“The Fourteen Reborn would be powered by a to-be-installed grid of Fulgur-Igneic reactors, six variable-output units for long-term use and a single high-output unit in the case of a truly dire attack. This system, combined with our newly-mechanized militia, Kargarian Irregulars, and Slayer’s Guild, would render Willowdale a high-risk low-reward target to any direct attacks that could be brought against us within the framework of international law. If any one faction wished to breach our defenses, they would open themselves to exposure on the global stage, thus providing casus belli for their enemies.”

“Fulgur-Igneic reactors? How?” piped up Elshor Grepeiros, a fat grey-haired merchant and the only other Grekurian on the senate. He was too stuck in his ways to be a threat, considering most new technology to be in the same realm as Ankhezian artifacts as far as understanding it went.

“I’ve made arrangements to have the parts for a reactor imported, alongside the blueprints to build further units ourselves. Just one reactor and three projectors total would be required to form a rudimentary barrier, which - if work were to begin at the end of our current farming season - would be achieved before the first winter snow even with delays taken into account”

The senate chambers were silent.

Estoras decided to push things along.

“All in favor, say yea.”

Still, silence. He’d stepped out of line and the other senators had full rights to force an adjournment, to stretch this sole discussion for weeks, but none did.

Then, one after another, a string of reluctant affirmations, a unilateral agreement.

It was nice for things to go right for once.

Enthralling as the caravan’s emergence and landing was, there was no point to going out there now. It would take hours for them to set up, if not longer, and so the four made their way down from the wall and to the sect property, thanking the guards for letting them watch from up there as they went - in particular, one of Berga’s friends.

They were overtaken by a number of vehicles on the way there, from motor carriages to carts dragged by llamas and a levitating boat with balloons instead of sails and a number of motorized propellers. When at last they reached the property, the bones of some larger structure had already been erected across the street from it, and the critical mass of eccentric-looking individuals with instruments suggested it to be a stage.

Besides this one greater congregation, the majority of the great wide street was filled with small individual merchants, lining up their carts in orderly fashion, even self-categorizing it seemed… Except for those wanting to take space immediately around the sect pavilion gate.

They were gathered in a vague blob of vehicles and people, arguing, haggling, waiting. Waiting for her. Zelsys felt the eyes of dozens immediately flock to her the moment she came within sight, and no wonder - even if they had only obtained a description of her appearance, it would’ve been difficult for the towering, bronze-skinned, two-tone haired, musclebound mishmash of disparate hereditary traits to go unnoticed.

She almost felt like she would have to muscle her way through to the sect gate, that she would be swarmed, but… It never came to pass. Even as she passed right into the crowd, many of them continued haggling whilst many others still just stared. Zelsys could do aught but stare right back, never having seen such a diverse mishmash of different peoples.

There were all sorts of eccentric characters to be seen of all conceivable skin tones, familiar or foreign.

Kargarians, Grekurians, Ikesians, even some Pateirians, and a number of clearly mixed people besides, many of them mercenaries or guards.

A pair of massive norsemen with bundles of hryvns on their belts and tattoos covering their bodies, one bald and the other hairy as a half-shaved bear.

Given a wide berth by the others there were four short, emaciated-looking people huddled together, with skin the colour and texture of hardened magma. Their veins and eyes both glowed the shade of dying embers, forming firelike patterns upon their utterly hairless, half-naked bodies. One of them had scars in place of ears, was missing a hand, and a Pateirian symbol glowed on his shoulder. A brand, but how? Certainly hot iron wouldn’t work on them.

People with sporadic patches of multicolored scales and hands ending in hooked claws, their feet fully alike those of some strange lizard, almost akin to a bird of prey, with the big toe curved sharply upwards and possessed of a dagger-sized claw. They wore orange pelts with black spots, had feathers instead of hair and carried weapons with blades of glossy black stone. One of them had a gaping hole on his chest, his heart seemingly replaced by an undulating sack of flesh inside a cage of ticking mechanisms.

When they reached the edge of the barrier, they found there to be a rather generous amount of clear space around it, but before any of them could step through, a person emerged from the crowd and approached Zelsys, calling out to get her attention.

“Zelsys Newman, is that correct?” the voice sounded. A male tenor, confident, convincing, and just artificially businesslike enough to press the same button that bureaucrats did. It was like the sleazy salesman cousin to the good-willed merchant of Arnys or Crovacus’s modes of speech…

And yet, she turned around, looking the speaker up and down and asking, “Yes?”

He looked honest enough. Relatively well-dressed wearing loose pants and a half-transparent sleeveless shirt, his dirty-blonde hair swept to the right with a few small braids adorned with beads. It was an almost aggressively pretty young man, even wearing a considerable amount of jewelry and enough makeup to be obvious, most notably dark eyeliner that connected to some sort of runic symbol just below his right eye and ended in a point below the left. A pair of gold-framed glasses with rectangular lenses sat near the tip of his nose.