She remembered what the old craftsman had said about them, how iconic they were in Kargarian culture - naming a motorbike after them was probably analogous to an Ikesian manufacturer naming one of their products something like Direwolf, Dragon, or Wildcat.
Riding through Willowdale in first, sometimes second gear, the engine didn’t howl or roar; its sound was almost like the sound of a distant, violent storm’s constant thunder. They reached the sect in the span of a mere couple minutes, finding Ozmir waiting for them inside alongside the groundskeeper, who was complaining profusely about having to clean out the outdoor grow houses, yet said his complaints with resigned whimsy and wore a grin on his face. The man truly did look like the one who had been entombed within the golem, the only differences being the healthy shade of his skin and his spryness.
He moved onto laughing about the older guardsman who was still stationed outside the sect, at which point Zel and Zef had come into immediate vicinity and both men’s attention snapped to them.
With sage-like calm and clarity, the groundskeeper waved, “Yo, boss. Had time to examine the premises in full?”
“That’s what I planned to do today, actually,” Zel answered, turning to Ozmir.
The concern of operational cost and making money to keep the sect running had crossed her mind on the way here, but she recalled that a major portion of the black-locked deed actually covered this.
The Black Horses owned a sizable portion of the fields surrounding Willowdale and leased them to the state, with Willowdale also subsidizing their basic operational costs in exchange for the sect’s alliance to the state in matters of defense, including the operation of its Slayer’s Guild. She recalled there also being an entire paragraph specifying that the Black Horses are in no way subordinate to the city-state, but rather that the partnership is one of peers.
Furthermore, the deed also mentioned something about facilitating training services and hiring out “sect-trained contractors” to vetoed customers through the Slayer’s Guild.
There was also the mention of a significantly reduced tax rate on sales of sect-affiliated alchemical products, which led her to the questions she asked of the chef:
“Speaking of, I had a couple questions that I forgot to ask yesterday. Firstly, what exactly was your position within the sect? Secondly, is there any particular portion of the property that would be well-suited for an apothecary?”
“Of course the mess hall has a dedicated apothecary!” confirmed Ozmir. It sounded like it was such an expected part of any sect as to render a contrary consideration strange. “Why, you could say that it’s more like our apothecary also happens to be connected with a mess hall. Alchemical products have ever been among our most important cash flow sources!
“And uh… I’m the chef,” he added in jest, continuing with a serious answer: “Though you already know that. It is true that I am the chef, meaning I’m the one who prepares all the outlandish things that other members bring in, as well as the ingredients we grow ourselves. To a layman it probably makes more sense to say that I’m an alchemist of sorts - have you ever heard of alchemic processes to make Azoth Stones safe for consumption?”
“You could say I am more than a little familiar with the benefits of the sciences, yes,” Zel smugged.
“Then think of me as a practitioner of the arts which so-called Purgation Alchemy owes its existence to,” said Ozmir with a self-satisfied smile.
“I was among the previous elder’s inner circle, and stayed behind only because he asked me to so that I might advise the next elder in case he never returned; a secretary of sorts, though I consider that term to be severely insufficient. I prefer to consider myself an unseen but crucial cornerstone of the sect, even if it is wordy - of course, I fully intend to carry out my duty unless you choose to discharge me of it. Don’t worry about pay, though if you do, I’d be happy to show you our extensive ledgers.”
Zelsys shuddered at the thought, putting on the mask of smugness that so snugly fit her and politely declining, “I’m afraid I don’t have the time to perform an internal audit. Perhaps some other decade.”
A raucous laughter erupted from the chef as if Zel had told a hilarious joke. She wondered if this was an Ankhezian humor thing, or an immortal humor thing in general.
Following this exchange, Ozmir showed Zel and Zef around the more frequented parts of the sect, starting with the aforementioned combination apothecary and mess hall. It wasn’t a single large room as much as it was two rooms connected to one another, with the mess hall being large enough to contain many, many people. The hall of course had its own counter and connected to the kitchen, alongside several other doors which led to the toilets.
Besides the imposing, overbuilt sales counter, the mercantile section even contained a variety of essentech cabinets, from several obvious attribute-readers to… Vending machines for common elixirs?
They sat wide open and empty, with their heavy-duty front doors revealing an elaborate mechanism combining a bank of storage tablets with four articulated automaton hands, their fingers possessing cork pads - likely to facilitate good grip.
Other, to-be-expected rooms were found in the sect - a few public meeting rooms, several classrooms for teaching theory, a scribe’s workshop, and a massive library connected directly to the main hall.
“The fast tour” as Ozmir called it only took them through a fraction of the sect’s true scope. He claimed that the above-ground compound had almost everything that one would expect to find in a cultivator sect, and the three-floor basement had everything else, including an indoor gym to make the outdoor one seem modest by comparison, a dedicated sparring area, its own smaller-scale bath, multiple warehouses and last but not least, the heretofore unresolved consequences of horrendous accidents from centuries past.
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