The city of Minmay spread below him, snaking alongside the river Tine. An island of red roofs amidst a patchwork quilt of green and brown crop fields, shot through with a thick and lazy blue-brown river. Towards the horizon, the fields began to break up into clumps of light forest and the satellite villages. There were no defensive walls to be seen. The scene was so peaceful that it hard to believe these people were at war.
The oblong shape of the city hugged the riverside, its growth over the years evident in the way the streets and houses clustered along cluttered streets without much planning. There was no planned aristocratic grid in the center, or even a clear center at all, unlike Corbin. This was a town that was founded and grown without imperial planning, a natural center of the region's bountiful plains. The wealthiest area just north of the large stone bridge boasted the biggest mansions and stone buildings of the local guilds' headquarters, but there was no dividing wall between commoner and aristocrats and usually no encircling garden.
It was a free city in many ways, both from outside interference and from aristocratic aloofness. That reflected in its character and even atmosphere, people walked boldly on the streets between all districts without restriction. It was perpetually market day, with semi-permanent stalls lining the streets and even dedicated commercial buildings run by the larger guilds, all hawking their wares with loud voices to whoever might pass by, aristocrat and commoner alike.
Even from high up, the bustle of the city could be heard over the wind, snatches of voices and shouts. Occasionally, there was even the scent of one food or another carried over the air. Below him, people craned their necks and pointed up at the thing floating in the sky above them.
Cato adjusted the strap in his seat, carefully not touching the knot. His fidgeting didn't help make it any more comfortable but Cato wasn't going to risk undoing the knot, it wouldn't be funny if he fell out of the balloon on the first flight. Presently, he worked the pencil free and began to sketch on the clipboard, gauging distances by eye and the pre-arranged marker flags around town.
Above the single seat, the magical flame that heated the balloon was burning merrily. Cato prayed that it wouldn't suffer a fault like it did in the first test, but it held true and eventually as the balloon drifted out of the city outskirts on the wind, Cato let some air out the top with the red vent string. The balloon lowered itself and a few careful pulls brought him to roof height.
The riders had been following his sedate pace with ease and now the hired knights fired loops of rope out of overpowered bowguns at the balloon, catching on the array of hooks below the chair. Then, horses straining, they tethered the balloon and slowly brought it down to the ground.
"I never thought it would work!" one of the female knights said as she helped Cato out of the chair, "when I saw the job request, I thought you were insane!"
He wobbled a bit on his legs, it had been hours after all, and grinned at her. "We ran enough dry tests to know that it would fly," Cato said, watching the knights fold up the huge white balloon, "the question was if I could get down safely. "
"Are you going to sell this... balloon?" the leader of the party asked, still supporting Cato's shoulder. Cato raised an eyebrow at her clear expression of interest.
"You can't afford it," Cato said, "you are free to build your own but unless you have a lot of money, I doubt anyone can replicate this. "
After all, the first few disastrous attempts to re-invent powered flight by using magical force had eventually gave way to the much less ambitious but still ridiculously dangerous hot air balloon. This was actually the fifth balloon Cato had built, the previous four had suffered... accidents. Expensive ones. And even discounting the cost of learning to build one, the materials weren't cheap either. The fabric in particular had to have as little stitches as possible and be able to hold up the entire weight of the balloon, it had to be light, strong and as airtight as possible.
Just building this thing had taken more than half of Cato's money. Short of a guild or noble attempting it, there was no one else who could afford a balloon. And no one with interest since even the rare and troublesome Elkas could be had for far less.
"So what were you doing up there?" the knight asked Cato.
"I tried to draw a map of Minmay," Cato replied, still watching the knights carefully load his packed balloon into the cart for retrieval. She took the clipboard from him.
"You suck at drawing. "
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Cato directed the knights to leave the cart in the large warehouse on the freshly broken ground. The first thing Cato had done was to buy a field, with some urging from Minmay, and start to build his own buildings there. They were hastily constructed wooden buildings and made poor houses but that was enough to shelter experiments from inclement weather.
For those more delicate tests, Cato and Landar had dug out a small basement under the main laboratory building and even now the masons were shoring up the walls with bricks.
The strange set of buildings drew a cloud of gawkers and hangers on every day. As well as more educated and curious eyes. Cato made no secret about what he was doing, and told everyone who was interested to discuss and learn ideas.
And there were ideas galore. From the focused study on types of cement to refinements on the cast iron process, there were also more mundane ones. Primitive charcoal pencils like what Cato had used on his flight, clipboards, abacus, double entry bookkeeping and strangely enough, umbrellas. Cato had to resist putting palm to face when he realized that everyone here just suffered through rain with oiled cloth raincoats. Or just got wet.
Minmay's two administrators, the three alchemists on permanent loan from the Order, four expert craftsmen from the Ironworkers, Masons and two from the Recordkeepers, and more than twenty local guilds and lesser merchants were forming a core group of inventors, thinkers and writers. Not to mention their own connections and little cliques outside that spread ideas throughout Minmay.
Cato's efforts to break down the barriers the guilds had raised between themselves swept through the group like a breath of fresh air, as well as rigorous personal interviews and Minmay's backing to ensure the group was immune towards intimidation by outside forces. It allowed them to discuss their problems and propose solutions each of them would not have seen alone. Far beyond Cato's own ideas from Earth, the mixture of so many different fields that Cato insisted on was already beginning to bear the fruit of innovation. Partnerships without Cato had sprung up, for mass produced glazed pots fired in Ironworker designed furnaces, for an attempt to brew larger batches of beer in steel tanks, for the first instance of outsourcing accounting to the Recordkeepers, for a plan to design and build a printing press and start a new guild for region-wide postal and news services. Among countless smaller experiments to refine and improve current processes from more basic principles of physics and chemistry that Cato knew.
As Cato had predicted, the place was turning into a university. One that focused on science and technology, compared to the traditional Academy's focus on history and magic. Here, they would be equal before the light of truth and empiricism. The fight to make it truly independent was not yet won, even with Minmay's adamant neutrality, but the ball was rolling and gaining momentum all the while.
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The most important innovation was the school building that Cato was headed to now. Built like an Earth style lecture hall design, the open air amphitheater wouldn't be open air for long. Not if Cato could convince the masons to test out cast iron framed constructions that would be needed to roof the huge area. Currently though, it was the focus of a large group of students.
Landar and a few alchemists hired by Minmay were currently in the center, conducting a basic class on how to use magic. The class was full of the children of lesser merchants, who had jumped at the chance of a low cost magical education, even if it was only half an education. This was the third group, the first two having managed to learn how to create and stabilize a basic magical ball were told to go home and practice it for a few weeks to get strong enough.
He nodded at the progress they were making, Landar was getting better at lecturing, however reluctant she was to admit it. The well-worn demonstrations and explanations had this third group already working at stabilizing their magic despite being only the fifth day of classes. The mana tax wouldn't be too far away now, a few more months at most once the first group turned into teachers in turn.
"The flight went well," Cato approached Landar as she wound up the lecture and sent them home to practice.
"Oh, how was the toggle?" Landar asked.
"The button works, I had to press it a few times to get the flamer to stop though, so we need to work on the accuracy," Cato said, "also, we need another method to store more magic, that short flight used up almost all of the reserve. "
"What?!" Landar's shout drew the attention of the other alchemists who were packing away their notes. "Four days! It took all of us to charge an iron basket that weighs half as much as you and it's gone in less than two hours?!"
"Imagine if we were doing this with force spells," Cato remarked dryly, "by my estimates, we would need three to four times more power. Just to stay afloat. "
Landar made a short choking sound and wilted onto the floor. "I see why we need the mana tax now," she said, gritting her teeth. The other three alchemists were also looking pale. The balloon flight had eaten up a truly preposterous amount of magic, more than Landar's golem in fact. "In order to build useful things, we throw away our pride huh?" she whispered, looking at the few stragglers left still practising their magic.
"Oh come on," Cato chuckled, "you're just thinking of all the cool weapons you can build with that much magic. I know you are. "
Landar peeked up from under her eyelashes, a mischievous grin building on her face, "well, I guess that will be sufficient compensation. "
"It's not like you aren't already building them," Cato sighed and helped her up from the ground.
"Well, I have a new idea to try," Landar said as she led him towards the firing range. Well, that was subtle, Cato could already foresee another round of repairs. At this rate, there wouldn't even be grass left at the range. Landar's experiments tended towards the extremely dangerous.
Her creatively destructive weapons were mostly not useful. That didn't stop Landar of course. Only the lack of magic did and with all the magic she was buying, Cato had had to drag her off to dinner and sleep not a few times now.
"It'll be all right, I was just thinking that we don't need to store all our magic in the arrow before we fire it. If we assume a siege weapon transported by wagon, then we can have the firing mechanism transfer magic from iron storage blocks to the arrow. There shouldn't be too much degradation from overloading the alchemy if you fire it immediately. " Landar was practically skipping, "so with that technique I can count on the arrow having far more magic than it can normally hold! So I thought of the perfect payload!"
She conjured a spout of condensed magical flames in front of her that promptly fell onto the grass. "Liquid Fire!"
Cato backed away cautiously from the rapidly charring circle around the reddish liquid. The dollop of gooey fire shed heat like a torch, the grass around it was already smouldering. A close relative to the gaseous magical flames he used in his balloons, this magical material was hard to find uses for. Non-Landar uses anyway.
"Please put that out before you burn the place down," Cato sighed.
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"How was the flight?" Minmay asked as Cato walked into the rented building. The chancellor was sitting comfortably on Cato's sofa. Currently the only one of that design in Minmay, although a bunch of nobles had placed their own orders. As the chancellor's own was still in waiting, the man liked to visit Cato's place to receive the daily reports. Cato suspected that he just liked the comfort of the expensive feather and spring stuffing.
"I managed to draw a crude map of Minmay," Cato said, holding out the clipboard, "the balloon definitely works well enough. "
"I still don't see why you want to fly so much," Minmay said, examining the useless map, "the Elkas can do this just as well as you can. "
"Elkas are too rare," Cato said, "there isn't even a single one here in Minmay. Taking resting time into account, an Elka can travel only twice as fast as a human. They can't stay up in the air forever. "
"Neither can your balloon," Minmay pointed out.
"It is simply a matter of enough magic," Cato said, "or if I can manage to make a lifting gas. Back on Earth, we used to travel across countries by balloon before we had powered flight. Besides, imagine what would happen if we refined one of Landar's new designs and mounted it on a balloon. "
The two men shared a mutual unspoken vision of a battlefield. It was on fire. Hopefully with monsters underneath.
"So it's still not ready," Minmay noted.
"No, the technology is still too immature," Cato said, "I could work faster if I could have a bit more money and people than just my own income, but you have other priorities. "
"Indeed. The seed drill is working well here, as your double plow. The problem is making the regional barons use it, and the peasants too. They don't trust this new thing. "
"For that matter, I'm not too sure you should have just applied it across the board like that," Cato said, "for all I know, wind eyes grow on the surface and work better with hand casting. "
"They don't," Minmay said. "We already know wind eyes grow best when planted, but doing an entire field by hand is impossible. "
"We will see when they start to grow, it should be only a week or so before the first shoots can be seen," Cato said.
"On to the second matter, the expedition set off today. Like you said, they are going to head to the Snow Wall first," Minmay reported.
"Good," Cato nodded, "let's hope they find something useful. "