Sorry I haven't posted as much as I was doing early on, been busy with work. I will regularly post on Sundays as its my only day off, the rest of the six days are a throw of the dice.

Chapter Four – Churning Wheels

*** Douglas McGlothin ***

The recent decade has been one of the most active for the Bulbarian Empire, ever since the exploration vessels discovered the new continent the empire has been busy colonizing. The new lands held and continue to hold much promise as it is rich in resources some old, some new. Over two hundred thousand of the empire’s twenty three million citizens have colonized and prospered in the new lands. There hasn’t been a proper survey of the new continent but surely in the decade that has passed the number of colonists surely has doubled if not more.

We’ve made contact with a new people as well, they have not yet landed their colonists but it is expected that when they do they will lay claim to the eastern half where the rich fertile plains reside. There is a race for the fertile lands but my best analysts believe that we will not win this race. Spreading our people is slow going, the lands are far too wild and isolated colonies tend to die out or be wiped out by one or another cause.

There is an island to the southeast that they are currently working to turn into a naval base and launch zone for colonizing the continent. My logistics officers say that there is no way to properly assemble an embargo line to keep them from the continent. Such a thing would require building a shipyard on the continent and moving some of our master craftsmen to the continent. For now it will be years before the other people can colonize the continent, my hopes are that before then we can capture some if not all of the fertile plains as unlikely as the scenario might be.

*** Granate ***

Recently the boy has come to me with several rather complex spell circle, crest, and other magical designs, all of them are original constructs with some influences of old designs here and there. I’ve come to realize that the boy understands more about magic and the elements than that which I might ever will know. His questions mostly pertain to the designs themselves and why they aren’t working as he wants or why they are not doing as he wishes.

The boy has made me promise never to reveal the secrets of our designs and works, though I may use them for my own purposes I may never teach them to another. I found it odd and asked why the secrecy, the nation would surely benefit from advancements in its magic. His answer was simple, introduce something new and potentially revolutionary could create chaos. He assured me he would introduce his findings and our works to the world, but in a slow dripping manner instead as an onslaught. As a man who sought the future of mankind with every advancement I found his reason lacking, but the more I understood what he could potentially introduce to the world the more I realized that we were unprepared for the changes it might bring.

The concepts that he has introduced to me has made me realize that there is so much more that we have yet to discover in the world, I have even begun a whole field of research on just the concept of gravity alone. In great secrecy I have brought together some of my most trustworthy colleagues I can trust to keep their flappers shut, introducing them to the concepts of natural earth magnetism, electromagnetism, electrical currents, frequencies, wavelengths, atomic elements, and many more never before heard of concepts. This circle we have come to call The Illuminated and have sworn to secrecy via a powerful magic that, by design, should we speak without the consent of the entire circle, only the pain of death would await.

We’ve had to expand to add members who provide the skills by the master of each class such as leather working, gem crafting, blacksmithing, and many other such masteries.

All of us have sworn our utmost loyalty to the boy whose name we have not yet been given, but we hungrily receive all that he offers and aid him to the best of our abilities.

*** Bjorn ***

The work in the shop has expanded to include works I had no idea I would ever work on, some of the projects were not even of my own choosing yet they intrigued me so greatly that I could not help but devote myself to them. After revealing to the king what the boy called a compass, the king rewarded me with a hefty sum of funds with the single requirement that I churn out something useful within six months again. I used the money to expand the workshop and hire apprentices, they have taken the vow of The illuminated just as I have after they approached my shop. Every once in a while they will come to me to ask me to complete certain projects for them bringing only concepts of their designs. I had little to no trouble filling in the missing pieces and building or crafting what was asked of me presenting the king with some of my creations along the way to keep the funds flowing.

The child that once frequented my shop had revealed many kinds of ways to design using concepts I never once thought of using such as complex pulley systems, gears, pressure, heat regulation, lubrication, and concepts such as lift, air pressure, and counterweight systems. After all these great revelations, which I jotted down in a journal before I could forget, he no longer visited me. It became rather lonely in the shop but the amount of my work and new apprentices have changed that.

I have even begun designing a vessel that will be capable of crossing oceans using a unique sail system never before used on ships. These vessels would be built much larger than long ships, they will be capable of carrying tons of goods and hundreds of crew members. The first models were promising and the king has even commissioned fifteen vessels as soon as the designs are ready.

Aside from the commercial fleet vessels I have also begun designing military grade vessels that will hopefully dominate the waters.

Through me, three trusted shipwrights also joined the illuminated.

*** Leo Cazador ***

*Bang!*

*Bang!*

*Bang!*

The rhythmic beating of a steel hammer against a crude iron mass could be heard in the small smithy I set up to refine the iron sand. I had turned six just a few months ago and Helton had long before stopped believing in the necessity of refining so much of the iron into steel which most of which was still kept hidden. There were massive piles of ingots in the deepest parts of the caves from which the sand was brought forth from. Though Helton no longer believed I continued to work tirelessly whenever I could on processing more and more of the iron.

Though I worked hard at the smithy my body was not lean by no means, it was broad and bulky, beneath a notable layer of fat were iron cord like muscles that even now helped me lift the heavy hammer in my hand and deliver powerful blows to the refined iron now made steel. I had designed a new kind of forge that would superheat the raw iron sand and turn it into molten iron, then, using gravity, I would pull it together into a sphere and spin it rapidly in place using complex gravity fields. The spinning would purify the iron then the process was repeated after adding charcoal to the mix, before finally getting hammered into a proper square ingot. The process itself was akin to the efficiency of an automated assembly line leaving me to the two simple tasks of feeding the machine and shaping the finished product.

As I finished my third four foot cubed ingot pile of the day Sophia arrived with Alice and Jenna in tow. Alice is five and Jenna is eight, both of them are Helton’s daughters. They carried a picnic set with them which meant that it was lunch time. After setting the assembly line to keep the finished products hot I headed towards the girls who set up the lunch on the “table”, a collection of tree trunks, in the front “yard” of the hut.

“We brought quail that daddy hunted,” Alice beamed proudly.

“Ah,” I smiled. “Wonderful!”

As I sat Sophia came over to me and took her seat on my lap, it was a habit of hers that she had developed since her early years. Having her on my legs always gave me the feeling that I was her father so I never saw it as a problem nor did I try and correct it. While I did have the body of child if you took account of my previously lived years and my years now I would have been a family man with children by now. I did not miss having missed the chance to have become a father, with Sophia at my side I felt she was the child I would have had.

I did not need both hands to eat, from early on I had learned to use magic like telekinesis, I was capable of moving things with my mind.

“There will be a merchant fair in Odea,” Sophia announced as she brought out a place and a piece of quail. Jenna filled the plate with beans and some greens. This plate she set near my right hand signaling that it was my plate. With a finger I lifted a spoonful of beans using gravitation magic and popped it into my mouth, the beans never touched my finger instead they floated in a rough bite size sphere. “Mister Helton is going in a week, can we go?”

“Hmm,” I thought about it. The Bulbarian Empire had made contact with Boraia and friendly trade had begun though how long that would last was anyone’s guess. “I guess it would be nice to see what kinds of goods come from the foreign empire.”

“Yay!” Sophia hugged me suddenly, she squeezed my head and neck tightly in her embrace.

“I’ll talk to Helton later so we can go with them,” I said after she let me go.

“You are so doting,” Jenna smirked. “You are going to spoil her.”

Sophia stuck out her tongue to her.

“Hahaha,” I laughed as Alice agreed as well.

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” Alice asked.

“No can do,” I shook my head. “I don’t think we’ll be back again until we go to Odea together.”

Sophia looked downcast and Alice pouted.

“I’m sorry,” I tried explaining. “Something came up and I have to take care of it before it becomes a big problem for me.”

There was brief silence broken by Jenna.

“It’s not like the world is ending girls,” she gently patted her younger sister’s head. Sophia and Alice were extremely close as friends, Alice was Sophia’s only friend though Jenna somewhat counted but she was more like an older sister, and Sophia was Alice’s only escape from her sisters.

“I promise to buy you something when we go if you cheer up,” I said.

She instantly brightened and cheerfully nodded her head.

“Ok Papi.”

Papi, means daddy in the Spanish language of my old world, it has no equivalent translation here making it my guilty pleasure as I neither taught her it’s meaning nor to anyone else. It became her word to address me, though she was aware that Leo was my real name.

The girls talked among themselves while I ate my fill and left them to finish as I continued my work.