Below the balcony, a group of laborers marched through the midday sun. They were the only signs of life on the streets. Their clumsy and cheap wooden bodies never needed rehydration, and could heat up to about twice the body temperature of an un-modified man.

What a shitty life, thought Mikel, exhaling hashish smoke in the shade. This from the man who built many of the bodies below. They were shoddily produced from inferior balsa. Light, but not strong. The man paying for them, Sharah, he didn't seem to care. He paid anyway, so Mikel made them quickly and poorly, just like the man wanted.

It was Sharah who had furnished his apartment, over three rooms on the second floor of mage-stone building. The floor and walls stayed cool even in the thick of summer, as it was that day. For that much, Malik was thankful. The Island of Moros, where he was born, was a windy and often cold place. The climate here suited him horribly.

He had done what he could to feel at home. A tapestry hung on the far way, blocking the morning sun and the view of the harbor. It showed the naval battle of Eren Redeye, the decisive victory that secured the Free Islands from the Krutish Empire, hundreds of years in the past. And Sharah had bought him a gift, a life-sized bronze statue of the six-armed and two-headed queen of Moros, Felicia Ahn-De-Katal. A statue likely too expensive for anyone in Moros to ever own

For that matter, it was Sharah's hashish in his hooka. He took another long draw and let smoke drift out of his mouth lazily. He wiped sweat from his forehead. The Gods, was it hot. There would be nothing else to do until the sun started going down. Nobody could work through the heat, except those with modified bodies.

Well, that was something Mikel knew a thing or two about. That was the work that had dragged him over the Eldoara Ocean to the swell of Artos in the first place. It was in general a terrible place to be, at least for most of the wretched and poor and broken people from the slums. For Mikel it was not as bad. His skills were in high demand, even without an official license. His flexibility to work off-the-record helped assure that he would never be wanting for work.

His head clouded with the drug, Mikel let his imagination roam. He started to wonder, what could be different about the heat. About people's bodies, how to change them to deal with the heat. The conventional model was to give them an all-artificial body. An all-wood or all-steel body had its advantages, but also some drawbacks.

Labor bosses loved them for their durability. Artificial bodies felt no pain, they could be smashed to pieces and the worker later reassembled. But they were expensive to construct, often clumsy to use, and required a special kind of food called Elixir. Not to mention the social implications.

Slavery was technically illegal in Artos. An outside observer might not realize this given the way many of the laborers were treated. While possession of a person was not allowed, there were very strict rules about defaulting on debt. It involved the authorities taking away your body and encasing your consciousness in a granite block, a year for each hundred Kress you owed. This punishment was known as 'blocking.'

Employers would mandate and finance an artificial body for its laborers, who would in turn have to work to pay off the debt owed to the company. Even when debts were close to being paid, an employer simply mandated the worker buy another body, setting the worker back in the hole again. In this way, what may start as a two-year agreement could be drawn out to decades or longer. With an all-steel body costing hundreds of thousands of Kress, the result of a laborer breaking his contract could see him blocked for millennia.

Of course, that was only the official channel. Out in the Swell, the rules were much more flexible. Debtors were not just imprisoned, they were humiliated. A blocked individual is 'shut down' in a sense. They are aware of the passage of time, and the weight of their loneliness. But it is a peaceful state overall, similar to a dark sleep.

Not so with those in the Swell. Often the head of the individual is disconnected, revived with their full consciousness, and then locked away. They remain aware of their surroundings for every waking moment. The thirst is said to be the worst part.

But Malik would make a great deal of money if he could stay out of trouble and work for a couple years. Enough to buy a nice ranch somewhere back on the Free Islands. And there he could be left alone to smoke hashish and invent new bodies. Which was all he'd wanted to do anyway.

That was supposing he could make it out without being killed or blocked or worse. He was an unlicensed crafter, a dangerous thing to be in these parts. The Artosian Families didn't bother with blocking for skilled magicians who might find a way of escaping. They simply incinerated them.

#

Out on the ocean, Ara laid eyes on Artos for the first time in her life. She had seen the silver towers so many times in paintings, dreaming of what was beneath. The Stone. Even this far away she could feel it was there. She had been headed to this moment her whole life.

The Captain was saying something to her in Artosian. She was still disguised as an Artosian and he was speaking very fast. She nodded and said one of the only word she knew which was "Okay." That seemed to satisfy him.

But even paintings did not do the towers justice. They gleamed with the strength of the sun itself. And they were so much bigger than she had imagined. Artos and the Swell together had over three hundred thousand people, more than all of the Free Islands together. But even that fact did not prepare her for the absolute size of the towers, rising up high, silver, gleaming over the black cloud of coal smoke coming up from the Swell.

They came to the port in the late afternoon, but the heat was almost unimaginable even then. Sweat poured off the men who unloaded the ship. It was easy to see why so many in the swell had wooden bodies.

After disembarking, Ara let down her disguise and entered as the foreigner she was. She had never been to a city before, and her slackjawed amazement would stand out no matter what face she wore. There were other reasons to change as well.

The captain of the ship, who she had not paid, ran by her angrily chattering to one of his underlings. They were obviously looking for the beardless young Artosian boy whose form she had only recently dropped. A pang of guilt shivered through her. The captain had been nice to her over the past three months, and she wished she'd had the money to pay him fairly. But there were other ways to return a favor. And besides, there was a better reason she was here than to simply scam her way across the Eldoara Ocean.

The Stone. She could actually feel it, all the way out where she was. Guarded for thousands of years, nobody outside the Artosian Royal Mages had seen it for five thousand years. The most powerful crystal in the world.

Ever since she was a small child, she remembered the Stone. Even before she knew the name of it, there was some other power that she was distantly aware of. It whispered her name in dreams. Ara, Ara, Ara. Ever since first learning about Artos as a young girl, she would do anything she could to find it, to see it for herself.

Why? She hadn't put that part together yet. She would know at some point. For the past week on the ocean. She could hear its whispers even while awake. Ara, Ara, Ara. But now it was quiet. It knew where she was. She was coming.

#

The Artosian writer Weot Pruet had observed that the only constant experience in Artos is that of envy. One is always looking up at those who are more powerful than themselves. Those in the Swell envied the few who lived in the City. Those in the City envied those with connections to the Families. Those in the Famlies constantly circled the Throne. And the Throne itself envied the Royal Mages.

Whomever they envied, they kept that secret themselves.

But there was another type of envy, experienced by a selected few of those close to the top. The envy of the common life, a life without the constant political strife. In a way, the powerful become their own prisoners. This is especially so for those born into power, who never sought it in the first place.

Such was the fate of Princess Ivey Riek, the youngest daughter of King Rathe Riek. A prisoner of the blessed life, if there ever was one. Not only was she the daughter of the King, but renowned to be one of the most naturally beautiful women in the kingdom.
While anyone with money could be modified to be beautiful, Ivey had not once been magically augmented in her life. Yet she still possessed a captivating face, eyes the glistened like deep seawater, flowing black hair that somehow shimmered with every range that black can be, a flawless face with high cheekbones and pearl-smooth skin.

Of everything that made a difference though, it was Ivey's smile. It was a smile that told a story of absolute and obvious goodness of character, a look that melted the hearts of even the most stolid politicals. And it was because of that smile that she was certainly the most loved public figure of all the families. Even out in the Swell, among the wretched masses of laborers and vagabonds, there was a special sort of sympathy for the princess.

As the astute political strategist Amer Rewety had once observed, were King Rathe's daughter not quite so beautiful, or not quite so well-intentioned, his reign may not have lasted as long as it had. The King was not himself especially well-liked. In some areas he was openly despised, thought of as an aging, out of touch king who cared only for the finery of his own tower. The King was seldom, if ever, seen even in court.

His position was typically presided over by his eldest son Char, a veteran of the political games of Artos. At that, Char was an Adept of the Royal Mages, an accomplished and powerful wizard in his own right. Char ran the day-to-day affairs of the kingdom, conferring with his father on larger strategic matters. Although he would have no claim to the throne himself, Char possessed the character of a man who longed for power, sought it at every turn. He was as feared as much as his sister was loved.

Together they had established a reign of over 20 years. An aeon by the standards of the Artosian throne, given the circling family succession and constant assassinations and depositions. It was a strategic decision to keep the King stored in the tower for as long as possible — this would, if nothing else, preserve his life and his rule. But a rule can only last so long if the people turn against their leader.

Discontent was spreading in the Artosian city. Even moreso in the Swell. Those at the top reaped money and crystals, while those below starved for the very bread and Elixir to escape the debtors prisons. Everywhere on the streets were seditious conversations, talk of the next King, Errugo of the Thiets, and his promise to reform the oppressive and onerous claim to all the crystals in the whole desert, and instead take only a small percentage of all crystal sales, both in the official and un-official markets.

But we were talking about Ivey. She was a compulsive reader of adventure stories. She had a relentless curiosity for the world, a warm and genuine desire to learn, to travel, to meet and engage with others. Learning was her one and only passion, and her contempt for political issues only endeared her towards the masses more.

Sometimes the blessed are imprisoned in their own success. Such was the fate of Ivey when her eldest brother Char suggested she be put on display at the Royal Museum of History and Antiquity. The masses of citizens — only those in the City, not those scoundrels from the Swell — would be allowed to come in and gaze at her beauty. If this succeeded, argued Char, then the people might forget their worries and the promises of Errugo and preserve their reign just a bit longer.

There was one condition to Char's proposal. While his sister had the most naturally beautiful face in the whole kingdom, her body was thin, lithe, and hardly that of a womanly or stately figure. A woman should have curves, so the common opinion went. Ivey's body was jagged, bony, even skinny in some places. Her ribs showed through her gowns, her knees and elbows were knobby and gaunt. But Char had a solution.

They would only display her head.

This was how Ivey came to become a prisoner, not just of her own birth which kept her from the travel and learning and experience she so desired, but a prisoner of her own beauty. Char himself did the mage-work.

For the first time in her life, Ivey underwent a magical transformation. Her consciousness, her soul itself, was moved to an jar of liquid Astarite. A collar of brass was fashioned around her neck, then enchanted with two spells. First a portal spell would allow her to breathe, speak, and eat as normal. Then a dividing spell split her neck right along the middle of the collar.

Such a construction allowed for a person's head to be safely removed, and re-attached as would be necessary. In the absence of a head, the body would fall into a type of lifeless stasis, technically alive but unable to act or move on its own. The head would remain full aware, but was obviously helpless and unable to move on its own.

And so Ivey's head was to be taken to the Royal Museum of History and Antiquity. The masses lined up to see her, to freely gaze upon her beauty, to get the rare chance to meet the princess herself. The artists and painters of the kingdom would come en masse to sketch, paint, and sculpt replicas of her beauty. But none, Char insisted, did justice to the actual thing. Char even suggested her head should remain on its pedestal for the rest of her life, such was the sheer ardor they felt for her beauty.

Perhaps the only person who regretted the decision was Ivey herself. While the adoration of the people was not unappreciated, she longed for isolation, to return once again to the world of books. The world of adventurers, journeys, pirates, lost and found lovers, tragedy, comedy. The world outside the walls of the City, outside the Swell, far, far away lands of untold experiences and unimagined possibility.

However, she had never been the sort to cause trouble, all the more so when her brother was so forceful.

#

Petar had always been smarter than anyone he knew. A citizen of the City, he had been educated in the Citizen's Schools for all 12 years, leading his class in exams for every year. His instructors has always noted his high marks and his 'potential' for being something special.

He'd coasted through much of his schooling with hardly being challenged or even interested. Still an instinctively driven boy, he had had developed an appetite for finding his own endeavors, to find an area of pursuit where his efforts could mean something. He had found that in the physical sciences, the non-magical realm of the world. In gears and magnets and forces and temperature. Magic was only as reliable as the person who wields it, yet the physical laws of the world are immutable, constant, and apply the same to all.
This observation, and the innate desire to understand some constant about the world, led young Petar down an inventor's path in life. He spent his childhood building complicated wind-up dolls that walked or did flips, re-creating old-fashioned mechanical clocks, or trying to build machines that could fly.

Petar was never good at socializing. This may have as must to do with his disinterest in practical pursuits as his off-putting intelligence. He often found himself with nothing relevant to say, and would hardly talk to most people he knew. But his world being consumed with the few topics which he was greatly interested in, and whenever those topics came up in conversation, he would seize on the the change to show off his knowledge, only to see the other's eyes glaze over with boredom. This only served to contribute towards the lack of confidence that led to being such a poorly socialized person in the first place.

The result was that, after the completion of his honored studies, Petar never advanced beyond the desk job at the Royal Museum of History and Antiquity. He had the immensely boring job of being the night watchman at the museum, given the duty of seeing that nobody interfered with any of the exhibits or archives. While his family and friends despaired over his being given such an unprestigous job given his obvious talents, Petar relished the extra time it gave him to pursue his own work. He would spend all night drawing up blueprints, and then set to work on them the next morning.

However all this changed one afternoon. The head curator of the museum, a very fat man and bald named Reyoy Merupk, opened his office door, waking Petar from one of many daydreams.

"We have a new exhibit coming, Mister Petar." Reyoy said.

"Oh," said Petar, shrugging. Peter's job did not involve the exhibits in much of any way. He was to keep records of many artifacts not on display, liaison for dignitaries granted access to the same archives, and due to his mechanical aptitude, maintain many features of the building.

"We are to display the beautiful head of Princess Ivey Riek."

Petar chocked a little bit. "The Princess? Here? How long?"

"Indefinitately. It seems she is to be displayed, such that the citizens and even the masses may gaze on her beauty, and reflect on the virtues of the Family Riek." The curator said, the words sounding sour in his mouth.

"That's very nice," said Petar. He had never been comfortable talking to the head curator, and always had the feeling the man completely despised him. The man also made a very unpleasant sound when he breathed.

"I suppose so. The only reason I'm telling you is because of the implications as security goes. I'm sure you understand there will be some changes here."

"I will do my best to stay out of the way."

"Nope. You won't. You'll be helping us design a security system."

"Me?"

"We could have the mages build one. Yes. But for every Royal Mage who'd weave a spell for us, there's some mercenary in the Swell who could just as well unravel it. We need physical security. The kind that can't be untinkered by all these magic-sprayers."

"Um… Yes, I'm sure build something. Between my other duties, I mean."

"Don't worry about them. We are moving you to the Security team. Pack up your desk and report to Poy."

Petar mutely nodded as the head curator made a noisy exit. He sighed and began to collect his things.