Sweat streaming down her face, Heidie ran around the bustling village, Kurnbor, the dwarves had finally named it. Three weeks had passed since she became an elder of the new dwarven village. There had been a ceremony for the naming only the night before. Part of the celebration involved drinking a great deal of the dwarves first batch of hastily fermented alcohol. It was surprisingly good. Heidie gained a newfound respect for the ingenuity of dwarves and their improvised wine.

Heidie had been amazed how highly the dwarves valued their booze. Among the very first tasks the swarthy folk had undertaken was taking stock of every single resource in the area that could be used to make alcohol of any kind. Honey, grains, fruits: anything they could find was tallied up and the entire group argued for hours about what the best approach for their first batch should be.

Before the dwarves even began working on shelter from the elements they were building barrels to ferment alcohol in. Heidie had provided a few bone-molded components to assist. Nails, rings, and tools provided as a courtesy of their host. Minions were then sent out with the dwarves to help gather ingredients. By the end of the day, the new denizens of the village were nearly completed preparing fifteen large batches of alcohol that was primarily composed of a local fruit.

The dwarves had at first been hesitant to accept the tools and components; mixed feelings were present about using bone. Eventually, the dwarves shrugged it off when Heidie assured them that everything would be made from the wolf pack that had attacked them. The Council approved the use of such things so long as none of materials came from the bones of the former townspeople or other humanoids. Not even human bones or elf bones. Guiltily avoiding mentioning some of the amenities she’d already made from the ill-fated Cat-Folk, the human woman promised she’d stick to animals for their things.

Heidie had watched the new villagers argue and prepare alcohol in wonder before wandering off to circulate a bit more in the downtime. Her stamina for circulation was absurd by any normal standard. Generally the most difficult part of cultivating oneself to the second Circle was limited mana reserves. It was challenging to circulate sufficient quantities of mana evenly throughout the body over and over. There was a fairly substantial net loss in the process but Heidie had yet to run into a case where her reserves were too depleted to continue. The extra work put forth into circulation had paid off: she was now nearly in the tenth step of the first Circle.

Lome’Matar could only laugh to himself quietly at his student’s potential. He’d thoroughly checked his disciple’s body and spirit as thoroughly as he could in his currently limited state, unbeknownst to her, but could not find an explanation for the human woman’s abnormal capacity for mana. He’d mentioned to his student that her reserves was unusual but had not told her how unusual exactly.

Physically, she was human. Not a trace of any other species or the unnatural touch of meddling could be found with the demon’s mana sense. Logically, by everything Lome’Matar had ever learned about the human species, there was no possibility whatsoever that she was human. Her initial reserves were a hundred times what the most naturally blessed humans should have. Tens of times higher than an ordinarily talented demon, Heidie’s reserves were more in line with the most powerful noble bloodlines in the demon world.

It was a marvelous quandary that a human could be so well endowed. The demon eagerly looked forward to getting to the bottom of the mystery. It had been so long since one of the lesser species piqued his curiosity so strongly. It was a shame that in depth study would have to wait until his capacities were somewhat restored. Heidie would not be capable of providing him a body that would meet his needs until she entered the third Circle, and that would take time. How much, Lome’Matar was not sure.

Unfortunately for his student, from the second Circle onwards, Heidie’s abnormal mana reserves would cease helping her progression. In fact, they would start to hinder her fast progress. In order to progress to the third Circle, a prospective mage would work to compress their mana as much as possible during circulation, struggling to permanently change their reserves into a more potent state. The problem was that to do this would require an absurd number of cycles performing this compression; each one being the circulation and compression of a mage’s mana reserves in their entirety. It would take hundreds of thousands of cycles to enter the third Circle. Ordinarily this would take a year or three for a human, however the more mana one had the longer each cycle of compression would take. For Heidie, Lome’Matar estimated that even with his guidance it could take decades.

Ignorant to the thoughts of her teacher, Heidie collapsed from her sprint around the village in a heap, twitching from a regeneration spell that was now active. Physical training was back on the menu. Running was always useful. In Lome’Matar’s experience, any practitioner who could not run away from things was likely to perish.

The demon’s student remained on the ground regenerating for a few minutes before taking a drink a soldier offered her and returning to her sprint. The sounds of hammers and saws echoed out as the young woman worked herself to the bone. Dwarves yelled back and forth and construction continued. They’d collectively decided to ignore the human council elder when she was engaging in what could only be described as masochism; it was none of their business.

New undead were designed and calibrated to the dwarves specifications. Reaching her maximum capacity of forty minions, Heidie had focused on requests from the dwarves for easily automated labors and made eighteen of a new variety of undead minion: the worker.

The undead workers were all humanoid, but were entirely skeletal, made from the remains of bison and wolves. They were reinforced for greater strength and durability, and Heidie had needed to spend a lot of extra time making sure they had the dexterity to accomplish the tasks that the dwarves asked of them.

Heidie had decided against overspecialization. Each worker was capable of adequately performing a fairly large list of tasks for the village. A newly built storage area housed many molded bone tools that they might need throughout their day. It took time to teach them how to perform each task properly, but once that was completed work took off in the village.

Heidie’s minions gathered and prepared resources for the dwarven artisans, the dwarves themselves focused entirely on their own tasks of tearing down the ruins and starting fresh on the new buildings. The trees near the village were disappearing at a rapid pace to provide timber but were sufficient for the needs of reconstruction for now. New buildings positively shot up; Heidie had a proper home now. Decrepit old walls of her old shelter replaced and a roof present over her head for the first time since she came to this world.

Further conversation with Dhuran and the other council members about the Kaied hunting parties that burnt out villages near areas of conflict had unnerved Heidie. Forcing herself to work a few more hours a day, the young necromancer had gone as far as her current abilities allowed to reinforce and strengthen her forces as much as possible. Her soldiers, monstrous bison, and mount had all been reinforced as far as Heidie could push it without slowing them down too much. Heidie learned that past a certain point continuing to reinforce minions ended up making them too heavy, too ungainly, to remain useful as soldiers or monstrous cavalry.

Lome’Matar assured her that this issue would be temporary; a result of simplifying his spells to the point they were usable in the first Circle. the undead at this level were simply limited in how strong the magic could make them. Heidie lacked the tools to truly reinforce her minions properly at this stage; molding bone together to create stronger, denser minions was only the beginning. Currently Heidie was held back by her lack of power; every ability a mere shadow of its true potential.

Finally completing the last lap around the village, Heidie washed at the river before returning to her cottage for a second breakfast. Bison stew, yet again, but seasoned with some herbs the dwarves had gathered. Food quality had improved since Dharun and the other refugees took shelter with the fledgling necromancer. They’d helped patch up some of Heidie’s clothing as well. Her paltry closet was made up of whatever she’d managed to salvage that was close to her own size from the deceased of her ill-fated college orientation. Intense training and living in rough condition had accumulated quite a bit of wear and tear.

Mealtime was interrupted by the thundering hooves of an undead Bison as it charged through the village to arrive at Heidie’s residence; a scout returning to report. Muttering profanity to herself, Heidie put her meal to the side and prepared for bad news. The quadruped minion wasted no time in its report.

“Mistress!” the monstrous Bison’s ghostly voice echoed out, unnaturally. “A disturbance was found. Smoke is rising from the east!”

“Shit…” Heidie dejectically cursed. East was where the spider wetlands lay. For enough smoke to be rising that it was visable It was a couple days walk, but her Bison minions should be able to run there and back within a single day. She didn’t know how likely it was that the area could start burning naturally, but Heidie felt that it was a reasonable assumption that the cause was unnatural, and potentially a threat, until proven otherwise. Heidie had a bad feeling about this. Dharun had warned her about Kaeid’s forces focusing their military strategy around pyromancy. The nation was famous for its exploits in that school of magic.

The necromancer addressed the monstrous creature that had delivered the report.

“Gather one other scout and move closer to the smoke with them.” The necromancer ordered. “Try to discover the cause of the fire, if possible, and Search the area for any signs of humans.” Heidie thought for a moment before adding “Don’t enter too deep into the wetlands. Don’t engage or antagonize the spiders. Do your utmost to remain unseen.”

Galloping off, the undead scout left to gather one other monstrous bison minion to take with it on its mission. Heidie sent one of her soldiers to find Dharun and let him know she wished to speak with him before returning to her meal. Arriving soon after Heidie finished her bowl of stew, Dharun knocked at the door of Heidie’s cottage before entering. Heidie invited him to sit. He had a right to know what was going on.

“One of my scouts noticed smoke rising from the wetlands to the east.” Heidie told the council head. “I’ve sent more scouts to investigate. It might be a natural wildfire, but just in case it is not… I wanted you to know.”

Nodding his head, Dharun thought for a moment

“Thank you for keeping us informed. I will tell the others there may be danger present.” the council leader told Heidie.

“Kaied soldiers or hunters have no reason to be out this far south. The vicious dogs should be moving deeper into Rashgur Council lands.” the dwarf said. “It’s a risk to come here. The edge we’re on is as peaceful as it gets out here, but it can still spit out some extremely dangerous creatures. Almost no one comes back if they go deeper, and few of those who do make it back do it in one piece.” Dharun laughed darkly “The whole area on our maps is vague; there are more drawn warnings than features, really. There hasn’t been a successful expedition into the south that I’ve heard of for nearly a generation.”

Heidie shook hands with the dwarf as he left. She hoped very much it was a natural occurrence. Swampy wetlands could definitely burn by themselves. Kaied pyromancy or monstrous beast could be issues, but hopefully the spiders would handle them. Still, Heidie hoped to learn the true cause. She really wanted to avoid a situation where she had to start blindly running again. The young necromancer sat back down in her cottage and began circulation again. She was so close to the second Circle. Safety would be so much closer once she broke through. Actually breaking through probably wasn’t in the cards just yet because she wasn’t completely sure how long it would incapacitate her, but Heidie was determined to get as close to the breakthrough as possible before the scouts returned again.