"Wow. I can see what all of the fuss is about." Chantelle said. "Though the feedback of our connection drives out everything else that is important. We should go, you need to make your preparations and we need to save my people."

She was right. Mind blowing orgasms were nice, but with the world coming to an end we needed to protect ourselves. Though more immediate concerns were food and a bath. A bath would be wonderful. I was pretty sure I had bruises on my back.

We both got dressed and I finished carving the Pocked Dimension doorway symbols into the only remaining doorway. I closed my eyes for the connecting flash and stepped through into my shelter. It was just as I'd left it, and I quickly lit the oil lanterns.

Heading up the stairs I unsealed the entrance and stepped out into the cold. It was light outside again, and I could see the clearing had been trampled, my bonfire scattered around the place very thoroughly. Some of the half burned logs were encased in ice.

I cleared out the fire pit and set about building a new bonfire, and also getting a fish from the frozen stream. I cooked up the fish and used the energy of the bonfire to duplicate Chantelle's muffin and we sat down for a nice breakfast at the edge of the platform.

I was idly shuffling snow around when I found a letter at the bottom of the shelter's door. It was paper, folded over and sealed with wax, the image of a tree pressed into it. Opening it up I found a language I couldn't read, and showing it to Chantelle she couldn't read it either.

I really need to set up my Artificial Intelligence. One of the advanced features I had within my knowledge of AIs is accelerated language learning, though I'm not sure if there is enough of a sample size for it to be able to guess at the contents of the letter.

"My next immediate project is building a bath downstairs." I told Chantelle. "I like the way you smell, but we're a bit sticky. Is there anything you need?"

"A bath sounds wonderful." She said. "Other than that, a warding room, if we're staying a while? I don't have a mana crystal big enough to serve as a consistent power source, but I can work around that. Somewhere central, so the wards have good coverage."

A room next to the entrance room, then, on the opposite side of the bonfire. A bath, a warding room, and a private room for Chantelle.

A bath was up first, so I went downstairs to carve out a new hallway and room. I added them in the opposite direction to my Pocket Dimension hallway, leaving the wall opposite where the stairs came out to expand later.

I sank the bath into the floor with stairs down into it and a seat around the edge, oil lamps lit the area well. I didn't have any way to add running water, so I filled it with snow and melted it to a steaming temperature. I went to get Chantelle, and we stripped off and sank into the water. We behaved ourselves, though it was very tempting running my hands over her to scrub her back. I had work to do.

After I was clean I reheated the water to let Chantelle soak and headed upstairs to build her warding room.

I didn't quite have enough left over stone from the bath project, so I cut out two rooms downstairs on either side of the bathroom hallway to serve as our private rooms. Back upstairs I made a doorway out of the entrance room and built the warding room. A four meter by four meter room with a stone table in the center.

I could excavate or build rooms and fixtures as easily as moving furniture, though I did have to stop and build up a fresh bonfire to charge my orb every so often. If Chantelle needed anything specific for the warding room she could let me know.

I went to tell her that it was ready for her. She had washed her clothing and spread it out over the floor of one of the side rooms to dry, so I made some stone stands for them and heated them up. She had changed into a spare dress that was in her backpack. She went to prepare wards for the clearing, the Forest Keeper ward being the most pressing, and I settled down to work on my AI.

The first thing I needed for the AI was metal. Something conductive like copper or gold, and something I could magnetise like iron. If I pushed my power into the bedrock below me and focused it into a beam rather than let it spread out I could extend my power much further. The narrower the beam the further I could push, and with a thin strand of power the furthest I could reach was about fifty meters.

Although it took some time and effort to move the entire beam, and I couldn't make my power do anything at that distance, I now had a way to scan for metals.

I had found a vein of copper and was still looking for iron when Chantelle shook me.

"You need to come up to the clearing." She said. "I can't keep the Forest Keeper ward on, and have been turning it on as I've recovered mana, and there are lights in the trees at the edge of the clearing outside the ward's range."

I went upstairs to find that it was night again. My bonfire had burned down and provided little light. There was a cool blue-white light coming from the top of trees further into the forest directly opposite the stairs and entry to my shelter. I lit the oil lamps at the nearest two corners of my building and immediately there was hooting from the forest. The blue-white light moved to the forest floor and approached. As it came out from behind the trees I saw that it was coming from the top of a staff held by a Forest Keeper, who had two others with it that were holding spears.

"Greetings, human." The one with the staff said from just within the clearing. "You called for a meeting?"

I looked at Chantelle who shrugged and shook her head. Well, if it was going to be polite then I would too.

"Greetings, keeper." I said. "I don't believe I called for a meeting, but you are welcome in my clearing if you come in peace."

It cocked its head to the side, then nodded. It gestured to the other two to stay, and walked towards us. I formed three seats and a table out of stone as it approached, two seats on our side and one on its. It looked distastefully at the chair I had made for it, and then stood to the side.

Right, they were at home up in trees, and having a tail would make chairs uncomfortable at best. I reshaped its chair into a pair of horizontal stone cylinders with vertical supports, one that would put it at sitting height if it stood on it and sat in a squat, and the other in easy hand reach above.

The Forest Keeper looked at it in surprise, considered it for a moment, and then settled onto it.

"My thanks, human." It said. "You are the first human to have changed a meeting roost to accommodate us. I am called Mal'Thorn, and I speak for the Forest Keepers of this forest."

Mal'Thorn looked at me expectantly. Uh... I still hadn't picked a name.

"My name is C.C." I said, using the first thing that occurred to me.

I wasn't sure what the customs were with the Forest Keepers, and I wasn't going to claim to be representing anyone, so I waited for Mal'Thorn to continue.

"You have been toggling your claim off and on all day, which is the arranged signal calling for a meeting." Mal'Thorn said. "How is it that you know how to make a claim, but do not know the conditions that accompany it?"

Chantelle was confused and obviously had no idea what conditions Mal'Thorn was talking about. The Forest Keeper ward was obviously a way to claim an area of the forest.

"I am new here." I said. "I was under the impression that we were warding the clearing against your people. You attacked us not far from here."

"Ah, so your companion is a young Warder." Mal'Thorn said. "She has mistaken the purpose of the ward. For the area under the ward you take responsibility for the Forest, ensuring that no fire burns out of control. We have allowed humans an amount of area within the Forest, and with the claim failing for their village it was permissible for you to set up a claim here with the same signature."

"We didn't attack you." Mal'Thorn continued. "Obviously it was you who built the tower. My people were seeking to detain you until I could discuss with you about your setting fires in the forest outside of areas that were claimed. There should have been a letter left for you."

I got out the letter from within my cloak and pushed it over the table to him. "We found it today." I said. "We couldn't read it."

"Ah. My mistake, then." Mal'Thorn said. "I assumed anyone who would settle within the Forest would know our language. Keeping a fire burning without endangering the Forest is one way to open treaty talks with us. Which is what I am here for now. Upon consideration I do not believe the existing treaty with the humans of the village covers you. Do you wish to form a treaty with us? If not, you will be asked to leave the forest."

"What are the terms of the treaty?" I asked.

"You will be given a ward that will claim an area one kilometer to a side." Mal'Thorn said. "Within that area you must ensure that no tree burns out of control and that no more than one tree in ten will be cut down without being replaced with new saplings."

"That sounds simple enough." I said. "I agree to the treaty."