"The Anchor," she said, her eyes gleaming.  She followed Bryn's hand as it lifted an assortment of cold pastry and grilled vegetables from his plate to his mouth.  

"What about it?"  He mumbled through a mouthful of food.  

"There must be a way to harness all that power."  Dagna smiled wide, and it was not comforting.  "I mean, we don't even know the source.  Or the strength!  You could be operating at ten percent of the Anchor's full capacity."  

"Doesn't feel like it."  The constant ache in his forearm, and the blinding flashes of pain which raged through his body when he closed a Rift—these suggested to Bryn that the Anchor was at maximum levels.  If it weren't, he'd rather not know.

"Imagine the kind of weapon we could create with that energy.  Or if it could be focused somehow.  A sword, maybe?"  Dagna's focus began to drift as she looked toward the sky outside the forge, and spoke softly, almost to herself.  "A directly charged enchantment.  But he's not left-handed... If it could travel through the arteries?..."

"It's already a weapon, though?" Sera asked.  She still grazed from her plate, but she was seated on the forge's cold floor, in front of a locked chest.  She was attempting to pick the heavy iron lock with a greasy chicken bone.  Dagna did not seem to care, if she noticed.

Bryn nodded.  "What she said."

Dagna tilted her head, her rounded nose wrinkling.  "Not exactly.  As I've said, it's more like a key.  Useful in its current application, of course.  But the possibilities are... well, totally unknown!" she said joyfully.  "Which is the best part!"  

"Got it!" Sera called from the floor, holding up the rusty, opened lock.  "Haven't done that in ages."  

Bryn appreciated her ingenuity, but at that moment he was preoccupied by Dagna's growing interest in his hand.  "I don't want to be a weapon.  Not literally."  

"Oh, of course not," Dagna said, raising her gloved hands.  "We need something a little less destructible than your body.  You're just bones and soft parts."  

He didn't like thinking of that.  No one enjoys ruminating on how fragile and short-lived they really are.  So instead, he held his dwindling plate close to his chest, and scooped up the last of the meat pie, which had grown cold in the forge.  

On the floor, Sera rummaged through the unlocked chest, picking up a ceramic jar or glass tube, looking it over for a moment, then tossing it to the side.

"You know, most of the things in that chest are explosive," Dagna said, her voice fluttering nervously.  "Which is, you know, why it was locked."  

Sera's shoulders heaved in a put-upon sigh, and she stood up, going back to her plate.  She dug out a piece of smoked fish and took a bite.  "Simple," she said.  "That's the best, right?  When I was a kid, worst thing was an old fish head."  She shook the rest of the fish at Dagna for emphasis.  "Let her rot in the alley, thwack her at some knob, he stinks for days."  She laughed and stuffed the rest of the fish in her mouth.  

Bryn smiled.  "We may want something more fatal than fish heads."  

Then Sera gasped.  "A bomb!"  She shook Dagna by the shoulder.  "Make a fish bomb.  Blows everyone up," she said, "and stinks."  She folded her arms and gave a self-satisfied smile.

"Well," Dagna said, "that's certainly not a complicated idea.  Original, perhaps, but, mechanically it's..."  She looked as dissatisfied with the idea as Sera was pleased.

"Not hard for you.  You can figure anything out."  Sera winked at Dagna, and smiled.  

A fiery blush bloomed in Dagna's cheeks and she avoided everyone's eyes.  Bryn stifled a grin, and wondered if these two would be more trouble together than they were apart.

Dagna coughed.  "I, uh, suppose we could infuse a a chemical explosive with... fish rot.  I'll check with the kitchens."

"They are demons, generally," Bryn said.  "I don't think they smell wonderful to begin with.  Do we think they care about smelling like fish?"      

"Nobody wants that," Sera insisted.  "Don't care what you are."  

He supposed it was worth a try.  

Later, after the trial, it was swiftly banned.