"The central camp is definitely where they are housing the prisoners. I wasn't able to get a close-up view, but there are between ten and twenty hostages there. Whether they are soldiers that you know or from Cairen's ship, I don't know," Derrin pointed to a spot on the map.
"That is what I suspected," Zara turned to them, "The bombs are done?"
"Yes, they will go off in three days at the next pulse."
She frowned, "That isn't much time, but it should work. Do you have enough for everything we need?"
Vizim nodded, his clothing had been freshly changed upon arriving at the fort, but it was once again covered in grease and oil, "We have three bombs that will detonate with the next pulse and three more bombs without detonators. That should be enough to cause chaos."
"We need to get them spread out in time, though," Red turned to Zara, "And someone needs to be in position to get the hostages out."
"I'll take care of the hostages just in case the pirate king is hanging around the central camp. Derrin, that means you'll need to place the bombs at the cannons. Traveling to that end of the island takes about a day, and with all the pirates, it'll be cutting it close for anyone else."
"I need some supplies, and I will head out right now."
Zara turned to them, "You two will stay here. Hopefully nothing will happen to the fort while we're gone, but just in case, we can run through the defenses."
Red tried to cover his frown. It made sense. Derrin could travel far faster across the island without anyone with him. The same went for Zara. He didn't like it, though. Yes, he had made the bombs, but he still felt like he wouldn't be doing anything.
Both Derrin and Zara left over the next couple of hours. Derrin needed to journey across the entire island before his true mission began. Zara, on the other hand, wanted to address her bombs immediately. Vizim retreated to the supplies room. Red wasn't sure what he was doing, but he wasn't all that interested.
Instead, he found himself in the training grounds. It had been a while since he was last able to properly train. Training wasn't something he enjoyed doing, but he liked the feeling of progress. It reminded him of engineering. Each success felt like one step closer to something. Red was sure what that was most of the time, but it still felt good.
He took the time to run through all of the things Derrin and Ayjax had taught him. Using his mist to enhance his punching and his kicking. The fight in the jungle really underscored the importance of mastering these abilities. The strange way his mist acted still bugged him. However, it bugged him even more that he was still alive thanks to his mist. If he had practiced more, then perhaps he wouldn't have needed the luck.
Red wasn't certain how long he had blindly swung his hands and feet around, but eventually he collapsed to the sandy ground. There was no way of knowing if he had mastered the mist-enhanced strikes unless he was in an actual fight. The problem was that simply landing harder hits didn't help with actually fighting.
Red knew that was his real problem at the moment. He didn't have the skill or the experience to properly fight. Since he'd never been taught proper fighting techniques, there also wasn't a proper way to train his skills. In the end, the only way for him to properly improve his skill was to get someone to train him. With that not an option, so he decided to train the one thing he could.
His shooting.
It had been days since the last time he shot his pistols and weeks since he had actually trained with them. Practicing on Wale Port had been difficult because there were no proper locations to test his aim. He had still managed somehow, and it had saved his life aboard the gearborn ship. However, it hadn't been enough during the fight with the pirates.
Red wandered across the training area until he found the targets lined up against one wall. He had noticed them earlier, but now took the time to properly examine them. There were a total of eight targets, each at a different distance and of different sizes. Behind the targets was a large, black, soot-stained spot on the wall. It didn't take a genius to realize what that was from.
In one fluid motion, he tore the pistol from his right pocket. The gun came up in a clean arc as he quickly fired on the largest target. His shot zapped across the field with a faint teal light before scraping the edge of the target. It was not nearly as accurate as he would have liked. A shot like that would not be enough to do any meaningful damage to an enemy.
He fired again.
This time, with his gun already trained on the target. The bolt of mystical energy slammed into the heart of the target with a crackle. Red sighed and holstered his gun. Hitting targets quickly was where his problems really were. He could hit a target like this given a moment, but that wasn't an option during a fight.
Red repeated the action with his left gun. The results were worse than before. He had expected as much with his non-dominant hand after all. Still, missing the target completing on the quick pull was not very inspiring. He had managed to land a hit after aiming, but it wasn't nearly as well-placed.
As much as training annoyed him, this was why he needed to practice. He would not be much help to Derrin or Zara with shooting like this. Red didn't consider shooting to be his expertise, but he had shockblasters and needed to utilize them. Nothing was going to change overnight; he just needed to work at it. Perhaps by the end of this excursion, he'd be able to actually hit the target consistently.