“If I still had my mage powers I’d be able to fly each of you over the wall. Fire magic seems a poor replacement.”

She might be a little bitter.

"Could we get through the gates with void weapons, if those don't count as force? Does the sigil protect against chemical reactions?"

Fire magic covering chemical reactions in general feels like the kind of worldbuilding he'd do, a name that stuck from when the magic was discovered back when burning was the main type of reaction anyone knew about. Then again, it's the kind of misleading name that would be unhelpful for his players. Maybe he'd translation convention it, have the word for 'chemistry' in the fantasy language literally mean 'fire' because fire magic determined the bounds of what they considered chemistry. 

"A quarter-inch of metal per cycle, several seconds to cycle, these gates are usually at least half a foot thick... We'd be standing here for several minutes just to make a single hole all the way through. The sigil is anchored to the whole structure so we couldn't break it any easier that way."

"But could we reach the hinges that way? That's how my players always did it. Ended up carting away the adamantium doors as the best loot in the dungeon."

"Those hinges will be heavy-duty. Tanya, do you have enough chemicals left for corroding something like that? Are you able to steer a reaction while it's beyond your line of sight?"

“I have some diluted sulphuric acid, but not enough for anything like this. I feel like I could make it melt faster with the magic but I’d probably still need a lot of acid at higher concentrations to get through something like this. I made the ethanol burn hotter and faster but I still did require fuel for effects that large. Also my range doesn’t feel all that big. I get stronger feedback and control the closer it is.”

Tanya’s fire magic powers are pretty new, to her at least, maybe not to the previous inhabitant, but melting through giant doors or walls doesn’t seem like something she could do. Just based one what it’s felt like using it so far.

"You wouldn't have to melt the whole gate, just the hinges keeping it attached to the wall and in our way. Or even just the parts of the hinges that hold the pin in, so the pin drops out."

"Then again, it could be a different design to the one I'm thinking of... It doesn't cost us much to try one hole, to see what the situation is, though."

Amaryllis gets to work, repositioning the bike so she can stand on the saddle for the height to reach the presumed location of the hinge and starts punching through with the void pistol.

thwip

"We do have some void bombs unused, since your fire magic took out the greater umbral undead effectively. Another option would be to push one of those through a hole to detonate on the other side. More of a gamble as we'd have less feedback on the results."

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"Something you should understand for when we are back in civilization is that void effects are banned across the Empire. Each use draws the Void Beast slightly closer. During the peak of industrial use, the arrival timescales by some estimates were down to a century."

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(Quest Accepted: Tragedy of the Commons - Following the discovery of the Void Beast, void weapons and tools were made illegal under international law, usable only with expensive permits or in situations that called for it. For a time, this was sufficient. Now the Void Beast stirs once again, and imperial regulatory schemes won’t be enough.)

“Make me some handholds so I can climb closer up to the hinge. Feedback and control is stronger the closer I am.”

So collective action problems trouble Joon but not Tanya. Good to know. She gets to work.

Soon there are two sets of shallow handholds in place, cut out of the slightly less dense stone of the gate housing to save on shots.

Tanya climbs up relatively easily and drips the bottle of acid around the pins holding the hinges in place. The feedback isn’t as much of rush as when sensing fire, but being able to sense the metal corrode as the acid gets to work is interesting. She tries to make it melt faster and more efficiently by willing it to just react with the metal, and not get wasted reacting to the air. It sorta works. Soon you can hear the metal fatigue groaning.

She throws a thumbs up down to Joon and Amaryllis.

"It worked? Now for the difficult part. We need to knock the gate down somehow, and when we do we'll have to either punch through the undead on the other side to a part of the city with a lower concentration before more are drawn in by the noise, or else retreat and wait for the natural dispersion to spread them out again. The first option risks immediate injury, the second lowers our odds of success for later from hunger if we can't find anything edible outside the walls."

She climbs back down. “I feel like the pins are as worn as they will get, they were making rather distressed groaning noises so I think if they are making stress sounds that should be weak enough. Now to pop the door…. Shaped charge?” The explosion that took out the mega zombie felt great through the magical feedback. She wants to do that again.

“If we had fuel we could burn all the ones that rushed through the door…. Doesn't have to be alcohol, just anything flammable would do.” Now the calculation is if wasting time and calories getting fuel for a big fire is worse than wasting time and calories waiting for the horde to disperse. Or if they should just push through.

"That would be an advanced application of fire magic, from what I've read on the subject. You're confident you could accomplish it?"

"There's little to burn around here, other than the long grasses, and we don't have a way to confine particulate for a dust explosion."

"There's all the ammunition we picked up, that's got gunpowder in it. Disassemble the cartridges and get it all packed in one place for the shaped charge, save your fuel for the undead?"

Like in Tintin!

“I’ve got two bottles of hydrogen gas and one and a bit of ethanol. Shaped would be a relative thing, I wouldn’t want to stand right next to it. But definitely I can make a big enough explosion to rock the door rather strongly. You underestimate how strong hydrogen explosions can be when you can manipulate perfect air to fuel ratios using magic. The worn pins should snap and the door should fall right out.”

She knew demo men in her unit who would give their right hand for the amount of control she just instinctually now has over stuff while it burns. And she has just enough chemistry knowledge and training with demolitions to make use of it properly.

“But then I would be mostly out of fuel, so not as useful if we run into the undead conglomerations.”

She turns to Joon. “I’d rather save most of the ammo. We should still use the hydrogen mostly.”

They get to work. Joon's share of the casings are opened, the gunpowder collected in case the hydrogen isn't sufficient, and his rifle left behind. 

"The guns will likely be a liability inside, with how the sound carries," Amaryllis cautions.

Joon considers suggesting that they use the sound of gunfire outside to deliberately provoke a greater undead into forming and punching down the gates for them from the inside. He decides against voicing that idea, given how vehement Tanya was the last time. 

The void bombs are also redistributed, one each, with strict instructions on their use.

Amaryllis and Joon are ready on the soulcycle. As soon as Tanya knocks the door down and burns the undead immediately inside, they'll ride by for her to jump in the sidecar and then punch through into the city towards Sorian's Castle.

Tanya gets serious as she rigs up the bottles to release the gas along with a decent amount of the collected gunpowder Joon donated. Better safe than sorry. If the first explosion fails, then a smaller explosion wont do anything, so better to just gamble it all on one combined boom.

She sets the gas to release then runs like hell towards a bend in the wall, still close-by the door, but with some cover, just in case. Safety first.

Once the Gas and air should have mixed to an ideal amount, she shoots at the bottle with the rifle. It hits the metal container and sparks.

And with Tanya using her magic to contain the explosion in mostly one direction, and pushing the oxygen and hydrogen to burn as efficiently as possible. It sounds and feels like gods hand just smacked the earth. Even around a corner it makes Tanya's ears ring and she can feel a pressure wave pass over her.

The hinge pins instantly snap and the door is blown inward with an insanely loud crash.

That worked way better than Tanya expected! Though thankfully she was in cover because she controlled the direction less well than she would have liked. She would probably have gotten hurt standing much closer.

So, shes good at exciting big explosions to be stronger, not so good at control at those scales. Noted.

She clips the full bottle of ethanol into her sprayer and waits for the first wave of zombies.

She doesn't need to wait very long!

They surge towards the now-opened gate and almost immediately start to amalgamate as they squeeze in towards the gap.

“Burn!” The first wave gets doused in Ethanol mist and ignited. She dumps most of the bottle onto the horde. She actually tries to slow down the reaction this time so they burn longer and the zombies massing behind them might catch fire by coming in contact with the burning mass.

She runs to intercept the soulcycle. 

They bowl over multiple undead as she hops in the sidecar, Joon swinging his sword to cut through limbs that might jam the wheels, losing momentum with each impact. For a moment it looks like they might get stuck and have to abandon the vehicle, but then the bike tilts, the wheels make contact again, and they shoot forward.

The sidecar has taken several impacts, from scraping against the edge of the gate and slamming into bodies, and now the joints connecting it to the rest of the bike are creaking and bending as they rattle down the streets of the city.

Well, that is worrying. She prepares to jump onto the bike proper if the sidecar detaches.