Bath, Lisa and the rest of the Church of the Dragon cohort (aka Lepochim and his trainees) decided that they needed to capitalize on the current momentum and get their enrollment program up and running.

Lisa gave them a detailed overview of the enrollment program via chip reader presentation.

"So essentially this is based around the idea that the Ritus headquarters is going to be the main temple..." Lepochim said slowly, his face calculating and critical. "And you're going to seize all the nearby territory?"

A large part of Lisa's plan was creating a commune for neophytes to live in while they form the foundation of the Church. Unfortunately, the fact that the Ritus headquarters were stationed in Virginia didn't help matters in any way.

"Is there a better suggestion from anyone?" Lisa quipped, scowling.

"The ocean?" Bath offered.

"The US owns the nearby ocean," Lisa spat. "You technically could go far out and make an island...but that's useless. Nobody would be able to get to our facility. That's why I chose to just make the Ritus headquarters into our home base."

"But Virginia..." Bath frowned. The US was possibly the worst place to set up a huge commune, violating property rights and likely a host of other laws in the process. "They'll never leave us alone."

"Oh, won't they?" Lisa said smugly. "I actually think the US is the best place to do this, actually. If we can set up shop in the US, that sends a message everywhere else that we're untouchable."

Lepochim tilted his head. "I concede that point. Honestly, this entire Church business is fairly messy...But of course, we don't need it to be clean."

"Exactly. No matter what we do, we'll end up in control of Earth. So why not at least have a little fun along the way, make a fun legend for ourselves as we go? And then the legend can grow as we go to other worlds until people actually do believe in COTD."

"COTD?"

Lisa gave Bath a look. "COTD. Church of the Dragon."

Lepochim sighed. "It's what they're calling us online," he explained.

Both Lisa and Bath gave him incredulous glances, to which Lepochim stoically replied, "Just because I look down on this planet's technology doesn't mean I won't use it."

"Sure," Lisa snorted. "Anyways, to recap what we're doing: Virginia. Announcement via email. Setting up training facilities. Getting kursi and mind slaves in line. Making giant dragonleaf commune buildings. Constructing COTD dragon statue. Anything I'm missing?"

---

Bath felt a little bad about pulling Lisa out of Alens for another day since she was already so far behind, but she wrote him off.

"I'm there to learn, not get good grades. Missing out on learning for a day or two isn't going to matter in the least."

With that, Bath transported Lisa and Bath to the now dragonleaf-wreathed Ritus mansion. The kursi and their mind slaves were waiting for their arrival and reverently nodded their heads as the three entered the main living room.

The dragonleaf, having now matured for a few days, seamlessly melded with the modern layout of the room and its high-end furniture. Lisa, personally, felt that the dragonleaf offered an improvement to the room's aesthetic: more in tune with nature, while still embodying modern-chic. It felt balanced.

Moreover, though Lisa had only heard general information from Lepochim, the house's substantial roof was able to generate a massive amount of electricity using the improved photosynthesis Bath had picked up off-planet. Since the mansion was next to a lake, the dragonleaf had an excellent reservoir of water for its roots and had the capability to filter enough water to serve around 1,000 people.

Once they set up the rest of the commune, electricity and water would be problems of the past.

They all quickly got to work, Lepochim leading the kursi in exercises to detect and obscure the senses of people who came too close to the mansion via air, such as hostile US forces. He also delegated a few of them to work with the dragonleaf full time, building up their expertise in controlling human thought by using the dragonleaf as an intermediary. They tested this on their mind slaves, of course.

The rest of the mind slaves Lepochim readied to receive incoming neophytes, giving them information written up by Lisa on how to greet people, what to say, and how to assign newcomers to houses.

Lisa mostly worked on traveling to the nearby residences within a 3-mile radius, the area that Bath deemed optimal for them to occupy. His long-range manipulation could reach 3.6 miles, so a 3-mile radius gave him a good bit of leeway with which to move around if he wanted to keep the whole commune within range of his essence. She essentially went to each house, told them the "Good News" (that the Church of the Dragon was seizing the area), and offered them the opportunity bring their house into the fold of the commune. If their initial response wasn't favorable, she simply used her mind manipulation to convince them to accept the offer.

Lisa quashed any feelings of remorse, reminding herself that these people were getting the good end of the deal. After all, dragonleaf houses based on existing properties were much nicer than those springing from nothing. Moreover, since the takeover of Earth was inevitable, these people would have a key advantage going forward for joining the Church so early.

Lisa had even been pleasantly surprised when around 40% of the people she approached seemed genuinely happy that the Church was setting up next door, even if that meant their property was being seized. One person simply asked her if he'd be able to get super powers, to which she'd replied in the affirmative. After that, he told her that the Church couldn't take over fast enough. Another house said that the Church could do whatever it wanted as long as it did another health boon bestowal, to which Lisa laughed and said, "Of course."

Within a day, everything was coming together.

Downstairs in the Ritus mansion labyrinthian basement, Bath was experimenting. He'd transported a host of different animals to a large area of the basement that had clearly served as a training room.

He was manipulating these animals, several at a time, each with a different intention. They needed food. They needed vehicles. They also needed protection. Moreover, Bath recognized the human need for companionship that could be serviced by animals.

Bath spent the entire day modifying his stock of animals. Whenever he finished, he placed the fully modified animals in the holding pens that Ritus had set up for the animals they fished out of the gate.

As the day came to a close, Lisa sent out an email and updated the website. She felt a sensation of butterflies as she thought about what was going to happen. To her, to the movement; to their dream of world--and universal--domination.

In the end, she'd had to ask Bath to knock her out with gas before she could fall asleep.

---

Lisa had pretty much left the people in the surrounding area alone with the intention of bringing them into the Order of the Dragon when it was founded. Which meant today.

Here at the Ritus headquarters, Bath had specially constructed the dragonleaf so that it formed into giant high-rise spires all over the three-mile radius of the property. He told Lisa that the commune should be able to hold 50-100k people, depending on how many people lived in each dwelling (i.e. if people came alone or with families).

To provide for all these people, Bath spent the entire night stealing cattle. He found that some companies kept thousands of cattle on these disgusting compounds called feedlots, which made his job incredibly easy: nobody noticed a few missing cows from the several dozen feedlots he visited.

He modified each of the cattle according to the pattern he'd perfected yesterday on a cow and a bull, respectively. Now, he placed the modified cattle in a thorn-lined pen outdoors.

He also erected an enormous garden out of plants he similarly stole and modified from various corporate farms.

After the food problem was taken care of, Bath was reminded rather scathingly by Lepochim to make bathing and toilet facilities. And kitchens.

Bath felt like every time he molded the dragonleaf into another construct, Lepochim had another building on his mental commune checklist.

"This is ridiculous," Bath grumbled under his breath as he worked out the mechanics of forming a hot spring by creating a fissure in the Earth's crust. "A bathhouse with natural hot water..."

When Lisa woke up about five hours after falling asleep, she was rather taken aback by the swath of changes that Bath had made to the infantile commune.

After taking a shower and getting ready, she took a few minutes to walk outside and inspect the new facilities. Bath didn't have any experience in architecture or design, instead relying on his lifetime with nature as a template for his constructions. The commune almost looked like a forest of trees filled up completely by bird nests and animals dens. However, this was only part of the picture: the structures also had column-like structures and large, flat, wooden covers that featured classical floral and geometric patterns. Additionally, wherever Lisa walked, she could see depictions of animals on the sides of the buildings, some extant, many not. Mixed in with these were depictions of Bath's dragon form.

Lisa felt a sense of awe as she viewed these many scenes. They were literally grown into the brown-green, woody sides of the dragonleaf buildings. Moreover, each scene was completely unique and formed with careful attention to detail. Lisa could tell that these were all scenes that Bath had recreated from memory.

On one of the buildings, Lisa even recognized an image of that monster-insect-thing that that Bath had made her photograph for his "research" on the Permian Extinction. Bathiosaurus Exo-something.

She eventually stumbled onto the holding pen for the modified cattle.

"What the actual..."

Shaking her head, she continued on. She didn't encounter the garden, but did find her way to the bathhouse, which she could only admire from afar. She didn't have time to relax; not today, not soon.

Definitely not today. She checked her phone: 7:15 AM. The email and website both clearly stated that starting at 8:00 AM, today, the commune would start accepting neophytes.

Already, Bath was dealing with the massive amounts of neophyte-to-be's that had gathered outside the commune. As part of his renovations, Bath had constructed a large dragonleaf wall around the commune. At 8:00 AM sharp, he planned to lower the wall and let people in. Before that, well, they'd just have to be patient.

Bath had lost track of how many small drones he'd crushed into oblivion over the past half day since Lisa sent out the email inviting people to come. People were certainly eager to cover the newest exploit of the Church of the Dragon, as aside from the drones, countless news sources had sent people to cover the opening of the commune.

Bath used his enhanced hearing to listen to the many conversations taking place outside. The one he heard most frequently from the reporters was discussion over what this commune was called.

Realizing that they actually didn't have a name for the commune other than the Commune of the Dragon, and that they didn't even have a new name for the main Ritus headquarters other than, descriptively, the main temple, Bath formed a human self in front of Lisa.

She jumped, startled. "Bath!"

"Lisa," he began without skipping a beat. "What are we calling this place?"

Lisa gave him a blank look. "The Commune of the Dragon?"

Bath shook his head. "We need something. And don't trust me to think of something; I already named dragonleaf. It's your turn."

Lisa refrained from pointing out that she'd come up with the name of the Church and names for its entire hierarchy of positions. "Fine. How about..." Lisa looked around for inspiration. "The Anima."

"Soul?" Bath recognized the Latin word.

"It sounds like animal, and means soul," Lisa stated. "This is a religious place, so the soul element is there, and, if those weird cattle are anything to go by, the commune is going to have lots of rather...interesting animals in the future. It's perfect."

"What about the main temple?"

"The Temple of Basa. Obviously."

"Basa?"

"Bath and Lisa together. Or, Lith. Or, hmm, Basalith. That sounds kinda cool."

"Just choose something," Bath said. He knew the current time to a few minutes of accuracy by analyzing the position of the sun. From this, he saw that 8:00 AM was fast approaching. He honestly didn't care what Lisa named anything.

"Wait wait wait. Okay. We're going to call the commune Basalith. Like a city name. Then, we're going to call the temple The Anima."

"Fine." Bath disappeared without a further word.

As he waited for 8:00 AM to arrive, Bath continued to embellish and decorate the commune--Basalith. He made sure to inscribe the name of the commune on the ground just beyond the area where most people had gathered. This way, as soon as he let down the wall, they would see it.

He also inscribed The Anima on the former Ritus headquarters. While he was at it, he numbered the various residences and wrote the names of buildings above their entrances according to their function.

Bath kept Lepochim informed of all of this as he continued to rush about the inside of The Anima, organizing the kursi and mind slaves while preparing for the imminent approach of thousands. Lepochim had actually smiled when Bath told him that the dwellings were numbered from one to twenty-thousand, as this meant that Lepochim could just give people a number and send them off instead of consulting the quickly-drafted blueprints of the commune's layout.

As the hour grew ever nearer, the crowd beyond the looming dragonleaf wall swelled. Bath actually wasn't sure how Lepochim and Lisa were planning to process this many people. Had they underestimated how many would come?

Bath looked up intently towards the cloud-filled sky as the final seconds drew to a close.

10. 9. 8. 7. 6. 5. 4. 3. 2. 1...and the wall came down.