Pieces fell into place in her head. So that’s why the governor had gone out of his way to ask her not to reject people without good reason. “That bastard… Don’t expect preferential treatment. If anything, I’ll use you for demonstrations, and the moment you try anything shady I’m kicking your ass. Or I might just kill you. Understood?”

Halxian… Nodded. This was not the spoiled, racist brat she had beaten into pulp out on the street. It was plain that he was looking forward to fighting her again. She sighed, “Alright, on your way.”

He smiled at her in earnest and just ran off, while she returned inside to open the letter, dropping the newspaper off on the counter for Sigmund to read once he got done stocking the shelves. Something inside Zelsys would’ve preferred if he had just grown more antagonistic.

The letter’s contents were much like the deed to the Black Horse property - a legal statement. Its first half simply confirmed the registration of the new family name, with all four of the inhabitants of Riverside Remedies listed as members. Its second half, unsurprisingly, held confirmation of the transfer of ownership for the Black Horse property and the address of the place, stating that while keys would normally be up for pickup at the Town Hall, the property had no physical keys on record.

Zel supposed it was high time to share the full extent of her plans with Makhus and Sigmund.

Young Ezaryl Krishorn, heir of her line, hadn’t slept in thirty-two hours, yet had eaten thrice as much as she normally would’ve. It was always like this, sailing the Sea of Fog. The absence of sleep drove some mad, but she liked it. It was a relaxing sort of waking slumber, watching the waves of the cosmos rolling by, trying to guess what in the material churned them up, catching cities and settlements just by the ripples of their people’s lives.

On the second day of her voyage, the Serpent’s Head and her caravan saw a great cage of black-stone towers barring the Sea of Fog, stretching into the cosmic nothingness both above and below. They were spaced so far apart that nothing came to mind which would struggle to fit between them. When, several hours later, the great caravan was set to sail between them, the ephemeral waters rose up in their path, churning and rising up to take the form of a great gate - an ageless edifice sculpted from primordial divinity, its surface rippling without wind.

The caravan merely pushed on to sail right through it, its experienced sailors knowing full well that Hedan’s Wall would permit passage to all those without overtly malicious intentions towards Ikesia and her people.

Condensed pseudo-real liquid washed over her with an undefinable viscosity, not warm, not cold, just there. Theris had panickedly fled into the cabin moments prior, emerging with concern in his eyes, clearly expecting both her and the deck to be soaked, rather than completely dry.

“I told you passing the wall would be like this,” she reprimanded him teasingly, toking from her pipe, which passing through the liquid gate hadn’t snuffed out. She released the smoke with a long sigh, leaning back in her seat even further.

There was a melancholy to this endeavor. Kargarians, at the behest of a Grekurian aristocrat, using Ikesian technology to bring Ikesian technology back to Ikesia.

Logically, it made perfect sense. Willowdale was one of the oldest cities in the country, and the only one to have maintained most of its centuries-old heritage. For centuries, the city had been a stable trading partner for Kargaria, being one part farming town, one part trading hub, and one part unimpeachable bastion of anti-authoritarianism, or “basic civil liberties” as its citizenry so proudly called the right to simply overrule legal decisions with referendums and lawfully exile or murder disliked politicians.

In short, it was an ideal penultimate stopping-point to offload old goods and pick up new ones before the long journey to the Southern Continent.

However, due to its strength as a cultural and economical edifice, Willowdale also suffered from stagnation, being one of the last places in Ikesia to be touched by the Sage of Fog’s “Great Industrial Evolution”. Compounding atop that, due to its neutrality and relative remoteness from the Western Front, Willowdale was never fully mechanized the way other cities had been.

Thus, from a historian’s perspective, Willowdale’s relatively small-scale adoption of new technology was to be expected. It had only a small manufacturing sector, outsourcing larger works and imports to places like Rigport.

But now, the few things that had prevented Willowdale’s industrialization were gone. Space for manufactories was plentiful, both workers and capable combatants small in number and orders of magnitude more valuable than ever, and the old guilds that so fervently resisted mechanization for fear of lost jobs were diminished to clamoring for any old piece of scrap to fill in for lack of skilled craftsmen. In a manner of speaking, the foundational strata of society now held more power than they ever had.

The Sage’s technology had brought a grand quickening to Kargaria, a new unfolding of ambition, wherein endeavors that would have spanned decades could now be easily accomplished in a few years with a fraction of the labor and struggle.

It was only right to bring that prosperity to the hometown of the man who had bestowed it upon them.

Lathes, die presses, essentech assemblers, condensers, industrial-scale essentia distillers, the parts to a Fulgur-Igneic Reactor with the output to power any possible grand work of essentech. Tractors. High-output lightgems. Aqua condensers. Lightning-catcher rods. Hundreds of liters of Geopolymerization Alkahest, just waiting to be diluted, used to melt rocks, and the resulting geopolymer pressed into molds to cure back to solid stone.

A library of blueprints to a great deal of things, both those that were already being shipped aboard the Serpent’s Head and its caravan, as well as many that were too large for even this great vessel. Tractors, trucks, a massive smeltery capable of matching the heat of a volcano by channeling and focusing the output of a Fulgur-Igneic Reactor.