A groggy Lilly came down shortly after I had finished the oven. Her blonde hair a tangled mess, and her hands still wiping sleep from her eyes. A large yawn announced her presence. I just waved her at the door and instructed her to fetch her brother.

While she did that, I pulled out my bag of holding and started to pull fistfuls of gems out onto the dining table. I ignored the shocked and greedy looks on the faces of the [Bandits] nearby. Intentionally scattering some beyond my range of sight, even going so far as to let two or three gemstones fall to the floor. This served two purposes. It tested the trustworthiness of the two I’d released. If the sight of this was enough to get them to turn on me, I’d slay them on the spot. The second reason, and more important one, is I needed an accurate inventory of what I had on hand and what I would need to obtain in the future. Sure, I owned some large gems, the size of my head, for my major enchantments but those were hidden away behind layers of illusions and wards. Even I would need hours to undo all the spells protecting them.

As I counted them, my stockpile consisted of thirteen small topaz, eight small and one large emerald, six tiny rubies roughly the size of my thumbnail, three medium and nineteen small amethyst all worthless to me, two small and nine tiny sapphires, eighteen tiny diamonds, four medium ametrine, and—the best—a moonstone. Unlike the geometrically cut other gems, the moonstone was shaped as a finely finished egg. I slid it back into my bag with care and started separating the gems on the table by type.

Partway through, Walker and Lilly returned. Walker was breathing heavily and drenched with sweat. I intentionally turned away from my gems and walked towards him to put a hand on his shoulder, “Good job today, lad. Go clean up.”

He gave me a tired smile and a nod as he walked upstairs. Turning back towards the table, I saw that all the gems I’d left remained untouched. Mena, the single female [Bandit], cut vegetables for a soup in such a studious manner that I almost laughed. The other [Bandit], Gonst I believe, slowly walked towards the table, and picked up the gems that had fallen. He then carefully placed them on the table. In the cell, the nobleborn was napping and the other man was pressed against the pillars watching the gems like a cat watches a mouse.

“Oh, what are those? They look so pretty!” Lilly exclaimed as she practically hopped towards the gems.

“These? Bah, these are just some cheap gemstones I use for enchantments,” I said dismissively, “Practically worthless.”

I walked with her over to the table. I reached out, sweeping the rubies and sapphires into the palm of my other hand, “When your brother comes back down, I’ll let you play with them.”

“Really?” She asked, looking at me with wide eyes. Certainly, I knew the girl was playing up the innocent curiosity beyond the believable. I just didn’t care. She would grow out of that kind of behavior eventually. I hope. Instead, I began pointing and naming off the types of gems, having her repeat the names back to me in different order. While it wasn’t a planned part of her education, I didn’t see anything wrong with expanding it a little.

Walker returned in a few moments, wearing a brown [Mage]’s traveling robe of the exact same make as before. His face was no longer flushed with exertion and he’d combed his hair. It did make me consider, though, that at some point I wanted to construct a bath in the tower. Cleaning spells were fine, but a soak in hot water did wonders for relaxation. Maybe I could build it on the top floor so I could watch the sunset at the same time.

With a nod, I stepped outside to survey his work and continue my own plans, leaving Walker standing in shock as he saw Lilly hold gems up to her eye. The ground around the tower was still mud. Even though it looked as if had dried in the sun, the horses’ hooves had churned it loose, and the water nearby crept back over it. For ten yards around the tower, it was nothing but this. At the edge of that ten yards, though a stone wall rose, nearly five feet high and a foot thick. Unlike the tower, the stones were still mostly intact instead of blended together.

I walked towards it and pressed my hand against it, sending my magic through. I felt the stones continue down into the earth for two feet beyond what I could see and spread out as a base to keep it upright. He’d left an opening for the road, a good place for a gate, though we didn’t have one. It was good work, for a half-day's worth of magic. And his improvement in [Earth Manipulation] was clear to see.

First, I sealed the wall closed. There wasn’t much more stone to work with that I could feel in the ground and closing the gap took most of it. I would open it later, after all this beastwave nonsense was finished. Next, I walked along the inside of the wall, hollowing it out and pulling in the muck and the mud from the center of the ring around my tower. The stone was used to make the wall taller and thicker. Doing so created a deepening trench as I worked. I packed the ground tight on either side of the trench, hardening the mud to the strength of stone.

Three times I walked around on the tower. As I came back around towards the gate, I stopped my working. The wall was near twice the height of a man now, and most of the mud was packed away. A lip of two yards existed around the tower, with the last yard being made of compressed mud. The first held the roots of the ivy that grew up the tower, and I wasn’t certain I wanted that ivy removed yet. I was considering waiting to see if it flowered, and how it looked if it did.

The trench had become nearly twenty feet down and was filling with water that dribbled down the packed mud walls like tears, that same mud filtering away the algae and murk of the water. A wide, flat bridge connected from the door to the tower across to the wall, various supports crafted below. In seven places in the trench, hardened pillars of mud were raised to stand three feet higher than the bridge, each with a diameter of no more than two feet or so.

Honestly, I could barely tolerate looking at the walls and bridge and pit. It was functional, but it possessed nowhere near what I desired aesthetically. Ugly. There, I admitted it. The mud walls and pillars looked like they were barely holding together. The echo of water draining through in drips and trickles reminded me of some very unpleasant noises. It felt beyond embarrassing. So embarrassed, I glanced up at the [Bandits] on the tower prepared to smite them if they were laughing. Luckily for them, they were taking their duties seriously.

With a grimace, I decided there was nothing I could do about it at the moment. There just wasn’t enough stone nearby to pull from to give it the form I envisioned. I mentally added ordering several wagons of rock to my task list and hoped for a quarry nearby. Chagrined, I returned into the tower to eat. I’d finish when night fell so that I wouldn’t have to look at it more than necessary.

Once I returned inside, I could smell the stew and reheated biscuits immediately. I also noticed that the room felt crowded. The alcove spilled outward with grates and barrels of supplies. The tables and chairs and cookware all scattered around the room with no thought to function. Only Walker and Lilly sat at the table, playing some number game with rows of gemstones. Most of the right side of the room contained a prison cell large enough for ten but holding only two. The oven took up the very center, the flames glowing brightly, and Mena moving something around in it with a poker. The other [Bandit], Gonst, approached me with a bowl of soup on a platter, a biscuit, and a spoon on the side. A mug of something in his other hand.

“Where you wanna eat, boss?” He asked.

I tilted my head towards the table and dragged a chair with me to sit next to Walker, letting Gonst place the food in front of me. Casually, I listened in as Walker used the gems to further explain multiplication. If I recalled correctly, I gave him until our arrival to teach Lilly, but I never really told him how far along I expected her to be. It was good they were still working on it, and demonstrated my idea that establishing vague but rushed learning goals often worked for the best. The room still felt crowded. So did the room upstairs. I could pull stone from the foundation, and use it to build up the third floor and start the fourth. Create a basement in the process.

Gonst continued to fetch and give food to everyone in the room before he took two more upstairs. I watched him go but didn’t say anything. Everything I owned up there was warded, some more powerfully than others. If his decision-making took a turn for the worse, then his body would soon follow. Walker and Lilly continued while they ate. It occurred to me, belatedly, that Walker had been outside working on the wall when I left the [Bandit] archers unsupervised above. They could have easily picked him off if he was unprepared. I’ve seen even good men break an oath, and held no reservation that these [Bandits] would hold true, even under threat of wizard’s curse and paladin’s god. Or goddess. Funny that, I think I forgot to ask.

I finished quickly, myself, but I was in no rush to return outside. I doubted the sun had set yet. I considered creating the basement, but if I did, then I would want to move my captives down there. I knew if I did that, I would likely forget they were there. But a basement would be the perfect place to store living experimental subjects. Though, the size might not suit my needs. No, I’d need several floors, most likely, if I did that. I might as well create large pits out in the bog. Local monsters falling in could serve as a supplemental food supply that way. No, better keep them out, or they might contaminate the results. Mud walls wouldn’t do for those pits either. They would collapse over time. Certainly, compacted ones would last for a year or two, but I would need stone. If I do stone walls, I could keep out most of the water and mud.

Gonst returned looking abashed and approached the table to take away my empty dishes. I wondered for a moment how he planned to clean them until I saw a water bucket and scrub in the corner near the wall. Someone showed initiative, apparently. Likely Kine.

“Sir?” Gonst asked hesitantly, dirty dishes in hand.

“Yes?” I responded, giving him my full attention for the first time since… hmm… ever, likely.

“Eni and Todd, sir, they’re asking about getting a chamberpot. They mentioned peein’ from the top wasn’t no problem, but didn’t want you getting’ mad if’n they stuck their rears over the edge,” his lisp and accent combined together to form an abomination of the spoken tongue.

It took me a few seconds to parse what he was asking for, but when I did, I couldn’t help but be annoyed. When is it that [Bandit] bodily functions become a tasking I’m required to deal with? Maybe I should have kept Kine here and sent Walker to Woodhoot instead. Kine had an excellent mind for dealing with these mundane concerns.

“You can let them borrow the one on the second floor, but you’re to be responsible for emptying it,” I decided.

“Where’n do I do that?” he asked.

“It can’t be full already,” I answered.

“It’s not, sir, but that one is,” he informed me, pointing to the narrow pot in the prison cell.

I looked over there for a moment, only to see that the nobleborn Mirm was doing some kind of exercises and the other one was filling up the already full pisspot with a grin. And looking right at Gonst as he was doing it.

I sighed. I’d just closed up the wall outside. Why couldn’t this have been brought to my attention beforehand? I decided right then and there that I needed to hire a servant next time I was in Lark.

“You can grab it and follow me, for now,” I finally decided on an answer. I’d need to put a purification enchantment in the waters inside the wall at some point. If I was going to have a moat, it shouldn’t be murky. I’d wait on that, though until after I could replace the compacted mud with stone. I needed to work on creating some large pits, anyway.

A few minutes later I was outside, walking towards the wall with a man holding a pot full of night soil behind me. I paused a brief moment to flutter my fingers and ‘stop’ the Dead Man’s Curse, before creating an opening in the wall. Gonst followed, with carefully measured steps to reduce sloshing.

We wandered for a few minutes until we were behind the tower standing knee-deep in marshy waters. There, I concentrated to use my [Earth Manipulation] to pull up small walls of dirt in a large rectangular area before sinking the ground down inside. No sense in creating a pit that’s only going to fill with water. I did this five more times, keeping the lip just above the waters and the walls steep. Gonst was now holding an empty pot that he’d been smart enough to dump along the way.

It was dark when we returned, my hand holding up an illumination spell to light the way. I closed back the wall, cast a quick cleaning spell on the [Bandit], and sent him inside. Now, now I could start. First, on each of the seven pillars standing out from my soon-to-be moat, I replicated the summoning from inside. This time, I pictured them staying lit on the top of the pillars, providing light. I pictured gouts of flame, spraying at enemies that came too close. I pictured darts of fire shooting forth like an arrow in defense of the tower. I pictured obedience and loyalty. The tiny rubies could only hold the contract for a Tier 1 elemental, but once they were in place, I didn’t need to use the illumination spell. The fires on the pillars lit the night, and when I looked closely I saw tiny mice made of flames inside skittering about.

Next, I pulled the nine tiny sapphires to one hand. It took extreme concentration to use [Water Manipulation] from the top of the mudbridge to cause streams of water to arch out to my level, the stream being as big around as my fist. The water at the bottom filled three or four feet of it now, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take to finish filling. My last dregs of concentration were used to send a mental appeal through the gems to the Queen of Waters to grant me her children. I pictured the arching water in front of me, and imagined waters jumping in arches around the moat, happily playing. I pictured them aiding in keeping the water pure and clear. I pictured them defending my tower by dragging things to their death in the water below, of forming needles that flew through the air. I pictured them obeying my commands and serving me faithfully.

Answering my call, little bird-shaped wisps of light no bigger than my finger began illuminating in the water as it flowed. First one, then a second, a third, then more. My eyes tracked the lights as they swam into the waters below, and then jumped, creating their own arches of water from one spot to the next, and I smiled. Then, I simply tossed the sapphires into the moat.

I walked towards the wall, using my [Earth Manipulation] to open the way as I pulled out the two small sapphires. Before me, the trail of compacted earth lay barren, but, to either side, the nighttime mists of the swamp were rising. I reached my will through the sapphires and pleaded for the Queen to again send me one of her children. This time I pictured the mists hiding my tower away, obfuscating magic and skills. I pictured it curling around enemies and leaving them feeling lost. I pictured torches sputtering out as mists made them too damp to keep flame. I pictured the fog rising from the waters in the moat on my whim leading attackers to misstep and fall into the waters. Answering to my needs without question. Serving me faithfully.

To either side of the path, the mist formed into the jaws of a great beast, but only that. Mist flowed from behind them the way smoke clouds float in a light breeze. The jaws moved in almost a swimming motion swinging side to side as they passed me behind swishing over the ledge and down into the waters around my tower. Satisfied, I closed the wall back and turned to walk back to my tower. I hid the two sapphires inside the arching stone doorway.

All was quiet inside. The [Bandits] all slept on the first floor, two outside the cell and two inside. My gemstones, untouched, lay on the table in neat circles. Upstairs, both Walker and Lilly were asleep in beds, though the one Walker slept on just held a mattress and a bedroll. I gave a half-smile at the thought. Whoever ordered the supplies and extra beds forgot the blankets and pillows to go with it. Still, a mattress beats the floor. With a silent casting of both warding and alarm spells for the floor, I decided it was time for me to rest as well.