Public Works

As I lean back in my chair, with a creak, I feel a square, papery object in my front pocket. Crap! The letter from that guy at the bar!

I’d been meaning to open it for days now. I quickly tear it open and take a look. It’s from the tribal council of dark elves. It’s vaguely threatening, encouraging me to keep Munin employed “if I know the capabilities of the dark elves”, but also giving me some useful contact info for the dark elf underground operating in the shadows of the city. There’s a maroon-red stamp with a symbol of two daggers over a crest at the bottom of the letter, but no signature. This becomes my first labeled file in my desk.

For curiosity’s sake, let’s see if the unwanted slime head-communication works both ways. I announce loudly to my empty office. “HUE!”

That disconcerting ringing within my head arrives. “Yes, human?”

“Where is Leia?”, I ask purely out of curiosity.

“She’s due to be here in about 5 minutes.”

I didn’t hear anything about this. Oh well. Thanks, Hue. A magical screen appears in front of my desk, like a television. It shows a carriage trundling along with a map overview, with an ETA time beside it.

I gingerly step down the creaky stairs to the front garden. Those dilapidated front gates swing open, and there she is. As tough as it is to admit it, my day does get brighter when she’s around. She grins at me.

“Are you figuring things out?”

“Yes, sort of”, I reply, meekly.

“There’s something really cool I have to show you.”

Like before, she grabs me by the hand and we hop into her carriage. At a rather accelerated pace, we travel beyond the inner walls and through the slums. As we reach the farthest extent of the city, the buildings become nothing more than blown-out rubble, barely inhabitable. Still, I see pairs of eyes poking out from windows and craters, campfires on the sidewalk, and way too many people.

We arrive in front of a large gathering of Royal College of Magic personnel. As I climb down from the carriage, I see Kalth. Long time no see! He’s in his typical royal garb, ostentatious gleaming white robe with the ridiculous collar and shoulderpads.

“Kalth! Fancy seeing you here! How have you been?”, I ask, smiling from ear to ear.

He looks thoroughly overworked.

“Very busy.”, he snipes back.

As usual. Leia is hanging off my arm.

“We’re here to see the newest great public works project by the College’s Department of Infrastructure. I think you’ll love it.”, Leia beams at me. She’s really cute when she gets excited over stuff like this.

A mage in black casts a small, loud spell that snaps in the air and catches our attention. A loud voice booms through the air.

“On this date, the Royal College of Magic dedicates this new waterway to our First King, and to our continued future as masters of the realm. May this land prosper forevermore.”

A team of 6 mages begin spellcasting, their staffs erupting in a torrent of magical energy. The air rends around them, the ground shakes, and a great cylindrical manifestation of light appears above them. This cylinder of magic is at least as wide as a building, maybe two, and seems to greatly tax the mages responsible for its birth.

Leia is drooling watching this. I can’t blame her, this is really cool.

The cylinder floats over to a pre-cleared section of fresh dirt, and angles itself precisely in a direction facing a mountain. The ground shakes ever more violently, and it slowly lowers itself towards the soil. The ground isn’t just torn up, it’s melted, dissolved as the cylinder sinks into the earth, blowing clouds of steam and dust into the air.

The cylinder comes to a halt, all the motion halts, the ground ceases to shake, and the mages get a momentary reprieve.

That same announcer’s voice booms again. “Let this day be known, our new work is born!”

The mages, scarcely given a chance to recuperate, resume their chanting. The ground is still, but the cylinder grows brighter and brighter. Leia grips my arm more tightly. “Here it comes!”, she grins.

A blinding, star-like light flashes into the sky, forcing me to cover my eyes. I wish I had covered my ears, because that was what came next. The deepest, loudest, bass-est note completely rattled me, as a beam of magic exactly the dimensions of the cylinder projected out in one direction as far as one could see, directly through the mountain it was aimed at.

The mountain, pierced midway through, collapsed, only to be swallowed up by the beam which rocked the Earth with a terrifying, moaning roar. Steeling myself against the onslaught, I saw a gentle white glow around me. Leia was healing my ears. What would I do without her?

The blinding, oppressive magical concert ends as quickly as it began. The smell of molten rock and magic fills my nose. In front of us lies a fully-formed, perfectly straight canal, dug through solid rock and bisecting a mountain, that stretched beyond visual distance.

The overworked mages began again. This time, casting a long row of water magic along the canal, the distance of a football field. A horizontal plane of water appears mid-air, dumping into the steaming hot rock channel and boiling around.

Leia turns to me. “This canal will give us our first access to the ocean in nearly 500 years, since the last one was blown up. Wasn’t that cool?”

“Yes, very cool.”, I croak. I feel lightheaded and uneasy. It’s like I watched a nuclear bomb go off. Was this real? It’s one thing to watch it through a screen, it’s another to see it happen right in front of you. I was deaf about 30 seconds ago. Now I’m fine.

I glance over at where those 6 mages were. They’re unconscious, being picked up by medics and hauled away. I can’t imagine the burden those guys shouldered to pull this off. Multiple teams of mages have taken over the water-dumping job. I spot Kalth floating overhead. I try to give him a sort of sign of approval, but he ignores me and vanishes into thin air. Can’t win ‘em all.

I ask Leia if we’ve seen everything here. She agrees, and we head back to the station via carriage.

Finally, I get to show her my freshly cleaned, dwarven-decorated office and the progress we’ve made outside of landscaping.

Her immediate impressions of the dwarven decoration influence were negative, to say the least. The very first thing she did was try and rip a shield off the wall, only to find it had been secured 16 times with 2 foot long iron bolts that doubled not only as decoration, but as structural reinforcement for the room. An attempt to wrest a sword from its display case met a similar fate. Try as she may, Maahnn had outsmarted her this time.

A fuming, upset Leia took a nap on my office couch with a blanket. Given some free time, I decided to draft plans for both the uniforms and the equipment of my future officers. This is a big deal. Equipment is one thing, you need it to do the job, but the uniform is another. I have to come up with something that will impress these absolute psychopaths, who witness incredible magic every day and don’t bat an eye. I need something cool.

The various departments I know of drift through my head. Highway patrol, with their traditional uniforms, ties, and big-brimmed hats. Clean, slate-black uniforms of the local city cops. Green, utilitarian uniforms of the local Sheriffs. Those Texas boys with their 10-gallon hats.

I’ve decided. It’s got to be a combination of the Troopers and my old department. Black trousers and tan, double-pocketed shirts with a black tie. The ties, badges, hats and utility equipment will come later. I quickly sketch a diagram down for later. I cannot imagine what the poor tailor is going to deal with getting all the measurements for our guys.

Now, weapons. I pull out a fresh notepad paper. I’m faced with a choice, whether I continue using firearms (as I’m used to) or choose a magic-focused approach. I could even synthesize the two, knowing these people. Wait a second, what happened to that nice Chief’s Special revolver? Those bastards at the College yoinked it from my pocket when we drove through the barrier. I sincerely hope they were able to do something useful with it, otherwise, my trip to go retrieve it will be a giant waste of time.

No swords, no axes, no shields unless wholly necessary. Let’s get that in writing before the Dwarves complain.

Very good. That’s something, at least. It’s nearing evening time. I pack up my desk, rouse my perpetual elven problem-companion, rustling her strawberry-red hair until she awakes from her nap, and we grab a carriage back to our lodgings.