Thomas; I hadn’t been expecting that.

  “We have lamps that run on oil,” continued Thomas, “and we also use the stuff to help heat some rooms in the castle. Will the spell still work if we use it instead of gasoline?”

  Could we make a flamethrower with oil? “I’m not sure,” I admitted, but one thing is for certain: it’s flammable.”

  XXX

  I sat at my desk, grabbed a quill and some parchment, and got to work. “I seriously doubt we have the materials to make an actual flamethrower,” I said to Thomas, who was hovering behind me, watching while I worked. “But maybe we can throw together some sort of rough equivalent.”

  I blinked, suddenly having an epiphany. “Y’know, when you think about it, a flamethrower is just a violent reverse water gun.” I turned back to look at Thomas, “Do you have water guns here?”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “What’s a gun?”

  “Right, I should’ve expected that by now.” I quickly scribbled out a drawing on the parchment and sat down the quill to admire my handiwork. I was a decent artist, and I think I’d drawn a somewhat accurate facsimile of a flamethrower. “I have no idea how to build this myself,” I admitted, handing the parchment to Thomas, “but if I’m correct, we need three parts to build a flamethrower, the pump, a chamber to hold the liquid, and a nozzle to squirt the liquid out.” I gave Thomas a significant look, “do you think you can make something like this?”

  Thomas frowned as he stared at the drawing, “I’m not sure; it looks kind of complicated.”

  XXX

  It turns out that making a flamethrower was super duper easy (relatively speaking). And after a few hours of trial and error, Thomas and I had whipped up the world’s first medieval water gun/flamethrower. We’d used a wine pouch as the container for the oil and had stitched a metal rod onto the back of the pouch to act as the pump. Fortunately, since wine pouches were designed to be drank from, we already had a nozzle, too. Unfortunately, the nozzle would almost certainly melt from the heat once the flamethrowers shot fire. Thomas had come in clutch again and suggested we replace the wine pouch’s original nozzle with a more heat-resistant metal.

  You might be wondering how we created a custom heat-resistant nozzle and pump when neither of us had experience working with metal. Well, it just so happens I was friends with a recently recovered and very grateful blacksmith. Whether it was my oregano disinfectant, the soap, or just dumb luck, Mr. Smith had completely recovered and was more than happy to do any sort of metalwork to assist with my witchy activities.

  I won’t lie to you; it was barebones and ugly, but while our medieval flamethrower wouldn’t be winning any awards for style, it held liquid, and it squirted it out, that was good enough for us.

  “Nice!” I exclaimed, admiring our new creation. “Not bad for a first try, eh, Thomas?”

  Thomas held out the flamethrower and gave it a scrutinizing stare. “How is it going to shoot out fire if there’s no spark or flame?”

  I frowned; I hadn’t completed that part of my master plan yet. “I guess we could soak the bad guys with oil and toss a match in their general direction, but that’d be hard to make work consistently, not to mention messy.”

  “Have you used a flamethrower before, Piper?”

  “Hmm.” I thought back to all the various hyper-violent movies I’d watched growing up, where the lead hero had burned their way to victory. “There’s a tip of fire that rests right at the front of the nozzle,” I explained, “when the flammable liquid shot out of the nozzle, the flame would ignite it.

  Now it was Thomas’ turn to Hmm. “Maybe we could stick a lit candle on the front?” He suggested. “Maybe add a small metal rod below the nozzle that’ll hold the candle in place?”

  My face lit up, “Thomas, you’re a modern-day Einstein!”

  “A what?”

  After one more trip to Mr. Smith’s forge, we slapped a candle beneath the nozzle of our flamethrower and then headed down to the castle’s archery range to test out our newest creation. A few knights were doing target practice when we arrived, so not wanting to freak them out, we borrowed one of the spare dummies and took it to a secluded spot behind the castle.

  “Are we ready?” Asked Thomas as he set the dummy against a stone wall.

  I nodded, gripping the flamethrower’s plunger, the wineskin body sagging in my hands and making it difficult to hold steady. “I think so.” When I said earlier this flamethrower was barebones, I meant it was the most basic possible definition of one. There wasn’t even a trigger to squirt out the oil, just a crude pump on the back designed to suck in air and shove out the oil. There were no frills, nothing fancy, just an old wine pouch filled with oil, which I desperately hoped wouldn’t explode in my face.

  The candle was also a problem, as there was no easy way to keep the flame lit. Even the slightest gust of wind threatened to put the fire out, which could pose a problem if this thing was gonna be used in the thick of battle. Oh well, one step at a time.

  “Make sure you’re far away from the dummy,” I called out to Thomas, “In fact, maybe you should find somewhere to hide.”

  Thomas nodded and ducked behind a stone pillar. I aimed at the dummy, standing maybe fifteen feet away, pulled back the plunger, and then rammed it forward. A thin stream of oil sputtered out from the nozzle, instantly catching fire and flying directly toward the straw dummy, dousing it in flames. I stumbled back in surprise, falling on my butt and causing the flamethrower’s candle to go out. I quickly patted down my body to make sure nothing was on fire. I was fine, but the dummy was up in flames, completely submerged in the hot, orange fire.

  “That was amazing!” Thomas ran over and reached out his hand toward me; he stared down at the flamethrower in awe. “That thing literally threw flames!”

  I took Thomas’ hand and allowed him to help me up. Now that I knew I wasn’t on fire, I was very pleased with the results. “Uh-huh,” I confirmed with a vigorous shake of my head and a wide grin. “We have ourselves a genuine flamethrower. It may not be the prettiest or have the longest range, but I wouldn’t be too keen to take me on if I was shooting fire in someone’s direction.”

  “I’ll say!” replied Thomas, eyes wide with wonder. “What’re we gonna call it?”

  “The flamethrower?” Thomas nodded. Hmm, I wanted something catchy but also ironic. “How ‘bout Dragon’s Breath?” Judging by the grin that spread across Thomas’ face, I think we had a winner. “Awesome! Now that we’ve got a flamethrower in our toolkit, we can get back to work on some good ‘old-fashioned lemon magic!”

  “Uh, actually,” began Thomas.

  I groaned a very long and drawn-out groan. “What now?”

  “One flamethrower is great,” said Thomas, motioning to Dragon’s Fire, “but if we’re gonna drive off the Boujie Boys, then we’ll probably need more than just one.”

  “How many more flamethrowers do you want to make, Thomas?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  Thomas did some quick mental math. “I’d feel more comfortable working on the lemon magic again if we had at least 30 flamethrowers.”

  Ugh, that was gonna take ages.

  XXX

  And that’s the story of how I rounded up all of my friends and enemies in Praedones and forced them to work in my flamethrower assembly line. Working together, it’d taken Thomas and me a couple of hours to make a single medieval flamethrower, and if he wanted 30 of these bad boys, we were gonna need a lot of help. I had originally sought out King Cassian, hoping he might be able to spare some guards or nonessential staff, but neither he nor Princess Melanie were anywhere to be found. So, after donning my witch cloak and threatening to turn anyone who said no into a capybara, I took matters into my own hands and was able to recruit lots of free labor.

  “Like this?” Asked Poofy Pants as he fastened a metal nozzle onto another of the wine pouches

  “Exactly,” confirmed Thomas with an encouraging smile; just try not to make a habit of pointing the nozzle at your face; that’s where the fire comes out.

  We didn’t have room for all these workers in mine or Thomas’s room, so we moved our base of operations down into one of the mess halls. It’d been slow going at first, and there had been a lot of trial and error and faulty parts, but with Thomas and I providing supervision, we’d already made more than ten flamethrowers in just a few hours. Even though I wanted nothing more than to get back to charging my laptop, this was kind of fun. The whole situation felt like a very violent arts and crafts project with friends, and keeping busy helped me temporarily forget that we were in the middle of a siege and at risk of starvation.

  “Is this tiny thing really going to help us summon dragon fire, Miss Piper?” Gomes cast me a worried glance as he carefully poured crude oil into one of the finished flamethrowers.

  “We’re not actually summoning anything.” Thomas cut in and walked over to Gomes. “Even though it looks like dragon fire, we’re just squirting a combustible liquid onto an open flame.” Thomas pointed at one of the lit candles littered across the room. “It’s pretty simple to create once you know the process.”

  Gomes frowned like his brain was struggling to accept this new reality. “So, there’s no actual dragons involved?” He said slowly.

  Thomas laughed, giving the shorter man a pat on the back. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  I shot Thomas an appreciative look, I guess all that time he’d spent reading Gerard’s textbook had wisened him up to the natural world, and his perception of reality was beginning to shift just a bit. In a way, I felt kind of bad; it would suck to believe in magic your entire life only to find out it wasn’t real, kind of like when you realize Santa Claus is just your parents. But on the other hand, I imagined it would also be cool to learn that the world works in a way completely different from what you previously understood.

  “All done! Thomas, can you check to make sure I did everything right?” Ellie raised a hand at her table, motioning for Thomas to come and inspect her flamethrower.

  The young knight immediately went beet red. “S-sure, I’ll give it a look.”

  Thomas didn’t move an inch. “I think you need to get a bit closer, buddy,” I said, giving him a friendly push in Ellie’s direction.

  Thomas stiffly walked over and sat beside Ellie, who smiled at him. “So I think I’ve gotten the pump inserted correctly,” continued Ellie, lifting the flamethrower for Thomas to inspect, “But I wanna make sure there’s no oil leaking out.”

  Thomas leaned in towards the flamethrower. “Everything looks to be okay,” he said after a moment, his intense focus seeming to make him forget how awkward he was around Ellie. “Just remember to be careful when screwing on the nozzle; you don’t want to fray the wine pouch.”

  “Wow, you sure are smart, Thomas,” replied Ellie as she fluttered her eyelashes and casually slid one of her hands toward the young knight. “Hey, if you’re not busy later, maybe the two of us can–”

  “Yep, keep up the great work; I’m gonna check on another group!” Thomas practically fled the table. Ellie sighed in frustration. I gave her a sympathetic look. Don’t give up, girl; you’ll snag that man eventually.

  Thud! Everyone in the room jumped as something slammed against one of the mess hall’s windows. Multiple variations of “What was that?” and “Did you hear something?” rippled across the room.

  The sun had set over an hour ago, and no matter what time period you lived in, it was always unsettling when something went bump in the night. I don’t think we all would’ve normally responded so strongly to a random noise, but with the siege and everything else going on, people were a bit on edge.

  Feeling brave surrounded by so many people, I crept toward the window and peeked outside. It was a moonless, cloudy night, pitch black, except for the flickering of torches in the guard towers around the castle walls. “I don’t see anything,” I said after a moment, turning back to the group and trying to put everyone at ease, “a bird probably smacked into the window–”

  Thump! That was right behind me! I leaped away from the window, barely stifling a scream. Turning around to search for the source of the sound, all I saw was more infuriating blackness. Everyone was staring at me, wide-eyed; a few people were even shaking. “It’s probably nothing,” I said with a nervous laugh, trying to sound calmer than I felt.

  “What if enemy soldiers have broken into the city?” Suggested Poofy Pants unhelpfully. That got everyone really riled up.

  “It’s probably nothing,” I repeated, not wanting my workforce to get spooked and run away. “If enemies had broken into the city, we would have heard an alarm.”

  “Not unless everyone is already dead,” replied Poofy Pants ominously.

  We all processed that thought in silence, each of us pondering a worst-case scenario in our heads. “One of us should at least go out and check,” suggested Ellie. “Just to err on the side of caution.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I replied, “We’ve got several strong, strapping men in here who I’m sure would love to show off for all of us effeminate ladies–”

  “I nominate the witch,” said Poofy Pants.

  I glared at the inquisitor, and he shrugged. “What? You’re the magical one .”

  Everyone else in the room seemed to agree with that logic. In their minds, I could summon a dragon if things got dicey, so of course I should be the one to investigate. “Be careful out there, Piper.” Said Thomas as he handed me one of our completed flamethrowers. You too, Thomas?

  I groaned and assessed the group. They all seemed pretty spooked; no one looked like they would keep working until they had some assurance that we weren’t in the middle of being invaded. Fine, whatever. I’d pop outside, confirm it was just a dumb bird smacking into the window, and then we could get back to work. There was nothing to be worried about, 100% guarantee…well, 99% guarantee. “If I die out here,” I said, hoisting my flamethrower and trudging out of the mess hall, “you all stay away from my funeral.”