"Could you get the goat-lady enchanter to meet us in the warding room, please?" I asked Dael.

He frowned at me. "Her name is Maaata." He said.

Her name actually sounded like a goat, Ma-ah-ah-ta, which brought a smile to my face.

"I don't mean to be rude." I said. "With everything going on there hasn't been many introductions, I seem to be meeting people only to solve an immediate problem and then move on to the next one."

At least with my perfect memory I didn't forget any of the names I had heard.

"Greta, please inform Maaata she is needed in the warding room." Dael said.

The healer rabbit lady's name was Greta, I noted as she left. I would need to set aside some time to meet everyone at least once after I'd gotten Chantelle and her people back here.

"Mal'Thorn." I said, walking over to where he was perched. "How are you and your people?"

"We are well now, thank you." He said. "And thank you for your assistance with escaping the trap I led you into. And for the healing from your people. I am in your debt, personally, and I acknowledge that we Forest Keepers are in your debt also."

I nodded. "We will discuss it later." I said, and headed to the warding room.

Mal'Thorn and the Forest Keepers both felt they owed me favours? Of course, we didn't have a formal relationship as allies, that was just how I felt. Formally I was their vassal, or a landholder, under them. Something I would need to think on and sort out later. As always seemed to be the case, I had more immediate concerns.

Chantelle was two hundred and twenty kilometers to the north now, she seems to have moved. Preoccupied with a warding problem, if I was judging her mixture of emotions correctly. I didn't blame her for going to her family, but I needed to get her back. I would need to figure out a way to physically cross the distance to her. It would be unpleasant, but I could run continuously and refresh my muscles of their fatigue as I went.

More importantly I hadn't been using my Pocket Dimension very efficiently. I hadn't really needed to use it as a storage space, but it could also be used as a portal nexus. It would have taken the risk out of collecting Chantelle the first time, and I would be an idiot if I didn't set it up so I could return easily from two hundred kilometers away. I would just have to secure the doorways within the Pocket Dimension.

I made it to the warding room to find Maaata, Dael, Greta, and an old rabbit man I didn't know already there. The rabbit man had a crutch and a missing leg.

"Maaata, you can see wards and enchantments, yes?" I asked. "Could you please examine the mana crystal pillar."

She placed her hands on it. "I can." She said. "It is a complicated effect. Well outside my abilities, I'm more focused on enchantments. I can see the variable strength part, and how it can be changed to affect the pull of it. It's well designed, the variable part is completely isolated from the rest of the ward."

"Good." I said. "You are in charge of making sure the mana crystal doesn't overfill until Chantelle gets back."

I quickly made a dozen small mana crystal orbs and passed them to her.

"Feel free to make whatever enchantments you want with these." I said.

I turned to Greta. "I assume you wanted me to try to heal this man?" I asked her.

"Yes." She said. "Our healing only accelerates what the body can do naturally. We cannot fix disabilities; missing limbs, blindness, things of that nature. We have some success in fighting the frailties of age, but we can't extend our life-spans. Our People still die of old age. I don't know if you can cure all of the things we wish we could fix, but those are the main ones."

Old age. I probably could fix that, I thought. Change all of the cells in a body to repair any residual damage to them... It sounded like it would be worse than any of the pain I'd yet experienced, but it might be worth it. But I needed to be preparing to get Chantelle and her people here. Any time I spent now would have to save me at least that much time. I was done delaying.

Could healing the rabbit man save me any time?.. From the way Greta moved, a higher proportion of her muscle fibres must be of the fast-twitch sort. They moved a lot faster than the slow-twitch sort, which is what my physique was mostly made up of. The advantage of slow-twitch over fast-twitch is that they lasted longer before tiring. Which wasn't an advantage for me at all if I were going to be refreshing my muscles anyway, except that it would require me to refresh them faster. The time I spent healing the man, if I could at all, would easily be made up in being able to run faster.

"Alright." I said to Greta. "I will try to heal him. The only reason I am attempting it before I leave is because I might be able to copy his physical speed. If it wasn't going to help me right now we would be doing it when I got back instead."

The two rabbit people followed me to the bottom floor of the fortress, where I was going to set up my first secure Pocket Dimension doorway. I didn't see any need to make the doorway any shorter than the four and a half meter floor height, and I already had a wall I could make a doorway on where the stairs came down. I decided to make the doorway the full five meters across of the stairway wall, raising a skirting around it to carve the Pocket Dimension symbols into.

"Hello." I said, talking over my shoulder to the rabbit people as I worked. "My name is C.C., Lord of this fortress."

"I am Greta." Greta said. "And this is Ian."

"You are aware that if this works it will be more painful than anything you've ever felt?" I asked Ian.

"You don't know the pain I've felt." Ian said. "It would be worth it to have my leg back."

"I've lost an arm." I said. "I agree that it is worth it. But be prepared for it to be bad."

"I can use my healing to keep him unconscious." Greta said.

I shook my head. "Where we will be doing it you won't be able to use your magic." I said. "It's possible if we made it so that my power worked with your magic, Ian's magic, and then brought him back out here... But I don't think so. I believe pain is simply the cost of using my power in this way."

After all, my digital side treats pain and injuries to my body as data input from my senses. But the pain from modifying my cells was felt even more intensely by my digital side, as it lasted longer.

I finished up the symbols and there was a flash of light. The new doorway had opened right next to my existing one, which was annoying. The hardware that was running my digital side was right there, within smashing distance. I stepped through into the Pocket Dimension and heard a gasp from both rabbit people as they followed me.

"I told you." I said. "No mana."

What I needed was... Oh, that worked. My Pocket Dimension power let me move existing doorways around within the Pocket Dimension. I'd only tried it with my Matter Manipulation power before and that bounced off of the Pocket Dimension side of the doorways.

I had an evil thought, momentarily, of moving the outsides of two doorways with Matter Manipulation against each other, and crushing someone by pushing the two insides of the doorways together. Only momentarily because I realised it would be no different to doing the same with slabs of stone.

It did raise an interesting point of instant travel between two points, I would just have to move the two inner doorways to be touching. Entering one doorway from outside the Pocket Dimension would lead to immediately exiting out another doorway outside the Pocket Dimension.

I quickly moved the doorway to the bottom of the fortress away from my digital hardware and built a stone room around it with the spare stone I had stored in the Pocket Dimension. I raised a table in the middle of the room, and had an electric light in the ceiling.

I got Ian to lay on the table and got started. I really hoped it didn't require sex for this to work. I started to force my power against the barrier that started at Ian's skin, adding more and more power. Nothing was happening.

"It doesn't look like it's working." I said.

"My mana is draining." Ian said.

Okay, so long as something is happening I'd continue to try. After a few minutes my power started to sink into him.

"I'm at about half mana." Ian said. "And the drain is slowing down."

It took a lot of power and effort to push fully into him, but I got to the point where I had him completely full. I wanted a complete model of him, from the cells up, and so I started to scan him into my digital memory. It took a few minutes, and I had to model how the cells moved in his body, but I got it done. I would have to make a scan of my own body at some point, but I didn't have enough memory for myself and Ian at the same time.

It was simple to mirror his left leg in the model to give him a right leg. I double checked that everything; nerves, bones, and blood vessels; matched up perfectly. All ready to go. I had a chunk of stone of about the right mass that was going to be serving as the source matter.

"I'm ready." I said to Ian. "You can still back out at this point." He shook his head. "Okay then. Grit your teeth and brace yourself for the pain. You don't want to bite through your tongue. The last thing I will tell you is this, the pain will feel endless, but it will end. When it is done there will be no more pain."

I was still relying on a program to make the changes, but without the distraction of feeling the pain myself I would be able to watch the process. Giving Ian a final nod, I triggered the program.

Ian's body stiffened immediately and he screamed through his gritted teeth. His leg was about half done when he ran out of breath and his scream cut off. He had tears streaming down his face, and he couldn't breathe in. Thirty seconds later his leg was finished and he gasped in a breath.