Flare gun/flare

[krilu She/her]

Hi All, 

Is it clear to everyone how the flare gun works? I tried to understand, but it’s too confusing  Even chat gpt failed  Especially this, in ch.41: 

Spoiler

Tress loaded the flare—along with some zephyr spores—into the
flare gun, which had a stubby, oversized barrel. She sighted down it,
but didn’t pull the trigger—which would inject water into the barrel
and launch the projectile.

Where is water there? Is it in charge bag with zephyr spores?  The timer system is also complicated

Edited September 25, 2025 by krilu

[alder24]

The gun probably has a small water tank in it with a valve that opens when the trigger is pulled. Water then floods the barrel, where zephyr spores are loaded below the bullet and they explode. Inside the bullet there is a roseite sphere with a bit of water inside, that breaks and ignites spores that are in the bullet.

The timer was explained in ch 37. Basically there is a separate smaller glass sphere with water that breaks when the gun is fired and that water is then consumed by a vine, which starts to grow at a very predictable rate. This vine has a silver tip, which then pierces the bigger roseite sphere and this causes the charge of spores inside the bullet to ignite. The timer in a flare gun works in the same way as in the cannon ball described in the book. Tress ch 37:

Quote

You see, each had a timer inside that, after its launch, would lead to a secondary explosion and a burst of water. Yes, you know that part already. But do you know how the timers were made?
It turned out to be quite simple: the timer fuse was a vine. From the notes, Tress learned she wasn’t the first to discover that applying water to an aether would cause it to continue to grow after its initial burst. The explosive emergence was erratic, but everything afterward was far more predictable. Even precise. An exactly measured verdant vine would grow at an extremely reliable rate when given an exactly measured amount of water.
[...]
Anyway, the initial explosion that sent the cannonball soaring also broke a small glass container of water inside, soaking a clipping of verdant aether. That vine grew—pushing a plug with a bit of silver on the tip—through a short tube toward the central mechanism of the cannonball. This was a charge of zephyr spores surrounding a hollow sphere made of roseite. That roseite, in turn, had wax on the inside— which allowed it to contain, but not touch, a charge of water.
The silver tip pushed through the zephyr spores, killing a small number of them but leaving most unharmed, and then touched the roseite sphere—which cracked from the pressure of the silver. Water flooded out, touched the zephyr spores, and released their explosion— which detonated the entire mechanism violently, shooting out shrapnel and water.

Ch 41:

Quote

To distract herself from what she was planning to do to Crow, Tress inspected the timer that she’d left out in reconstructing the flare. The small device looked exactly like the schematic had described: a bit of verdant vine for a fuse, already grown from spores, and a small glass vial, which—being far more flimsy than the roseite bead—would break upon firing.