Dael, Mal'Thorn, and Mal'Thorn's two guards followed Chantelle and I down the inside stairs to the warding room. Chantelle stopped for a moment at one of the relay crystals and the alarm shut off.

"What's happening?" Dael asked on our way down the stairs. "Is the fortress under attack?"

"Chantelle set up a detection ward that covers my lands." I said. "It detects when people come onto my land. The alarm triggers when they are still over four hundred meters from the walls. So no matter who it is, we aren't under attack yet."

"The ward is set up to detect anything larger than half-human size." Chantelle said. "There is some leeway, if they aren't headed towards the middle of the claim the alarm won't trigger. The claim ward is a circle, so creatures could enter at one point and exit across the circle. So long as they don't get within four hundred meters of the center they aren't detected as a potential threat."

This was the first time I'd heard the details of the ward. So long as it all worked I was happy to leave the wards to Chantelle. I couldn't see them or affect them in any way, and she was the expert.

We got to the warding room and Chantelle and I headed for the table that was displaying the detection ward holograms. There was a formation of humans entering my lands from the north. Ten humans wide, they were marching directly towards my fortress. There were already over two hundred of them, and the count was going up as the column continued forward. Chantelle adjusted the contacts side of the display from its list mode to showing the front of the column. It looked like this was the winter priest army that Dael had warned me about. I turned to ask his and Mal'Thorn's opinion and found both of them, and Mal'Thorn's guards, stopped outside the room.

"Is there a problem?" I asked.

"That is the largest mana crystal I have ever heard of." Mal'Thorn said. "The amount of mana I can sense from it is simply immense."

"You saw me creating mana crystals." I said. "I don't know why you would be shocked that I would create something powerful for the wards on my fortress. We have more pressing concerns."

"Indeed." Mal'Thorn said. Dael just nodded, and all four of them joined us in the room. Dael walked up to the mana crystal pillar and laid his hands on it.

The red markers of the human army had reached the enlarged pavilion at the bottom of the outside stairs, and had split to start to surround the fortress. They weren't entering the pavilion, or trying to go up the stairs.

"The table too?" Mal'Thorn muttered as he came over to observe the display. "It looks as though they mean to besiege you."

"I did kill a large number of the last army they sent against me." I said. "There were some extra defences I wanted to get done before we were next attacked. These are winter priests?"

Dael came over to the table and rested his hands on it, placing them through the hologram.

"Yes." He said. "They don't look like they are going to attack, so you may have time to finish whatever preparations you had planned. You can hold the fortress against them?"

"I've only seen an example of one of their siege spells." I said. "But I built the walls to withstand that level of power before wards are considered. Which is important because they seem to be able to remove wards at their leisure."

"That is reassuring." Dael said distractedly. "In the treaty you stated you could provide us mana crystals in any amount that would be useful. Our mana regeneration has been halved on your lands. Could you place relay crystals in the fields, and may we use them and your fortress mana to speed the growing of our food bearing plants?"

I looked to Chantelle.

"I have been varying the intensity of the recharge ward." She said. "It covers the entirety of your land and we can easily power any number of high-intensity workings. I could enchant a variable strength relay effect onto small mana crystals, that way the druids could carry a permanent tap to the fortress mana source. It's the same effect that we put along with the sun enchantments, as they needed to be able to be moved before you fixed them in place."

"A dozen of those would allow us to grow our first harvest in a week instead of months." Dael said.

I nodded. "What do you need from me?" I asked Chantelle.

"A dozen small mana crystals." She said. "More if you wanted to give access to more spell casters."

I sat down to make the mana crystals, taking the material from the floor and walls. I really needed to set up a stockpile of material in the warding room. I formed the mana crystals into orbs, elongating one end to make them into teardrops, and leaving a hole through the top. Now they could be worn as a pendant, they just needed a chain or string threaded through the hole.

With that done I left Chantelle to her enchanting. She had made me a light stone, so I could see when I went down two floors to the level of the ground outside. Sinking my power into the stone of the walls I adjusted their outer surface to be covered in tiny razor sharp overlapping plates. Anything trying to climb the walls would shred their feet. I got half way through modifying the first floor when my power started bouncing off the very outside edge of my walls, where I wanted to modify.

I pushed heat into the area and it was quickly leached away. They were piling ice against my walls? I pushed more heat into my walls, melting the ice, which allowed me modify them again. I made a full circuit of the walls and melted all of the ice. The other defence I wanted was against mining my walls. At five meters in from the outside surface of the walls I converted the stone into air to create a twenty centimeter deep pocket in the stone.

The air was at the same density as the stone I was converting it from, which gave it an enormous amount of pressure. Anyone digging into a pocket would cause it to explode outwards, killing them and anyone behind them. I left a thirty centimeter wall and then made another pocket. I made ten pockets deep, in all, which left me with five meters of solid wall. Any siege spell that broke into the first pocket would be affected by the explosion caused.

I finished up the pockets in the walls of the ground level floor and headed up to modify the outer surface of the walls on the next floor up.

With that done I headed back to the warding room. Dael had left, but the others were still there. I hadn't sensed any alarm from Chantelle, so the army hadn't been doing anything threatening while I was improving the defences.

"What have they been up to?" I asked Chantelle.

"They're building an ice wall around the fortress." She said. "Initially they were building it against the walls, but after that one melted and fell onto the fortress they moved it back a meter and have been building it straight upwards. They've left a gap in the wall to let the stairs through, and they've set up a tent outside of the pavilion at the bottom of the stairs."

"What are they doing?" I asked. "We don't get our supplies from outside the fortress, a siege isn't going to do anything to us?"

"Perhaps they seek to stop you offering shelter to other groups they are persecuting." Mal'Thorn said. "There are many such groups, the druids aren't the only ones who have been petitioning us for aid."

"They're stopping us from rescuing my people, too." Chantelle said.

"Not very effectively." I said. "I went through their last army easily enough. I could just go down there and kill my way through them."

"Was the last army made up entirely of spell casters?" Mal'Thorn asked.

"Well, no." I said. "But I can counter any ice or cold effect they could use on me. As soon as they're within close range they will get out of my way or they will die."

"I suggest that it may be more complicated than that." Mal'Thorn said. "Spell casters are usually acutely aware that they need to keep their battles at range against melee fighters, and so have spells that ensure that they maintain that advantage. It might be possible for a diplomatic solution here. They aren't carrying open flames, and so aren't acting against any of our prohibitions, but Forest Keepers have traditionally been mediators between groups within the Forest."

"They've made their demands pretty clear." I said. "They want Chantelle on a manufactured charge of sedition against their god. I won't hand her over to them. She will be staying here where she is safe. But if you wish to try to negotiate terms, you are welcome to. You and your people are the only ones who would be inconvenienced by the siege."

Mal'Thorn nodded. I escorted him and his two guards to the outside stairs and saw them off. There were two oxen men, Brutus and the oxen man I had saved from the snow worm, standing on the stairs below the doors, guarding them. I nodded to the both of them after securing the doors and headed back to the warding room. I could feel Chantelle's annoyance, bordering on anger.

"I will be staying here, where I'm safe?" She yelled once I'd entered the room.

"Yes?" I said.

"We were going to rescue my people." She said. "You and I."

"I built this fortress to keep you safe." I said. "You wouldn't be safe running around who knows where, attacking a place called the Fortress of the Gods. That we don't even know where it is. Which is not even mentioning the army around us now."

"The druids have a summer priest with them." She said. "You didn't even ask him where the Fortress of the Gods is, did you?"

"There has been a lot going on." I said. "I don't want you to be angry with me. Our fortress is self-sufficient enough now that I can save your people. I don't know how we could keep you safe if I take you with me."

"I don't need to be safe." She said. "I need to rescue them. It's my fault they were imprisoned."

I opened my mouth to tell her it wasn't her fault when the table in the center of the warding room made the sound of breaking glass and flared red.