Kush’s eyes normalized after a moment, even though Thar was not the nearest of locations, people will always find a way, especially if jobs are available and this port work seemed like the perfect kind of work. Kush re-focused and inquired, “So do you mean that every dock worker is an immigrant from Bhasmachal?”

As he asked this, Ramya the chief medic, put her palm flat on his naked chest and her eyes went red again. Once again red concentric circles started emitting from the point of contact and disappeared.

“Before you ask any questions, do you want me to heal you?”

Shock and surprise were not enough to describe what Kush was feeling right now. He now realized what was happening, what this really represented. She was one of the few with ‘That’ Karmic power. She was a healer.

“Dad said people with your powers are really rare. So much that even Kings and ‘The’ emperor pay a fortune to keep the royal court healer”

Hearing this caused a smile to appear on Ramya’s face “It’s been a long time since someone told me that”

Kush asked “Then do the people don’t know this?”

Ramya smiled “nah, I was made the chief medic of the region for this very reason. People don’t say that nowadays is cause everybody knows this already for the past decade and it’s no longer special for them”

Ramya then asked again “Do you want me to heal you?”

Kush replied “Nah. My parent don’t want me to use potions and healers on my body”

Ramya then retracted her hand and made a perplexed expression. What she did was just a formality, meaning treatment without consent was crime, hence she waited for the person or the next kin’s consent before proceeding with the treatment, unless the injury was life threatening and what’s with that reply my ‘parents’ wont allow this and that. “What was he a kid? Doesn’t look like” she thought as she did a once over of his entire muscular taut body.

Then came the usual rude comment about his parents “The heck sort of people are your parents?”

Kush by now was used to people not realizing his training regime so he just smiled, there was no way he was going to get out by explaining these things to her, so he just said “Thank you for your concern” and looked around. There were no patients, meaning in this ward meaning she was able to discharge all injured people quickly. He continued saying “Like I was asking, is every dock worker here an immigrant from Bhasmachal?”

Ramya still not able to understand the direction, simply shrugged and went with the flow “Nah… there are atleast thirty thousand other people working on this port”

This surprised Kush a lot, in his journey across the port, he barely saw a few people, the port even felt ‘deserted’ for the lack of a better word. He asked “Do all of them work the night shift?”

Ramya bobbed her head and said “Pretty much, yeah. If you work during the day, those sort of accidents happen quite a lot. Heat stroke is a major risk, so the people working during the day have to have a certain level of strength and experience”

They talked about the fact that Kush saw a couple of stray mermaids and burly dwarves. After a few minutes, there was a knock on the door. It was Arul and Mukesh, they had come to check in no Kush. After seeing Kush awake Arul started walking a bit faster and approached Kush. He stopped before him and said “Thank you for preventing a disaster from happening, thank you saving my behind, thank you very much” repeating his gratitude a couple more time. Kush could see the genuine elation and gratitude in his voice and simply smiled. Mukesh too showed his gratitude, after which he inquired the doctor about the Kush’s prognosis. On hearing the reply from Ramya Mukesh was a little surprised and asked Kush if he was sure. He, for obvious reasons, did not give the usual comment on his parents. Arul then said “In that case, please come to my home while you heal”

Kush then replied “I have had worse accidents, you don’t have to worry about me, it will take not more than a few days for me to heal. I don’t want to trouble you and your family”

The claim surprised Ramya the most. She was the most aware about Kush’s prognosis and knew it would take atleast a few weeks if not months with self-healing, even with her help it would take a few days, but she chalked it up to being polite to Arul.

Arul then said “Trust me, it’s no trouble to me at all, my wife and children wanted to meet you since I told them what you did for me and also that accident would have been an immense load on my conscious please allow me the opportunity to help you heal from this wound”

On hearing this, Kush didn’t want to sound impolite so he acquiesced and said thank you. Arul immediately went on to pick up his axe and bag started to move towards the gate and told him “Please wait for a few hours I will come back to take you home”

Along the way Arul realized that axe weighed a lot and so did his stuff. “The fuck is the dude carrying”, but then he remembered him throwing off a more than 50 ton slab of ore and shut up. Even though Kush had a baby face but no one assumed him to be young; his physique and strength made him look like a monster, the only way to justify such things was decades of cultivation.

Later that night, when Arul came to pick him up, it was still a few hours to mid-night, but it was cold, too cold. It was like the inside of a refrigerator. Arul was an apprentice in power level so he seemed to be able to barely bear the cold but Kush seemed fine. Arul was not surprised by this cause he thought Kush to be way ahead in cultivation than him. Kush used walking stick to walk alongside him. While alongside Arul and conversing Kush came to realize that the port was basically built in the ocean using huge pillars as the support, from what Arul told him, the soil of the port couldn’t support the weight of construction, so this is what they had to come up with to support the entire activity. Kush couldn’t believe the engineering and forward thinking of the person who could pull this off. The world never ceased to amaze him. Arul then told him that the port village where all the dock worker’s family are located was also built on a similar platform and adjacent to the port.

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During the night Kush saw close to 38000 thousand workers of the port, sometimes it was difficult to decide where to walk, his physique and the fact that he had to use walking stick made it difficult for him to navigate commotion of the port, but he was really mesmerized by the organized way things worked there. It was like three arms of the clock, which would pass the same point at the same time but still not interfere with each other’s work. The ore blocks came in and went out in oodles, Kush was now beginning to think why people would need so much mana ore. Transporter after transporter carrying ore blocks the size of mega structures and hundreds of, kilometer long ships sailing in sand talking with the wind. Going further inwards he saw a massive gate surrounded on both sides by walls which were 16 ft high on both sides. It encompassed a massive area inside which were a lot of houses. It was like a town built on the seas, beautiful and peaceful in the night as people went to sleep. Paved roads, multiple two storied houses, it was like a suburban dream land, Kush liked the planning with which the town was built, unlike multiple ancient major cities which were planned after people settled in. It was clean and most importantly, he did not see the sectoral divide of inner, middle and outer city he generally saw in almost all towns and cities. They slowly walked along the road, it had been a few hours and the temperature had dropped to icy levels and Arul was starting to feel it, his teeth chattering but he did ask Kush to rush it. Kush was taking this all in.

He asked Arul “This sectoral division of town, don’t you have it here?”

Arul was in no position to answer his question cause of the cold and but between his chattering he tried saying “This is… is not actually… a town…”

Kush realized Arul was feeling the cold and remembered the first time they came here, how his father draped him in a blanket and made him walk the rock path at night to protect him from the cold. He promptly said “Please excuse the delay caused on my account” Saying so he picked up speed and in another 15 mins, a little before mid-night, they reached Arul’s home. As soon as he entered the house, he once again observed the sudden change in temperature. The temperature inside the house was really pleasant making one want to stay indoors all day.

Arul let out a breath of relief on coming inside. When the body was under continuous exertion, it automatically heated up, in fact the cold weather made it pleasant even and night shift was not like the day shift wherein people got extended breaks from work between blocks. Night shift had the peak of all activities at the port and port workers had to punch out batches after batches of cargo, day shift only had to take care of emergency cargo which are like urgent orders from companies. The port authorities are the judges to decide who executes the operation during the day.

Kush showed an apologetic expression to him, Arul simply waved his hand and called for his wife “Seema, look who I brought home”

Kush was still wearing his cloak and Arul was unaware of the Kush’s identity cause he had not seen Kush’s amputated right arm yet. The living area of his house was above average among the houses in port town. Seema was plain looking homely wife, dressed in the traditional attire of the people of Thar. Similar to what Ramya the medic was wearing; she was draped in a figure hugging saree. Petite, pale skinned stood there and put her tiny right hand, when compared to Kush’s gigantic palm, forward to shake his hand. Kush was put in an awkward position as he slowly pulled out his left hand to shake. Seema thought something when realization hit her as she said “Forgive my manners, I forgot you were injured from the accident” and pulled her hands back. She continued “Please come in, we put all your gear in the guest room, you may freshen up while I set up the dinner table”

They had a pleasant meal and the next day Arul introduced him to his children, before they left to their respective daily activities. Seema took up the mantle of showing Kush around, which was against the medic’s explicit advice, but on Kush’s insistence she acquiesced. They left in the evening when the weather was pleasant outside as well. Kush meditated through the night and day to heal his wounds. They had healed a lot but he still kept the metal cast on. Seema was a trader by profession, but had put in a leave to take care of Kush, their benefactor, for the few weeks he would be staying at her house. Kush repeated his question he had asked Arul the other night “You guys don’t have any sectoral division in the town do you?”

Seema was taken aback by the question, she thought this was just a day visit from a foreigner but it seems he was interested in the town itself “Yes, you are right and wrong at the same time”

Kush still had his cloak on and had put on the hoody of the cloak to hide his face. Seema did not understand why but she knew strong people had their own secrets and whatever the case, even if he was evil, Arul and Seema were going to help him. Kush turned his head towards her not understanding her response when she continued “You are right in saying that we don’t have sectoral partition, but you are wrong in saying that we are a ‘town’ per se” using two of her fingers from both her hands to show air quotes. “Officially this is not a town this is a settlement, meaning when the port started a few hundred years ago, not a lot of people had any hopes for the company. Thar’s primary industry until the construction of Kuchhy ports was supply of mercenaries. Able bodied men and women, enlisting in war fare and missions coming back with whatever loot or income they could salvage. But bless the people of Marwari Trade troupe, who came up with this innovative idea of transportation”

Kush seemed very interested in the story again. Seema continued “You see, they used took an immense risk of investing their entire humongous fortune in building a port on the sea itself and designing the ‘Chudan Vallam’ or the snake boats. Each boat atleast a kilometer long sailed on sand and carried humongous amounts of cargo. Though they were a bit slower than carts but the volume they carried were thousands of times the capacity of carts which ran on city paths.”

“What do they run on?” Asked Kush curiously.

“They are mostly run using oars which are again run mechanically using mana”

Kush realized this was an oversimplification of what the actual mechanism was but he simply nodded. He then asked “What happened next?”

After that “once the port was in place people started coming in looking of jobs, as dock workers, as oars men on vessel among others. Their transportation was difficult, since travelling across habitation especially in the deserts is difficult, so the Marwaris used a portion of the port’s ‘land’ to build a ‘settlement’ for us and slowly we took up different jobs to make ourselves self-sufficient” she said making those air quotes when they were not needed.

Kush was really impressed by the ingenuity of the traders troupe “Wasn’t this Tara’s profession as well? Didn’t she say she was the leader of one the largest such troupes. Is she related to these Marwaris?” he thought.

Seema then continued “Since this is not a ‘town’, we don’t have a mayor or government, or nobles or those ‘things’” She said, hate palpable in her tone.

She had said that both Arul and her were immigrants from Bhasmachal.

“and hence no town sectorialism”

It was a brief explanation of what seems like a hateful topic for her “Thank you for your explanation”

Smile returned to her face on hearing this and she continued giving him a tour of the city.

Kush asked “Hey Seema, do you know of a person called Tara, she should be a leader of one of the largest trade troupes here”

Seema smiled “Our kind beautiful princess is the leader of Marwari Troupe”

Kush was not too surprised and realized Tara must be bigshot for these people here.

After touring the city for a couple of hours they returned home. It was about time for Arul to return too.

Arul returned home with downcast expression on his face.