July 20th, 5 AC

Timothy, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, sweat dripping from his brow in a minor river, carefully maneuvered his pen-is-mightier to finish the last delicate curve of an elaborately carved rune.

Letting out a relieved breath, he wormed his way back out of the stone tunnel, able at last to stretch the annoying kink out of his back. He tickled the sky with his fingers for a moment, before bending as far backward as possible. Holding it for a few moments till a satisfying pop resounded through his body. His five two height and buck thirty weight made it a fairly unimpressive stretch, and his outfit, a green hooded knee-length robe that looked like 2 dozen flattened vines stitched together, didn't help his image much.

The loose robe was gathered at his waist by a two-inch-wide belt of a much higher quality. Hover Croc leather in fact, and considering the delivery van-sized floating lizards could move faster than an old-world racing horse, it wasn't cheap stuff. Dangling from it was a mess of dangling strings. Bearing fruits that were a bit on the freak show side. Like some old-world swamp witch, there were shrunken preserved fish heads, rune-carved bones, bits of amber or precious metals, charms, fetishes, bottles and much more. All the tools of a mage who was far better with enchantment and ritual than improvised spells.

A few small accouterments completed his outfit. Bone greaves on his lower legs and bracers of the same materials clad his forearms from wrist to elbow. Amazing stuff, but when you could work bone like clay with the right spells not nearly the artistic statement they might have been before the change.

Letting a sigh of relief, he reached up to wipe the stinging sweat from his forehead and eyes and glanced around, enjoying the glimmering effervescent twilight that half-cloaked and half-emphasized the massive trees that shot up far beyond where he could see.

A strangled wretch and a few coughs reminded him that effervescence wasn't always a good thing. Even after several years, he just wasn't used to chewing the air. Trees that towered larger than old-world skyscrapers dotted the jungle floor here, blocking out the sun and trapping the heat. Twice daily rains plus heat made a fair approximation of a sauna. And that sauna was rocking some truly rank potpourri. Chewing the air was bad, but tasting it right now was worse.

He took a few small breaths, imagining them like shots. Over the tongue and swallow, don't taste if you can help it. It was still better than breathing through his nose. Not unless they cleared back the Stinkhorn Mushrooms and Amorphophallus, better known as corpse flowers.

Smell wise it was a toss-up between the two. The stagnant sewer and rotten meat smell was overpowering and lingered like an 80's perfume. At least the flowers had a valuable tuber under them even if it took a year of stench to grow. The mature phallic-shaped shrooms, on the other hand, were unholy and an affliction of the devil. A well-known fact to all who lived here. Not even debated any longer, though the conflicting faiths often debated as to which hellish figure should get the credit.

Google damn, Timothy'd even thrown a hand in. He had several spells designed to exterminate the wretched things but little more success than anyone else. Funguses were not flowers. They weren’t as beautiful. They didn’t smell nice. But if there was one thing they damn near had a corner on the market for it was survivability. Of the species if not the individual. He could kill a whole field of the damn things. They’d grow back in days.

Not that he, nor a hundred other mages who had to live around them, were willing to give up just yet. Eighteen of the twenty-seven known holds had created spells to deal with Stinkhorns. Independently. Most of them even worked. In a small area and for a short time. Try to chain that together and the mana costs exploded.

He sighed, maybe someday he'd figure out an efficient, long-lasting fungicide spell. Until then they'd just have to deal with it.

Despite the smell, Timothy took another few moments to appreciate the view. When the jungle wasn't committing atrocities on his nose and taste buds, it was feasting his eyes. This was The Deep Dark, though that pretentious name didn't really capture the reality. It was a seemingly perpetual twilight. Little to no direct sunlight slipped through the many layers of leaves above, but the plants had adapted to make up for it. Flowering vines in the deepest glowing blues and purples flooded the air with dim light and vibrant scents as they fought for territory on the towering trunks with bioluminescent shelf fungi.

Half-seen birds and arboreal rodents dodged through and around them, seen more as motion and shadows than anything else. Streams of water, small but consistent, dripped from giant leaf to giant leaf before pouring out in wide misty falls to the jungle floor below. Joining with their land-bound cousins in a thousand glittering waterfalls.

Trickling down from the unseen sky lakes that laced the canopies above, fed by twice daily rains, the streams never really went away. Between constant, nutrient-rich water, deep black soil and the ever-present cloying heat, the land down here was a hothouse of biblical proportions. And with mana taking the place of light for many species, it was exploding with a variety of life that had to be experienced to understand.

Timothy bent slightly to reach under a foot-long thorn and snagged a fist-sized twill berry from a nearby shrub. A shrub that towered more than twice his height, but still a shrub. He crunched into the slightly glowing berry, a mix of deep blues and flickering shadows with a tart taste and a fleshy body that reminded him of a plum mixed with a cranberry more than the blueberry it resembled. Three dozen other bushes of various kinds fought for place on the jungle floor around him with mana ferns, red flowering ginger and orchids blazing with yellows and purples that refused to go unseen in the dim lighting.

He took a moment, taking it all in. The sheer size of life these days made it hard not to feel insignificant. Looking up at everything all the time. It was still a problem out on the planes, where the grasses towered overhead and a single wild wheat grain grew to old-world almond size. Somehow, it still wasn’t the same. The looming forest giants made it worse. Much worse. Not everyone could handle it, between the looming existential issues and the lack of light, many ended up fleeing inside of a few months.

Their loss. There was beauty here Timothy’d never imagined in his old life, much less seen. Not in all the Our Planets or Discovery channel shows. Not in art nor Hollywood.

And as for feeling insignificant? Timothy had a lot of practice dealing with that particular feeling. He was a pygmy in a family of giants, even before the change he'd predicted neck problems in his future. Now? At least there were healing potions.

Then again, Timothy mused with a small smile. His head had always been big enough to compete, even if the rest of him hadn't. It wasn't physical size that mattered now, despite what evolved instincts screamed but mental. And he'd never feared anyone in that battle. Here he was the giant. The thought set his inner peacock strutting about in glee. He squished it with a familiar shrug.

It was dangerous to dwell on. Short or not, he'd never been a humble man. Didn't believe in it. Humility was only a virtue in other people, and mostly when you wanted them to sit down, shut up and follow directions. Sheep were humble. And they were great for fleece, milk and meat. Humility got you taken advantage of. It robbed men of the ambition to strive for greatness in the first place.

No, his issues were decidedly in the other direction. Arrogance was nearly as bad. A vice that led one to take foolish risks, overestimate oneself and unnecessarily alienate those around you.

The trick, and one he admitted, to himself at least, that he hadn't quite mastered, was to dance the knife edge between the two. To let the peacock strut and show its feathers, without getting the nose so high he strutted off a cliff.

With an exasperated head shake, Timothy fished through the mess of thongs on his belt, before pulling up a clay jar. It took but a moment to remove the cork and lukewarm water cascaded into his mouth. He considered the three-quarter empty bottle for a moment, then dumped the rest over his head.

Even lukewarm it felt gloriously cool. For a few moments at least. Then he was back to the same old laundry not quite dry feel. Nothing really dried out in his muggy hell.

Not much he could do about it, at least not without expending precious mana reserves on it, and he just didn't have it to spare right now.

With a sigh, he dropped to his heels, then slid forward and up through a half-seen hole in the side of the bolder. Threading his way down a narrow tunnel. He had to wiggle forward on his elbows and knees to get through the several feet of rock and into a slightly larger chamber at the boulder's heart.

Chamber might be a bit generous, he mused and not for the first time. The three-foot-wide spherical space would be a tight fit if it was empty.

It wasn't.

A two-foot and change orrery filled most of the available space. Three gleaming basalt rings orbiting along divergent angles. Each smaller than the previous and connected to it by thin strands of mana. Each was lined in what looked like small, dense text fit for an archaeologist’s whimsy more than readable letters.

More hieroglyphic than letter. Though not ancient hieroglyphics. The paucity of modern symbols mixed through the images put paid to that. Outlined directional arrows, chemical warning signs, stick figures and traffic signs stood under homes built of cuneiform lines and slashes.

An original language he'd created for enchantment and ritual work. Symbolic and conceptually focused rather than grammatical. It was a work in progress, but one he'd been forced to share. Oh, no one had twisted his arm, neither physically nor metaphysically, but the sheer chaos caused by hundreds of new magicians all trying to wright the same words with completely different meanings and assumptions had just been too much for him to stand.

More for his own sanity than anything else he'd had to share it. He gave a tired sigh and pushed the sour taste, and memories, aside. There wasn't time.

He took a breath and forced himself to focus. Tracing each rune, with both his eyes and his less physical senses. Tracing the runes, but more importantly, the meaning they anchored. That was the real secret that he couldn't seem to get across. Each rune was a link. A shorthand callout to the entire edifice of meaning.

A meaning that he had created and maintained. Glowing constructs of thoughts, meaning and restrictions that lived as a keystone inside his soul palace. He traced the links, fully remembering and reinforcing each rune. Recognizing them as fully contained, internally consistent and complete ideas before tracing the links and interactions that made it more than the sum of its parts. Tracing through the geometric web of circles, lines and polygons of however many sides were needed. Other symbols denoted timing and one-way gates to control mana backflow. All directing and imprinting the mana in pursuit of a specific and clearly delineated purpose.

An intake filter. To draw in the constantly fluctuating and pulsing local mana field (called just the Field by most) in, process and repackage it in a consistent stream to the runed black rod floating at the center. It took him most of a half hour of slow checks and careful tracing to get that far, frequently pausing to pull one of a dozen small carving tools or materials out to fix, improve or just better fit the construct into the Field.

He'd spent months, off and on, scouting and studying this location. How it changed with the seasons. How it was rocked by storms, flash floods or beast waves. And with all of that study, he'd gotten his initial enchantments close. Better than he’d expected honestly. It still needed final adjustments by hand and in person to really make it fade into the background. To become a feature of the Field itself, rather than an obvious drain on it.

It was inevitable really, the Field was a confusing, chaotic mess of thousands of distinct mana types. All that was physical gave off mana, in ten thousand flavors and personalized bits. And all those bits also created physical mass of the same flavor. Chicken or egg? Who could say?

The results favored television static in 3D.

With thousands of colors.

And tastes.

Smells.

Hell, throw in the rest of the senses while you’re at it.

Too much to feel, too much to describe. And most certainly not a stream or a lake you could dip a cup into and come out with something usable.

Timothy took a moment to gaze into that chaotic trippy mess. So many tried to simplify it. From the traditional four or five elements, earth, wind, fire, water and occasionally metal, to something more human or religion-centric. And you could do that. But not without forcing the magic to fit your mold. As soon as the willpower that made the mold left? Things went wrong in a hurry. They did anyway really, but if you fit to the Field instead of the Field to you, it took a lot longer.

Mana was messy. Every tree had its own mana type. Every different flower in a plant and every drop of rain that made its way dripping through the leaves above produced something semi-unique. All water droplets, but not identical. Each flavored by the story of its short life.

Flowers born on the same plant had meaning and intrinsic mana that was mostly the same, but not entirely. If he spent long enough and focused small enough, he could taste the difference. This one might be pollinated by a hummingbird carrying Passionflower pollen. That one a corpse flower. That one had a nick in its stem that partially starved it. Not enough to die, but enough to leave it partially wilted.

The history of objects was written in their mana, for good and ill. And while for the vast majority of mana wielders such subtle differences didn’t mean much, Timothy was not them. Stability in long-term constructs required higher standards.

Timothy knew, not just thought but really knew, that despite his imagined giant status, he was still just a slightly smarter caveman, making a better snare and perhaps a smoother club. He was peering through the rain at the workings of the universe and barely eking out a few squiggles and holding them up like the Ten Commandments.

He knew a bit about how a few things worked, but almost nothing of why they did! Not that he wasn't interested or didn't try to learn. He was and did with a passion that consumed his hours and coin purse. He'd trade an arm for that knowledge if he could find or make such a ritual! Though an eye might have a better symbolic link. There just wasn't enough time. Wasn't enough broadly ranging basic knowledge to do more than point and guess. Just not enough of anything, really. Still, he'd figure it out eventually, he promised himself that.

He might not have the time to dive into all of it right now, but he did have time. A reason to use the quasi-immortality he'd tripped and found his way into.

He snorted at the memory. One he'd never told, and likely never would. Immortality, though the word was a bit of a misnomer, could be found. But it could not be taught. Not without everyone involved being killed, and everyone nearby who was not involved too. And probably anyone linked to those people.

Besides, even if he could what would he say? The truth was hardly going to do his reputation any good. That he went looking for a better way to wipe his ass and defined his body at a set age he could return to? Hell No!

Timothy reflected with a shudder, and not for the first time, that it was a damn good thing he was good at keeping secrets. It ate at him sometimes, when those he cared about showed the signs of age. But it was what it was.

He didn't have the strength to argue. A caveman against a space-faring species of galactic wizards. Besides, he had a brain. It was also a good idea. Immortality en masse was a terrible idea for any society and trying to pick out a way to hand it out on a limited basis just begged for abuse.

No, it was yours if you could find it and that was it.

Shaking his head again, he pushed those pesky nagging thoughts to the back of his mind. Not forgotten, never that, but stored away for another time. He gloried for a moment in a nearly mindless state, empty and waiting, then the Field bled in. A twisting pulsating nightmare containing so much information that it could, and would, turn his mind to jelly if he tried to comprehend it all.

So, he didn't. Merely flowing along, a wood chip in a flash flood. Unharmed and unconcerned. The shape of it slowly made an impression, even if the exact details, the history of a million discrete parts, slid past unrecorded.

Enough, he kept the impressions, the water-colored impression, and pulled his mind slowly back. From a different mental cupboard, he pulled out his intended enchantment. Tracing out the flows and reactions, sizing and carefully adjusting them to fit, to blend into the twitching outline of an image he retained. One last double check before he dived in and all mistakes became unredeemable.

He had two sets of replacement rings waiting for just such a situation. And he'd started with five. But it would waste the rest of the day at the very least to have to use them. No, not this time.

He'd learned from those earlier mistakes. His eyes darted to a deceptively simple twisting flux that graced a portion of his mental map. Tricking freaking little mana eddy.

With a last shake of his head, he took that step. His hands were firm, stable and confident as he carefully carved half a water droplet into one of the few empty spots in the outer ring, he deftly reached out with his will, both to the mana in the Field and to one of the many constructs carved into his soul. A cursive version of a percent symbol continued upward from the half droplet, reached the top and began to trace out the mirror side. Humidity, the very muggy shit that was making him miserable. It was a constant, and that meant he could take advantage of it. The physical environment meant it would always be here, and if he collected it as it formed, it wouldn't have time to mix into the quagmire. As long as the climate didn't shift massively, there would always be humidity, and always be mana associated with it for the spell to collect.

With a last flick, he guided the soul concept into the rune while tying its resonance to the field at large. He paused, watching for a few seconds, then nodded as mana began to trickle in. It wasn't the most potent source of mana, but it was an excellent source to start with. A stable trickle to slowly get things moving.

A few deft strokes of his magic pen connected the rune to the mesh of its brethren. His hand continued, carefully carving away the interrupts he'd left for ease of transport. Babying the trickle of mana through the lines. Tracing the many outer runes, and teasing them to life as they reached out and started pulling mana in from around them.

The collected mana began to ramp up rapidly, trickling through the lines and feeders before jumping to the middle ring.

Where the runes split and collected tiny streams of related sub-aspects. Venting away the many odd types that just weren't compatible with any of the new streams. The first ring was choosy, pulling from mostly stable sources, but it wasn’t perfect. Some things slipped through.

The homogenized streams fed into the inner ring, where they were threshed, twisted and spun into usable threads. Stable and uniform meaning, instead of just similar. Meanings that were then reinforced and recombined in a game of magic marbles. Using conflicting attributes to counter each other while useful aspects were combined into a more useful whole.

Mana Engineering, Timothy style. He sighed in relief; it was almost done too. After most of a week of work, he was almost bloody done. Done with the constant- Grrroa- thunk. The roar stopped with a sudden, lethal finality that left goosebumps lining Timothy’s spine. -with the constant attacks and the lingering dread that came with them.

This was the last feeder ward. The last set of ambient mana links and while he had more to do, some of it quite difficult work, but it would be in a much less exposed position.

Easing out a mental tendril Timothy slowly worked his way through each of the rings, double and triple-checking the stability and throughput of each individual rune as well as the composite patterns of them as they ramped up to full power. It wasn't a quick task, and the close confines and growing heat certainly made it an unpleasant one, but he didn't hurry, didn't rush. Really with his mind inside the runes, he hardly noticed.

Couldn't afford to notice. A wizard without the ability to tune out discomfort for the sake of a spell was no wizard at all. Concentration was a required attribute in the pursuit of magic.

At last satisfied with the outer connections, Timothy moved on to the ward stave itself. It was a beautiful if slightly ominous piece. A two-foot-long rod of black wood with the sheen of an oil slick on its exterior. Sets of runes like the endless forest, the fog bank on the water and the moonless night were carved into its exterior, then inlaid with natural amber. A further series of geometric constraints, a standard primal sequence of triangle pentagram heptagon, symbolically indivisible but in a predictable pattern, directed and united the mana flows. Given meaning by the runes and the concepts they anchored before being directed into a double fist-sized Mirage Pearl for the final combining and release. A raw pearl of that size and quality could enthrall a mid-level guardian for hours, where only the pangs of starvation, suffocation or dehydration might pull them free. Might.

The version in front of Timothy took that to 11. The pains of the body would not save them. Not even a veteran if they were caught unaware. It was a weapons-grade material by no mistake, and Timothy had properly pushed it to its very limits.

Taking a deep breath in, Timothy cocked his hands oddly, deftly weaving a thread of mana from his bracers into a Mobius strip. No ending and no beginning. A constant, and eternal path. Symbolically linking that concept with the ritual he was about to cast. He opened his mouth and began to sing/chant a guttural invocation. He’d never win a Grammy, but it did go right round for a bit. It wasn't pretty, but as his mind and will followed along behind the mnemonic he easily activated each rune in turn, and the amber they were lined with began to glow, starting at the base and traveling slowly to line the entire stave before igniting the Pearl itself in iridescent splendor.

In the moment that it lit, Timothy's will and focus split, leaping outward, upward, sideways and nowhere all at once. A feature of how directions worked in the Field, but even so he easily found and latched onto the prepared beacons. Each of the other mana feeder nodes and the staves that capped them. They glowed with simple order, standing out like a sore thumb among the boundless chaos. For now at least. He felt along the prepared lines and pre-scouted non-Euclidean passages that linked the proto wards. Sometimes moving a few feet backward to move a hundred yards forward. Distance and direction be damned, but he did it and made linked his sight with threads of mana.

For a timeless moment, he was both here and many theres at once. Inside similar small spherical chambers. Most of polished stone, but with a few outliers like a natural cave, polished wood or even buried beneath the mud at the bottom of a pond. Just enough to keep from being predictable.

Holding them all stable in his straining mind, he traced three muskets crossed at the barrels. The thin threads wobbled for a moment, straining under the load, then snapped into place. First a trickle, then a flood of mana poured into the network from each connected nod.

Still, that was just the foundation. A warp of fuel-filled threads spread across the area he intended to protect. Now it was time to weave something more on top of it. With practiced mental fingers he began to interlay the connections. Each feeder to every other feeder in a simple pattern at first, but steadily increasing in complexity as he wove in shunts and grounds to handle the massive mana load, recirculating and reusing it wherever possible for efficiency, but with enough depth to absorb attacks, mistakes or just plain bad luck.

Redundancies were inefficient, and it hurt to waste mana that way... but he'd learned that lesson the hard way. Perfection was for ideals. Ones that seemed brilliant in your head, but once they escaped into the real world were nothing but problems.

Several minutes later he let out a breath in relief. It wasn't done. But it was stable, and as long as he didn't wait a couple hours, it wouldn't go anywhere. Enough time to take a short break, relax a bit and let his strained willpower recover. He spent a few minutes that way, forcing his mind to let go and relax. Waiting a bit longer, to let the fresh stresses fade into the background. Not gone, not without a full night’s sleep he suspected, but faded. Enough to finish.

Unable to sit still for long when he was so close, he sighed and prodded the construct with his intent. Deliberately poking away at it, and watching the responses like a hawk. Then nodded in satisfaction. No obvious deal breakers. No dangerous incompatibilities or large-scale eddies.

Nothing he could find in the few minutes he allowed himself.

It was good enough. He stepped firmly on his inner perfectionist. The Cardea would be more than capable of streamlining things later. He let his mental vision back up a bit, taking in the entire edifice at once. A massive, interwoven net of mana and meaning crisscrossed the jungle for several miles. Extending not just to each ward stave, but in expanding circles beyond them.

Of a sort anyway. Circles dictated by distances in the Field, not the physical. He'd accounted for that, mapping out the connections between the two before carefully placing the feeder wards. But it didn’t result in nice clean curves. No pretty circle or Timothy’s preferred hexagons, the best-a-gons... There wasn't even a constant thickness to the protections on each side.

Not that that was a bad thing.

Neat even shapes had obvious centers. One you could predict and target by walking the perimeter. This? A drunken slime thrown at high speed at a spiked wall? Guess away. If you hit it, then you should buy a lotto ticket while you’re at it. Predicting such things required an understanding of the local Field and how it mapped to the physical realm. Once the wards were up and running, masking those connections, even Timothy would find that a tall order.

He nodded and knotted off the last few strands of mana before inching his way backward and out of the boulder. His crawl ended in an awkward flop sideways onto a flattish section of the house-sized boulder. Exhausted.

It had been a long day. Hell, a long week. He really didn't want to drag it out any longer. The thought made him frown. He forced himself upright, sitting rather than lying on the shelf while he took a good careful look inside. Then he let out a breath of relief. He had enough left in the tank to do this. Not a great deal more, unfortunately, and he'd need to rely on his guards more than he'd like. But enough.

Still, best to get a bit more safety room. With fumbling fingers, he isolated another lanyard and pulled the cork from the clay jar at its end. Not water this time, but ginger tea, with the roots and leaves left to continue brewing since they left Treeholm. It was thick, oily and bitter. Exactly what he needed.

Taking a small sip, he grimaced at the grit and overpoweringly spicy taste. Not that taste mattered much when a clear cool stream began to flow over his aching brain. It was peace, comfort and a surcease of pain in a small bottle. And it wasn’t even a potion, just a tea he’d brewed himself. Nature had its own mana, its own meaning. Sometimes it was better raw.

Feeling like he'd had an hour's rest instead of several minutes, He carefully recorked the half-empty container and let it slide back down its lanyard. Had to be careful with that stuff. A normal cup of ginger tea wouldn’t matter much, but this super-concentrated stuff could be addicting. Both for itself and the relief it could bring.

He really didn’t want to deal with withdrawal again. Even when it felt so damn good...

He squashed that thought and turned back to the boulder, arching his hands and cocking the fingers through several careful passes, chanting out a lengthy password while runes lit up in sequence surrounding the hole in the rock. A few moments passed, then it began to grow closed.

First, a minuscule inner layer of lead and tin to hide it from inner eyes, not a solid layer, mana had to permeate it easily, but in offset plates. Then a layer of stone essence to secure it against accidental physical blows, then two feet of solid normal rock to camouflage it.

A few final minutes grew a layer of moss over a lot to match the rest.

Double-checking his work, with eyes and senses, he nodded and took a step backward. Sliding down the boulder’s side and half stumbling as his feet hit the ground. He brushed aside a thin layer of leaves to pull out his staff, the leg bone of a hog polished and shaped into a wrist thick runed cylinder a few inches taller than he was and topped by a large knot of amber, with a six-inch prehistoric looking mosquito trapped within.

A bit more brushing and he pulled out a reinforced wooden case that was a bit shorter than his staff, but just as magical. He'd left it outside by necessity, not by preference, as letting the damn thing out of his sight damn near gave him anxiety attacks. The kind of worry that came from handling a thousand-year-old Ming Vase or reading your best friend's signed copy of Dune in the hot tub.

It took him a full minute chanting and gesturing to unlock the various wards and open the case along an unseen seam. The rod revealed was the big brother to the ward stave he'd just placed. If the big brother was Rambo to it’s Rugrats. The four-foot length of oily black wood was topped with a melon-sized pearl that cost more than a Veteran hunter's yearly take. Several years of it if they had poor luck.

And that was just the Pearl, the rest of it wasn't any better. The stave was Ayahuasca Vine, a powerful hallucinogenic and spirit-aligned material, transformed by internment over at least a decade in tar or deep sucking mud into Bog Wood. The runes were filled with good old natural amber. Rare wood that had to be retrieved from the depths of the swamp and a pearl from a magical freshwater clam gifted with illusions. Throwing in a half pound of Amber, called tree gold, only added a paltry metal coin or three to the cost. Barely noticeable.

Forcing himself to ignore the price, at least for a moment, Timothy let his will encompass the stave, and in turn through the forged links of similarity, the entire network. All the lesser ward staves, and this, the king stave were made from the same massive peace of bogged vine. And since they were once one, magically they always would be. And being the control rod, it offered a much better connection than the minor stave inside had.

He gave a simple order and mana from twelve adjacent sub-wards pulsed through the mesh to a single ward on the opposite side of the threshold. Then redirected again a quarter circle away. Nodding, he released his active control, watching carefully as the accumulated mana drained back through every available link, redistributing itself evenly without his intervention. Mostly even, he noted, spotting a few low points his mind interpreted as crimped pipes.

A good start. He made a mental note of the rough areas. They still flowed, but it wasn't as fast or as smooth as it should be. Still, that was fixable. Good!

Or at least good enough. For now. His fingers twitched, but he let it go. The Cardea would do a stress test and optimize the flows without his interference. That and he didn't have enough left in the tank to do much more than the minimum anyway. He was already pushing things. Not just today, but the entire week. Balancing between the competing needs of getting some basic defenses up against the violent and deadly wildlife and frying his brain.

Magic was his one true love, but that didn't mean it was a kind lover.

Nor one that suffered fools. Overreach, even once, and he'd be lucky to end up a vegetable.

It was a familiar risk and one he'd trained and practiced to manage. That didn’t mean it wasn’t risky. He'd be a fool to push it any farther than he had to. With a moment or two to catch his breath, he gripped the King Ward Stave tightly and commanded the mana not to move, but to act!

And it did.

Time seemed to pause, then the air itself bloomed in white misty clouds. Expanding rapidly, covering and hiding the green and vibrantly colored world in shades of gray, then opaque hanging white. Till he couldn't see so much as a tree. Considering the smallest was 50 feet in diameter and blocked out the very sky, that was saying something.

How do you make a wall that can stand up to hundreds or even thousands of crazed beasts? Willing and eager to die for a tiny taste of human. Powerful beasts even. Answer: you don't. Walls were a target. A challenge to be broken through. But a maze? One without walls or gates, that was something else.

Give them nothing to fight, and how will they break through?

It wasn't foolproof, of course. Nothing was. The laws of magic didn't permit it. He could almost hear Bugs Bunny calling out ‘You have to give them a chance! It’s in the rule book.’ No matter what he tried, or what any other pathfinder tried, there was always a fault somewhere waiting to be exploited. So don't try. Direct instead of forbid. Guide instead of block and form the flaws into a feature.

In this case, Timothy'd fallen back on some obscure knowledge. Or at least culturally restricted knowledge. Old fairy tales, video game stories and even pop culture references. Cliches and standard tropes. He couldn't picture little hog babies being told Hansel and Gretel as they were tucked into bed. Nor about the Labyrinth of Crete or The Golden Key. For that matter, they didn't exactly have hands to hold a ball of yarn or a stick of chalk. Breadcrumbs, now that they might try, but then again that trick hadn't worked that well for H&G.

It might still work. Eventually.

But if you knew the right story, you could do it in one go.

The fog was so thick he couldn't see, nor sense with all the spells dampening and confusion threads woven through it, farther than the reach of his arms. He couldn't even see the massive boulder not three feet away. But leaning over and reaching out his arms, he found it easily enough. But...

He took a step to his right. Moving both feet once, then moved them back, the same length of a step to as close to the original position as he could manage. He reached out again and found no stone, but he did touch something green and soft.

He grimaced; he must be wearier than he’d thought. That had been really stupid. What if he'd grabbed an acid fern? Or a thorn bush? Still, it wasn't one and he recognized the mana signature. He felt for a better hold, then slowly pulled the plant in, still almost bashing a head-sized white orchid flower into the top of his head.

Not a bad catch! Better lucky and all that. He tucked the King Ward Stave into his belt, then carefully cut the stem off near its base, then the flower portion as well. All without moving his feet. Feeling around he found another 4 main stems, and cut all but one of them in the same way. heads, he dug out a shallow hole in each direction about the plant and left at least one foot, the same one foot, unmoving, and buried them. The stems he tucked behind his belt.

It was a lot of work to wring the oil from them, or some tricky magic, but it was a useful base for potion work and worth 4 to 5 stone coins an ounce. He’d be lucky to get an ounce per stem, but that wasn’t bad money for such a small amount of weight. An important consideration when he'd have to pack it out.

His little bit of herbalism complete; he spent a moment looking around. It was like living swabbed in loose cotton bandages. Mummy style. Even sounds were muffled or echoed weirdly. A nearby waterfall sounded like it was to his right, then his left, then faded out completely, only to come back with a different pitch.

Truly confounding. As intended. With a last glance, he pulled the Ward Stave out again and commanded the mist Back.

And it moved! Like a carpet being rolled up his little island of reality expanded to a hundred yards across. He glanced about and frowned at the seemingly empty terrain. Now where was that boulder? He had to turn most of a full turn before he spotted it, almost hidden behind a tree root and over 20 feet away. In only two steps! Google he loved magic!

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

He also hadn't spotted any of his bodyguards. Not that he should. If he could spot them, then the beasts might. The corollary was that beasts that didn't spot them would not be spotting anything else ever again. Without protection, there was no way he'd be able to work the necessary rituals in safety.

Safety, he held back a habitual snort. Safety training and protective equipment had nearly given him an aneurysm in the old world. And that was working in an office! In a cubicle farm peopled by fellow actuaries, whose job it was to know better, there were still idiots of every stripe and flavor finding new and innovative ways to hurt themselves. Worse, instead of chalking it up to 'you can't cure stupid' every corporate managerial stooge in the world was constantly creating miles of red tape to save them from themselves. And from getting any work done in a reasonable time frame.

He took a deep breath and let it out. Old world, old problems, let that shit go!

None of that mattered. Now stupid did have a cure, many cures in fact. Starting with a 7-foot tall 14-foot long jaguar rip off with magical camouflage that would make a marine sniper jealous. Or a single fern hiding in an acre of near twins, only this one, barely detectable by a bluer tint to its ethereal glow. The acidic mucus membrane coating it would melt flesh like wax in a blow torch. So fast that its victims sometimes took a dozen steps before noticing they were bleeding out. Those and many, many more. It was just one inattentive moment away from a cleaner gene pool.

Pitching his voice low, but not whispering as it would carry even farther than talking normally, Timothy spoke a single word. “Gather.”

While waiting, Timothy ran his hands over the detailed engravings on the stave in his hand, pride warring with consternation. It was a symbol of the most powerful magical working in the entire union! It was also likely the most expensive.

The wood had to be retrieved from an insect, crocodile and hippo-riddled death trap of sucking mud, brackish water and quicksand. Despite the risk, the payout offered for Bog wood was high enough that there was a constant trickle of it brought in. Intrepid Hunters braving the depths for fame and fortune. Many never to leave. Even when they were successful, what they brought in was a variety of different woods. Most indistinguishable in the wild.

You had to bring it back to find out if it was a gold nugget or the whole mine.

The pearls were an odder case. The smaller versions, despite coming from an illusion-savvy lake clam in piranha-infested waters, weren't priced too badly. They were a major export of the Fishman and Innsmouth Holds. Timothy held in a familiar sigh at the names. He didn’t begrudge them their sense of humor, but they might regret that levity in time. Names mattered in the new world, and there was such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

He pushed the familiar thought aside and refocused on the stave. The King Ward Stave pearl though, was a different story.

Those came only from one tricky bastard who refused to say how he managed it. He also only sold them on the condition of anonymity. Timothy respected secrets... that’s why he spied on the man, but never told a soul what he’d seen.

Who saw a Tier 2 clam and thought ‘let's make friends!’ Who did he think he was, Doolittle? He who dares, profits. And feeding it the cheaper cuts of tiered meat? Inspired.

Expensive. But that wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Paying the costs was a sacrifice, and that mattered for spell work. Risk, loss and determination. The very history created in to collection of these resources empowered them in his rituals.

And despite those risks and sacrifices, there was no shortage of willing participants. Many of whom willingly died. He held in another sigh.

And it didn't matter. Or rather they had no choice but to pay the cost, and would pay even more if they could, but it just wasn't available! This was the only way they'd found to safely expand into the wilds.

Well-crafted wards, and with ingredients like this, he refused to provide anything less, could protect a five-mile-wide area. Enough of a maze-like buffer zone to really protect a settlement.

Unfortunately, it was also an area that took a hell of a mage or wizard to cast the spell over. Even after Timothy used every trick he knew, or anyone else he could beg borrow or steal from knew, it was still a stone-cold bitch to cast.

The number of people who could do it alone pretty much defaulted to 1. Timothy. Understanding plus the strongest will in the Union meant he could manage it, but he couldn't be everywhere. And worse he had to sleep sometimes. Then what? And that was ignoring the fact that Timothy had better things to do with his time than sit around holding a single spell!

It wasn't like they hadn't tried other solutions. Most of them much cheaper too. From groups of guardians working from a set of stone henge-style ritual circles to individual sectional wards fitting together in a jigsaw puzzle. Mostly they had the same problem, too many guardians were needed to hold them, like two dozen for a smaller area, and when the spells overlapped or the united casting got slightly out of sync, the spells tore themselves apart and left several casters heavily corrupted from the emergency healing.

They even tried to limit the time, dropping the spells regularly and recasting to sub in fresh guardians and to remove harmonics from the mana flows. Every time the spells dropped anything trapped in them would be released. Not to mention hell on its casters. The initial cast was much more expensive than the upkeep!

With the risk, costs and paltry results, it just wasn't worth it.

Nothing was until his inner Grinch gave them a little poke and revealed one of the secrets of the universe. If at first you don't succeed, throw money at the problem! Exorbitant materials, an entirely new style of ritual-based enchanting that included lunar charts, planetary alignments, eclipses and divination to find the most auspicious times. Any and everything he could think of and then what his allies could think of as well.

And it worked. Enough to reduce the number of guardians to four.

And not even all 4 at once. They could actually sleep! A very important improvement, Timothy snickered. Not all at once of course, and not if they were under a major attack, but he'd take his wins where he found them.

It was enough, if barely. They couldn't afford to let more of their preciously limited veteran guardians get tied down in defensive measures. They already had a massive shortfall at the higher ranks. You could toss a lot of jobs to the greener guardians. Defending the safer river Holds, patrolling or even just the quality of life magics like keeping the sewers and running water working.

He too serves who stands and guards as well as he who shovels shit! It wasn't glamorous, but it was safe work. Sure, it was mostly trainees and beginner hunters who took those jobs. A place to learn and improve before risking your life to see if the lessons took.

But even there, you needed some experienced troops to lead or head the tasks. Even if it was just to offer some common sense and on-the-job training.

Thankfully, there weren't many complaints about such jobs. So far at least. On the defense end, most of the serving elites had their own families behind the Hold's defenses. No one wanted to wake up with a 25-foot-long poisonous snake in their bed... or rather their bed in the snake!

On the practical end, it only took a few backed-up sewage tanks or the daily bath turning into a near-boiling sauna to make even the most arrogant of magic users willing to lend a hand.

Despite the necessity, he begrudged every elite guardian stuck in such roles. They were holding ground, instead of claiming more. Standing around instead of growing their strength or discovering new things. Not out hunting for meat, valuable medicines or natural resources. Not studying magic or learning new spells from natural phenomena!

That was the point of all this. A new outpost in the jungle, one of many such. Each a new nail in the map, an expansion for humanity's territory in an uncaring and lethal world.

They called them Thresholds.

Both a safe base and bait. Hunter teams would live here, harvesting the high mana density areas of the Dark, the deep jungle areas where the sun never shined. It was also the first line of defense against anything nasty trying to migrate towards the Riverlands. The bait aspect came into play here. High magic concentrations, like the wards and supplemental defenses, were catnip for beasts. Each threshold then, just by having high mana defenses, would attract the beasts, especially compared to the lower mana areas of the Riverlands.

It was a dichotomy that held true everywhere. More mana meant stronger defenses, but also stronger bait. You couldn't just keep pouring mana into defenses and expect it to work. The bait aspect would overcome the defenses in time. And that was if one of the Kings of the Sky didn't step in and eat you first.

The solution, as usual, lay in greater understanding. It was a multiplier. The clever usage of mana with a corresponding understanding of how the effect you wanted to create should act equaled the total effectiveness of a spell. Or something like that at least.

Creating an entire knowledge base, teaching or letting people find their own understandings, all of that took time. Maybe even generations of it. Until then, they had the Threshold project. Spreading out the mana signatures and defenses of humanity over a larger area, and hopefully by doing so, reduce the bait aspect. Or at least control where it occurred.

Outside the doors of the Riverlands. At the Thresholds. The defended gateways into the heart of human territory.

A bit grandiose to some, but that was that pesky pointless humility speaking again, humanity had more ambition than that. Grandiose held symbolic meaning that also improved effectiveness. Humility held nothing but pain and death. Shaking the thought aside he looked around and grimaced. Eight cloaked forms crouched in a diamond shape around him. Their cloaks were in a state of flux, chameleon camouflage shifting as it adjusted to the new location. From rough bark on a few to berries and thorns on another.

Timothy hid a sigh. Still in flux meant they'd barely moved, but he hadn't noticed. He was tired and it was their job to be sneaky, but still. He hadn't noticed. That would get him killed. He took a deep breath and his mind turned to the half-full vial of tea.

Best not. He reflected, though not without more of a battle than he'd expected. He might have been hitting it too hard already he reflected. He'd have to go cold turkey for a while.

That was going to be fun to deal with.

The cloaks settled, leaving half-hidden floating faces to surround him, without even an outline to show more. Of course that was only on the physical level. Their calm, watchful intent pressed against him. Born on the bonds of their mutual humanity through the clutter of the Field. As close as they were, he could feel them even if his eyes failed. A slight raggedness to their impinging thoughts told him a different story. He wasn't the only one worn out.

Sighing he pulled a coil of thin rope from his belt, leaving one end tied and tossing the rest backward. He didn't need to do any more than that. Everyone here was an elite, and they'd earned that status in spilled blood and by dint of survival. They grabbed the rope in a line of ducklings.

The guards gathered; he spent another moment looking around. Even with the mist pushed back it wasn't clear where to go. After the wards had a bit of time to charge, the mana in them would act like a lighthouse, a beacon travelers could use to navigate the trackless Dark. Even then that would lead you to the wards, not to the Threshold inside of them. That's why they wanted a larger area. The mana signature was spread out across the entire five miles.

With a twitch of his will, the mist collapsed, rolling up and over them and trapping him again into a cotton-wrapped world. Protected to a degree because what could find him? But also blind and unable to see it coming.

Scary, but as intended. Or at least what was intended for beasts. Not for humans. How did they let humans in without the beasts? It wasn't like the wards could be toggled on and off all the time. Even if it was possible (which it wasn't!) leaving the wards down while a human ran across several miles wasn't going to work.

And that was ignoring how often they'd have to do it. Hunter teams mostly ran a day-on, day-off schedule for mana reasons. But they did NOT stay out at night, darkness brings death! We know this! Even in the land of eternal twilight, there was a massive difference from ‘looks like night,’ to actual night!

And that brought them back to knowing the right story. Something complex enough to inhibit random luck from solving it, but also easy to remember.

Timothy started walking forward, slow at first so he didn't yank on the rope and in no particular hurry even after that. Because forward was a relative thing. As was left, right or even backwards. If he jumped even up would be hard to nail down. He wasn't trying to get anywhere, just moving enough for the solution to present itself.

He kept walking, probably in circles. Merely checking every now and then that everyone was still attached. The guards knew the flaw as well, so they wouldn't stay lost, but they could hardly guard him if they couldn't find him now, could they? If they let go, even for a moment, then they'd be lost till they met back up at the Threshold.

A bit of bush slid through the outer edge of his sight and he considered it, for a moment, then regretfully turned away. To many thorns and far too big. Then a waist-high fallen branch that half hid a shiny bit of ground behind it. A mud pit if he had to guess, and he wasn't willing to find out he was wrong. The world being what it was, it would probably be worse!

Then a knee-high rock half buried and bulging out of the ground appeared. He stopped and gave it a second glance. No unfortunate, or dangerous-looking terrain around it, check. His inner eye and sight agreed it was a rock and not a burrow beetle or a trap door spider, double check.

Good enough! With a large step, he passed over the rock without touching it. The size of the obstacle didn't matter beyond the convenience of stepping over it or jumping if he wasn't tethered to a group. The intent of going 'up' was what was important. Intent and symbolism were leveraged to create the wards, and they also held the key to it.

Continuing forward, even if straight likely had nothing to do with it, he slapped his palms down and vaulted over a waist-high fallen branch. Chuckling slightly as the rope never seemed to pull at him. His bodyguards didn't use their hands for such a small jump, but the idea of them popping up like streamer behind him was suddenly somewhat amusing.

He was tempted to spin around a few times and see how they handled it. He regretfully decided against it but never doubted that they would easily could.

Continuing on his merry way, imagining dancing dwarves as a string of beads behind him, he ducked under a fallen branch, from a bush and not an actual tree branch considering it was a mere three feet in diameter, as it presented itself propped up against the bush it had broken from. Then again, he ducked beneath an arched fern.

When a tree presented itself inside his tiny sight range, he dodged around it to the left... though dodge was an exaggeration when it took about a minute of walking. Then right around the next bush. Left again, right again. He casually touched the first branch he could find for a B, then had to look about to spot something that started with an A. An ant, he cussed softly to himself as his eyes rapidly and pointlessly darted about. Army ants ran in hordes of hundreds of thousands and at six inches long each, it was a death sentence to get caught in their path. They weren't particularly magical though, and the mist wards would destroy their coordination. Forcing himself to relax he took a step forward and squished it beneath his sandal. An army ant without its army was just an ant. And squashing it definitely counted as an A.

He still made a mental note to have someone check for a colony. He ducked down slightly to pick up a handful of mast. Filtering through it to Select the largest chunk. Then he stopped moving, if only so he could Start up again.

Then straight on till morning. which took less than five minutes to arrive. The mist slid away and the Threshold slid into view. Rising over a football field-sized patch of twenty-foot-tall twilberry bushes. An excellent nearby resource as the blue and black fist-sized berries were a favorite breakfast.

Made great smoothies too.

They were home, at least temporarily. And more it was finally at least mildly safe. Safety derived from a classic simple code. Reggi could flip him all the shit he wanted to; it was perfect. It was quick, easy to memorize, and had a strong historical significance! The classics were classic for a reason.

Still holding the mist active through the four-foot stave in his hand, Timothy gave a relieved sigh. He wouldn't be able to sleep till he handed it off, but at least that end was somewhat close.

Glancing down at a tap on his arm, Timothy gave a quick nod to the guard and tied the recoiled rope back to his belt before trudging through the knee-deep mulch towards the fort. It was an impressive edifice already, and it had a great deal of growing left to do. Black stone shot through with a vein-like tracery of crimson red highlights, half hidden beneath a double twist of interstate-sized roots. Roots large enough that one twisting over the other created a hillside and a largish cavern beneath.

A cavern protected on five of the six directions and the remaining side was fronted with a spiked moat some 15 feet deep. But the spikes were rather empty at the moment, no signs of last night’s attack remained. Not even blood stains. The house was developing quite the appetite. Hopefully a satisfied one though. With the wards on, it wouldn't be getting nightly takeout anymore and he'd rather not have to pack the bodies from a large-scale hunt back.

The intimidating black wall in front of him twitched and pulsed as a rectangular slab seemed to break loose and slowly descend. A semi-living drawbridge. Handy, but also a bit creepy. Timothy gave a polite wave at the wall and the unseen guardians who were undoubtedly staring at them over primed spells.

He couldn't see them, but the feeling of being watched was rather obvious to him. When you focused on someone, your intent reached out as well, and if you were good enough, and Timothy was, you could use that to back trace them. Of course, if they'd been trying to hide from him, they'd have left their eyes unfocused. Noticing his movement but not focusing on him until or unless it was time for violence.

There were a lot of rules in the new world. Not hard and fast, but more practical realities. In the meantime, those focused gazes told him the guards were up and in force.

A fact that would make him feel considerably better when he attempted his first real, uninterrupted sleep. He crossed his fingers and spat over his shoulder without stopping. Of course, that would only apply if he could manage to pass off the ward before then. An event that was by no means guaranteed.

Dammit.

He wearily trudged through a mouth-like gate and into a deceptively welcoming room. The murder holes on the roof and arrow slits on the sides were hidden, but he'd seen the plans. At least the crimson veins were glowing bright enough to frame the passage, even if they didn't really light it. A bit Gothic, possibly pretentious, but a familiar and comforting sight nevertheless.

He waited, still surrounded by his cloaked and heavily armed guards as the mouth closed behind them and a slight shushing sound betrayed the drawbridge being retracted. Then a pulse of mana flashed out from the right wall, followed by several more from the other walls and ceiling. Detection charms of several makes. Standard precautions. What was nonstandard was the person-sized smoke cloud that bled through the walls and expanded to cover them in eye-searingly pungent garlic and jasmine.

The cheapest and dirtiest cleansing spell. Garlic to kill any fungal spores or insects while Jasmine would overpower any scent markings that might lead a predator to them in a future hunt. Then, with the outer gate closed, drawbridge up and a clean bill from the detection spells, another toothy-looking maw opened on the opposite wall.

Timothy hopped over the sharp red-lined obsidian teeth and finally into a safe space. Or relatively so at least.

The common room to be specific. With a wave and gesture of gratitude, he dismissed all but two of the bodyguards to the mostly non-existent comforts of the large room. It was spotted with low black couches and short fat mushroom tables that glowed a bioluminescent blue. Providing enough light to see and eat by, without really removing the ever-present dim.

Getting used to bright lights wasn't safe out here. It left you blind for a time when you went back into the dim. Better to stay close to it.

It wasn't much. Not yet, but it was safe, and they could relax and have a bit of conversation, a welcome change from the near silence of a proper hunt. It was unfortunate but the massive bar that extended nearly the length of the room on one side was unstocked still. Not enough room for that kind of luxury when they had to pack everything in. At least there was food available in a line of stone pots steaming away at the end of the room.

Not great food, but plentiful and you didn't have to cook it yourself. That was something. He took a deep breath through his nose. Stewed meat and mushrooms. Bland stewed meat and mushrooms he corrected after a second sniff. Disappointing but expected. It took real skill and careful ingredient choices to make beast meat edible. Especially here where even weak beasts were at the limits of the first Tier. Even the vegetables in this environment were filled with mana and flat poisonous to unawakened humans.

The elites here could manage it, though the amount of time spent purifying the corruption of foreign mana wouldn't be worth it. A skilled chef could mix and match the mana types and symbolic natures, blending the results into a coherent and easy-to-absorb whole. Sort of a roshambo where the bad effects of a particular spice or vegetable could counteract one from the meat. Mana Chef was a highly prestigious position and not one they were willing to risk on this adventure.

There was a workaround, though one he had a hard time feeling thankful for at this point.

Boil the hell out of it.

A stew pot where everything inside had been cooked into an unrecognizable mass, removed the symbols, removed the harsh mana, and left just stew. A drastic method that wasted the benefits that meat could offer, but it was at least safe to eat. Without distinction or uniformity, the mana tended to bleed out. A very good thing for the norms considering. It wasn't a great taste, nor texture. But it was food.

Still, it could be worse. The first night it had been trail mix! It was amazing how relative taste could be. After days of ration bars, jerky, dried fruit, berries and nuts, even overcooked starchless stew sounded divine.

He was a bit hungry but regretfully turned away from the pots. Trailing his pair of guards, he passed around the tables and couches, and through a door at the end of the bar. Then down a short hallway and through two more guarded and heavily reinforced doors, complete with arrow slits and kill box rooms lined in stone bars, before approaching the Sanctum. The ritual room and heart of the Threshold. Complete with mana storage and soon, control of the wards and other defenses. It was a bit lackluster at this point, but that would change. Like everything else it just took time.

He knocked carefully on the frame and waited. Interrupting Donald mid-spell would be both incredibly rude and frankly unsafe. Timothy had no interest in having his blood reverse directions in his veins. Sure, he had a suite of robust defensive enchantments in the charms hanging from his belt, but that didn't make him invulnerable and Donald was powerful. Besides, it was one thing to wear impressive armor, it was another to stand there and let people with sledgehammers take potshots.

And Donald swung a very large sledgehammer! He was frankly a lot better than Timothy at the quick and dirty enchantments that many magical brawls devolved into. Timothy wasn't much a brawler. More of a big game hunter really. Study, plan then execute.

“Enter.” A polite, high-class voice with a stiff British accent breezed through the door. “I felt the outer wards go up. Stable I trust?” Opening and stepping through the door Timothy smiled up at the tall, muscular man standing with his hands crossed behind him. Dressed in a dandy’s, by the new standards at least, boiled leather armor with flax cloth inserts, it was easy to underestimate the man. At least if you only looked at the physical. His aura was a different story. The manifestation of his power, a thick cloying whirlpool of blood, pushed at the edges of Timothy's awareness. Heavy, in a non-corporeal way. The streams of blood wove about him in elegant patterns and ripples that hid little of the power and sheer willingness to commit violence that dwelt within. Without dropping his senses deeper in the Field he couldn't pick out details, but he could feel the edges of them!

Timothy paused and took a moment to work that thought back through his mind. It was almost an instinctive reaction. But not an accurate one. The power tied up in his aura was a blunt weapon, but it wasn't aimed at Timothy. Nor was in uncontrolled in the least.

And despite the blood motif, it wasn't all that dark either. There was nothing ‘evil’ in what he felt. Quite the contrary. The violence was watchful, disciplined. And while blood could stand for slaughter and death, that wasn't the direction Donald had taken it. It wasn't coagulated and rotting. It wasn't filled with pain and fear. It wasn't the bright frothing explosion of an arterial spurt.

No, it was crimson, vibrant and waiting. A deep pool of potential life. Power and rebirth with a side of growth. The charismatic commander on a field of battle. Surrounded and emersed in blood, but standing for the hope of something better rising from the red dirt beneath.

Timothy paused, as his senses pinged... Huh. It wasn't just his aura. He'd been wearing that set of armor for a while now, and the history in its mana was transforming it into something new. Something powerful.

Magic could make clothing, not good clothing frankly, but it could make something. Giving that clothing a useful magical nature was something else entirely. The magic of the creator would clash with later enchantments and magic that you didn't make yourself when worn that close could interfere with more ad hoc spells.

That left ritual enchanting, Timothy's specialty, or what was called Life Enchanting, which was what Donald was doing. Though he couldn't quite tell if it was on purpose yet. Heavy use, large amounts of mana and the history created by your own actions created seemingly natural enchantments over time. Surprising ones quite often, as the history combined with your style in odd ways. But generally useful.

It was also highly personal. To the point, Timothy hoped no one else was dumb enough to try it on. A guardian could resist the damage, for a time at least, but any unawakened would die.

Then again, Timothy mused a guardian who followed the same path, and to a high degree of accuracy might manage it. Or one of his two brothers, since all three had blended their paths. It would be interesting to see if a single set of armor, if used with distinction and passed down to another to do the same, again and again, what could it become?

He made a note to revisit that idea later. In the meantime, even without opening his inner eye, he could feel the conflict that armor had seen. It was already at the stage where it had a story to tell. A story that said clearly, don't fuck with me.

He'd come a considerable stretch from the goth club vampire wannabe Timothy'd first met. His dyed black hair long since returned to his natural pale blond and a rich diet of well-prepared Tiered beast meat put some serious muscles on his tall frame. A frame that had gained at least 8 additional inches for that matter and some bulk as well. What was once a tall and painfully thin teenager had transformed into the trained fitness and towering inches of an NBA all-star. One with hops that would make Jordon jealous.

The new world had been good to him, while Timothy, he glanced down reflexively, hadn't really changed much. At least not on the outside. Still short, still skinny. With the physique of a suburban walking enthusiast… ya, that’ll impress the ladies.

When you added in a complete lack of an aural manifestation, without his defensive enchantments running, he looked like a norm. Powerful will and discipline even kept his intent bottled up inside. Useful when he wanted to watch people without being detected. Oh, it wasn't that he couldn't emit when he wanted to. No, he could full-on panic freeze people with his displeasure if he wanted to. It just didn't happen by accident. Nor a sort of cloud that hung over him like it did with Donald.

Surrounded by Conan types with mythical projections overlapping and outlining their massive frames Timothy stuck out like a sore thumb. His cheap simple clothing compounded the issue. Crazy Hermit to their Hollywood Stone Age chic. All tanned hides, bone fasteners and the occasional reinforced section of boiled leather or crocodile hide. Frequently spotted with blood and plant stains, not to mention the clouds of violence that lingered on the well-maintained gear.

Not even his robe kept up. Timothy replaced it every week or so. He had far too many secrets to let his clothes hint at what he did. His belt had a bit of buildup, that he didn't replace, but it was already enchanted, and that neatly hid the accumulating history.

He was a tinker, crafter, teacher, explorer and a bit of a spy. Not really a fighter. Frankly, he figured fighting was an admission of failure. An admission that he didn't see it coming and wasn't prepared. Because if he saw it coming, then he didn't bother to fight. He sniffed out weaknesses, bad habits then abused them. He didn’t fight. He killed. Less fuss and bother.

He didn't really mind his image. He could have crafted and projected anything he wanted to. It was a choice and it had many benefits. Mystery and unknown depts. Perfect for a wizard.

And if he really needed to make a point, then deciding you were going to beat the hell out of someone, then pushing that decision directly on them was hellaciously effective. Brown pants style.

Still, while he could manage the ‘look’ if he wanted to. It wasn't something he had to do often. His magic was pretty good for utility and comfort. Things people were desperate for. And more than willing to pay through the nose for. He made a point not to abuse their desperation, but he still had a steady stream of rental fees pouring into his coffers. Everything from sewage and bathing facilities to defensive works and detection spells.

And that didn't even include what he made from putting up Thresholds! Though he had to share a third of that fee with several other Pathfinders. Having done most of the work and having to take the risks to actually place the damn things, he did get most of the fee. No, he had plenty of coin on hand.

He just didn't bother spending it to look wealthy. Being the hand that held out comfort and security brought its own sort of respect. One that went beyond fancy duds or a powerful aura. If he wanted to dress in rags, then he was merely eccentric. And wizards were supposed to be eccentric/

Not that he disdained luxuries. Quite the opposite. He loved them. Spent a pretty penny to acquire them. He had a full set of flax clothing, pants, shirt, underwear and even shoes! All hand woven. It was sitting in a sealed case in his tower. Cloth crops were fairly rare and even more difficult to weave, making it a ridiculously expensive indulgence. Also, a sinfully comfortable one. He even wore it on occasion. Just often enough to remind himself of what comfort really felt like.

What he really loved about luxury was the temptation of it. Most humans were merely animals constantly led around by the nose from one temptation to the next. Timothy tried not to be one of those. But he didn't step completely beyond it either. Recognizing where desire and temptation met, experiencing it, then stepping back and choosing not to be controlled by it was the Path of Will. The start of the Path of Soul.

It wasn't in aestheticism, avoiding temptations was refusing to fight against yourself. Only when you lived cheek by jowl with your desires, and mastered them on a regular basis, could you grow from the conflict.

It was what made Timothy the paragon of willpower that he was. He farmed willpower in self-denial. Ironically so that he could sate his most potent desires. To use and understand Magic.

What was a six-pack and a bevy of drooling ladies compared to that?

Timothy snorted. Quite a lot actually! If he didn't desire it, value it, then there would be little temptation to fight!

The things he gave up for magic. It was worth the trade, but it still hurt. Had to hurt, or it wasn't really giving anything up. It was just too bad that those competitors weren't following suit.

As much as he enjoyed being on top, he was beyond busy and could have used some support. There was even another Pathfinder in the Union who could fit enchantments into the Field like Timothy did.

He just didn't bother to do much with his talent. Timothy sighed, thinking about Conager was depressing. Talented, smart and with a useful path unfortunately paired with little ambition beyond personal comfort and no long-term plans.

He shook the thought aside; comparisons could be odious. The man was quite happy with his lot, not to mention safe and comfortable back in his villa in Copenhold. While Timothy was out here. Dirty, hungry, head aching and exhausted. Who picked the better path, hmm?

Timothy shook his head, to each their own. Conager made choices that reflected his desires. Timothy would do the same. His path was not the only way. It was the best for him, but others were not him, and their path was not his.

Ego. Only egotism suggested otherwise and he gave his to much of a leash already. Best to keep an eye on that. A knife in the back from an inferior killed just the same as from an equal. A truth he tried to keep firmly in mind. It was also the reason that while his robe was cheap and fragile, the enchantments he wore on his cloak, staff, belt and jewelry were anything but.

He wasn’t poor, after all. Not by a long shot. Oh, he wasn’t Scrouge McDuck either. Able to swim in piles of money. No, he spent it nearly as fast as it came in. Experimenting on rare materials was not a cheap hobby. Not to mention bankrolling expeditions like this. The Cardea bought the start-up equipment and owned the results, but expecting them to be able to foot the entire bill was crazy. They took out loans, and while the hold backing them would provide a portion in exchange for benefits, well Timothy usually supplied the rest.

He'd recoup the initial investment over the next 20 years and with a bit of interest on top. At least in theory. If they didn't die, didn't need expensive help didn't need... well the list of potential problems was too long. Frankly, if he wanted more coin, he had far better, safer investments available.

Of course, just because he wasn't looking for coin, it didn't mean he’d take a loss. He was just playing a different game, and coin was not the prize. New materials, luxuries and places of power to study were. Things he would only get if humans expanded out farther and had more territory to explore.

With a guaranteed first right of purchase on any new materials, he made out all right from the deal. But even he wasn't rich enough to just give it away. Nor did he want to.

Do that sort of thing for long enough and people start to expect it. Started thinking it was his responsibility to help them, that they deserved his free help. Stop providing help at that point and he'd piss off far more people than ever felt grateful in the first place.

Humans were dicks like that. And morons. It took force before they'd really look at what they received, and how much it cost to give it to them. It took force to make them acknowledge and pay back the debts they accrued just by going through their everyday lives. Protection, food, housing, direction.

No matter how unimportant it seemed, every source was an obligation. And failing to recognize and repay such obligations was magically actionable!

Woolgathering again. Shaking his head, Timothy forced himself to focus on the present, and the obnoxiously, obviously patient smile on Donald’s face. Yep, he'd lost track of time again.

Oh well, moving on. Timothy held up the stave, its runes still lit and the pearl on top glowing. “Yep. So far at least. Several of the mana cross-links are a bit rough but I can deal with that after I've had a bit of sleep. Or the Cardea can if you four would prefer. Might be good for you to get some experience with it early.” he nodded to the four faceless black-robed figures who were carving away at a large stone block. Already beginning to look like a snarling dog.

“I'll need to spend a bit more time on diagnostics, with or without their help, but provisionally I'd call it green. Good enough that I'm hoping to set it up and activate the binding. Preferably soon so I can get some sleep, but I can wait long enough for you and the Cardea to finish your current projects.” He glanced around for a moment then continued. “At least I hope so, how far along are you?”

Timothy slowly opened his inner eye, half closing his outer at the same time. Not fully diving into the Field as he'd done earlier, but at least looking on that level, enough to get a better feel for the room and the magic constructs filling it.

Pools of meaning-laden mana drenched the surroundings. Unpolished and slightly ragged without the finishing touches, but he could still make out a consistent story. Not bad at all for a week’s worth of work. Especially around the large purified blood pool that held pride of place in the center of the room. Not like some horror movie torture room, but something else entirely. With a clean, metallic scent and the promise of new life. Not a reminder of death.

There was an effervescent vitality about the pool that overwhelmed the senses. A comforting feeling of life in its most basic form. Like smelling a flower ready to bloom, the fresh scent of spring with shoots of green breaking through black earth. It was a feeling of boundless potential and seemingly possessing a faint willpower of its own, shouting for new life.

If Timothy's wards were the skin and senses, this was the beating heart. A ritually purified and highly enchanted reservoir for mana. A semi-living battery that had enough will of its own to at least maintain the pool, instead of letting the mana leak away.

It already held a decent charge, all that blood had its own mana and kept it during the conversion, but not a drop in the bucket compared to what it would have soon. What an established Threshold required. They'd build it up over time. Partially by bleeding some mana out of the wards when they weren't being challenged, though the wards would need most of what they drew in just to stay active. The rest they'd have to supply manually. Either through donations of personal mana, either their own or by buying it from residents, or by charging rent in the form of beast blood from successful hunts. It was mana-rich and fairly uniform. Perfect for claiming and conversion.

Still, it was a good start. The mana lines were wide and robust. The linkages had been crafted with care and the entire construct was bound to the physical realm by the pool and statuary.

Statuary that Timothy took a moment to appreciate. The dog the Cardea were carving at took center place. It rose up from the pool of blood like a king looking down, the center and observation point of the entire enchanted arrangement. It was rough still, only partially finished but already its shoulders stood a good 5 feet off the ground.

Most of it was still just a stone block. Though one of excellent quality. But the head was at least finished and easily recognizable as a German Shepherd. Its sharp nearly triangular ears were spiked back and its fangs bared. Timothy paused for a moment to appreciate the artistry and watch as one of the black-robed men worked his chisel and hammer to chip out the details of one front leg.

He was talented and with the other three going for a general shape he'd accomplished a great deal. Still, even with magic tools it was only a week, and when each blow had to force meaning and a chain of spells into the statue, it could not be hurried.

“That is coming along nicely Cardea.” Timothy gave the man a nod. He and his three cohorts would have to finish the work later and without help. Symbols again. Self-reliance was a powerful one.

And considering how much aid Timothy and Donald had already provided, they needed to firmly put their stamp on it. Both for the symbolism and so that they really understood how it was all put together. Hard to compare to the creator of something when it comes to knowing how it works.

They'd manage and in time a fully formed German Shepherd would stand guard over the Threshold. Just like its many brethren. Each guarded over by a stone guard dog of its very own. But from there things widely diverged. Becoming unique to the location, goals and the very men and women who created them.

Timothy smiled. It was a powerful thing, making your own mark on a task. And while they had a great deal of work to do still, both on the statue and on the henge of guardian spells and statuary that would surround the pool, they at least had a stable start. A very good start at that! Their planned arrangement would take Years of work, but it was well thought out and ambitious. Timothy approved of ambition. It was a well-planned and imaginative defensive setup. Far better in fact than the first Threshold he'd put up.

That had been a bumbling, fumbling disaster...

Of course, they'd managed to power through the early mistakes and that hallowed ground now stood as a powerful linchpin in their defenses. Symbols mattered! And being first and eldest was a very powerful symbol indeed. Not to mention the amount of time they'd had to build up their mana stores.

Still, that ship has sailed, and it was nice to see progress being made with newcomers.

Not that much of that mattered now. What did matter was that the dog's head was intact and the base-level chain of spells was complete. Enough for the first major binding and the advent of some real security.

A dog was a symbol of loyalty and the mascot of the Brotherhood. Standing behind that half-finished statue was Regi and his current bumper crop of idealists. With their symbol standing tall here, it tied the Threshold into the network of similar statues. The pack. Guardians in every Threshold and most true Holds ready and willing to support one another.

When required, it would allow Regi to bridge the distance and provide aid. Not for free of course, crossing those kinds of distances had a high price, so they'd much prefer that each threshold stood on its own feet, two or four. But it was a weight off the mind to have that support in case of a true emergency.

The King Ward Stave would be placed in the dog's mouth and sealed with locking and amplifying runes to tie the various bits together. The Wards to the Statue, locking the use to loyalty and protecting them from treachery. The Statue to the Bloodpool, linking life and storage to the protector's will, providing control and linkages beyond the Threshold. The Bloodpool to the Wards, to harvest in times of plenty and to feed them in times of woe. Three as pairs and as one. The minimum framework of a fully functioning Threshold. A framework that allowed nearly infinite customization and expansion from that simple, powerful base.

Exterior defenses were the most obvious, but additional rooms, freshwater storage, furniture and indoor gardens would all need some attention.

“Thank you Runefather. Let me finish this set of links, and the upper leg with them, then we'll be ready to bind the King Ward.”

Timothy just waved his hand in ascent, tiredly moving over and plopping down on another of the ubiquitous black leather sofas. This one placed back out of the way against the wall closest to the entrance. It was a low cushy affair without legs to speak of. That's what happened when you grew them in place. The blood mages were imaginative bastards, he had to give them that. Who else would think to ‘grow’ not just the building, but the furniture and fixtures as well?

The building was alive, with all that implied. It wasn't a particularly bright being, somewhere on the dumber end of the dog spectrum. But a dog was certainly easier to train than a tree. And even a tree could reinforce its trunk with will and mana over time. The oldest blood building in Bloodhaven Hold could block a charging hog without shaking.

The drawback, and there were always drawbacks, was that a living being had to eat. Organic matter for the most part and no surprise considering its makers, blood in particular. Feed it well and it would create the needed furniture. Even plates and cutlery given time and careful direction. But the materials were limited to things it ate. Bone and hide made dandy furniture, decent silverware but not the best pots and pans. Also, while small pieces like a fork could be excreted, the larger pieces were part of the building. If you liked redecorating and moving the furniture around you were out of luck.

It did make for easy repair bills if a bar fight got out of hand. If you broke it, you bought it in blood, flesh and bone. Beast blood flesh and bone mind. The brothers not so grim were moral wizards, even if they didn't go around preaching about it. Even went so far as to hide it behind a facade of cynicism. Their Gothic sensibilities and dark worldview didn’t prevent them from thinking the world could, and what's more should, be fair.

The fact that they did that by bleeding out their bestial enemies and using the resultant pools of blood as a power source was beside the point. Though the irony of it was something he enjoyed immensely. Bloodmages who drew power from killing and blood sacrifices were more moral than the religious zealots in Templeton. My what a weird world.

Donald nodded at him, finishing a small spell and popped his neck. “Good enough, not all the rooms are fully formed and those that are might just have a pallet, but fido here is coherent, happy and ready to grow with his new owners.” The lowercase on the name was obvious. It was a joke, not a true name. It would be beyond rude for him to name someone else’s dog/house/fortress... Ya. What a world.

“He's got the sewage connections up at least,” an easy thing considering the building also ‘ate’ the sewage, “-and the first purified water tanks are up and partially filled. We're not exactly swimming in it, but enough for drinking and a sponge bath. I've got a few gardens laid out, but you know the drill on that.”

Timothy half sang, “Feed me, Seymour!” A bit of gallows humor. A mind was a dangerous thing, after all. Anything that lived had them, yes, even trees in their own odd way, but the smarter ones had free will to go with that mind. And a dog could be a man's best friend or a biting menace. A feral Blood Haven was a nightmare they hadn't seen yet. But Timothy figured it was just a matter of time. Sooner or later some dumb bastard would abuse what was given to him, and turn out a monster.

Though he made a point, and everyone else involved too, to vet the new owners of a threshold to avoid that.

On the less dark side of things, the gardens wouldn't grow from nothing. The house had to be fed to fertilize the earth, water provided and the appropriate seeds planted, not to mention canned light for any of the less adapted plant life. Keep up on the maintenance and the gardens would happily provide some variety and taste to a hold’s meals, not to mention a backup for sieges.

Don't keep up with it though, and no spices, no veggies and possibly an angry flesh-eating house. Ya. No thanks.

Of course, even without the lit gardens, you could always grow mushrooms. They grew like... well like mushrooms! But while Timothy loved the taste of the less aromatic shrooms and there was a massive variety of that type around, they weren't enough on their own for a Chef to purify meat with. That meant you were probably reduced to stews. And that got old. Fast.

“Don’t be so melodramatic! Little fido is a good boy. He's no Audrey 2! Nor is any other of his kind. They're man’s new best friend,” Be proclaimed pompously, “and their track record is exemplary.”

“Such a long history behind that claim my friend!” Timothy couldn't help himself; he fired back cheerfully.

“Pot, meet kettle. You of all people are bitching about that?”

“Touche” Timothy admitted. The first Threshold had gone up a bit over 2 years ago. They didn't have time for some 10-year military procurement project to fully vet them.

Nodding Donald continued. “I wouldn't worry about issues here. It's not a greenies first Threshold. Only elites will make the journey and this isn't their debut. They've been around the block and no what irresponsibility will bring.”

Timothy nodded, that was true at least. No one under Mid-Tier 2 was likely to make the trip. And they'd best be in a group that could punch up a zone or they wouldn't be welcome here. They didn't go for much in the way of saving people from themselves out here. But minimum power level requirements to live in a Threshold were fairly standard.

“A damn good thing too!” Timothy absently rubbed at a raised ridge of pink and red flesh that extended the length of his upper arm. Not to mention the missing pinky finger on his left hand. “I don't need the blood on my conscious.”

Donald sighed, “I wouldn't bet on it, old friend. Even at the top of the second tier, this is a dangerous move. We don't know what we might find out here.”

That wasn’t strictly true, Timothy had some pretty good ideas. But even he, after weeks of scrying, wouldn’t presume to say he knew everything. Even if he did it wouldn’t do much good. Veterans had their own ways of learning the lay of the land and all the critters in it. Those ways were not his ways and the terms they used amongst themselves amounted to a foreign language.

He'd tried being helpful before. It backfired. The creatures he dealt with easily, were nasty to them and sometimes vice versa. Too many differences in approach and power sets. He'd still warn them if he saw something catastrophic coming, but otherwise, it was best to let them work things out on their own.

“That's part of why they’re here, right? To find the unknown before it finds us.” Timothy paused and gave his old friend a serious look. “It's a bit late for getting cold feet now. We are almost done.”

Donald rubbed at his chin and the weeks’ worth of beard it sported, “I take your point, Runes. I just worry.”

Timothy nodded. “Don't we all. I keep thinking about dwarves and digging too deep. But saying more is a bit too much like ill-wishing. The die is cast, no good will come from bitching and some harm. As much magic as you’re packing, and the hmm- lack of control with which you carry it, your idle thoughts could have significant consequences.” Timothy warned. Taking his own advice, he suppressed the image of a burning demon wielding a whip from his mind with a casual, and well-practiced mental flex. Stray thoughts given to intent could become stray beliefs. And those did occasionally come true. Especially with a story as popular as the trilogy.

“Thanks asshole. I'll have you know my control is well above average, just because I'm not a blank spot in the Field like you are, doesn't make me uncontrolled.” He waved away the familiar argument before it could start. “Anyway, I'll give you the victory here. You are right, I'll try to be a bit more cheerful if you will. Come, it's not even that hard. Just think of all that they might find out here! And all the hurdles we've already crossed.”

“True, we can start a pat on the back for the giant pair of brass ones the Cardea-” Timothy nodded at the men in the black robes, “and guards must have to stick it out here once we leave with our guards. Props to you.” He paused as he remembered the distribution of sexes. “Ovaries too, and no, I don’t need an anatomy lesson.”

He glared at Donald while the man closed his half-opened mouth and made a zipping motion. “We need more like you. Men and women with a sense of adventure and the explorer’s spirit. Not just a sniveling pack of cowards hiding in our holds, trying to pull the doors and walls in behind us.”

“My, tell me how you really feel Runes.” Donal half laughed, giving his friend a bit of a wide-eyed look.

“Hush, you Bloody fool.” He ignored the tightening of that wide eye into a glare. It was his own fault really. British blood mages were just asking for their own insults. “Of course, it's something I believe in. I wouldn't be out here otherwise. I assure you I have a massive backlog of critical projects I could be working on. All of this-” he gestures most of a circle, “-it’s worth the risk. We, and no not a royal we, but the humanity 'we' all need to keep looking for opportunities. Whether it’s to grow, to find new treasures or even just to see the wide world out there! There is more to life than fear.”

He paused for a moment then continued, “It’s been five years and we still know so little about the world outside our narrow valleys. There's no Lewis and Clark's rushing out to see what’s over that next mountain or beyond the sea.”

“Because they'd get eaten! I don't see you volunteering either?”

Timothy sighed; longing mixed with guilt. “I'd like to, but I can't. At least not yet. Too many responsibilities. I know-” he waved away the slightly panicked protest that began to bubble from his friend’s mouth. “-I can’t be spared. Hell, the lot of you nag the hell out of me about safety even on trips like this where we all know it’s needed! I won't go risking myself and leave you in a lurch. I know what duty requires of me.” He didn’t voice the ancillary thought. Someday, he'd be free of it, and then, well. Then he'd have to see.

Donald stopped and looked down at Timothy with a pensive look. “You want it that bad? Sure, with your control you might be able to slip through beast zones without being detected, but what happens when you don't manage that? You're not much in a surprise fight and somewhere along the line, something will slip through. It’s still far too much of a risk. And you're right. We do need you.”

Himself a victim of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility Donald sighed. Then half changed the subject. “So, is that why you won’t eat the Tiered beast meat? Trying to keep your mana signature small so you don’t stick out when you go exploring? Poor trade, my man. Even if it makes you harder to find, you’re still crazy for giving up on mana bacon!”

Timothy scratched his head, exasperated. It always came back to this. None of them really understood. Being inconspicuous was a nice side effect, but it wasn't the real reason. That was somewhere between self-denial and a refusal to muddy his personal mana signature with impure foreign mana. “Why you always got to go for the bacon? Damn my brother for starting this.”

“Because it’s bacon! The sheer smell of Tier 2 bacon could empty a saint’s wallet and fuck the deserving poor.”

“Very vivid imagery there, ass hat.” He didn’t bother to argue. It wasn’t like he could. The benefits of the Tiered meat were well documented. Physical and magical growth, both at an accelerated rate and even beyond what might be naturally possible. Not to mention the smell. His body only had to get the slightest of whiffs and it knew it wanted it. Like fat and sugar, the body craved it, even if it didn't really understand why.

Chuckling cheerfully at the easy victory, Donald stood and stretched his arms over his head, bending backward until he touched the floor without lifting his heels. Just to rub it in of course. Dick.

Straightening out he glanced sideways at Timothy. “The ladies love the flexibility! As much as the muscles!”

“I got it, I got it! Can we move on?” A proper nerd to a ladies’ man and all it took was an apocalypse. He should make commercials.

‘When the world ends try our Tiered jerky, the ladies will come a runnin'!’ Timothy shoved the silly image out of his mind.

“Alright, I have a few things left to finish here, then we can finish up the enchantments and enthrone the Cardea. Then back to civilization and a proper bath! God I could use it right now. A whistle spell and a hip bath may keep me mostly clean, but it's a far cry from a long soak and possibly a massage.” Donald took a sniff at his armpit and turned away slightly green.

“You don't expect me to argue, do you? Who do you think invented the bathes?” Timothy muttered, refusing to move his own arms. He'd tried that earlier and hadn't liked the results any more than Donald did.

“I heard something about the Indus Valley.”

Timothy snorted, “Smart ass.”

“Better than a dumb ass. But seriously, if I don't say it often enough, I hope you know I'm thinking it.” Donald paused to turn to fully face Timothy and looked at him with a sincere intensity for a moment.

“Thank you! Thank you so much for the baths! I'm dreaming of a well-cooked meal floating in the waves while enjoying the view. Coed clothing optional baths! I don't know how an uptight, prudish American Catholic came up with it, but I bless your God for it. You sir are a saint!”

Timothy let out an exasperated sigh. If only he knew it had nothing to do with his mother’s God. In fact, quite the opposite. They sprang fully formed in a moment of pique and spite when his mother tried to bully him into putting personal baths in every home.

“And while I'm enjoying the ladies-” Donald paused, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “-you can get back to your students! Just think of how much trouble they've caused in your absence.”

The groan slipped between his teeth before he could choke it, this time. A direct hit. Sometimes responsibility sucked- scratch that, most of the time it did! “Thanks for that, I wasn't worrying about it all on my own. Not at all!” Timothy snidely fired back, well aware that he'd lost this particular fight as well.

“We should both have a bit more faith. They're a good lot and they'll have to go out on their own eventually. Might as well get a bit of a trial run now. Besides, miserable as it can be, I need this. A reminder that there is a lot more beyond the walls of Paradise waiting to be experienced.” And so much more to a Path than just who can throw a bigger ball of fire, he was careful NOT to say.

But instead of thinking onward into the jungle and the many things he'd spied in its depths, his mind drifted to how he'd gotten here. And to the not-so-small crowd of students who were so much more than the cute but dumb youngsters he'd first met.

The memories began to rise inside him as he dragged himself from the couch and pulled a fine engraving tool, a thumb-sized chunk of silver, and an even smaller lump of Amber and walked towards the dog statue.