A flash of sparks reflects in Gimbal’s goggles as the dragonling reaches for a wrench from the nearby workbench, her eyes never leaving the open panel before her. The tools in the base camp are paltry compared to her workshop in New Haukeland, but they will have to do. There was hardly enough room for her supplies alongside the “medical tools” that Durnipia had insisted on. Still, Gimbal had worked with less. Icaria hardly offered the array of technology available on Valhalla, but that had never stopped the curious dragon from tinkering. Limitations only fueled her creativity.

On a world where size and strength determine who rules and who is subject, being born the runt of a clutch was often a death sentence. This was not to be Gimbal’s fate. As a hatchling, she quickly learned to survive using her wits and knack for engineering. So renowned was her gift for invention that she was invited to courts of draconic royalty to craft contraptions never before seen on Icaria. This only made the other Scions resent her more. Had it not been for the timely intervention of Volarak, the young dragon would have been the victim of an assassination by those jealous wyrms. Gimbal would not soon forget this gift, nor the opportunity presented in working for Volarak Enterprises, with the technological promise of dozens of worlds.

“Hey, small fry, how’s it going in here?” Sheriff McCreech’s drawl comes from the entrance to the make-shift workshop. “We’re gonna need those claws to break through this door soon. Ain’t enough chain axes in the world to make it budge.”

Gimbal grits her teeth in a quiet snarl, pretending not to hear the lawman over the sound of machinery. Finally, the last few bolts secured, she carefully puts her tools aside and clambers into the cockpit of her greatest creation yet. With a titanic rumbling, the dragon mech rises above the camp, wings spread and a jet of orange flame streaming from the B.R.E.A.T.H. apparatus for added effect.

“I told you, human…” the dragonling pivots an enormous metal claw to point at the visibly impressed McCreech: “Don’t. Call. Me. SMALL!”

Gimbal is available in the Clockwork Combine Research Expedition army expansion. Pre-order now for a July release!