The Caravan moved slowly but surely. There were about sixty of them, between men, women and children, without counting military personnel and brothers from the Enlightened and Sun Blinded Orders. With them, the number got closer to a hundred. The carts tarps were colorful, and they beared the banners of Clathermont: Red, Yellow, Orange, the occasional purple. And of course, the sun in all of them. After all, that's what they were here for. To spread his light.
At least that's what the Sun-Blinded brothers kept yapping on about. Lorris didn't buy it for a second that everyone here shared their motives. Most of these people came from the Count of Coal and Copper's and the Marquis of Marble's mines. Some of them from the farmlands. The miner's were much more enthusiastic to leave the mines behind than they were about crusading in the name of the sun. The air among them was generally cheerful. They drank, they sang, they ate. Lorris was familiar with the work songs, having lived in Villê Dei Ôr, close to the mines, but he didn't know the words. Before the Enlightened order snatched him up from his fathers shop, he knew only pottery.
The presence of this many soldiers from the Brass Brigade's made him nervous.Not that he had anything to fear, now that he was a Brother. The Count of Cogs made sure his favorite workers were left alone, but old habits die hard. In Villê de Ôr, you didn't even look at the Gendarmerie funny, lest you wanted them to give you a hard time for the next hour or so, which, at worst, would end in a beating. They were here to protect the workers, so, in theory, there was no reason for him to be nervous. Protect them from what exactly? Anything, really. Animals, humans, foreign attacks. All equally improbable. Clathermont wasn't really known for hostile wildlife, in a week of travel they had not encountered a single soul and it was unlikely they would find any on the way to the newly named Lac Roland lake, and Clathermont was not at war with anyone. No, the real reason they were here was as a reminder: you might be in the far edges of the Grand Duchy, but you are, nonetheless, still subjects of Her Everliving Majesty.
This was specially important here, where there were actual human workers. The only reason they could afford assigning them here was the Automata. The machine's new models had taken over the hard work in the mines, so when given the choice between helping Clathermonts settling efforts or finding new careers, most of them took the chance to breathe the fresh air of the countryside, rather than finding another mine to toil away their life at. Lorris felt a tinge of pride, as he had worked on the mining model. Sturdy, big, made of good Clathermontisse Iron. Equiped with drills and powerful as a cart carried by 6 ox. Hell, it could probably stand there amidst an explosion and catch the rocks, but they hadn't actually tested that. Yet. Then there was the builder Automatas. Those looked more...human, and that, in turn, made them slighlly unsettling. Those were being sent to the newly settled islands and to secure the channels into the inner sea. They didn't want to use human workers there. Too much at stake to risk a workers revolt or something as simple as human error in building those bases.
Some folks still didn't trust the Automata. there seemed to be special distaste for them from the Sun-Blinded order. "Too lifelike, but too soul-less" he'd heard one of the brothers say. That was the entire point. They had to be soulless. That way, the people with actual souls didn't have to waste away their live's working for the Counts. Of course, the Brothers of the Sun-Blinded order wouldn't know anything about that. Unlike the Enlightened Brothers, you didn't work your way into the Sun-Blinded Order. You were either born into it, or they took you in as a baby. So they absolutely had no clue what happened in the farmlands, in the mines, in the factories.
"Sanctimonious pricks" he whispered to himself. Of course they didn't like the Automata. Blinded by the sun indeed. He grinned. Of course they didn't like them, they were replacing them. He'd heard the Duchess herself was now using Automata as her honor guard, instead of brothers from the order. One mindless drone for another, Lorrin thought.
Lorrin noticed one of the workers children was lagging behind the camera, seemngly fixated on something in the ground. Lorrin walked over to him, curious to see what was so interesting. The kid couldn't have been older than 12, and was fixated on what looked like drawings and scribbles on the mud. He didn't even look up as Lorrin approached.
Lorrin smiled and cleared his throat. "Carry the Heph and add a conjoining loop between Aphias and Bethos"
The kid finally looked up, somewhat embarrassed. Lorring recognized the sigil he was trying to make. It basically read "That which Moves Upward and Stops". A levitation sigil, although not a very strong one. Lorring remembered it to be one of his first excercises on Martel's Treatise of Sigilia Magicka, first volume. The kid must have copied it.
"Thank you sir" he excitedly wrote down the misisng lines, and proceeded to toss a pebble at the sigil. The pebble floated, rising a few inches from the ground and coming to a halt.
"Not bad. Not bad. I didn't get it on my first try either. I forgot to write a stop and my practice marble kept going up until it hit the Ataeneum's ceiling." He chuckled.
The kid smiled at him. Lorrin gave him a pat in the shoulder, stood back up, and walked away, leaving the kid to throw more pebbles at the sigil. He turned for a second "Just don't lag too far away behind okay? Your parents will be worried sick if you get lost out here"
Lorrin looked at the horizon. The sun was setting and they'd have to set camp soon. He wasn't worried though. Out here, the air seemed purer, less heavy. The people looked freer, happier. Perhaps, this was a new dawn indeed. Not only for the Duchess, but for the people as well. Maybe, out here, in the edges of Clathermont, the seeds for a new day could be sowed. And, at least for tonight, Lorrin would allow himself to feel hope.
