After we closed up the entrance to the core room, I stopped for a moment and smiled. I needed to go back in there and test to see if I could turn the place into a dungeon. I wasn’t sure why I wouldn’t, but I felt like, in this case, it was closer to a test than a sure thing. If I could, then putting both cores in the same room seemed like they would keep each other safe, so that’s what I would do.

I pointed to the other end of the hall. “Let’s see what’s in the cellar now that there is a door to it. By the way, what did we do with the wagon and horses?”

Kasidy flashed me a smile. “Took care of them, of course. The wagon is unharnessed outside, and the horses are hobbled. I would rather have had a place to put them, but it is what it is.”

“Are they safe from attack out there?”

Renfry spoke up. “From wild animals, yes. The tower keeps away natural predators. The only things that we need to worry about are intentional attacks and theft. If we were staffed, I would say have someone in the map room watching. Then again, if we were fully staffed, we would likely build a stable as well.”

“Map room?” I asked.

“Yes, my lord. The first floor has the map of the area on the wall. As far as can be seen from the top of the outpost is updated on the map.”

“There wasn’t one there when we got here.”

Kasidy gave a slight giggle. “It showed up while you were sleeping. It might even have been there the whole time, just not able to see past the walls of the lair. I think that you will like it.”

As we got to the bottom of the stairs, I saw what they were talking about. Behind where the commander would have stood was a map wall. The thing took up the whole back wall and went from floor to ceiling. I smiled when I looked at it. The thing appeared to be as clean and crisp as a monitor. It even looked like it was projecting light filling the room with that nice warm computer glow.

I stopped about 10 feet from the map. “That’s impressive. How far out is the range?”

Renfry stopped beside me. “It is just over 9 miles on a clear day. If it is storming, then this map will shrink down to a very small area.”

I nodded. “What about at night?”

“It will still show as though it is day. It makes it very hard to sneak up on us.”

“So on a stormy day, the map vanishes, or does it just change to show where it can’t see?”

Renfry smiled. “It becomes unmoving, which let Renaut make plans and notes. We were all shown how to work the map. However, my brother also showed me what he could do with it. He hoped that someday I would advance to be the commander of the outpost.”

Renfry sighed, and I watched a tear form. “I am sorry, my lord. The loss of everything still affects me; I will try harder to serve you well.”

I didn’t know Renfry at all. I had only talked to him a bit after somehow bringing him back from being a Haunting. However, I knew those tears and the feeling that everything was gone.

I place my right hand on his shoulder. “If you want to take time to think through things and deal with the change, I understand. Losing everything all at once can be tough.”

Renfry shook his head and gave a slight smile. “I have dealt with the loss of everything for years already. It is knowing that my brother tried to keep me safe, and I threw it away that hurts. It would hurt even more if we had family, but my parents had both died already.”

I nodded. “Tell me then, what else can this map do?”

Renfry stepped up and touched the map, then walked over to the lectern and tapped it twice. The notes on the lectern appeared on the right-hand side of the wall. Then he started to write on the paper. As he did, the words appeared.

Renfry stopped and pointed. “My lord, as you see, the items on the lectern are added to the wall. It means that any notes for the patrol could go up there. Also, the past patrol notes were all stored in the map. I haven’t checked to see if they are still there. I don’t know why they wouldn’t.”

I smiled and thought for a moment. This screen would give me lots of information on how the tower had been used in the past if it was still stored there. The problem was my reading. I sighed when I thought about not reading. At the waterfall, it wasn’t that big a deal, but over and over again, I was running into problems because of it.

Renfry broke me out of my thoughts as he said. “Also, the map view can change. We can make one area bigger at the lectern by touching this grid.”

As he said that, an area on the far edge of the map zoomed in. He tapped it again, and it zoomed in more until we were looking at a deer that was life-sized. I watched him and the wall as he dragged his finger across his grid; the view slowly changed. Then he tapped twice in the top left corner of the grid, and the wall zoomed back out.

Renfry nodded to the wall. “Lastly, the map can show an overview of your holdings. I have not tried this since you have been on the throne. However, in the past, it showed all the lands the Marquess had. This wasn’t just Westiral, mind you but also included the lands that he had from being a knight of the crown and the manor that his wife brought with her when they married.”

I smiled. “Okay, let's see what it can do.”

Renfry nodded and made a couple of adjustments to the grid. The map on the way vanished, and then what appeared to be a hand-drawn map appeared. It was amazingly detailed, reminding me of the maps that I had seen in old sailing movies. The map on the way was now the yellowed parchment color with black ink lines.

Renfry said. “My lord, this map is our largest map. I know many years have passed, and so I don’t know if it is correct anymore. However, you can see here the roads and the cities.”

I walked up to the map. “Okay, where are we on this thing?”

Kasidy walked up beside me, brushing my arm; she smiled slightly. “My lord, we are right over here.”

I shook my head. I need to tell the girl about Lannah, and soon because otherwise, she was going to keep this up. Not that I didn’t like Kasidy, but I wasn’t sure what was going on with Lannah, and I already had a commitment there. I shook the thoughts of relationship problems from my head and looked over at where the map showed us.

I glanced back at Renfry. “Can we put markers on this map?”

Renfry nodded. “Come over here and lay your hand on the grid. Then think of where you want to mark.”

I walked over to the stand and put my hand down on it. As I did, I felt the interface come up. It hadn’t done so when we were first down here, which meant that there was a trick to turning the thing on. I thought about my map overlay and adjusted my view to bird's eye. Then I turned and started to try to line things up.

Once I had lined everything up, I looked at where Lannah was. The wall map showed that she was in the same Kingdom as we were in and that she was in the middle of nowhere. I marked her location on the map.

Then I asked. “Is there a way to feed other maps into this? We just bought a more recent, though not as detailed, map. I think, if possible, I would like to add it and update names.”

Renfry smiled. “Yes, we can just put the map on the grid, and the wall will read the whole thing. Then we can tell it what to take from the map. Also, while you are there, you can will the map to display your holdings. Once you do that, once the map is tied to you, and you'll be able to see if your holding changes size and shape.”

Kasidy laughed. “The only holdings he has is this place. I know when I first met him, I checked to see if where I was had been claimed. It hadn’t.”

I smiled at Kasidy. “Would it change anything with you if I had holdings now?”

She shook her head. “No, I know you.”

I willed the grid to show my holdings overlaid on the map. The map asked me what color to use to outline my holding. I thought through briefly the things that I had done and what color would be best. Right now Yellow because of the crest, but I felt drawn to a brighter blue.

I made my selections and then watched as my holdings were colored in far to the southwest. The small little dots of the overnight holes I had dug showed up each a tiny x. Running up the string about a mile on each side were dotted lines. At the bottom of the string of Xs, a larger area showed up that appeared to spread several miles in from the river. This area wasn’t in dotted lines, but a solid blue line circled it.

Close to the middle of my line of ownership was the waterfall. That was another circle that went out several miles. The whole area that I had set up defenses for appeared to be claimed. Then from that area, a line went north and then turned sharply east. On this map, there was no reason given that someone would turn. Then it ran into the water where it moved north again, till it stopped in the water.

About forty miles north of where my line of claimed land stopped was what appeared to be a proper track of land. The tower was shown as just inside the claimed land. From there, my claim ran up another fifty miles or so north and then towards the mountains. I saw a large X sitting just this side of the mountain pass. It had written beside it, Castle Westiral.

Kasidy gasped. “When did you claim all of this, and how?”

I shrugged. “No one else had a claim to it, and I improved it all, so I was able to claim it. I did most of it before we started out. I was worried that you would steal my hard work from me.”

Kasidy turned and looked at me. I could tell that I said something that she didn’t like because she looked furious. She huffed, crossed her arms, and stormed out of the room. I looked over at Blink, who just shook her head a little and went to follow Kasidy. Then I glanced at Renfry, who was trying to hide a slight smile.

I sighed. “I don’t get that girl at all. So how do I update this map? It looks like some of the land features we came across aren’t shown. See here; this should have an impassable ridge. This area is dry land with a port here.”

Renfry said. “If you command the grid, it will take from where you have been and update it. I don’t understand how it works, but it can do that. It is far better in those areas than any drawn map will be.”

I pushed my request, and then I saw everything update like my own personal map. I smiled slightly and thought through what had just happened. Renfry didn’t have a personal map because of the way the visual interface worked, which meant he didn’t know that he was always creating a map with his movements. So when he would update the map, it would take the new info and add it in.

People used normal maps because they didn’t have built-in ones that they could access. This meant that the hand-drawn maps still had value but not as much as this would for me, at least. If I could figure out how this thing worked, then I might could create a magical map that would show people where they had been and update the same way mine did. It wouldn’t work as an overlay like what I had, but it would still be vastly better than the paper maps.

I shook my head and smiled. “Okay, so this map is helpful in ways but not in others. Let me find the map I just bought and get it up here. Then we can plan out what we are doing.”

Renfry looked like he had a question but then stopped himself. So I asked. “What is it, Renfry?”

He took a breath and then paused. “My lord, how is it that you have claimed dungeons? They are marked in your color, which means they are yours?”

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