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Quoted By: >>5749021
This had to be the refinery. My gaze flicked from the rubber hose to the wooden door and back again, hunger gnawing at my gut. I wanted nothing more than to force feed myself the black blood of the Goddess until my stomach burst. Still, I had a greater purpose than to feast. Standing there outside the door I allowed myself a moment. A deep, calming breath helped me clear away the fog, and then I shook the tension out of my shoulders. Channeling the casual confidence of someone who belonged there, I stepped through the door hoping that my own white robes might allow me to blend in with the daruni.
I emerged into a large chamber which was absolutely coated in some manner of black film. It clung to the walls and all the furniture, dimming the yellow light cast by swollen pustules throbbing on the ceiling. The flesh in the center of the room had been carved out to make room for a brick platform. It was raised a few feet above the floor, built to house two large vats at least twenty feet wide and half that deep. It was into the nearer of the two that the hose spit ichor.
There were half a dozen daruni scattered throughout the room, all of them wearing gloves and masks of rubber. Three diminutive women in white robes were standing around a large ceramic pot raised half a dozen feet in the air on a wooden scaffolding. Each of the workers dispensed clear essence from spigots at the bottom of the pot into small glass vials. Hundreds of those filled vials were gathered in wooden crates against the far wall, stacked there by a large man in white robes who swapped them out for crates of empty vials as his sisters of the cloth worked. A section of the room was set aside for an alchemy lab. Beakers, alembics, and all manner of glassware I didn't have names for lay stacked in haphazard piles across three tables, some of it broken.
The masks worn by the refinery workers possessed clear glass visors, and a metal cover over the mouth and nose onto which two canisters were attached. Glancing around I found spare masks hanging on pegs set into the wall on my right, and blackened rubber gloves tossed into a pile on my left. I donned both before proceeding. Once I had the mask on I could no longer smell the heavenly stench of ichor. It was lost under a pungent assault of lavender, mint, and rose.
"Oi, big girl," a muffled voice called out. "Get over here and help me."
I turned towards a masked woman in white robes who beckoned me up onto the brick platform at the center of the chamber. I approached, trying to mask my ignorance with a confident stride. When I joined her standing beside the ichor vats I glanced down and saw that they were lined with silver. The bottom of the vat on our left was filled with a brackish mix of water and divine ichor, while the one on our right contained only water.
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I emerged into a large chamber which was absolutely coated in some manner of black film. It clung to the walls and all the furniture, dimming the yellow light cast by swollen pustules throbbing on the ceiling. The flesh in the center of the room had been carved out to make room for a brick platform. It was raised a few feet above the floor, built to house two large vats at least twenty feet wide and half that deep. It was into the nearer of the two that the hose spit ichor.
There were half a dozen daruni scattered throughout the room, all of them wearing gloves and masks of rubber. Three diminutive women in white robes were standing around a large ceramic pot raised half a dozen feet in the air on a wooden scaffolding. Each of the workers dispensed clear essence from spigots at the bottom of the pot into small glass vials. Hundreds of those filled vials were gathered in wooden crates against the far wall, stacked there by a large man in white robes who swapped them out for crates of empty vials as his sisters of the cloth worked. A section of the room was set aside for an alchemy lab. Beakers, alembics, and all manner of glassware I didn't have names for lay stacked in haphazard piles across three tables, some of it broken.
The masks worn by the refinery workers possessed clear glass visors, and a metal cover over the mouth and nose onto which two canisters were attached. Glancing around I found spare masks hanging on pegs set into the wall on my right, and blackened rubber gloves tossed into a pile on my left. I donned both before proceeding. Once I had the mask on I could no longer smell the heavenly stench of ichor. It was lost under a pungent assault of lavender, mint, and rose.
"Oi, big girl," a muffled voice called out. "Get over here and help me."
I turned towards a masked woman in white robes who beckoned me up onto the brick platform at the center of the chamber. I approached, trying to mask my ignorance with a confident stride. When I joined her standing beside the ichor vats I glanced down and saw that they were lined with silver. The bottom of the vat on our left was filled with a brackish mix of water and divine ichor, while the one on our right contained only water.
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