Yagar promised to hurry the man that was supposed to excavate the basement and it sounded strange to Tercius that only one man would be doing it.

"How is one man supposed to dig up all of that?" his childish voice asked while he showed with his waving hands what he meant. Yagar must have found it funny because the man smirked at the interruption and he crouched next to him to explain. It must have been difficult with all that weight, yet the man made it look effortless.

"It would be if he used only his hands. This man has a skill for moving earth. For him this is a work of a couple of hours, maybe up to a day." Yagar explained to him.

"Oh... What is this skill?" Tercius asked. Maybe he could learn it, it sounded incredibly useful, not to mention powerful. Imagine shifting the land your enemy stood on...

"Who knows. Well, that man does, but he is not sharing. I heard he went to the Academy of the Thaumaturgic Skills in the Capital, but that may be just rumor." said Yagar.

"Academy? How does one get in the Academy?" Tercius asked. This place sounded like an excellent place for learning...

"Grandfather what does Thaumaturgic mean?" These days he learned a new word every day.

The older men smiled kindly at the small child while Neiran just stood on the sideline of the conversation, too shy to ask any question he had. Yagar ended up the one who cut in with the answer.

"It is one of the types of skill that exist. I believe that it's an old word for magic or in some way related to magic. Correct me if I am wrong master stonemason?" said Yagar getting back up as his knees popped.

"No correction needed, that is indeed true. Only he asked me." that last part his grandfather murmured in a low voice and probably only Tercius heard it as anything else than a unarticulated sound.

"I will be going now, I thank you for coming to see me at such short notice. I will endeavour to have the conditions required for you to work by tomorrow afternoon, the stone will surely be provided, as for the digging it may be running a little late. But I am sure you will think of something. " Yagar said and extended a hand towards grandfather. The elder took it and they exchanged a brief handshake.

"We can start on shaping stone should that case come to pass. Don't worry there is a lot of work that can be done before we begin." his grandfather assured his customer.

"Then I will send someone to notify you when the shipment comes. It is a pleasure to work with you master stonemason. You would not believe the likes of some I've considered before Ftir recommend you. Now I can rest easy. I bid you all farewell until the next time we meet. " said the corpulent man with a small bow towards them, then he went on his way.

"Are you boys hungry or do you want to look around for a bit? " his grandfather asked them while he pointed in the direction of the center of the town. The boys looked at each other, a silent message passing between them, then Tercius turned back and said "Only if you promise to wait for us. We can't keep up with your strides."

"I will try." his grandfather looked ashamed. "Now come with."

So they went and explored. Shops of all kinds, tailors, blacksmiths, restaurants, inns. They walked by slowly while his grandfather explained to them what was what. They made a particular effort to stay on the wide main streets, avoiding the shadier and narrow ones, his grandfather claiming that those had some unsavoury characters. Figures that there would be thieves and thugs in a dark alleyway.

They made their way back to the inn and Tercius noticed a particular shop. A book store. It was already closed, but he made a mental note of it as a place to visit as soon as possible. It was close to the inn, they only needed a couple of minutes to walk from one to the other.

Now he just had to find some time and convince the owner to let him read a couple of books, maybe buy a few that were interesting.

***

They were sitting at a table in the corner of the common room. Here the customers of the inn could have a meal, a drink and have a nice conversation in company of others. This evening there was something out of the ordinary that was happening.

"What are they doing?" asked Maya.

"A task I have assigned to them. They will not go to bed until they finish it all. " answered Ciron.

"Well, what is it? " she asked peering over the shoulder of the older boy, making him a bit uncomfortable.

"Don't bother them Maya, they need their focus, and you are distracting them with your questions. " Ciron said.

There was a crowd in the room after dinner, but the noise the crowd made was not as nearly as distracting as the one that the two conversing elder made right over their heads. He almost burst out multiple times for them to be quiet, but he held himself back unsure if his grandfather would resort to the same disciplinary punishment as his father did. So he endured and finished the basic mathematical problems his grandfather wrote. Then he helped Neiran finish his, so that they could go to bed finally.

It took him a couple of minutes to get the adjusted to the different signs people here used for different operations and even after all these days since his grandfather showed him how to do it, he still kept getting a moment where his brain would just freeze. He kept expecting one thing and he saw another and it took some getting used to. It’s lucky they used the same numbers, he couldn’t imagine doing maths with Roman numerals or something similar.

"Neiran, look here." his finger pointing out on the spot where the error, that made progress impossible, hid. Once Neiran saw it and made the correction, it wrapped itself very quickly.

You have learned the skill Mathematics (1)! Yes/No?

The study of such topics as quantity, structure, space, and change. Increases focus by a small margin while doing any work on the mentioned topics and spotting of patterns is made easier by a small margin. Every skill level increases the effect by a small degree and lowers the cost of its use by a small degree.

Well this was an easy decision to make. And a Yes. The skill looked too good to pass up on. Only Tercius decided that he would keep this one to himself, at least for now. He heard that some skills are grounds for immediate execution, and while he highly doubted that a skill of mathematics would be treated as such, until he knew for sure it would be better to keep quiet. The world was full of strange things and mathematics is a powerful tool in the right hands.

"Thanks Tercius that was tough." Neiran said. "You are really smart. I don't know how you do it so fast."

"It's nothing." he quickly denied praise. How could he accept it, when behind his youthful face hid a man almost in his thirties?

"You can go up if you want to, but there should be music here soon, so of you want to stay and listen..." Maya offered to the boys who eagerly accepted. They both wanted to see and hear what it was about and they didn't have to wait for long.

A group came in all of them bringing various familiar instruments and more unfamiliar ones. Of the ones he saw before there was a drum, a small harp and some kind of two barrel pipe with holes down both sides. Yet more were alien and he looked forward to hearing them. The singers came last and they were twins, a brother and a sister. They stood out in the crowd because of their blond hair amongst a sea of black and an occasional brown. His own hair was easily masked as black in the low light that candles around the room provided.

First the band played for half an hour while Maya and another man served drinks around the room, but when the singers began, everyone had only eyes and ears for them.

A fast bawdy song about a drunken miner and his pick that sent the room roaring with laughter at the end of every stanza, it left the crowd wanting for more, yet the singers went to wet their throat on the house. By the time they returned the crowd was ready for more and they didn't disappoint. A few local song that clearly went very well with the crowd followed and here and there someone sang with them. Then came a few song that no one but his grandfather new, the man clearly reliving an earlier period of his life through these songs. The musicians retired after a slow and sad ballad that left people in a particularly homesick mood and the crowd dispersed.

Tercius and Neiran stayed until the end, neither realising what time it was, until Ciron realised his mistake.

"Boys! Let's go, we rise early. Go, go. "

***

A boy came for them right after they had their breakfast and then they were on their way to the site. Over a ton of rough stone waited for them and the excavation had yet to begin. Tercius preferred it this way, hoping that he could spot something when this man used his skill. His grandfather started sorting stone that was to be shaped first, for the floor of the basement. The biggest went in that group and they would be shaped by his grandfather. To Tercius and Neiran he left smaller ones, those that the boys could carry.

The dimensions of the block they used for getting a baseline were length of 0.6m, width of 0.4m and height the same as width. They first melded smaller stones into a larger one then they put it on a paper outline of the right dimensions and then slowly using their hands and skill started massaging out all the extra, until they got a flat surface on all six sides. It took quite a few corrections to get to the perfect shape their grandfather preferred to work with. During the course of 10 hours that was planned for work, Neiran could shape around 11 blocks, Tercius held himslef back a bit at the same number even though he could go up to 15, not wanting to discourage the older boy, while his grandfather could go for over 50 in the same time frame. They spent three days making stone cuboids, returning to the inn at night and then back to work in the morning.

Then on the fourth day on the job, that was the fifth away from home, Yagar came and brought a man with him. He was the first man he saw wearing a robe. The colour of it really stung the eyes, a kind of dark yellow with green stripes in over the base. He looked ready to meld inside a forest. With no preamble the man immediately went to work, while Yagar went to talk with grandfather.

Tercius and Neiran stopped what they were working on and went to see this man move a few tonnes of earth, something you don't see every day. The man started walking around the small enclosure his grandfather made in the shape of the first floor. He followed the string around the edges slowly, stopping sometimes and closing his eyes then stomping his bare feet on the ground. Huh. I didn't even notice he had bare feet. That robe really hides a lot. thought Tercius.

"What's he doing?" asked Neiran in a whisper.

"I think he is looking at the land. Maybe what's inside? I can only guess." answered Tercius in the same tone, afraid of disturbing the man.

They observed him walking around for almost half am hour and by now the novelty wore off, they were thinking about going back to doing their own business when a change occurred. The man stopped in the middle and snapped his palms together. A ripple run over the surface of the earth with him in the center. First one then more and more, the surface started behaving like water. Small stones started falling out at the edges where the ripples ended when grandfather came with a shovel and started to pick them up and throw them over in their way.

"Come, don't get near that, just move the stones over by a few meters." commanded grandfather in his most authoritative voice.

Bigger and bigger stones kept getting out of the future hole, the earth spitting them out like a small child spits out their least favourite vegetable. Two teenagers came, sent by Yagar to assist and they carried away larger stones, setting them on the side. They took shovels and threw away the smaller ones. Two hours it lasted, but Tercius and Neiran followed it all from the sidelines, not wanting to miss anything. The man in the center of the churning earth gave a shout and his grandfather and the older boys moved our way as the earth started to spill over in five different directions, each making a neat pile of earth on the place it settled.

Wow. Now that is a skill! thought Tercius. He wanted to learn it, to run up to the man to ask where he learned to do that, but the earth was still leaving it's previous place leaving a pool like hole in the land. The man was standing in the middle of the hole, under him a circle of grass still fresh. At each direction where the earth went a ramp like indentation connected the ground level with basement level, allowing easy access. He was beyond impressed. He had to do something.

Tercius grabbed a bowl and filled it to the brim with cool water and ran to the hole. He caught the man just coming up the earth ramp.

"Here you go mister, that must have been exhausting. " he extended the bowl forward and the man took it. Tercius observed him while he drank, he had long black hair held by a pin behind his head. The man stood clean before him, his robe, face and hands pristine.

"Ah I needed that. " said the man.

"Thank you. "

"Can I ask you something? Where did you learn to do that? Can you tell me that?" Tercius said in a hurry, ejecting questions while pointing at the hole.

"How curious. The usual reaction I get is that they ask me to teach them. But you want the source. Clever boy. Why settle for third or second hand when it can be your own. I will tell you this. There are places called Academies. Now it's up to you to research from there. If you measure up you will find your answer." said the man as he went over to Yagar.

"Thank you!" he shouted. Now he had a confirmed lead, and not some gossip! Now I really need to get to that bookshop.

***

Still, he had work to do and by the time he finished each day, the store was always closed. His grandfather insisted on finishing more blocks that day, with construction to begin in the morning.

They rose even earlier than before, the sun not yet visible on the horizon, yet Maya was already in the kitchen making breakfast for her customers. They grabbed a few pitakis, a local small bread favoured by working class for it's compact form, flavour and ability to stay fresh for up to a day.

"Early risers today Ciron, these boys certainly have a fine role model." Maya complimented his grandfather, making the old man visibly uncomfortable.

"We have a lot of work today Maya and I've always been of a mind that it's better to finish this kind of work in a single session. Can you send us a larger portions today, only an hour later that usual? " grandfather made arrangements for lunch and off we went. The construction site was the same as we left it last night, the man who was guarding over night came and greeted us and went home to sleep.

A shipments of fine yellow sand and gravel came just in time and those two teenagers showed up just a few minutes after it. His grandfather made them take carts full of gravel and spread it evenly in a layer over the earth, then they started spreading a layer of sand over the gravel, filling in the spaces in between and making an even surface with it. Neiran and he tried making a few blocks, but they ended up mostly watching how and what his grandfather and the boys did. When the pit was evenly covered with a fine sand layer and his grandfather was satisfied he told the boys to take a dozen of the bigger stone blocks down to the hole and then take a break, but not stray too far. Then it was showtime for the two of his students. The basement floor blocks were of larger dimensions than those made for upper parts of the house.

"It is just a precaution, but there are beasties of all kinds, with skills that can have a wide range, but we here have, first earth, then this gravel, which is of a different sort from the stone we use for construction of the actual floors and walls and then we have this sand. On top of it we have this large block, which should be enough protection from vast majority of critters capable of moving through one material. " his grandfather explained his reasoning. The blocks that the boys carried down were laid on array of long round wooden poles and his grandfather laid a path with those same poles to the end destination for the block. All three then pushed the block to it's resting place, displacing some sand in the process, but his grandfather assured them that it was alright. He used a piece of string and three small wooden pieces to check the tilt of the block. It was perfect.

"Well done my boys, a great start."

Block by block was arranged in an interlocking pattern, making adjustments on the go and by the late evening the floor of the basement was finished. An almost smooth surface, his grandfather left the upper part of the line where the blocks met visible,while anything below was melded by him personally. He said they could do do it with the walls, but the foundation was too important to have a single flaw. The floor was one large slab of rock made in the shape of a square, with a nice pattern on it's upper side.

"Let us go, I am exhausted." said grandfather when he packed up his tools.

"I could sleep for a week." said Neiran in an uncharacteristic burst of opinion. I guess he must be coming out of his shell. thought Tercius. The boy only answered questions usually.

"How about you Ter?" asked Neiran.

"Maybe two would be enough for me." he answered.

"Well I have good news for you two. There will be no tests tonight nor tomorrow, so rest easy and recover." his grandfather informed them as they walked away after a long day.