With my pile of measuring sticks in hand, I went outside with my knife at the ready, and did my best to measure the dry part of the marsh that I lived on. It took a while and I didn't have enough sticks. I went back inside and made a ton of them and then went back outside. I laid them down all along one edge and then all along the front of the hut where I usually kept the boat in the waterway, then went all the way back around in the other direction.

I finished back where I started and I still had several sticks left, so I put them aside. Now was the hard part and I actually counted them. When I ended back up where I started, I was into my fifth hundred and that was way too much. I knew that. I stopped and sat down. I knew I was doing something wrong and wasn't sure what. I had the sticks laid out and counted them...

“Ha.” I said and stood. “I've only got one number! That's what's wrong!”

I ran back into the hut and went to the bed. I looked at the top down drawing of the boat and saw that it had numbers on the bottom and on the side only. The only page of the three that didn't have any numbers on it was the sketch, so I took that page and flipped it over. I now had a blank page and then realized I had nothing to write with.

I looked around and saw the ash under the cooking fire. Since I knew it covered everything if you weren't careful, I went to it and picked up one of the metal fire pokers. It was much too big to use, though. I would poke holes in the paper with it if I tried. I needed something smaller. I went to my wood carving tools and found one of them with the smallest head.

“No, it's too sharp and I don't want to ruin it.” I said and went to the bag of blacksmith things I had and took out the pitchfork. The end of one of the prongs would work well, if it wasn't attached to the thing and I didn't need it for my other idea. I sighed and sat down as I thought about it. My eyes landed on the wildwood tree pieces I had cut up and added to the smoker. I gasped and saw that they were blackened on the ends and they increased the smoke.

I went over to the smoker and used a set of metal tongs I had bought and plucked one of the side pieces out of it and only the very tip of it was blackened and started to be ashen in color. I blew on it to try and reduce the heat and let it cool, then took it in my hand. It was a bit thick and hard to handle; but, it would do.

I took that and the piece of paper outside and went back to where I started by the shallow water in the back. I marked a line on the corner of the paper and started counting the sticks from there and all the way to the front of the dry area and stopped at the waterway. I was at a hundred and fifty two. Now I was stumped.

How did I write that down? I asked myself. It took me a minute to remember that a number in front of a number mean tens of that number and smiled. Ten tens were a hundred, so I wrote down a ten, then I knew fifty was a five in front of another number, and two was the last. I had 1052 on my page and smiled. “I did it!”

I made another mark on the top corner of the paper and counted the sticks along the front of the dry area and ended with ninety five. I wrote 95 on the page and kept going. I counted them all the way to the back and ended with 1086. I frowned at the number, then was surprised when I counted all the way back to where I started and it was 1030.

“That's not right, is it? I must have counted wrong. The lines are straight and...” I stopped talking and used the vigilance technique as I looked over at the sticks. My lines were straight... but... what if the dry area wasn't?

I went back inside the hut and made another pile of sticks and went back out. I started at the side of the hut and went over to the front waterway with the sticks and then went back to the hut and added them from there to the back of the dry area. I counted them up and marked it on my paper. It was 1066, which was between the distance between the two sides and proved that the dry area wasn't like the top down drawing of the boat.

I knew it was a different shape; but, I didn't know what shape it was. I only had the numbers and they didn't match, which meant I needed to match them up, somehow. I knew I needed a lot more space than a boat for a place to live, so I gathered up all of the sticks and brought them back to the hut. I used them to measure the hut on the outside and found that it was twenty sticks by thirty sticks.

That surprised me, because it looked the same size inside. I couldn't measure the inside, not with all the stuff inside, and I knew I wanted a lot more room than what was in the hut. Plus, the new boat would have been half the size of the hut and two boats would take up nearly the same space with twenty four sticks by twenty five sticks.

Now that I knew how much room I had in the dry area, it was time to work out what I wanted. I definitely needed a whole room for smoking meat and then another room for ingredient storage, then another room for potion storage and maybe a whole room by itself for making potions. It was always so cramped inside the hut when I had everything in it together, so I definitely needed to make rooms for everything.

Since I wanted plenty of room, I decided to make each room twenty sticks wide. That was four rooms and if I put them side by side, that was eighty sticks. Since the front of the dry area was ninety-five, I wouldn't have much room on either side, so I changed it to only three rooms across, which was sixty sticks, and that gave me lots of room on either side. I needed a kitchen, a bedroom, and also supplies storage. That added three more rooms.

“Boy, the rooms sure are adding up.” I said and thought about the size of the thing on the side, and decided that I might as well add in three more rooms and would decide what to make them into later. When I was done, it was three rooms, three rooms, and three rooms, with the hut in the middle room. Once I had everything else built up around it, I could empty it and destroy it.

That thought alone gave me strength. I would get to destroy the thing that the Hag kept me in and did horrible things to me all these years. Now I was really motivated to get started, so I gathered up as many rocks as I could. Once I had a huge pile of them, I had to figure out how I was going to make what I wanted.

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You have a choice to make. It will change how you make your new home.

A) Copy the block making technique. B) Do something different. C) Carve out what you want.

Hey, thanks a lot. I thought in genuine appreciation. Now I have a much better idea than just making blocks. I'll choose C.

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My mind was working overtime on how I was going to make as many blocks as I could, except that I had a limited amount of rock to make such a huge stone block structure out of. My eyes went to my boat and how I had made the middle piece and carved out the shape that I wanted and then waterproofed it.

“THAT'S IT!” I yelled and jumped to my feet. I ran into the hut and grabbed the hand saw, the hatchet, and rope, then left the hut and ran off to the side of the dry area and crossed the shallow water to go deeper into the marsh.

It didn't take me long to find a nice sized tree and I quickly cut the thing down with the hatchet. I used that and the hand saw to clean off the branches and to remove the thinner top, since I wouldn't need it, then used the rope to tie it up with a harness and hooked it over my shoulders to run back to where I lived. I easily crossed the water and stopped in front of the hut, peeled the bark off of the tree, and segmented it into thick planks five sticks long.

I used the number ten potion to meld enough of them together to make it five sticks long, then melded sides onto it to make a box that was six inches deep and five sticks wide and five sticks long. I used a fortifying potion and let it sit to make it much stronger than it normally was, then added the waterproof potion. Once it was sunk it, I now had the exact size of the stone block I would need. Four of them would make half of a room wall and eight would make it ten sticks high.

I quickly made four more boxes, since I had plenty of wood, and now I had enough to make four large stone blocks at a time, that wouldn't be too heavy to move. I carefully placed various stones into them and then added the number ten potion that I had made. I filled them right up, so they were all the same, and left them to harden and for the potion to assume the properties of the stone.

I went inside and ate some of the meatiest and tastiest stew that I ever had, waited for the potion to set, then went back out and dumped out the wood boxes. Since they were waterproof, the potion hadn't stuck to it and only stuck to the stones I had placed in them. It worked perfectly, so I did it again... and again and again. I needed a lot of them, so I kept working, eating, slept when I wanted to, and kept making stone blocks.

It took me a week to make all ninety six blocks for the outer walls and meld them together. I had been tempted to make window holes, then realized that I didn't have windows to use. I didn't want to use the ones in the hut, because I wanted to wreck that thing completely, so I made wood blocks to fit into the spaces where windows would go if I ever found any to put them in. I also put a thin layer of stone over them, so that it looked like it was solid stone on the outside.

Once I had the outer walls done, I needed to make the floors. Each room took sixteen blocks to cover the floor and I had nine rooms, which turned out to be even more blocks than I needed for the walls!

I chuckled at that, since it didn't make sense to me. It took me another week and a half to make them all. The problem I had was I couldn't do the center room or the side room, because the hut occupied them.

I also didn't have a roof.

I thought about making it flat, then decided that would be a huge mistake, especially considering the creatures that lived in the marsh. They would love to have a large flat area to nest on, which was the problem I had when the wards had failed. It hadn't taken them long to move in to try and claim it and I didn't want to have that problem again. I just didn't know what kind of roof to put on the thing.

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You have a choice to make.

A) Keep working. B) Rest. C) Read. D) Gather ingredients. E) Brew potions.

I sighed as I read the options. I guess that means I can't rest if I go read. I thought and read the options again. Well, I don't really have anything else to do, since I need to get my new home built before winter. I better choose C.

_______________

I decided to delay building my home for a day and went inside the hut, since I had been working for two weeks straight, and I ate a nice meal of stew. It wasn't drying out, even after being constantly on the fire for all this time, and I kept adding more ingredients and the occasional sprinkle of fungus powder.

My eyes caught sight of the small burlap bag with the reading things in it and I decided to go over everything again. I took my time as I laid down on my bed, since I wasn't in a rush, and I finally reached the two other books that didn't teach me anything. Instead of putting them aside like I normally did, I decided to try and read them again.

A lot of the words didn't make sense, since I hadn't heard them before, and I skimmed over a lot of it. I flipped the pages and looked at the pictures as I read the parts that I could. I got a little better at it, which I was happy about, then I flipped the next page and caught my breath. I saw a picture of a grey house that kind of looked like mine. It didn't say how big it was, so I couldn't be sure.

I did my best to read that page, even though some of the words I couldn't work through. They were long and I couldn't even sound them out, because they sounded weird. Something on the top of the wall that looked like stone teeth had a really long name and I didn't even bother with it. I tried to read everything else and it described the walls as eight men high.

I laughed at that. “That would make it so everyone would see it!” I said and shook my head and read more. It described the inside and it was stone and had stairs and rooms. “Lots of people must live in it.” I said and flipped the page and read about a king, a queen, and their daughter. I thought she looked pretty and her blonde hair was a lot like Diane's.

I sighed about her having to see John die and kept reading. I came near the end of the story and my eyes locked onto the picture and the words below it.

“The sloped wooden roof kept the drag-on at bay long enough for the ka-night to fight it off.” I read out loud and looked back at the picture. The roof was a triangle, just like the letter A. “I'm going to need a lot more wood.”