The afternoon was spent working with Kine on the second basement level. I erred when I constructed the staircase downward, not taking into account that I would need a flattened landing for future floors, but this was remedied by making the steps following the second basement level shorter and steeper for a quarter-turn of the tower. I would need to redo the entire stairwell down at some point in the future, but the immediate need was in constructing the second basement level.

I divided the room into three smaller areas; one large, one medium, and one small. The smallest room would be the armory for the guards, and the medium room would be their sleeping quarters. The armor purchased for them was a fine leather cuirass with iron shoulder pauldrons, small iron rings hung from the pauldrons on either side to clip a cloak onto. With it came matching grey trousers and undershirt, and a thick black cloak. We would need to make a trip to Lark if I wanted boots to match, but that was for another day. Stone weapon racks were made to hold the two spears, four cudgels, and four long iron knives, all of a standard make.

In the third room, I moved the holy symbol of Bi into the back, with intentions to mount the various war trophies and mementos I retained. Something I wasn’t prepared to do, emotionally, at the moment. With the guards’ quarters moved lower, that opened their previous quarters to be occupied by my new servant and her son. Four beds had been purchased for the guards, but two were diverted for the servants' use. The guards would sleep in shifts, and had been using bedrolls for a while anyway. Use of spare cloth served as room dividers for now, until I could obtain doors.

Fresh water became my next concern. I would need to construct a stone piping to bring it to the tower from the spring, but for the moment I pulled one of the sapphires and tier-one water elementals to the barrel with orders to keep the water purified. It was odd to have the barrel pour itself into a cup, but it was only a temporary measure. The piping would wait for tomorrow.

The evening meal was once again a soup, with the meat of indeterminate origins. Chelsea complained the entire time, until I pointedly reminded her that this was one of the reasons I sought to employ her.

The following morning, I enjoyed a better prepared breakfast with freshly baked bread. I tasked Lilly with teaching Chelsea’s son, Rolf, numbers and letters, something that would keep them both busy. Chelsea took it upon herself to clean the sheets and blankets throughout the house, something I approved of. I pulled Kine with me and set out from the tower with two goals for the day. First, to create piping for the spring, and the second to see what could be done about the bats roosting on my bridge.

As we traveled, I inquired about Kine’s academic knowledge, asking questions that often had him sputtering for answers. It was an interesting experience. The bog was just losing its nighttime mists, and the stale waters often were deeper than they appeared. There was also a change in the bog, as different monsters were active during the day than those at night. I was pulling stone together with [Earth Manipulation], creating a solid hollow line of it that extended from my castle towards the spring, while Kine was fending off any wild monsters along the way.

“Master, I wanted to ask you. Is there a reason you have me and Walker so focused on learning Earth Manipulation?” Kine asked after a particularly annoying Blue-Beaked Crow was killed.

It was a good question. My foremost reason was to keep them safe. In war, I had seen firsthand that [Geomancers] were often kept to the rear building defenses and roads. Unlike [Pyromancers] and [Aeromancers], who were often sent towards the front of the battle lines. I know I was. At the same time, I couldn’t tell a young man that for fear it might hurt his pride. Which is fine, as there are a number of reasons that I find the [Geomancer] class to be superior.

“Kine, I would like you to pull on the rock to your left, a few paces from your feet,” I waited until my pupil was holding the stone in his hand. The heavy stone was about the size of a head with mud and algae dripping from it. Kine held it out from himself his desire not to muddy his robe with it clear as his arm shook slightly with the effort.

“Now, I would like you to use your [Earth Manipulation] to separate out the rock from the crystal within,” I answered, no longer looking in his direction, but at the area of water that my piping was laying under.

A few minutes later I heard splashes and then a gasp, “Master, is this…?”

I glanced back, seeing him holding a fist-sized bit of smokey quartz, “Yes, that’s one of the benefits of a [Geomancer]. You’ll likely have several options for your third-tier class, and I wanted to ensure that was one of them. It’s very difficult to be poor when you can pull gems from the ground. When we return, I’ll show you how to shape it properly. Gemstones are different than normal dirt or stone, the structures can shatter if you don’t mold it in the correct manner.”

We continued on, discussing his magical knowledge and the benefits of choosing the [Geomancer] class until we reached the spring. There, I sent the piping through the water to where it rose from the ground and, when I was sure the working took, we headed back to the tower. It was only about an hour’s walk in either direction but would have been much shorter if there were a path instead of wading through murky water.

On our return, I first noted that the water level of my moat was getting higher than I would have liked, and made drainage holes in the wall. Inside, we snacked on a boiled pheasant in cabbage leaves, before I made a fountain in the kitchen that the spring water would pour into. The excess was drained off into the moat.

Kine and I continued the day's travel towards the bridge where the bats roosted, a sense of discontent filling me when I realized I had never returned to it to add an ornate design. The bridge was fully functional, it was just rather plain. A thick arching slab of compressed stone with a raised wall on either side. We could see the bats clearly hanging from the bottom, their bodies wrapped within wings. I asked Kine to wait at that spot, so he could see the effects of my spellcraft.

I took slow and soft steps across the bridge until I stood in the center of the highest part of the arch. From there, I used [Earth Manipulation] to shift the stone walls on either side of the bridge downwards, so that they hung below. Then I slowly connected the walls, spreading the stone out and entrapping the bats. The stone itself was only about a two fingers width thick now this way, but once connected was more than enough to seal away the beasts and suffocate them. But I didn’t plan to wait around for that. Instead, I had that bubble of stone compress, slowly, and listened as a cacophony of shrieks and scrambling claws could be heard from within.

It wasn’t long until the noises stopped and the stone layers were only a handspan apart. With careful manipulation, I pulled the stone back to the sidewalls of the bridge. The sounds of bodies falling and splatting into the mud below wasn’t pleasant, and, when I glanced at Kine, I could see his face was nearly green with the urge to vomit.

I took it upon myself to spend a few moments improving the bridge’s walls to be more ornamental, with curling spirals and angular openings. Some parts of the stone had a very pleasant turquoise color that I pulled to the surface of the structure, leaving in the natural striations rather than adapting my own design. The tiny bits of mica and quartz, I did pull into a pattern of diamond shapes along the top of the guardrail. I quite liked how the diamond pattern reflected in the sun and hoped that it would do well for anyone unfortunate enough to need to travel this path at night.

It was as I was finishing my work when I noticed the sounds of falling bat corpses were replaced with the sounds of something a little more disgusting. Kine’s face was one of horror, his eyes locked onto something in the crevasse below. His long eyebrows only accented his expression. I walked to the edge and glanced down. There, beneath me, a swarm of lampreys squirmed over themselves in a frenzy of feeding. Needle-toothed circular mouths tore at anything they could grab, often even each other. Smooth bodies wrapped and wriggled each other in a manic desire to consume. With a frown, I watched for a moment, before returning to Kine’s side.

“Come, let’s depart,” I called.

It was dusk by the time we returned, though the first part of our trip back we may have walked a slight bit more briskly. Dinner was a serving of pork baked into a pie with peas and carrots. While it still wasn’t to the level I was used to from my time in Sena City, it was a much better fare than the past several weeks. So much so, that no one even spoke throughout the meal.

Afterward, I brought Kine into my library and pulled more than ten tomes of arcane knowledge for him to study, three of which I personally authored. These were the parts of a basic magical foundation I felt he was lacking based upon our discussions. Not that ‘Rudimentary Understandings of Ley Lines’ was common knowledge among mages throughout the kingdom, but it was a part of the core lessons instructed at the academy.

That night, I fell into a restless slumber, dreaming of tentacles and eels biting pieces of me away.