"There was a mechanical solution to that," I sulked.

"And if we used that, we would have stopped for half an hour so you could explain its design, working principles, history, and social implications to me before making it in a few heartbeats," Rachel said. "This way, with a sound-dampening enchantment that helps everyone, we're allowed to bring this machine into Kotor itself, and we can actually get to the council chambers faster, instead of taking more time than simply walking."

Kotor was a beautiful city, really. One interesting thing about earth magic is that, as long as it's common enough that you can expect any stonemason crew to have an earth mage, then suddenly you stop really seeing bricks and blocks. But here, everyone had elemental magic, and something like a quarter of the population had an earth affinity, letting the craft reach higher peaks.

The buildings were tall and proud, robust and carved in ways that, while pretty, were also eminently practical. They even had rain gutters so that it wouldn't roll off the edge of the roof in sheets!

The streets themselves were wide enough for two carriages to pass each other, with elevated sidewalks on both sides- a bit cramped to my American sensibilities, but plenty spacious for my motorcycle, and honestly probably a better use of land just in general. The paving was more smooth, contiguous stone, with the road subtly domed to let water roll off and into storm sewer inlets.

And, the best part? Despite being a medievalesque city, Kotor was not covered in piss, shit, and corpses! People had healthcare and sanitation here! Between earth magic and water magic, people understanding intimately the principles of plumbing from an earlier tech level was kind of predictable... and, admittedly, something I'd already witnessed. I'd been shitting in an actual toilet back at Manor Nukem this whole time, and my biggest complaint was that I had to, initially, use water magic to clean the shit off my ass. It was perfectly reasonable and not at all wasteful, but all the same, I had to admit that I did miss having toilet paper. Efficiency be damned, I didn't like spraying cold water on my asshole.

"I can't believe we can go at full speed even in a city," Rachel murmured as I wove through the city streets, taking turns as she directed me.

"To me, twenty miles an hour is a perfectly reasonable speed for a motor vehicle to go at in a crowded city," I said. "It feels a little slow to me, honestly."

"How fast did you normally go?" Rachel asked.

"Well, on the highway, sixty five miles an hour was the legal speed limit," I said. "Of course, people regularly went faster than that, myself included, with seventy being normal. I think the fastest I ever drove was when I was a courier, and I had to deliver car parts to a place that was... oooh, probably thirty miles from the warehouse?" I chuckled. "When I told my mom I'd gotten up to ninety miles an hour on the highway, she said I had no business going that fast, and I told her that, as a courier, I literally did have business going that fast."

"And... this motorcycle could one day go that fast," Rachel said.

"Well, probably not this motorcycle," I said. "I might Ship-of-Theseus it with upgrades, but honestly I kinda don't want to. I want to keep it as a memento, and then build a new one from scratch that doesn't suck as bad."

"Turn right at the intersection after this one," Rachel said. "And... fair."

"Plus, I should clarify," I added. "Most of our engines didn't run on compressed air. They ran on very flammable liquids, which, when ignited the right way, produced a lot of hot and compressed air inside the engine. That may be part of why my engines are kinda wimpy, clunky, and underpowered compared to the engines we had back home. But I sure as fuck am not going to start using flammable liquids to power engines, because I've seen where that road leads, and you fuckers deserve better. Ah, is that our destination?"

"It is," Rachel confirmed.

Earth magic meant that construction was a lot faster and easier. And when you had a lot of it, plus a lot of institutional skill in using it, that clearly let a medievalesque city structure itself along a nice, neat grid pattern, with square city blocks of standardized size. Plus, there was a funny thing about patterns, even the simple ones: it is very noticeable when you break them.

Near the center of Kotor was a block twice as wide and twice as long as was standard, and a radically different style of architecture. Where most of the city was tall, smooth, closely-packed monoliths of colorful stone and big clear glass windows for storefronts- hey, if earth magic could manipulate metal, why not also glass?- this place was wide open and lush with grass and a few well-manicured shade trees on the half closer to the outer walls, and held a big, broad, somewhat short (but still three stories) building in a conspicuously older-looking style, with decorative arcades around the outer wall, all made of polished grey stone that reminded me of granite. In the center of this was a raised circular dais, which the building accommodated with a big semicircular cutout.

To judge by the thin crowd that was milling around and trickling away from this place, I would say that some big public event had happened here a little while ago, but it had already ended.

"The Central Office of Kotor," Rachel explained as I performed my sickest motorcycle stunt ever, which was to pop six inches worth of wheelie so I could hop the curb and ride all the way to the front door. "The influence of the Grand Temple has brought a wide-spread scholastic culture to the city. Offices and office-work are seen as important, vital, and praiseworthy. It serves much the same role as the Grand Hall of Manor Nukem, by holding court, resolving disputes, and convening council meetings to agree upon a course of action, but it does so in a far less grand and far more impersonal manner. The Duke's own council does not even have a specific meeting hall, reserved exclusively for that use. They use whichever meeting hall happens to be available at this time of year, and most are as big as the tent the Duke uses for this purpose on campaign."

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Kotor getting the joy of inflicting that indignity on a bunch of nobles is part of the terms that keep them loyal, I'd guess," I said, before I blinked. "Huh. Hang on a minute- unprompted exposition about history and sociopolitics? Am I finally rubbing off on you?"

"I understand why you do it, now," Rachel said primly.

"God, if we weren't on a fairly time-sensitive mission because of tense events that have very much given you to be reason to be upset with me earlier this day, I'd find us a private corner to make out in," I said wistfully. "Anyway, we're here." I cut the engine and hit the brakes- yes, I could just manually stop the wheels with void manipulation, but that felt like a bridge too far, considering that bicycle/motorcycle brakes weren't all that complicated.

We climbed off of the motorcycle, which I stuck back inside my void space along with my hat and my coat, and walked the remaining ten-ish yards to the front door of the Central Office.

The inside was, honestly, not that different from what you'd expect a government office to look like. The lighting came from circular white panels in the ceiling rather than square or rectangular, because they didn't have drop ceilings, but... it was an office reception area. A waiting area with rows of honest-to-god metal folding chairs, a fifty year old woman in a cardigan at the desk, and... okay, maybe a few more potted plants than you would've expected. Probably to muffle the echo that you'd otherwise get in a room made entirely of stone, with polished stone floors, stone walls, a stone ceiling, a fucking stone desk...

"Hi, can I help you?" the receptionist asked, looking up from whatever was on her desk, behind the counter that acted as a sort of privacy shield. Once she saw me, her eyes went wide and she blinked a few times, clearly not expecting to see, well, me. I had a pretty distinct appearance.

"Yes, thank you," I said, strutting up to the desk and depositing my tits on the counter. "My name is Archmage Lucifer Morningstar, and this lovely lady with me is Knight-Bachelor Rachel Miranda of the Black Wind. She's a knight of Duke Nukem's household, and I'm Rachel's acknowledged retainer, known and familiar to the Duke. We'd like to speak with the Duke at earliest convenience, if that could be arranged?"

The receptionist blinked a few times, before clearing her throat and rallying. "The Duke is not currently in the building," she said, tearing her eyes upward to meet my eyes. "She's retired to the Grand Temple for the evening, as a guest of High Priestess Amelia."

"Ahhh, thank you," I said, standing up straight and smiling. "We'll just go there, then. Thank you!" I winked at her, turning around and sashaying towards the entrance with far more sway in my hips than was entirely necessary.

"What was that?" Rachel asked once we were outside, with the doors shut behind us.

"That was me being conspicuously sexy, and reveling in the gender euphoria of being the most fuckable person in that building and knowing that the receptionist is gonna jerk off to her memory of me," I said, putting my coat and my hat back on from void space. The coat was, naturally, closed in the front while I was riding, because it was a protective garment, but while it had been tailored specifically to fit my new form- which had made Siobhan swear and curse a few times because it took a lot of darting to make woven fabric fit someone like me- it still compressed my tits a fair bit more than the tank top did, which had simply hugged them tightly. I mean, admittedly, I still looked pretty stacked with the coat closed, but not as much as I did with it open, and it wasn't thin enough for you to see my piercings through, so really, what's the fucking point? Well. Not getting road rash on my tits, obviously, hence why I put it on before getting on the motorcycle.

"Now, you're going to have to direct me to the Grand Temple itself, because all of the buildings in this town are tall as hell, and I can't see any fucking landmarks."

"Fair enough," Rachel said. "I'll admit, I had been hoping we'd arrive early enough to catch the Duke at the Central Office. The thought of taking you to the Grand Temple is..." She shuddered.

"Hey, you said that the clergy were more sexually open than was normal for the population," I said, popping my motorcycle out of void space and climbing into the saddle. "I show up looking like this and acting conspicuously sexy, I don't think they're gonna take nearly as much offense as your implicit betrothed did."

"I'm not worried that the Temple would hate you," Rachel said, climbing on behind me and wrapping her arms around my waist. "I'm afraid that the Temple would love you, and that you would quickly grow to love the Temple, and you'd spend the rest of your life on its grounds, swinging between hedonistic bliss and writing skill books."

"Hell, that doesn't sound too bad to me," I said.

"You see now why my worries are well-founded."

"Spoilsport."

Kotor, despite being obviously a dense city that was full of people, was not particularly busy on this day and at this time, and so I only needed to stop to let another carriage pass through the intersection, or let some pedestrians cross the intersection, about five times as we made our way to the Temple.

The Grand Temple of Kotor was another break in the pattern, taking up a two by two square of city blocks, and using rather a lot more of that space than the Central Office with its front lawn for public gatherings. More than that, though, the architectural style was different, with a few more organic shapes, even though the Grand Temple was still clearly designed around square angles. Most notably, however, was the fact that, while the common buildings were colored in all variety of bright colors arranged in all sorts of mixes, blends, and patterns, the Temple's primary color was black, with sparing accents of pure white, red, blue, and green. The symbolism was pretty obvious even to me- black was the color of void, the holiest element, and the other four- white, red, blue, and green- represented the four lower, common elements; still important, still valued and present... but less present here, in this house of the void.

The front entrance was pretty obvious, and I pulled up to it before storing the motorcycle. Riding it on the sidewalk was just rude. Riding it through a temple would probably get me lynched.

"We can just... walk in?" I asked.

"Anyone can," Rachel said. "The doors of the Grand Temple are open to all. Come on. This shyness isn't like you. You can worry about impressing the nuns later; right now, we have a job to do."

She strode past me, pushing open the doors of blackened and polished wood, and I hurried after her. As rude as it may be to put it like that... she was right.