Etan Za'Darmondiel.

19th of Trescia, 1492.

Protectorate of Bakewia, Atford County. Winwell.

17:52.

***

I found myself equally excited and nervous, disembarking the caravan. It was the first time I stepped foot on soil- or ice- that was not declared part of Shujen. Yet, part of me knew what awaited me in those streets. However, the other part of me sought to allow the childish wonder to escape my body. A task that was easily done as said.

Winwell was a place I thought to rarely exist above the surface. It was a place of magic where buildings floated freely in the air, freeing the streets below from noise or traffic. A place where carriages and carts lumbered about on their own power or floated above the street, eager to ferry any passersby to their destination. Regrettably, I seemed to be the only one lost in the daze. Blude and her crew took to the air the moment they disembarked, swimming through the streets as if they knew them like the backs of their blades. The other two were in their wolf forms, lumbering beside Amun in the same way their progenitors had. And Iris…

She was uncannily quiet, riding atop Amun's shoulders with her hands outstretched like a bird's wings. She was even rattling her tongue loudly, apparently to mimic whatever an 'airplane' was. Much to my annoyance, she persisted up the hill, to where a mushroom-like tower sat overlooking the rest of the city. There, we met Blude and her girls, who seemed to have multiplied in our absence. I assumed she took Amun's advice and recruited some followers but second-guessed it with her looking over the need to introduce them before we entered, scowling at them instead.

Only when a human approached did they react in any way besides fear. The human was a male no older than I, although his hairless face made him look ten years younger. He was dressed in a strange garb of a strong-looking material dyed a dark gray. Pockets were stitched on strange places throughout. The outer-thighs. The shoulders and outer arms. And of course, the chest, embroidered with his name and what I assumed to be the name of his organization.

He cocked his head upon seeing the girls behind Blude and smiled, showing a row of teeth whiter than the eyes of a cave horror before his shoulder-length locks shook loosely. "Told you they'd show up." He laughed teasingly, and Blude spun back to face the motley crew of two humans, a gnome, and a surface elf. All children of her age. All girls.

"W- we wanted to join you, Blude." The gnome muttered.

Blude only rolled her eyes. "So you take over my spa, huh?" She spun to face the oddly dressed human, shaking her head. "That warrants extra work outta you lot."

With the newfound respect I gained for Blude, I faced the human, smiling in a way I otherwise would not have.

"Edward Pascal." He bowed in greeting. "Proprietor of Pascal Industries. Soon to be Imperator. And." He motioned to Amun. "Amun's Chief Engineer."

I nodded in understanding. "He is the one you hand-picked at… what was it, Corvus Tower?"

"The very one." Ed beamed proudly and with a dramatic flair that brought my eyes around his lair. "Now, with a tower of his own. Welcome."

He spun, bringing us to follow him through a veritable wonderland. Everywhere I looked, more of those otherworldly devices appeared- those… vehicles, in various stages of completion, with illusory windows that showed dramatizations of what they could do in perpetual loops. One machine in particular left me stuck in place for minutes. It ran on the black oils found in abundance underground and in the Darkworld, giving birth to fire that drove a massive auger into solid ground, crushing it into chunks that were ferried out the backside. Other devices used the same oils, carriages that spun their wheels at ferocious speeds, spitting up plumes of sand as they raced across the sand seas. All without magic.

It was like something out of dwarven fantasy. The airplanes Iris spoke of were no different. They were nothing more than metal tubes with spinning blades or fire-spitting devices attached to their fixed wings to push them through the skies. Yet they came in a multitude of shapes and sizes that would have been unbelievable were it not for them being fabricated before my eyes. I saw ships larger than the goblin settlements of Shujen. Some were even capable of diving into the ocean depths. Others were capable of ascending beyond the skies themselves. Again, all without magic. And yet, every vehicle I saw had a version that used enchantments as a fuel source, and then more variants that used magical items, materials, or enchantments to propel or lift them.

"This place triples as my house, workplace, and headquarters for sales and distribution," Ed explained, seemingly to me alone. "My brand as a grandmaster artificer is creating these vehicles and the infrastructure to support them. Roads, bridges, tunnels, you name it; both enchanted and naturally powered, capable of traveling across land, sea, or air with ease."

"I assume those would come at a steep price." I managed to say, though I wanted to point out other things.

"Indeed." He sighed with a surprising amount of disappointment. "As it stands, only the most established merchants and nobles can afford my products. And that's after reducing the price from their assessed worth. So, to compensate for the missing income, I formed a chartering business. One where the undead teaches the orphans to operate the vehicles, giving the common folk the means to travel across the realms.

"On top of that." He paused, pulling my eyes to the largest buildings floating at eye level. "That's one of my workshops. It's an apprentice house for the kids of this region. I supply everything. There's one in every city within the county now. Once we build roads to connect them, we'll be branching out to the surrounding counties."

"I see. But… well, why?" I asked, ignoring the leering gazes of Blude and her gang. It was something that I needed to know. "You are not exactly dependent on gold. None of us are, I have come to learn."

"Well." Ed laughed through his nose as Amun often did. "It's certainly not out of the goodness of my heart."

"Then why?" I demanded.

"Because it's fascinating, is it not?" he laughed. And I was a bit taken aback. "Think about it. Interest in these vehicles will rise as more people use them to travel. As more people gain access to them the general cost will go down and people's proficiency in tinkering with them will rise. Soon enough, everyone on the peninsula will be driving and flying around. Think of how many people will create unique designs from scratch or otherwise customize them. Or how many will race their vehicles or create some other type of game, festival, tradition, or crazy thing because of the knowledge they gained from places like this?

"Besides." He shrugged. "Many Bakewians have expressed their interest in joining my Legion already. Those who don't want to be Legionaries still want to work with me as contractors and engineers. I didn't even have to try!" He shrugged again, smirking this time.

"Huh. Heh. Hehe! Hah!" I laughed. And for several long minutes, I could not stop. Everything- my very life had become so… crazy. It was unbelievable. But… "I think I understand you now, Amun." I wound down, facing Amun and his raised brows. "You spoke of your previous life with pain and disdain. A world without magic, you said? Filled only with the cruelties of man and the machinations made by them?"

Stolen story; please report.

I awaited his nod of affirmation before continuing. A wait that did not take long. "You fail to see, as you would put it, the other side of the coin. Your world without magic birthed a predatorily tenacious curiosity within your people that the denizens of the realms could never achieve. How could we, when magic gives us a simple answer for everything? We do not need to know every rule or behavior of nature. Not when, despite our ignorance, magic allows us to bend those rules to our will. But your people had no magic; no mana. And it was that lack of magic that birthed a divine curiosity in your people that yielded divine intelligence. Having no magic, your kind sought the absolute truth of all things. More so, your kind never gave up when there seemed no truth to uncover. For eons, you toiled, you invented, progressed, regressed, and made leaps and bounds until you came to learn the secrets of the very universe. All in only a few hundred thousand years; over six thousand times faster than the elves of Youtera or any creature on the Mortal Plane.

"Disease and death- your very bodies became your playthings, able to be changed at a whim. The matter of the universe was as pliable to your kind as clay. If there was something your people could not do, you used your knowledge to create something that would do it for you and never ceased to improve it. In our eyes, that would be like an entire realm understanding the essence of every conceivable mana affinity and having the prowess to use them all as they will.

"You were humans, yes. Weak and frail, yes. Yet your people embodied the human trait all elves are wary of, no matter how much they deny it: potential. Your people, without magic, had the mind to do what every species of these realms could not." I gestured out the window to where another of those flying machines was beginning to come to life. "Your kind made the realm in your image. And when that was done, you sought other realms- planets- to impose your will upon.

"You were humans, yes. Weak and frail..." I repeated, turning my gaze over the onlookers before they met his once more. "In your eyes, that may be true. In my eyes, however, I see you as one who came from a realm of seemingly human War Gods who needed no magic to be divine. What is more, I now understand your wish to bring everything you loved about that realm into this one, leaving those painful and disdainful things behind."

"That is much the way we understand it as well."

Although Ed spoke, I heard others echo the same sentiments. Two sets of feet approached during my rant but paid it little mind. Thus when I turned to see two humans dressed in blue clothes similar to Edward's, I was half as surprised as they were to meet my eyes. Though theirs quickly darted away as they turned to embrace Iris, distancing themselves in the same motion.

"Horace. Lois." Amun nodded to them before gesturing to me. "This is Etan." Still fearful, they only nodded from their posts so far away. "They've been the citizens about science and engineering," Edward explained. "Unknowingly giving worship to Amun in the process."

"But engineering is not one of my religions. I only have the Black Plume and the Order of Worlds." Amun clarified.

"One more than any other God, oh dear." I snorted with pure sarcasm that went largely untranslated through my monotonous tone.

"You seem a lot more well-behaved, Blude." The old man, Horace, lightened up enough to chuckle. The Gerdian in question, on the other hand, shied away from the remark, facing away with her arms crossed and her face flushed.

"Aha! So this is where you were before you came to the Halls." I looked at the girls in a new light. Then looked around for any more children. "Where is the next one?"

"With my other half." Amun cryptically assured me. Then a small painting of him appeared to my side while his voice echoed in my mind. 'He'll be taking care of our Troupe's other half while we tend to our business.'

I only nodded. Meanwhile, Amun turned to Blude to ask if her new additions made their pledge. Upon receiving their affirmation, he sent them off with a talking skeleton to be measured for new clothes. In the meantime, Geri and Freki napped peacefully while I explored this miraculous place as much as possible. Which, to my dismay, was not much. Only fifteen minutes passed before the girls emerged in the same fine clothes as Blude, wherein Amun led us into one of the many workshops within the tower.

Referred to as a 'Module,' it was a large doorway that gave way to a tiled floor that seemingly stretched infinitely in all directions. No walls composed this room. Only a backdrop of black with countless motes of colored lights gave any sense of boundary to the structure while the blue, red, white, and orange stars simultaneously bathed the room in inspiring light.

"What happens when nature meets engineering?" Amun teased our minds but waited not for an answer. He did not care to hear it, I assumed, as he spawned a colossal abomination within the space before anyone could form a response.

It remained in midair like an ominous messenger from another plane that spoke with no sounds or movements. 'W' shaped pupils stared emptily out into the starry abyss while it spoke to the most primal parts of my soul. Tendrils, like ones on the caravan, dangled to the ground like the roots of a great tree penetrating the caverns of the Darkworld, hiding not an ancient monolith, but a horrendous beak. A maw that could swallow a hill. And that was just the head; tame compared to the thousands of meters of flesh trailing behind it, making an elongated ovoid monolith with great tapestries draped loosely from the edge.

It elicited a feeling similar to those described when standing before a great dragon. But… "What in the Seventeen Hells is that?"

"A creature from my divine domain. A Giant Astral Cuttlefish." Amun cheekily explained before he began withdrawing and methodically arranging exotic wood, stone, metal, water, various machinations, and more next to and below the great monolith.

"By 'Astral'… you do not mean the Astral Realm?"

"No." Amun shook his head, pointing to the starry abyss while more materials were withdrawn and worked by the second. "Astral, as in connected to the stars. Although, calling it that isn't entirely accurate either. What my people call deep or outer space, the cosmos, or the universe, is an infinite void of three spatial dimensions affected by the stream of time- a rate of change in space. It's ruled by four fundamental forces and ununiformly filled with matter and energy. Gravity, the weakest force, causes matter to aggregate into stars, planets, asteroids, and other celestial bodies, forming the objects we see in the heavens- largely inhospitable realms so far apart that even we struggled to reach them in our lifetimes. The cosmos is extremely hostile to all forms of life as we know it. Yet it was a place I spent most of my past life in, dwelling in engineered habitats built to withstand the hostilities of the infinite void.

"Stars and the cosmos are represented by twilight, as the motion of stars and planets is what brings about dusk and dawn. Planets, celestial bodies, or worlds themselves, are represented by Moonlight. That's why Blude and the others fly the way they do. They have the power of the seas, both the seas of water, air, and maybe sand too, I dunno. At any rate, they can swim through air like water and breathe in water like air.

"As for this… well, I suppose I'll call it a Space Cuttlefish." With a sigh, Amun turned, releasing an absurd concentration of divine energy.

Now, I knew little of artificing and even less about engineering. But I knew of magic. I knew of ki. Thus I could understand how Amun's magic, both divine and arcane, was re-purposing this dead creature in a way that even a necromancer of the Nox could never achieve on their own.

I felt both my jaw resting on the floor and my eyes bursting from their sockets. There was no need to even concentrate on the wave of necrotic energy flowing over the creature as if it were fleeing from the wave of blue at its tail. As quickly as lightning flashed but yet slow enough to allow me to witness every detail, the deathly energy flowed through flesh, nerves, organs, and muscles wholly, hollowing and discarding the parts as if to use them as fuel to drive its flight from the blue wave.

When it came, that wave of blue brought miracles that melded material with the organic. The shrunken husks of organs inflated with the wave of energy, expanding the interiors to make way for soils, plants, buildings, and ponds. In mere moments, bodily systems like the nerves had become wide roads, staircases, or railed passages leading to various parts of the structure. The liver was hollowed and dubbed the 'cargo bay.' The stomach became the center of industry. The eyes, brain, and, arms formed into private wings for the lot of us.

The miraculous process ended with a highly volatile crystal merging with the heart and priming it to life in a burst of radiative heat. As the beast inhaled its first breath, untold volumes of air rushed through a conical chamber on the creature's belly, giving rise to a rising whine before it evened out into a smooth hum, and then faded to silence.

First, a twitch, then the 'tapestries' along the edge of that elongated ovoid body began to glow purple and undulate, sending the creature on a slow drift that corrected just as the pupil twitched.

Almost as if by reflex, Amun lashed out, sending a lair stone rocketing into the great maw of the beast. It seemed to not even realize it consumed the morsel. Nor did it seem to realize the burst of energy that only came from a lair stone taking shape in its innards. It only turned to the mountain of inorganic materials and fresh food deposited beneath it and began feasting.

"The answer to my question is Biomimicry. The practice that, I assume, influenced my hold over nature. That," Amun pointed to the creature, pulling itself low to the ground, "is our Zeta-Class Uma. Our capital ship, Legion headquarters, and Empire within our Empire of Empires. Our mortal home. I call her the Cuttleship.

"Get in and get settled. We're going to my Emporium tomorrow."