Calling the place a city turned out to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. New Cas City—or the city, as I liked to call it to avoid embarrassing myself—got a major upgrade after we finished the first road connecting it to Bek Tepe. All of the timber that we’d collected to clear the way was going to be used for firewood, but I figured we might as well use it to upgrade the houses that people were living in. Soon, there were dozens of large log cabins dotted around the area, facing the communal campfires of their tribes. The elders told me each cabin belonged to a family, and that they figured it could become a part of their wedding ceremony for the couple to build themselves a new wooden house.

The problem with wooden houses is that they aren’t well insulated, which can be really troubling during the winter, so all of them were plastered with hardened clay on the outside. I helped make stone fireplaces inside the houses, with nice little chimneys that would be a lot easier to clean in this world of air and water magic.

The road to Bek Tepe made it easier to get to the temple, but some of the elders wondered whether it had been worth the effort. I told them it was something that would be useful later on. Every tribe came to Bek Tepe for the summer solstice, so it could serve as a hub of sorts for a road network. I was already working on clearing a route to the copper mines near the Roja tribe’s homeland, and since we were going there, I decided we might as well connect the Roja to Bek Tepe too.

And now that we had made two roads, I could send multiple teams to make several roads at once. Of course, they’d need Paris to clear away trees on a large scale, but not every road had to go through a forest. I sent a team to make a road to the sea following along the banks of the River Teg. Another team made a road to the Imm and Oko tribe’s lands from the other side of the river.

I came to the river with Kelser and Princess Kol. I asked the princess how the bridges from her homeland looked, to which she replied they were mostly made out of wood, and only crossed over narrow parts of rivers. In fact, the kingdom relied on the impassibility of rivers for defense against armies and invaders. She added that there were a few small stone bridges over streams, but there was only one large stone bridge over a major river. That bridge had been built a long time ago and nobody knew how to replicate it.

I frowned. Had the Izlandi Kingdom not invented cement or concrete yet? I asked Kol about it, but she said she didn’t know much about construction but she’d never heard of those words before. I looked over the large, flat river, and wondered if it was worth building a river crossing right next to the city. What Princess Kol had said about rivers serving as natural barriers against invasions and armies was pretty accurate, after all. And so, I chose a site a little further upriver, where the river was narrower. I also figured the bridge could be blown up if it ever needed to be.

There were some limestone deposits nearby, which I used to create quicklime by burning it in large clay kilns. I mixed the quicklime with water, always using magic hands to handle the dangerous materials, and produced some simple lime mortar.

The lime mortar would be useful for joining together the stone bricks that Kelser and a few other humans were making off to the side. It was a tiring, repetitive job that I was glad I didn’t have to do myself. I could hear Kelser grumbling about it from here.

I let the princess watch me add some pieces of crushed baked clay into the lime mortar, which helped me make a type of water resistant cement. This would be necessary for all the parts of the bridge that would be in contact with the water. I figured the princess might spread the technology to her people, but I didn’t mind that. A little technological exchange wouldn’t be too bad.

A team returned soon from the mountains, carrying with them bags of volcanic ash. I thanked them for their work, and asked them to bring as many people as they could from the city to come watch the construction of the bridge. In the meantime, I grabbed Kelser, who was finally done making stone bricks, and started laying down the foundations of the bridge.

I strengthened the ground on either side of the bridge with concrete made from volcanic ash and lime mortar. This stuff was basically a kind of artificial rock, which I had learned about while watching a few documentaries on ancient Roman bridges and aqueducts. In fact, the arched style of the bridge that we began to construct was also inspired by Roman architecture, since I wanted this stuff to last for a long time.

Actually building the bridge was a long and complicated process, but it was made much easier and quicker thanks to magic. There was a lot of trial and error involved, and by the time the spectators arrived from the city, we’d already accidentally washed away some of the stones we had been laying in the middle of the river.

Thankfully, we didn’t mess up too badly in front of the audience, although it took a lot longer to make the bridge than I’d originally anticipated. It took us several days to lay down all the bricks and hold them together with lime mortar or cement, and even longer to build underwater with the concrete. The crowd grew smaller at first, but as the project got closer to completion, pretty much everybody came over to cheer for it.

I laid down the last brick, thanked all of the people who had been involved in building the bridge, and the elders announced a small feast to celebrate the bridge. The feast was held right there by the banks of the river next to the bridge. The roads on either side of the river had been extended up to the bridge, so people brought over food from the city in pretty much no time at all.

We woke up the next day after night full of revelry, and got to work on the next project. Now that we had access to clay, cement, and concrete, I figured it was time to make a few simple aqueducts and canals to help supply water to the city and to irrigate the crops. We didn’t need to make any of those fancy roman aqueducts since the terrain was pretty favorable, but we still had to make many underground tunnels and collection basins and other small things here and there to help get water all the way to the city. I even made some sediment collection pools that helped make the water a little cleaner.

Of course, since everybody already had water magic, spending all this time and effort on bringing natural water into the city might have seemed like a waste, but there were many things like baths and washing clothes or sanitation that required so much water that relying on water magic didn’t make a lot of sense. Sanitation in particular was something I worked on quite extensively for the city, since I didn’t want it to become a hotbed for disease.

And so, as the leaves began to fall and summer retreated once more, the city that bore my name became connected to the wide reaches of the double river basin. Our first harvests had already come in, and we replanted seeds from the best plants right back into the ground, hoping to get an even better harvest than last time. The herds of wild monsters that we had been managing were also routinely culled and bred as selectively as we could, since the monsters were only tamed and not domesticated.

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I spent some time learning the princess’ language, while she learned the human tongue, after which she taught me about her people and her kingdom, and I taught her some basic magic. What kind of magic?

“Magic,” I said, to the princess who sat next to me by a campfire near the bridge, “is very complicated, and I don’t want to bore you with the details.”

“You mean you don’t want to teach me the details,” she said.

“Only because they’re boring,” I said with a smile. “All you need to know is this. Everything around you. Like this stone, this piece of wood, this burning, crackling campfire, is made up of something called mana. Mana exists inside all of us, too. And because we are also made up of mana, we can manipulate this mana to cast magic. Now, there are four types of mana. Water, earth, air, and fire. We call them the elements. Everything in the world is made up of a combination of elemental mana. And since magic is essentially the art of manipulating mana, all magic can be splint into these four elements as well.”

The princess frowned. “Are you saying all of the magic you’ve shown me was elemental magic? What about the magic hands you were using to lay bricks for the bridge? Was that just air magic?”

“Smart,” I said, “I didn’t want to mention this yet, because it’s a little more complicated, but there is a fifth element as well: the void. But let’s not worry about void magic just yet, okay? For now, you should focus on this burning campfire. Feel the heat, see the light, and hear the way it burns through the wood and reduces it to charcoal. I want you to extend your arms, not too close, since we don’t want you to get burned. Yes, that’s it. Like that. Now close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And let’s begin!”