We found them in the corridor outside the canteen. The court mage stood upright with the quiet posture of someone who had decided that patience was a limited resource and that most of it had already been spent. Next to him stood the royal scribe. The contrast was substantial. The mage looked irritated. The scribe looked like a man negotiating with gravity.

  Deep shadows rested beneath his eyes. His shoulders sagged forward slightly, as if the concept of standing had become an administrative burden. In one hand he held a rolled parchment, though the grip suggested that the parchment might be holding him upright rather than the other way around.

  Observation: severe sleep deficit.

  The court mage noticed us first. He looked at me—not hostile, but not pleased.

  “Good,” he said flatly. “You’re here.”

  Nicholas gave a small greeting. The royal scribe attempted something similar but only managed a weak nod, which required visible effort.

  “Let’s go,” the mage continued. “The others are already waiting.”

  We began walking down the corridor. The scribe followed with slow, careful steps, like a man who had recently discovered that the floor occasionally moved.

  Nicholas glanced at him. Then again. Finally curiosity won.

  “Are you… alright?” he asked.

  The scribe made a noise that could generously be interpreted as laughter.

  “Define alright,” he said hoarsely.

  Nicholas gestured toward the parchment in his hand. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

  The scribe exhaled slowly.

  “Yes.” A short pause. “The notebooks,” he added.

  Nicholas frowned. “What notebooks?”

  The scribe stopped walking for a moment and looked directly at him.

  “The notebooks,” he repeated with the patient tone of a man explaining weather to someone who had never seen rain. “The ones filled with recommendations. The ones sent to the king.”

  His tired eyes shifted toward me.

  “Now take a guess,” he said slowly, “who has to transfer that entire mountain of structured madness onto parchment so it can be preserved in the royal archives.”

  Nicholas followed his gaze. He looked at me. Then back at the scribe. Then back at me again.

  Understanding arrived.

  “Oh… I see,” Nicholas said quietly.

  The scribe nodded once.

  After some time the court mage stopped. Not fully—he simply slowed, turned halfway, and looked directly at me.

  “This time you are not here to change anything.”

  He raised a finger slightly for emphasis. “You are here to give instructions.”

  A second finger. “You explain what needs to be built.”

  A third. “And then you leave.”

  He looked at me with the exhausted patience of a man who had already lost several arguments he had not intended to participate in.

  “No rearranging. No structural reforms. No sudden improvements.”

  A pause followed.

  “It was sufficient that last time I had to expend two days of my reserves helping remove a wall from the throne hall.”

  He looked ahead again and added dryly, “And turn it into glass.”

  I considered the statement.

  “Natural light improves spatial awareness.”

  “That is not the point.”

  “It also improves evacuation orientation.”

  “Still not the point.”

  Nicholas quietly cleared his throat behind us.

  The mage stopped in front of a heavy wooden door and opened it. Behind it was a staircase—not a short one. Stone steps descended steeply into the lower levels of the castle, disappearing into a corridor lit by wall-mounted torches.

  I studied the lighting. Open flames. Enclosed stone corridor. Smoke moving upward along the ceiling. Ventilation: insufficient.

  I opened my mouth.

  Nicholas placed a hand firmly on my shoulder. “Don’t.”

  I looked at him. “Don’t what?”

  “Whatever sentence you’re about to start.”

  “That depends.”

  “No.”

  He tightened his grip slightly. “Just let it go.”

  Operationally inefficient architecture was rarely improved through silence, but Nicholas’s tone suggested immediate resistance. I allowed the observation to remain undocumented—for now.

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  We began descending. The staircase continued longer than expected. Eventually the air changed slightly—warmer, heavier, carrying the smell of oil, iron, and recently worked metal.

  At the bottom the corridor widened. The court mage pushed open another door.

  Beyond it lay the royal workshop.

  The space was enormous—not merely large for a workshop but large in the way buildings designed for entirely different purposes were large. High ceilings. Massive wooden beams. Wide open floor space. The closest comparison that came to mind was the hangars in my world where aircraft rested when they were not flying.

  Except here the floor was occupied by workbenches, half-built machines, piles of timber, stacks of metal fittings, and several groups of craftsmen already waiting.

  Nicholas stopped beside me and looked around.

  “Well… that’s a lot bigger than I expected,” he murmured.

  Yes. The kingdom, it seemed, had prepared for construction.

  Whether they were prepared for the instructions remained to be determined.

  While I was still examining the workshop, the sounds of work gradually stopped. First one hammer, then another. Metal against metal faded into silence. When I turned back toward the center of the hall, several people were already moving toward us.

  Six in total—four men and two women. All of them built like individuals who had spent most of their lives persuading stubborn materials to cooperate. Broad shoulders, heavy hands, clothes marked by oil, soot, and old burn scars. Some looked concerned, others curious, and one looked mildly annoyed.

  Before anyone else spoke, a voice emerged from the group. The speaker was an older man with a beard that had lost its argument with time but not with gravity. His back was slightly bent, but his eyes were sharp in the way tools often are after decades of use.

  “Well,” he said.

  His tone suggested that politeness had been left somewhere outside the building.

  “We were told to come here because you want something built.”

  He crossed his arms.

  “Apparently whatever your little head came up with.”

  The phrasing required a moment of adjustment.

  I began to respond.

  “W—”

  The sentence collapsed halfway through.

  Nicholas quietly nudged my side with his elbow—a reminder that informality was not structural collapse. Recovery followed.

  “Yes. We need to construct a siege machine.”

  The room remained quiet.

  Then someone behind the old man spoke.

  “I thought that was a joke.”

  A younger engineer, arms blackened with grease, leaned slightly forward. “I figured the messenger was pulling our leg.”

  The old man nodded once.

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me again.

  “So. How exactly do you imagine this thing?”

  I inhaled. The explanation required translation between worlds.

  “We require a large machine designed to compact soil. A large rotating cylinder positioned at the front, heavy enough to compress the road layers when moved across them.”

  I gestured toward the floor.

  “The machine moves forward. The cylinder rolls. The ground becomes denser.”

  Silence followed. The engineers exchanged glances. One of the women tilted her head slightly.

  “So,” she said slowly, “a wheel.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “A very large wheel.”

  “Closer.”

  The old man scratched his beard.

  “And what drives it?”

  “The machine will be powered by coal.”

  This time the silence lasted longer. One of the engineers blinked. Another looked at the court mage, then back at me.

  Finally the old man spoke again. “Coal.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want a coal-powered siege engine.”

  “For road construction.”

  Another pause followed.

  Then the old man nodded slowly.

  “Well.” He looked at the others. “At least this will be interesting.”

  The word coal lingered in the air like an unfinished equation.

  The older engineer frowned.

  “And the coal does what exactly?”

  “It provides energy.”

  He waited.

  “So… it burns.”

  “Yes.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the energy is transferred into motion.”

  Several of them looked at each other. One of the women folded her arms.

  “Coal doesn’t move.”

  “That is correct.”

  “It just sits there.”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you burn it,” another engineer added, “it disappears.”

  “Yes.”

  “So how exactly does something that disappears make a machine move?”

  The question was reasonable. The difficulty lay in explaining industrial mechanics to a group of people whose technological framework stopped somewhere between lever systems and animal power.

  “The coal produces heat.”

  They nodded slowly.

  “Heat expands water.”

  They stopped nodding.

  “And the expanding water produces pressure.”

  The nodding did not resume.

  “And the pressure moves mechanical components.”

  The silence deepened.

  One of the engineers rubbed his chin. “So the coal pushes the machine?”

  “No.”

  “The water pushes the machine?”

  “Also no.”

  The old man squinted at me. “Then what pushes the machine?”

  I paused.

  Explanation attempt one: unsuccessful. Explanation attempt two required metaphor.

  “In my world we often use animals to move heavy things.”

  They nodded immediately. That concept had survived centuries.

  “A horse pulls a wagon.”

  “Yes.”

  “But the horse becomes tired.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it needs food.”

  “Yes.”

  “And rest.”

  “Yes.”

  I pointed at the floor.

  “Now imagine a horse that never tires.”

  That caught their attention.

  “A horse that eats coal instead of grass.”

  Nicholas slowly covered his face with one hand.

  The engineers exchanged looks. The older man spoke again.

  “So you want us to build a metal horse.”

  “That pulls roads flat.”

  “While eating rocks.”

  “Coal.”

  “Which we set on fire.”

  “Yes.”

  A long silence followed. One of the women leaned toward another engineer and whispered something. He whispered back.

  The old man scratched his beard again.

  Finally he nodded once. “Well.”

  He gestured toward the workshop.

  “Explain the metal horse.”

  I raised a hand slightly before continuing.

  “Before we proceed, there is an important clarification.”

  Several of the engineers were already exchanging skeptical looks.

  “I can explain the principle,” I continued.

  A pause.

  “But not the exact construction.”

  The reaction was immediate. Murmurs spread through the group—low voices, metal tools shifting in irritated hands.

  “That’s what I thought,” someone muttered.

  “So the messenger really did come here to make fools of us.”

  Another voice joined in.

  “You drag us here for fairy tales?”

  “I’m not here to—”

  The argument grew louder. Voices overlapped. Skepticism increased.

  Then the old engineer raised his voice.

  “Quiet.”

  It was not shouted. It was spoken with the authority of someone who had spent fifty years telling younger men when to stop being idiots.

  The room obeyed. Tools settled. The murmuring died.

  He looked at me.

  “Explain.”

  I nodded.

  “The machine functions by using heat to create pressure.”

  Blank expressions returned immediately.

  So I tried again.

  “Have you ever heated water in a kettle?”

  This time several heads nodded.

  “The lid begins to rattle when the water becomes too hot.”

  More nodding.

  “That happens because steam expands.”

  I picked up a small metal bolt from a nearby workbench and held it between my fingers.

  “If you were to seal the top of that kettle completely, the pressure would build until something gives.”

  One of the engineers said quietly,

  “The lid would fly off.”

  “Exactly.”

  I pointed toward the workshop floor.

  “The machine uses that same force.”

  They watched me closely now.

  “The steam pressure pushes mechanical components.”

  I gestured slowly, describing the movement in the air.

  “That movement turns the wheels. And the wheels move the machine.”

  Nicholas stood quietly behind me, clearly enjoying the moment where industrial engineering became storytelling.

  “The machine must be large,” I added.

  “Large enough that the front cylinder covers the entire width of the road.”

  I paused briefly.

  “It should not resemble a military device.”

  A few eyebrows lifted.

  “No spikes. No weapon mounts. No unnecessary structure.”

  I looked around the group.

  “Aesthetics are irrelevant. Function takes priority over appearance.”

  Another pause.

  Then I looked directly at the old engineer.

  “Can you build it?”

  He studied me for a moment. Then he scratched his beard.

  “So,” he said slowly, “you’re asking us to play god. To build a creature out of iron.”

  He laughed once—short and dry—then looked around at the others.

  “Well. If anyone in this kingdom can manage that, it’s us.”

  Structural Addendum: