Ch. 55: Gryphon Craftsmanship

"This is the central marketplace?" Rosy asked their guide with wonder in her eyes. It was small in size, since Gryvus wasn't a very large city area-wise, but it was built with three or four levels to it, and walkways between the larger buildings.

"Yes, miss Princess." Their guide nodded, though nobody really needed the confirmation. With all the shops and stalls around, it was pretty obvious.

"Alright. You can go, then. We'll meet you back here in a few hours." Adrian told the envoy. As the prince of Uriah, Adrian had never dismissed an envoy while he was touring foreign lands, but being by Rosy's side, their guide would only end up holding them back. Inspecting the weapons and technology that Gryvus had managed to assimilate wouldn't be easy with someone by their side taking notes of everything they did.

"But... sir!" The envoy argued. He'd clearly been ordered to follow them wherever they went and report everything back to the gryphon elders.

"You know we'll just lose you if you try to follow us." Rosy added.

"But! I cannot allow you to just go off without an escort!" Their guide argued.

"Alright. Find us, then." Adrian goaded. In moments, he and Rosy had vanished from sight, disappearing like the wind. The escort, to his merit, took immediate action the moment that he lost sight of the two, turning into a bird and scouring the marketplace frantically, but it wasn't of any use. They weren't going to be found so easily.

"Nice, miss Cloak." Adrian joked when he met up with Rosy. They'd split up to lose the escort more easily. She'd stolen a cloak from one of the merchants in the marketplace in order to hide her face. 

"You too, Mr. Cloak." She retorted. Adrian'd picked up a few tricks from Rosy, after all the time they'd spent together. He was a bit troubled that they weren't capable of paying for the cloaks that they'd stolen, but he knew that either the cloaks would be returned soon, they'd be paid for in full, or both in due time. Gryvus was small enough that each and every bit of merchandise could be accounted for rather easily.

Adrian had been the one to find the blacksmith shop at the far end of the marketplace, and he'd reached out to Rosy via their telepathic link, telling her where it was located. 

"Gryvus Blacksmithing, eh? Let's go in." Rosy said, turning to the door. 

"Welcome to... Who are you? You're not from here." The man at the counter immediately realized that they weren't natives of Gryvus. This made sense. The gryphon's population wasn't very high. Only a few thousand gryphons in all. A few hundred were conducting themselves outside of the city, but overall there weren't many gryphons in all. It wasn't impossible to find someone who could match someone's race to gryphon by face. And this old gryphon happened to be capable of that to some extent, apparently.

Adrian'd matched the gryphon race with this idea of tall and wiry people, but this man was neither of those. He was only barely taller than Rosy, and his muscles bulged like grapefruits. But of course, Rosy wasn't intimidated in the slightest.

"What's this thing?" Rosy immediately went to a shelf, fascinated by the device on top of it. It was about the size of an average sword, but it had a barrel, and a specialized handle. It was a flintlock-type rifle. These gryphons had already created guns. 

"Get away from that thing! It's a delicate instrument of war, not a toy." The burly gryphon shouted at her. Rosy ignored him, picking it up and checking it over to see how it worked. Seeing her wave the rifle around like it was a toy clearly freaked the shopkeeper out, and he quickly dashed over the counter to pluck it from the girl's hands.

Neither Rosy nor Adrian had ever seen a gun before. This was to be expected, since the necessary ingredient for them, gunpowder, wouldn't be invented anywhere else until the ninth century, around 800 years in the future from now. This gun was technology that was literally one thousand years ahead of anywhere else at the moment. That was how amazingly advanced Gryvus's hoarded technology was, thanks to their ability to gather knowledge from the four corners of the world via their ability to fly. 

"An instrument of war? This thing? What's up with all of the tiny baubles. If you hit someone with it, it'd just break." Rosy deduced, snatching it back from the shopkeeper and inspecting it in her hands.

"Alright, I guess I can't stop you from looking at it, just be careful. We don't have many more of those things. It's just a prototype, after all." The shopkeeper gave up once he saw how easy Rosy had it when she took the gun back from him. He had the ability to recognize an uncrossable gap in skill when he saw it, apparently.

"How's it work?" Adrian asked, curious. The shopkeeper explained the general idea behind guns to the prince with a sigh. 

"Whoa! This thing's like an upgraded version of a high output bow! It could totally change the face of war!" Rosy was impressed by the idea of guns, immediately realizing its value. Unfortunately, these gryphons had only barely managed to create a design on the same scale as the first real guns that were eventually going to be invented in the 1200s or so. They had too many drawbacks to make them a reliable replacement for swords, and they weren't very accurate without rifling, either, which hadn't been invented yet. 

Hearing that really put Rosy's sparkling eyes out in a flash, but Adrian hadn't been very big on the idea to begin with. If they were perfected, they'd be incredible weapons, but they weren't useful enough at present. The materials that they required combined with the garbage accuracy made them mostly useless in war, and the kickback only hindered the already poor aim. 

Adrian didn't see this as a possible defense option at all, but rather a useful item that would definitely end up coming in handy knowing the particulars of when they eventually met with the gryphon elders in the coming days.