On the Hills of Eden

The brown coffee beans slid from the wooden scoop, tumbling onto the metal bowl of the balance scale and sizzling like little droplets of rain in the process. Lauka held her finger under the part of the beam that held onto the weights, carefully slowing her pouring down as she felt the force of the weights gradually disappear. Eventually, the weight of the beans on the side opposite matched that of the weights, and she stopped the pouring altogether.

She scooped the measured quantity of beans from their bowl, the balance scale clinking as the weighted end landed back onto the brass base. She grabbed a spray bottle, spritzing the beans with a thin layer of mist before shuffling over to her food processor.

Setting the large scoop back down onto the varnished wooden countertop, she held onto the glass body of the processor, clamping her fingers about its wooden lid to pop it open. Its insides and its blade now exposed, she poured the beans into the glass vessel, popping the lid shut once more and hearing the sounds of beans shuffling about under the returning blades.

Pressing firmly upon it with her left hand, she grabbed the knob of the lid’s crank with her right, slowly beginning the process of turning the beans into powder.

Lauka watched as the three blades of silver buried within the earthen dark browns of the deep roasted beans spun about, each one following after the other and dicing up the beans it came across; gaining in speed and volume with each round about the central shaft.

She’d known the three tribes of the Saqr, the Eaziz and the Yusheed for a long time by now. They had had a long history of ups and downs, of moments of tension and of trust-building, but in all those nine years between her treachery against Oldenburg and her arrival at the edges of Houzen, not once had the tribes failed to keep to their schedule.

She had tried convincing the Saqr to hold back, to remain with her for a little bit longer. But no matter how hard she negotiated with the elders, or how much she pleaded with Tina to try and convince them to stay, they would not listen. And she was beginning to feel as though they had made the right call, too.

They didn’t have the resources or the luxury to remain in any one place for a very long time. Given how it had already been a whole week since their departure, and how neither the Yusheed nor the Eaziz have managed to turn up, Lauka felt as though them staying would’ve been for the worst after all.

She peered back down through the glass of the vessel, watching as the half-grounded beans continued to roil about with the movement of the blades, jumping up against the see-through walls of the container with each one’s pass as though to try and escape.

At the very least, she managed to convince the Saqr to help her with gathering intelligence from the other Sahlbaridi tribes. She and the reach of her three allied tribes were largely limited to the comparatively thin strip of land between the Houzen Woods in the south and the marshes that surround Al-Muqayad in the north. So, if she wanted information on the beasts and fiends further outfield and on the western edges of Al-Muqayad’s prison, she would have to get them to liaise with the others on her behalf.

Which shouldn’t be an issue, given that Siraj had given her her blessing, essentially earning her the compliance of each of the Sahlbaridi tribes.

Though times had changed over the past decade, and Siraj’s continually waning influence did little to soothe her anxieties.

She popped open the processor’s lid, shaking it slightly to gather all of the well-grounded coffee into the bottom half of the vessel. She turned around, opening a cupboard above head and gingerly retrieving a strange two-pieced glass contraption from within. Careful not to cause its top half to fall out, she set the syphon brewer down by the food processor.

Lifting the upper chamber of the brewer, resembling an upside-down beer bottle with its bottom removed, she reached for the little piece of fabric within. She pulled it out, letting the spring-loaded hook and its dangling chain tail hang low. Then, she let the chain tail descend through the neck of the upper chamber, grabbing it as it appeared on the other side of the neck and using it to pull the hook into place– thereby fixing the filter.

It wasn’t that long ago that Siraj was one of the Phian continent’s most defining forces. It wasn’t that long ago that her Domain, spanning the Shafraturriyahn Mountains, encompassing Mount Ahd, bordering the plains of Merkez and the forests of Minerva, and pressing up against the Solar Wall, was the largest singular state on the continent– and the third largest in history, not counting its predecessor in the Maftuh Tribal Confederation and the great anomaly that was Incolumnitus’ continent-sized Empire.

She lowered the bottle neck of the upper chamber into the top of the lower chamber, resembling a little conical flask with a secondary pluggable opening used for pouring in water. After ensuring that it had been put firmly in place, she scooped the grounded coffee from the food processor and dumped it into the upper chamber, seating it as evenly as she could atop the filter.

It wasn’t quite the right way to do it, which would be letting the water boil before adding the coffee grounds, but she found it easier to do it this way.

Back then, she was still a little girl. A little girl locked away in the upper floors of a grand industrial complex that existed for the sole reason of bringing her inventions to reality.

She turned around again, pulling the kettle off of the stove and setting it to the side.

She looked to her feet, seeing that she had forgotten to set alight the fire below.

It wasn’t long ago that she hated every facet of her existence. To watch from the windows as the featherless children outside frolicked in the fields, to toil in her room over pages upon pages of sleek, scribbled and scrapped pieces of paper as the forges and hammers below her thudded incessantly through the night.

She picked the kettle up, pouring water into the lower chamber until the water level had arrived at the very bottom of the spout; long since submerging the bottom end of the upper chamber’s bottleneck. Then, she popped the spout’s cap shut, sealing the lower chamber.

She didn’t blame herself for what she did. Wouldn’t all birds, when presented with the opportunity to fly into the open, spend not a second moment pondering the choice?

She grabbed a flint and steel from a drawer, squatting down to strike a cloud of sparks into the tinder and kindling beneath the stove. Once set alight, she blew into the flames a few times, before finally standing upright once more.

She stretched her arms behind her back, her fingers interlocking as the two small wings on her lower back imitated to the best of their abilities the movements of her arms.

She remembered how she manipulated those around her. How she buttered up her superiors and warmed up to the guards, how she built within their minds an image of her that very closely resembled that of a precious daughter or little sister.

She remembered slinking her way into the holding of the Artefact of Avarice, how she took the glowing centrepiece of Oldenburg’s greatest achievements and returned it to its home within the Great Wheel.

The water very slowly began to bubble, little clear beads of vapour rising and filling the air portion of the lower chamber with steam and mist.

She remembered that feeling of the ground shaking beneath her feet, of the sound of the Great Wheel’s clanking cogs and jangling joints overpowering everything else in the silent dead of the night.

She remembered that feeling of the earth thudding below her as she rode in pursuit of the thing, how she watched on in horror as it pulverised everything in its path; trees, houses, people.

The smooth edge of the wooden countertop pressed against her back as she leaned against it, folding her arms and preening the feathers on her forearms as she watched the syphon brew away.

She remembered having to stop when she arrived at the fringes of the Houzen Woods, having to come to terms with the reality she had brought upon her and upon the world.

There was no danger in moving further in pursuit of the Great Wheel– for every elevated beast that had once rallied against the armies of Siraj, Houzen and Oldenburg had already been reduced to a red stain upon the shifting dunes of ice that blanketed the north by it. Instead, she stopped because there was no reason for her to keep going. There was no real reason to her pursuing the Great Wheel at all– Siraj had certainly not instructed her to do so as she had done with the heist of Avarice.

She rested her palms against the countertop behind her, her head slowly hanging as she stared blankly into the amber fire beneath the stove, its flames roaring in stubborn protest against the iron grills that imprisoned it.

She hadn’t left out of a need to follow up. If she wanted to help with the war effort, she would’ve let herself stay in Oldenburg– becoming a prisoner kept alive only for the breakthroughs that she provided to the field of gunsmithing.

She had left out of a want to escape; to run far, far away from the system that had used her as a well of knowledge and had denied her her childhood.

And she could no longer return.

She sat down in a chair by the dining table, letting herself sink into its cushions as she closed her eyes.

Opening her eyes as she kept her head lolled back and resting ahead the chair’s headrest, she saw as the water in the lower chamber began rising into the upper chamber. The building pressure from all the added steam and water vapour in the lower chamber had forced the water level downwards, pushing the water up through the bottleneck of the upper chamber and through the filter– finally arriving in the upper chamber to brew the coffee grounds.

Of course, things didn’t turn out so bad in the end. The Sahlbarid were quick to heed the word of their Lady, taking care of her as though she were their own. And though the relationship may have been entirely formal at first, held together entirely out of requirement, it did not take long for her to win their trust and earn their support as genuine allies.

She was even able to re-establish contact with her mother.

She rose from her seat again, shuffling on over with her slippers sliding against the floor to pull the syphon off of the stove.

Really, she didn’t even know what the situation with Al-Muqayad was back then. How was someone without even a decade of life under their name supposed to be able to even comprehend the complexity of a war waged far from their home?

What information she did have on the Fellbeast came only in the form of disparate droplets, be it through snatched documents back when she was still in Oldenburg to whispered rumours passed amongst the Sahlbaridis.

As far as she understood it, the elevated beasts had lost. And all but one– Al-Muqayad– had survived, though only as a figment of its former self. Siraj had altered it, in one last affront to it and its fallen kinsmens’ intelligence, and warped its spirit in such a way that it would be forced to starve itself of mana. When paired with the Artefact of Avarice as supplied by the Great Wheel, the Fellbeast was turned into a nothing more than a living fountain of mana, spewing forth the bounties of the Artefact and warping the flow of mana away from itself– in turn handicapping its intelligence and robbing it of its sapience.

She watched as the brown elixir in the upper chamber slowly flowed back down into the lower chamber, the hot steam trapped within now condensing back into water and reducing the pressure enough to allow it to fall.

And, though the current state of affairs was assumed to be able to last for the foreseeable future– at least by Siraj– Lauka could hardly find herself comfortable with it. The progenitor of the Ice Technique herself had been reduced to a state of senility by the effort that was required of her by that final sealing endeavour, and something about leaving one of the six Artefacts with a latent elevated beast felt wholly irresponsible.

After all, wasn’t leaving the elevated beasts to their own devices what led to their uprising in the first place?

She pulled the upper chamber off of the lower one, placing it into the sink beside her.

Furthermore, considering the recent anomalous changes in the behaviour of the nearby beasts, Lauka had an inkling of a feeling that something seriously wrong was brewing beneath their feet.

She pulled a mug from a drawer, setting it down beside the lower chamber and filling it to the brim with freshly brewed coffee. The aroma of the brew immediately rushed forth to greet her, and she felt as though all her worries and paranoia had melted away like snow in the face of the blazing summer sky.

She lifted the mug to her face, taking a sip of the drink.

She never drank it to keep herself awake– for some reason it seemed not to have that effect on her. She only drank it because she liked its taste.

Setting the mug back down, Lauka sighed.

There wasn’t much left to do but wait. At least she already had the first few handgun designs done and ready for testing. Really the only things left on her agenda for the year were to find a faster loading mechanism and to find some ignition mechanism that would not fail when in the rain or under snowfall.

She took another sip of her coffee as she shuffled her way back to her seat.

When she stopped midway, freezing mid gait to slowly turn towards the door; hearing as it was knocked.