Val and I lay around in bed as long as we could stand it but eventually wakefulness overtook us, and we moved to the couch instead, where Val curled up beside me.

"We need more of your little books," Val yawned, "One for each of us, I think."

"Just so you can summon breakfast?"

Val ran a hand through her hair, letting it flow through her fingers like violet mercury, "I'm not going much of anywhere with my hair like this, just making it here from the bed was difficult enough. Do you have a way for me to trim my hair? Or are you expecting me to figure it out on my own?"

"Oh, I've got some ideas," I assured her, "But I think I'll let you figure it out on your own."

"An effective way of keeping me confined to the bedroom," she mused.

I extricated myself from Valentine's grip, and rose from the couch, "I'm going to get showered, and then see if I can track down Cassius," I told her, "And if I feel like it, I might let Amity know you'd like something to eat."

Val leapt excitedly to her feet, "Mind if I join you?"

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As I couldn't immediately come up with a creative way to mess with Val, I did end up letting Amity know that she'd like something for breakfast. Good thing too, since Amity knew where to find Cassius.

I tracked him down, not out gathering wood for his project, but in the private bar upstairs.

The hotel's event space was on the eighth floor and stretched across both wings. Set up for conventions, conferences, and weddings, the central hall's high ceiling rose to take up part of the ninth floor.

One could find the private bar in the space that remained, with large floor to ceiling windows that looked down upon the event floor.

It reminded me of the few times I'd watched a hockey game from a private box, the games being a reward handed down by executives who deigned to recognize the people who did all the work at the company.

Though not blessed with an abundance of space, it added to the charm. While the restaurant downstairs was well appointed, it was too large, too open to have the same cosy, private feeling as the upstairs bar.

Cassius and Phoebe sat in a corner booth, one of those circular ones that I always thought looked cool on television. The sort where the hero would find the mob boss and several of his henchmen, or maybe a pair of lightly-clad women.

A candle sat burning in the centre of the table, and I'd have thought it was just an ordinary candle, if not for the cloud of glowing motes that hung above and around the table. They were shades of red and orange. Their slight flicking gave the effect of being surrounded by firelight.

They were seated opposite each other and speaking quietly, but looked up as I approached.

"Sup man?"

"Good morrow, Wallace."

"Mind if I join you guys?"

Cassius did spare a look for Phoebe, but held out a hand towards the table, "Sure."

The bench creaked under my weight as I settled onto it, and Phoebe shuffled over to give me a little more room.

"You guys like the place?"

"Yeah, why? You got some plans for it?" Cassius asked.

I shrugged, "Still not sure yet, but one way or another, we're gonna end up with more people here. The restaurant and the lobby will be their area to gather and eat. I was thinking this could be ours."

Cassius looked at me askance, though I caught the grin encroaching upon his features, "I thought we were supposed to be all egalitarian and sh-" his glance at Phoebe was almost too quick to catch, "Uh, and stuff," he corrected.

"I found the place, and I'm the guy who knows how everything works," I gave a flippant shrug, "Hypocrisy is part of leadership."

Cassius was about to reply but was interrupted by Phoebe's a very unladylike snort.

"Sorry, sorry, go on," she insisted, stifling a laugh.

"Oh yeah, is that why you're up here? Because you know how everything works?"

"Fine. I know how almost everything works, and I'm bigger than everyone else, so I still get to be in charge. Besides, wait long enough, and you'll get to be the big man. By the time this place looks more like a small city and less like a post-apocalyptic ruin, I'll be dead, and you'll get to decide how hypocritical to be."

"Dude, you can't be more than twenty-five. I'm only like five years younger than you."

"And if I'm fortunate I'll get another twenty-five, but probably not."

"Are you ill?" Phoebe exclaimed.

Cassius grimaced as the realization hit him, "Ah shit," he sighed.

I turned to Phoebe, meeting her concerned gaze, "Humans my size don't live very long. Fifty is about the limit. Being so big puts a lot of strain on the heart and skeleton. I've got some other freaky shit going on that makes my bones crazy strong, and that takes the stress off my skeleton, but it means I weigh about double what I should."

"And puts yet more stress on your heart," Phoebe sympathized.

"And my joints," I nodded.

"Damn, I'm sorry man."

"Don't be," I insisted, "I've always known this is how it would be. So if you want the penthouse, you'll have to wait till my heart gives out."

Cassius threw up his hands, "Man, that's not even fair. How am I supposed to argue with you now?"

"I'm not certain you'll get the penthouse even after Wallace is gone," Phoebe observed, "for Valentine will remain."

"She knows?"

"Yeah, she knows."

Phoebe pursed her lips, but I saw the smile in her eyes, "Are you certain that spending time with little Valentine is the best thing if you're worried about your heart?"

"If I'm only going to get another couple decades, I'm damn well going to enjoy them," I retorted, "And to that end," I added, dragging the conversation back on track, "I want to get the bar, and the hotel up and running. You said robotics, does that include some wiring?"

"Some, yeah. Probably more than you, doing software work."

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"We still don't have any Create mana, Val and I walked around for hours yesterday, but nothing I saw matched her torch. We'll keep looking, but we do have four elevator lift motors."

"Ah, run 'em backwards, I get it. I don't know if it'll be enough to power the whole building, but it should be enough for a couple of floors."

"May I be of assistance?" Phoebe offered.

"Well you know as much about wiring as Wallace, and are way better at magic, so sure, why not?"

"Smartass."

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"See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. It's not even a DC motor."

"It's not?" I asked haltingly.

"No. It's a tri-phase AC motor."

"Ah, of course," Phoebe intoned.

"It's not even that complicated," Cassius added, "The way you were talking, I thought we'd need to rewire the whole building to suck power out of the elevator motors, but they're already set up to do that."

"Really? Why?"

"Regenerative braking, like an F1 car. It'll only work if the building already has power, though."

Phoebe was holding her magic candle, and in the faux-firelight, I saw her frown, "Why would this building carry such a system? To only generate power if it's already present?"

"Safety," Cassius explained, "It's not meant to power the whole building. The system recovers energy that would otherwise be lost while braking. Instead of turning the kinetic energy into heat, the motor turns it back into electrical energy. It's not enough to power the whole hotel, but it makes a dent in the electricity bill. That's why it only works while the building is powered. If there's no power, either something has gone really wrong, or some dude is working on the wiring. If the motor put power into the grid, he'd fry."

"Wallace has already devised a way of powering Amity, might the same work here?"

"Actually yeah," Cassius grinned, "We'll need to disconnect the motor from the elevator cables, that'll probably be a pain. But once we do, we can hook up a power source and start the shaft spinning. Could you create an enchantment that does that?"

"Certainly," Phoebe agreed.

"What if we're generating too much power?" I put in, "Are we going to melt something if we're not careful?"

"Breakers should save us if we screw it up too much, though yeah, it could still mess up the motors," Cassius turned to Phoebe, "And we'll need a way to tell the enchantment to stop, or even just to spin more slowly, so keep that in mind," she nodded. Cassius turned back to me, "What I'm thinking is we set one elevator aside as a battery. We'll fill it up to its max load, and set it up so that any extra energy is sent to this motor," he explained, slapping the top of a nearby lift motor, "It'll lift the elevator, storing potential energy. This is what Fee's enchantment'll pay attention to when throttling back. And if we need more juice, the elevator lowers, and we get the energy back to power... I dunno, the washing machine probably."

"We'll need to set another aside to use as a normal elevator," I informed him, "Val can't wear her amulet if she's hurt, and without it, she can hardly make it up one flight of stairs, let alone make the climb to the penthouse."

Cassius winced, "That put's a cap on how far we can get without magic, but we'd be good for now," he checked the little metal plate carrying the motor's technical specs, "It says thirty-seven kilowatts per motor, but I don't know how much of that we'll get out of them."

"My apologies," Phoebe interjected, "How much is a kil-o-watt?"

"A thousand watts?" he explained, "But that's not gonna mean a lot to you. On average, someone from America or Canada is gonna use about one and a half kilowatts. But that's on average," he added, "the number'll go up or down depending on how much stuff you have on. Which means we don't just need to be able to cover the average, we need to cover the peaks, and I got no clue how high it could go."

"Well if the average is one and one-half of your units, I don't imagine the peak could be more than double the figure you provide," Phoebe pointed out, "Which would mean two dozen residents here at Wallace's fortress."

Cassius nodded thoughtfully, "Yeah, good point," he agreed, "But we can only count on one motor worth of power. The second one'll be free most of the time, but if we're counting on it and someone hops in the elevator, we'll have brownouts through the whole building."

"You intend to store power in one of them, by gravity, yes? Could one elevator lowering not lift another?"

"It's tricky. The energy recovery isn't one-to-one. It's not like a seesaw. It'd help, probably a lot, but we'd still need at least part of the second generator's output. And that assumes the storage elevator is at the top, which it won't always be. Nah, we'd need to be ready for a worst-case. So twelve people instead of two dozen."

"I don't know how much of our power budget would be heating, but we've got that handled already," I pointed out, "We should cut power to the HVAC and the two big chillers. It should make a pretty big dent."

Cassius threw up his hands, "It's complicated, okay? Getting something basic set up actually shouldn't be too bad. The tricky part'll be rigging up one of the elevators as a battery-"

"I'd be happy to help," Phoebe offered.

"Great," Cassius went on, "Once we've got power, I'll be able to get a feel for things, run the numbers, and see if anything needs changing. But you need to decide if you want this more than the ramp I'm also supposed to be building."

I shrugged, "We need both. Ideally, as soon as possible. Have you decided which way you're going to build the ramp?"

"Sorta? I know I want to build out of wood then transmute to stone. Don't have blueprints or anything though."

"Then you guys stay in here and work on this, the rest of us will get you the lumber you need."

"Oh. Well, thanks, man," Cassius relented.

"No problem, and don't worry too much if we can only generate enough power for twelve people. That's twelve more people than right now, it'll be enough for a while yet."

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Still in the grip of The Long Night, I wasn't about to go running out to chop down trees, but I did recall seeing fire axes in 'break glass in case of' boxes. My long axe was ill-suited for chopping wood, but other than Valentine, I didn't have a lot to do at the moment, so I went round collecting tools.

I found one of the boxes on the ninth floor. While the bar occupied the centre of the building, there were pretty swanky rooms on the building's wings. Yet another reason to get the elevator going. The others had taken rooms in the second and third floors, but once the elevator was up and running, I expected they'd move up here where it was nicer. While not as spacious as the penthouse, they were pretty damn close.

I noted a lock on the red, glass-fronted case. Not wanting to leave a bunch of broken glass in the carpet, I headed down to the front desk to get the key.

It was on my way down that I ran into Regina. She came bounding up the stairs in great leaps that carried her from one landing to the next without touching a single step. I moved aside to let her pass, but she stopped when she saw me.

"Wallace, intruders approach the fortress."

"Just when I was getting bored," I sighed.

----------------------------------------

I followed Regina up to the roof, though took a moment to tap on the penthouse door and let Val know what was going on.

Regina took me to the northern end of the roof and set her paws on the low wall.

"I will be truthful," she rumbled, "I make no claims against the teaching ability of Felicity, but magic is not coming easily to me. However, I am unwilling to let your generosity go unanswered, so I've taken to patrolling your fortress's perimeter when not in Felicity's lessons. It's in this manner I spotted the torches."

Less than a mile to the north was a single torch, so near that I could distinguish two separate figures huddled around its light.

"They will reach us in under an hour, though are not what concerns me," Regina took her paws off the wall, and turned, "There is more."

The door to the roof clattered open, and Val emerged to join us as I followed Regina to the building's south end.

She'd dressed in appropriately sized human clothing, and had the simple T-shirt tucked into her pants. Her hair, in turn, was tucked into the T-shirt. Restrained by the waistband of her pants, it gathered against her back.

Despite the potential crisis, I still found time to smirk at her, and Val returned a look that promised vengeance.

Again, Regina put her paws up on the wall, but I didn't need her to point out what I should be looking for despite the distance.

"Damn, that's a lot of torches."

"Gauging the distance is difficult, but unless I miss my guess, they are on horseback. They came into view only recently, but have already crossed a great deal of ground. I expect them to reach us about the evening meal, perhaps shortly afterwards, should they take a rest."

"Twenty torches?" I guessed.

It was hard to get an exact count with the distance as they bobbed along the landscape, disappearing and reappearing as a tree blocked the light here or there.

"I believe so," Val agreed.

"Not more than forty, at the very least," Regina added.

"Well, they're obviously not from the village, and they can't be Prince Guillerme's men," I counted, lowering two of four fingers, "Which leaves Temerity, or one of several fey noblemen who might be looking to scoop you up."

"Another fey seems more likely," Val replied, "I could see Temerity sending a runner to take back your reply to her offer, even one under guard. But not in so great a number."

"Let's hope you're right."

"Wally," Val exclaimed, eyes wide.

"Whoa, not like that," I clarified, "But if Temerity is sending so many guys, then there's no simple way to deal with her. But if it's some fey dipshit and a bunch of mercs, we can just shoot the asshole and tell the mercs to take their money and go home. Or at least promise to go home next time The Long Night rolls around."

"And should the sellswords remain?" Regina asked.

"It may not even be sellswords," Val added, "Temerity has hired most of those available in the city, and any nobleman will have had time to gather any sprite soldiers at his disposal. Though I approve of your general sentiment, if there are sprites involved, I don't believe it is a simple matter of shooting people until they go away."

"A man can dream."