By the time they left the tailor's shop, it was already dark. The sight of the city at night was quite mystical, for it almost didn't feel like it was night. The ever-present lamplights littered across the streets illuminated everything already, but somehow, every window from every building was also emitting light.
Aloe could understand the city affording to light up every lamppost, but surely not every citizen could afford the oil or coal to light the fires. Unless…
They rushed back to the slaver's safe house and Aloe started inspecting the open room. Before doing anything else, she put Xochipilli to sleep. The poor child was exhausted after having walked across the forest and the city for a full day. He asked her for water, but because she didn't know how people got water in this era, Aloe grew a Flourishing Spring and poured some water directly into a glass. Xochipilli was amazed at her water-making capabilities, but she asked him to sleep first and question her later.
It was simple doing so after pouring a few Dream Spore spores into his water. She wasn't sure that it would work, but she still tried, nonetheless. It strained her heart a bit forcing him to sleep, but she justified it by telling herself that a Dream Spore sleep left the body more rested than a normal sleeping session.
When the child was already sleeping, she was pleasantly amazed to find a little half-sphere of cast iron screwed onto the wall slightly glowing. A whisp of light came from the slits on the half-sphere, so she unlatched the pin holding the cast iron, and the room filled with light.
"I knew it!" A part of her was furious at what she was seeing, but another one was ecstatic at the applications.
Before her, a piece of Myriad lay.
"So I guess they found the Myriad I threw in the oasis all that time ago, huh." She pressed her hands on her hips as she inspected the craftsmanship. "How curious, they have polished the glass and given it a spherical shape."
She didn't know much about glassmaking or optics besides what she had been taught back in the day, but judging from how the room was illuminated, Aloe guessed that shape was this way so it dispersed light equally across the room instead of focusing it on one spot.
"So how does this whole system work?" Aloe pondered whilst looking directly into the Myriad glass. "The light coming from this Myriad, the rest of the buildings, and also the lampposts have an orange tinge, so it isn't sunlight, but firelight. Have they built a whole system where they carry the light from a single fire across the whole city? If that's the case, then it's… genius."
There was no other word to describe it.
"Being able to passively illuminate a whole city with a single fire saves a lot in costs and time, but how do they prevent the Myriads from blinding everybody? After all, if I were to shine an undergrowth right into this Myriad, then its light would overpower that of the fire and everyone would see it…"
She was really, really tempted to do so. But at the same time, she had no reason to be a nuisance to the whole city and its tens of thousands of inhabitants. Also, that may bring her into the spotlight if they were to track down the source of the light. But she couldn't deny growing a Radiating Undergrowth and pressing it against the Myriad was highly… tempting. And amusing. Especially amusing.
"Hmm, but then what happens with the lampposts? They are outside so they should reflect the light of the sun during the day and blind everyone…"
Unable to resist the impervious need for answers, Aloe left the house and inspected the closest lamppost on the street. Before doing anything, she checked that no one was close or looking at her, and once she was in the clear, she jumped up with a slight movement of her tiptoes.
That was more than enough to reach the top of the four-something meters of the lamppost. With care, she grabbed to the post, though the metal screeched a bit.
"Oh, come on!" Aloe groaned in protest. "I'm not that heavy!"
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Twirling her neck around to unsettling degrees, she was able to check how the whole device worked. First, it had a half-spherical lid on top that blocked all light from the sun; this had the side effect that lampposts could only illuminate directly beneath them, but there were so many of them on the streets that it wasn't much of a problem. Then, inside of this bowl, there was the typical glass cage used for lamps. However, instead of having the source of light down like you would have with an oil lamp wick, it was at the very top.
The Myriad glass seemed to be glued at the highest part of the cage, meaning that there was no way for sunlight – regardless of the hour of the day – to hit it as it was completely surrounded by all sides.
Except downwards, of course.
Looking directly into the post, Aloe saw it. A second Myriad.
"Ah, now it makes complete sense," she nodded and got down from the lamppost before something broke. "They are using a series of continuous Myriads to carry the light and judging how the lampposts are placed on the same grid pattern, I bet a mansworth that there is an underground network of them to carry the light across the whole city. Such a marvelous design."
Aloe could never have imagined it, let alone created it.
It was quite obvious in hindsight, but she would have never thought of putting several thousand pieces of Myriad glass in a line and then concatenating their light to illuminate a whole city. And this is only a frontier city in the middle of nowhere. I wonder how majestic Asina will be. The capital of Ydaz may be the cradle of her misery, but Aloe was wiser than to hate the city for just being the place where her misfortune occurred.
This whole debacle was quite ironic as a former scribe of commoners, urban planning was part of her duties. Well, technically it was shared amongst all scribes, especially the imperial scribe, but by the whims of fate – and the sultanzade – she ended up doing most of that work.
With swift movements, Aloe dusted her hands and cracked her neck.
"I hope I haven't ruined the dress already," she picked up the skirt and slightly raised it to check if something was wrong. "Doesn't look like it."
She went back to the safe house and was careful to not wake up Xochipilli, even if the spores had knocked him cold.
"I must say, this light is quite delightful for reading at night," Aloe mused as she picked up the 'newspaper' they had bought a few hours ago.
There were still a few hours before the first light, so she thought it would be a great way to pass up time.
The newspaper was a surprising advancement in technology. Even if the paper was of very poor quality, the writing was not. Such perfect calligraphy was nothing she had seen before.
"Considering the number of my plants I've seen around," only two of them, "is it possible that they are using the Aloe Veritas for this perfect calligraphy? The veritas has a floral style in its scripture, but at the same time, the only thing in the world that could recreate these precise letters in each instance would be the veritas."
For now, she let those doubts fly free and focused herself on the newspaper at hand. She had some difficulties reading as the language had seemed to evolve slightly over the centuries, so much so that her old Ydazi now felt like traditional Asayn in comparison with the modern one.
Most of the information was quite trivial, some politics and whatnot, but it allowed her to grasp – if only slightly – the current landscape of the world. She was very fond of these 'comic strips' though. Not only did they show a bit of the modern landscape, but the comedy portrayed in those drawings got a chuckle out of her more than once.
As it would appear, the whole continent was under Ydazi control. She didn't know how that had happened, but the multiple products announcing their place of fabrication or the politicking, mentioned multiple places like the Loyatan fjords as a Ydazi 'airport' – whatever that meant – and the frigid mounts of Seviren as just a touristic attraction for the traditional family.
If they gave her a drupnar each time she had read the words 'traditional' and 'family', she would have a drupnarun, which was a lot.
One of the things that caught her attention was how some of the political parts of the newspaper referred to Ydaz as the Ydazi Caliphate.
"So The Caliphate, huh?" Aloe groaned as she leaned her head on her hand whilst lying on the sofa. "It wasn't enough with being the Sultanah, you now wanted to be the Calipha too?"
Truth be told, there wasn't much distinction between the titles. The only instance of the title of Calipha in history was with the founder of Ydaz, the father of Sultans, so no other sultan or sultanah titled themselves after him from there on out of respect.
Until now.
There seemed to be a logistical – or rather hierarchic – reason for the usage of the title, though. With the new additions of Loyata, Carea, Pincerare, Infume, and Seviren under the Ydazi banner, the title of Sultanah fell quite short. And that was without taking into account the Tecolatan colonies from where Xochipilli fared.
The title of Emir wasn't enough for the rulers of these kingdoms under Ydazi control, so it was obvious that when they were given the apt title of Sultan, now the Sultanah needed a greater one.
"Sultanah or Calipha, it makes no difference," Aloe let the newspaper rest for the moment. Her voice was cold, but her emerald eyes were burning. "My intent remains the same."