5 A new daughter
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'Is it God's blessing?'
Nahar's days turned hectic very quickly.
After that talk with… Ney, he quickly went to the workshop to try and make the new tools. His master was at first angry at him for wanting to waste metal on such things, but after seeing the blueprints, he produced all the necessary money and went to talk with the blacksmith himself.
A day later, they had made the first few of the chisels and also the hand planer. Everything worked exactly like how Ney described. Nahar used the skew chisel for a few hours, and like Ney said, it needed some getting used to, but very quickly, Nahar felt like he could never work on woods without the thing.
They were the simplest of variations, but Nahar felt awed at how much difference such small adjustments made. If Ney hadn't shown these new tools, for how long would they have used the same old methods to work?
His master asked him where he had gotten these new tools, but Nahar was unable to answer. He couldn't just say that his daughter suddenly started talking about God one day and showed him all those pictures.
However, he soon realized his worries were unfounded.
Two days later, he found his daughter sitting in the middle of the Tradesmen's Square standing inside a booth filled with drawings alongside an old man. He was dressed rich, a white cotton robe adorned with golden silk here and there. In his hands, he would play with a worn golden coin.
Looked completely out of place among the gathered tradesmen.
Asking around, Nahar realized it was the sly and nefarious Merchant Guild's Headmaster. He was apparently helping Ney sell her inventions. For every type of craftsman, she listened to what kind of tools and techniques they used and offered them the appropriate upgrades.
She would also mention God every few sentences.
With how every person that walked up to her looked shaken and dreamy, Nahar could only imagine the impact of the tools they saw.
And when all the people who wanted to be involved were gathered, they all blood-signed a magical contract of a new kind – a patent royalty contract. It was something akin to the contract of the Magi, but much more specialized. Apparently, rich merchants used them to make sure a contract's conditions were being properly followed.
The contract's terms were simple. For three years, anyone who sold her inventions and methodologies needed to give her and the Merchant Guild's Headmaster a 5% cut each, and each product sold that involved the use of her inventions granted the Ney only a 3% cut. Ney's cut was for the inventions themselves, and the Headmaster's cut was for the magic contract he provided.
In a matter of days, Ney suddenly started receiving money from every tradesman with half a head in Strati city. She would sit at home, doing nothing, but she would earn more money than anyone in the city.
The reason why Nahar got busy was because almost all of the tools she invented had some piece of wood involved. The easier ones, the craftsmen made themselves, but the more complicated ones needed a professional woodworker. The blacksmiths in the city became abnormally busy as well.
Their workload only lessened a bit when the Headmaster brought new woodworkers and blacksmiths from other towns for two weeks. They, after seeing new tools and equipment for all the other craftsmen, first felt jealous of their peers. But after realizing that the woodworkers and blacksmiths of the city also received new tools but wasn't willing to share, they immediately wanted them for themselves.
Endlessly, they pestered the woodworkers and blacksmiths in Strati city. They demanded they share the new tools with them, but those secrets were protected by the magic contract. It was impossible to break them unless one was willing to write them out in their own blood.
They explained everything to the craftsmen, after which, they started pestering Ney.
When anticipation was at the highest, Ney revealed that she was willing to sign another magic contract with every tradesman across the Strati state, one and a half months from now on. She gave every visiting tradesman samples of her new inventions and told them that for every tradesman that brought 20 new craftsmen to Strati city, she would lessen the cut they needed to pay by 1%.
Nahar very quickly realized Strati city was never enough to sate his daughter's appetite. She wanted the whole state. Maybe after that, she wanted the entire Magicracy.
Why would she need such huge amounts of money, he couldn't tell, but he knew deep inside that his family was going to become the richest family in the world soon.
These events would've made anyone happy, but Nahar just couldn't make himself feel that way.
Because at that point, he realized that there was no more Ney, Only 'Her'.
He looked at 'Her', who was sitting before the table, one hand eating the dinner and the other hand flipping through a page of a book every five breaths. Only very occasionally, she would spend more than a dozen seconds on a page. From the moment she sat down on the table, she was almost finished with two books.
Nahar thought she was just acting cool, or maybe showing off or something, but deep down he knew that she was properly reading through everything on those books.
"Are you not going to eat more, Ney?" Liley asked with a worried face.
'She' didn't react to his daughter's name.
"Ney?"
"Oh," she finally looked up. "It's okay. If you're hungry, you can eat mine."
Pushing away her food, her gaze fell on the book once more. There was about a fifth of the book left.
Nahar stared at her figure. Not even mentioning her inhuman reading speed, her posture, her movements, even her presence felt completely different from the Ney he knew. Ney… and whoever was now Ney were completely different people.
In Ney's stead, some sort of demon stood. 'She' called herself a voice in Ney's head at first, but nowadays, she was calling herself God's Chosen.
As for Ney... his daughter... she was nowhere to be seen.
Nahar... was prepared for something like this. He knew that one day, her daughter would be taken away from him. She would either become a slave mage or she would die from the fevers she suffered.
But what happened in reality was still quite different from what he imagined. It was hard to even describe it.
And Nahar also realized that despite mentally preparing for Ney's death for such a long time, he was also unable to accept reality as easily as he expected. Even though it wasn't his first time losing a child... Lara, Kiki, Arnold...
Perhaps because they passed away so young, it was different. Despite being the sickliest of all his children, Ney had survived for 12 years after all. They other three were healthy children, but death took them away without any warning.
It was hard... but Nahar was able to overcome it. The knowledge that such things occurred often around him was a form of consolation as well.
But why was it so difficult for him to accept Ney's death?
'Is it because she lived for so long?'
'Is it because her body's still walking around, doing God knows what?'
'Is it because... she's still alive?'
Nahar shook his head.
'No.'
He refused to delude himself. The person inside Ney, God's Chosen, whoever it was, 'She' made sure that he wouldn't be able to either.
'She' seemed to know what Ney knew, and was probably able to act as his daughter properly, but she never bothered to. In fact, she was doing everything in her power to tell Nahar and Liley that their daughter was gone. Replaced.
On the other side of the table, 'She' finished reading and put the book down with a sigh.
"Not here, either…" she murmured and opened another book.
SLAM!
Startled Nahar looked at his son. Lihar had stood up and slammed his fist on the table. His expression was one of someone wronged and confused. His hands were shaking all over.
"Lihar?"
Lihar stood there for a few seconds, silent under everyone's gaze.
"You… you all… …nothing," he murmured and walked away. The front door slammed.
Nahar shared a look with Liley. Her eyes pointed outside.
Sighing, Nahar struggled on his chair to get up. Ignoring 'Her', who kept her eyes on the book as if nothing happened, he got out and ran after Lihar.
He didn't have to run for long, he ran two streets eastward, walked through some bushes, dove under an abandoned house's porch and looked inside. Lihar was sitting on a log, head buried in his knees.
Nahar wanted to say something, but he wasn't sure what his son should hear. He wasn't even sure what he himself wanted to hear. He could only sit beside his son, patting his small, but already lean shoulders.
…
"What's going on, dad?"
"…She's…" Nahar's breath was caught up and he couldn't finish his sentence. "I don't know, child."
Lihar raised his head and looked at Nahar with surprise. His gaze seemed to ask, 'why, his father who knew everything, is unable to answer now?'
"Maybe it is God's…" he managed. "Gift…" he whispered.
He almost said punishment.
"A gift? This all seems like a punishment to me," Lihar said.
"Some gifts are too heavy for small men like us. They're so big they crush us under them."
Despite saying it randomly, Nahar felt like he said something terribly accurate. He couldn't help but mull on the topic longer.
