I sat down one evening with Don and Rick Corral and Willa and nutted out precisely what we needed.

As for subsequent building projects, there is a plethora of the damn things, I thought to myself.

Clint Darlington-Whit was also present, but this, I believed, was more because we were in close proximity to my father’s drink cabinet. Clint, in terms of laying out a ranch, was of limited use, having grown up in the luxurious settings of the British aristocracy. A man as amiable and open-minded as Clint was, who had grown up as one of the extremely privileged one percent, was of limited use when it came to plotting out the best locations to build a storage facility or a greenhouse and hydroponic center. He’d had people to do that sort of thing for him, he’d once told me and Willa.

Concerning that last building—the hydroponic center and greenhouse in which we hoped to grow our own produce—my father took the leading hand. This was no surprise, seeing as he was an Arcane Farmer and had already produced plants that could be turned into healing potions and the like by our skilled Artificers and Alchemist.

Even with the magic we had at our disposal, there was no real surefire way to produce glass, so it fell to the scavenger teams to fetch glass of all different sizes and types from commercial and residential greenhouses, as well as warehouses. Eventually, enough glass was gathered, in some instances from all the way in Columbia Falls and Rhodes, to make the greenhouse and hydroponic center that my father had envisioned.

The greenhouse soon became colloquially known as the glass cathedral by the guild. The edifice—for edifice it was when we got done building it—was a surprisingly majestic-looking structure of glass panels held within sturdy steel frames. These glass panels had been tempered with magic. Specifically, this was the magic of Kameel Al-Sala, our Pyromancer, and our Paladin of Light, Carmelo Ruiz, working together over several days. They managed to imbue the glass with heat and light properties that would ensure that snow and ice would not form on the glass itself and enough light would penetrate even on the gloomiest of days.

Once more, Kameel’s wife, Farah, was bought in to use her hydro magic to divert another small branch, a little skinny tributary, off the Stillwater so that it ran through a specially made opening in the greenhouse. This little offshoot of the life-giving river then diverted into several smaller channels, each irrigating a specific part of the greenhouse.

Our Occult Engineers oversaw much of the construction, but they were to all intents and purposes supervised by my father. Don Russo was a no-nonsense farmer through and through, with the advantage of the magical abilities of an Arcane Farmer, which had been bestowed upon him by the system, or ‘those bunch of idiots’ as he called them.

Along with the greenhouse and the bunkhouse, a number of other structures sprung up like constructed fungi. Some of the first to be erected, even before the bunkhouse had been finished, were several storage facilities. These were more rough and ready structures, as they didn’t need to be insulated or made habitable.

A nondescript armory, filled with weapons that were both mundane and extramundane, was crafted out of great blocks of river stone. Set against the backdrop of Montana’s expansive skies and rugged mountains, our armory looked about as impenetrable as I hoped it would prove to be. It wasn’t monsters that we feared getting into this building —it was the roving bands of brigands spotted on the roads. The walls might have been constructed from river stone, but on the inside there were also sheets of salvaged metal.

“Of all the storage sheds that we’re going to need,” Dominic Cook said before he led the armory building team, “this one needs to have the most solid foundations. Stone is apt to shift with the earth, and we don’t want anyone being crushed inside of here if some sort of geological shake takes place.”

We also built a designated infirmary and medical center. The exterior was a mosaic of reclaimed metal sheets, forming what Kayla Sigurdsson hoped would be a protective cocoon around the heart of healing on the ranch. Flanking the entrance to the infirmary, a herb garden flourished in repurposed oil barrels. Lavender, chamomile, and aloe vera stood tall, protected by enchantments from the growing cold, and tended to by my father, as well as our one and only Alchemist, Sofia Koura.

Kaila Sigurdsson and Sofia were charged with the interior decoration, and soon the corridors and rooms, simple as they may have been, were adorned with framed botanical sketches and the like.

Each of the treatment rooms held a blend of technological remnants of the past and the makeshift innovations of the magical present. Beds with crisp linens stood beside medical machinery, which in turn sat beside chests filled with alchemically-made potions and elixirs.

“We should have a quarantine room too,” Mrs. Mirum said when she wandered over to inspect the medical center.

“Oh, come on Mrs. Mirum,” I said. “That’s a little bleak, isn’t it?”

The old woman in her chair swatted at me. “Bleak? These are bleak times. A blind mule could see that, you silly son of a gun,” she said with her usual lack of compunction to one’s feelings. “Trust me, dear, I’m old enough to know that in times of affliction, the health of the many outweighs the solace of the few. Quarantine is not just a necessity; it is a selfless act for the greater good of the tribe.”

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“The tribe?” I said with a raised eyebrow and a crooked smile.

“Well, when you strip away all the finery and the modern bits and bobs that we still have at our fingertips,” Mrs. Mirum said, “Isn’t that what we are? A tribe living out here in the boonies?”

I hadn’t considered that, but she made a fair point.

“You mark my word, Sonny Jim,” she continued. “A tribe’s vitality hinges on the courage to make tough choices, and people will be looking to you, Devon Russo, to make those tough choices.”

I nodded, the small smile on my face fading. “I guess quarantine just has connotations of exclusion.”

“Quarantine’s not an act of exclusion,” Mrs. Mirum counted. “It’s the embrace of responsibility for the collective health. It’s a testament to the strength of unity, if all of us agree to abide by the quarantine rules should anything befall us.”

“That’s something I’ll have to bring up with the guild as a whole,” I muttered to myself.

“Well, don’t be too long about it.” She turned her wheelchair to head back to the ranch house. “Who knows what those damn ingrates that call themselves the System have got up their sleeves next?”

The other edifices constructed were the observation towers, a laundry facility, a water purification center, and a waste disposal commons. Seeing as we had the Stillwater River running right beside us, the water purification center might not have seemed very important. However, I wanted to take all precautions in preserving our way of life. Mrs. Mirum had been right. There was no knowing what the System might have in store for us. They might decide to poison the river and get rid of our only easily accessible source of water.

They’re nothing if unpredictable.

As it happened, the water purification center turned out to be more of a shrine. It was the brainchild of Roberto Mina, the Forest Ranger; Sofia Koura, the Alchemist; and Farah Al Salah, the Hydro Mage, who was finding herself with more on her plate than almost anyone else. Our Monk, Kai Morris, also presided over the erection of the shrine, weaving blessings around it in the strange mumbling tongue that was the unique ability of his class.

This shrine was a humble structure on the outskirts of the ranch. It was constructed out of repurposed barrels interconnected with salvaged hoses. Each barrel served a distinct purpose in the symphony of cleansing, from pre-filtration to the final purification act. The team of four that came up with the idea and managed to implement it had tried to explain how it worked to me. Even the mundane aspects of the project were baffling, and, as so far as the magical part of things went, it was almost totally incomprehensible.

“It’s like this man,” Roberto Mina told me as we stood there and looked at the completed purification center. “The water goes through the barrels and then goes out to that mound of sand over there, you see?”

“I see,” I said.

“That sand stands at the entrance of what you might call the shrine.” Roberto scrubbed his weathered hand over his shaved black-haired scalp. He had a good way of talking. Easy going, calm, friendly. He was a good man to diffuse tense situations. He had a cocksure grin too that couldn’t help but lure you into a smile of your own.

“So the water trickles through the sand, which is nature’s filtration system, right?” he continued. “And it cleanses the liquid of impurities. It’s a simple yet effective act.” He waved his hand further to the right. “Beyond the sand, there’s a reservoir of charcoal that Kameel helped us out with. It’s a porous structure that protects against contamination. According to Kai, it’s that charcoal over which he has sung most of his Monk-based jiggery-pokery.”

I laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”

Roberto grinned. “Well, the guy didn’t go into too much detail. The dude’s pretty reticent at the best of times, isn’t he?”

I nodded. I had to agree. Kai Morris was a quiet, introverted man, almost withdrawn, but it took all kinds to make a world, and he had proved his worth in helping to build the water purification center.

“So what water have we got running through it at the moment?” I asked.

“It’s only laundry water that we’re testing the purification of and then running it back into the greenhouses,” Roberto replied. “We can, at a pinch, divert the water from the river, but at the moment there doesn’t seem to be any point.”

“And let’s hope that there’s not any point.”

“Here’s to hoping,” Roberto agreed.

The laundry facilities that Roberto spoke of were perhaps the least glamorous of the newly erected buildings. They were essentially just a long, low, dimly lit barn that held twenty washing machines and dryers, taken from homes in the surrounding area. These were powered by their own solar unit on the barn roof, although they could also be plugged into generators. It was amazing how dirty sixty or so people got and how many clothes needed washing at any one time.

The waste disposal commons was on the very outreaches of the protective bubble. It was little more than a pit that was periodically blasted with magic of different varieties—fire, dark, and light—until it was little more than melted slag. Admittedly, it was not pretty, but it was better than just putting the trash that couldn’t be recycled into landfill.

The observation towers that stood at intervals throughout the forest encircling Merlin’s ranch were perhaps the structures that I had been most proud of. They were less watch towers and more cunningly hidden tree houses set amongst the towering pines. Sentries were scheduled in tightly controlled rotations to scan the surrounding country and watch for enemies. They were accessed mostly by rope ladders, though a few could be quickly reached through various spells or magical contraptions. Their wooden frames intertwined with the branches of the ancient pine trees in which they were hidden.

Whenever it was time for my turn at sentry duty, I enjoyed the high climb, the air thickening with the scent of pine needles as I ascended into a realm where man and nature harmonized. One of the many places that man rarely visited and hadn’t really been designed to go.

Unsurprisingly, the main structures were centered around the boles of the trees. They were made of platforms, but these extended like helpful arms along the thicker branches. They were edged with makeshift railings which would never have passed any kind of health and safety test anywhere in the world, I didn’t think.

All in all, once all these structures were completed within the space of a month or so, the ranch felt less of a farm and more of a village almost.

A township or a settlement out on the frontier.

When that thought struck me, I couldn’t help but draw a connecting line, thinking about how the pioneers of old had carved their existence into the heart of Montana and how we were forging our destiny amidst the remnants of a world that once was. Although this journey that we had embarked on may not have echoed to the sound of wagon wheels and the rustle of prairie grass, we could still find kinship with those old pioneers. Their journey, like ours, had spoken of courage in the face of the unknown.