God of Discovery [high fantasy, slow build, mlm]

Avoiding Kaariai

The group's first night travelling with Matias was magical and there was no mahee involved.

As soon as the sun was fully behind the horizon, Matias asked the others to stop and he started pulling his white fire flowers out of the back of the cart. It took him a bit of time but he had almost a dozen ready and stuck into the ground with wooden sticks. He did, however, ask them to wait until the sky was fully dark.

They did.

And it was worth it.

Using a flint stone, he lit a cord hanging from one of the tubular objects and then rushed a few steps away, pulling D'Argen back along with him.

When the string stopped smoking there was a sudden and bright flash and then immediately following a large explosion that made D'Argen reach for his bow and flinch away. Then the tubular object shot off into the sky with a sharp whistle. With how fast it was moving, D'Argen finally understood how the man used these as a weapon to defend himself and he was impressed.

But then it got even better.

Another explosion sounded loud in the sky above and suddenly the black emptiness was filled with bright lights, spanning out in all directions and sparkling as they danced before disappearing into nothing at all.

D'Argen was not the only one staring at it with wide eyes and an open mouth.

"Do it again," he said without looking at Matias.

The man moved to another of the tubular objects and lit it the same as before.

The light and sound were easy to ignore this time as D'Argen followed the flying object with his eyes until it turned into another shower of sparks in the sky. Another explosion, another flower in the sky. Three, one right after the other, and they intersected and blended together. The next one did not turn into a flower in the sky but a bird. The next looked like a winged snake. The one after that turned into streaks that shot off in all directions before each streak blew up again and exploded into its own flower.

D'Argen had never seen anything like this before.

When the last of the white fire flowers faded from the sky, D'Argen found his eyes straying down to look at Matias. The man was grinning so wide that his eyes were barely slits. A glance around the others revealed that his three companions were as in awe as he was. Even the bandits were staring at the sky in wonder.

"It is a personal concoction," Matias said, bringing D'Argen's attention back to him. "I have smaller ones, less of a bang and more a show for the kids, and I've recently been experimenting with different colours but I can only get white and yellow so far. Orange is not too far off though and after that red, purple, blue, green... I could paint the sky in all the known colours within a few years! No, months! Weeks even. If I had the right equipment and..."

"Is this why you said Kaariai?" D'Argen asked and the man startled.

Lilian, knowing the question was addressed at them, walked up to D'Argen and nodded. They said, "he explained to me very briefly about what he was doing. If Master Upates does not know how to do this yet, he would be very impressed."

"Impressed?" D'Argen scoffed out and turned to face his friend. "I honestly can't decide if he'd be livid he didn't come up with it first or truly impressed. Imagine that... a mortal outshining our head artificer."

Lilian smirked and D'Argen could barely hold back his own smirk in response. If D'Argen was the one to bring this mortal to Kaariai, Upates would be furious. Now, all the runner had to decide was if pissing the master off would be more rewarding than making sure this knowledge could be shared and improved.