Upon arriving at the village the Supreme Council assigned to them, the two witches realize that it's deserted. And the uprising that caused so many residents to flee did a number on some of the village's buildings. Some of them clearly had seen better days. At the same time, the ground road leading from and to the village is very narrow and more trees must be cut for the roads to be widened.
Janick then wastes no time holding a town hall assembly with the remaining residents. They see there's just isn't a whole lot of them left: a handful of miners, along with their families. And a blacksmith as well as a carpenter, with perhaps a hunter to feed the handful of residents left to run the mostly-ghost hamlet.
"What business do you have here, witch?" one of the residents asks Janick, never having seen her before.
"I am new to the frontier, and the Supreme Council sent me, alongside with Seloniel here, to help develop, or, in this case, rebuild the frontier. However, since the Supreme Council doesn't usually pay much attention to the frontier..." Janick answers the resident's question.
"So we know traveling the road leading to this place is almost like tramping the woods with barely any indication that it's, in fact, a road. Our starting point to get wood is through the road under construction" Seloniel announces the first phase of the roadmap, so to speak.
"But other than oppressive taxation, what were the main issues under the previous lord?" Janick asks them.
It's obvious this place can't grow vines, Janick might be wondering about another challenge this area might face, beyond keeping the residents fed. But maybe, when hung over, if I can still fly the carpet, I can carry fallen trees from the road under construction to what could pass for a lumber mill around these parts. I just don't think I can cast alcohol magic until I'm free from the hangover, even though alcohol magic is my main breadwinner.
And the pair realizes that it wasn't just exceedingly high tax rates that led to the uprising, but also other needs not being met. The village was so far away from any market that they practically needed to rely on carpet-borne freight to get anything from and to the village. Which was operated by, well, the previous lord. And, obviously, justice was brutal under the reign of the previous lord, who publicly zapped residents for even small infractions.
"The Supreme Council decreed this village is tax-exempt. The first priority is getting the road built, by clearcutting in a line three trees wide, and, along with it, a sawmill, so we can turn the trees we chop down into planks of wood and the bark and branches into firewood" Janick announces the roadmap in front of the villagers, who are worried about the lack of available labor to chop down hundreds, if not thousands of trees. "Refugees, vagrants will arrive in the coming weeks to help get this village back on track"
"In short, people who have nowhere else to go. Better that than nothing, I guess, especially since the Supreme Council gave this village tax exemption" yet another villager sighs, dreading the work that lies ahead of him.
"As a temporary measure, the Supreme Council will provide this village with emergency supplies, such as food and wine" Janick announces to the villagers, oblivious to the supplies' origins or how they will be paid for.
By then, Seloniel realizes the uprising left behind piles of raw iron ore. Because she knows that a certain amount of iron is required to make a specific tool, she decides to make these tools one by one, using fire magic on specific amounts of ore. She starts with axes and saws, so that she can keep her burns under control. However, ultimately, from her standpoint, it amounts to turning burns into a rising blood content since the drawback of casting rubbing alcohol spells is that it increases the caster's blood content alongside that of the person it's used on.
If, as an artisanal blacksmith, I feel forced to use rubbing alcohol several times per day just to make some axes, arrowheads, saws and hammers, or baking bread, will using fire magic to keep the town's blast furnace working be worth getting burned every day I get the blast furnace to work using magic? Seloniel starts getting worried about the consequences of using fire magic to get the iron production back up as ordered by the Supreme Council. On the other hand, I don't think the Supreme Council actually cares about how the results are achieved, only that we have something to show for sending two witches to rebuild a decrepit fief after an uprising.
The fire witch then starts distributing the tools among the villagers, feeling a little lightheaded from using rubbing alcohol magic on her hands, but also that pickaxes, while useful to dig, won't cut it to chop down trees.
Meanwhile, Janick realizes that there's a bucket list of items to get the village up and running, beyond simply food for the villagers, since the village's food supplies appear to be running low and nearing on starvation. It becomes clear to her the uprising took place without any actual forethought as to how the village will live after the uprising.
She starts budgeting based on her own production of magical wine, and the prices she thinks she can fetch for it, assuming Seloniel doesn't earn anything, at least for the time being. And what will the amount of money then obtained buy for the village. For now, anyway, she starts by putting the smaller of her two barrels into what passes for a manor home in this village and fills it with magical wine for the residents to drink.
Feeling lightheaded and buzzed, however, she thinks she needs to get away from the town and buy the emergency supplies she told the villagers would obtain. Let's see: the first batch of emergency supplies would contain an 80-pound wheel of cheese, as well as four bushels of flour. This amount of food would last the village about four days, and cost three hundred gold. Our starting budget is ten thousand, obtained by selling magical wine on the way here, Janick runs down the calculations in her mind as to how long their starting budget would last in food. Until the road is finished, I will be made to shoulder a lot of burdens, nay, all of the village's financial burdens, in hopes that I can earn the villagers' respect, and, with it, they will respect the Supreme Council. Even if it means I must get hangovers every other day or so. And eventually, they will enjoy the freedom of frontier life as a tax haven, once everything is up and running.
"I will be gone to buy flour and cheese for tonight!" Janick tells Seloniel in the afternoon, while she flies off with the carpet to get the "Make sure you don't overwork yourself making tools for the villagers! We still need to bake some bread!"
"Good thing you don't need nearly as much magical power to bake bread with fire magic as it does to work the same weight of iron ore!" Seloniel points out to her, as she realizes that working through the pile of iron ore to make tools did consume much of her mana, albeit in small doses each time.
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As Janick takes off with the carpet, she sees that the villagers, while having cut some trees during the day, faced the problem of removing the stumps from the future road. Which, combined with their lack of experience as lumberjacks, slowed the villagers down in getting the road built, but had the benefit of providing more firewood. The villagers realize that cutting down roots from a stump with an axe isn't the same as swinging a pickax into the ground to dig for iron ore.
It shows that the easy part was cutting the above-ground part of the tree, cut the smaller branches off and then cut the trees into either 8-foot or 12-foot logs, Janick starts thinking of the early stages of rebuilding and developing the area, and of the wood milling the carpenter is doing on these logs with the magical saw as the villagers cut down the trees to size, as well as the roots around the stumps.
Upon arriving at the nearest marketplace, which is not the one in which she last sold magical wine, Janick feels like she needs to sell some magical wine first, and then seek to buy the food for the village. However, unlike the previous trip to the marketplace, she doesn't feel like she will be able to sell nearly as much magical wine as she would have had if she had the entire day to do so.
Even so, with the amount of magical wine she feels she's able to sell, she feels her vision has blurred somewhat after selling several gallons of magical wine. Nevertheless, she flies on her carpet, trying to locate the cheese and flour vendors. Starting with the cheese vendor, but the marketplace feels like a maze to her in her alcohol-addled mind.
"A wheel... of cheese!" Janick, in her alcohol-addled voice, orders from the cheese vendor upon arrival at the cheese stall. "Please?"
"How big?" the cheese vendor asks her.
"The largest... one!" Janick hiccups, before asking for the weight of the wheel. "How big?"
"Eighty pounds. That would be one hundred fifty gold"
"Two of them, then" Janick then counts what she believes to be 300 gold, while the cheese vendor loads up two 80-pound cheese wheels onto the carpet.
After both cheese wheels are loaded, the cheese vendor returns the gold she forked out in excess of 300 gold, but she vaguely remembers the villagers don't just eat cheese. By nightfall, her blurred vision makes it more difficult to discern whether someone is selling flour.
"Can you tell me... where's the flour vendor... please?" Janick asks the cheese vendor while she hiccups again, thanks to her elevated blood content.
Yet Janick seems to only partially make heads of the directions given by the cheese vendor; her vision still blurred by remnants of her alcohol magic.
Once again, she flies across the marketplace on her carpet, at a much slower speed, because her magic carpet is weighed down by the two cheese wheels. There are several occasions where she nearly collides with the stalls or with other people, but other patrons of the marketplace tend to make way for the carpet. When she finally gets to the flour vendor:
"In the name of the Supreme Council..." Janick, exasperated by the winding trip she took at the marketplace because of her alcohol blood content, starts asking for flour, but gets interrupted by the flour vendor.
"Woah, what does the Supreme Council has to do with flour?" the flour vendor asks her, surprised that the Supreme Council would even ask for flour.
"I am to deliver... foodstuffs to a frontier road... construction site!" Janick keeps hiccupping while she feels her temper is about to flare up.
The flour vendor keeps questioning the alcohol witch about why the Supreme Council would send someone prone to alcoholism to fetch flour for a frontier road construction site, and where the road is supposed to lead. And, of course, the sudden interest of the Supreme Council for settling the frontier. After all, even there, to the eyes of so many, the Supreme Council is just a faceless authority lording over the land from on high, and that only seemed to care about the bigger cities and the territories under their jurisdiction.
"Why all... these questions?" Janick keeps hiccupping, tired of feeling like she's a criminal on trial. "I just want to buy... hold on" the vendor questioning her about the Supreme Council's motivations to settle the frontier and build a road through it caused her to forget about the quantity of flour she wants.
Hurry up, if I don't buy the flour soon, our village is going to starve, and it will reflect poorly on the Supreme Council in this region! A voice keeps ringing in her mind, as she tries to remember how many bushels of flour her puncheon can hold.
"How much flour... do you have left?" Janick keeps hiccupping while she runs the calculation of her flour-buying capacities in her alcohol-addled mind, first in terms of volume, constrained by her puncheon, and then the amount of money she has left from the sale of magical wine earlier today.
"I have tuns of flour in stock" the flour vendor asks her, while she tries to calculate both figures she feels could affect how much flour she can buy.
"Just fill this puncheon then..." Janick asks while she prepares the gold to pay for having the entire puncheon filled with whole wheat flour.
While the vendor empties several bushel-sized sacks of flour, sixty pounds each, into Janick's puncheon, she tries to get as close as possible to the sum of 275 gold, which is the price of filling the puncheon with flour at the regular price. Sure, she'd still have some gold left over from the sale of magical wine, but the final tally comes...
"That would be two hundred fifty gold" the flour vendor announces her the total price she's charged for the puncheon full of flour, which she then hands over.
Happy with the bulk discount she obtained from the flour vendor, she closes the barrel. Janick also realizes the emergency supplies will last much longer than she planned for.
Not only this carpet is overweight, but I am also still drunk. Yet I don't have a choice! The village needs these supplies delivered, on the double! Janick starts thinking of the risks she's taking to get the villagers fed.
She takes off from the market and back to Laverton. However, because of the sheer weight of the food, she carries far more than on any previous flight of the carpet up to this point. The total weight of the carpet's payload is well over nine hundred pounds, especially since the empty weight of the puncheon is almost a hundred pounds, and there's five hundred fifty pounds of flour in it.
Because the carpet is overweight, she flies at a much slower speed towards Laverton than she left the village, since the total payload more than tripled. And also at a lower altitude, following a somewhat erratic flight path since her blood content is still a little high.
As she makes her final approach towards the clearance that's to become the road leading to the village, the alcohol witch, flying under the influence, starts losing control of the carpet. A swift, magical air current blacks her out and throws her off the carpet, even though the villagers' food remains on it because of its sheer weight.
The villagers start panicking as a riderless carpet keeps falling towards the street, threatening to pummel any hapless bystander if they can't get out of the way fast enough. They get back into their homes, and the carpet lands on the dirt road, dragging itself to a stop and a cloud of dust is kicked into the air. Luckily for them, the dust only seemed to have affected the cheese.
The first villager to lay its hands on the cheese wheels, overjoyed to be eating food other than game meat and forest mushrooms for the first time in weeks, promptly brushes off said dust before he cuts into the cheese wheel.
Meanwhile, another villager finds Janick near a tree stump slated for uprooting. That villager asks Janick if she's all right.
"Where... am I?" Janick asks, still reeling in from the effects of using alcohol magic to conjure magical wine at the marketplace. "What... happened?"
"You're at the edge of Laverton. You fell off a flying carpet" the villager explains to her, while Seloniel and a few other villagers rolls the puncheon full of flour to the baker's shop, where she lives, since the previous baker died in the uprising. "You must have drunk too much!"
"It's my magic, really"