Qhor

Qhor is such an odd place. They say any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, but there also is a difference between moving wood and steel and stone by steam and manpower, and weaving the energy that flows through the veins of the earth into doing that for you, or bypassing it directly.

And then there is Qhor.

Qhor, the first city to light up from the sparks of electricity. Qhor, the city of a thousand faces, a thousand tongues. Qhor, whose veins are copper and rubber, whose muscles are steel and whose skin is dwellings ,resting on them, breathing, moving, tingling.

Qhor who awoke as place with a mind, a living location, breathing, metabolizing, growing, speaking.

Qhor speaks to its inhabitants and visitors. Mother Qhor, they call it, and they are its children.

(Perhaps the only person who has truly seen Mother Qhor and the city itself in all it’s ugliness and glory from seed to fruit is the girl they call the firestorm, who haunts the information core that runs from the very roots to the top, the girl who keeps her hair under a fireproof scarf or her mere presence would turn Qhor into an inferno)

And amidst all this, there is still magic, in its rawest form. It drips from the power lines and bleeds from the batteries for there is so much, so much of it gathered from the sun sails and the veins of the earth crossing under it, enabling its growth.

A well that has a tree growing from it is still a well, even though it is trickier to reach, the water set with waste from the tree and leaves and insects and organisms and life. Magic tastes different here.

It’s wards spray-painted on its skin, spells made from runes and symbols, independent from circles and formulas, ingenious in their simplicity.

It’s machinery, sometimes fuelled, sometimes only charmed to run without maintenance, it’s a city miles in all directions, and from one end to the other barely two hours.

The magic tastes like sparks, like steel and oil and paint and life.