Gerry finally dug his way out of the mound of different threads five minutes after I'd finished making him his mana crystal orb.

"Here it is." He said, holding a bobbin of dull silver thread. "Arachne silk steel thread. Very difficult to come by, as the Arachne don't tend to like visitors. It's nearly indestructible, which of course makes it nearly impossible to work with, but it is the absolute best thread that I have. It's only twenty meters of it, mind."

I gave him the mana crystal orb and took the bobbin from him. It was very heavy for such fine thread, over five kilograms for the twenty meters. I nodded after confirming that I could sink my power into it.

"I've met the Arachne a couple of times, actually." I said. "I think I even left on good terms with one of their Guardians of the Maze."

Frank and Gerry were both looking at me oddly, half frowning with their heads cocked to the side.

"You're just full of surprises, aren't you." Frank said.

I nodded with a smile and gestured for something to write with and on, and Gerry handed me a pen identical to the one Frank had and a sheet of paper.

/Do you have a wall that is made with unenchanted stone? I'd like to put a Portal back to the city, being able to trade would be useful./

"Sure." Gerry said. "Follow me."

Frank and I followed him down the stairs and across the second floor that held rows and rows of clothing. Gerry was obviously a prolific tailor and this was his shop. As we were passing by a collection of robes I stopped and pulled out a hooded black robe that was my size. My power sank into it readily, unlike the blue one I was wearing.

"Gerry, how much for this?" I asked.

"You easily overpaid for the thread, I'll throw the robe in for free." He said.

I switched out of the blue robe and into the black one, rolling the blue one up and tucking it under my arm. I gestured for Gerry to continue and we headed down the stairs to the main store area. There was a salesperson, a female leprechaun, who Gerry nodded to as he led us through a door into a back room. There was another set of stairs there that we took down into a basement, and Gerry pointed to the wall opposite the stair landing.

I didn't need to carve a full portal right now. I sliced out a two centimeter deep doorway into the wall, using the stone I was cutting out to line the doorway to make a door frame. With the first Pocket Dimension doorway symbol carved there was a connection made to my Pocket Dimension and I could finish the doorway from the other side at a later time. The whole thing took less than a minute to do, and I now had an anonymous exit from my Pocket Dimension into the city of the Fortress of the Gods.

"That's it for now." I said. "I can finish the rest when I finalise the connection when I have time. Thank you both for your help."

"I look forward to trading with you in the future." Gerry said, leading us back up the stairs and to the front of the shop.

Frank and Gerry both waved as I left the store. The traffic was moving on the road again, the middle of the road for wagons and people mounted on bipedal lizards and the outsides for foot traffic. I joined the foot traffic, turning right and heading towards the keep four hundred and fifty meters away. Chantelle was a bit over five hundred meters away, and from our connection I could feel that she was anxious.

There are winter priests and guards in the crowd of foot traffic every so often, but the majority of people were just ordinary people. Not all human, or even humanoid, to be sure, but they seemed to be going about their business in a normal fashion.

I was holding the bobbin of very heavy thread in my hands and I unwound a six meter length to work with, cutting it with my Matter Manipulation power. I placed the rest on the bobbin in the pocket of my robe, which was a nice thing this robe had that my original one didn't. Pockets. I fused the ends of the thread together to form a six meter loop.

I had really been missing the full potential of my Pocket Dimension portals. If micro-portals work with symbols inscribed at the scale of nerves then I should be able to make a portal from thread. I hadn't tried making a Pocket Dimension doorway in a flexible material, but in the worst case I would have to hold the thread rigid in a doorframe for the portal to stabilise. Which was something that my Matter Manipulation power could easily do. It was also why I was using six meters of thread, that would give me a two meter tall doorway that was one meter wide.

I carved the first Pocket Dimension doorway symbol into the thread and felt the connection link up to the Pocket Dimension, I placed the destination of the portal within range of my digital Matter Manipulation. I worked on carving the rest of the symbols into the thread while I worked my way closer to the keep.

Crossing the crossroads was an interesting process. None of the traffic, wagons included, wanted to give way to each other. The only reason people on foot could get through at all was because the wagons had to slow to a stop as they pushed in front of wagons coming from other streets. I wasn't entirely sure how it was working, but wagons seemed to be making it around the city without creating a deadlock and there were only a few times that I saw city guards intervening in the traffic.

I finished the last symbol on the thread and to my surprise the portal formed within its inner bounds. The thread was scrunched up, so its inner bounds was complicated, and I wouldn't want to try passing anything through it as it was. But I could soak my power through it and after some odd spatial twists and turns it came out in the Pocket Dimension.

The thread changed from feeling like ordinary thin thread to being like thick wire. Not that it was difficult to move with my Matter Manipulation, but it wanted to keep the form it was in. As soon as the portal formed the weight of the thread also doubled from one and a half kilograms to three kilograms.

I manipulated the thread so that there were no tangles, folding it over so that there was a single opening that I could adjust the size of. I hadn't, before now, considered too much what was on the back side of the portals I had been making. It turned out the portal worked in both directions. One side of the opening, which I made the size of my hand, opened facing upwards in the Pocket Dimension, and the other was facing the ground there.

I put the thread portal into the empty pocket of my robe, fixing it to the leg side of the pocket. With my digital side I pulled a staff of stone from my stone source beneath my fortress and passed it through the portal in my pocket, pulling it out with my left hand.

My Pocket Dimension finally matched what I thought of when I chose the power, an infinite storage that I can carry around with me.

I didn't get any odd looks from pulling a two meter staff out of my pocket as I was walking, even though there were quite a few people around me.

I had reached the end of the street I was following, the walls of the keep were fifteen meters away. There was a fifteen meter wide street that went around the keep that made a buffer between the walls and the buildings of the city. A wide gate that led into the keep grounds was guarded by ice golems and winter priests.

The only ones coming and going through the gates were winter priests, and it looked as though they were being studied by the guards. The walls themselves were twenty meters high and five meters thick. I couldn't see on top of them but I assumed they were manned.

I cut off a second six meter length of thread, joined it in a loop, and started carving Pocket Dimension doorway symbols onto it as I turned right to follow the road around the keep. Chantelle was roughly one hundred and fifty meters away, almost at the center of the keep grounds which were three hundred meters on a side.

I crossed the street to walk along the walls as I worked. The foot traffic was lighter next to the walls, there not being any stores or buildings to gain access to. There was still a crowd but it wasn't as packed as the other streets I had been walking.

I made it to the middle of the back wall before my second thread portal was done. There was only one gate into the keep grounds that I had seen. I crossed the road and continued walking until I got to the alleyway that was between the buildings of the block. It was barely wide enough for a single wagon to go down, and was overshadowed by the tall buildings on either side.

Which distracted me for a few moments, the city was actually warm enough to be liveable, and the heavily overcast sky was providing light as though it was day where everywhere else was eternal night. The winter god must not want to kill the city that it took over.

I was five meters down the alleyway and I had the three kilograms of thread in my right hand. I soaked my power through the portal in my pocket and then back out the portal and into the thread in my hand. I compressed it into a solid ball and used all of the energy in my right arm to throw it in a high arc that would land it on a roof in the middle of the keep and returned my hand to my side. It should have looked like a flicker of motion to anyone watching.