As Nic walked back he opened the channel in his mind to Sofia, and her voice came flooding back in.

“Thank sept and tomb. Nicolas, do you see what I meant about the Heretics?”

“Yeeep.” Nic admitted, rubbing his throat. The goblinoid’s essence was particularly sticky, and he was rotating his energy through the lingering pain of the wound, slowly dissipating the foreign force so it didn’t become an impurity trapped with his meridians.

As much as he wanted another mud bath…

“We should pivot to hunting them. Assuming they’re emerging from the dungeon nearby, we’re their natural target. There’s no way to keep everyone safe unless they die…”

Nic bit his tongue. She was probably right.

“But the quest to hunt those monsters is in two days, right?” He asked. “After that I’ll make a decision with the town leaders. If they want to hunt the Heretics, we hunt them. If not, I’ll go it alone…”

By the time Nic rejoined the hunters, they had finished driving their totems into the earth and marking out Winterhome’s territory. While he was gone an opportunistic beast had tried to strike, but it was only an ugly mole-like thing with a star-shaped nose, and Redjaw had defended them with ease.

In fact, there wasn’t even a scrap of the corpse left beyond some gnawed bones.

The hunters were talking amongst themselves with excitement. In addition to planting territory markers and building formations, they had been out to scavenge and hunt, gathering what they could from the trees. They were dividing up a haul of dusty yellow berries that numbed the mouth, a few stone-covered fruits that could be cracked open with hammers to reveal delicate pulpy insides full of seed covered in a rich jelly, and other prizes, all charged with faint Essence…

While Nic didn’t bully his youngers by claiming a share, he did run over the haul with his crystal eye, quickly spotting everything with potential to become medicine. A few trades later, and the hunters came away with better quality fruits from his collection, while Nic had gifts for Nylea.

If there was anything he regretted about his evolution, it was that he had to consume F-Class treasures to boost his cultivation for even a few hours. A price that was slightly counterbalanced by the fact his bonus for ‘resting in a toxic environment’ seemed to have been permanently fulfilled…

Quite happy with what he’d achieved for an idle morning, Nic carried on towards Winterhome.

Towards his home.

Something he’d never quite been able to say before, about any of the places where he’d lived and ate and slept…

---

When Nic returned to Winterhome, he saw the whole town moving together, a single mass of people possessed by a single will. They were lifting up the tentpoles and bones of a single structure, a massive rounded building like a cathedral.

“Sofia?”

“A merchant emporium, Nicolas. One of the basic structures open to all Settlements. Once we finish building it we can start attracting traders; we can even make Old Ben, that rapscallion friend of yours, a permanent fixture. Right now we have countless things of value, but none of the things we need. Bringing in traders will let us change one to the other…”

But that wasn’t what fascinated Nic about the scene; what he saw was much more than the mechanical creation of a structure, a purpose Winterhome needed filled; what he saw was countless people working together for a single cause.

Lumberjacks cut trees down in the forest beyond the city, dropping them onto rollers made from the logs of smaller saplings. They rolled the trunks across these makeshift wheels, picking up the ones that slipped behind and moving them to the front again in a seamless, quick procession; there was barely a minute the needed timber wasn’t moving.

The cut trees reached the end of the forest and dropped into the water, where swimmers pulled it through the lake towards the city proper.

And then, at the hardest step, when the logs needed to be pulled up onto the docks, the beasts of Winterhome stepped in; a pair of massive oxen with skin of bronze and a huge, dark-furred bear worked together to lug the timber onto shore, where a mass of humans waited to receive it.

Carpenters cut the raw trunks into boards.

Laborers dragged the boards into place, laying them into the structure of the merchant emporium with ropes and pulleys…

And still more workers came to knock nails into the wood, or set up scaffolding to hold it in place. They were like ants; a swarm of lives moving to a single purpose. Everywhere the workers went, Nic saw Rueben, the old and heavy human defying his age and weight to appear wherever he was needed, shouting instruction, keeping the whole rhythm of construction moving to a single, unified beat.

The man had something Nic didn’t.

He had the spark of leadership. The knowledge of where he should be, and when, to keep people from going astray; the ability to fit himself seamlessly into some part of the construction on the edge of disaster, and push people in the right direction.

Nic saw Winterhome.

And he knew it couldn’t only belong to him.

He could cut a path for the people to follow, and he could lift the skies to let the city grow beneath them. He could do his best to teach, and warn, and arm his followers against what they’d find beyond the walls. But he’d never be able to control how they walked in the world; he’d never be able to prevent them from finding danger, from fighting their own battles where he couldn’t help them.

It was a realization every parent reached, in the end.

That in order to save their child from the tyranny of their own self, they had to let go.

But Nic was proud…

Fiercely proud, down to his very bones…

Of the strength he saw. Of the bare-cut timber being lifted towards the sky, and scaffolded in place by nails and skeletal constructions of plywood. Of the heave and rhythm of the crowd as they came together to build towards the far horizon…

Instead of rushing forward to join them, Nic sat, and watched with satisfaction.

---

As the day wore on, Nic drifted off to find food. He found Kiana’s kitchen, where the chef shoveled a ladleful of thick, steaming-hot grain porridge into his bowl with comment, topping it with specks of fish and fried egg like she would any other worker.

Nic sat down and dug in.

It was only bites later, the hunger in his belly beginning to still that he noticed he was sitting alongside Rueben.

Nic didn’t believe that was coincidence; but he didn’t challenge the old man either.

Inkspur leapt onto his shoulder, curling around his arm in a brush of smooth, almost-slippery scales.

“Hey.” He said.

“Hey yourself.” The man responded, pausing the rapid movement of spoon between bowl and mouth. “How you doing?”

“Pretty good.” Nic answered. Somehow, Reuben always left him feeling at ease. “How did you get the beasts to help you?”

“I just asked, my man. You said they were human, so I figured, treat ‘em like humans. I go out into the woods, I cup my hands to my mouth, and I shout, hey!”

Nic laughed. Reuben was an enchanter; he could make small things seem funny.

“And they come up to me, all curious-like. I say, we gotta big project to work on. We’d sure appreciate it if some of you came and helped. And I figure, if I was a beast, I’d be pretty lonely by now. I’d be happy to help wherever I could. Sure enough, a couple of ‘em come with me…”

He shrugged, like it was nothing.

“And that was it?” Nic asked.

“That was it.” The old man replied.

Nic paused for a while, mechanically moving his wooden spoon to his mouth and gulping down the contents. But all the while he was dying to ask…

“Why didn’t you take a Shard?”

“I dunno. Honestly, cabrone, I don’t know.” Reuben paused, looking at his spoon. “I guess it comes down to…”

There was a long pause.

“Well, you wouldn’t know, being from another world and all.” He cast a glance sideways, at Nic’s strange, alien form. “I forget sometimes, being you’re just like us and all, but…”

“My people. My people were proud. They lived on the plains with bows in their hands, and they lived good lives. But then, another people came. People with guns and other weapons we hadn’t even imagined yet…”

Nic was silent.

“The others, they won. And I grew up in a home for kids like me, not even allowed to use my own language, to talk like I should talk. Every time I showed who I was, I was beaten down. They wanted to whip the ghost out of me.”

“But I didn’t stop. I never stopped. I remembered.”

“That’s all I want these kids to do. I don’t care if they take the Shards, I don’t care if they live in this new world. All I want them to do is remember who they are, and what was taken from them. If I’m the last one without a Shard…”

“If I’m the only one without magic powers…”

“That’s fine. I’ll be a memory. I always was, anyway.”

Nic didn’t know what to say to that, but Rueben didn’t seem to expect him to say anything.

---

Nic was left alone as the lunch crowd dispersed, his belly full, his mind full of echoes as he tried to digest what he’d learned.

It was a lonely endeavor, ruling a city. It was being a figurehead without ever pressing your will so hard you damaged all the people below you. Learning when to accept half of what you want, and when to come down in full fire and force because someone had cheated you…

Learning to follow all the little threads of the different lives unfolding underneath your watch.

It was a harder existence than just living alone.

Only worrying for you and your small circle.

It lacked the small confidences, the shared worries, the joint triumphs, of having a partner to stand by your side. Sofia was loyal, and Sofia was his friend, but in some inescapable way Sofia was also distant and unknowable. She understood him better than Nic would ever understand her.

He missed…

Nic paused, and then his resolve set firm.

He missed Tarquin.

But he didn’t need to miss Tarquin. He had the power to bring Tarquin here, and he’d had enough of Sofia’s delaying tactics. Any longer and his friend might die, or be crippled, or any number of fates.

“Sofia?”

“I can guess, Nicolas. I’ve prepared the equipment, Shards, and other necessities as best I could, and we’re ready to go when you give the word.”

“The word is now.”

Pushing his way out from the table, Nic turned and strode towards the Totem in the center of town, a smile already on his face.