It had been a few days since the summer solstice festival. After the festival was over, I held a meeting with the elders. I invited Princess Kol, and let her make her request to us there. As I expected, she asked for an escort back to her homeland across the mountains. She promised we’d be rewarded, and that we could even set up trade routes between our peoples, but the elders were just as cautious as I’d been. They’d seen the princess’ oil lamp, and heard about how many demons lived in her kingdom. The elders might not have a lot of experience with foreigners and kingdoms, but they could understand numbers and populations. After all, they’d been unofficially managing the sizes of the various tribes through marriages for a long time.

And so, we all agreed to help the princess get home, but reminded her of how difficult it would be to get through the mountains. We would need some time to prepare. A few years, perhaps. The princess tried to tell us how impressed she was by our magic, and how she could even help us find a better path through the mountains, but even she knew we wouldn’t help her so easily. Not when the survival of the entire community was at stake. She had no choice. She thanked us for our promise of help and our hospitality, but laid bare how her position back home would grow weaker if she was away too long. She undermined her own bargaining power by telling us she could not promise we would be rewarded if we took too long to return her.

“I’ll be assassinated in a heartbeat if I don’t become the queen,” she said.

“Then you should just stay here with us,” I said.

“I can’t do that,” came her reply. She wouldn’t explain any further, but the conversation was mostly over anyway.

I tapped my fingers on my knee. “There is one more thing, princess. If you want to make sure you don’t get assassinated, all you need to do is become stronger.”

The princess raised an eyebrow. “If I could do that, I wouldn’t be asking you for help getting through the mountains.” Her eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t mean—”

“Yes,” I said, looking in her in the eyes. “We can teach you magic.”

“But you wouldn’t let me near any of your training sessions or answer any of my questions! I even asked the children, but they refused to say anything! I thought it was a secret,” she said.

“It is a secret,” I said, noting that it had been a good idea to tell the parents to not leave their kids with the princess unattended. The shrewd woman had tried to take advantage of their naivete! “But it isn’t a secret I can’t share. I shared it with the humans, after all.”

The princess’ expression changed. Over the past few days, she’d gotten used to me, but from her look I could tell that she’d just remembered that I was supposed to be a mythical elf. Of course I’d been the one to teach magic to the humans! “Please, Teacher Cas, I will repay your kindness a hundredfold!”

Already calling me teacher? A true politician, this one. “You don’t need to go that far, but there are a few conditions. First, the type of magic I will teach you will not be as powerful as the kind I’ve taught the humans. Second, I know you’re learning the human language, but I need you to start teaching us your language too. Kelser and I will be your first students. You also need to tell us more about your people, their technology, their political system, pretty much anything that could help us understand them.”

The princess thought for a little while, before nodding. “I can’t tell you any state secrets, but you won’t be disappointed by my information. Besides, I learned a lot about administration, which included things like agriculture and irrigation. I’m sure that’ll be a help with those farms I saw back at the encampment near the river,” she said.

“Good,” I said, “but the final condition is the most important one.” I leaned in closer. My eyes darted to the sky. It was bright despite the night. I felt like something was staring back at me.

“You have to denounce your god.”

---

“Take it down here,” I said.

“It’s stuck,” shouted Kelser.

“Elder Brol,” I said.

“I’ve got it,” said the burly elder as he strolled over to the teetering log and positioned himself beside it. Brol Ibog took a deep breath, grabbed both sides of the log, and began pushing with all his might.

The corner of my mouth twitched as the log began to move. I decided to help hurry it along with magic hands. For some reason, Elder Brol refused to use magic for things like this. Actually, his whole tribe was eccentric. Apparently, they were all foragers! They’d hunt monsters if they came across them, but their primary source of food was all plant based. It was a little difficult to believe that this burly old geezer went out with foraging parties, not hunting ones, but I suppose you needed that sort of commitment to find the fruit that makes the best alcohol in the region.

The log fell to the side. Paris, the Fil Tusker, gave a low roar. Young Cota Ibog, the five year old boy who I’d made toys for before, shrank away at the loud noise, but he recovered quickly. For some reason, most of the children were both terrified and fascinated by Paris. I suppose the way she towered over them was impressive, but I had a feeling I knew what the kids really wanted.

“Cota, come here,” I said, beckoning to the boy with one hand.

The purple haired kid was surprised, but walked over hesitantly at a glance from Elder Brol. When the kid arrived by my side, I hoisted him up in the air with my hands. He smiled, but his smile turned to panic as I let go of his body and he began to float in the air. The kid was so light, I could keep him aloft with magic hands. He said something about letting him down, so I did. Right on Paris’ back.

Cota froze, his eyes wide. I smiled at him and gave Paris a pat on her leg. The Fil Tusker roared and knocked into another tree. Cota held onto the makeshift saddle with all his might, until a hand wrapped around his waist. Looking up, he stared right into Kelser’s annoyed eyes. Kelser turned his gaze to me and I shrugged. Kelser sighed, held onto Cota while telling him to hold on. Kelser used his magic hands to steer the Fil Tusker towards new trees.

Branches cracked and tree trunks snapped, as the Fil Tusker pushed into the forest, followed by a party of strong humans, who lifted the logs onto a large wooden cart. Afterwards, the cart was pulled away by a small group of tamed monsters, ones we had chosen from the managed herds we were keeping near the encampment that was somehow going to be called New Cas City. Once the logs were gone, two teams of magicians swept through the underbrush. One team carefully burned the plants while the other one doused the fire to keep it contained to the cleared area.

Paris roared again. Cota laughed, though I detected a hint of nervousness. The logs were cleared, the underbrush burned away, and another team of magicians finally caught up to us. This team was using earth magic to form a stone cover for the path. The stone wasn’t particularly sturdy, and had different colors in different places, but it was even, and that was all that mattered to me at the moment. I waved to the road making team, and they waved back.

We’d been out here for a few days now. Most of the humans had returned to New Cas City already. I walked up to Paris, who was tired after a long day of breaking trees, but I knew we were almost done. And just as I thought that, a tree fell to the ground and revealed the wide open fields that led up to the hill that housed Bek Tepe. As the road making team approached from behind, I smiled.

“And now we have to make another one all the way to the copper mines!” I said aloud, earning another exasperated sigh from Kelser as he once again caught Cota before he fell off the saddle.

---

“More!”

“Yes, now.”

“Keep going!”

“There we go! Now come help me take off this clay,” I said.

I was out at my secret wooden hut in the woods outside Bek Tepe with Kelser, Elder Brol, and Cota. A large clay mound stood next to the hut, with smoke spewing out of its top. I used magic hands to break up the clay mound, as Kelser coughed and complained about how much air magic he’d had to blow through a tiny hole. I told him to stop complaining and help me, which he did.

Soon, we’d extracted a small gray mass from the mound. I quickly grabbed some of the copper tools resting beside the hut, conjured up some water magic, and got to work hammering up the smelted iron. I picked up the hot iron with magic hands and held it up to the light.

Smiling, I told Kelser: “Not bad for a first try. Completely useless, but still, not bad!”