Weird put the quill down, as the alarm bells rang out.
"Every FUCKING DAY!" He shouted. "Can't your people just give it a rest already!?"
He had finished the PVC rubber batch more than 2 hours ago, and was burning the midnight oil, yet again. The new hazard suit, in all its glorious and gleaming brass and black rubber glory, was stretched over a makeshift mannequin made of wadded up pillows and bedsheets to cure, and had been standing that way in a corner for hours now.
Now, he was drafting a sanitized volume on the art of healing living flesh from the mad scrawlings of that bitch thari. Or rather, *was* doing that.
He and hugo had sequester themselves away, reading and discussing the magics inside those creepy leather bound tomes. Bound in what kind of leather, exactly, he didn't want to know or guess, though he had his suspicions.
He was sleepy, and cranky. Couldn't the fortress just install a self destruct mechanism and a panic room, so when the invading armies come, we could just pull the lever from isolated safety, and squash whatever invading horde was paying us a visit that time? Clearly not. That showed too much rational planning and forethought for this place. Why did he even live here again?
"The fools are at it again." He scowled, rubbing the center of his brow, nursing a fatigue headache intensified by all the noise. Languidly, he stumbled to the workbench and popped 2 of the aspirin tablets, and chased them with some distilled ethyl alcohol from the workbench. He had been getting sober from working nonstop the last few days... well, would have been nonstop if it weren't for all the damn interruptions! The airborne alcohol vapor from the alcohol lamps and the retort's distillations alone had kept him properly sauced. He was hungry too.
Blowing out all the alcohol flames, and tidying up the workbench, putting reagents away safely to avoid any accidents should the troubles pay his makeshift lab a visit, he scooped up some of the refined substance containers he had managed to refill. Gods he hated using them right now, these were meant to kickstart operations in a *real* lab room! Using them now would mean more sleepless nights processing raw materials the *hard* way. The very thought made him angry. Whoever was outside was gonna pay! With meticulous care and well honed control he kept the sizzling rage just beneath the surface so he could work; loading the compartments of the new hazard suit, and attaching the unbroken components and vials from the previous model to expedite completion. Five minutes, it was done.
"Dragons! The dragons are comming!" He heard from the doorway. Hugos expression became one of apprehension. You didn't have to be psychic to read what was on his mind. Poor guy was a dragon himself. Dwarves in the zone wouldn know him from adam outside, and going into the hall would cause a panic.
Weird huffed out an exasperated sigh.
"Hold still hugo. We'll make sure nobody confuses you for one of those damned deus-ex-machina morons outside." He growled, and reached for the pot of PVC rubber adhesive.
He hoped there was enough.