Querit stood in the middle of the petrified forest with me, right on top of the ritual circle I’d constructed to form the valley’s genius loci. Overhead, a slab of sparkling silver stone floated in the air. It was oblong, a hundred feet long and thirty feet at the widest, and nearly as thick. That had been a pleasant surprise, but also an unexpected complication. My phantom space couldn’t hold nearly that much volume, even if I’d been willing to chop it into chunks.

I’d ended up creating a massive portal on the spot and multicasting two grand telekinesis spells to relocate the moon core after I’d finally pried it out of the coils of the dead behemoth sand worm. It hadn’t been a pretty or clean process, but it was done now.

“Is… uh… What’s… what’s that thing stuck to the bottom of the core?” Querit asked.

I followed his eyes to where a three-foot-long section of worm muscle had adhered to the stone and frowned in annoyance. A flicker of force magic cut it free, where I directed it into the worm stasis box.

There, now it was done.

Querit opened his mouth to say something else, saw the look on my face, and wisely changed his mind. Instead, he just looked around at the clearing and said, “This is a pretty nice setup. How long did it take you to make?”

“Too long,” I said. “I’ll be breaking it here momentarily.”

“To put the moon core in its place?”

“Yes. This is relatively close to the center, so the moon core will have the least impact on the mana flows here.”

I’d left the ritual circle intact for two reasons, even though it wasn’t necessary once I’d completed the magic to bind myself to the valley and form its genius loci. First, I hadn’t needed the space for anything else, and second, if for some reason my bond to the valley was broken, I could quickly and easily reestablish it.

Stone shape did the majority of the work cutting the ritual circle from the ground over the next few minutes. I delegated holding the slabs out of the way to Querit while I started digging. It was a good thing I was back in my demesne, both for the mana recovery that afforded me and because the genius loci could help reshape the ground as I desired. It still took an hour to hollow out the space for the moon core, but we did eventually get the job done and the ritual circle replaced back over top of it.

A great deal of tension drained out of me with that. One of my big fears over the last few days had been that Ammun’s mage hunters would show up while I was in the middle of this project. That fear had only gotten stronger when I’d discovered and unearthed the moon core. The absolute worst-case scenario would have been losing it to the enemy.

Now that the moon core was buried in the center of my demesne, it was as safe as I could make it. The valley’s defensive wards would protect it, and the mana regeneration from the petrified forest would help camouflage the core from any invaders who managed to somehow get inside. Short of digging it up, no one besides Querit and myself would ever know it was there.

On the other hand, plenty of people were going to know that something had happened out in the desert east of Derro. There was no way to hide that, not with that sand worm being multiple miles long. The whole area was going to have trouble with an influx of scavenging monsters in the near future, and they’d need to handle that without the teleportation network until the current crisis had been resolved.

That reminded me that I still needed to go collect the platforms. That was going to be an expensive project, requiring thirty or so teleportation spells all over the island. Fortunately, by my best estimates, my newly improved valley should produce that much mana in less than a day.

“Get me a projection of when we’ll have enough mana saved up to start building our resonance point, will you?” I asked Querit.

“We can start the preliminary divinations in the next two weeks or so,” he answered immediately. “It’ll be another month after that before we’re ready to actually map out the Astral Realm’s connection to the valley.”

“I can see I underestimated your ability to gauge ambient mana levels,” I said.

“It is a matter of my very survival,” the golem told me. After a moment’s thought, he added, “Or it was.”

“Still, something putting out as much mana as the moon core… You’re sure you’ve got a read on it?”

“I am.”

And Querit had been living in the valley long enough that he probably had a better grasp of how much mana each individual tree produced than I did. Certainly he’d spent more time here. If he thought he had the mana production capabilities figured out, well, that was his job, and I was inclined to believe him.

Stolen novel; please report.

“How are we doing on the storage crystals?” I asked.

“I’ve got them arranged in an Adenmeiyer array for maximum conductivity. We’re at thirty percent capacity.”

“I’m not sure what that is,” I said. “Is it similar to a Volstigar configuration?”

“Oh, yes! It was created about a hundred years ago—well, plus another thousand—using Volstigar’s work as a basis, and the principles of mana harmonics to calculate the optimal mana flow path between crystals.”

I would have loved to get a closer look at that, but I still had an hourglass with an unknown amount of sand in it looming over me. “If that’s what you think is best,” I said. “I need to finish recovering my mana reserves, then I’m going to collect the platforms for the teleportation network. After that, I want to test the pillar defenses to confirm they can operate at a higher sustained level of mana output.”

“That reminds me, I’ve finished streamlining the new enchanting rune clusters. When did you want to start updating the wards?”

“What did you get the mana reclamation up to?” I asked.

“Exactly where we expected it to end up. The rune cluster will recycle about a third of the mana used.”

“Okay. Platforms first. Ward upgrades next. Then pillar stress testing.”

Querit nodded along. “I think it’s quite admirable that you’re so dedicated to helping the natives of this island.”

I snorted. “No, you don’t.”

“No, I don’t,” he agreed. “Admittedly, I haven’t known you that long, but you’re not that selfless of a person. I assume there’s some tactical reason to prevent any invading forces from gaining the locations of those villages.”

“Something like that,” I said. I trusted Querit more every day, but not enough to tell him about my family. That was a weakness I would never reveal to anybody I didn’t have to, especially not a golem as powerful as Querit was. He would understand how vulnerable my family was.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t stop the rest of the island from talking about New Alkerist—which would easily lead any invaders to my family—without killing everyone. Genocide was almost never the correct solution, even for a monster as heartless as me. The best I could do was remove the clues pointing out where to look now that I knew I could expect mage s oldiers showing up in large numbers.

Whatever Querit’s thoughts on the matter were, he recognized that I wasn’t interested in talking about it and dropped the conversation. We parted ways, him back to work on adapting lossless casting and me to my personal teleportation platform once I finished gathering all the mana I’d need.

This was not going to be a pleasant task.

* * *

“What do you think you’re doing?!” a middle-aged woman with hair like straw and a frumpy green robe screeched at me.

“Removing the platform so that the invading mage army can’t use it to access your village,” I said.

“But we need that! Half our supplies come by teleportation these days!”

“I understand that, and you were given several days to stock up.”

“Please,” another villager pleaded. “That’s not nearly enough time. We’re not ready yet.”

“Overland caravans are being organized,” I told them as I pulled the last of the emitters out. “With any luck, this will only be a temporary situation.”

A small crowd had gathered around me, some keen to fight, others silent with haggard faces. They knew they were in for hard times, and some of them rightly blamed me for it, even if they didn’t understand exactly why it was my fault.

Mana burst out of the woman with the green robe in the form of a lick of fire that hurled itself through the air in my general direction. It splashed harmlessly against my shield ward while the villagers gawked at the scene.

I paused in my work and straightened up to my full height before slowly turning to face her. “That,” I said slowly, enunciating the word, “was a mistake.”

I raised a hand and pointed a single finger in her direction. The crowd flinched back, all except for a young man who appeared to be around my age. He threw himself between me and what I assumed was his mother, or perhaps grandmother.

“Stop,” he cried out, too late to actually accomplish anything even if I’d been inclined to listen to him.

A single thin line of lightning jumped from my finger and crossed the intervening space between us. It easily arced around the man to shock my attacker. She let out a pained howl and jumped back, but there was no escaping my magic. The spell stayed connected to her for a few more seconds despite her defender’s attempts to interpose himself, then I let it fade.

The woman slumped to the ground with a groan. Ignoring her and the young man, I asked, “Would anyone else like to fight, or can I get on with doing my job now?”

Despite some muttered conversation and a lot of dirty looks, nobody else came forward. Satisfied, I turned my back to them and started disconnecting the rune plate from the base. It would have been easier now to pull the whole thing into my phantom space, but leaving the rest of the platform in place here would make it easier later when I went to put the whole thing back together.

“You’re an evil, heartless man,” the guy who’d tried to stop me from zapping the woman said. “How can you just condemn our entire village to suffer like this?”

“You’ll survive,” I told him. The rune plate came free, and I pulled it into my phantom space. “Or you won’t. I don’t really care. If you do die, though, it won’t be because a dozen mages teleported to your village and burned it to the ground.”

Without waiting for a reply, I took to the air and flew a mile or so out into the desert. I’d gotten similar receptions from every other village I’d visited, though this was the first time anyone had been bold enough to actually throw a spell at me. Usually, I just got a pitiful audience mewling about how much harder their lives would be without the magical conveniences they hadn’t even known existed a few years back.

I’d learned my lesson about teleporting away inside the village itself. It just gave the people an opportunity to pester me for solutions to their problems, solutions I had no interest in providing. Honestly, it was like no one could think for themselves anymore.

I heaved a great sigh and crossed another name off my mental list. That was fifteen down, nineteen more to go. Maybe the next village would show a bit more grace about the loss of the teleporter.

Probably not, though. My spell took hold and I appeared on the platform of my new destination. There was already a crowd waiting for me. “Great,” I muttered as they surged forward. “Just great.”