The king grudgingly sent Albert to fetch the artefact’s carriage. It had been placed at the end of the train because it looked jarring next to the beautifully crafted court carriages.
When it arrived, the king told those in the keep, through horn signals, to stand in the designated space. All sharp angles and steel, the artefact had a door on one side and a button that glowed red when a switch was thrown. Depressing the button caused a terrible racket to emit from the room inside it, before a bang was heard and the item in question would be transported to a location entered according to a tome that the merchants had supplied. Out of the door stumbled the first group of twenty-five from the keep. “We shall have to renegotiate payment after this,” the chancellor said, “there is naught of the mountain left to mine to pay for this ‘shipping’ as they call it.”
“We shall do so when next we see them,” replied the king.
“I suspect that it shan’t be long.”
As the sun rose the next morning, the chancellor was woken by exclamations of shock outside his carriage. As he was dressing, there came a knock on his door. “Yes?” he asked.
“Lord, the merchants are here to speak with you, and there is a large... cloud is not the right word, perhaps fortress is better. It appears to be made of iron. In any case it fills the sky and dwarfs the keep!”
“I shall be out in but a moment, bring them refreshments, and thank you for waking me.” He changed his mind on what he would wear, and put on his nicest robes—those reserved for dignitaries.
A quarter of an hour later, the chancellor exited his carriage and was struck by the chaos that he saw around him. Many lords, ladies, and servants stood about, their tasks abandoned, staring at the sky. Or rather where the sky ought to have been; instead there was a huge and pendulous steel coloured blob that filled the all the space above the valley. From mountain tops to mountain tops on both sides, and it stretched down the valley to where it turned. It appeared to the chancellor like a metal facsimile of his own barrel-chested and overweight frame: bulbous and prickled with hair. Though he could not guess at what the hairs on this beast could be. Emblazoned on its side, in the language of the merchants he had been learning in secret, was written: Hypotenuse Shipping: Moving Monads Through Space, Not Time.
Meanwhile, in the eternal shade at the bottom of the pit, King Ethelred IV—last of his line—died alone and unnoticed in the commotion, a knife in his heart. A name was etched in the pommel: Otto.
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