The next morning, after a breakfast of grilled fish over corn, I was approached by Jax. I was headed downstairs to my laboratory when I noticed him following behind me. Jax was the third of my attendants, the shorter brother of Philip, who made up for his lack in height with a greater number of freckles and a brighter shade of red hair.

“Master,” he called, his voice sounding soft and uncertain.

I paused on the stone stairwell, two steps above the illumination spell, and turned to look up at him. The young man was standing another five steps above me but hurried down to my side with his black student’s robe swishing along the way.

“Yes?” I asked, and turned to continue downstairs once he caught up.

“Master, I—I was wondering. You assigned additional duties to Philipe and Leslie. They’re learning new spells and copying tomes. Philipe is working on the spellcraft for our animal-bonding idea, and Leslie says she’s preparing for an important task. Have I done something wrong?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle, “Jax, the copying of tomes was a test for them. They had a number to copy by a certain time. Had they asked for your aid, it would have lightened their duties. Yet, since you feel a distance removed, you can take one of the tomes from Philipe and provide me with ten copies within a week’s time as well.”

Jax grunted in a way that expressed his displeasure without actually forming words. Given that he was still following me, I could only assume that meant he wanted even more tasks to complete, “You may also seek out [Geomancer] Kine outside the tower when you are free. Let him know that your duties also include the design and construction of pits traps for any Mirktallean scouts. I suspect it won’t be long until they arrive.”

“Yes, master,” he paused on a stair to bow.

When he made to follow me further, I glanced at him with a raised eyebrow, “Did you require any more additional duties?”

He stopped on the stairwell, “Er, no master.”

“Very well, then,” I waved a hand and continued to my laboratory, leaving the man behind. I needed to check on the ongoing experiments there, though I suspected they hadn’t changed much in a week's time. It reminded me that I also need to work to develop a Stasis spell. I’d looked through all my current tomes and couldn’t find a single hint that such a spell existed.

It was after lunch when I met with Kine again, this time outside my tower where I looked on at the pitiful state of the refugees. Their tents were poorly constructed, often of cloth not meant to weather conditions. Barely-clothed children ran about unattended. Several campfires were still lit as women cooked stew made from monster meat and bog water.

The lack of organization astounded me. I suspected that Kine had more difficulty in arranging matters with these people than he let on. Of course, the man stood at my side and whispered, “See what I am dealing with?”

Only some of the people seemed to even notice our presence. I felt dismayed at the sheer lack of—of everything. This haphazard sprawl of humanity seemed almost a plague on my eyes.

I looked at Kine again, less impressed now with the man than I was yesterday. I was ostensibly meeting him here to further yesterday’s conversation. I had intended to openly discuss the Pestilence and my current studies on the matter. Yet, this disorderly camp offended my sensibilities, “Do you wish my intervention?”

He seemed uncertain and looked around at them again before answering, “I think not. I see in my mind how it looks. I’m just uncertain where to begin.”

“Show me.”

He took a deep breath and then began constructing an illusion before him, a village built from stone and wood that stood on stilts out of the water. The homes he imagined were simple constructions, round with wooden shingles, but they looked sturdy and well-built all the same. The image was only half the height of a man and maybe three paces across.

There was a larger, central building made of stone that was round in the center. Around it trails led away in five directions, each to create a circle that led to five homes facing each other. He added the bog to the image, showing two fisheries on the southern end of the village, and a trail that traveled around the far end of my beast pits and connected to the road that led to Woodhoot.

I watched carefully but also noticed the disarrayed refugees had grown quiet and were now looking in our direction. “Make it larger,” I ordered him.

Soon the illusion grew until the buildings were as tall as me, “Larger again, and move it to where it will be built.”

I saw Kine grimace and begin breathing hard with exertion as he tried to comply, the illusion traveling south past where my beast pits lay until it was out on the bog waters. I placed a hand on his shoulder and led him down the trail so that he could concentrate on his spellwork. The refugees, even the children, all followed silently behind us.

When we reached the correct place, far enough from my tower not to bother me or for lights from the village to disrupt my reflection lake, we stopped. I pulled out a moonstone from my bag of holding, and tied Kine’s spell to it, making the illusion stand on its own. Kine sighed in relief, his thin, brown hair wet with sweat the evidence of how hard the task was for him.

The crowd of people surged past us to walk among the illusionary village, staring in awe and muttering to themselves as they took in the sight. Children ran under and through it, playing games that involved a good bit of flying mud.

Narwick the miner walked to stand beside us with his arms crossed and grunted. I looked over at the man, ready to begin a game of who can speak less, and raised my eyebrow.

“Do this?” he growled and motioned toward the village as if he were grabbing it.

I smiled and nodded. He grunted again and walked away gathering men around him.

I looked at Kine in satisfaction of my victory in the game, only to see him with his hands on his knees and panting. I was surprised that the illusion took that much out of him, but I suspected it was more a lack of practice in the spellcraft than a lack of skill. I wouldn’t let his wheezing bring down my joy at winning though. I clapped his shoulder and handed him a scroll I’d prepared.

“Give that to Baroness Lark when you next travel into town.”

Kine nodded and accepted the letter without looking, but otherwise kept panting. I left him to his recovery, satisfied that the new villagers were now building their homes a good distance from my tower. The last thing I wanted to hear about was some poor mother crying because her idiot child slipped and fell into a wolf pit. We would have time to discuss the Pestilence later, and I hoped that he would be able to reserve more focus for the matter then.

When I arrived back at my tower, Eni came out of the small building by the gate to hand me a message scroll that had been dropped off in the short time I had been away with Kine. The scroll case bore Baron Froom’s marker, four squares of the elemental colors, but didn’t hold any of the wizard tricks he normally enchanted his missives with. Instead, it only held a single enchantment that would bar any other than me from opening it.

Or so I thought. The Baron got me good, with a hidden enchantment inside the only one I found. When I opened the scroll case, hundreds of multicolored, illusionary birds flew up and away in a shimmer of feathers and wings.

To the Illustrious Wizard Nemon Fargus, Mentor and Friend,

I will be calling upon you at your tower in approximately two weeks’ time as I travel towards Eiston to meet with the Duke.

Cordially,

Baron Alred Froom

It was a simple enough letter, and I appreciated that he didn’t entrap it with a myriad of complex enchantments as he did before his last visit. I still hadn’t opened that first letter from two years ago. That he managed to sneak the illusion past my senses made me both proud and embarrassed. I could have and should have taken the time to more thoroughly examine the scroll case. With my mind on a dozen other matters of import, now was not the time to forgo caution.

I made my way to my laboratory trying and failing to contain all the different items that snagged at my attention. My current experiments hadn’t changed much in the time I was gone. The only one that wasn’t doing well was the more aggressive strain of parasitic mushrooms. It had consumed the entirety of the Hydra scale provided and was dying off without more sustenance.

I could only frown at my oversight. I had been in the presence of a multitude of the beasts and hadn’t thought to obtain more samples at the time. It was another example of the stress I was under being pulled in so many different directions. The Pestilence was the most important work I had at the moment, yet I still prepared for so many other things.

The kingdom’s war was a looming annoyance, a threat should Mirktal specifically target me. I didn’t doubt that I had the means to survive an attack from anything less than an heirloom artifact, but that didn’t mean that my research and tower were well enough defended. Certainly, they could withstand the might of a single army, but the damage would be a hindrance. Two armies would put even that certainty in question.

My plans for the tea, something that I had prepared for two years or more, were also in consideration. I had spent many nights considering the topic. I had half-convinced myself at one point that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. That all the other nations had similar, even more egregious, controls in place. Mirktal with its slavery. Tervan with its sacrifices. Furing with its bloodsports.

I also considered that my actions needed to be equitably retaliatory for the offense against me. That the kingdom was threatened by so many outside forces made me want to stay my hand even more. The citizens of Sena did nothing wrong, and yet they would be the ones to carry the costs of any changes in the stability of the country.

I wasn’t even certain that those thoughts were not influenced by the tea, and that had scared me. That I was justifying the kingdom's actions to myself only made the matter even more obfuscated. The part of me that wanted to see the good in humans died a little with each consideration, and I was glad I was so far from civilization at the moment.

I sat at the table on the right the wall of my laboratory, and opened the tome on my desk that represented another hurdle. When I ascended to the fifth tier, the class I was given indicated that I would be able to hold Rights of Authority in three magical fields, but didn’t provide any other information than this. The worry I had was that I didn’t know what this entailed.

In my soul scroll, it didn’t provide any options whatsoever. My tower crystal had likewise proven useless. None of my tomes held any relevant knowledge on the subject, and the tome I was writing my notes into would likely become the foremost literature on it. Yet, given that the class [Planar Lord] was subject to some type of Rules of Conquest, I was uncertain if whatever field I chose would also make me beholden to some type of rules I didn’t understand.

The last thing I needed was to choose a field like Elemental Fire and be forced to combat the king of that plane in a battle to determine who held the highest authority on the subject. I also didn’t want to accidentally choose an authority that might cause one of the gods to react. While I was familiar with the local gods, who knew if the seafolk worshiped a god of magic?

I could only lean back in my chair and sigh at the feeling of being overwhelmed. As I composed my thoughts, I decided to, once again, postpone the consideration of Rights of Authority. The Pestilence was my highest priority. With that in mind, and my memory of the green-skinned natives of the plateau, I began designing an earth magic spell that would lift land to create a plateau. A massive work of spellcraft that would take more mana than even I possessed.