Vignette - Red Handed

He sat on what his asshole of a brother christened the bitch throne. A large, well padded recliner, he was not the masochist Timothy was, with armrests that were the backs of a pair of German shepherds. Gorgeously detailed German shepherds, Sally ‘Carvers’ best work in his opinion and that was saying something. She had captured something special in their supine forms. Not the traditional bared canines of chinese foo dogs, not a threatening pose. No. Instead they laid down peacefully, companionably. Part of the pack at rest. Sitting here, he couldn’t help but to give their backs a few light strokes. They were that realistic. Even the feel was right. Some combination of wood, stone and fabrics in a true artist's hands had given birth to something that didn’t feel like furniture. More like living dogs beneath his hands. The enormous amounts of mana constantly channeling through the chair even made them feel warm to the touch. They might actually do it someday. Live. Belief, intent and loads of mana. Stranger things had happened.

To him!

He paused for a few more moments. Continuing to pet these beasts who were so much more than statues. They were a touchstone and a reminder. Of an unspoken dream. The defender's image held sway in the thresholds, teeth bared, back arched in defiance of the outside world. And so it must be, guardians were always required, but they had to have something to guard! Here there was the peaceful rest of the pack females, and the relief etchings of pups that surrounded the base of the chair. The world would not suddenly become safe, but with work, they might manage to make some safe places for the young. It was a day to look forward too, to strive for.

But that day was not today.

Aesthetics and dreams aside, the chair was necessary. Both as a tool to reach out, and to hide his signature. Stored mana was a beacon for trouble and about half the mana available in every Brotherhood bond he held showed up at either end of the link. That made Regi the largest single beacon in the union. More than any one man, and even more than full holds! He couldn’t afford to make such a target out of Runehold, it held far too many non-combatants. No, the chair was a tool created by working together with his brother and the Binder. Honorable mention had to be given, though he would never admit it to anyone else, to that bitch Bensen.

The inception came from that asshole's original statue. Every dog statue, pack at rest or the defender, were focal points and purifying tools. Taking the massed ideals of fraternal brotherhood, all the disparate concepts that spawn from different perspectives on even a simple concept, and purifying them, condensing them down into a cohesive simple concept that they could all support. The Brotherhood was far too large for him to do it manually anymore. Instead the network of statues, anchored by his ‘throne’ united the brothers, in concept as well as connections. Just as important, it spread out the stored mana between all of those links, focusing most of it into the thresholds. It was their job to be bait anyway.

With a sigh he stopped petting the beasts (and patting himself on the back) and reached through them. Mentally following the conceptual links. Brother to brother, He mused, remembering an old movie. He brushed the nostalgia aside, the links spread out across the landscape of the river valleys and beyond to the border fortress that guarded them. New thresholds rising, slowly but surely, as humanity stepped up to. Not content to simply hide. The pack increased and their territory spread.

It was good.

He felt the dogs faithfully waiting in little shrines across the union. Each statue a massive cable that unraveled into a host of individual Brotherhood members. A web of loyalty and the glue that was binding the union, slowly but surely, into something more than just a trade group. They were fast approaching three thousand members here in the 5th year, and growing constantly. He often thought the youth born to this harsher, more brutal world were a better fit for the brotherhood's tenets than even his original crew. Something about growing up under constant siege brought out the nobility in most humans.

Most.

He snorted softly, now was not the time to think about that. He considered reaching for the veterans, if only to disprove his thoughts on the new generation. But no, the veterans were mostly deployed to the thresholds, and they needed the mana stored in their bonds. No need to put them at risk when the youngsters needed the experience. He followed the links to Sparkletown, Gardencia and Waterworth. He rotated through to give everyone a rest and they were next in line. Between them the three towns had over 170 Brotherhood guardians. If fairly low level ones. It should be sufficient for the reported threat. If not he would widen his call. There was no profit to be made in close victories. Better by far to crush your enemies with no casualties of your own. That didn’t happen in fair fights, it happened when you stacked the odds so massively in your own favor that there was really no fight at all.

At his urging, the statues let loose long, drawn out howls. It echoed out over their respective cities, calling the faithful to battle. Faith, not to a religion or god figure, but to a simple concept, even an old one. That men in hard times must hang together, or they would all hang separately. That to stand beside a man in battle was to become his brother. And brothers did not leave brothers to die alone.

The response eased his mind and soul, as it always did. They answered the call in mass, stopping where they stood or rushing to the shrine if they could. It wasn’t necessary to gather, not for the magic at least. But as brothers it did help. If only to feel the support and resolve around you empower your own will to fight.

The linkages firmed up quickly. The mana stored in each linkage offered to him, as was the willpower of the man who anchored it. Together they were far more than just the sum of their parts. He reached out once more, and his brothers reached with him, a braid of faith and support that reached forth to threshold Snaggletooth. Named for the jagged promontory of rock the threshold was built into, it stood guard over the north east approaches to Pearl lake. Somewhere near to 100 miles northeast of runehold. Timothy could have told him the exact distance, not that it mattered. Distances as the crow flies were only good for crows.

Magic did care about exact distances, but only when you didn’t cheat. And he always tried to cheat. His questing mental fingers made contact with the threshold’s guardian statue, guiding the rest of the pack with him.

Contact!

Cardea, what’s the situation?

Good to hear from the Brotherhood! Relief filled his mental voice, but no panic. The danger was there, but not imminent, he judged. An initial tier 3 Earth Toad with a knot containing two high tier 2 lieutenants. Maybe a half dozen low tier 2 elites and a large number assorted first tiers..

No wonder they’d asked for help. The mass of tier ones weren’t worth mentioning, they would wander about in the wards till the second coming. But that tier 3. That was a problem. The threshold, situated in a vast wetland that wasn’t quite a swamp, was rated as a mid tier 2 minimum posting. They should have a few overleveled individuals, the Cardea were included in this, waiting for their teammates to rank up as well, but they wouldn’t be a team.

The usual rule of thumb was ten to one for each step. Ten mid tier 2’s to one high tier 2. It was a bullshit rule of course. An experienced brotherhood team in a full meld could do it with fewer, and a disorganized group couldn’t do it at all. Punching a spell through a higher tiered creature's competing intent took teamwork and precision. Like a blizzard putting out a fire, a flake here and there did nothing. A branch full of snow dumped on the fire all at once? That would do the trick. It took multiple spells of the same, or preferably synergistic, attributes to locally overload the beast's aura. Something like an earth spell to conjure pitch, followed by a fire spell to ignite it and multiple wind spells to fan the flames. All on target in a very short amount of time.

If you didn’t work together regularly and approach the fight intelligently, well, they were looking at a decent body count.

May I ‘look’?

Please do!

He pushed forward through the door the Cardea left open, snapping open ‘his’ eyes to see the ritual center of the hold. The semi-standard sunken ring of purified blood surrounding the German shepherd statue of the brotherhood with the keystone ward sceptre between its bared teeth. The defenses were fully activated and he could see the other three Cardea at the compass points around the ring. Small toads, formed from the blood, were making long hops above the pool in the northwest direction. The wards detected the pulse of a beast, and the heart of the Threshold beat in time, revealing their location. More than that, it ranked them on the same value. They were not to scale with the terrain or even each other. The potency of their pulse, the strength of their body and the magic in their blood determined their size. It made the leaders stick out like a sore thumb at three the size of the swarming smaller toads.

Useful folks, the Blood Brothers, if a bit creepy. The Cardea reached down, at his request, cupped hands encircling the beasts, symbolic and descriptive at once. They were held in the palms of the brotherhood now, and within those palms the magic would be contained. It was time. Calling the merge to order, he felt the mental footprints of his brothers form ranks. Shoulder to shoulder, mind to mind. Then they took a step forward, shoulders overlapped, another step, minds interlocked. He became them.

They surfaced the images of their planned assault, his own ideas augmented and improved upon by the many. Still his memories were the guide, the governing push. He reached for the Northwind. In an adult life spent more at sea than on land the fury of nature's storms had left an indelible mark on his very soul. He longed and feared to see it’s spectacular rage once more. Magic was a deeply personal thing for a pathfinder, it followed their inclinations and experiences. He had based his new identity as much as his magic on the strong bond of shipmates and the awe inspiring power of the storm. He brought that vision to bear once more.

Thunder and lightning might be the most visually spectacular of those forces but they were far from the only tools the storm could apply and not the most appropriate for this situation. No, he called to the Northwind. The breath of the north that stole the heat from a sailors body and flipped the ships of the unwary in massive white frothed waves. Even bringing up the mysts that had led many a seaman in ancient times to lose his vessel upon the rocks.

It was a truly fearsome thing and a foreign one to these parts, but all the more effective for it. The reptiles, born and bred to the warm wet of the swamps and wetlands had no experience or defense against this freezing northerner.

His mental image and call resonated with the winds above, beginning to tease a small flow free of the greater sky and send it screaming down through the trees. It may have been a long time since this particular wind graced those ice-ridden flows, but the memory was there, he just reminded it of its past, for a time. And the flow of frigid frost laden air pounded down onto the jungle floor and the toads hopping about within. Walls of earth leapt from the jungle floor attempting to shelter the beasts, but the wind eddied and swirled, changing directions every time it reached the edge of the circle. The walls could not offer shelter. Then they turned to speed. Great earth assisted hops flinging them 50 feet in a bound. But could they outrun the wind? No, you can only hide from it, and he felt the Cardea united together to foil that option. Twisting perceptions and spinning illusions in the face of conflicting intent, leaning on the well of power that was the threshold for leverage. Four men as one with a fulcrum long enough to move, if not the world, at least a Tier 3 toad. Forward motion became a subtle turn as they hopped back and forth, confused and split up by illusions, traps and perception filters. Leaving them to always jump, but never away. In time the strongest of the beasts might grind down the will of the Cardea and pass through the maze. But the Brotherhood would not give it that time.

The Regi/Sparkletown/Gardencia/Waterworth merge enveloped the battlefield, urging on the wind as it danced and played between the roots of the great trees. Never directly competing with the tiered beasts. Even in mass, for a tier 3 and a smattering of 2’s that was a fool's errand. No, they let the wind fly free between their fingers. Free to blow through the aura’s of the toads. The wind, dreaming of memories of the arctic in times gone by, would wake eventually, hidden from interference by that aura. Returning to the hot, humid breath of the jungles they had learned to love. But not yet! The wind traveled from one side of the cupped hands to the other, it was reminded and redirected again and again.

Together, always together, they surrounded the small glen, singing a lullaby to the wind, of another time and place, and in its dreams the cold grew ever more brutal and the toads faced two inclement aspects. Cold and wind. Their rough earth manipulations availed them not at all. Their fearsome tongues, capable of punching a hole through boarhide armor and fast enough to snag hummingbirds mid flight, worthless without a target they could see. Weakest to strongest they began to collapse to the ground in chunks of ice and fruitless, dying rage.

They watched through the Cardea’s eyes as small blood crocodiles dissolved back into the waiting pool, as the wards no longer felt their pulse. Giving the Cardea a supporting mental pat on the back, the merge began to separate, one became many again. Reversing the flow Regi unwound the cable of their combined wills. Slowly dropping off each town back where they belonged as he himself returned to his ‘throne’ alone at last in his own head.

Reaching over he grabbed the waiting bucket by touch, a good thing as his vision was split and wobbling. Without witnesses he no longer had to suppress it. No longer had to pretend to be immovable. Breakfast did not taste very good coming back up. A shaking hand matched the rest of his quaking and shivering body as it reached for a large mug of ginger tea. He blessed the day they found the mental restorative effects, but it was a distant blessing. Taking a shuddering gulp, he began the mental exercises to settle his mind. The stretching of an athlete after the competition, pain and nausea were acceptable costs for doing business. But long term damage wasn’t something any of them could afford.

After all, he would have to do the same task again tomorrow. The towns called would change, giving each time to rest between calls. A rest he truly wished he could have as well. Just a little while longer. He told himself once again. Guardians were growing at a reckless pace even as new pathfinders were soon to burst on to the scene. Just a little longer...

Chapter 5

Finally! Finally done with social obligations, at least for now, Timothy's rejoicing was somewhat muffled by that unfortunate truth. There was always more waiting in that particular obnoxious que. Like meeting Jenney, he reflected guiltily. But for a moment, just a moment, he was free of such. Timothy leaned back on a familiar bean-bag cushion, safely ensconced in his wizard tower, free to think about whatever he pleased.

And he pleased to think about the valley James and his team discovered. It was just one of several dozen similar discovered locations. But they were increasingly taking up more of his attention.The materials that came from them, constantly inundated by aspected mana, were quite valuable for enchanting. Just so long as the enchanter worked with the aspect in question.

Like the Iron Pyrite from earlier. Fools gold, it was often called but with a heavy sun aspect modifying its nature. That could make things a bit dodgy if it wasn’t handled delicately. The normal symbolic aspects were closely aligned with deception and greed, but the sun was light, growth and even a degree of righteousness. On first glance not a great match up. But then, mirages in the desert were a thing, where heat waves created deception under the unforgiving light of the sun.

Aspects were like that. The sun was far more complex than just light. Deception was far more than lies. It took an artist to read the materials for what they could be, and create an appropriate enchantment to take advantage. An experienced artist! At first he thought that taking advantage of every possible meaning was the best way to empower an enchantment, and it could… but it was damn difficult to do, he had become clever about linking multiple enchantment sets together for greater effect, but there were still limits to how many directly linked runes he could carve. On top of that, power wasn’t everything. If you couldn’t harness that power to flow in one direction it was hardly useful. All those disparate, or flat out conflicting, meanings would fight each other as much as a designated foe.

No. Taking advantage of a few closely aligned aspects to tell a coherent story was the only way to go. Easy to say, difficult to do. Even worse when multiple materials were used. It wasn’t just the material aspects either.

Time of day, season, phases of the moon or ascendant planets, weather conditions. All of it could affect the more complicated spells. It wasn’t apparent to the casual use of day to day magic. A simple fire spell would work a bit better during a hot summer day, but it wasn’t something most casters were likely to even notice. On the other hand a spell that directly leaned on the heat of the sun might be ten times as powerful for the same effort at high noon on the summer solstice, but not work at all at midnight of the winter solstice.

Like so many other tasks, it was a balancing act. He could spend a massive amount of time optimizing an enchantment, or he could make five or ten base models for the same time and less effort. Sure none of them would be as powerful, or as efficient. But quantity did have a quality all of its own.

It was only on specific enchantments where it was worth the time to really go all out. Even there, time constraints applied. Like the threshold wards. Something that had to be maintained all the time needed to be as efficient as possible, if only to make it possible to keep them up in the first place. Add on top of that the expensive and rare materials. He didn’t have enough of them for all the Thresholds he wished he could make, much less multiple crappy versions per threshold.

But even there he had to compromise. He hadn’t carved the threshold wards during directly antagonistic conditions, but he also didn’t fully optimize them. The alignment of solar and weather conditions happened far too rarely and lasted for a fairly short period of time. There was no way he could manage to carve all twenty one scepteres during a single night! He didn’t have time to wait for the same conditions again and again. They might occur once a month, but then they might be once a year as well… who had the time for that? He’d compromised. The carvings were done as and when he could, rejecting most outside influences,not benefiting much but also not being harmed by them...hopefully.

The final linking enchanting was under the most optimal short term conditions he could find. A slightly overcast night with a new moon, sometimes called the dark of the moon, and Jupiter ascendant. Invoking Jupiter's aspect of the guardian, the aspect of the lost from a dark, overcast night with no visible stars for direction, along with a new beginning for a hold in the deceptive dark of the new moon.

Even that was a compromise. The dark of the moon had an affinity for the Black Bog Wood but not so much for Soul Pearls. A pearl is often a stone closely aligned with the moon, but unless it’s a black pearl, which he didn’t have access to (dammit!), the alignment was for the full moon. Past that, pearls are aquatic, if they’d been ocean pearls he would have tried for a high tide, which happened at full and new moon phases. Perhaps even a spring tide where the sun, earth and moon aligned to create an even higher tide.

But they weren’t ocean pearls.

If they had been from a river pearls then the spring run off would have been an excellent opportunity. A raging maelstrom of water to twist and twirl invaders about. Power and confusion in a nice tidy pair.

But it wasn’t a river pearl.

They were from the lake that bore their name. None of the lunar, tidal and seasonal aspects were useful! He’d had to exclude them. Just merging guardianship with darkness was difficult enough. One of Jupiter's other aspects, a byproduct of the Romans apparently, was justice. Justice and deception were hardly best pals. Advanced enchantment in a nutshell. Invoke the needed aspects while excluding the contradictory or just plain divergent, but never ignoring them.

He was dipping his toes into the kiddy pool here. It would take a lifetime (or multiple!) to really explore the available aspects and how they interacted. All he had to go on now was a smattering of astrology derived from the mythology of a dead world. As the new world created their own thoughts and legends would what he did now still work? Which aspects were natural laws and which were byproducts of common beliefs?

The deeper he dug, the more complex it became. He stood up abruptly and walked over to an elaborate orrery. Nine carved planets, a generic comet, the moon and the sun sat in individually sized pockets surrounding a small but intricate model of Runehold. Caressing the elaborate and artistically carved wooden venus, the hollow iron sphere of mars or the elaborate rings of saturn brought him a few moments of true joy. He gave it the full respect such a work from a talented artisan deserved. It was a gift from the Father of Astrology, Kevin. An offering from one hardcore astronomy nut to a mere amature. Perhaps he’d hoped to inspire Timothy’s interest in the subject, or just to share the joy it brought him with a peer. Either way Timothy was grateful.

Kevin was an avid stargazer and a volunteer at the local planetarium before the change. He managed to negotiate his obsessive hobby into a powerful magical path. A path full of stargazing and prognostication. Sort of. According to him, the stars and planets didn’t necessarily foretell the future, but they did affect the present, and would affect the future as well in predictable, if massively complex, ways. He lost Timothy when he started describing strain points and coalescence of indicative causality. But when forced to dumb it down Kevin, grimacing and complaining all the while, had described it as certain influences, like an ascendant mars or a bright summer sun, could fan the flames of existing aggression. If that ‘event’ were to coincide with an oncoming beast wave, then it was likely to trigger the ‘event’. The ‘event’ was set in stone already, a beast wave would happen. But the celestial influences might indicate when.

It sounded more like weather forecasting in some ways, then fortune telling. Dry weeds in the fields, hot dry wind, and thunderstorms coming? Madam Marie foresees a fire in your near future! Of course, that was only his own understanding. Kevin's record of success was far too robust to doubt. Regretfully, he just didn’t have time to spend several years, or decades, diving into it. This was Kevin’s life's work and passion. Even a cheater like Timothy couldn’t just do a bit of spy*cough* observation and suddenly pick it up. What he could do was leverage Kevin’s skills in a premade enchantment.

With a heavy dose of will and most of his not very impressive mana pool, it was not his enchantment to gather it’s own mana and since he didn’t make it he had to pay the same will cost any guardian would, several planets, the moons and the sun jumped from their pockets to align themselves above, below or just around the castle. It was not to scale (of course!) but then, that wasn’t the point. Neither did it show a belief that the earth was flat or that the sun revolved around the earth. That wasn’t the point either. It was a tool to detect influential celestial aspects, and to predict what they would become in the near future. He didn’t want to spend the required will or mana to push the image forward in time, but with the current aspects there was nothing much he could do. There was no point, the aspects were so muddled he couldn’t see any clear story worth telling.

No point besides beauty.

But that was point enough. The beauty of the world at large could inspire, and he desperately needed that inspiration right now. The transportation issue was scratching away at him. Regi’s overworked state was a direct result of a lack of fast, safe transportation. Waiting a full day under siege for reinforcements to arrive was possible, the thresholds were designed to survive just that for an extended amount of time, but it wasn’t all that safe for the reinforcements approaching through a horde. A jungle run towards the target of a large-scale attack was not high on his list of good decisions.

He had the germ of an idea, had had it for most of a year in fact, but making the idea usable was just not happening. He walked over to a long experimental hallway. Plain of all furnishings or distinguishing characteristics it was nothing more than a forty foot long rectangular box, half again his height, wide enough for four of him shoulder to shoulder and with a thick door at either end. Awkwardly built down the middle of two of his workrooms and part of his bedroom, he was more than eager to complete the damn project and get his space back.

Stepping into the entrance and closing the door behind him he pulsed a command. The two doors became part of the walls. Sealing out all external light even as a dozen incredibly dim light points, randomly spread and constantly, if slowly, moving through the hallway appeared. They were a simulation of the diffuse sunlight that made its way through the jungle canopy. Barely there did not mean it was absent. With a grimace he merged his will with the intricate runed flagstone situated beneath him, adjusting his mental and physical state to match the directions of the stone. The world, already a greyscale in the almost non-existent lighting, snapped into complete monochrome. Unrelenting black and pure burning, blinding lines of light. Light that did not shed itself on the surroundings, staying contained in beams that moved across the floor like lasers in a mission impossible style bank vault.

He only had moments to act. Humans were not native to, nor welcome in, this place. Lingering could be fatal. Focusing his will he found the connection between the stone beneath him and its near twin. Only the length of the box away in the real world, something else entirely in the shadows. He could not see or feel his body here. Nothing physical could be seen or felt, it was just another shadow in a world of such. He nevertheless adjusted it into a configuration he hoped would dodge the light beams and stepped to the exit stone. A shadow was an absence. An absence of light but if approached correctly it could also be an absence of space. Without space how far could it be? But all was not shadow and all that was light was pain and 3rd degree burns. One step to cross the distance. One step to correctly pass through the laser fields. He almost made it through cleanly.

Almost.

“Monkey fucking son of a -” He slumped against the wall, real once more as the guidestone did its job, flicking his agony clouded mind out of the shadow dimension. Crumpled on the twin of the first flagstone only at the other end of the hall. The charred remains of his left pant leg couldn’t hide the blistered and bubbling skin beneath. It was all he could do to snag one of the healing potions stored directly beside the door. He hesitated for a moment with the potion bottle uncorked. Failure should have penalties, and he was sick to death of fucking up this particuler evolution. Was it his lack of kinesthesia? An inability to know where his body was without being able to feel or see it? Maybe someone else could manage where he failed.

He held out for a brief moment, wallowing, then the pain overwhelmed his self pity and he downed most of the potion, pouring the remainder over the wound itself. Almost immediately the burns lost their angry red hue, but the flesh didn’t immediately reform to its usual shape and definition, nor did the pain from it entirely fade. With the severity of the burn in question that could take a while, and maybe another potion he thought ruefully. Interfacing with the runes on the door briefly to unseal it, he struggled up and limped over to a well padded chair.

Insanity, that was what the burns signified. Bloody minded frustration overcoming good sense. Doing the same damn thing and somehow hoping for better results. The originally full case of twenty healing potions was down to eleven. Ten in a bit most likely.

The worst part about it, was that it did work in a way. Just not a useful one, he snarked. Travel time from stone to stone was quite short. A hopscotch path of runed stones from hold to threshold through the shadow dimension would be an effective trick. If only the shadow dimension didn‘t make one quite so vulnerable to light. It wasn’t a surprising weakness. It's what they used against shadow snakes, even if those blasted creatures were not nearly as sensitive to it as he seemed to be. Studying them had been the inspiration for this particular bit of fuckery.

But a movement method that only worked in perfect darkness wasn’t terribly useful. Even under the Jungle canopy there was some light. Starlight might leave only a mild sunburn, but the light of a full moon would probably be deadly. Only on a moonless or overcast night would it be safe to use… If there was no artificial lighting! No torches or campfires or bioluminescent fucking mushrooms! Fuck! That wasn’t something he was going to risk his life on, much less ask someone else to!

Not unless he wanted to, he mused, dig out underground tunnels to each of the thresholds. It sounded like a Herculean task even as he thought of it. Hell he wasn’t sure it would be possible. The root network of the forest giants was no joke. Simply cutting a straight path through might cause massive ecological disruptions. A falling tree was a hurricane level disaster at the size they grew. Perhaps pulling down some of its neighbors as well in a wooden avalanche of titans? Or maybe worse a line of dead and drying trees a forest fire might use as a springboard to burn the entire jungle down?

Hell no.

Even if they managed to get deep enough to avoid the roots… was a mass of underground tunnels some 20 or 30 miles long each really an option? The amount of work involved… He shuddered.

Then again, he tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair aimlessly. Maybe not a tunnel, but a series of underground bunkers. Solid earth should be dark enough, he sighed. The shadow of reality didn’t treat matter the same way. No solids or empty space, just light or dark. He could no more exist there than a shadow snake's corpse could. He could only step through it, entrance stone to exit stone and that just so long as it was a quick step.

It still wasn’t a usable solution, he sighed. Forty feet in a step was all the further he’d tested. He should be able to extend that a considerable distance… but how much? He wasn’t sure and testing it until failure was a less than interesting form of suicide. And even if he stretched it from forty feet to a full mile, that was still twenty to thirty bunkers that would have to be built in enemy territory, then sealed against wildlife without sealing out breathable air. For EACH threshold.

Even then, it would only be usable by a tiered magic user. The perception required to pick up on the subtle linking resonances between stones… a resonance that would be harder to detect the farther the stones were from each other? No. Too many damn use restrictions for the work involved. Too many risks.

Snapping, he threw the empty potion bottle against the wall. The momentary flame of satisfaction cooled rapidly as he moved his aching and still partially mangled leg to clean up the mess.

He struggled up and headed for his hard little pallet. There would be another day and it was time to sleep.

If he could with this fucked up leg!

Timothy stumbled out of bed well after dawn the next morning. It wasn’t an oversight, but damn near a necessity. The mind didn’t work correctly on short sleep. Or at least his didn’t. Pushing people to find their limits while sleep deprived was a time honored tradition for most militaries, but not so much for inventors. The mind was his most valuable tool, shorting it on fuel was foolish.

He pondered over last night's failures while munching on a bowl of plain squashmeal, but neither the remembered events nor the land of dreams delivered any stunning new revelations. Unfortunately, he had too many obligations waiting to dive back in either.

It had been almost two weeks since he had taught a class or checked in on his students. Add in a meeting for his sister and he would be lucky to get done with the humdrum before dinner. Speaking of which, he switched directions over to a drop box of sorts. If the box dropped upwards. Reaching in he pulled out a series of wooden work request plaques from the drop off point in the bunker below.

He glanced through them with all the pleasure a box full of bills had given him in the before. Some sewage runes were starting to show signs of instability and needed to be refreshed. Rhododendron hold was requesting another ELR charge box with 50 charge cards. A few new ‘ideas’ from residents. He always made time to try a few of their more outrageous suggestions. They very rarely worked, but ‘rarely’ is not ‘never’. Even the failures occasionally inspired him with different ways of thinking. Today's fit in neither of those categories. Egg substitute from ground mushrooms as a sperm symbol, feathers from a psychic buzard for a bird aspect and the egg shells from a compy? Where the fuck did that come from… He went back to the beginning to read it again. Surely he couldn’t have read that correctly?

Yep. Build a chicken 3.0. Wow…

He shook his head in exasperation. How did three aspects and some bad shrooms equal a chicken egg? He couldn’t even throw something at the jackass who wrote it. People needed to feel comfortable making suggestions. No matter how stupid they were, there was a chance that he could find some real gold. At the low, low price of his sanity several times a week.

He flipped the suggestion plaque upside down against the desk and hit it with a joiner. A second later the letters were completely removed and it was ready for reuse. He couldn’t do the same with the sewage task nor the ELR charger. The first he would have to make time for today. The second could wait a bit. He snatched the plaque up to check for a moment. Yep, 10% earnest money was marked as paid with the seneschals stamp for authenticity. Not too long then, or Da might get annoyed.

Before he started though, he snapped through several quick spells, temporarily disabling a number of defensive works, then focused briefly on that name and all the baggage that came with it. And it was a lot of baggage...

Jenney!

WHAT! Timothy? His name spoken with personal knowledge and intent behind it rang through him. A deeply unpleasant feeling, even if it was an efficient method of communication. This was why names were dangerous.

It wasn’t just a message that could pass down that connection.

Yes, can I drop by for a visit today?

I don’t need a minder, brother dear.

No minder, just a brother who loves you. Also need to redo the sewage runes.

...Fine. I’ll help on the runes, but the visit will have to wait till sunset.

The connection broke. The frayed end of the resonance snapped back towards him like a rubber band. Or an over tensioned cable. With a grunt and a well practiced clench he absorbed the backlash. Grounding it out before it had a chance to damage any of his more delicate experiments. That Jenney, always a brass bound… charmer. He restarted the defensive measures with a snap of his fingers.

With a sigh he walked over and jumped up the access shaft. There were no ladders to his portion of the tower. If you didn’t know how to activate the coded runes in the elevator, nor how to manage the reinforced hatches then you didn’t belong here.

Meshing briefly with those runes the hatch above him became liquid and he slid into and through the previously solid three feet essence stone with a ripple. He kicked off the opposite wall and into the third story doorway as the ripples damped out and the hatch settled back into solidity. Defensive enchantments needed to remain sealed when no mana was present. He wasn’t always here to maintain the defensive wards and while they were minimally activated by the guardians who maintained the general hold defenses, it was a far cry from when he personally held them.

A solid block of reinforced essence stone didn’t sleep. Magic or no magic it would stay shut. Getting through it was tricky and it wasn’t available to just anyone. There was a white list of approved users built into the enchantment. A short list that included His parents, Regi, Jenney, James, Arthur, Lissette and Sven. Anyone else had to request admittance, and that had to be granted by Timothy personally.

Pressing his hand to the ward plate by the door he pulsed the building's active wards to life. Structural reinforcements, scrying blocks and a few divination wards to alert him of intrusions.

It sounded extreme but he often thought it was the only reason he got anything done. Too many people wanted a portion of his time. Either they had a perfectly valid, in their mind at least, reason why they should have some extra enchantments in their home that only he could do, or they wanted to purchase something.

The buyers were at least more honest about their desires. He had enough pans in the fire that he often did need the money. But a politely worded note would do the trick just fine. In the time he had set aside for making money he would go through the requests in the order he received them. Interrupting him was hardly going to get you to the front of the line. At least the lesson had finally stuck where the baths were concerned. He not only turned them down, but black listed them for a time. Even he needed a place to occasionally relax.

He made his way around numerous, equally spaced small square tables, each a detailed topographical map of a ten mile square section of territory, to the smoky quartz platform in the center of the room. The pool at its center was about the only portion of it that resembled the scrying pool he had started with all those years back. Layer after layer of runes had been added. An organic accumulation of new functions, protections and refinements that made this enchantment the most complex and impressive (his opinion!) working in the Union.

He was hardly going to use it’s more advanced features today, but even simple tasks were made easier by good tools. Sitting down on the cushion he began to wake up the enchantments. One at a time he pulsed up the subsidiary linkages and various defenses, the clouds in the quartz beneath him swirled and dissipated as the tables around the room drew closer together then merged into a full map beneath the now floating platform. With a final pulse the pool itself clouded over and from the depths, Runehold in all its glory emerged. Looking on the fruits of his labors just didn’t get old, but he only spared a moment for pride. Dwelling on those fruits could quickly become hubris. The view descended through the upper floors of the castle to approach the sewage cistern in the center of the multi layered garden.

It wasn’t an easy thing to see, Jenneys domain was another dimension. Not as extreme as the shadows perhaps, but neither was it quite ‘there’. Dimensional walls on top of her active defenses made it damn difficult to enter when it’s owner didn’t approve. Either physically or by clairvoyance. He could penetrate it… probably. It would certainly be a difficult task, he had to give her that. And pulling it off undetected? Difficult! Hell, she probably had specific blocks and alarms tied to his name. He would, in her place. Thankfully he didn’t need to attempt that particular task today.

He deliberately pushed his intent into the barrier, a desire to fix the sewage, communicating in the most basic of ways. He felt her attention for a few moments, annoyance and discontent followed quickly by resigned acceptance and a thread of direction. Permission received he snagged the thread and allowed it to drag his awareness to the heavily runed exteriors of a number of interlocking large stone cylinders.

Like so many other things he had done. It had started life fairly simply. But hadn’t stayed that way. Numerous runes from multiple magical paths lined its sides, and the troughs and smaller subsidiary cylinders that surrounded it. Not to mention the various organic organisms that participated. An elaborate composting and treatment scheme that turned that massed waste of the hold into nutrients for the plants and fungi that fed it. The full circle of human consumption. Food to waste and back.

This could be done naturally, if you had a big enough compost heap. But that would take a massive amount of space and time. Space that, even multi-layered as the gardens were, they didn’t have. And time that they also didn’t have. Rings of enchantments supercharged various fungal tanks in breaking down the waste in hours and days rather than weeks and months. The mushrooms produced as a byproduct weren’t edible. But ground up into the resultant sludge and mixed with a massive amount of dead vegetation and a small quantity of ground up bones they created a rich fertilizer. Concentrated plant food for all your growing needs. Spread through the mushroom farms and vegetable plots as a liquid it provided a steady, robust food source for the colony. It was a bit more complicated than even that. Not every plant needed exactly the same nutrients, so it wasn’t one fertilizer that was made. But many. All of it going through the cycles with little oversight and a rotation of random guardians to power it.

It mostly worked without a hitch.

Mostly.

Runehold’s population exploded over the last five years. More than 5,000 people now made it their home. The vast majority of them normals and incapable of going out and hunting their own food. Food had to be provided and it was.

But it was only possible to feed them all due to the ubiquitous Hogs and Jenney’s Garden. It put a degree of use and stress on the sewage system that was far beyond anything he’d imagined when they first built the damn thing. Improvements had been made but the enchantments still needed touching up every six months or so.

Step by step, line by line he read through the runes. Divining their purpose and acting to preserve it. Understanding, true understanding of a rune made the use a reinforcement, rather than an erosion of the embedded intent. It was a tedious job, but critically important. He didn’t have to do it alone though, he felt Jenney’s mind waiting at a series of floral pictures, her work this time, as well as his. Using the symbolic meaning of the carved plants to create a long lasting alchemical effect within. It was one of the first merged magical enchantments he’d participated in.

With well practiced ease he extended a mental hand to her, then as she took it they both considered the pictures, Jenney to understand the alchemy that was the heart of the enchantment, while Timothy addressed the linkages that maintained, powered and adjusted its use to fit within the whole. Meeting in the middle to reinforce the entire piece. In time she moved on to check the mycelium nets while he continued with the sewage retrieval and distribution linkages. It was a familiar chore and he worked through it with a will.

Even if it wasn’t glamorous work, repairing the shit recycling system, it was necessary. That was why they called it work! He just had to remind himself that it beat the alternatives. Mass hunting and gathering that had gone on at the start of the colony would be pretty damn difficult to manage with this many people. No. A reliable self sustaining food supply that would remain viable in the coming decades? Worth it! That much, at least, he and his troublesome sibling could completely agree on.

It was still going to be a long morning.