Prologue: What Bragging Can Do.

Wanted only one pov. Fear key elements are missing n wasn't sure how to add them till later. Wrote a prologue to address them. I think I can them to ch2, now, but thought to share anyway.

The King's Surveyor/Cartographer/StarMapper sat in his office, a small, windowless room, only twenty feet square and 10 feet high with no windows. The room was not really small except by palace standards. It was as a large as the den in his home on Kremp Way, one of the nicer neighborhoods in Celestaerion, the Sky City, the Capital of Aidurq Erion. It was the only city in the sky, that being a major accomplishment. It was also called The City of Glorin, for now. It was renamed when King Glorin took over from King Yulit three and a half years earlier, who renamed it after himself before that. All Kings do so when it's their turn to rule over all of Aidurq Erion. King Fronkor of the Frost Elves was due to take over for another five years. Idly, Mali noted how the chosen number of years linked with the number of lesser deities.

It was also the number of known planets. He could see some of those planets. They became small, oddly colored balls when viewed through his faroptical. Larger ones could see more detail of course, but he did not have to share his, even if was only two feet in length. He kept it on the roof of his four story home. If was not a mansion, having been built higher than it was wide, but it provided plenty of room for his wife and four children.

He felt the overhead fan start up again. A feathered, rainbow-colored fan that lazily stirred the air. It seemed to hang there in the air, a trick of mechnology. Bookcases decorated much of the walls to either side of his desk. More existed beyond those, another trick of mechnology to make better use of space. They contained books of all sorts with a few knick-knacks for bookends. Most were on mapping terrain, both on the surface and deep inside the earth. Some even speculated mapping air and water currents like they were the stable earth. Some he wrote himself. A few were his favorite stories.

His desk was large, necessary for drawing his maps and comparing different types. It is currently cluttered with maps, paperweights, a forgotten health drink his wife insisted he bring to the office, pictures of his family playing out a short history of their lives at some point or another. The desk faced the door, which was sandwiched between yet more bookcases. Above everything there were shelves containing all sorts of knick-knacks and artifacts, including geological rocks, bones of various animals, old map scrolls stuffed away and forgotten.

The slim man, slim even for his people, sat in a chair behind the desk, staring at the wall behind him like he was trying to plot out every detail. There was a painting of white, tulip-shaped clouds in the sky. One was a highly realistic imaging of his family in a glass frame, taken with lenses and that photoelectric paper that was all the rage. He had a smaller one of just his wife on his desk. maps and paintings.

He had the most accurate maps of both stars and terrain in all of Aidurq Erion. He could touch any part of the terrain map and make it move in for a closer view, close enough to see the grass on his lawn if he wished. He loved almost mapping as much as marking the stars on his personal sky chart at home. He was a surveyor/cartographer, not an astronomer. Still, he performed that task when asked. It was he who came up with the idea for translating terrain onto maps, some 347 years ago. He was quite proud of that. He knew more about mapping than anyone. He often bragged that he could map a world without the use of glass lenses better than anyone else could using the best tools.

Right now he just, his back to his desk, and the door. He was examining that terrain map, using it to look in on his family. Now he was thinking he should have kept his mouth shut. Thinking about what he had to do made his mouth dry, his tongue almost scraping across his teeth, like he was chewing on one of his boots. Perhaps he was. He wanted to laugh. He had really put his foot in his mouth this time, didn't he? boots and all.

Earlier today one of Aidurq's High Priests came. He had said "Your claim to map a world quickly and without your usually technology is well known. Now you will get the chance to prove it. Aidurq is sending you to Shurm. You will map the entire land with one year's time. Aidurq will not send anything with you this time."

"No Tech? And I'm supposed to do this in one year?" How small is this place? "Please, I beg of you, intercede on my behalf to send my Pocket Carto'granomical, too."

Turning to go, the High Priest, slimmer even than he was, merely said. "His attention is needed elsewhere."

He wanted to argue, discuss, beg on his knees if necessary, but as he followed the priest out the door, the man was gone.

Last week word went throughout the land that Shurm had accepted Aidurq Erion's invitation. Shurm was a deity of some tiny, backwater realm that was more like a moon with grass. He had moved his meager followers there, taking the place for his own, barely six hundred years earlier, His followers were humans, quick tempered and short-lived with memories even shorter. The name Shurm tickled some long forgotten memory. The distraught man had no time for it.

Shurm barely had any magic, no technology to speak of, and barely any metal or wood working capabilities. More specifically, no glass! That was why they came to his office, because he bragged he could do it with no tech. Of course, he never meant with no glass! Oh, comets and meteors! Why did he have to say those things all the time?

The slim man looked about his office for perhaps the twelfth time. He tried to resolve himself to his fate. Out loud he spoke to the map "There is nothing else to do but go through with it." He went back to staring at his family house in his terrain map. It was all ready dark when he made it home to tell his wife and family.

Author's Note

Hoping this is more interesting and easier to follow.