Chapter Text
It is possible, that Gold had never felt more pride swell in her chest as it was right this instance; gazing out the tall-framed window of her private laboratory, there was a faint bubbling noise in the background and the steady clicks of heeled shoes treating on polished floors.
The door opens with the idea of a creak, and a tall man, Gold didn't need to turn to, in order to recognize, entered.
"I told you; I would not disappoint.", she said, still holding her eyes on the ebony-cloaked landscape of Khaenri'ahs capital.
The King, no doubt, laughed heartedly, teasing a beaker, filled half way with a translucent liquid, almost tipping it and hastily retreating his hand, as the Alchemist finally turned toward him.
She smiled.
"Please refrain from messing with my belongings, Your highness, it is in, truly, both our favors."
To demonstrate Gold took a strip of clean, white parchment and dropped it into the liquid, which promptly tinged the parchment an charcoal black before desolving it into fast nothingness.
"Of course, we wouldn't want something terrible happening, now would we.", said the King, and continued: "Alchemy and Khemia were never practices I found myself interested in pursuing, I'd rather leave it to the intelligent folks that seem to draw actual enjoyment from participating in those arts."
"Truly wise decisions being made, your highness."
"It was a wise decision, indeed, employing you as our head alchemist, Gold, my advisors did not lie to me about one thing regarding you and your genius."
"Genius... I know where my ambitions lead me, and I know where to lead my own hands. If you need to call it genius, so be it."
Another laugh spawned from the King, pursuing to roam the laboratory and picking up a book by chance, featuring the caricature of a human body on the cover, Gold didn't laugh with him. She never did.
"Your creations are remarkable in keeping those pesky gods trapped at our borders.", he said proudly, while reading the blurb.
"Those smoke clouds are instable at best... I need to come up with something to make them... more sustainable.", Gold grumbled in the face of her apparent failure, ignoring the praise as a whole and rather focusing that pride she felt earlier in fueling her rising ambitions. She can do better than a couple of formless black puffs of smoke, she just needed more time.
"Homunculi, it's what they're called, eh?", asked the King and held up the book for Gold to see.
"Not really, what I've been delivering the cavalry so far is barely sentient for one, and designed specifically for warfare. A true homunculus has at least an inkling concerning what autonomy is supposed to be. But you needn't break your head over it, just leave it to the intelligent folks, your highness."
The King responded with a whole hearted laugh.
-
Field tillers were fascinating in how uninteresting they were to Gold. Fine, she admitted, they were useful, but that didn't justify their bulkieness and francly lack of any reason whatsoever.
"For the last time, stop testing these overzealous metal cans in my hangar!", she screeched as she stormed across the area, armed with her clipboard, ready to throw hands with the artillery captain and blacksmith currently aim-testing a field tiller in, for alchemies sake, her hangar, for the third time this week.
"The hangar provided to us is still being reconstructed.", says the Blacksmith disinterested.
"Oh, really. And then you thought to wreak havoc in my hanger now. The things I store here are fragile, you degenerates, and also quite explosive too. Not that im objecting, but do you two really want to die that badly?!"
"Come on, witch, stop being a killjoy, were almost done here anyways. This one is fine; good boy can be send out to the front soon.", said the artillery captain.
"It better be. And who are you calling witch. Magic is the art of gods, what are you implying, Sir." Gold was really not in the mood for this; left eye twitching, anxiously watching the tiller click and huff and hopefully stay far, far away from her precious alchemical materials.
"Whatever. We got a war to win, whether you are a witch or not.", deflects the artillery captain and shuts down the field tiller, which drops to the floor, looking like a slouching giant.
Both; artillery captain and Blacksmith then leave the hangar.
"Don't come back.", Gold mumbles under her breath.
She had come here originally to look for some ore she wanted to try and form a shell from, something solid, in which her shadowy creations could prolong the enevideble spending of their life force. Maybe soften the blow all together.
Now she was being dwarfed by an automaton the hight of three men. Silenced by a small mechanism.
It made her uncomfortable.
A truly remarkable invention constructed by the best engineers in all of Khaenri'ah... they were cold, dead metal. Nothing but wholly Khaenri'ahn, through and through.
Gold huffed.
Making a big arch around the field tiller she came to her stash of ores from different parts of both Khaenri'ah and Teyvat.
They were a bit messy, just barrels filled with rocks or crystals of varying sizes.
She pulled out a pebble sized piece of iron ore, and promptly discarding it again; too heavy.
White iron was no different and she decided to look at the Khaenri'ahn ores instead.
There was some obsidian sitting in a corner, but it would be too hard to work with.
While rummaging in the many barrels, a chunk of black-ish red stone jumped out and onto the floor, echoing in the tall walls of the hangar.
Gold picked the chunk of cordierite up and examined the glassy stone in her hand. It looked nice enough. The hardness could be compensated for, might as well go with this before she looses her mind in the face of going through all of her ore stash one by one.
-
Back in her laboratory, Gold decided to run some tests with the cordierite, to determine its compatibility.
"Let's make something simple...", she mumbled to herself.
"A flower perhaps."
Grabbing a pot filled with ink-black soil she dropped a bit of a opace red solution in, giving it time to sink into the soil before digging a small dent to place the cordierite.
Gold placed a delicate, gloved finger ontop it and let the budding life force from the soil submerge into the ore.
It was harder than expected, given the hardness of the mineral, but soon enough the stone became ready to mold into something new.
It grew slowly, slower than Gold would like to have it, but soon enough an eight petaled flower stood proud in the midst of the soil.
The cordierite had merged flawlessly into the shape of the flower, though it was no surprise that is was static in its stance and perfectly smooth to the touch. It was nothing to what Gold usually provided to the farmers further down south to the capital or for bouquets for the royal family.
The cordierite flower glistened in translucent shades of black and violett, and Gold smiled victorious as she threw the flower straight into the fire of her furnace.
She never saw the faint hair thin cracks.
Someone knocked at her door.
"Come in.", she said while straightening her back and closed the furnace door.
The door opened and one of the Kings advisors stood between the frame.
"The King wishes to see you present at dinner, Miss."
"Tell him I am terribly sorry but-"
"It was not spoken as a request, Miss."
Golds jaw clicks shut.
Fantastic, she thought, she hated it when the King made her attend dinner with his family; the young prince was a nuisance and the Queen couldn't stand her, constantly fiddling with her little mechanized birds, shooting her poisoned stares and always hinting at how she'd rather have Gold eat at the other side of Khaenri'ah.
The King didn't notice. He never did.