The watery form of Poseidon’s Wrath rippled every time I moved my wrist, as if it were a living serpent tattoo with a mind of its own. The ice blue striations of the three prongs still gleamed even as I rubbed it with my other hand. Every few moments though I still felt the phantom pains of my hands burning from the integration of my Granite Gauntlets with Svalinn, which wasn’t helping me as I searched for Spot in the Arizona desert. My hoverboard allowed me to travel easily but it still required a semblance of concentration as sand lizards and mutated giant condors frequented the area. What almost took my head off an hour ago was a small group of creatures that looked like stacked boulders in the shape of a human. Those twenty foot tall fuckers chucked rocks as I zoomed past their cliffs that I could’ve sworn weren’t there a few months ago. Just how much was the Earth still changing, still shifting?

I mean, the desert is still the desert, but I’ve flown over this area before and I know for a fact that that creek wasn’t there, those cliffs weren’t there before, there’s a random ass mountain up yonder . . .

[Yes, your world is shifting, get over it. I didn’t make a program to run your castle without you so you could gripe on a freaking joyride!]

[Look, I appreciate the automation but you can’t tell me that this doesn’t freak you out a bit?! Seriously? Angry rock golems chucking rocks from mountains that didn’t exist before? Oh look! Sand lizards dueling it out with four-winged condors while eastern dragon-looking velociraptors drool just waiting for the initial fight to be over.]

Kraken’s laughter rang in my head. [This is just the beginning! Enjoy the ride while it lasts! I mean, you sealed up a Way into Faerie! Earth’s sister is probably merging and then all kinds of fun hell is gonna break loose! That seal won’t last for long and then a whole bunch of super-hot murderous Fae are gonna start claiming land. I suggest you hop on it. Besides, they got monsters for days . . . .]

My familiar explained the basics of the Fae power structure and economy as my link with Spot showed me that we were getting closer. All in all, basically the Fae center around power, but their power is intrinsically tied to claimed land, which means that when they get out on Earth’s soil, it’ll be a wholesale landgrab that’ll put the Western Expansion to shame. Luckily, the pointy eared bastards were weak to iron, which my earth sorcery was more than happy to supply. Apparently some lore still holds true, which, after making a quick mental note to refortify all of my holdings with iron, we saw Spot tussling at the mouth of a cave with several smaller versions of himself. Spot’s mostly crimson coloring was now streaked with tan, I’m guessing a side effect of his dragon traits taking on the environment as well as the most abundant source of meat, sand lizards.

[Now, where’s his cunt of a mate?] I wondered, circling the area while deciding not to worry about my dragonized dog. Big floofer can fend for himself now. The oversized mama wolf however, wasn’t exactly happy to have a human being around her pups last time, even if said person was the master of her pups’ dad which meant that I still had to be careful. Careful in my mind, was hovering via SAW’s wings about a hundred yards off the ground, giving me a good view. From way up here, I could see my dog playing happily with his pile of fuzzy offspring just in front of the mouth of the cave that rested at the bottom of the fifty foot cliffs. The meandering beginnings of a river provided a convenient source of water, and just the idyllic vibe this little place was giving me made it harder to go down and say hi to Spot.

He just looked so happy, playing with his pups, a magical desert full of new kinds of food with a kick-ass wolf mate . . . fuck. I could see it so easily, the start of another wolf pack, but one made of mythical canines with descendants full of flesh sorcery and dragon characteristics, eventually becoming epic in a way that all nerds would dream of. But it could just as easily go the other way, people coming from far and wide to get an altered wolf companion of their own, one that can get stronger the more it eats, not even fearing dragons or griffins in its quest for eternal ascendance. The pack would be no more, each pup taken far from its home, forced into slavery and sold to the highest bidder. Thanks dour imagination of mine, conjuring horrible ideas that may never, hopefully, come true.

Even as I flew down and landed on the cliff overlooking the happy crew, I sat on the edge pondering all the ways this upcoming adventure could go wrong, and did I really need Spot for invading Greenland. I mean, he’s a big dog, so big that he could flip a freaking tank with one paw if he wanted too. Think Clifford the Big Red Dog size, but with crimson scales, a flaming bark, and a collar that lets him shrink down to normal dog size but still have the physical strength, weight and mass as if he were huge. That dog could be my ticket in and out of whatever undead army or ice castle the Hungry Ones erected.

This was my mission though, one that I’d taken on myself and hadn’t actually pushed anyone else to accept. Reeanth would follow me to the ends of the Earth and Acantha is my ward, but Johnny is the closest thing I have to a friend, and Spot would be perfect as backup. Versonae and Arglyn though, would be perfect bodyguards for Johnny and Reeanth, and in a perfect world, that entire group would be my inner circle. Johnny would be the fighter, perfectly equipped to deal out some serious damage and disrupt a concerted attack. Reeanth with her seriously powerful enchanted gear would serve as a perfect frontline tank for me, her maul and tower shield (a copy of what I gave my brother but hadn’t actually given to Reeanth yet) would make her an immovable bulwark. Acantha’s fire magic sets her apart as she is the initial artillery. With her combustion capabilities and the different kinds of fire at her disposal along with the wands I made for her with the mana batteries, the classic horde of undead wouldn’t stand a chance.

And then, another burst of inspiration struck my daydream, the friends I’d made at New Richmond, the Glyph Blades and Jamal the Dragon Hearted, fearlessly charging the ice castle in gleaming suits of armor specifically enchanted to enhance their fledgling powers as well as protect them from the unending swarm of living dead. But again, I couldn’t do that to the children, they still require constant protection. I didn’t harbor any false impressions, they still live in a forest on a planet undergoing its own violent shift due to the intake of magical energies.

Which left me with myself to take on whatever Big Badboy was up in that castle and my golem army to take on whatever managed to survive Acantha’s onslaught. For once though, I cursed my choices of sorcery as an idea struck me, a daydream of driving one of the floating islands over the Hungry Ones castle and simply dropping a freaking mountain right on top of it. Do that twice and it would solve my problem, but I didn’t have air or wind sorcery. Other ideas came and went, using mana batteries to power large fans to direct a floating island, or making a pact with air elementals to do it for me, or maybe even spending some time to make a magical version of a hydrogen bomb.

But curiosity picked at my brain even more than that. I’ve spent all this time preparing, making an army, enchanting boatloads of epic magical gear, and here I was planning on doing something else than actually using what I had prepped! Classic procrastination technique, fill your life with plans that get in the way of the actual work, so you still feel accomplished but haven’t actually done the thing you set out to do. Fuck it. Also, giving them even more time to get dug in will only make my job harder. Popping up to my feet, I let out a shrill whistle and called out through my mental link, “Come’ere Spot! Here boy!” Party Time!”

Getting my dog back to Sunstone Castle was actually way easier than I had expected. With a happy yelping howl, Spot sprang to the top of the cliff in two bounds. Waves of elation and pure love bombarded me through our link as he tackled me to the ground, covering me in layers of giant dog slobber. “Ack! Help! Dog spit phffhphph!” Immune to my cries for relief, Spot licked me from head to toe, communicating thoughts of, ‘happy!’, ‘master!’, ‘play!’. And so I did, I played with my dog and his pups while Kraken grumbled about the end of the world, muttering something about not even doing a scouting trip. And that, that caught my attention. Intel. I need more intel, the eyes-on kind of intel.

[And you might want to check in with Reeanth as well . . .] Kraken’s tone was a bit on the slightly angry father side, the kind where you knew you were in trouble but not exactly what kind of trouble you were in.

[What’s wrong with her?] I shot back, already planning my trip to Greenland.

[You upend her worldview of magic, sorcery, and genetic recombination, stick her with the humans at New Richmond, and then run off with a crazy fire witch with legitimate issues and then raze a city to the ground. She’s your sworn vassal and might have some stake in the game.]

His reasoning wasn’t bad even though the context was a little off. It’s not my fault that my sorcery completely flipped her understanding of why the Centauri do their genetic ‘fixing’, and it’s also not my fault that she walked away from the opportunity of upgrading her body because of that. This is the problem with being a bit of a loner, or honestly, a legit hermit. Sometimes, most of the time, you don’t really think about other people, you just go ham at whatever goal is at the top of the list. My pre-apocalypse workaholic tendencies were getting in the way of building the bonds that a team or partnership would generally have.

But I couldn’t let my personal problems distract me from a legitimate issue. I need to put eyes on the problem itself. I need to scout out Greenland, set up a forward operating base, set up and test a Yggdrasil-based portal connection to the area, set up and test the energy tap to sustain my sunstone golem army, and then hopefully capture and experiment on a couple Hungry Ones. I have to know what I’m dealing with, and being over prepared is not going to hurt me, in fact, it’s probably going to keep me alive.

Since Spot is smart, but not as smart as a human, I essentially sent him broad strokes of feelings and ideas to communicate to him that we were going to be leaving his kids for a while but we’d be bringing them to new friends later, and we could play to his heart’s content at that point in time. And because my dog is literally one of the best creatures in all of existence, he was more than happy to come along. I flew out and returned an hour or so later with a couple paralyzed sand lizards to tide over his pups and we made our way back to Sunstone Castle where I communed with Kraken as Spot set off to re-sniff and re-mark his territory.

[What you’re proposing isn’t really as insane as you might think it is . . .]

[Really?] I asked, staring down at the holo-map inside my mind space as Kraken made colorful outlines to the area.

[Really. Greenland is a land of ice and snow, but there is still a significant presence of tundra with large patches of evergreen trees. And since you made an oak tree as well as a baobab tree into roots of Yggdrasil itself, it stands to reason that there’s no reason you couldn’t do it to a large pine tree. It doesn’t take much energy for you to portal out there, but you would basically have to recreate the same setup over there that you have here, especially if you want to get back. This means you’d need large solar panel rituals with a power containment building at the center attached to the modified Yggdrasil tree/root, and you’d have to be there to make sure it’s defended.] Poking at the map, a bright red dot lit up at the very bottom of the landmass. [That right there, this valley area, that’s the only place left with some sort of plant life. It should serve your purpose well enough.]

Grabbing the map with my mental hands, I zoomed in on the area. [You got this from that meditation with the World Tree right?]

[Yup.]

[Tight, okay . . . I think we will go with the same approach that I’ve done so far but with a twist. The valley should help in masking the massive amounts of magical energy that’ll be in the area, but I think this time, instead of building up, we’ll be building down. The tree with the main building will be in the center of the valley, but the solar panels will be up the mountain sides and then on the plateaus up there as well. This will spread out the magical signature and make the energy gathering ritual way bigger, which we’ll need as the sunlight will be our main source of power.]

[Good plan, but remember, don’t rule out finding convenient ley lines. Valleys tend to be where rivers and good soil come together, and where that happens, there’s life . . .]

[And where there’s life, there’s mana.] I finished.

********

My preparations for my scouting trip took a lot less time to plan than my small but mounting anxiety wanted. In order to tamp down on the magical signature of myself and my armor, I used my flesh golem to make sheets of dry minotaur skin and dried sinew which I then made into a pair of oversized pants, moccasins, and a poncho with a hood. This, combined with my own sorcery-assisted control of my aura, would pretty much get invisible to any kind of magical radar that my as-of-yet-unmet enemy would use. After confirming with Kraken that I was correct in my assessment, I made two more sets, one for Reeanth and another for Acantha, and then a few large blankets of it for pretty much anything else.

The issue that soon unfolded was not one that I wanted to deal with though. My arrival at New Richmond after flying in from my home at the Hole after portaling in from Sunstone Castle coincided with a formal town meeting that I didn’t know about, nor did I want to know about. Arriving in the town usually meant that Scott and the guys either greeted me with drinks or the kids would run up and want some new magic toy to play with, but the place was a ghost town at first glance.

Rap! Rap! Rap! Spot’s keen ears caught the sound of wood smacking wood, our mental link allowing me to hear what he did. Following his lead, we arrived at a large, well-built pavilion where the entire population of the burgeoning town was sitting on crudely grown benches while others were leaning up against the pavilion support beams. “Order!” Jamal yelled, continuing to bang the gavel. I stayed hidden behind the corner of a longhouse, watching as everyone kept arguing. “ORDER!” Jamal’s roar was punctuated with a burst of dragonfire that he spit off to the side, finally succeeding in getting everyone’s attention. “Thank you, now, Cassandra. I believe you were saying something?”

“Thank you.” It was interesting to see how calm she was even though I could tell from the body language of the crowd that a large chunk of them were legitimately angry. “I’m not saying we have to do anything. I’m saying that we can do something. We hold leverage here, more than you realize. Look, we already have a codified set of laws, people are starting to get into a normal routine for life, and we have what we need to make a start of a truly great settlement. What we’re missing is more people. The Centauri have already started putting down roots in the Florida area and are willing to help more base humans get here if they so choose. The Aelves and Dwarves would fall over themselves to trade with us in a few years, and there’s a sorcerer with a Messiah complex who’s about to get rid of this world’s greatest threat. I’m saying that it’s time to grow!”

A lady I didn’t recognize stood up in the middle. “That’s good and all, but our children need to go to school, or at least get schooling of some kind. If we’re going to integrate with galactic society, then we’ll need to get them up to galactic standards.”

“Yes, you in the back,” Cassandra said, pointing at a well built man in the back who joined in, his scales flexing as he scratched his back.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea yet, there’s still too much we don’t know. We have a posse of magic users who are learning, teaching, and applying magic but haven’t figured out the best way to use it yet. The men folk are keeping up with the hunting demands and the greenhouses are exploding with food. We’re in a good position to grow right now, but we need our roots to solid before we take in more of anything.”

“Ronald’s right,” Mark agreed. “Between the flesh golem letting us get to a new standard of health as well as powerful and what the witch is willing to teach us, we’re doing pretty damn good.”

Acantha frowned at being called ‘witch’ but Reeanth placed her hand on Acantha’s shoulder, forestalling a complaint. Reeanth shook her head and squeezed. I got it, the Centauri woman wanted to let her know that it wasn’t her place.

“But we’re missing something crucial, you guys! We need a teacher!” Cassandra said, her voice growing more firm as her youthful enthusiasm took over. “There’s so much we don’t know, having an experienced sounding board from a society with thousands of years of experience could revolutionize our progress! Just think about-”

Her voice cut off as Spot bounded into view, barking up a storm. The damn dog just couldn’t contain his enthusiasm as several children caught his eye. “Sorry! Sorry!” I called out, running from my hiding spot and grabbing my canine by the collar. He didn’t give a flying fuck as I couldn’t stop the three-quarters of a ton dog’s momentum from taking me along for the ride. “Spot! Bad dog! Hunting mode, remember! Quiet watchfulness!”

“Bad form mate,” Scott chuckled, “bad form.”

“You’re not British, damn it,” Mark growled. “We’ve been over this.”

“I can be whatever I want now!” Scott joked, poking Mark in the arm. “The world’s got a fresh start, which means this accent is now the new Southern accent. We’re still in Virginia, right?”

“Fantastic timing!” Lovera cut in, the gorgeous women using my clumsy entrance to bring people back on topic. It didn’t help that she was disgustingly hot, or that her voice sounded like smooth chocolate. I don’t care that that doesn’t make sense. My sex drive rebounded off the iron walls of my flesh sorcery induced control, leaving small cracks that I oh so quickly repaired. “And what does our benefactor have in the input?”

I mean, I did have an opinion, but my priorities were so different that I’m sure it shouldn’t have any bearing. Were I them, I would’ve organized a few hunting parties and started clearing out anything that would be a threat to the children, starting with the harpies to east and then working clockwise from there. Then I’d make big ass walls and use the earth elementals to make very secure stone housing and more than a few bunkers while having the water elementals be on fishing duty. Shaking away my thoughts, I stuck them to a mental sticky note for later and grabbed Spot by the collar again. “Nope, don’t mind me. I’m just here for my team,” I said, futilely pulling at the dog who was solely concentrating on what he considered ‘playtime’. “Y’all do your thing and I’ll do mine. Reeanth! Acantha! Johnny, fuck, where’s Johnny?”

Lovera answered. “Your friend said something about harpies being perfect crafting material? He did mention that floating islands might be better cultivation spots then mountain tops too. His Lunek is with him as well, to watch his back.”

“Shit.” I cursed. “Ya know when he’ll be back?”

“He did also talk about acquiring a bloodline, my lord,” Reeanth responded. “He did say that you’d be the best one to help him after that.”

[He could be gone for a week or ten years,] Kraken remarked internally. [You never know with cultivators. He probably found his way into another dimension by now and will have a difficult time returning.]

[That can’t be fucking real,] I mentally growled back with a hint of exasperation. [I need another heavy hitter as a backup!]

“Ok, fine!” Throwing my hands up, I walked up to the side of the sitting crowd and conjured a square pillar of light gray stone. Using my finger to spell as my earth sorcery traced with my finger to turn the stone to black, I wrote out a list as I spoke. “My priorities are way different from all of yours, but that doesn’t mean y’all don’t have valid points. Growth is needed just as much as securing your foundations. Your greatest threats though are definitely from the outside. There’s no army or police force to help secure this place from danger, it’s all you guys.”

Still writing, I spelled out a few priorities.

Secure safety. Secure food. Gather info.

“I mean, it’s pretty simple. Jamal, Mark, Scott, all you guys, get together as a team and learn how to work as a cohesive unit, working as a team to clear out anything that you wouldn’t want around the kids. The rest of the town should be focusing on the food production, mainly the greenhouses and fishing while the others who are inclined differently work with learning and experimenting with magic. This includes incorporating the elementals and the weapons I’ve left here. And when the security team gets back from doing their thing in the woods and the surrounding area, they’ll be the ones to go gather info, probably with the Centauri as the first option.”

“What about the Fae?” Scott cut in. “They’ve been banging on the main greenhouse from the inside for almost a week now. The hell are we supposed to do with that?”

“I mean,” I groaned, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t fuckin’ know. That’s y’alls fish to fry. Who knows anything about the Fae? Any old tales or myths that might have some truth to’em?”

Cassandra answered that one. “Frankly, there are too many tales for us to come to a singular conclusion on that. They could either be cannibalistic monsters that hunger for children or magic powerhouses that want our land. The only commonality we can find is that they don’t like iron.”

“Well there you go!” I yelped, happy about something going right. “You got earth elementals around here, have them find or conjure piles of the stuff and use it to tip the crystal rounds. Easy day.”

“Like this?” Sheila, the little girl who I showed how to work the earth wand a few months ago waved her wand at the short elemental next to her. “Come on, Rocky! We did this with pretty stones, now make iron!” The three foot tall living pile of rocks put its stubbly hands on the ground, it’s coal eyes unblinking as it conjured a rough sphere of iron. “Lovely!” she exclaimed, doing a little dance. “I did good?”

Lovera leaned over and picked up the sphere. “You did perfect, you cutie.” Giving Sheila a hug, Lovera handed it to me. “Does this meet our requirements?” Her sultry voice almost made me forget what she just said, even as my earth sorcery reached out to confirm.

“Yup,” I gulped. “That little princess and her friend will make this place Fae-proof if you let her. And I recommend you do.” Lovera’s hand lingered on my wrist as I handed it back to her.

[Trouble.] Kraken chortled. [I thank the Scions that I don’t have to contend with biology.]

Figuring that I’d done enough, I less than politely grabbed Reeanth and Acantha and dragged them off with Spot so we could get going. Versonae followed behind quietly as the three of us argued. “Scouting ‘party’ doesn’t mean that we scout and party, it means a group of individuals who scout together.” Arguing with Acantha and Versonae about the irregularities of the English language wasn’t what I wanted to be doing at this point in time. I had a goal, an achievable goal to help me gather information and avoid certain death by unknowable things. And, it was high time to get moving on said goal.

It was also time for me to catch on some things. Apparently, Reeanth was invaluable when a small delegation of Centauri visited from New Miami to establish contact and hopefully trading in the future. She had wisely maneuvered the visitors into granting diplomatic gifts, some of which adorned the fingers of the women in front of me.

“Storage rings? You have spatial magic to store shit and it doesn’t weigh a goddamn thing?” Luckily, my outrage didn’t occur as we were portaling through the World Tree’s root from former Fredericksburg to Sunstone Castle. It did pour out afterwards though in the form of constant grumbling as I threw supplies at each of them. Quickly making another set of minotaur skin leather clothing for Versonae, I alternated between grumbling about their good fortune and telling them about my plan.

“Sounds like a lot of nothing for us to do,” Acantha complained as Versonae stuck her hands into my flesh golem. “And that’s not a toy!”

“Do not reprimand my servant,” Reeanth snapped. “And as a vassal, it isn’t your place to whine. Simply offering alternatives to the plan is more than sufficient if you have a good idea.” Turning to me, Reeanth lightly coughed. “I believe, my lord, that what my fellow vassal is trying to say is that we will not be fully utilized in this particular course of action. Might I suggest using us to scout while the operating base is underway?”

[Their magical signature is actually far less dense than yours, even with your armor doing most of the work,] Kraken commented. [Although, the extra layer of minotaur skin almost does enough to mute it. You’d basically be at their level as long as you aren’t actively using magic.]

“The spirit seems to agree,” Acantha smirked, picking at her nails. The damn woman could tell when I held my internal conversations.

“Fine, but you’re going to have to take turns. Versonae will be on outer perimeter duty all the time but you and Reeanth are either going to switch off on the sorcerer watching duty or work as a team on the scouting. That’s non-negotiable, besides, I have a few more things to get ready. We leave in three days.”