I looked down at the vague outline of my project, nowhere near done, but showing the first bit of true structure. It had taken the entire rainy season, and even now it was looking very rough, but this was my weapon. Well, it would be my weapon when it was finally finished at least, now it was just a number of small magical crystals held together by thin connecting strands.

My creation would be a hammer. I used such an instrument the most, and I liked the symbolism, the builder of civilization to destroy the barbarians at the gate, so I was going with it, and when it was done it would pack one hell of a punch. The many individual crystals making this artifact up would all force energy in directed paths, both forwards with the head, and upwards away from whoever was swinging it. If I'd done all of my work correctly it would look normal, if fancy, until the moment it struck. Upon landing the amount of energy released should be enough to shatter stone walls, not everything I hoped for, but a start.

Control of course was still all manual. Surely there had to be a solution, a way to make this work with inputs, but I didn't have it yet, and I didn't have a ton of time to figure it out. For now it would do one thing and one thing only, and I hoped it could do it well enough. Maybe if I used it at just the right time it would be enough.

All of that would sadly have to wait, for I had projects to oversee. The nearby villages needed to be fortified and even if the people working with me weren't fools there were parts that I wanted to oversee myself. Atal hadn't liked it, but with his people pushing back the enemy over the previous season and the fact that I wasn't going far he accepted in the end. The fact that I'd tossed most of my metalworking duties at others helped too, myself only now working on particular projects rather than the day to day making of weapons and armor.

I returned upstairs once more, looking about as I put the last of my things together. Isha was there fussing. This world didn't have marriage ceremonies in the same vein as my last one, but they did exist. Much like those for becoming an adult it simply showed a shift in you, a change in perspective that others could see and attest to, and they too varied a bit, the only real constant being that you had to state your intent before others, so they would know. It was all rather like the contract we'd had as children, but far more serious.

“I don't like you going out there,” she said, pouting at me.

“Been hearing that a lot lately,” I answered, pulling her close, married officially or not we were basically already there.

“Seems like perhaps you should listen to it then.”

“Isha, I'll be nearby, with guards, and this needs doing. You know that.” I kissed the top of her head, only for her to pull back a bit.

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“Someone else could do it.”

“True, but nobody else could do it as well. Even Chien couldn't, and he's almost as good as I am nowadays.” That was the truth, as the lad's magic might be well behind mine but his ability to understand and work with designs was improving by the day.

“Fine,” she said with a frown.

Before long I bid her and the others of the house goodbye meeting up with Ian. He'd be with the guards joining me for this, though wasn't in charge of it all. Frankly I think the powers that be knew I got along with him better than the average guard so sent him along.

“Ready?” I asked my friend as we walked out of the gates.

“Following you around will be better than what I was doing last season,” he said with a smile and a shrug.

“How'd things go?” I inquired.

“Badly, but we did it. The leaders had us tracking down where they were coming over the mountains and start taking them down one by one. These Westers are a mess.”

“Westers?”

“Needed something to call them, they don't have cities or really even villages so Westers it is, they're from the West after all,” he explained.

“What do they call themselves?” I asked.

“The True People.”

I didn't bother to disguise my displeasure with that, lots of implications there.

“What do they call us then? The False People?”

“No, they just call us enemies from what I can tell. Honestly I'm not all that impressed with them. Their weapons are poor, and while they're pretty aggressive they don't really build anything so far as I can tell, no houses, no walls, nothing.” He was already starting down the path almost all people in war did, dehumanizing or in this case de-elfanizing them.

The trip to the first of the villages we were beefing up wasn't even a day. As I looked around I realized that I'd seen it before, this was the place I'd stopped by when moving to Atal. Of course we didn't waste any time, quickly the magic users in the group beginning to assemble walls. Construction was already underway, though I'd be seeing to the gatehouse and ballista emplacements myself.

Rocks were being pulled out, cut to shape, and assembled one by one, it wasn't fast, but it would be sturdy. We'd even brought a small amount of cement along for the process. I would've preferred to use more of the material, but without a good source of limestone we could only make it from shells or coral, neither of which anyone wanted to drive away through hunting. The idea of environmentalism may not be around, but hunters understood over-hunting.

At the end of the day's work I sat atop the section of wall we'd completed with Ian, sipping a basic berry wine from a water-skin Turned out that alcohol had predated agriculture on this world, even though few bothered with it.

“I saw one of those kids,” he admitted after a long drink. “One of the ones they poisoned. I watched him die.”

“I'm sorry to hear that. It's horrible what they're doing to them.”

“He was there, hovering in the air throwing stuff at us one moment, and the next... The boy wasn't more than twelve, couldn't have been and he just ripped apart. One of the fire users with us said it was the power, that the unnatural nature of it killed him.” Ian stared off into the distance, lost in his memories. “I've seen lots of people die Justin, from monsters and accidents, even a few killed by criminals, or Atal when he's done with said criminals, but nothing like that. The screaming, sometimes I hear the screaming in my sleep.”

“We're going to win this, and when we do those responsible will know pain and fear,” I told him.

“Then maybe we take their kids and...”

“No.” I knew he was in pain and that he'd probably never harm a child if it came to it, but that was a line of thought that didn't even bear speaking about.

“What?” He turned to me with hard eyes.

“We will not become monsters, there's no end to it. Justice, yes, but revenge against the innocent? We cannot go down that path.”

For a moment I wasn't sure what he was thinking, but then saw his eyes soften. “You're right, we can be better than them. The adults though, the ones doing this.”

“Oh we're going to kill the shit out of them,” I agreed.

“Kill the...” then he snorted. “You say the weirdest things Justin.” He passed back over the wine, shaking his head.