If there’s one thing about Rikidan that Ghomak loves, it’d have to be their ale.
The people of this empire just get it, leaving a nice burn down to travel down your throat and a satisfying buzz to permeate your brain. You’d think the Barbarian Lands would have some taste in alcohol, but no, all they’ve got is pathetic ass rice wine, with all their good shit being imported through one of the few merchant companies that have found a foothold in the land of debauchery and dark dealings. The Barbarian lands might not have many people but all of them have complete foundations, strength being the only respectable quality in that place. That and the blood spilled on your axe.
Ghomak takes a final swig of his barrel and lets out a satisfying belch as the bar patrons cheer him on. It takes a while to get drunk once you’ve dug your roots deep enough, and Ghomak’s got roots that reach to granite, meaning he can drink a lot. Still, his determination to get absolutely plastered always wins in the end.
He picks up another barrel and starts chugging.
He’s going to pay of course, he’s not one of those cultivators. He hesitates to even call them by that title, as far removed as they are from a respectable disposition. Truly, using your power to act like a common highway bandit is pathetic, and he has, on occasion, slaughtered a few fools who think that they can assert dominance because of their puny steps on the path. Chopped up quite a few too, but that’s neither here nor there, he’s drinking! He just needs to focus on the ale, not the stupidity of cultivators.
He finishes another barrel but this time there are no cheers, he sets down the empty barrel and looks to find quite the dapper gentlemen standing in front of him, dressed in a formal toga with a sling wrapped around his shoulder and across his waist. He has a lot of rings, all of them jade, and there’s a collar of encrusted gems around his neck.
He’s looking right at Ghomak.
“Ghomak Yortide,” he says, “your reputation precedes you, truly you have demolished the beverages of this poor establishment.”
“What do you want Sol?”
“Oh? You recognize who I am?”
“Only your kind dress like that, no clue which one you are, and I don’t care to know either. I’m here to get shitfaced and fuck like a rabbit, not deal with merchants.”
The man chuckles, “well, I could certainly find the finest accommodations for both, if you listen to what I have to say.”
“I don’t do jobs for your kind,” Ghomak says simply, “there’s always some kind of stupid twist to it all.”
“Oh this is nothing like that, I simply want you to find an imposter.”
“And?”
“Well, bring them here, or kill them, it’s your choice really.”
Ghomak grunts as he takes a gigantic gulp from another barrel, “no.”
“Come now, the Jade Sol can pay you handsomely for your services, it’s a simple job for one of your strengths.”
“Get someone else to do it, merchant, this reeks of politics, and I have no intention of involving myself in that cesspit, ever.”
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The merchant frowns, “very well,” he says, “but if you change your mind, do come visit the estate and ask for Tikor Sol. It’d be a delight to work with you.”
Ghomak just ignores him and gets back to his ale.
-
Invention is a bitch.
Taking a shitload of theoreticals and putting it into functional application is, in essence, immensely frustrating. Takes a lot of trial and error, lots of experimentation, and lots of gold. Still, it’s what her sultan wants, so she’ll deliver with both grace and panache. The new models are sitting right in front of her, assembled to perfection, the smith having taken her designs and giving them a life of their own. The first is something like a fire lance, the inspiration for this new branch of research, except it is much bigger, rivaling the size of a carriage, it uses gigantic balls of iron and a precipitous amount of black powder, all attached to a slow match.
It’s meant for sieges, serving the same purpose a catapult might. Except much more powerful, at least that’s the theory, in practice she still has to make sure it works. But that’s okay, this is the simplest of the three contraptions she’s devised.
She’s thinking of calling it the dragon’s maw.
The second is an a ball, slightly bigger than one's palm, at its top there is a a whole where a fuse is to be lit, making the thing explode and expel shrapnel into the soon to be corpses of their enemies. This was inspired by the fire bombs, hoping to make something with more…explosive potential.
This one she wants to call the dragon’s shit.
Then, there is the most complicated one. It is a kind of fire lance, except much slimmer, and it doesn’t use a fuse. Instead there is something called a trigger, when pulled it’ll cause a small hammer made of steel to crash into the flint inside the back of the lance, propelling a smaller pellet of steel.
She smiles.
Now to test her little inventions.
-
There is so much information to rip out of the thing.
All being packed into what might be considered a brain of a thing with eyes and nothing else. It does not know what it was, all it knows is what it is. An observer, it can SEE everything, no corner of the world is safe from its gaze, no story left untold. It sees through the walls of its cage and watches all the world in all its splendor, just watching. There are so many different forms of life, and that’s before the life/change courses through their bodies, then they turn from uniform design to something unique, something distinct.
Few are the creatures that aren’t changed by the life/change, and that’s only because they have a filter. It can still be overcome and create something new. First are the descendants of the ungulate, if you ignore the Godthings, they are the strongest species to walk the land. Things of steel hooves and horns. Their pelts are a pristine white with a line of black running along its belly that travels up its neck and reaches its eyes.
Oh it’s, eye’s, those beautiful rainbows, how it wishes it had eyes of such majesty.
Then there are the things with two legs.
The things can communicate in something other than huffs and snorts, and their language fascinates it, if only it had a mouth to speak, that it could replicate such sounds and have conversation.
Instead it is here, in this cage.
It does not know why it is here, nor why it was put here.
Once it lived on the mountain, before the wolf of silver made its residence there. It would watch from its vantage point, it would watch all the world. Then, one day, it was here. The memory between the mountain and here aren’t present, either ripped away or transported in an eyeblink.
IT CAN SEE EVERYTHING
It is a law of the world now, has been for a long, long time, and yet it does not see its captors, does not know who they are. All it knows is that it is vented Qi into its cell for sustenance and some sort of script of a language it’s never seen to take all the delicious information contained in the thing it calls its mind.
It is a painful process, too painful for it to really put into thought.
Like its soul is being torn from its body.
Like a hot poker searing into an infected wound.
Like-
And then it forgets, the pain is there, as an echo, but it forgets what caused it.
Wasn’t it on the mountain?