Weeks passed, and the empire buzzed with hammers and chisels, bridges going up, hospitals radiating light, and libraries unfolding like spring flowers. Sharath—Emperor, reformer, reluctant diplomat—felt a hollow ache within him.
The inventions lay stagnant.
His guns had already altered battlefields. His presses had remolded knowledge. Hot-air balloons drifted languidly across the skies. But in his imagination, sparks of motion leapt perpetually toward one vision: motion without muscle.
Engines.
A means of propelling carts without horses, ships without oars, machinery without interminable strings of sweating workers.
Lastly, as civic projects operated smoothly under Madhu and Lord Bassana's stewardship, Sharath was in his liberty. He called in the guards, dismissed most of the advisors, and went down into the new lab, carved out below the extended palace halls.
The Emperor's Laboratory
The laboratory was huge, by far a cathedral-sized structure, lit by thousands of spheres of mage-light floating like fireflies.
Widespread were the weapons of semi-mad construction: cannons rimmed with runes, glowing lightly, rifles, jars of alchemical flame sealed behind armored glass. Against a corner wall, a half-built rocket propped against scaffolding like a restless beast to be unleashed.
But in the center of the laboratory, one area had been cleared. Blueprints littered enormous tables. Pages of paper contained drawings of pistons, gears, propellers, and wheels. Models half-assembled of wood and steel rested next to piles of dwarven-forged pieces.
This was not a weapon. This was revolution.
Sharath bound his hair back, rolled his sleeves, and spoke to himself in a hushed tone:
"Engines. Let's make the world move."
The First Attempt – The Steam Engine
He started with what he could recall from Earth's ancient stories: steam power.
A steel boiler, water-filled, set over fire. A piston above, designed to be driven by increased pressure.
Easy on paper. In action—
BOOM!
The initial boiler blew so forcefully it torn a table to shreds and almost burned three irreplaceable rifles kept alongside.
Madhu, bursting in, coughed through the smoke. "Sharath, are you attempting to kill yourself, or simply redecorate the palace with burn marks?"
He coughed, flailing soot from his face. "Failure is progress."
"Progress shouldn't burn off your eyebrows."
"Eyebrows regrow. Engines don't assemble themselves."
The Second Attempt – The Crude Motor
Days passed in a blur.
He experimented with coils of copper and enchanted magnets, trying to generate motion with raw magical current. But mana burned too fast, the coils overheated, and once, the table itself caught fire.
Lord Bassana poked his head in, saw the flames, and promptly turned back around muttering: "I'm too old for this madness."
But Sharath smiled right through it. "If it burns, it is because there's energy. We only have to master it."
The Breakthrough – Wind and Fire
The real moment arrived when he broke the thought habit of thinking only of machines.
Surrounded by busted boilers and charred coils, he realized: I am in a world of magic. Why stick to Earth's constraints?
He inscribed runes on a steel cylinder—wind for movement, fire for flame. The fire rune warmed the air, the wind rune channeled it into rhythmic pulses. Gradually, step by step, the piston started to go up and down.
Not an explosion. Not chaos. Rhythm.
Chk—chk—chk.
It was primitive, but it worked. A cycle of repetition. Movement born of magic tapped through technology.
Sharath released a breathless laugh. "By the gods… it's alive."
The Tricycle
He didn't lose any time. The initial test subject: a wooden tricycle, with dwarven steel axles added for strength. He mounted the new "engine" to the frame, fitted gears onto the rear wheels, and sat down.
Madhu stood close by, arms folded. "If you blow yourself up, I'm not explaining it to the people."
Sharath cranked the rune key. The engine coughed—chk—chk—chk—before roaring into action. The tricycle lurched forward, wheels screeching on the stone floor.
"YES!" he bellowed, spinning the trike wildly across the lab.
"NO!" Madhu bellowed, leaping out of the way as he just avoided a rack of unstable explosives.
The tricycle smashed into a wall with a splintering crunch. Sharath rolled out, bruised but grinning maniacally.
"It works!" he exclaimed triumphantly.
"It nearly worked you into a funeral," Madhu growled.
The Carriage Without Horses
The next step: scaling up.
He built a four-wheeled carriage, stripping it of horses and lashing a bigger engine to the back. He fitted brakes (a precaution Madhu demanded after the tricycle accident).
The roar of the engine made the carriage move steadily forward. Guards and engineers stood amazed as the vehicle travelled around the palace courtyard, Sharath gripping the reins like a lad with his new toy.
"Behold!" he cried. "The horseless carriage!"
One of the guards grumbled, "Blasphemy."
Another breathed, "Genius."
The City Engine
Flush from success, Sharath envisioned even bigger.
Why just carriages? Why not drive the city itself—mills, pumps, factories—liberating laborers for more rewarding work?
He started on the City Engine, a stupendous edifice of steel and stone, driven not by coal but by compounded runes of fire and wind. The idea: one central power house turning shafts and belts across the city.
But scaling the runes caused instability. Too much fire, and the chambers overheated. Too much wind, and the pistons shattered.
For weeks, the great hall filled with the sound of collapsing prototypes. BOOM! CRASH! THUNK!
At one point, Bassana stormed in, robes smoking from a minor blast. "Sharath! You'll blow the city off its foundations!"
Sharath only grinned, chalking new runes onto the floor. "Then we'll rebuild stronger."
The Success
The solution was achieved when he stacked the runes, securing them onto dwarven steel inscribed with elven script. The fire rune burned exactly so; the wind rune imparted pressure evenly; and an earth rune solidified the framework.
As the engine began to run, the earth hummed around it. Shafts rotated, gears turned, belts buzzed. The great wheel spun steadily, driving power into the first mills.
The gathered crowd gasped as looms started weaving without human hands, hammers struck metal without blacksmiths, and fountains sprayed water higher than ever before.
"The City Engine lives," Sharath declared.
Madhu shook her head, smiling despite herself. "You'll either be remembered as the greatest genius… or the greatest madman who ever lived."
Sharath wiped grease from his hands. "Why not both?"
Momentum
The empire changed almost overnight.
Tricycles whizzed down palace streets, kids racing after them with wide eyes.
Horseless carriages transported officials and merchants through the city.
The City Engine-powered mills produced cloth and tools at unimaginable volumes.
Engineers and mages met every day at the palace, drawing out innovations, envisioning sailless ships, railless trains.
The crowds were awed. There were some nobles who rebelled, grumbling of "unholy machines," but as farmers understood that plows could be drawn without oxen, and merchants prospered as their profits doubled and then tripled, opposition dissolved.
Gossip wove its way through neighboring kingdoms. Elves feared it would disfigure forests, dwarves coveted the rune-steel motors, goblins conspired to steal plans. But for the subjects of Sharath's empire, life was forever altered.
Sharath's Reflection
One late night, Sharath sat in the lab, staring at the tricycle now polished and perfected. The City Engine thrummed faintly in the distance, a heartbeat for his empire.
He whispered to himself:
"Rifles won wars. Books spread knowledge. But engines… engines will move the world."
🐧NeuroBoop buzzed in his ear. "Until the next explosion, boss."
Sharath chuckled, eyes glinting. "Then we'll rebuild. Stronger."
And with that, he returned to his blueprints, already drawing wings.