Chapter 1054 — The Stars Over Tarrond
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
At the northern edge of the Loren Continent, the new port city of "Northport" had already begun to take shape. Though it would still be some time before it became a truly bustling hub of transport, this important city — which concentrated the Empire's most advanced technology and enjoyed vast resources and manpower — already showed glimpses of the magnificent scale it would one day attain.
Along the long coastline, a broad, straight port avenue ran east to west. Piers cast from reinforced concrete and enchanted with permanent magic extended north from the docklands, driving in a straight line into the sea. Large-scale breakwaters had been built upon the shallow waters offshore, forming a broad, zigzagging dike outside the harbor, while numerous spires topped with runes rose from the sea on both sides of the dike; wherever the rune-light reached, the waters within the harbor were further calmed.
All of this was technology taken from the sirens or the naga — had humans been left to research it on their own, there was no telling how long the arcane engineers and craftsmen responsible for building Northport would have needed to explore it from scratch.
On the other side of the harbor lay Northport's urban district. Beyond roads that branched in every direction and were broader and straighter than those of ordinary cities, the most distinctive feature of this "Cinderborder City" — the northernmost of all human nations — was the towers scattered throughout the city. These towers rose among the buildings, their surfaces covered not only in faintly glowing rune panels but also in great numbers of metal pipes extending from within; the upper ends of these pipes connected to massive arcane devices, while the lower ends ran out toward the surrounding districts and to heat plants set at the towers' bases. Together, these ubiquitous towers and pipes formed Northport's ingenious and vast thermal network — the most advanced and complex heating system the Cecil Empire had yet produced.
It was thanks to this thermal network that humans could gain a firm foothold on this frigid land.
Victoria Wilde, the "Duke of Ice and Snow," stood at the end of a broad pier, facing the sea wind and watching the surging waves. Several naga and sirens stood beside her; among them, a beautiful siren with long black hair and a tear-shaped mole at the corner of one eye propped herself up on a long serpentine tail and glanced back toward the city. With a touch of feeling, she said, "How fast it develops... Prosperous commerce truly is the lifeblood of a city..."
"Lady Cassandra, is commerce not prosperous in your siren kingdom?" Victoria turned her head and looked at the black-haired siren with some curiosity. "I seem to hear very little from you about conditions on that continent of 'Eo.'"
"The siren kingdom... the siren kingdom is not like the continent," the black-haired siren called Cassandra said after a moment's thought, smiling. "We do have commerce, of course, but the rhythm of our society is slower, and trade is not as brisk as on land — as you know, we came to this planet aboard a great vessel, and over the long ages most of our social life has revolved around that ship and the few satellite cities around its landing site. That has changed somewhat of late, of course; since the naga became part of the siren realm, our society has gained new vitality. But on the whole, we remain a people of slow rhythm.
"There is one other thing I must correct you on, Lady Victoria — though our territory includes the continent of 'Eo,' more than nine-tenths of all sirens actually live on the seabed around it. Our interest in the land is only because it still holds a few mineral deposits; compared with the bountiful, generous ocean, it holds little appeal. So if you are interested in sirens, you should not ask about the continent — you should ask about our deep sea."